– Transcript 83
R: Well let’s get on with it. (students laugh) SH: Are you sure you want to?
R: Might as well. (SH: You don’t have to.) Nothing else to do. (SH: Well, then let her rip.) Good evening! Welcome to the house of Henry.
(Robert continues) One of the questions I’m frequently asked is, “What do you do when you get bored?”
People tell me, “There’s nothing to do. I want to travel. Let’s go to India. Let’s go to Mount Shasta. Let’s go to Santa Fe.” Most people think they have to do something. The truth is, the Jnani is all pervading, and the whole universe and the Jnani are simultaneously the same. There is no difference between the moon, the stars, the earth, the universe, God, and the Jnani. Everything is a projection of the Self. Therefore where is there to go? If you have Jnana, you are at peace with yourself and the world, for all the happiness that exists, all the joy that exists, all the peace that exists, all the love that exists, is another name for Jnana. Therefore to the extent that you awaken, to that extent do you find that all is well, wherever you are.
In other words, you do not have to go anywhere. You do not have to do anything.
You can sit and never get bored, or you can go and never get bored. It’s all the same. It makes no difference. Therefore when you say you’re bored, there’s nothing happening, what do you expect to happen? Some people expect thunderbolts to come down, lightning to strike. They expect to rise into heaven or to become a saint, as they imagine a saint is.
Nothing is further from the truth. For a Jnani there’s no coming, there’s no going, there’s no hurry, there’s no time, there’s no space. Everything that is happening, is happening now. Not tomorrow or yesterday. It’s all happening in the moment. So where is there to go?
To see how advanced you are, take a look at your life and see how bored you become. When you believe that you’ve got to do something or go somewhere, when you think that time is of the essence, and you think that you’ve got to accomplish something with your life, you’re not making much spiritual progress. For in truth there is nothing to do. And yet you’re doing everything, because you are everything. You have become the trees, the mountains, the rivers. You have become the babies being born, the people dying.
Everything has become you. Therefore there is nothing to do but watch, observe, look, look intelligently and see that all of this is the Self and I am that.There’s always happiness. There’s always peace. There’s always love. It’s not something you have to acquire. It is your real nature. Until you experience your real nature, you practice things like self-inquiry.
I said something on Sunday that apparently has clicked with some of you. I received three calls about it. What I said was simply this, “When you follow the I to it’s source, then all of your troubles, your problems, your life, your world, become dissolved in the source. Until that happens, realize that you are not the I that has the problems.”
That’s the point I made. And it clicked with some of you.
It is the I that sometimes feels depressed, or worried, or hurried, or upset, or fearful. It is the personal I that feels that way, yet that’s not you. You are not the personal I.
Even though you are following the I, you are following a mirage, an optical illusion, for you are not the I. You are absolute reality, nirvana, Sat-Chit-Ananda. You are not the I.
If you are not the I then who has the problems? Who has the sickness? Who has the doubt? Who has the suspicions? Who has all these worldly problems that most human beings have? I do, but I am not the I. Yet I has the problem. Do you see what I mean? I has the problem. Not me, but I. In this case me is absolute reality, pure awareness, consciousness.
Therefore this is the best psychotherapy that’s ever been invented, for you can step back and watch the I having the problems. You can understand and realize intelligently that the real me, the real Self, can never have a problem, it’s impossible. Yet I feel the problem. You immediately catch yourself and realize, “Yes, I feels the problem.” Do you see? Not me, but I, feels the problem. Then you forget for a while and you say, “Oh I feel depressed. And you catch yourself and you laugh. You say, “I feels depressed. I feels out of sort. Not me, but I. “Then after a little while you forget again, and you say, “I feel sick.” Then you remember. You say “I feels sick. Not me, but I.” You do this all day long.
Finally what will happen is that you will (celebrate) separate… (you can celebrate also. (laughter)) But you will separate yourself from I. You will no longer look at your body as I. You will no longer look at your mind as I. When you realize that I is everything in the universe, I must also be the body and the mind. You then realize that you are not the body and you are not the mind, but I is. I is the body and I is the mind. I is all the problems. You separate yourself. You watch. You observe I having all these problems, and pretty soon you’re having a good laugh at yourself.
You will feel freedom. If you practice this, I can assure you that you will feel a freedom that you never felt before. You will feel omnipresent. You will feel an indwelling bliss. You will come to see that the body does not exist, as a body. You will look at yourself and see the body, but you will laugh. You will know it’s not your body. There is no body. It is like the water in the mirage. There is no water. It only appears so. That’s the way the body is. You appear to have a body, but you don’t really. I has the body. And I doesn’t really exist.
Do you see this revelation you have? There’s no I, there’s no body. Then what gets old and dies? What gets sick? What has mental anguish? What becomes depressed? And the answer is, “Nothing.” There’s no one to get depressed. There’s no one to die. There’s no one to have mental anguish. There’s no one left to do anything. You’re home free.
When you feel this way, there’s nowhere to go, because everywhere you go, you are the Self. No thing makes you happier than another thing. It’s all the same. You no longer differentiate between objects. All the objects become like a piece of clay that you’ve taken to make objects out of, but you realize it all comes from the same piece of clay.
That’s how it is with your life. There’s no one doing anything. There’s absolutely nothing to do. When I say there’s absolutely nothing to do, I do not necessarily mean you’re going to sit still and sit in one chair all day long. This appears paradoxical. Your body will appear to be doing things, and yet you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s no one doing anything. Think about that. That’s a very important point. You will appear to go to the movies, if you have a job to go to work, to come home, to get married, to get divorced, to go swimming, to do whatever you do. Yet you will know no one is doing anything. How can that be? How can you appear to be doing something, yet nothing is being done.
The sky appears blue, and yet upon investigation there’s no sky and there’s no blue. So you appear to be doing something but there’s no doer. There is really no one who needs to do anything, or does anything. Space and time have been eliminated. You are in an entirely different dimension, where you appear as if you are moving, working, experiencing, and there’s nothing being done. I admit that state is difficult to think of, yet it is the truth. No one has ever done anything. There’s only one, and that one is all pervading and omnipresent. There’s only one. If that one is all pervading and omnipresent, where is there room to do anything?
Think of it this way… (Dog cries in background as Robert says, “Gotcha,” to the dog. (students laugh)) Look at it this way. If you were the only one in the universe, and you were the size of the universe, all of the planets, the stars, the moon, the earth, people, places and things would be within you. You would have no space to do anything. Yet everything is being done within yourself. It’s the same thing.
This is really the truth about you. You are the microcosm and the macrocosm.
When you are working in duality, in ignorance, you appear to be a small human being, and you look around you and you see billions of human beings just like you. You argue with them. You fight with them. You love them. You do all kinds of activities with fellow human beings. But as you work on yourself, and as you begin to rise in consciousness, something tells you that there’s only one. There is not you and I. There’s only the I and the I doesn’t exist. Therefore there is no thing that you can comprehend that exists. There’s no such thing as existence. There is no God that creates the universe. There is no being that causes anything to happen. The highest truth is, nothing is happening.So you say, “That may be true Robert, but I’m suffering. I have mental anguish. I appear to be ill. I have difficulty with people.” Why? Simply because of wrong identification. You are identifying with the apparent existence. As long as you identify with existence you’re going to appear to exist. And if you exist, you’re going to have problems. For every human being that’s born has a problem. There are no exceptions. As long as you believe you were born, you’ve got a problem.
Therefore, somehow you have to get rid of the notion that you were born. You have to get rid of the notion that you exist, and you have to get rid of the notion that you’ve got a problem. In other words, you have to wake up. You have to wake up to your reality. No birth, no death, no problem. Nobody dies because nobody was born.
I can go on and on like this but if you’re not experiencing what I’m talking about, how can you believe me? I know some of you here have had a glimpse of this reality, so you know it’s so. But most of us have not. How can we accept this? You have to experiment within yourself. That is the only way you can ever wake up.
Do not experiment in the world. How do you experiment in the world? When you believe those trees are beautiful, beautiful sunset, beautiful sunrise, beautiful flowers, beautiful people. As good as it may sound, this keeps you back from awakening. Why?
Because you are identifying with an external cause that does not exist. You do not realize that the beautiful tree comes from your mind. The beautiful sunset is in your mind. All of the beauty and all of the ugliness that you perceive is all within your Self. You are that Self.
So the person who wants to awaken, when they look at beauty, they realize that they are projecting it. When they look at ugliness, they realize that they are projecting it.
They are both impostors. Two sides of the same coin. And you start to inquire, “To whom has this come?” Think about that. When you behold all the beauty outside of the window, instead of being in awe and admiring it, ask, “Who sees this?’ In other words, the beauty that you see out there, really comes from in here. You are the beauty. It only exists out there because you exist over here.
When you are in deep sleep at night, who sees? There are no trees. There are no flowers. You are in deep sleep and yet you are awake. Deep sleep is the closest thing to self-realization that there is. Did you ever wonder why, when you come out of deep sleep, you say, “I feel good?’ There is no one who comes out of deep sleep that feels bad. You may have a bad dream. But I mean when you are really in deep sleep and you wake up, if you catch yourself, you will see you feel good. You feel great. You feel wonderful. It’s only when you start to think that the feeling changes. Check it out for yourself.
Why? Because deep sleep is really bliss. Yet it’s unconscious bliss. Liberation is conscious bliss. Liberation is when you’re awake and you’re conscious. You’re not conscious of anything in particular, you’re just conscious. That’s liberation. So when you see anything external from yourself, and you get involved in it, catch yourself, realize it’s coming out of you, and question it, “To whom does it come?’
I know there are many of you who like to go hiking, like to climb mountains, like to become part of nature. That’s okay, but do not believe that these things are external from yourself. These things are your Self. You are that. When you question, “To whom does this come?” You again realize, “It comes to me. I perceive it.” Then you remember that you are not I. I perceives it. Yet, in reality, you are not the perceiver. You are not the witness. I perceives it. I is the witness.
This is a very important point, and I want you to understand it because it can change your whole life. Whatever you see in the world, you are to realize that I perceives, but do not look at I as being your Self. You have to catch yourself and say, “I perceives this,” does not mean that you perceive it. It is I that perceives it. When you separate yourself from the I, what is left? Consciousness. It is only when believe that you are I, that your humanhood comes into play. But as soon you perceive that I is the universe, you have separated yourself from I, and then consciousness comes into play. You have awakened. In other words, when you can separate yourself from your I, you will be awakened and liberated.
Play this game every day. Whatever you see, whether it is your body or your mind, or other people, when someone does something to you that you don’t like, the worst thing you can do is react. Can you see why now? Because when you react you are affirming your humanhood, and your ego becomes stronger. But when you no longer react, the ego becomes weaker, and weaker, and weaker. The I and the ego are the same. Whatever you see, I know most of you believe, when you see the bad things of life, mans inhumanity to man, all of the dastardly things you see on TV, you want to separate yourself from that.
But it’s the good things also. You are not the good things and you are not the bad things.
You are no thing. You are not trying to exchange bad for good.
Play the game with yourself. Whenever you think of another person, whenever you think of a problem, whenever you think of a beautiful sunset, catch yourself. Ask yourself, “To whom has this come? It has come to me. I perceive it. Before you ask, ‘Who am I?” remember to realize that you are not the I. The I that perceives is not you. In other words, what you must do from now on is, when you refer to I, you’re not talking about yourself.
Can you remember that? Whenever you use the word I, you want to catch yourself and say, “I is not me.” Me is, “Who am I?” Me is the question “From what source does the I come?” But the I has absolutely nothing to do with you. If it has nothing to do with you, this means that you do not have to struggle to give it up. If the I really belonged to you, you would have a fight on your hands, for you would be looking for all ways to remove the I. But when you remember that the I does not belong to you, there’s nothing to fight. You simply realize, you are not I. Then who am I?
If you practice this the way I just outlined, when you say, “Who am I?” you will have a completely new revelation. You do not say, “Who am I?” until the very end, until you come to the realization that the I is not me. Therefore everything that’s attached to the I is not me. My problems, my house, my body, my family, my birth, all attached to the I.
And since the I does not exist, nothing exists. If nothing exists, then, “Who am I? Remember never say, “Nothing exists and I am consciousness,” because you don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re just words. Never say, “The I does not exist, but I am Sat-Chit-Ananda.” Those are just words to you.
You have to inquire, not make a statement. Do not make a statement. This is not a metaphysical class where you make affirmations. Affirmations are kindergarten. That’s just to improve your humanhood. What you’re trying to do is get rid of your humanhood, not improve it. Everything is a question, “I am not I. I am not the body. I am not anything that is attached to the I. Then who am I?” If you’ve gotten this far, then when you say “Who am I?” you will be in deep silence, and you’ve come a long way.
So let me succinctly recapitulate. Starting tomorrow morning when you get up, whatever you see, say to yourself, “That’s not me.” Whatever you feel, whether you feel wonderful or you feel depressed makes no difference, say to yourself, “That’s not me.”
Whatever you hear, whatever you feel, whatever you touch, whatever you smell, say to yourself, “That’s not me.” But then admit, “I smell it, I taste it, I touch it, I feel it, but that’s not me. It is the I that is going through the experience of the senses, feeling, touching, tasting, smelling. But I am not the I. Then who am I?”
What I want you to do now is to close your eyes and practice this on yourself. Go through the whole thing. Look out the window and look at the trees, how beautiful they are, and realize, “The trees do not come from nothing, they come from I. So the beauty of the trees is I. I have nothing to do with it. But I does. So who am I?”
(long silence)
Fred (SF): Robert, I’ve been wrestling with a matter of faith verses freewill and as I understand that Lord Krishna told Arjuna that he had the right to action but not to the fruits of action inasmuch as the fruits are foreordained. And my question is, as Arjuna, do I have the right to action, in that I have…or he has had the will to make a choice, it seems to me that the action is foreordained too as well as the fruits. In other words if I’m facing a situation and I have a choice of handling it in an honorable manner or a dishonorable manner and I think I have a choice and I make a choice, but in actuality that choice is not mine? Can you comment on that?
R: The reason that Krishna told Arjuna that he has a right to the work but not the fruits of the work is because he realized, and he wanted Arjuna to realize that there are no fruits. The fruits do not exist. They appear to exist. There is no one who works and no one has any freewill to choose or not to choose. Everything is preordained. The freedom you have is whether you are going to react to it or not.
As you begin to realize who you are and you begin to see that you are not the person who chooses you become free from making any kind of a decision. And everything is taken care of for you. Everything just happens the way it’s supposed to. What was the second part of the question? (SF: I don’t hear very well?) Oh, what was the second part of your question? (SF: Oh, you covered it. When you said everything is preordained…in other words,
the action will take place, Arjuna has nothing to do with it.) The action will always take place by itself but you will have the choice, whether to react to the action or not to react to the action. Nothing is the way it appears.
As an example: One day Krishna and Arjuna were walking along the path and they got hungry. So they came to a little town. And Krishna told Arjuna, “Let’s go beg for some food and a place to stay for the night.” But as they got close to the town they heard people quarreling with each other, calling each other names, fighting with each other and they begged for food, but no one would give them any. They spit at them and chased them with rocks.
So Krishna and Arjuna ran out of the town and when they got to the edge of the town, Krishna turned around and said, “May you all prosper and live a long life,” and they walked along the path. And they came to another town. So Krishna said, “Lets try this town and see if we can get food and lodging.” When the people of this town saw Krishna and Arjuna they fell at their feet. They garlanded them with flowers and gave them the finest house to stay and worshiped them and gave them food.
In the morning when they left Krishna looked back at the town and he said, “May everyone drop dead soon.” (laughter) So as they were walking down the path Arjuna said, “What happened Krishna why did you do that? The town that abused us you said, May you have a long life and prosper and the town where they treated us good you said, may you all drop dead soon.”
And Krishna explained it this way, “You see Arjuna it is not important how long you are going to live. The people in the first town, I really put a curse on them to give them a long life because they were quarreling with each other and throwing things at each other and hitting each other and the more they prosper the worse they’ll get. So they’ve got a lot of problems to get rid of.
Now the second town we went, where the people were loving and kind they’ve worked out all of their karma and as soon as they leave the body, they will be self-realized, liberated. So I told them may you drop dead soon. Which is really a blessing. So you see nothing is the way it appears.
This is why we should never judge because it is the ego that judges and the ego is always wrong. You should observe your condition and realize it is the I that has the problem and that’s not me, therefore, “Who am I?” If you do that you’ll be safe.
I think tonight’s lesson is very important. Therefore ask all the questions you want. If you don’t understand this, please ask.
Fred (SF): I came across something the other day where one of the Sages told a person that realization is of the fact that you are not a person. (R: Umm.) And I was reminded of Sri Bhagvan when somebody asked him, “Should I read the Gita?” and he said, “Always,” and the person added, “What about the Bible?” and he said, “the Gita and the Bible are the same,” and the fellow said, “But the Bible teaches that man is born in sin?” and the Master said, “The man sense is sin.“Which I gather means that if a person thinks that he is a person in a sense he has sinned or there is separation. Any comments on that?
R: That is correct. The only sin there is, is to believe you’re human. To identify with your body and your experiences, that’s a sin. It’s only a sin because it keeps you back from being free. As soon as you realize you are not your condition and you are not the body or the mind and you’re not I, you become free. Then there is no one to sin.
SL: So how would you define sin?
R: A mistake. Sin means you made a mistake in your belief. You believe something is wrong, so you have to react and do something. As an example, you may believe that you deserve to have a lot of money, so you hold up a bank and you feel justified. The sin is not in holding up the bank but in your belief that you had to hold up the bank so you could have money. When you change the belief the sin vanishes because you become a new person. This is why it tells you in all the scriptures, it makes no difference how evil you were before. It makes no difference what you did before. It makes no difference how bad you thought you were. When you know the truth you become totally free and all past karma is totally transcended. But as long as you think you are a human being you have to experience the results of your karma. There is only one way to transcend karma and that is to wake up.
Fred (SF): Sometimes we hear the word, Jnani pronounced with a hard ‘g’ … are both the pronunciations the same? (R: Both pronunciations, it depends what part of India you come from.) Sir? (Robert repeats) Oh okay, that answers that question.
SL: Why do we have to go through such trials and tribulations in a mortal sense? Once we wake up, why bother? What is that part of it all about? If we are consciousness then why do we have to bother with the material world?
R: You don’t. Ask yourself, “Who has to bother?” There is no one to bother, it’s like a dream. You’re dreaming the mortal dream. Pinch yourself, wake up! Be free! There is no one who has to do this. See we’re caught in mesmerism. We’re hypnotized into believing we have to go through experiences. So it’s natural to ask, “why?” But the truth is no one is going through any experience. It just appears like that. Just like the water in the mirage or the sky is blue or the snake in the rope. It appears that way, it appears real. But once you know the truth you’re free. There’ll be no one going through anything.
Only when you hold on to I am the body idea do you appear to go through experiences, but as soon as you give up the body idea by realizing that I is the body, not you but I then you become free. You never were the body. There’s no body. But I do admit that in some people the mesmerism is so strong that it’s most difficult to believe that you’re not the body because you see it, you observe it. It feels, it thinks, it acts. This is the reason you have to do self-inquiry.
Fred (SF): Sir can you explain the difference between… (R: Excuse me?) …the no mind state and enlightenment? It went over my head, I wonder if you could run that by again. (R: The no mind state?) The no mind state as compared with enlightenment.
R: The no mind state is when you’ve come from practicing, to the place in the silence. Where there are no thoughts bothering you any longer. You get there through self-inquiry. That is the fastest way. But that is not self-realization. Self-realization is when the mind is pulled into the spiritual heart. (SF: Can we wait till he goes by?) (As airplane flies overhead.) Liberation, moksha, self-realization is when the mind that’s left over in the silence is pulled completely into the spiritual heart. At that time your whole mind, the I dissolves completely and you are free.
So the no mind state is a very high state. It’s the state of bliss. But there is still somebody left to experience the bliss. When the bliss is pulled into the heart there is no one left to experience anything. Therefore you no longer say, “I’m in the no mind state.” At that time there is nothing to say. Can you understand that? (SF: Seems pretty clear.) As clear as a mat. (laughter) (SF: That’s about it.) Again an important part to remember tonight is that you should keep asking yourself questions. Do not make statements. Ask questions to yourself. The mind hates that.
SS: Robert what you’ve been talking about tonight, it seems that it comes down to the mind or the ego trying to identify from itself and trying to identify with the mystery. (R: Yes.) Is that enough to produce the shift?
R: That’s enough to produce the shift. When the mind begins to wonder about itself it becomes weak. So the more you ask the question the weaker the mind becomes. If you make statements or you keep saying to yourself, “I am God,” or “I am consciousness,”
or, “I am absolute reality,” the mind likes that because it wants to be God. The mind wants to be God. So then the ego thinks it’s God and you walk around with a chip on your shoulder or when you go the other way. When you ask, “Who am I?” or, “Where does the mind come from?” The mind becomes weak it doesn’t like that. As you said, it begins to see the mystery and becomes weaker and weaker. It devours itself, so-to-speak. But of course the ultimate truth is there is no mind. So do not concentrate on the mind doing anything. (SS: Of course, Robert.) But ask, “To whom does the mind come?”
SU: Robert you said to ask questions, but earlier you said to say, “This is not me.” That is not asking the question? (R: It’s like a question.) Oh. (R: “This is not me?” Question.) Okay. (R: “Who am I?”)
Mary (SM): Robert does this all come about even through surrender?
R: Oh yes, definitely. If this appears to be complicated, Mary is right. All you’ve got to do is give it all up. Say, “Take it God, it’s all yours,” and let go so completely that there is no room for a question.
SL: When we’re meditating, how important is it to stay physically relaxed?
R: Well first of all meditation has nothing to do with this. (SL: Well I know but when you’re keeping still.) You just sit in the silence and you watch. Whenever a thought comes you ask yourself, “To whom does it come?” If you feel yourself tensing up, you ask, “To whom does this come? Who feels tense? I do.” Then realize that your personal I feels tense not you and the tenseness will disappear. SL: Is that also related to surrender?
R: In a way. In surrender you don’t have to go that far. You simply take a deep breath and you say, “Take this God, take the whole burden, I no longer care.” But that’s difficult also because it means you have to give everything to God and not worry about a thing. Not concern yourself about anything in this world. To realize that God is taking care of it. That’s true surrender.
(silence)
R: Om shanti, shanti, shanti, shanti, peace, peace.
Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to bow to yourself, to pray to yourself because God dwells in you as you, peace.
Good being with you once again. God bless you, I love you. Until we meet again, om nam Shivaya.
Fred (SF): Thank you.
R: Thank you. You’re free to go into the world…
(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.