– Transcript 90
R: Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, Om. Good afternoon. Greetings and salutations. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again.
If you abide in the first principle, that everything is an emanation of the mind and everything is preordained in your life, you would have no problems. Where can there be a problem when you realize that everything is preordained, predestined, and everything that is predestined in your life is projected through your mind. In other words, the world that you are seeing, observing, is simply your movie. You show yourself a movie whenever you stare at the world. And all the things that you see, is your flick. It belongs to you, no one else, everything.
Nothing just happens. Everything has already happened. And you appear to be going through a movie, where things appear to be happening, but you’re really the projectionist, and you are projecting your fairy tale. The idea is to become free, to become liberated. But how can you become free and liberated, when the world affects you, when you’re always scheming and planning and criticizing, becoming angry, reacting? How can you become free?
You become deeply involved in the situations of life as if they were going to last forever. You realize by now that the only thing permanent in life is change. No thing ever stays the same. So why identify with the external world?
The wise person leaves the external world alone. They have very little to do with the external world. They have trained themselves that when they behold a situation, there’s no reaction, no identification. You become no-hurtable. You cannot be hurt any longer by words, by deeds, by whatever. Wherever you find yourself, you put yourself there. No one is responsible for what happens to you. The appearance is that people seem to be responsible, for you always seem to be involved with people. Yet it’s all planned.
It’s as if you were an actor and you are rehearsing for a play. Then you play the part. You do not really get angry at your co-actors, for you know that it’s a play, they’re all playing a part. Life is like that. It’s an act, act one. How you come out of act one determines if you go back into act two, or you become free of the whole thing. Act two is when you become reborn and go through further experiences. You’re continuing the game. You have not learned to turn within, to dive deep within yourself and become free. You become attached to person, place or thing. And again you grow older, and it’s time for act three. All of the time you are responsible for your actions.If you would only leave it alone, if you can only understand no one can really hurt you, no one can really do anything to you. The appearance may be that they can, but you should always hold in the deep recesses of your mind that it’s only a play, an act. If you go through the play without reacting, you do not have to take on an acting job again. You become free. But if you insist on reacting, it makes no difference what the situation is. You are reacting when you have preconceived ideas, when you believe something has to be done a certain way, when you believe people want to hurt you, things are wrong somewhere. When you’re always scheming and planning and you’re not spontaneous, that is acting. And of course, whenever you react there will be a further reaction from the other side. It never ends. It keeps on going. This is collective and individual.
No thing is as it appears, or it wouldn’t change. The whole universe is a mirage on the screen of life. Everything is a mirage, including your body, your thoughts, your feelings. They’re all a lie. And they do not really exist.
When I go so far as to say that nothing really exists, I don’t blame you for sort of becoming a little irritated with me, for I know that some of you have gone through life, and you’ve been hurt. Certain things have transpired in your life, so how can I sit here and say that no thing exists? Try to remember that I’m not speaking from a book I read, or what somebody else told me. This has been my direct experience. There is no world. There never was a world. And there never will be a world. All of the psychotherapy you go through, all of the karma you go through, all of the perverse situations in life you go through, they do not exist. They never have existed and they never will exist. Yet the mirage is so strong that you’re sitting here believing you are the body.
No matter how many times I tell you, you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the doer, you always identify with yourself as the body. You can tell you’re doing that because you’re always thinking about your self. When you’re taking a walk, what do you think about? Yourself. True? Whatever you’re doing, you’re thinking about yourself. You may get lost sometimes when you’re watching TV, going to a movie, participating in a sport, but that doesn’t last. When the movie is over, when the sport is over, when what you’ve really got involved in is over, you’re back to thinking about yourself.
As long as you think about yourself as the body, you have to suffer. You have to go through experiences in life. That’s what this world is all about, for the deluded person.
Experience after experience after experience. There’s no end to it, until the day comes when you get good and tired of the whole thing. This is why some people really have to have the rug pulled from under them before they come around to this way of thinking. For as long as they are leading a mediocre life, they don’t have that many bad things happening in their life, they seem to be satisfied, and they keep searching for better humanhood, not realizing that for every backward there’s a forward. For every up there is a down.
You have to experience all kinds of things when you identify with the body-mind phenomenon. Therefore you should do the best you can to transcend that kind of thinking.
And you do that by catching your thoughts. Catch yourself thinking about yourself, about
your problems, about your family, about your needs, about something being wrong somewhere, about your doubts, your suspicions, your apprehensions. You have to realize that it doesn’t matter what you’re going through, physically, mentally, economically. Those things are all incidental.
For instance, the body may be wasting away, getting older, dying from cancer.
That doesn’t make any difference. There’s no difference between a person who has become emaciated, dying of cancer, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’re both impostors. The problems begin when you take it to be seriously. When you want to be someone else, or you want a different kind of situation in your life, that’s when the problem really begins.
If you can only learn to abide in whatever situation you’re in. What I mean by abide in every situation you’re in, I’m referring to not reacting, not feeling sorry with yourself, or comparing yourself with someone else, but simply laughing at yourself. Allowing to come what may. Not fighting, not trying to get the best of someone else.
I know what I’m saying, to some of you, appears sort of stupid, for you say, “If I don’t stick up for my rights, people will step all over me. That will never happen. For it is when you stick up for your rights and you appear to win that you really have a problem.
For you have to go through similar situations over and over again until you stop and leave things alone and simply not react.
I am not referring to holding it in. If you hold in your fears, your problems or whatever, you will blow up one day, and all sort of things will happen. I’m referring to transcending your life, going into a different dimension, seeing things in the fourth dimension, rather than in the state of waking, sleeping and dreaming. Abiding in your real Self. You abide in your real Self when you become quiet, when thoughts stop, when people around you may be in chaos and confusion, they may be shooting at each other, wars may be going on, but you are still, you are quiet, you are not disturbed. You cannot make out you’re like that when you’re not. You cannot pretend that you are still and calm and peaceful, when you really have a lot of anger in you, and you’re always sticking up for your rights, and you believe that people are trying to hurt you.
You therefore have to work on yourself. Your body appears to be the factory, the laboratory, for you to experiment. There’s only one way to go, and that’s inwardly. Do not attempt to do anything in the world to become evolved. The world cannot do anything for you. It’s only within your own Self.
Thursday night I mentioned that most people cannot practice self-inquiry because they’ve not come to terms with themselves, meaning they’ve not as yet removed the anger, the doubts, the bad temper, the feelings. Those things have not as yet been removed in order for you to go further. If you are really attached to this world, and you are when you have a bad temper, when you have to react all the time, when you think something is wrong, that’s being attached to the world. It’s going to be very difficult for you to practice self-inquiry, for your ego is so strong, it will always pull you back to the situation in life that you’re going through, your job, that you may hate, you’re always thinking about that,always upsets you, family problems, bodily dysfunctions, lack or limitation, or an over-abundance of things. When you own too many things, your mind is always thinking about the things you own, whether you’re going to lose them, whether you have to pay taxes on them, so it’s just as bad as thinking about problems. As long as you’re thinking at all you’re making a grave mistake. The mind has to become quiescent. It makes no difference what the situation is.
So Thursday I mentioned you’ve got to put your house in order, before you can really get into self-inquiry. And I mentioned two things that a couple of people have reacted to me about. Ramakrishna used to talk about these things as women and gold.
Throughout Rama Krishnas’ writings he says that women and gold are the two things that keep you from becoming enlightened. People think he didn’t like women. But he actually was referring to lust and greed.
So some of you who called me, believed I said that you’re not supposed to be sexual in your life, and you’re not supposed to own anything. This is a mistake. There is nothing wrong with being sexual as long as you are in control of yourself. You’ve got to control your own body. If you’re lustful, your body controls you. Some of us believe to be sexually active we have to be lustful. This is not true.
I can only use myself as an example. When I had my illuminating experience when I was fourteen years old, the I-thought was completely destroyed. When there is no I, you would say, then there is no one to be sexual. And the appearance would be you become asexual. This again is a mistake. The body is going to appear to go through many experiences. I got married, I have two daughters, but yet the I-thought was not there.
So again, you may say, “But Robert, if you became self-realized, you would have no interest in sex or anything else.” This is a fallacy that only the ajnani would ask and feel. The body will always be active. It will always appear to be doing things. Whatever you have to do as a body will be done, but you do not think about it. Nothing is planned as far as the enlightened person goes. The Sage plans nothing because the Sage is not the body nor the mind. Yet the Sages body may appear to go through certain maneuvers, maybe work at a job. The body may appear to go through all kinds of things, but the Sage has absolutely nothing to do with it.
This again is confusing. It appears that there are two people. It appears as if there is a Sage and there’s a body that does all kinds of things. But that’s why I said it’s an appearance. Just as Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi and others appeared to be dying a horrible death and wasting away. I want to inform you that no such thing happened. None of these things are happening. That’s why you should never judge because you’re judging from the viewpoint of the ajnani. In other words you’re seeing things with your ajnani eyes, and you’re thinking how things are supposed to be.
Now as far as greed is concerned, it’s the same thing. I do not mean when I say you should work on yourself to remove greed, I’m not referring you should sell your possessions and get rid of everything you own, and own nothing. On the contrary, if you like
a nice car, a nice home, antiques, there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying those things as a body, as long as you’re not attached to them. In other words, possess what you want, but never be possessed by your possessions. You have absolutely nothing to do with it. The real you is free from the whole thing.
As I’m trying to explain this, I’m talking about both worlds, the world of the body and the transcendental world. There is really one world. There is only ultimate oneness.
But for the sake of trying to explain these things, I refer to the fact that you appear to have a body, but you are not the body. You are absolute reality. That is your state right now. Do not worship your body. See yourself for what you really are.
If you’re that far enmeshed in this world, again self-inquiry will be difficult for you to do. That’s when you sing bhajans and you have mantras, you chant, you practice pranayama. You do all these things to make your body pure enough so that you can practice self-inquiry.
There is a story about the Buddha and the courtesan. One day the Buddha and his disciples who were walking through the forest and they came to a town. In this town lived a beautiful courtesan, who was a high class prostitute. She had a beautiful home and she was a lovely creature to behold. She had heard about the Buddha, how handsome he was, how strong of body, and she said to herself “I must have this person. This will be my ultimate conquest. So she sent her handmaidens out to fetch the Buddha. “Bring him to me,”
she said. They approached the Buddha and they said, “Master, our mistress wants to see you. Please come.”
When Buddha’s disciples looked at the girls they realized who they were. They were all prostitutes. And they began to chase them away. They said “How dare you approach our Master like this. What kind of person do you think he is?” And the Buddha said “No, do not say anything harshly. I will go.” The disciples were amazed. They didn’t understand where he was coming from at all. But they knew enough to trust him, because he was self-realized and they were not. He told them, “Wait here,” and he followed the handmaidens to this beautiful home, a mansion, a castle.
He approached the courtesan, and she was dressed in her finest clothes to entice him. She said, “Stay with me and I will give you love beyond your wildest dreams.” He smiled at her and he said, “Not now.” She continued and said, “I will give you riches you never had in your life. You will be treated like a king. Just stay with me.” Again he said, “Not now.” She continued by saying, “I love you with all my heart. I will give myself totally to you. Just stay with me.” And he answered, “I love you also, but not now.” This went on for hours. She finally realized there was no use. And he bid her farewell and went back to his disciples. They walked through the town and disappeared into the jungle.
Thirty years passed and the Buddha and his disciples again came to that same town. All of a sudden Buddha stopped and started to think, and told his disciples, “Wait here for me. I have to go see my beloved.” He walked to the part of the town where this great mansion had been, and he found a pile of rubble. Everything was torn down. Everything was a mess. He inquired where the courtesan was, and someone pointed to the ground. And there she was lying in the ground in rags, with leprosy all over her body, wasting away.
He went over to her, kneeled down and said, “Now I have returned for you, and I love you as you once loved me.” He kissed her on the forehead. She was immediately healed. She understood. Her consciousness had risen. She followed the Buddha back to the forest with the disciples and became one of the loving disciples of Buddha.
This story tells you that no thing is the way it appears. When you attach yourself to someone or something, and you believe that’s the thing that you have to have all of your life, you will always be disappointed. The safest thing you can do is to turn within.
You should get rid of all of the undesirable traits you’ve got. Enough of them. Awaken from your sleep. Begin to inquire, “To whom do all these feelings come? Who is going through karma, reincarnation, mental anguish? Who is going through all of this? I am? It is the I that is the culprit, that has kept me in delusion all of my life. Now I’m going to trace that I, find out from whence it comes and become free.” Do it.
(silence)
Feel free to ask any questions.
SB: Robert if realization is all fullness and all bliss and all proficiency, why would the Jnani want to get married and have a family?
R: The Jnani has nothing to do with it. This is why I say it’s sort of difficult to understand. The body does this. (S: But if there is no mind, how would the body do it? If the mind is gone who would do it?) The appearance is there. It’s like when Ramana Maharshi was dying, who was dying? A human being appeared to be dying but he said you’re making a mistake. There is nobody here dying. In the same way a Jnani appears as a body to some people and the body appears to be doing certain things, getting married, having children, having a job, becoming a president… (SB: But if there is no karma what would impel the body to want to do those things?) The body is not doing that. It appears to be doing that. This is the reason I always say, “It is only an appearance.” (SB: So are there still karma’s operative in the Jnani?) There is no karma, there is nothing, there is no body.
SH: What determines the appearance then?
R: Nothing determines the appearance because nothing is going on. There is a complete blank. (SH: Well what determines that nothing that is going on goes on?) Nothing determines what goes on because nothing is going on, there is no determiner. (SH: You just wiped it all out.) (laughs)
SB: Yeah but why would the Jnani get married rather than just sit in one place in a cave?
What impetus, what motion is causing this to happen?
R: Why would the Jnani sit in one place in a cave? (SB: Well some of them have.) The same reason. There is no difference to the Jnani whether he is sitting in a cave or gets married. The difference that you see is in your mind. (SB: Doesn’t he prefer to get married rather than sit in a cave?) There is no preference whatsoever. (SB: Then why does he do it?) He
doesn’t. (students laugh) He “appears” to do it. You are seeing the appearance, that’s your mind. Remember I told you the first principle in the beginning? Everything is an emanation of your mind. The appearance appears that way but the reality is quite different. In the reality there is nothing going on. It’s like a mirage. You see the water and it’s not there.
It’s like hypnosis. You’re seeing the Jnani with a body doing something but no one is doing anything.
(break in tape)
(A student must have asked a question about nothing is reality.) You can’t say nothing is reality because that implies that reality is a thing. There is only nothing, it is. Nothing comes after that.
Mary (SM): It’s a dream Robert? It’s a dream? (R: It’s a dream? Of course.) SU: Then who creates an answer? (R: No one.) You said everything is preordained.
R: Everything is preordained as long as you believe you are the body but when you get to the point when you realize you are not the body there is no preordainer, there is no karma, there is no reincarnation, there is no God. All these things simply exist because you believe you are the body. That’s why you have to realize that it is your personal I that believes all these things. When you destroy the personal I everything else is destroyed. Everything is attached to the personal I.
SH: And that’s based on the identification of the body.
R: Yes. So when the identification of the I stops, there is no body, there is no mind, there is no world, there is no universe, there is no one looking to become self-realized, there is no liberation, there is nothing.
SB: But that nothing is happiness, right? I mean, bliss and fullness. Sat-Chit-Ananda right? (R: That what you call nothingness is beyond happiness and bliss. There are no words in the finite mind to describe it. You can’t even imagine the bliss.) SH: But for there to be anything there has to be someone to experience it? (R: Yes.) And what you’re speaking of there’s no experiencer?
R: There is no experiencer so how can you experience anything?
SB: But then you just become the bliss?
R: You do not become anything, because there has to be someone to become. (S: Umm.) And the bliss is something that you’re describing. So that cannot be the ultimate reality. That is why I always say the ultimate reality is silence. Total quietness. That’s nothing.
SU: In the silence it’s like being enveloped by something, bliss, I mean I use the word bliss that’s wrong but there is something…
R: When you’re enveloped in the silence by something, that is not the true silence.
(SU: So the true silence is beyond that feeling?) It’s beyond that feeling, there is no feeling whatsoever. See there has to be someone to have a feeling. As long as someone is feeling something that is not it.SU: Umm? I’ve never experienced it I can’t say but why would I choose something that isn’t wonderful or blissful or… I mean I haven’t had the experience obviously that, because in the silence I’ve had a blissful feeling. The presence of something.
R: The presence of something, the blissful feeling is only a part of it. But all that becomes transcended. All that disappears. The true silence, what you’re referring to is a billion trillion times greater than the bliss you’re talking about. It is something so incomprehensible that if it came to you your whole body would be destroyed. The body will not be able to handle it. That’s why it only comes when you’ve had the realization that you are not the body because then there will be no body that will be destroyed. It never existed so how can it be destroyed. But if you’re feeling a point before the bliss with the nothingness then your body can actually be destroyed by that great feeling.
SH: Why would the body be destroyed? It would just be the identification of the body that would be destroyed?
R: The body appears to be destroyed. It’s an appearance. (SH: Umm? It’s not actually destroyed?) No, because it never existed. (SH: (laughs) Here we are back to ground zero.) See this is sort of difficult to understand, to comprehend but I can assure you that if you dive deep within yourself and you follow the I-thought to it’s source you will have happiness that you never dreamed existed and you will have bliss that no word or feeling can ever describe. You will be in your true nature.
SH: But there is still a you there?
R: No. I’m just using that word. (SH: You’re using it…?) To make you see what happens. (SH: Yeah. But you must’ve disappeared?) You never is available. You is gone, there is no you. But when I’m referring the experience to you that is the only way you can do it by using certain words. (SH: Well then there is no bliss, there is no anything?) There is no bliss as you know it. (SH: There is nobody to know it?) There is nobody to know it. (SH: So there is no knowing?) There is no knowing. There is just it. (SH: Why talk about it then?) (laughs) SE: Why ask him? (laughter)
R: Why are you talking? I’m just answering your question.
SU: It’s not like an out of body experience? (R: No, on the contrary.) SH: It’s no experience at all. (laughs)
R: Out of body experience is kindergarten. (SU: Okay, uh-um.) SE: Some teachers talk about the absolute as being experience without conceptualization which differentiates into an I and to trees and so forth, but what you’re saying goes far beyond that, you’re saying experience itself doesn’t exist, is that correct?
R: That’s correct. There is no experience. (SE: So you don’t belong to the Douglas Harding group of Jnanis.) Douglas Harding has his own message. There has to be an experiencer to experience anything. When the experiencer has been transcended there is no one to have any kind of experience. And that’s total silence.
SH: There is no experiencing Self whatever. (R: No. It’s all gone.) Umm.
SB: But yet you say it’s a great happiness.
R: I’m trying to explain it because many people believe that it’s a void. It’s not a void it’s beyond that. There are no words to describe it. (SB: Could you say that it’s happiness itself without anyone to be happy?) No, happiness is nothing compared to the experience.
SX: Robert if you gave up your body tomorrow and you hear all the time on TV or radio, young people, children even going through the tunnel. And going through the tunnel in a near death experience or whether they’ve been in an accident or whatever or in the operating room it seems to be a break in the agreement about what happens about going through this very very blissful state. When they reach that near death or going over to the other side. So back to you, if you left your body tomorrow where would you be?
R: Where I am right now. (SL: Nowhere?) (SE: Everywhere?) (laughs) SX: Now without this body and you passed on after having only drowned to a different energy would you still be aware that we pions are all down here sitting around waiting for you to show up?
R: I have not passed on anywhere. (SX: No, I know.) I know I will not be doing that because I would have to be an individual to see all you pions. There would have to be a seer and individual entity but I am you, I have become you. The energy is your energy because there is only one energy. (SX: You just become that, you just become another energy?) There is no other energy. I was never an energy to begin with. The Self always remains the Self. There is no where to go and there is nothing to become.
SX: So all these people who believe in some after life are going to be disillusioned?
R: The people who believe in an after life will experience an after life but you are causing the experience yourself. If you are controlled by your mind when you leave your body your mind creates an astral world, a causal world and you’ll have experiences there but you are doing this to yourself you have caused this. It all comes out of your mind.
When you are free and liberated there is no one left to cause anything and there is nothing to become. You’re already that and you remain that, forever.
SX: So in a sense if you are living in a hell, to expand this a little bit, or sort of Dantes Inferno and you leave the body at that stage you might likely to talk… if I just use this as an illustration to try to clarify it to myself or anyone here - say the Bible speaks of purgatory and hell, and if you’re a good kid you go to heaven. So are you saying in a sense, whatever state that we are living here that when we leave this mortal flesh we sort of become that. Whether it’s peaceful or in a bad state?
R: You continue. You take a short vacation. You go through the tunnel. You see your relatives, people you hate, people you love then you take a rest for about 400 earth years… (laughter) (SX: Are you pulling my leg Robert?) No this is the story, this is the way the story goes and then you’re pulled back into some body, somewhere, in some time and you go through the processes all over again. It is only when you know who you are… (SX: That you don’t go through that?) That you don’t have to go through that because there is no one left to go through that.SM: Robert could you say it’s like emulsified oneness?
R: A multiplied oneness? (SM: No, emulsified oneness?) You can say that if you want. (SM: Well it’s everywhere so it has to be emulsified.) (laughter) See the Jnani the Sage is already omnipresent, all pervading therefore there is no room for the Sage to go anywhere. There is no space and there is no time because the Sage is space and time. There is no place where the Sage is not. Therefore the Sage is already everything that exists. So where would the Sage go when the body appears to be dropped. There is no place to go because the Sage takes up all the space there is at the present moment.
SE: So everything we know or experience has nothing to do with the absolute? (R: True.) Nothing. (R: Absolutely nothing.) Every question that I would ask would have to be wrong. (R: Right.) (students laugh)
SH: Now you can give up. (laughs)
Glen (SG): Robert in a Jnanis point of view you mentioned earlier something about, we might forget ourselves… we might stop thinking about ourselves a little bit while we’re watching a movie or something. Is losing yourself in the TV lets say from the point of view of - is that more helpful from the point of view of lessening the identification with the personal I than sitting around and thinking about yourself in perhaps a sort of a relatively unconscious way?
R: It’s not really helpful but it doesn’t benefit you at all either. (SG: Do you mean you got to have a negative benefit through that…) You can have a negative or positive benefit. (SG: Like sitting and thinking about yourself can have a negative benefit from that point of view?) Sitting around thinking about yourself only pulls you deeper into the delusion. When you watch TV or see a movie it keeps you from having a nervous breakdown. (laughter) SG: Is there any difference between watching a movie from this point of view of identification with the personal I. You’re watching a movie and you’re losing yourself in the movie and lets say losing yourself in Mozart or losing yourself in a mathematical problem?
R: Of course when you’re listening to Mozart or you’re doing something beautiful, again it’s taking a break from thinking, thinking, thinking about yourself, the world or the problem. (SG: So it’s still just basically a neutral from the point of view of…) It’s neutral. It’s similar to going into nirvikalpa samadhi. When you are in nirvikalpa samadhi you’re no longer your body. You’re involved consciousness or experiencing consciousness, only when you’re in nirvikalpa samadhi. But when you come out of it you’re back to where you were before. (SG: Well you’re not saying that nirvikalpa samadhi is the same as losing yourself in a TV movie as far as being in identification with the personal I aren’t you?) The only difference is one, it gives you a taste of reality. And the other it gives you a taste of being one with the program. (students laugh) (SG: Can you say what can happen in the future to these two people where on maybe doing one and one the other?) The person who practices nirvikalpa samadhi, if he goes deeper and he or she does not believe that is the solution or that’s the ultimate will go further and become totally enlightened. But the one who practices watching TV
becomes a part of the soap opera and begins to think and feel like that. That is their reality for now . They believe life is like a TV program, of the movie.
Glen (SG): And so how is that any different from a person who just sits there and thinks about himself and kind of spins out his own TV program?
R: When you think about yourself all of the time you appear to becoming more dull. Your mind becomes dull. You become an idiot, by thinking about yourself all the time and the problems and then you have trouble going further in your spiritual course or spiritual practice. So thinking about yourself just dulls the mind. It doesn’t do anything for you. But thinking about the I and following the I to its source, does a lot for you.
So you can watch TV, identify with the TV. Practice nirvikalpa samadhi and identify with that or sit around and think of your problems and your personal feelings, identify with that, the choice is always yours.
Glen (SG): I’m still not sure, not all those choices are immediately available to me but three choices that are, thinking about myself and let’s say losing myself sometimes in a TV movie?
R: It’s better to lose yourself in a TV movie because you take a break from yourself.
SX: I think he’s trying to say is if we go out and do something positive rather than just be self-absorbed all day in all of our miseries and our own soap opera’s, is it not more beneficial to go out and be a part of the world doing something constructive?
R: This is very true. When you can help others that is one of highest human experiences that you can do. It’s very beneficial for you because it develops humility and develops a semblance of peace within yourself so you can go further in your spiritual practice. You’re right. You should get involved in helping the homeless or being of service wherever we can be. When we’re not working on ourselves. Doing what you said is much better than watching TV.
SB: Robert when we forget ourselves - In the beginning of the meeting you said the ego is self-involvement, is self-concerned and if we do help others and we’re transcending that self-involvement and we’re forgetting ourselves so thereby transcending the ego to some extent by helping others.
R: Yes again it causes humility and compassion and when you have humility and compassion that is a very high human state. So when you practice self-inquiry you will be able to get further. But when your ego is too big and you don’t give a damn for anybody else then it will be very difficult to practice self-inquiry. (SB: Self-abandonment is like self ignorance, divine ignorance?) Give yourself away, get rid of yourself. Do not sit at home thinking about yourself too much or about your problems. If you’re in that state get involved, help others, do something good for someone else. All those things help.
SX: I want to ask you a question as Bob was asking a question. In many Oriental practices they’re always trying to infer that being a celibate is much quicker to being in a household. And what you were saying to Bob is that once you reach a certain realization within yourself it really doesn’t matter whether you are single, living in a cave or whether you’re married being out in the world because you are in control of the situation? Why then are so many Eastern philosophies are almost telling us how dreadful it is for a man to have a relationship with a woman or whatever or to mix a very negative kind of energy? When you think that it takes an awful lot more energy to be married to the same dear old lady for fifty years and love her dearly than it is to go out and escape from the world.
R: That comes from the old school. The thinking used to be and still is with many groups, yoga groups that having a relationship is detrimental to spiritual growth because you’re too much involved in the relationship. This to an extent is true. When you’re involved in a relationship with someone you’ve got to keep that person happy and always please them and so it takes you away from your spiritual work.
But as you say when you have reached a semblance of enlightenment at that time it does not matter any longer because you know that you are not the body. Therefore what the body does is incidental, it doesn’t make any difference. It only makes a difference in the beginning. When you’re really working on yourself, a relationship will interfere in the work you’re doing because again you have to give to the relationship. You can’t have a relationship and be by yourself. Some people can I guess.
But once you have come out of the basic premise that I am the body and you have touched reality it doesn’t matter what you do.
Would you like to read the Jnani Mary?
Mary (SM): Sure. (Mary reads the confessions of a Jnani, refer to beginning of this book) (After reading)
R: Always remember that you are not the body, you are not the mind and you are not the doer. Your true nature is absolute reality, pure awareness, consciousness, ultimate oneness, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Brahman, you are that, peace.
We have some announcements.
(Tape ends with the beginning of announcements)
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.