– Transcript 87
R: Good afternoon. It’s fun being with you again.
You all strike me as very funny, because you believe you are the body, you believe you are your mind, you believe you’re your experiences. No matter how many times I tell you you’re nothing, you won’t believe me. You want to be something. Why won’t you be nothing? It’s fun being nothing. When you’re nothing there’s no world, there’s no God to pray to, there are no others who can do anything to you, there’s no death, there’s no rebirth. There’s just nothing. Yet the nothing is everything. Be nothing. You’ll love being nothing.
You don’t believe me, do you? You think you have to be something. What a group.
You think you’re personal, you’re an ego. You’re always wrapped up in me, me, me, me, me. True? You’re always thinking about yourself. I need this. I want that. This is wrong.
This is right. There’s always something.
Nothing is the way it appears. No thing that exists is as it appears. Whether it’s the world, or the universe, or other people, other situations, conditions, no thing is the way it appears. And as long as you identify with the things that appear, and are not real, you suffer accordingly. Anything that you think about, anything that your senses tell you is real, is only an appearance. If it’s only an appearance, there’s absolutely nothing wrong. If it were a real entity, if the world were real, if the universe were real, you would have something to worry about, for everything is subject to the law of change. Everything changes constantly. You become frustrated, you become confused, you become confounded when you have faith in the world, because the world’s always changing. It tells you something one day, the next day it tells you something else.
Even science agrees with this. Science tells us that everything is composed of atoms and energy. And when the atoms spin at a certain rate of speed, this determines what the object is. Science tells us that our eyes see a reflection of light, and the reflection of light causes the image to appear before us, as a tree, as a person, as a mountain, as an ocean, as the moon. In other words, science is beginning to see that no thing exists the way it appears to exist. It only exists because you exist. If you weren’t around to see it, there would be no existence. It is only because you are around and awake, so-to-speak, you awaken the ego, that things appear as they appear to you. Yet no thing appears the way it looks.
They say that the sun, millions of years ago, exploded and caused our planets to be the way they are today, and everything is evolving. The big bang theory. That’s all well and good. But where does the sun come from? They say that there is a central sun. All of the galaxies in the universe revolve around the central sun, and it takes 24,000 years for a galaxy to revolve around that central sun. The closer the galaxy gets to the sun, the more evolved the planet becomes. The farther away the galaxy goes from the sun, the greater the dark ages on that planet. They say it takes approximately 12,000 years to go as close to the central sun as you’re going to get, and 12,000 years to pull away from it. In other words the planet is 12,000 years in the dark ages, coming out of it, and 12,000 years in the golden age, going back to the dark ages. That’s what they say.
Where did the central sun come from? Who gave it birth? Since the beginning of time there have been individuals who have pondered this question. Where did it all come from? Where did creation come from? Out of what did it evolve? Great Rishis in India, great seers in Japan, in Egypt, thousands of years ago sat beneath trees pondering these questions. If God created everything, where did the God come from? Who created the God? There is always a something and a somebody that appears to be responsible for this creation.
So these olden day Rishis, seers, pondered these questions, and something very interesting happened. As they pondered externally the cause of creation, all of a sudden they found themselves becoming introverted. They began to look within themselves. They began to realize “I am,” and inadvertently they posed the question “Who am I? Who am I?” without knowing what they were doing. They didn’t even voice it verbally. They just felt it “Who am I?”
And as they did this sincerely, religiously, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, something happened. And it came to them “I am that.” They were amazed. Remember, these great thinkers from the past did not know each other.
They did this independently, in Egypt, in Africa, in India, Japan. They all came up with the same answer “I am that.”
In other words, there is no external world. There is no thing but mind. And because there is mind, there is a universe. Therefore I am the creator of the universe. Everything exists, because the mind exists. And they believed they were the mind. They came a long way, for they now realized that everything was an emanation of the mind. When they had this revelation, they didn’t stop there. They pondered “What is mind? Where did mind come from? If my mind is the cause of creation,” they pondered “where did the mind come from?”
Again they pondered this for days, weeks, months, years, until again something happened. This time they realized that mind is the cause of the relative world, and the relative world is false. So the mind that I think is important must also be false. In other words, there is no mind. If there’s no mind then who am I? It took a long time to discover that they were mind, and everything came from the mind. Now they were realizing that they are not mind. They inquired “Then who am I? Who am I?” and they abided in themselves. They became the selves.
They lost track of the body, the universe, the mind. They were not in a state of samadhi, because they were awake. During their awakened state, they became nothing.
There was no mind. There was no universe. There was no God. There was no body. There were no others. There was just absolute nothingness. And they realized this is the Self. Not myself, but the Self. And they were absorbed in the silence.
From that moment on the world still appeared to them, but they were able to see right through it. All pain disappeared, worry, fear, desire. It all disappeared. It was transmuted. Now these ancient Rishis were unable to share this with devotees or disciples because it’s a personal experience. Since it’s beyond words, it’s beyond mind and beyond thoughts, how can one actually share this? Therefore these ancient Rishis became silence.
They never spoke. Yet there was such power emanating from them, that if the right devotees came to them and just sat with them, doing nothing, saying nothing, wanting nothing, desiring nothing, they too achieved the same results. It was amazing. This technique was passed down through the ages. It was commonly called Advaita Vedanta or Jnana, and it is still the supreme truth.
Now let’s talk about you. As long as you want to become enlightened you are making a grave mistake, for there is no one to become enlightened. As long as you want to end your problems, and change your problems from bad to good, you’re making a grave mistake, for there are no problems. As long as you think there’s something wrong or there’s something right, or right overcomes wrong, and we have to try to correct the condition or situation, you’re making a grave mistake. You see, whatever has to happen has already happened.
There’s nothing you have to do, yet your body will do. Your body has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality. In other words, the relative world, the material world that you’re involved in, good or bad, rich or poor, healthy or sick, happy or sad, that world has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality. That material world doesn’t even exist. Only consciousness exists. Even though I tell you all of the time, do not be concerned over your affairs, for right actions will always take place. By right actions I mean the Dharma, that which is supposed to happen.
Some of you will still feed the homeless. You’ll still have your jobs. You’ll still do what you’re doing, but it will not be you. You’ll be aware that you are not that. You are consciousness. You are absolute reality. Yet, unlike yoga practices, you have to have the experience for yourself. And when you have the experience for yourself, you cannot prove or show anybody anything.
As an example, a person says they are going to practice Hatha Yoga. The result of Hatha Yoga is really to bend themselves into a pretzel, and do all kinds of pranayama breathing exercises, hold their breath for an hour, be buried alive for four days and live.
All these siddhis and all these powers can be developed when you practice Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga and Kundalini Yoga. But this has nothing to do with the Self. It has nothing to do with consciousness. The one who achieves mastership in all of these yogas still has problems. They still go through mental anguish. They have likes and dislikes. They have bad tempers. They have fears. They are still human even though they have developed these siddhis, powers, and can do extraordinary things.
All of these things have absolutely nothing to do with self-realization, with moksha, with liberation. That’s why, as an individual, you have to make up your mind what you want out of life. All of you have attended various meetings in your life time. You’re seeing various teachers. You’ve read many books. What do you want? Do you want to become ultimately free or do you want to develop different characteristics, powers? Do you want name and fame? You can achieve these things, but it will not free you.
Now why do you want to become free? To be totally liberated means you’re no longer part of the cycle of birth and death. You no longer have a body, but you are conscious. You no longer have a mind that thinks all the time. You’re totally free and radiantly happy. You always find yourself in the right place wherever you are. There’s no place for you that’s better than another place. You’re free. You’re liberated. You have eternal happiness, joy. You’re no longer concerned about what your body is doing, for you are aware that you have no body. Even though you can see it yourself and you see other bodies, you are sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are no bodies.
This is a hard one to explain and a hard one to understand, for how can you not be the body when you see the body? Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. You have transcended and transmuted existence. What is beyond that cannot be comprehended by the finite mind. There are no words to describe it. So we say it’s the blissful state. Yet most of us cannot understand what the blissful state is, because we haven’t experienced it.
It’s like trying to describe the taste of ice cream to a person who has never tasted it.
No matter what you say it doesn’t come out right, until the person tastes the ice cream himself. Therefore you have to experience this for yourself. And it can be experienced.
The first thing to realize is that it can only be experienced when your mind has become silent. When your mind has become silent it means your mind has been destroyed, because the mind is only a bundle of thoughts. When there is no mind, there is emptiness. That emptiness is silence, and that silence is consciousness. How do I make my mind silence? How do I silence my mind? By inquiring “Who am I?” or “Where does the mind come from? How did the mind originally appear?” In other words you must inquire into yourself.
There is absolutely no thing you can do externally. This is the reason it’s not for everyone. Most yogas, all yogas, all spiritual teachings beside Advaita Vedanta are external. They’re something you do externally. Yet in this teaching, you dive deeply within to discover your Self. You’re not looking to develop anything. You’re not looking to add anything on to yourself. You do the reverse. You remove everything you’ve ever known from your life, mentally. Everything you believe in, all of your preconceived ideas, all of your dogmas, everything you believe in has to be dismissed. Hardly anyone is ready to do this.
Think of all the things in your life you have to give up. I don’t mean you have to give them up physically. You have to give them up mentally. You have to let go. Everything has to go. Everything that has been brainwashed into your head since you were born, has to be reversed. This is the only way you’re going to get there. There is no other way. You have to reverse yourself, and not identify with person, place or thing, but with the Self, with consciousness. And again this is done through inquiring. Whenever an object enters your mind, you have to inquire “To whom does it come?” You have to question everything. You no longer accept anything at face value. And yet, as you do this, your life style will not change much, for your body will continue it’s work. As you begin to understand and feel and experience that you are not your body, your body will still continue the work it came here to do. But you no longer think about it. You rather ask yourself “Who is the thinker?” and of course you always come back to “I am. I think about these things.”
Slowly but surely you begin to realize you are not the I, you are not the I that thinks. “If I am not the I who thinks, then who am I?” and you wind up in the silence.
There is no answer. Do not say to yourself “I am consciousness,” or “I am absolute reality,”
for if you really are that, there would be no one to make the statement. When I make these statements to you, I am merely voicing, so you can hear what’s going on. You have to get to the point where you become that, not where you voice It. And, again, the easiest way to do that is by negating everything else. Whatever comes into your mind, you simply question. You don’t accept it at face value.
Say for instance you are an angry person, you’ve got a short fuse and people make you angry, conditions make you angry. Now instead of reacting immediately to the condition as you usually do, you question yourself “To whom does this anger come?” and you wait. You do not say “it comes to me,’ until it happens by itself. In other words, this procedure does not need any help from you. It will come “The anger comes to me. I feel angry,” but don’t just say it mechanically. Wait till it comes. You ask “To whom does the anger come?” and you become still. Sometimes, if you’re advanced enough, nothing else will come for a great while. You’ll remain in the silence and bliss. But sometimes the answer will come immediately “The anger comes to me.” Then you ask “Who am I?” and you keep silent again.
You see the way it’s done? It is not done mechanically. You allow the Self to take care of everything. You watch. You become as quiet as you can. You no longer get involved with the world too much. You observe, by becoming the witness, but you do not react.
(end)
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.