– Transcript 84
R: Good afternoon. (Students: Good afternoon.) Welcome. I welcome you with all my heart. It’s good to be with you again.
Always try to remember that satsang is not a lecture. Satsang is being. Being with the Self. The reality of all existence. It has absolutely nothing to do with a sermon or a talk.
Just by being you can overcome all your problems and become the real person you are.
Just being. Not being here, or being there, just being. Being yourself. Satsang is being.
What do you think you are, when I say being? Do you identify with birth, with existence, going through life, hurrying, scurrying, trying to make things happen, trying to overcome your so called problems, searching for a better life. You’re doing the wrong thing. What you should be doing is letting go of everything you’ve ever believed, perceived, conceptualized. Becoming like a little child. Watching the world and not reacting to it. Observing and inquiring, “Who is the observer?” Never coming to any conclusion.
No beginning, no end. Not comparing, not analyzing, not judging, just being.
When you are just being, you are the Self. When you are being this and being that, you are your humanhood. When you are your humanhood you identify with the world and you go through the vicissitudes of life, having problems, trying to solve them, having opinions, being judgmental, concerning yourself with what others say or what others do.
As long as you’re doing these things you can never really know what spiritual life is.
Spiritual life is being empty, totally empty. No opinions, no beliefs. It is only when you become empty that you become fulfilled. You’re not trying to add on new knowledge to what you already have. You’re not trying to learn some mystical way of becoming self-realized. You’re not really trying to do anything to find liberation. You’re merely letting go of everything you’ve ever had.
If something is bothering you or annoying you during the day, during the night, no matter how justified you may feel, you have the problem. It makes no difference what anybody else is doing. As long as you feel hurt, as long as you feel slighted, as long as you feel doubtful, apprehensive, you must realize it’s the me, the personal I, that feels this way.
People ask me, “What is the reason, what is the purpose of becoming liberated?
Why can’t I just live a hedonistic existence, enjoying everything on this earth. Why should I become liberated?” That’s an interesting question. There’s really no answer, for you have to feel something in your own heart to cause a change to come upon you. You shouldn’t believe anything I say. I can only confess my own experience. I share my life with you. Yet that’s my experience. What is your experience? What are you going through?Trying to become something is the first mistake you make.
Trying to overcome your problems is the second mistake you make.
Even trying to understand reality is a mistake.
The only thing left to do is to let go of everything else you’ve got, your fears, your frustrations, your concepts, your ideas, your ego. Everything must be given up. There is absolutely nothing to gain. There is absolutely nothing to gain due to the fact that you are that already.
Wherever you go in the world, whatever teacher you may fall upon, whatever book you may read, whatever teaching you may discover, is really to no avail, until you decide to give up everything you’re holding on to, and that hurts. Yet that’s exactly what you have to do. You have to give up your so called pleasures. Say your pleasures are drinking, smoking pot, doing all those good things. All those things are doing for you is making you a little high. And as you know when you come out of it, you feel worse than you’ve ever felt.
Now you have to give up also your love for trees, for flowers, for life itself, due to the fact, that whatever you hold onto keeps you earthbound. When you think about liberation, moksha, freedom, bliss, absolute reality, this is your state, beyond your addictions. As long as you’re doing things to make a better life for yourself in the world, you can never know reality.
Yet you may ask, and rightly so, “You mean I shouldn’t care about my job, my family, my love for flowers or for mountains or for rivers? I shouldn’t care for any of these things?” Mentally, you shouldn’t. Your body will continue to do what it does and will feel better doing it. Everything is given up mentally. When everything is given up mentally, your vasanas, your habits, the things that have held onto you for so long, will automatically break loose, and you will find freedom.
As an example: Many people ask me, “Robert, you go to the movie sometimes, you watch TV sometimes, you read a paper sometimes, you like to enjoy the ocean sometimes. How come? If truth is your reality, if you were truly consciousness, you would be self-contained and you wouldn’t care to do these things.”
Who asked this question, the ajnani or the Jnani? When the Jnani appears to be doing something, no thing is really being done. There is just an appearance of doership.
The doer has been destroyed. You’re seeing your dream. You’re observing your own consciousness, where you’re at, at this time. Naturally you’re going to see everything external to you, the same as where you are in consciousness right now. So when you see the Jnani enjoying himself or not enjoying himself, it’s all the same for the Jnani.
The Jnani can sit in a room day in and day out, and if no one brings him food, it doesn’t matter because there are no thoughts about those things. The Jnani can go to the movies and enjoy the picture, yet it doesn’t matter. There are no thoughts about these things. The Jnani can be in a so-called human hell or a so-called human heaven, it’s all the same. It is the ajnani that sees the suffering, that identifies with conditions and judges
accordingly. But the Jnani knows that all is consciousness. Nobody dies, nobody is born, nobody suffers, nobody enjoys. Nobody goes through any experience whatsoever. Yet the average person cannot see this. They can only see themselves, where they’re at. And all they do most of their life is react to conditions.
Therefore if one vehemently makes up their mind that they want to become realized, they must begin to give up mentally all their judgments, their observations, their conclusions. They must become simple.
The apparent life will take care of itself. It didn’t need any help from you. There is nothing you have to do in this world. Your body, which appears to be the doer, will take care of itself. It will take care of itself because it doesn’t exist. It appears to exist. What appears to exist will always take care of itself. It doesn’t need any help from you. When the body goes through experiences it has nothing to do with the consciousness. It is like hypnosis, like mesmerism. Everything you see, everything your senses tells you, those are erroneous conclusions you come to. And if you react to them you must suffer accordingly.
This is the way of the world.
An example: I’ve known a person, so have you, who loves trees. They just love trees. And they hear about the rain forests being destroyed. They hear about lumberjacks in northern California cutting down too many trees. This disturbs them. They become activists and fight for their rights, the rights of the trees. This is very commendable. This sounds reasonable. But I tell you in truth, the trees do not need your help. Things of this nature have been going on since the beginning of time. And yet if you help, that’s good.
Sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not. As long as your body activates your mind, believing that your body and mind are real, you have to stick up for causes, for you also believe the causes are real. It is only when you understand through experience, that the world is like a dream, not just say this in words, but you actually have the experience that the world is a dream.
If you are in a dream, and someone is telling you, “We’re cutting down the rain forest, it’s terrible, join our organization, let’s put a stop to this,” what would you do? Would you join the organization? Would you become an activist? Wouldn’t you laugh? Wouldn’t you say, “This is a dream. Why are you going to all this trouble? It’s not really happening.
No trees are being cut down.” And of course the other person would insist, they would prove to you that they’re being cut down. Yet there would be no way for you to explain to this person that the whole thing is a dream. The person wouldn’t accept that. For they are witnessing with their senses their reality called the world. What can you do?
Now you see the Jnanis predicament. People come to the Jnani all day long and tell him their troubles. They’re so serious about their problems. They’re so real to them that the Jnani has to cry with them, and have compassion. But the Jnani is experiencing the fact that it’s a dream world that the observer is seeing, and the observer of the dream world is totally identified with that world. Whatever the Jnani says will make no difference.This is true of everything in your life. Think of what is going on in your life. The things that are so real to you. The things that you feel, that you worry about, that you become upset over. Of course you feel justified, for you are living the mortal dream.
Therefore when you see the Jnani personally, the Jnani will never make fun of you and tell you, “You’re dreaming. This is not reality. One day you will awaken and be free.”
That sounds like a cop out. So the Jnani listens and responds accordingly. Yet you must come to the same conclusion through experience. You must not believe the words the Jnani tells you. You must have your own experience.
To get back to the question again. Why should I become self-realized? Why shouldn’t I enjoy the world and live a hedonistic existence? The first reason is that everything changes. When you live in the dream world everything changes. You grow up with certain friends, then you move, and you’re totally upset. You go to a new city, a new state, you have to make other friends. Then you get a good job. You buy a beautiful home. Your home burns down. You lose everything you’ve ever had. You inherit a million dollars. All of your relatives are at your door. Before you know it, there’s nothing left, and you’re in the worst position you’ve ever been. Can’t you see everything goes from one state to another state. Everything continuously changes.
When you are on the path to liberation, one of the first things that you experience is the removal of fear. All fear leaves you. And when there’s nothing to fear, there’s nothing to fight.
You simply have a chip on your shoulder and you react to life negatively because you fear. There is some deep embedded fear in your subconscious. You may not be aware of it, but you have a deep fear, and you react by having a chip on your shoulder, and you’re always ready to fight life. As you inquire, “To whom does this fear come?” as you begin to see that the fear belongs to the personal I and not to you, the fear begins to become weaker and weaker and weaker. The fear begins to flee as you self-inquire, as you ask, “To whom does the fear come?”
As you continue on the path to self-realization, the next quality that happens to you is a feeling of great peace. You’ve lost fear and now you become peaceful. You become very peaceful. The world, things, ceases to disturb you. There is no reason why you feel peace. In other words, things have really not changed dramatically in your life. You’re still aware of man’s inhumanity to man. You still see all of the dastardly things on television that used to cause upset inside of you. You used to become upset something awful. And now for some reason you no longer become upset. People used to look at you the wrong way, you are ready to fight. You’ll always find some fault some place. You go to a restaurant and you always believe that the waitress or the waiter is cheating you. You go to a supermarket at the checkout stand, you count everything you bought. You’re afraid of being cheated. All that stops. The fear is gone, and you feel peaceful. You have a deep conviction that nobody wants to hurt you. The feeling that there are people in the world who still can cheat you, mug you, rob you, disappears, even though those people may still
exist. But you have risen. You have risen. You no longer feel these things. You feel an unalloyed peace, for no reason, that has nothing to do with person, place or thing.
The next quality that comes to you on the path to self-realization is happiness.
Something within you is always happy. This doesn’t mean that you’re laughing all the time, or you always have to have a smile on your face. That’s just an outer appearance, a put on. You just feel happy for no reason whatsoever.
Eventually as you continue on the path, you feel a bliss, a bliss that is beyond understanding. The world can no longer hurt you. You haven’t come to a 100% conclusion that the world doesn’t exist, but for some reason you feel that the world can no longer hurt you, and you feel blissful all the time. Other people cannot see this. You want to share it with them, but you cannot. You can only point the way to self-inquiry.
As you continue on the path and you go deeper and deeper, the peace, the happiness, the bliss, become transcended. You become the Self. You become the substratum of all existence. You function as consciousness, yet you appear to people as a body. Your form becomes a transmitter for divine grace to those mature disciples and devotees who are ready to receive it, but you are doing no thing. You are not saying, “That I am something, and I transmit something.” If you make a statement like that, there is still somebody left who believes they’re a transmitter. There is no one to transmit anything, yet it appears to happen that way.
So you see, there is a good reason to want to awaken from the mortal dream. You will become totally free, and you will experience joy that cannot be explained.
Now let’s talk about you. How do you start?
By letting go of all your problems. All those things that have been hounding you, all those things you love so much, mentally letting them go, and inquiring, “To whom do they come?” Inquiring, “To whom do they come?’ Realizing, “They come to me. I feel these things. I feel hurt. I feel slighted. I feel upset. Yet I am not I. Then who is I? Where did the I come from that feels upset, that feels out of sorts?” You do not answer that query, but you feel that the I carries the weight of the problem, not you.
As you continue to do this day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, who knows? You never know when it may happen. But one day, the I will disappear into the heart during your waking state, and you will see your omnipresence with your spiritual eye. You will feel a joy, a happiness, that’s beyond understanding. You will be free.
(music played)
R: Questions?
SB: Does self-inquiry remove the samskaras that are veiling the Self?
R: Self-inquiry itself does not remove anything. But as you keep practicing and the more you know the truth the less samskaras come back to you. Samskaras, karma are for those who look at the external world as real. When you become introverted there are no samskaras. When you become introverted there is no world. There is no karma. Karma, reincarnation, samskaras are for the extroverted person. It’s really amusing when you went to school they wanted you to become a extrovert. They wanted you to be outgoing.
But now you’re beginning to understand that the more outgoing you are the more worldly you are, the more earthbound you become. As you practice self-inquiry and you begin to focus on the Self, then the samskaras are destroyed. It’s the focusing on the Self, on the heart center that destroys the samskaras. Self-inquiry itself does not do that. It is a method to destroy them. The method you use to find the Self. And it’s only when the mind dies to the Self that samskaras are destroyed.
SB: So the samskaras are in the mind and as long as we’re not focused on the mind but we’re focused on consciousness, then they’re not effective anymore, right?
R: This is true. For when there is no I left, when the I-thought has been destroyed, for whom are samskaras? Samskaras are just for the I. No I, no samskaras.
Glen (SG): I’m reading Sri Ramana, Remembrances and they talk a lot about the illnesses and other things that Sri Ramana went through. It’s hard for me to understand why he went through those things and I wonder if you could talk about it.
R: Of course. You answered your own question. It’s hard for you to understand.
Who are you? As long as you believe you’re human you’re going to observe sickness and you’re going to observe things of this world. But when you transcend yourself, your little self and you begin to feel the reality, in the reality there is only perfection. No one is born, no one is sick and no one dies. Consciousness is the only power. Nothing else exists.
So when we see Ramana dying, we’re seeing our own state of consciousness. We’re seeing where we’re coming from. Ramana never thought he was dying. He never believed he was dying. To him there was no death, there was no transition, there was no change from life to death and then you’re made whole in death. To Ramana life and death were one. There was no doubt about that. There was no duality. There was no sick body to become well. There was only the one and you are that one. But as long as you’re living through your senses you will observe life and death and you will come to conclusions.
That’s why it’s so necessary to work on yourself and raise yourself higher and higher until the body is totally destroyed in mind. The mind-body is totally obliterated. Then there is only absolute awareness, nirvana and in that state there is no death.
Glen (SG): So just to pursue it a little bit further, you were talking about making an analogy about dreaming about trees and somebody would ask you,” Do you want to do something about trees,” if he’d awakened he would just smile, knowing there were no trees. And so Ramana allowed himself to be put through a number of arduous treatments and stuff. (R: Yes.) For what purpose was that?
R: For the purpose of his devotees. (ST: The purpose of what?) The purpose for his devotees. If he was by himself living in a cave he would sit there or lie there, smiling. But his devotees were so insistent, they wanted to preserve the body that he allowed them to enjoy themselves. It gave him pleasure to do this. So he allowed it to happen. But he didn’t
do it because of anything that was in him, he was above all that. It was only for the pleasure of his devotees. (SG: In the book they make it plain that Ramana was not experiencing what his devotees were perceiving.) Of course not. If he was perceiving what they were perceiving he would be like one of them. He was beyond all of that.
SH: Why would he give in to their ignorance? Instead of awakening them from it?
R: He didn’t give in to their ignorance. He just allowed it to happen. (SH: Why?) For the same reason that he allowed his body to appear to be real. For the same reason his body took a walk and made breakfast and went through all kinds of experiences, why?
That’s the appearance. (SH: But that keeps them, his devotees in their illusion.) It makes them, at the present time in the state that they’re in, it makes them feel a little better. He realized that they could not all be enlightened at the same time. (SH: But their feeling better is keeping them in their illusion.) Their feeling better keeps them in their illusion as long as that is going on. But they’re able to see the attitude of Bhagvan. When they are able to see where he’s coming from and that the illness does not affect him, it causes them to awaken to a greater extent.
But the appearance is that he was suffering and they’re taking care of him. This is the appearance of the body, he can only be himself. So he couldn’t really awaken them if they were not ready to be awakened. They were what they were and he was what he was.
It’s like when you talk about the gurus grace, only those who are mature students can receive it. So those who were true devotees were able to see the truth about Bhagvan. Not all of them reacted like that.
SH: Then they wouldn’t want to have things done to try and cure it or something?
R: They were not interested in that. There were many devotees who just watched and they didn’t get involved in that. Only the devotees that were not spiritually high took care of all those things. (SH: What I don’t get is why he would give in to them and let things be done to his body which he had no interest in…) Because of a great compassion. (SH: Is that compassion?) Of course. (SH: It keeps him sick?) Not really. When they see what happened after it was over many of them had an awakening. They were able to see the folly of all that. But while it’s going on they had to participate. That’s just like if you were driving your car and you saw somebody being hit by a car and no one was there, would you drive by and say it’s not happening? And not care about the person being hit?
You would stop your car and render aid to the best of your ability but you would know the truth. You would still render aid. So how would it look if all the disciples and devotees were watching Ramana waste away and they were all laughing and playing cards and saying, “Well this isn’t happening.” They haven’t gotten to that state. So they have to do what they have to do and Ramana has to do what he has to do.
Remember the story I told once about the scorpion? About this Master sitting by a pond, watching the scorpion swim across and when it was nearly drowned he would pick it up and put it back on the shore. Then he would watch it swim across and when it was nearly drowned he would pick it up and put it back on the shore. And a wanderer came by and saw all this and said, “Master what are you doing?” and the Master replied, “It’s the scorpions Dharma to try to swim across and it’s my Dharma to try to save it.”
So it’s the Dharma of those devotees to take care of Bhagvan the way they did and it’s the Dharma of Bhagvan to allow it to happen. (SH: Even if it doesn’t make any sense?) No it doesn’t. Existence doesn’t make any sense, but it appears to be so.
SI: May I ask you a question? (R: Of course, that’s why I’m here.) I’ll make it short.
What this young man wants to know, what most of us would like to know. Like when a person has cancer or many of these diseases of the body, the worst thing about it is the discomfort and the pain.
(R: Umm.) So if I’m sitting here in pain and I just took my pain pill, well which I actually did, or I need to be around people so I don’t feel the pain, or I have to come here so I don’t feel the pain, then what is the best thing that we mundane people have to reach much of a spirituality to not feel the pain, can do? (R: You can only feel the pain but you can observe it also.) Now that is the second question that I was going to ask. If you say that we are in a cancerous state and someone else could say “well why,” and you would say, “for the devotee,” because they need to experience it and may at sometimes get enlightened afterward. I think most of us would say or know that only through suffering or through pain or through travail that we learn to have compassion for other people and putting in the stake. And then at the same time you’ll say that is almost like it can’t be vacillation because you shouldn’t be really concerned what the other people out there or being at the scene of the car accident, be concerned with yourself. So is there something that a guru or an advanced man can show with a cancerous body to his devotees. Is there something they should know about suffering or the human state so they can realize that that is not important, I guess that’s what you’re saying.
R: It is important when you’re going through it. As long as you’re going through it and you’re feeling it then it’s important to you. You’re not supposed to imagine it doesn’t exist when in fact it does. Therefore you’re supposed to do everything you can to alleviate the pain from yourself. If you have to take pain pills or if you have to go to a doctor, you do whatever is necessary at the time, but you can always realize that it is your body that is going through this and not you. You have nothing to do with this because you are not your body.
You can do both at once. You can handle the pain the best way you can and also keep realizing that you are not the body. That the pain is coming to you as I. It’s attached to your I. Your personal I. It is the I that suffers, not you. As you keep doing these things you will notice that the pain becomes less and less. You’re not feeling it so strongly. When you identify with the I and you realize that the I is going through the pain, then you suffer.
But when you do not identify with the I and you just observe and you watch and you realize the I is going through the pain not you, the suffering becomes bearable. You will not stop suffering because it’s attached to your body and you believe in your body so strongly, but it will become bearable and you will suffer less and less.
We’re not trying to say that suffering does not exist that would be idiotic to the person who is experiencing the suffering. We are saying that there are those beings that are
called Jnanis that have transcended the world, the universe and everything thereof and there is no suffering for those people. Yet others see them suffer. The suffering is apparent to others who are not in that state. Therefore you must not be judgmental. Because when you speak, you’re speaking about the state that you’re in and you have no idea of the state of the Jnani.
You’re all looking so serious, it’s not serious it’s a joke.
ST: Robert can I ask you a question? (R: Of course.) If everything is preordained is that just in the world of illusion? And would that mean that there are no accidents and if a disease came would that be preordained and the healings be preordained and would your time of enlightenment be preordained, I just can’t seem to…
R: Everything that has happened to you since your birth has been predetermined.
It is only when you realize that you were never born and you become introverted and go within that all that stops. But as long as you are living in this world as a human being everything is preordained. Only when you rise in consciousness by diving deep within yourself do you transcend preordination. The truth is no one is preordained, it doesn’t exist. But as long as you believe you are the body it does exist because the body has lived before and before and before and will continue to live again and again and again. As long as the belief in the body exists in you. When that belief is destroyed who is left to be preordained? What is left to be preordained? All that becomes redundant. Do you follow that?
ST: In a way, but it seems like it’s a process. I think I’ve heard you say that you can awaken in a flash… (R: Yes.) But it seems to me like it’s taken a long time for me to awaken and I guess that’s part of the illusion too, I don’t know. It seems like a process. If I can’t give up my belief in the body all at once, does that mean karma and preordination lessens as the process goes on?
R: As long as the process goes on, preordination exists. (ST: In the same way?) It is only when you go within and transcend the ego and the body that preordination ceases to be. (ST: Well, I think sometimes we have flashes of knowing those things but then the world comes in again.) As you continue with the practice the flashes will expand and the world will contract. (ST: Thank you.) Forget about time just continue practicing. (ST: I’m going to do that.)
SI: May I ask another question? (R: Of course.) This one may be about how the spirit moves. Sometime three weeks ago they were selling the book “I am the Self.” (R: Umm.) and one of the students of Ramana - I will not try to say the name and the young woman who was his disciple and him - And it was telling about the disciple who was lying on the floor with the snakes and the rats. And that one of the rats had died. And the rats would come and sit on his lap or knee and it would laugh, like it was in a bliss state like he was. And he felt that when the rat died or passed away that it had received the Self and in the image after it had expired there were like three baby rats dancing. And I know in the Hindu philosophy ???(student looks for a word) (R: Transmigration.) Transmigration, yes, but most people through concepts do not believe that the human body ever reverts to a lower existence and is also I guess it’s like a monkey who he feels he is known in a prior existence who is a person. And this would be an anathema to many peoples belief system because they only believe they evolve over and never backwards.
R: So what’s the question? (SI: Which is right? A do they both exist?) None are right and both are right. Do not go along with your belief system. (SI: Well I find that hard to believe that this is a student of Ramana, why is that written?) This is the reason why I say so often when I start the class, “Do not believe anything I say,” in this world anything is possible, yet what difference does it make? What you should do is work on yourself. Read the books if you like but take it with a grain of salt. (Who made that expression up? (laughter)) You are not asked to accept everything you read.
SI: Well I don’t. When you think of someone who is that evolved they should know the difference between fools folly and something that happened to… (R: You are judging!) That’s a judgment, yeah.
R: Find out who you are and when you discover your own reality then you’ll understand that. But people assume to have all kinds of experiences. Look at all the experiences Yogananda went through in, “Autobiography of a yogi” and other books. There are many stories, there are many books, some stories are true, some are false but never mind that, see who you are, work on yourself and don’t pay attention to all those things.
SE: It’s like what’s the difference between a true dream and a false dream. (R: Umm?) They’re both dreams. (R: They’re both dreams.)
R: (answers previous student) See it appears to me that you have a very strong belief system, you’re always saying this is right and this is wrong. (SI: I don’t really feel that way but if that’s…) I believe this and don’t believe that. It shouldn’t make any difference.
Just read it and say, “uh-huh that’s interesting,” and work on yourself.
SB: Robert the mind always seems to resist consciousness and it’s always looking for it’s happiness somewhere else. So when will the mind realize that if it rests in consciousness that someday happiness will come over it?
R: When you stop paying attention to it. The less attention you give to your mind the more it will subside. Do not give your mind power. Do not believe that your mind is very powerful and it can cause you pain and all sorts of obstructions. Ask yourself, “To whom is the mind?” The point is to always to be aware of who you really are. Identify with your source. Do not give the mind any credit, or any value, or any power, by believing it’s strong and it’s hard to overcome. Rather go beyond the mind and find out how the mind arose, and to who it arose, and then you’ll become free.
SH: Is there such a thing as a mind, an entity. We speak of it as though there was a mind but there is no mind there are only thoughts.
R: That’s what I was saying, the mind doesn’t exist. (SH: No.) The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. (SH: Right.) When you slow the mind down it means you slow the thoughts down. (SH: No thoughts no mind?) Exactly. The mind doesn’t exist, neither does the body, neither does the world, or the universe. They’re all out of the mind and the mind
is really the personal I. So when you follow the personal I back to the source the mind goes and everything with it.
SB: So we’re always using the mind as a reference point to find the truth and that’s why we never find it from that point of view.
R: Because we believe in the mind. We think the mind is very strong and we have to fight it to destroy it. It will never be destroyed if you feel that. You have to become neutral and not fight the so called mind. But observe it, watch it and follow it back to it’s source.
ST: Mind has to somehow become convinced that there is something greater than the mind.
R: Not really, you don’t want to convince the mind of anything, you want to destroy it, annihilate it. The more you try to convince your mind the more power it will have over you. That is why you have to inquire, “To whom comes the mind?” And you will always go back to the I-thought. Follow the I-thought to the source, the mind will go.
Would you like to read the Jnani Mary?
Now listen to this carefully, this is your true nature. This is what you really are.
(Student reads the confessions of a Jnani, Refer to beginning of this book.) (Robert then plays a tape of students song that was written for him) Students applaud song.
SI: Put the donations in for Robert why don’t we do that, we’ve got to have one.
Mary (SM): Alright any donations go to Robert.
(tape break)
R: It’s been a pleasure being with you again. I love you all, God bless you, thank you for coming. Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to pray to yourself because God dwells in you, as you, peace.
SL: Thank you.
R: Until we meet again, you can go home now…
(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.