– Transcript 88
R: Good afternoon. I welcome you with all my heart. It’s good being with you again this beautiful Sunday, 1991 A.D.
Ask yourself, “What is your reason for coming? What do you expect? What do you want? Do you want to listen to what I have to say?” Did you come to listen to a lecture?
Did you come to observe the speakers so you can compare him with other teachers? What is the real reason for you coming here?
The reasons I just mentioned are the wrong reasons. What is the right reason?
There isn’t any right reason. Everything just is. When you try to analyze your reason for doing something you are negating your reason for existence. You were meant to exist spontaneously. To just be.
It’s interesting how your body can do everything it’s supposed to do with out your help. You are in your right place you know. Going through those experiences that you need to go through at this time. There is no use complaining. There is no use talking about it. There is no use criticizing yourself or anyone else. There is no use in finding fault. Everything is in it’s right place. There are no mistakes.
Even if there appears to be something wrong in your life emotionally, physically, financially, mentally. Never judge these things. Never come to any conclusions. Live in the moment, just be. Do not be this or that, just be. When you try to be this or that you spoil it.
You are unique just the way you are. You are special. You are what you are because of where you have put yourself and there is no other reason. Drop all of your preconceived ideas. Drop all your dogmas, your superstitions, your analyzations. Everything has to go, you have to become totally empty.
This is satsang it is not a lecture. It is not a sermon, it is not a talk. Satsang is very different than the things we’re used to in the west. Sat means knowledge or being. Sang means in the company. You’re in the company of being or in the company of knowledge.
Who’s knowledge? Who’s being? Yours. You are in the company of your highest being.
Your highest Self.
It’s as if you were in the ocean. You are immersed in the ocean. You and the ocean are one. So it is with satsang. In other words you did not come to acquire knowledge or being. You are knowledge and you are being. This is your true nature, this is satsang. You are in the presence of your own divinity. In your own divinity there are no mistakes, there is no lack, there is no limitation of any kind.Some of you people have been meditating a long time. You have come from different groups and you have learnt many meditation techniques. Some of you tell me that you meditate on the I-thought. This is erroneous. Meditation and self-inquiry are different like night and day. Self-inquiry is not meditation.
When you meditate on the I-thought it is like meditating on your disease or meditating on your body because the I-thought is the culprit that is responsible for your world and everything that is in it. It’s a lie. You do not meditate on the I-thought. The I-thought doesn’t exist.
In self-inquiry you hold on to the I-thought. You follow the I-thought, you abide in the I-thought. You follow it to it’s source which is God or the Self. Thus discovering that you are the Self and there is no I-thought. But from talking to some of you on the phone, you are living the I-thought. You believe you’ve got to think about the I-thought all of the time. You do not hold onto the I-thought. You only hold on to it to the extent that you follow it back to the heart center, the spiritual heart which is on the right side of your chest. That is the only reason you abide in the I-thought.
When you meditate there has to be a subject and an object. Meditation is duality.
For you are the subject meditating on an object. You therefore choose your object of meditation. Can be Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Rama Krishna, Ramana Maharshi any deity that you choose. Or it can be a flower or a tree or a rock or a river. You see meditation is to increase your concentration. To make you one pointed so that your thoughts may stop and the object of your meditation becomes real.
Rama Krishna used to meditate on the Goddess Kali, twenty four hours a day until she became real to him. Meditation is all good and well, it has it’s place and it’s very helpful. But meditation is not self-inquiry. Try to remember that they’re two separate things. Self-inquiry is negating the whole universe until only the Self remains.
You start it early in the morning as soon as you open your eyes. You observe yourself becoming worldly. And you realize that just a few moments ago you were not cognizant of the world at all. Where were you? And in the space in between sleeping and awakening you had an abounding peace. Think about that. In that space as soon as you opened your eyes before you became cognizant of the world there is a tremendous peace and joy.
It only lasts for a few seconds.
The reason it only lasts for a few seconds is because the I takes you over. The I-thought begins to rise from your heart center and as it begins to rise you become more and more aware of your body, your affairs and your world. It finally rises to the brain at that time you say, “I am late for work. I have to get dressed. I feel sick. I need a cup of coffee. I have a headache,” and the I becomes very active.
Now the secret of self-inquiry is to find out where the I came from. Who gave birth to the I? Where did it come from? The only way you can find out is by following it back to it’s source. Therefore you inquire, “To whom does the I come?” or “Who am I?” the same thing. “To whom does the I come?” Think about that.
When you were asleep there was no I. You were not aware of an I. You were in deep sleep. When you were dreaming you were in a completely different world. You were aware of the I in your dream because you say, “I dreamt.” And now that you are awake you say, “I am awake.” It would be more proper to say, “I is awake.”
We’re talking about the I-thought, we’re not talking about the I as consciousness.
We’re talking about the I-thought. You see that I-thought does not exist and the only way you’re going to find out that it does not exist is by following it back to it’s source.
The question you ask is, “Then why does it persist? If it does not exist why does it haunt me? Why am I always saying, “I am this and I am that, I need this and I need that.”
Part of the awakening process is when you compare the I-thought to the water in a mirage.
The water in a mirage seems very real to you and if you don’t know anything about a mirage you would believe that the water is real. So when you don’t know anything about your reality you believe your body, your mind, your affairs and so-called life, is real. But if it’s real how come it changes all the time?
What is the definition of something being real? Something that exists the same way forever. Does your body exist the same way forever? You’re are not the same person you were ten years ago or twenty years ago or thirty years ago. When you were first conceived you were no bigger than the size of a pinhead and look what came out of the pinhead. So when somebody calls you a pinhead don’t feel insulted. Your arms, your legs, your arms, your hair all came out of this pinhead. You were born in order to die. For as soon as you’re born you begin to die. You begin to grow older and older and older and your reason for being born is to die. Sounds strange but true.
Therefore your body cannot be real. For it was born to die and it changes constantly. It’s never the same. How can you therefore hold on to your body as if it were real?
And abide in your body and think of your body night and day and be concerned with your body and waste your time dressing the body continuously in fine clothes, bathing it three times a day, feeding it all kinds of exquisite foods. Doing all of these things to your body is like beating a dead horse. Whatever you do you’re going to become weak in the end and die, whatever you do there is no escape from that.
Arnold Schwarzenegger likes his body. What will he think about his body fifty years from now? When he’s weak and decrepit and he can’t walk, these people become very delusioned, very upset with themselves. Somebody was telling me that Jack Lalanne refuses to come out of his house. He takes tranquilizers and he can’t believe that he can’t pull boats anymore and do all of those feats he used to do. In other words he’s running away.
Isn’t this the truth about all of us? So what are you doing with your life? What are you chasing? What are you trying to acquire? What are you trying to do for yourself to improve your life as a body? It’s all a waste of time. You should devote about 5% of your life to your body. That’s all it’s worth. The wise person somehow begins to understand this and they ask themselves the question, “Then what is reality? It is true my body is not real because it changes, changes, changes. The world is not real because it also changes, changes, changes. Everything changes constantly. Therefore what is real?” Asking yourself this question is the beginning of wisdom. For it leads to other questions. “Who am I then? If I am not the body then who am I?”
One day you begin to catch on and you say to yourself, “I asked myself who am I?” emphasizing the I, “What is this I that tells me I am human, that I am the body, that I am alive?” You begin to feel the I in your chest and in your brain. Something happens within yourself, where you begin to see that you are conscious. You are conscious during the dream state, during the deep sleep state, during the waking state.
Therefore you begin to understand that you are consciousness. Consciousness is absolute reality, pure awareness, or you can call it God. When I refer to God I am not speaking of anthropomorphic deity, I am referring to absolute reality, to Brahman, pure intelligence.
You begin to feel an inkling of this truth inside of you. When this happens to you, you will be attracted to the right book or to the right teacher or to the right environment.
Where you can go further on the path.
Now in the beginning it’s very exciting because you’ve discovered something new.
You have begun searching for yourself. But it seems to me unless you have a proper teacher the initial stage wears off and after a year or so, you’ve read all the books, you’ve heard all the lectures, you’ve seen many teachers and you’re becoming bored.
This is the time that a spiritual aspirant either goes through the friction with flying colors and gets to the other side or gives up the whole thing, becoming disgusted because they have not received illumination as yet. They have not awakened. Therefore this is the time to do the most work on yourself. This is the time to forget about your wanting realization, wanting something to happen, wanting to become free and begin to live in the moment spontaneously. Not concerning yourself with the world, with others but developing compassion. You begin to work on your greed, on your lust. Those things must go.
You begin to tolerate everything just the way it is. There is no longer anything to fight and there is no longer anything to fear. You become mellow. Things that used to disturb you have stopped disturbing you and then all of a sudden you notice your mind becomes quieter and quieter. The thoughts stop attacking you to an extent. You practice meditation and self-inquiry both together. Wanting nothing looking for nothing.
You’ve stopped running around the world you have settled down, for you realize wherever you go you’ve got to take yourself. One place is as good as another. It makes no difference where that place is. You become calm, no longer perturbed. You become the observer, the witness to your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your reactions.
You’re always watching, you’re always aware, you always see yourself in action and you always ask, “Why am I doing this? Why am I acting this way? What do I really want?” You
realize you have so much time to live in this body and you become more and more involved in spiritual life.
When you practice meditation you focus your attention either on a living Sage, which will bring you faster results or you can focus on a Sage of your religion that has gone. Which will improve your concentration and make you more one pointed.
When I tell you to meditate on God many people ask me, “How do I meditate on God? God is invisible.” Therefore you meditate on the first name of God which is the “I-am.” This is really the highest form of meditation. With your respiration you become quiet and you inhale and say “I,” you exhale and you say, “am.” This is really the highest form of meditation you can do. And during your waking hours when you’re busy, busy, busy you practice self-inquiry.
You can do this formally also. If you wish to sit in the silence and practice self-inquiry by all means you do that too. But do not believe that that’s meditation, they’re both separate. And it’s simple to practice self-inquiry wherever you are. In back of your mind you realize that you’re trying to destroy your thoughts. You’re trying to empty your mind and then your mind will disappear.
So whenever thoughts come to you, you simply ask, “To whom do they come?”
You can do this anywhere. “To whom do these thoughts come?” You never answer. But the answer always comes by itself, “These thoughts come to me. I feel them. I think them.”
We’re back to the I again. So this means if it weren’t for the I, I would not feel the depression. I would not feel the doubt, the apprehension, the fear or whatever because I feel it.
This is a wonderful revelation for me. For it means if I can only get rid of the I, I will not have this problem again. And the way you get rid of this I is to inquire, “From whence did it arise? Where did it come from?” As you think about this you become silent.
Almost immediately you will feel a joy a peace. A feeling of well being welling up inside of you. You watch, you observe.
Thoughts will come to you from all over the place. They will tell you, “Stop wasting your time. Go bowling.” They will tell you, “This is boring, I could be doing something constructive.” Your thoughts will pop up and tell you all kinds of things. They will tell you, “I’ve been doing this thing for a while and nothing is happening.” That’s all the game of the mind. You have to work it through. Whatever thought comes to you, you ask, “To whom does it come?” Over and over again. When you get tired of doing this you meditate on “I Am.”
You always do something. You take your mind off the world, off your body and off your thoughts. For after all if you do not do this where will you be? You will be going through the same experiences that millions of other people go through. Fear of the unknown. Never knowing if you’re going to have a heart attack tomorrow. Whether you’ll be still be in this world. Fear that somebody is after you trying to take away your good things or trying to hurt you. You will have all kinds of fears. The choice is yours. This is your life. Let us practice the “I Am” meditation. For when you practice it at satsang it becomes more powerful for you and you notice results.
The first thing you do is you make yourself comfortable. You relax in your chair.
You close your eyes to remove obstructions. You begin to observe your breath. Do not emphasize your breath. You observe your breath. If your body does not feel comfortable or relaxed tell it to relax. You may work your way up from your toes to your head telling every part of your body to relax. Again you become cognizant of your breath, the way you breath normally. Your feelings, you become aware of them. You become the witness. You are observing yourself breathing and feeling.
Then you ask yourself the question, “Who is the observer? Who is doing the observing?” And with your respiration you begin the meditation. You inhale and you say “I”
you exhale and you say “am.” Then rest in the silence a moment or so and say “I Am” again with your respiration. After a long practice the space between the “I Am” will become greater and greater. And you will begin to feel that you are consciousness. So practice “I Am.”
(long silence)
Feel free to ask any questions. Long talk hey?
SU: Okay Robert I hesitate to bring this out in the open but it’s there so, I have been overcome with the greed of food, memories come back of the most marvelous meals I’ve ever eaten in my life and all I want to do is eat. It’s in my mind I don’t do it but it’s in my mind pressing there. And I notice when I go to a restaurant it’s not only my own food but I look around at what everybody else is eating and I want it all! And it’s uncomfortable, really uncomfortable.
R: You’re not alone. (laughter)
SH: We all want it all. (laughs)
R: Well these things do come up. When you begin the process of self-inquiry…
(tape break) …it’s like dormant seeds ready to sprout. Things from a past life. You’re bringing everything up to the surface. So you can get rid of it. This is why with many people things sometimes appear to get progressively worse because everything is coming to the surface. You’re inquiring, “To whom does it come?” So it’s coming up and out, up and out.
Therefore when these things come to you like that, feelings, lust, greed do not be disturbed. But joyfully observe it. Observe yourself feeling this way. Watch it, look at it intelligently and you may ask, “To whom does it come?” But as you observe it, as you inquire, “To whom does it come?” The feeling becomes weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and it will ultimately disappear completely.
All these things do happen, but realize they are not you. Those thoughts, those feelings do not belong to you. They belong to I. You say, “I feel this.” When you inquire “Who am I? What is the source of I?” The greed, the lust, the feelings will go with it and they will all dissipate and leave you forever. You just have to keep up the practice. Do not allow these fears or these so called things that come to you to frighten you or to make you
feel something is wrong. Merely realize they come from the deep recesses from your mind and you’re getting rid of them.
It’s like when you shoot the ducks at the shooting gallery. The ducks are all flat on the floor and then they pop up and you hit one and it goes down again. The same thing with your thoughts. As the thoughts come you shoot them with your gun of inquiry, “To whom do they come?” And the thoughts falls dead and goes away. Then another one comes up and you ask, “To whom do these come? What is it’s source?” And it falls dead and goes away. You keep this up. As you keep doing this you will find one day that your mind is free and you feel bliss and happiness and joy that you never felt before.
ST: Muktananda taught that the body is the temple and to distract it and take care of it, how do you feel about that?
R: The body is a temple. It’s a temple that gets old and decrepit and no matter how much care you take of it, it’s going to get old and get decrepit. Just like a temple. You should take care of it but not to give it your whole life. I get up about six o’clock in the morning, I do exercise, I go for walks in the park, I make myself a drink and put hundreds of vitamins in it and by 7-8 o’clock I’m all finished, that’s it. That is the only attention I give my body to keep it going.
In reality the body does not exist. So if you spend too much time with it, you’re putting your attention on something that is going to go anyway. If you put your attention on the Self, on absolute reality, on “I Am,” on consciousness then you will become consciousness and not become a body. But sure it tells you that the body is the temple. It is a temple but must also be destroyed as a temple will be destroyed. No thing lasts forever.
When you’re a hundred years old and you can’t walk and you have to be taken care of what will you say about your temple then? So before you get like that, find the truth about yourself and become free and liberated.
SB: The I-thought seems to act like it knows everything. It knows who I am. It’s familiar with all these people and it wants this and it wants that but when I inquire and slowly start to see that the I-thought is just illusion it seems to be like abiding in ignorance like, I don’t know what anything is. Like divine ignorance. There seems to be a place of not a knower when the I goes.
R: This is a good place to be. When you no longer think, “I know.” I know is a statement of ignorance for as Bob says, “We do not know anything.” We don’t know why we look like we do. We don’t know why a tree is a tree or why a dog is a dog. We don’t know why we were born, why we die. We don’t even know who we are. We know nothing. Therefore when somebody appears intelligent, they think they know something that is a joke because no one really knows anything. We’re born into a world where things just appear to exist and we take them for granted. Why is a dog a dog? We give it a name dog.
Why do we have men and women? To propagate the race, why? We know absolutely nothing. Therefore it is real funny to me when people walk around thinking they know something.Now the interesting thing is when you begin to admit to yourself that you know nothing you become nothing and then you’re everything. But as long as you believe you know something that of course is ego and always gets you in trouble. Because when you believe you know something humanity always wants to change to something, into something else. Wars begin, man’s inhumanity begins, man’s inhumanity to man. But when you feel you know nothing then there is nothing to do. There is no one to be angry at. There is no thing you wish to change. You leave everything alone. You do not try to convince anyone about anything and you become free. So a free person is really a person that is good for nothing.
SH: So much for being free?
R: But he is nothing that’s why he’s free. (SH: But he’s good for that, for being nothing?) Free and nothing is synonymous. (SH: Well, that sounds good to me.) And when you’re good for nothing you’re free. But if you think you’re free and you’re good for something then you’re deluding yourself. Be good for nothing you’ll like it.
I know some of you are wondering to yourselves if everyone was good for nothing what would become of the world? Do not concern yourself with the world. The same power that knows how to grow mangoes on a mango tree, wheat in the field, cherries on a cherry tree, that knows how to maintain and sustain the universe as it appears will always take care of everything, even you, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
I realize also that you have been brought up to believe if you do not make something out of yourself, if you do not take care of your affairs you will suffer. This is a blatant lie. No one was born to suffer. If you allow yourself to be the natural person you are everything will always be provided and you will be radiantly happy. But when you interfere in the process and try to change things, become somebody, do something, you may appear to go through those processes but it’s not happy. There is no joy. There is no real beauty, it’s all mechanical.
(short silence)
Well we’ve got prashad to share with everybody.
(Opens up prashad)
This is a gift from the Self. You’ll never starve if you come here. Mmm, these look good, why don’t you open this?
(prashad continues with general conversation)
(tape ends)
*Note: Audio file had a date of 910829, but is the same as the transcript dated 910825. Audio date has been used.
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.