– Transcript 79
R: (tape starts abruptly) …om. It’s good to be with you again. I welcome you with all my heart. I notice we have a few new faces here today. The first thing I’m going to ask you is, “Do not believe a word I say. Why should you believe what I say? Who am I?”
SH: Good question?
Nate (SC): You’ve been there. (laughter)
R: Do not accept what I say literally. Open your heart. Have no opinions for or against. Do not come to any conclusions. Leave your concepts and preconceived ideas outside of the door for a while and just be. Be your Self.
Your Self already knows who you are. You believe that you are the body-mind but your Self knows you’re not. Your Self knows that you are ultimate happiness, pure awareness, nirvana, absolute reality. Your Self already knows this. Be your Self. Just be.
Do not listen to your mind. Your mind will tell you all sorts of things. It makes no difference if they’re true or not. Your mind is not your friend. Be your Self. Be happy. Just the way you are. Sammy is happy. (laughter) Slap happy.
SH: Great. (laughs) Other side of the tape, that will do. (laughs) R: Mary would like to sing one of her beautiful songs that she writes for us.
Mary: This is dedicated to Robert.
(Music plays and Mary sings)
Om shanti, om shanti, peace, peace, peace.
Om shanti, om shanti, peace, peace, peace.
In my heart I pray to you Robert of a thousand eyes,
Omnipresent, always free, where no one lives or dies,
I see you everywhere, absolute supreme
With your grace, we awake, from this mortal dream,
Take my mind and send it through the ego lost in time
All I have I’ll give to you what I thought was mine,
In my heart I sing to you Robert of a thousand eyes,
Your pervading silence to, beyond these mortal skies,
Time and place dissolve in space but you remain the same, Eternal blissful consciousness one without a name.
Om shanti, om shanti, peace, peace, peace.
Om shanti, om shanti, peace, peace, peace.SM: Thank you. (R: Thank you Mary.) Thank you Robert.
R: Do you want to read the Jnani?
(Mary reads, confessions of a Jnani. Refer to beginning of this book.) (Tape break then restarts with Robert)
R: Again greetings and salutations. It’s good being with you again.
Most of you see me about 3-4 hours a week. This is the reason we have transcripts.
As most of you know I do not give seminars or workshops or intensives. I do not travel any place giving any lectures. I do not advertise. I do not want masses of people coming here. I allow the transcripts for one reason, because you only see me for 3-4 hours a week and the transcripts are an extension of my Self. This is why every once in a while I explain to you how to read those transcripts.
Do not read them like you do an ordinary book. You go through the book and you’re finished and you’re ready for the next book and you go through that book and you’re finished and you’re ready for the next one and you forget all about the first one.
This is not head knowledge.
The proper way to read the transcripts is before going to sleep and when getting up in the morning. Read through it once. Then go back to the beginning and read each paragraph pondering, cogitating, meditating, identifying with each paragraph. Even though it takes you an hour or more to go into a paragraph it doesn’t matter. You have to become a living embodiment of what you’re reading. You have to digest and assimilate those words, it helps.
(short silence)
There are many of us when we first got into spiritual life, we do so because we want to remove some problem from our mind or from our experience. That is the logic we use. We wish to become a happier person. We wish to remove a disease from our body. We wish to remove lack or limitation from our lives. We think we’ve got a problem that we cannot handle and we wish to remove this.
In the beginning stages this is all fine and well. When you get into a thing as Jnana, Advaita Vichara, self-inquiry, non dualistic work, we begin to understand it makes no difference what we’re going through physically. We stop to consider our physical needs, we no longer consider these needs. We forget about our bodies. We’re not trying to change bad for good. We begin to feel that this world is an illusion. We’ve been mesmerized to believe that the world that we hear, smell, touch, feel and talk about is not the real world. It’s a world like a dream world. We make progress by pondering these things.
After a while. After you’ve been in this teaching for quite a while the feelings sort of die down. Many of you call me and tell me, “Robert nothing is happening.” This is very funny. That’s just the point. No thing is supposed to happen. What do you want to happen? When nothing is happening that is when you’re really making progress.
Many of you believe that you have to make changes in your life style. You have to move somewhere. Something has to happen in your life to show that you’re making progress. You’ve got it in reverse. Everything in your life should become a no thing. Your desires should begin to become less and less. Your needs, your wants, your bodily comforts. These things should become extinguished from your life. In other words you are transcending the world and your body and your mind. Only when you transcend these things do you begin to feel true happiness and true joy.
All of the great Sages, great Saints have told us the same thing. We’re supposed to develop a state of no mind. We’re not to think about our problems and our troubles, so-to-speak. For to think of these things simply increases them. Everything is karmic. Everything is preordained and everything that is going on in your life is supposed to happen.
Yet you are not the life that this is happening to. You are not that. All you have to do is to wake up.
You’re not supposed to learn new techniques. People run from teacher to teacher read book after book. Thinking they’re going to find a special technique that will enlighten. There is no such technique. Can’t you see the idea is to give up all techniques? To surrender everything? To become empty? And just wake up. But because most of you are so stuck in the world, in Maya you just can’t wake up when I tell you to wake up. You use certain techniques in order to awaken you. Yet no technique is really necessary but you refuse to wake up.
This is again why great Sages from time immemorial have told us only a mature soul can practice Jnana, real Jnana or real Advaita Vedanta or atma-vichara. Due to the fact that it’s so simple. It’s so simple that it becomes hard. For all you really have to do is wake up. That’s it!
The average person cannot comprehend this. They would like me to sit down and tell them stories and give them techniques and become initiated and get into all kinds of yoga practices believing that will do it. Yet most of you have tried all these things and you’re still where you were before.
You have to undo everything you’ve learnt. Not add to it. The mind is already filled with preconceived ideas with all the garbage that your environment has fed you, you’re filled up with everything. And now you run around trying to find new techniques, new methods, new ways to become enlightened. You’re adding garbage to garbage. I mean really, you have to empty yourself you have to turn yourself upside down and empty yourself out completely. Become totally empty.
When you have a dream all kinds of things are transpiring in that dream. Then you wake up, the dream is gone and you’re back in this world. This world is just another dream. You have to wake up just like you do of an ordinary dream. You have to become free of this world by waking up.
When you wake up from a dream you no longer entertain the dream world. For you are awake to this world. When you wake up to this world you become aware that you’re the imperishable atman. That you are absolute reality, all pervading, omnipresent. You were never born and you will never go anywhere. You are pure existence. Absolute existence, that is all there is, is the Self and you are that.
That’s the real world. You are that world. You are not the world of suffering and pain and illusion. All this happens in an instant. It does not take time. When you awaken, you awaken instantaneously. Just like you do out of a dream. When you’re dreaming the self is in the heart and the I-thought is in the brain. The I-thought and the brain are both dreaming. When you awaken from the dream and this happens instantaneously, the I-thought jumps into the heart and becomes the Self and the Self is all pervading consciousness.
This happens between awakening from the dream and actually opening your eyes.
When you open the eyes the I-thought goes back into the brain making you become cognizant to the world. When you awaken from this world the I-thought will leave the brain and disappear into the heart center. You therefore become the Self. It happens instantaneously. It happens all of a sudden. You become totally free, totally happy. (Someone snores in the background) Somebody’s totally free right now. (laughter) SH: Yay.
(A bit of commotion during the satsang. Tape break then tape starts abruptly) R: …he wanted to become a Zen Buddhist monk. He heard about this zendo in Japan and flew out there. He had an interview with the Roshi. And the Roshi explained all the rules and regulations to him and said, “By the way before you go to your quarters we take a vow of silence here. We only speak three words every ten years.” So the monk said, “Okay,” he went to his quarters.
Ten years passed he had another interview with the Roshi. The Roshi said, “Do you have anything to say?” And the monk said, “The food stinks,” and went back to his quarters. Ten more years passed. He had another interview with the Roshi. The Roshi said, “Do you have anything to say?” “The beds hard,” went back to his quarters. Ten more years passed, he went to see the Roshi again. The Roshi said, “Do you have anything to say?” The monk said, “I quit.” So the Roshi said, “I don’t blame you, you’ve been bitching ever since you got here.” (students laugh)
Things are never as bad as they seem. (commotion continues in the background) Look at yourself and see how you react to this situation. What do you feel? What do you think? These are the thoughts that have to be dealt with. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care what is happening. You understand the truth about what’s happening. The truth what’s happening is there is only consciousness. That’s it. Or if you prefer you can say there is only God. There is nothing else. You’re not separate from the source. You are the source. If you are the source and you understand who you are, you will know that all is well. (pause) Nate?
Nate (SC): I have a question. If I am the source, we’re all the source, consciousness, reality, why does it seem that the mind and the thoughts seem to take over. I know you know what I’m saying or they seem stronger than reality if reality is all pervading?
R: Because you are immersed in illusion. You are identifying with the body-mind.
That’s the first problem. You identify with the I-thought. The I-thought tells you what you just asked. What you just said. (SC: Why does they seem so strong that’s what I don’t understand.) To whom do they appear strong? To you. When you have a dream the dream appears to be very strong also. Yet when you wake up from the dream you realize the dream was nonsense. And so it is, the world appears to be very strong to some people because they feel it. But you’re asked to go beyond your feelings. To go beyond what is appearing to happen. To go beyond your thoughts. To go beyond the body. You’re asked to identify with consciousness. With reality. With the substratum of all existence. Not with the appearance. The appearance will always be. Do not deal with the appearance. Do not deal with anything. Become the witness to the appearance. Watch your mind playing all those games. Observe what is going on within yourself. I’m sure that you’re able to do that for a few moments anyway.
Then you can tell yourself and ask yourself, “Who is the observer? Who is it who observes the feelings and the mind and the thoughts?” That’s when you’re really getting into it. And of course the answer is, “I am. I am the observer. Who am I?” When you get that far, there will be quietness there will be stillness. There will not be an answer.
When you pose the question to yourself, “Who am I? Who is the observer?” There is no answer. The answer is infinity. Beyond concepts. Beyond knowledge. Beyond the body-mind phenomena. Something that cannot be seen, cannot be known by the mind. So whenever you ask a question, Nate. You are always coming from your mind. From the ego. But you’re told to go beyond it. Allow the appearance to do what it wants. Don’t fight the appearance. Just become still. Ask, “Who am I?” and become still. Everything will take care itself.
See Nate you always believe that you are the doer and unless you’re doing something nothing will happen. This is the way we’ve been brought up. Our school, our parents, the environment told us unless you do something you will get nowhere. (laughs) And that’s just where we want to get. No where. We have believed all these years we have to get somewhere. But we want to get nowhere. When you get nowhere you will be free.
So every time you ask a question Nate, you’re doing it from the point of doership.
I Nate am alive, I am the doer. I know, I feel, I experience. Always I, there is the solution.
Get rid of I. If I am the doer. If I am the person who feels this way it makes sense if the I is dissolved there will be no one left to feel this way and you will be in a new state of consciousness. Doesn’t that make sense. So whenever you ask a question realize that it is I, Nate asking the question. I want to know because I am experiencing pain, misery and so forth.Therefore as I tell you all of the time. Catch the I. Abide in the I. Follow the I-thought back to it’s source. When the I-thought goes back to it’s source which is on the right side of the chest, the spiritual heart, you then become Nate the enchanted one. You become a typically new person. You’re no longer you’re old self. You become pure intelligence. Which is altogether different from the Nate that’s sitting here now.
Again you can look at it this way. You’re having a dream and in that dream you are a pauper. You have no food, no money, no job. You go from house to house begging, begging. No one will give you anything. You are becoming emaciated, you’re wasting away and to top it all you’re dying of cancer. Now you’re really wasting away.
Then you see me walking along the path and you say, “Robert, do something for me, help me, look what is happening to me,” and I tell you, “Nate, I have a great compassion for you, but you’re dreaming. This is all a dream,” and you look at me and you say, “How can you say that Robert, look at me, look at my state. I haven’t had any food in twenty days. I’ve got cancer tumors all over my body.” Then it appears as if you die and you wake up. You find yourself in bed. You laugh at yourself, you’re still alive. You smell the roses, you enjoy the trees, the sky. You never died.
And so it is with life. We believe this world is the reality. We believe that everything that is to have and give and experience is in this world. We’ve learnt somewhere if we’re good we go to heaven when we die. But nobody has ever proven this. It makes no difference where you go when you die, what matters is what you are doing with your life now. For what you believe about your life now determines what happens to you when you die. If you awaken there will be no death. If you stay deluded and you keep believing you are the body-mind, well there are all kinds of stories that go after that. You have to come back again and again in different bodies and go through the experiences of karma until you awaken.
This is why I said as I did before that this teaching is not for everyone. Most people can just not comprehend what this is all about. They say, “I’m alive. I’m in the world. I can practice pranayama, breathing exercises, I can practice yoga exercises. I can learn to meditate to find peace of mind,” and that’s as far as you want to go.
But I’m saying to you, you’ve got to rid of everything. You have to transcend your body, the world and your mind. It’s up to you. I’m not here to try to convince you of anything. I’m not here to try to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. I am simply here to experience the Self. And if you can see yourself as absolute reality you will become the happiest being that ever lived.
We hear words like bliss, divine joy, ultimate happiness. Yet I say to you that you cannot experience these things as a body. It’s impossible. The body just cannot experience any of these things. As long as you are the I, by being the I mean you say, “I am Joseph, I am Henry, I am Robert, I am Mary, I am Joan,” that I is a lie. You are not that. Were you Joseph or Mary when you were born? Who were you when you were born? You didn’t have a name. You just appeared to be born. A name was given to you and now you identify with your name. Just like a dog identifies with it’s name. You call a dog by it’s name it will answer. We’re the same as animals when we are the body. We aren’t any different from an animal. We’re only different in one way, an animal is conscious and we are Self conscious.
Because we are Self conscious that should give you a clue and make you understand that you are the Self. The Self is not the body or the mind or the world or the universe. The Self is pure beingness. The Self is. The Self is total silence. There are no words to describe the Self. Yet you are that.
You can only find the Self when you become quiet. This is why the procedures that you learn such as atma-vichara, self-inquiry is to bring you deeply into the silence. To get you to a place where there is total quietness. Total peace. Once you are in that place, the Self will reveal itself as you.
It’s like the sun. The sun is hidden by clouds and no one can see the sun. Sometimes a glimpse of the sun comes out but then the clouds dissipate and only when the clouds dissipate can you see the entire sun. (tape break) The belief in your body, that’s like the clouds. Your mind like the clouds. You believe the body mind is real. All of your experiences that you go through you believe are real, that’s like the clouds.
But then one day by inquiring, “To whom do these experiences come? To me? Who am I?” One day something happens and the clouds begin to break away. Your body, your mind begins to disintegrate, break up and your true Self comes shining through with all it’s joy and bliss and you are free. Do not look at time. Do not think to yourself, “I have been practicing for a whole week now and nothing has happened or a whole month or a whole year or even a whole lifetime. It makes no difference.”
Just remember, whatever you believe, whatever you do, you want to be led to the silence, to that quiet place. Where there is total silence, total peace and when you get to that place you will be forever free.
If you feel like asking a question at this time, feel free to do so. You can ask two questions.
Glen (SG): I have a question. Sometimes self-inquiry is difficult for me so I hold on to the I-thought. I spoke once of Ramana’s book where he said, “I, I, I,” and I don’t understand why I’m doing that either. Is it different from self-inquiry or do they help each other…I just wanted some more clarity.
R: If you hold on to the I-thought you’re holding on to the self. Your real Self is the I-am. The only I there is. So by holding on to the I-thought it will eventually lead you to the heart and you will become the I. The I-am. (SG: Isn’t there a false I and a true I? I mean…) There appears to be. The false I you’re speaking of is the I-thought. In the beginning there is the I-thought. That’s the I you use everyday. I am happy, I am sick, I am rich, I am poor, I need this, I need that, I’m going through this, I’m going through that. That is the I-thought.
It is an idea. It doesn’t really exist. It has come out of your heart and it has gone to your brain and so you identify with I am the body. I am the world. As you keep meditating on “I-I.” The I-thought begins to leaves the brain and go back into the heart.
Glen (SG): So I’m holding on to the false I and eventually that will just dissolve?
R: It will go back into the real Self, into the real I and you will become yourself.
That is a good policy if you can do it. You see the reason that some of us get a little disgusted with some of this is because it’s too simple. Imagine all I’ve got to do is sit here and say “I - I. I - I.” We think we want some substance. Like mantra’s or japa or prayers. We think we have to do something profound, but I say to you that there is nothing profound you have to do. You have to become simple like a little child. Laugh at yourself. Do not take your life seriously and simply abide in the I. You’re abiding in the I by doing this and you will become stronger and stronger and your I will become weaker and weaker.
Glen (SG): I have one other question, reading some works on death and when one is dying and one is releasing hold of the body. Can one just continue with self-inquiry in the process when the subtle experiences start to arise? (R: When you die you mean?) Yeah. I was wondering what Advaita kind of…
R: Unless you’ve been practicing before it will be most difficult to hold on to the I when you’re dying. For with the average person when death starts arriving there is total fear and you become more engrossed in the I then ever before. That is why upon death according to the ancient scriptures the I leaves the body and grabs hold of another body and then you go through the same experiences of I.
Glen (SG): But what can one do when one is dying and maybe in the first three days - was looking at - that can happen any time you know?
R: As I said, it is not what one can do when you’re dying. You will not have any choice because a death experience will be so frightening to you, it will be so powerful in your mind, you will not be able to do anything. But, if you’ve been practicing eliminating the I all of these years, perhaps you have not come home yet, awakened yet, but you’ll be an advanced devotee and you will not hold on to the I, you will simply smile as you leave your body and you will realize that you are I-am, consciousness.
Glen (SG): Because in the book I was reading they said the mandala appears and at the center is the white light and if one just surrenders to that light then you can let go more.
R: In this teaching you have to ask yourself, “To whom does the white light come?
To whom does the mandala come?” To the ego, to the I. The I is experiencing the vision of the mandala. It does not free you. You cannot become free this way. The whole I has to go.
In other words, the object and the observer have to both become annihilated. You are the observer, the I is the observer it’s observing the mandala. They both have to go. The only good that can do you I think, is because you are experiencing the vision of the mandala you can become a Buddhist monk in the next incarnation. And you’ll sit if front of mandala for thirty-forty years. Contemplating the mandala. That is as much good as you’ll get out of it. (laughter)
Glen (SG): Well in this teaching the light is supposed to be our Self, you know, who we really are.
You know and they say that if you get distracted by other worlds and that’s where you end up then you’re in doubt, you have like a chance a special opportunity…
R: Again you will not be able to do those things unless you’ve been practicing meditation before. (SG: Right.) That is why in the Tibetan book of the dead they explain you have to practice how to die for years before you die. To die correctly. Most people do not do this. But we go further in Jnana. We go beyond the light. When you split the atom there is a tremendous light. When you go deep within yourself you will see fantastic light.
It’s like seeing visions. You’re seeing the source of your existence. But you’re not seeing the real source. Which is nothing.
You’re seeing the source of your existence, the light. The question is, “Where did the light come from?” Go beyond that. That is the only way you become free. But lights visions, mandalas, colors, those are all in the occult world. We’re told to go beyond the occult. Beyond the visions. Beyond the light. To become totally liberated, totally free. One must destroy the I who sees all these visions, all these lights and you do that by inquiring, “To whom has the I come?” or “Who am I?”
Glen (SG): For me also I use devotion. What helps my self-inquiry is really remembering you or imagining Ramana or somebody…
R: Devotion is excellent. Devotion is excellent because it stops you thinking about yourself. It gets your mind off your body, off your mind, off your affairs and you realize the guru, God, and you are one. So you become devoted to the Self. Which is none other than you and you become free that way too. So devotion is very good.
(loud bang)
R: Horat is wrecking your house. (SH: It’s time.)
Jorge (SR): Robert how important is service to the Jnana process in which you’re talking about?
(R: You mean service to the Jnani?) Service to others as opposed to self-inquiry alone?
R: Who is that who wants to give service? You have to ask yourself, “Why do I want to help others?” Is it to expand my ego? Is it so that I can say, “I’m being of service?”
If you practice self-inquiry diligently, if you’re supposed to be of service you will be. You have nothing to do with it. Your body will do whatever it came to this earth to accomplish.
So if you’re supposed to be of service to the homeless. You will. But when you say, “I am going to be of service.” That’s a mistake. For you become flattered by this. The ego becomes stronger because after all I am being of service. I have helped someone. I did it. And when someone pats you on the back and says good work, you eat it up. (laughter) So it’s the ego that goes through these things. Remember I’m not saying you should not be of service, I’m simply saying they’re both wrong. Know your Self and then see who is of service.
SH: Well then the Self really is doing everything that is occurring… (R: Yes.) And we’re under the illusion that there is a separate me who is involved in it?R: Exactly. The Self is, and anything that takes place in this world is the Self, not you. When you think you are yourself or your ego that is when suffering begins. But if you leave yourself alone and inquire where the I came from, then the Self will take care of all your needs and the needs of others through you.
A good example of this is Mother Theresa. I don’t know if she’s familiar with Jnana Marga or not, but when you ask her and you tell her, “You did a wonderful job.” She gives you a dirty look. (laughter) She didn’t do anything she believes. Everything is being done through her, but she takes no responsibility and no credit for any of her work. That’s being of service in the right way. In other words she never really said that, “I am going to go to India and be of service to the untouchables.” It happened through her. And her body is the vehicle that takes good care of everything. But she never believes she is of service and she never believes she’s not of service. She just is.
How is Pam doing?
Jay (SJ): She’s alright, much better.
R: Do we have any announcements Mary?
Mary (SM): We’ve got a bhandara next week at 1 o clock and Sid called and said to tell everybody, “please bring main dishes. And not potato chips and just bring some main dishes,” he said.
R: Does anything have to be in the main dish? (laughter)
R: We’re going to have some music so be here at 1 o’clock next week. Anything else to say?
Jay (SJ): Can we celebrate Thursday night?
R: Sure, we can always celebrate. Do we have prashad?
(tape ends by the unwrapping of prashad.)
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.