– Transcript 89
R: Oh this beautiful Thursday evening, whatever the date is. Most of you know Dana. She’s in the hospital. It would be nice for people who know her to give her a call. Maybe send her some flowers.
When I say, “All is well, and everything is unfolding as it should,” most of you begin to think about your personal problems, collective problems of the world. This is exactly what you should not do. As we go through the vicissitudes of life, we find we go through much friction. This is normal. There is absolutely nothing wrong. Most of us have been brought up to believe certain things are wrong. This may appear true in the relative world, but as far as the spiritual world is concerned, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
Whatever you believe is wrong with your life or with someone else’s life, there’s nothing but an unfoldment in consciousness, and it’s necessary for your evolution. If you understand this, you will not react to whatever happens. You will simply smile, observe, and become the witness through each situation that comes into your life as you unfold.
There is nothing in the universe that can hurt you. The substratum of this universe is divine love. It is pure consciousness. It does not know the meaning of hurt or evil or sin.
Those are just words that human beings make up.
When you begin to identify with your real nature, which is love, then you sail through all the so-called calamities of life. But if you identify with the world of appearances, and as you know there are many appearances, you seem to suffer. You become angry, you become upset, you become disillusioned only because the world is not turning your way. Only because the world is not turning the way you think it should, according to your concepts, according to your preconceived ideas. Again, there is nothing wrong. Everything is right just the way it is. As you begin to understand this, you find peace.
What do you really want out of life? As most of you know, when you achieve your goals, it doesn’t turn out to be the thing you hoped it would. As long as you’re looking for something, you will always be disappointed. When wisdom starts to come to you, you stop searching. You stop needing, you stop wanting. You leave it alone. You live in the moment, spontaneously. And then everything unfolds where it’s supposed to.
There is the story of a prime minister of a great country who used to go to a teacher in the forest and all the teacher would say to him is, “All is well and unfolding as it should.’ This was the entire teaching. Then there would be silence. The prime minister of the country went to this teacher for five years. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he had faith in the teacher and in God and in himself. So he just kept repeating “All is well and unfolding as it should.’
One day he became totally immersed in consciousness. He lost the body-mind idea, transcended the I-thought and became absolutely free, became radiantly happy, inner joy, inner bliss. One day the head chef of the palace caught his wife with one of the cooks making love in the kitchen and he became angry, he became upset. He wanted to kill her, but before he did anything, he went to the prime minister and he said, “Prime minister, what can you do to help me? I caught my wife with another man. I want to kill her. What should I do?’ And the prime minister said, “Don’t worry. All is well and unfolding as it should.’ And the chef got upset. He got mad and went away, saying to himself, “How can he tell me that? I asked him for help and all he told me was, All is well.’
Now it happened that the chief of the guards of the palace was due a promotion.
And somebody else got promoted in his place. And he became upset. And he decided to see the prime minister to ask his advice. He told the prime minister what happened and the prime minister just smiled and he said, “Don’t worry. All is well and unfolding as it should.’ And the chief of the guards said, “What?’ And he went away angry, mumbling to himself. He happened to bump into the chef whose wife had been unfaithful. And they related their stories to each other. And he said, “The prime minister told me the same thing. Lets fix him good. Lets plan to do something to him. What can we do?’
They happened to pass the royal barber shop and the king was taking his royal shave. The barber slipped with the razor and cut the kings royal neck. Blood was flowing all over the place. And they ran in and helped bandage the kings neck. When they left, they came up with a plan. And they ran to the prime minister and they said, “Prime minister, our king has cut himself shaving and he’s in extreme pain. What do you think of that?’
And the prime minister said, “All is well and everything is unfolding as it should.’ That’s what they wanted to hear!
So they ran to the king and they said, “Your Majesty, we told the prime minister about your terrible accident, and he didn’t even care. All he did was say, “All is well,’
laughing, and “everything is unfolding as it should.’ And the king says, “What! Bring him to me!’ And the palace guards brought him to the king. And the king looked the prime minister in the face and he said, “Look at my neck, it’s bandaged and it hurts like hell.
What do you think of that?’ The prime minister merely said, “Your Majesty, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.’ And the king got real angry and he said, “Put him in the dungeon!’ So he threw the prime minister in the dungeon.
Now it was Wednesday afternoon, and every Wednesday afternoon the king went horseback riding with the prime minister. But of course the prime minister was in the dungeon so he went horseback riding by himself. The forest was filled with Kali-worshipers. And this was the time of year when they captured someone and sacrificed that person to the goddess Kali as that was their custom in the old days. So the chief of the Kano said, “Go bring me a pure person for the sacrifice.”
So they searched and they searched and they couldn’t find anybody. Then they saw the king coming. They grabbed the king. They didn’t care who he was, and took him to the Kali guards. And the Kali chief looked at him and he said, “Take off his clothes.”
Which they did. Then he saw the cut in his neck bandaged. And he said to his guards, “How dare you bring me a person like this? Can’t you see he’s impure? He has a great cut in his neck. We only sacrifice a pure person. Get rid of him.
They took him back to the forest and let him go. Now the king was running back to the palace and he thought this over. And he realized that if he had not cut himself, he would have been sacrificed. And he sent for the prime minister and told him this story. He said, “You were right. If it weren’t for the cut in my neck, I would have been sacrificed to the Kali gods.” And the prime minister said, -Not only that, Your Majesty, but I usually go riding with you. They would have caught us both and I would have been sacrificed if you didn’t throw me in the dungeon. So thank you.”
So you see the moral of the story? No matter how things may look, no matter how things may appear, every situation in this world has a beginning, a middle and an end, but all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
Take a look at your life, all of the times that you interfered with the condition because you didn’t believe it was the right condition. And you caused problems for yourself and for all concerned. Everything will always work out. There are no mistakes. You have to feel that. You have to have faith in yourself and in the powers that be. While you are working in this world, do not react to things. For you are only seeing a partial story.
It’s like the example of the keyhole I give you. A person looks through a keyhole and they see one part of the picture. They see somebody stabbing somebody else with a knife, and that’s horrible, very bad. But let’s imagine they open the door and they see the whole picture. They will probably see that in a previous life the man who was being stabbed, stabbed the person who is stabbing him. And now in this life the same thing is happening to him. And when he looks further, he will see the one being stabbed and the one who is doing the stabbing both laughing. For nothing has happened to them at all in reality. So you see, we always get a partial picture. We never get the whole truth. This is why we are told not to react! This is why we are told, whenever a situation confronts us, act from the point of wisdom by not reacting. Yet, your body will do something. When I say to not react, I mean mentally.
First, if you do not react mentally, and you are at peace with yourself, your body will take the right course of action in order to transcend that situation and you will not have to go through it again. But say you react, and you seem to get your way and win, whatever the situation is. This simply means that you have put your karma in abeyance for awhile. The results have not hit you yet. You stopped them, for awhile. But according to the law of karma, you’re going to have to go through it at one time or another. If you do not react mentally, divine right action will take place and you will transcend and not have to go through that experience. This is the way to live in the world. The question is, is the world your real home? What have you got to do with this world? As you evolve, as you unfold, you begin to see that you are a spirit. You are not a body. You are not a mind. And you are not the doer. By spirit! mean your true nature is consciousness, absolute reality, pure awareness. You are really not of this world. But this realization only comes when you do the work. By doing the work I mean when you develop compassion, humility. Your feelings no longer become hurt. It doesn’t make any difference where you live or where you are or what’s going on in your life right now. You realize this is for a time only. And this too shall pass. So you do not react.
And you have transcended lust and greed. When this has been accomplished to an extent, you find you’re beginning to feel a tremendous bliss, tremendous peace. It’s at that time that you can begin to practice self-inquiry. Everything I’ve said to you has led to the practice of self-inquiry, atma vichara. If you have not come this far, as I just explained, you will not like self-inquiry. It will be meaningless to you, it will be boring. You will try for a couple of weeks, some a couple of clays, some a couple of months, and then you will tell me, “Robert, it doesn’t work.” And I will smile and realize you have not done the preliminary work. You still have anger, doubt, apprehensions, suspicion. Things of the world still annoy you. You react to things, sometimes violently. Therefore you cannot practice self-inquiry. You will not like it, you will not enjoy it.
But you can surrender, if you are ready to do that. You can surrender to the Self, to God. You can allow God, the Self, to take your anger, to take your suspicions, your depressions, your apprehensions, your greed, your lust. You can give it all to God. But this is also not the easiest thing to do. For it means that you have come to the conclusion that you are not the doer.
You are more like a puppet being manipulated by karma. And so you give everything up to God. You surrender your karma, your sins, your past mistakes, everything.
You let go of it. Then you find you’re becoming more peaceful and you begin to search for the personal “I”. You begin to feel, “I am not the body. I am not the mind. I am not my experiences. Then who am I? Who am I? Who is this person called “I”? Is it me? When I refer to my foot, my chest, my hand, who is the “my” I am talking about? To whom am I referring?”
You begin to question yourself. Remember, this can only be done when you are at peace with yourself. “What is the source of I?’ You begin to look within yourself. You spend moments in the silence. In the beginning when you ask the question, “Who am I?”
there’s a profound silence. It will only last a few seconds. But as you continue to question, the space between each “Who am I?” becomes greater and greater and you remain in the silence longer and longer.
This silence is your true nature. The silence is consciousness. When the “I” dissolves, you become Sat-Chit-Ananda, Brahman, Nirvana, Emptiness. And you become blissful. As the clays go by, whatever you feel, whatever you see, whatever your senses tell you, you question, “To whom does this come?” You’re always questioning.
As I mentioned Sunday, self-inquiry is not meditation. You can sit at certain times during the clay and practice self-inquiry if you desire. You’re not meditating. You’re inquiring.
You’re following the I-thought to the source. You do not look for results. If you find that you cannot do this, you practice being the observer.
You observe everything you go through during the day. You become the witness.
You watch. And you do not react.
Then self-inquiry will come by itself. Something will open up within you and you will ask the question, “Who is the observer? Who is the witness?” And something will say, “I-am.” And “I-am” is the first name of God.
So you will change the meditation and do the “I-am” meditation with your respiration. You inhale and you say “I”, you exhale and you say “AM.” It’s okay to mix self-inquiry with the I-am meditation, as long as you’re always doing something. That’s the point. Always do something. Do not focus on your so-called problems. If you’re doing something spiritual your problems will always take care of themselves. They will. They will always work themselves out. As far as you’re concerned, keep your self spiritual. You will always begin when you awaken. If you wait too long you will forget and go about your daily business.
But if you do something spiritual when you first awaken you will carry it through during the clay and before you fall asleep. Keep yourself spiritual all the time. When you wake up you can immediately ask yourself, “Who am I? Where did the ‘I’ come from? ‘I’, ‘I’
had a dream, and now ‘I’ am awake. Who is this ‘I’?” The “I’ slept soundly, the dreamt, and now the ‘I’ is awake. Interesting. And you ask, “Then, who am I?” Which really means, “What is the source of this I?” You always pause, and remember you never answer the question. When you ask yourself, “What is the source of the ‘I’?” and you rest in the silence, thoughts will start to come to you. So you inquire, “To whom do these thoughts come?”
If you find you are late for work and you have to get up and get dressed, or do whatever you’re doing, do not force yourself to stay back and practice self-inquiry, but get dressed. As you get dressed, ask yourself, “Who’s getting dressed?I am. Who am I?” And follow it through, as you’re eating your breakfast, “Who’s eating? I am. Well, who is this ‘I’?” And you keep it up. You keep it up. You keep it up. You keep it up. You will forget in the beginning. But as you keep up the momentum, you will remember. And you will remember more and more. All during the clay, keep up the self-inquiry. Surrender. You can do both simultaneously. When something faces you that you don’t like you can say, “To whom does it come?” and you can also say, “Take this from me, God. It doesn’t belong to me at all. Take it. Take this burden.
Then you can inquire, “Who had to give the burden to God? I did. Who am!?” It always goes back to the same thing. This is the procedure. These are the things you must do if you want to become free. Why are you wasting your life? The things that you think you need will one clay vanish. You don’t know how much time you’ve got left in your body. And if you haven’t become of no mind, you have no idea where you’re really going to go when you drop your body or what’s in store for you.
If you practice self-inquiry, if you practice surrender, if you keep your mind on the source, you’ll be safe. And the worst thing that can happen to you when you drop your body is that you will reincarnate into really spiritual parents, parents who have been on the path a long time, giving you the opportunity to start at an early age to become free and liberated. So what do you want with your life? Do you want to go after material things that are here today and gone tomorrow? Or do you want to become free? The choice is yours.
Feel free to ask any questions.
Mary (SM): I had a very interesting dream a few nights ago, Robert, where I laid down on my child and his guts came squishing out and I was in a panic. I saw my baby killed. I was just lamenting and weeping, gnashing my teeth. All of a sudden a voice said, “Relax it’s only a dream.’ And I stuffed the guts back into his body and got up.
R: So what is the question? (SM: This is all a dream, relax!) Good! Everything that appears really does not exist. If you are only able to awaken without going through these procedures and all the work you have to do on yourself. And the reason you can’t awaken is because you’re attached to the world. You’re attached to person, place and thing. That is the only reason that you will not awaken. In other words, you’re getting pleasure out of the world. And as long as you’re deriving pleasure out of the world, you will never awaken. I’m not saying you have to stop the pleasure and acquire pain. They’re both two sides of the same coin. Enjoy your pleasure, but do not react to it. Realize what it is -
Maya, illusion. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. Therefore when you are no longer attached mentally, you become free.
S: Eve had that same experience that he did about waking up and saying, “This is a dream, I whenever I did a lot of self-inquiry during the week. Then I’m more likely to have a dream, sort of this lucid dreaming.’ I wonder if anybody else has had that experience.
R: Yes, those dreams actually do come when you practice self-inquiry a lot, to show you the nature of things. You will have a dream and all kinds of things will happen, and then in the dream you will realize it’s a dream. That shows you you’re making progress.
Those are really good dreams to have. Isn’t there a song, “Life is but a Dream?’ I know I heard it some place.
S: There’s also a song, “I’ve Got Plenty of Nothing.’
S: Robert, you said a couple of weeks ago, you were talking about the need for a living guru and I was wondering in your own particular case, how many years were you with your teacher?
R: I was never with one teacher a long time. When I had my own personal experience I went to many teachers to observe and to confirm what I was going through. (S: So, in a sense, your experience was self-evoked?) You can say that, yes. But I was so young at the time, I thought I was going crazy. But somebody always introduced me to a teacher who
let me know what it was all about and what was really happening. (S: Why did you think you were going crazy?) Because I became different than my friends. (S: That’s all very sensible.) Not when you’re mixed with the world. Because the world showed me otherwise.
And I felt, deeply, that it was a lie. I felt the whole world was a lie. And when I tried to express to my teachers and to people in my family, they told me I was crazy.
S: Your mistake was in believing them. (R: Exactly!) You were on the right track. They were in illusion. It’s hard to stand alone sometimes.
R: I’m not crazy, you are. The whole world’s crazier than me.
S: You were just gaining your sanity and thinking you were crazy. A paradox.
S: Was Ramana the teacher under which you attained your complete realization then?
R: Not exactly. He was the one that opened my eyes to who I was and made me understand where I was coming from. But I had already had the realization before I came to him. (S: Then how would he open your eyes if you already had the realization?) I used to believe something was wrong, for I felt that I was omniscient, omnipresent And I tried to get rid of that feeling. Then I went to Ramana. He explained it to me and he told me about his experience when he was a boy. When he was a boy, he did all this tapas. He meditated by himself for years, kept silent, and had all kinds of things happening to his body, various modifications. So he told me I didn’t have to do that, being from the West, the modification itself was the Western thinking. So I didn’t have to go through anything else.
S: Robert, during the day I feel a sense of anxiety or self-judgment and I surrender it in my mind to you. What will you do with it?
R: Never mind what I do with it. You just surrender it! And it will be taken care of.
To give you a better explanation - actually the Self only exists. When you surrender to me, all of yourself, it evaporates, because it never existed to begin with. So I do absolutely nothing with it because it’s a nonentity. It has no power, it has no beginning, it has no end, it’s nothing.
But you believe it’s something. When you give it up to me, then the grace flows more freely to you because you have surrendered all of your self to the Self and the Self takes the place of your self. The deeper the surrender, the more the experience of the Self.
S: Sounds like a good exchange. A win-win exchange, no losers.
R: There are no losers. You can’t lose with the stuff I use!
S: Last week you mentioned that the fastest way for any of us to become self-realized was to be of service to you. And I was thinking about that during the week and because it was the first time you gave us something specific. And I would like you to address how we can be of service.
R: I never used the word “you’, if you recall. I said to be of service to your Self.
Your Self and my Self are the same Self. There’s no difference. Because for some reason I am able to see this more clearly, when you give up your ego, give up your mind to me, to the Self, you receive greater freedom. You begin to experience great joy, great peace. So when you actually become of service, you are of service to your Self. Can you follow that?S: Yes.
S: I hate to bring up scripture again, but Jesus said, “Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers you have done unto me.”
R: This is very true. Can you explain that? (S: Well, there shouldn’t be drawn any difference between any of my brothers, brothers meaning all persons, whatever their circumstances, whether they be Mother Theresa or Charles Manson.) This is very true. There is only one Self and we’re all that. So whatever you do to anybody else, you’re doing to yourself. To go further into this, if you see me as a human being, if you see me as a body, you’re making a big mistake. I see you as the Self, as consciousness. There is only consciousness. When you abide in consciousness, you become free.
So when you are of service to consciousness there is a greater amount of grace that flows. It opens your heart. It pulls you upward. It pulls the mind into the heart center, when you become totally free, liberated. Some of you are a little confused. When someone brings me an apple, they are really giving the apple to themselves. Since the Self is more prominent through this body, then the measure with which you give the apple returns to you tenfold. Is that clear to everyone?
S: Not exactly. (R: O.K. What isn’t clear?)
S: This tenfold thing on the apple. You’re saying that it essentially depends on their inner attitude what the overall experience is for them?
R: It’s like digging for diamonds. The deeper you dig, sometimes the more diamonds you get. When you serve the Sage, it’s like digging for diamonds. You become part of the sage’s vibrations, which is called grace. Therefore you find your needs and your desires fulfilled by themselves. Whatever is supposed to happen to you, which points you toward divinity, is accelerated.
S: So when you say desires, those are spiritual desires.
R: Spiritual desires, yes. This is why many times when certain people are in close proximity to me and hang out with me a lot, things appear to become relatively worse, for some people because all this stuff, all the karma which has been accumulated for centuries is being accelerated, being pulled to the surface and hitting you all at once. And as you hold on without reacting, everything is being burnt out. Then all of a sudden you become empty. And you find peace and liberation.
S: Robert, this non-reaction you’re talking about - the thing you mentioned with Dana going to the hospital, someone is taken ill, the natural reaction is to want to become well. In fact I read something Ramona himself had said that health is the natural state of beingness to begin with.
So it would seem that it is a natural reaction to want to react to illness with the desire to be well.
Can you just expound on that?
R: Yes. The desire to be well presupposes that there’s somebody who has to be well. But in reality, no one ever became sick. So there’s no one to make well. If sickness were a reality, then you would spend your time trying to make someone or yourself well.
Since a sickness is itself an illusion, trying to make someone well is also an illusion. And
the only real way you can help them is by being your Self. By seeing the truth. And the truth is, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
Dana knows this. She’s going through some horrendous experiences. But I talked to her on the phone today and she was laughing, and she’s happier than I’ve ever heard her in a long time. She told me all this doesn’t exist anyway, so who cares? She has a real good attitude about it. What appears to be real is false. Do not judge by appearances. We are not here to make sick people well. We have to realize no one was ever sick and no one needs to be well. They’re both impostors. We have to rise above that thinking. And the easiest way to do that, of course, is to inquire, ‘To whom does it come?’ Then you begin to see it is the I-thought who believes somebody is sick and somebody has to be made well.
So you get rid of the I-thought. The whole universe is attached to the I-thought. When the I-thought is transmuted, the whole universe seems to stop functioning for you. There is no longer a universe. Things like sickness and wellness no longer exist. In the meantime, you do the best you can.
S: The reaction part is knowing all this, at least on an intellectual level, you would still take the steps to attain what would seem to be a state of wellness, would you not?
R: You will automatically take care of yourself. Your body will always take care of itself. What appears to be your body knows what to do to take care of itself. But you shouldn’t spend your clay thinking about your body, and thinking whether it’s sick or well and trying to make it healthier all clay long. Be spontaneous. Do whatever has to be clone and forget it.
As an example of that, what I am talking about, people give me all kinds of herb’s, vitamins, green stuff, purple stuff, everything. So in the morning without even thinking, I throw it all in the blender with some apple juice. I mix it up and I drink it and I forget all about it. I do not think, ‘this is going to make me sick or well.” It’s just something to do.
S: Robert, what is there before the “I Am” consciousness?
R: The I-am consciousness is simply to cause you to understand that God is all there is, and there’s nothing else. The I-am is a process or procedure to come to that conclusion. But reality is Nothing. There is absolutely nothing. When you are the Self you are nothing. The I-am consciousness comes from delusion. And you’re doing the I-am consciousness to get back to your real Self, to who you always were. In reality there is no I-am consciousness. It never existed. Just like there’s no Self, there is no absolute awareness, there is no realization. Those are only words to get you back to nothing. (S: There’s no ‘nothing’ too, then?) There’s no nothing too, then, it’s only a word. What we call the absolute reality is something that can never, never be spoken or described. It’s indescribable.
There are no words for the true reality. 5o in order to convey the message we say that the true reality is consciousness, pure awareness, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Nirvana. But those are all words. And in the final analysis all the words have to go and all the thoughts have to go.
So nothing is the answer.
S: Sri Bhagvan said, “words of the great-grandsons are Truth.“R: Oh, yes. That’s a good analogy. Words of the great-grandsons is the Truth.
S: Robert, Mom and Dad were right then, when they said, “you’re going to amount to nothing.” (R: We always talk about this. I became a ‘good-for-nothing.’) But you’re not even that. (R: What am I? That’s the answer. Silence. Henry’s the only one who gave the right answer. Silence is the answer.)
S: My cat has been trying to tell me that for a long time.
R: How did the cat tell you? ( S: Just by not answering. I keep asking him to tell me his secrets. The answer is nothing.) He doesn’t even say, ‘meow’? You can probably learn a lot from your cat.
S: Workers comp lawyers don’t talk either.
S: Couldn’t you substitute the word ‘everything’ for ‘nothing?’
R: Not really, because when you say, everything, it implies things. It implies some thing. There is no everything when you’re nothing. When you’re nothing you’re no thing.
But when you say everything! you start thinking about the world. (S: It puts you right back in Maya.) Yes. So you want to be nothing.
S: Did you say there’s no other?
R: There are no others, no. If there were others, there would be something.
S: Could we say, and think, just in terms of words, instead of nothing, no other?
R: If that helps you, by all means say it. You can say anything you like.
S: It’s a nothingness that has nothing to do with nothingness.
R: Yes. As soon as you begin to think, you spoil everything. Do not try to figure it out. You can’t. It’s like trying to figure out what came first, the seed or the tree. The only way you can make progress is by self-inquiry, surrender, service to the Self, and silence.
S: What is service to the Self?
R: It is giving up your ego, giving up your mind, giving it all to the Sage.
Do we have prashad? Remember, the whole teaching is in the prashad!
(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.