– Transcript 85
R: Good evening. It’s good being with you again. I welcome you with all my heart.
What is it you really want out of life? Some of you want perfect health. Some of you want wealth. Some of you want happiness, a new life. Some of you want self-realization. Everyone wants something. This is a very big mistake. What you really want out of life, is nothing. Nothing is your real nature. You are nothing. You’re not something.
If you want something out of life, that something has to change. Everything in the material world must change. Therefore whatever you want out of life is transient. It is not eternal. It has a beginning and an end.
The nothingness I speak of is eternity, omnipresence. When you do not identify with anything, everything unfolds as it should and you become very happy. When you’re looking to the future trying to become something, or attain something, or improve something, you always worry, you have fears. And even if you attain it, it’s not what you thought it was. When you identify with emptiness, your true nature, this is Brahman, absolute reality. Another name for pure awareness is nothing. Absolute reality is nothing.
Pure intelligence is no thing. Your real nature is no thing. It is no thing that you can describe. It is pure emptiness.
The body that you believe you have will take care of itself. Your wanting of something keeps you from being your Self. It makes no difference what the something is. As long as you desire anything, it keeps you from your true reality and causes suffering.
When you empty yourself out, then there is plenty of room for nothing. But as long as you have preconceived ideas, concepts, desires, wants, ambitions, hopes, you are filled to the brim. There’s no room for nothing. Therefore nothing appears to evade you, and you’re always wanting something.
The body that you think you are will always take care of itself. You do not have to have one thought about your body, or about your affairs, about anything, and you will live the most marvelous peaceful existence. Due to the fact that the nature of Maya is pure happiness. Maya, the world as it appears, comes out of the pure happiness. As you keep thinking about things, the pure happiness can not be, for you have identified with a mind, with a body. You’re not empty. You’re therefore worldly. Your senses are in control.
As you let go of your senses, your desires, your wants, Maya is no longer in control. It’s a new ball game. The substratum, the happiness, the pure awareness, which is at the basis of everything, takes over. And even though you appear to have a body, your body unfolds as it should. All of your affairs are taken care of, without one desire.
Your body is karmic. What appears to be your body is preordained. When the body first appeared, everything about you was preordained. Whether you’re going to be male or female, the kind of nose you would have, your color, where you were born. Everything was taken care of. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. Isn’t it reasonable to assume therefore, that the same power that was able to bring you into this world as an appearance, can take care of this appearance, maintain it and sustain it, and do with it what’s supposed to happen.
The trouble begins when you react. You’re brought into this world learning the difference between bad and good. You are taught at an early age these things are bad and these things are good. Yet this is erroneous thinking, for nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. The mind thinks. It says something like this, “It’s bad to be sick. It’s good to be healthy. It’s bad to be poor. It’s good to be rich.”
If that were true, why is it that most Sages were sort of sickly and never owned anything? Yet everyone remembers their names and knows who they are. But when you have a person like a Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, these people become famous for a time. Will anyone remember them a hundred years from now? Yet a name like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Shankara, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and so forth, these names will be remembered a thousand years from now, and their fame will grow greater and greater.
Now what am I trying to get at? I’m trying to get at the fact that you have absolutely nothing to worry about, nothing to fear, nothing to be upset about. The only job you really have is to stop thinking. Stop thinking about anything. I know you were taught to believe that if I stop thinking, my affairs will go belly up. All kinds of horrendous things will happen to me. This is not true. Your body is going to do the thing it came here to do, whether you like it or not. You have absolutely nothing to do with it. Why quarrel? Why argue?
Say, for instance, right now someone is doing something to you that you don’t like.
To retaliate is to react, and that causes you to accrue new karma, which has to be wiped out sooner or later. Therefore you come back to the earth again, and again, and again. And you go through all sorts of experiences until you learn not to react. Until you realize everything is okay, just the way it is.
When you can learn everything is okay, just the way it is, you’re ready for the next step, which is, what is? What is? And you realize, “I-am.” When you say, “I-am,” you will not refer to your body. You will refer to consciousness. Consciousness and “I-am” are synonymous. As long as you are reacting to person, place and thing, and you have a strong body consciousness, whenever you say “I am,” you’re referring to your body. But as you practice bhakta, devotion, detachment, compassion, all of a sudden you will realize that “I-am” is omnipresence, and when you say “I-am,” you’re referring to the whole universe.
You are the universe, the galaxies, the planets, the trees, everything. And what you do to everything or to anything, you’re doing to yourself. So you will think twice before you become angry, before you decide to get even, before you react. It is only when you practice this, that you can grow.
Look how excited you become about the world everyday. You’re always trying to get rid of the bad, and substitute it for good. This is a great mistake. You have to remember that the true condition is neither good nor bad. You have to learn to forget about your body. Your body has nothing to offer you. You do not denounce it or curse it. You do not love it or worship it. You leave it alone. As you leave it alone it will do everything it’s supposed to do. These things must be done before you can even consider Advaita Vedanta.
This is why I talk about them so often.
I know so many people, all they think about is enlightenment. Yet they have bad dispositions, bad tempers, selfish, only concerned with their own bodies and what’s good for it. Yet they walk around saying, “I am consciousness, I am pure awareness, I am the ultimate reality.” All of the time they’re talking about their body. They have not learned to transcend the body and they’re paying all these great attributes to the personal self.
The personal self, the body, can never be enlightened. It’s impossible. The body was not meant to be enlightened. The body has absolutely nothing to do with liberation.
Yet your real nature is enlightenment, liberation, nothingness. Are there two of you, one the body and the other liberated? Are there two I ams? Of course not. There’s only one Self and you are that. This means the truth is that there’s no body, there’s no mind, there’s no perceiver, and there’s nothing to be perceived. All that is a hallucination.
Have you ever had an hallucination? Well you’re having one now, for you believe that whatever you see is real. It has been my personal experience that nothing the mind produces is real, and the mind is the source of all existence. What happens to existence when you’re in deep sleep? It’s not here. It’s gone. Where did it go? It never went anywhere. It never existed to begin with, and the only time you can prove this, is when you are in deep sleep. The world appears to be going on for others, but as far as you’re concerned, there’s nothing, for you are in deep sleep.
The only difference between you and being in deep sleep, and being self-realized when awake, is when you are in deep sleep you are realized, but it’s subjective. When you are awake and you are realized, it’s objective. But the state is the same. Objects appear to the self-realized person, but the self-realized person sees right through them, like the water in the mirage, like the snake in the rope, like the sky is blue. Once you’ve experienced that the water in the mirage is not real, it can never fool you again. Once you have experienced that the snake, it appears to be a snake; but it’s a rope, it will never fool you again.
Once you have experienced that there’s no sky and it’s not blue, it will never fool you again. So also once you have experienced that you are the Self, the world can never fool you again.People, things, places, all become a joke. They have no existence. When that feeling comes to you, you hardly feel that you are a body. You see your body in the world as a mirage. They appear to exist, but they do not. Therefore all fear leaves you. All desires have been transcended. If your body appears karmically to be dying of a disease like cancer and rotting away, this is all a joke to you. It’s laughable, for you understand that you have absolutely nothing to do with the body. There is no condition that has the power to frighten you, for you have transcended conditions.
Now why do you want to become like this? Are you happy the way you are? For the hedonistic individual who’s only interested in having a good time, time runs out fast.
And no matter what they own or they don’t own, or what they’re doing or not doing, they have to be visited by Mr. Death. That’s what they have to look forward to.
The enlightened being knows there is no such thing as death, because there’s no such thing as life, and there is no such thing as birth. Therefore the enlightened being is always free, is not bound by anyone or anything, and is all pervading. The enlightened being knows only happiness.
Remember in the beginning I said that happiness is the substratum of all existence? Not the happiness that you’ve experienced, not human happiness when you gain things, but a happiness that is beyond words. A happiness that is beyond description, a joy that can never be explained, a bliss that a human being can never know.
So you have a choice. What direction shall I go? It starts with you. It begins and ends with you. You have to take an honest look at your life, an honest look at your thoughts, at your desires, an honest look at how you’ve been living, and start to work on yourself to transcend it. The way you transcend it is by attaining a quiet mind. Stop thinking. No thoughts whatsoever. No goals. No thoughts. Do not tell yourself, “I want to attain self-realization,” for that will keep you away from it. You will think there is something you have to do to attain it, whereas all you really have to do is to wake up. You take a look at yourself. Look at the way your thoughts have been ruling you, keeping you in bondage to them, how your thoughts have caused you to fear, to be suspicious, to be doubtful, to be apprehensive, to worry, and you begin to do the work. As long as the thoughts keep coming, you have to ask the question, “To whom do they come?” That’s how it all begins. Forget about the world. Forget about everything.
I know some of you are saying already, “If I forget about everything, how will it get done?’ As I explained to you before, before you were born everything was already laid out, and your body is going to go through the experiences it has to go through, yet it has absolutely nothing to do with you. So forget about that. Deal with the thing at hand. Admit first that your thoughts control you completely, and it’s hard for you to get away from them. Then you start to work by inquiring, “To whom do they come?’ Whatever thoughts come to you, you pose the same question. It makes no difference whether the thoughts are good or bad.
Some of you are still believing that to pose the question, “To whom does this come?” are only for bad thoughts, or when things are not going your way. On the contrary.
All thoughts are erroneous. No matter what kind of happy thoughts come to you, no matter what thoughts come to you that are horrible, you have to ask, “To whom do they come?
To whom do they come? They come to me. I feel them. Since I can think about I, I must be separate than my Self, and all of my thoughts are threaded on the I.” You therefore follow the I thread to the source, realizing all the time that you are not I. You become the witness to I.
That alone makes you feel wonderful, for you begin to realize that your real nature is freedom. It is I who has the problems. It is I who has the apprehension, the suspicions, the anger, the fears, the frustrations, the needs, the wants, the desires, are all attached to I.
It is even I that wishes to become self-realized.
Watch the I. Abide in the I. Just by abiding in the I do thoughts begin to become weaker. When more thoughts come, you inquire again, “To whom do they come?’ and you realize they belong to the personal I. At this time, when you’re witnessing the I, do not inquire, “Who am I?” but spend the time witnessing the I.
As further thoughts interrupt you, again inquire, “To whom do they come?” Again, “They come to me, to I.” Again feel and realize that my real nature is safe and secure. It is I who has the problem. When you come to this realization after a while, you then can inquire, “Who is this I? Who am I?” Remember when you’re saying, “Who am I? you’re not talking about your real nature, who does not experience problems. You’re referring to your personal I, that is separate and apart from you. Where did this I come from? Who gave it birth?
If you do this correctly, everything will come by itself. You will begin to feel and realize your Self. “When I slept, I was not bothered by I. When I dreamt, I was not bothered by I. But now that I woke up, I is born. Who gave it birth?” This kind of inquiry will cause something beautiful to happen to you. You will begin to feel that no one gave the I birth. It never existed to begin with.
I know some of you still believe that consciousness, or the Self, gave the I birth.
How can this be? Consciousness, the Self, is all pervading. It takes up all space. There’s no room for anything else. In other words, there cannot be consciousness and you, or consciousness and I, or consciousness and the world, because there’s just no room. There never was room for you and I. This will be a new revelation for you. You will awaken, simply by realizing this great truth.
When I say you look for the source of I, the source of I is nothing. It comes from no thing. But you will ask the question, “Then why did it come at all?” And the answer is, it didn’t. The I exists like your body exists, like your mind exists, like the world exists, like the universe exists, like God exists. All of that is I. If none of these things exist, neither does the I.The important point to remember is, when you’re playing with the I, do not identify the I with the body or with your Self. Keep the I separate. Realize that your body is attached to the I, the universe is attached to the I, but the I does not exist. Nothing gave it birth. That’s why as I opened up the lecture tonight, I said your true nature is nothing. You are plain nothing. You are no thing. No thing, nothing is consciousness, absolute reality, pure awareness. It is Parabrahman, it is beyond Brahman, and you are that. It begins and ends with you.
What do you do with all of your time during the day? There is no such thing as you’re too busy to practice self-inquiry. This should come first in your life, because this is your life. Everything else is secondary. If this appears too difficult for you in the beginning, surrender everything to God. Let God take care of everything for you.
(tape break)
Say something like this “God, self-inquiry is too heavy for me right now. I seem to go nowhere with it. But I surrender to you my emotions, my body, my anger, my fears, my frustrations. I surrender the universe, the world. Everything that I believe, I surrender to you. Take it and do as you will with me. I am only a puppet for you. Play with me as you desire,” and leave it at that. As you keep on surrendering every day, twice a day, three times a day, just by that alone fear will leave you. Your frustrations will leave you. Your mind will not concentrate on your body. It will become weaker, just by surrendering.
The choice is yours. Do what you must. But remember, to go on playing the game of life will only lead you to more life, more births, more deaths, more frustration and more ignorance. Realize the truth about yourself, and become free.
SD: Can I ask a question? (R: Yes.) Who surrenders? I really don’t understand?
R: When you surrender you believe you are the body, the mind. So when you speak about surrendering it is the mind and the body who surrender. (SD: So is that the same as the I that you’re trying to get rid of?) You’re not practicing self-inquiry. (SD: I understand that but I was just confused about what aspect of a person or whatever you may call it surrenders, does the surrendering?) The body does the surrendering. So you are surrendering your fears, your frustrations, your mind, your ideas. (SD: Your reactions?) Everything. Everything goes, that is surrender. Of course if you’re higher on the path you practice self-inquiry. But if you cannot practice self-inquiry surrender will also get you there.
Glen (SG): Robert, also Ramana says, “Surrender once and be done with it?”
R: Of course, if you’re able to do this. Surrender once and it’s all finished. That again is for the mature devotee. Where they give everything up and in the process of giving everything up you’re going deeper and deeper and deeper. You’re saying, “Take my body, take my mind, take my thoughts, take my fears, take the world, take the universe until there is nothing left and then you’re free. That is what Bhagvan meant when he said, “Surrender and be done with it.” Give it all away, get rid of it in one shot. You might have to keep surrendering for a year because you have so many things to give up, but keep it up.
Glen (SG): So to whom do you surrender?)
R: To your Self, God. (SG: Uh-huh.) When you are surrendering you are surrendering all of the stuff that you think is real. And as long as you believe the body and the stuff to be real then God is also real. So you are surrendering all of this stuff to God and in the process you will come to realize that you are that.
Fred (SF): I have a question sir, Indian scriptures says the Self is not known to study the scriptures… (R: Okay what’s the question?) …subtlety of intellect not so much learning but by him who learns one is he known, rarely unto him does the Self reveal his own being. I believe that comes from Indian scripture.
R: That’s a great quotation but what’s the question? (SF: The question is that Christ said, “Ye have not chosen me, I have chosen you.” Is there a connection between this, could you comment on that?) Well that means that you and I are one. That is a very high state. You have not chosen me but I have chosen you because I am you. How could it be any different? (SF: And we’re one with Christ?) Excuse me? (SF: We’re one with Christ?) We’re one with Christ, we’re one with eternity, we’re one with consciousness… (SF: Sir?) …we’re one with Christ, true! We’ve always been one with Christ. So when Christ says, “You have not chosen me, I have chosen you,” in the ultimate that is true because there is only the Christ.
There is only the Self, consciousness, reality. Everything is reality, everything is the Christ.
So the Christ cannot help but choose you. For you are the only one. “I and my father are one. If you have seen me you have the seen the father.”(Biblical quotations) So in truth I have chosen you. There is only the one and I am is that. Do you follow this? (SF: Sir?) Do you follow this? (SF: Yes sir, very well. yes, yes sir.) Good. The Christ as you say is the ultimate reality. The Christ of the universe. So the Christ has chosen everything, everybody.
Everything is the Christ.
Glen (SG): Isn’t the concept of chosen a little bit of an illusion? It’s not like chosen anybody?
R: Well for human beings to understand what they’re talking about we have to realize that most people cannot comprehend anything else. So you say, “I have chosen you,” as if there is an I and a you. The you becomes merged in the I, the ultimate I and they become one. But if the writing said, “I am you and you are me and there is only one,”
then the masses would not be able to follow and you would not have all these religious organizations. These sayings are to keep everybody dumbfounded so they can go to church.
Jay (SJ): Isn’t all the wars about who considers who is chosen and who is not chosen?
R: Sure you have the chosen people, you have the heathens, you have all kinds of people with their own ideas and they all kill each other trying to prove they’re right. (SJ: It seems like, that we’re alone in…) Chosen? (SJ: Yeah. If someone said to someone else, “I’ve chosen you or him,” as if someone deserves it, with me there is an ego feeling of, “Okay I’m special.”) Of course, of course. Remember the real meaning of I have chosen you means I am one with you. There is only the one and I am that.
SH: That’s the interpretation of it but the wording itself is dualistic?R: Yes. Again it was purposely made dualistic to keep people in line.
Jay (SJ): And made by the court authorities.
R: The great authorities. When you read such a thing as the Bible you have to read between the lines. You cannot take it literally.
SK: Robert when one is consciously free or conscious of being free. To the observer it would seem that karma still is operating for that individual, yet from the individual who has merged into the ultimate reality, do they perceive the karma or do they have no perception of the karma?
R: They have no perception. Again this is why people like Ramana Maharshi, Rama Krishna and others were able to die and laugh because they had no perception of the body. The perception of the body is felt and seen by others but not by a self-realized being.
SH: It doesn’t perceive a body at all? (R: No.) It just doesn’t exist, period.
R: It doesn’t exist. (SH: Far out.) It exists like a shadow. (SH: I can say not even as an appearance?) As a shadow.
SL: It appears, everything appears dense to you, does it not? As you see us we’re not transparent shadows?
R: You are not transparent shadows. But I realize like the blackboard and the chalkboard and the images on it, that everything is an image in consciousness. You’re just an image. I see it, it appears, but I realize I’m the blackboard or the chalkboard and people are drawing images. The images are superimposed on the chalkboard. You can erase them at any time and draw new images and erase those and draw new images. Yet the blackboard totally never changes. It always remains the same. So the Self is always the Self and all the changes are going on in the Self. The changes in the images are not going on out there, they’re going on here.
SL: This is probably really to understand what we really need to do is self-inquiry but when I look at George I can’t change my point of view, change my mind about him and I know we see each other as ourselves but still everyone is here as they are.
R: You’re speaking of your present state of consciousness. (SL: Yes.) That is how you see it right now. (SL: But can you change the image of us too?) There is nothing to change, it doesn’t exist. Everything just is. What would you change it to? There is nothing to change it’s a mirage. (SL: I’m through with asking questions. (laughs) It just tapers into silliness, but ah…) (laughs) When you see a mirage in the desert and you go after it, it becomes sand, it doesn’t exist. So you’re not trying to change the mirage into anything. You just know the truth about it, that it’s not real but you still see it. So the Jnani sees the world as a mirage.
Everything appears but nothing exists.
SK: There was an article in today’s paper about some guy he was saying that life was just a big hologram, it’s all just an illusion. And I can understand that but the problem I have with it is that it feels real and I’m wondering when you evolve to a higher level does the feelings go away. I mean is there less of that aspect there?
R: There is no feeling at all in humanity. That feeling is gone. (SK: That seems to be the key thing because I guess if the feeling goes away then I think…because that’s where I get fooled.) The thing that is difficult to comprehend is that you are speaking from the viewpoint of the ajnani. (SK: Um-hm.) And you can’t really comprehend how the Jnani feels until you have your own experience. This is why I tell most people most of the time, do not believe a word I say but have your own experience. Find out for yourself. For the whole thing is very paradoxical. Your mind will tell you, “How can you feel something and then it doesn’t exist at the same time?”
There is no logical answer for this because the Self does not deal in logic. It is beyond logic. You can come over here and you can stab me and the body will appear to die but nothing will happen to me. I will be the same. But to others there will be blood, there will be death, there will be mourning and nothing has happened, how can you explain that? There are no words to explain something like this.
SD: You once compared the way you see the world as watching a movie, that was the best allegory for me because - I’m sure everybody here or at least I did - get totally caught up in the movie and you feel the emotions and you feel like you’re there but there is still a you there that can still eat popcorn or who knows it isn’t real life and who knows that at the end of it you’ll still be going home. I think you just suspend belief for a few minutes.
R: Who does? (students laugh) You’re speaking from your point of view. (SD: Yes.) See this is why questions like this is like, what came first, the seed or the tree? the chicken or the egg? There is no human answer. It’s beyond that. The only way to find out what a Jnani feels is to become one. That is why it’s most important to work on yourself.
SU: Robert I want to thank you for telling us about surrender because up until yesterday I was working with self-inquiry from morning till night. I was really not sure whether I was making headway with it until yesterday when it just hit me like a ton of bricks I just couldn’t cope with it.
Everything like, every thought I ever had was going around in my head and I couldn’t get to self-inquiry, I just couldn’t get to it and I thought I’m going to have to drop out, this is to much for me.
I want to really thank you again for the surrender aspect to take me through.
R: Let me remind you that when you practice self-inquiry what you’re really doing is you’re asking all the thoughts from past lives, from this life, to come up. So you can get rid of them. All the samskaras, all the dormant seeds waiting to sprout. When one practices self-inquiry they awaken all this stuff. Sometimes it feels as if your head is going to blow up. (SU: Oh, huge.) Sometimes it makes you feel worse than you ever felt in your life.
(SU: That’s truth.) And that’s a good sign because everything is coming to the surface.
Whereas the average person, they experience a little karma here and there, then a little more. Then they die and they take on another body and they experience more karma.
You’re only given enough karma that you can handle. But to a person who practices self-inquiry you’re asking for it because it all comes up. Therefore when that happens do not be frightened. You can change from one to the other. You can change from self-inquiry to surrender. When your mind is about to blow up with thoughts, you can say, “Okay God take this from me, I give it to you, I can’t handle it, it’s yours take it,” and give it all to God.
Glen (SG): Robert is the term, “you have a choice,” is that a convention of speech. Is it more a remembering of the Self when those windows appear?
R: It’s a convention of speech. We really do not have a choice. Everything is predestined. Yet you have a choice when you decide to turn within. When you decide to practice self-inquiry you have made a choice. And the deeper you go within yourself the greater the transmutation of karma and predestination.
In other words the deeper you go within yourself the greater you overcome your past karma and your destiny. So the choice you really have is whether to be worldly or to turn within. Everything else is preordained.
SH: Turning within would include the position of the witness taking effect?
R: Yes, yes. (pause)
(short silence)
R: Would you like to read the Jnani Mary? (SM: Yes.) Here is the truth about you, your real nature.
(Mary reads “The Confessions Of A Jnani,’ refer to beginning of this book) R: Thank you, Mary.
We’ve got prashad. Prashad is very important. Prashad is the teaching. The whole teaching is contained in prashad. So be sure that you eat something…
(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.