– Transcript 94
R: Good afternoon. It is good being here with you again. Welcome. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.
The world is a cosmic joke. Would you agree with that?
SE: A sick joke.
R: Not sick, cosmic.
SL: A joke means funny.
R: Sickness is the way the mind perceives it.
SL: But you see it as amusing when you say joke.
R: It’s a cosmic joke. Why is it a cosmic joke? Because our real nature is moksha, liberation, freedom, unalloyed happiness, bliss, yet we imagine that we are bound. We imagine we are the personal self, bound, by our environment, by karma, and limited. So what do we do? We frantically search for ways to become self-realized. We practice various yoga techniques. We look for teachers. We read books. We play with our kundalinis.
(Students laugh) We do all sorts of weird things to become free. But we are already free, and there’s really nothing we have to do but become still. That’s the cosmic joke. We are liberated beings and we’re running around trying to free ourselves.
Here’s a simple illustration, a person comes here to this satsang, sits with me and because my talks are usually boring, he goes to sleep. He dreams. He dreams he’s a wanderer. He takes a plane to Tibet, studies with the llamas. Then goes to India and goes through many austerities, fasting, performs many sadhanas. Then flies to Japan, goes into a Zen monastery for a few years. Then goes for a vacation on a Caribbean Island. Meets a lady and gets married. Has three children. Children grow up. Get married. He has grand-children. He gets old. Wonders what he has accomplished. Ready to drop the body. Then he wakes up and he is right here at satsang. He hadn’t gone anywhere. He hadn’t done anything. He never searched for enlightenment. He never got married. He never had children. He never got old. He never died. He awakened. And he is right here where he’s always been.
This is true of us. We are right where we are supposed to be, free and happy. But some illusion called the personal self, the I-thought, tells us quite a different story. It tells us that we’re starving, things are bad, we can’t find gainful employment. It shows us all kinds of pictures in our mind, and we fall into deeper delusion. This is called Maya, the grand illusion, the cosmic joke.There’s nothing we have to search for. There is really no sadhana we have to practice, meditation, mantras, the worship of gods, rituals to deities. This is not the real us.
These are simply concepts. We are following somebody else’s thoughts by believing if we do this sincerely, we will awaken and become free. But we’re already awakened and we’re already free.
Yet it is paradoxical due to the fact that when we went to grammar school, we learned the multiplication table, and that was sort of the substratum for higher mathematics. Without a multiplication table we would never have gone on to higher mathematics.
So again, for some people these things are necessary, ritual worship, surrender to God, mantras, chanting. These things are sometimes important to some of us. Yet, they do not liberate you. Liberation comes by itself, but if we have not practiced the ritualistic worship, the mantras, the chanting and the other things, we will become aggressive, arrogant, cynical, whereas we have to develop humility and compassion.
Someone asks, “You mean when we see the homeless, suffering, man’s inhumanity to man, we’re to do nothing?” The answer of course is, although you know that this is a dream, you are the dreamer. As long as you feel there is suffering, there are homeless, then it is your duty to be of service. In other words, you are part of the dream, that’s what you believe. How can you tell if your part of the dream? When these things appear real to you and you feel them. If you feel them you have to do social work and help to alleviate the suffering.
When you help someone else you’re really helping yourself because there’s only one. There is one Self. When you do social work you help the sick, the homeless, whom are you helping? No one else but yourself, so as long as you believe the world is real, and you feel the world, you feel your body, and your mind, your thoughts as being real, and you believe that you are the doer, it is therefore your duty to be of service.
Science tells us that every so-called human being emits a certain frequency, a certain vibration of different colors. Occultists call this an aura. And all of the auras emitted by individuals are basically the same. Some are more sattvic, some are more rajastic, some are more tamas, some are more pure than others, but they’re basically the same. Therefore, when you help the homeless you are merging your vibratory force with theirs, and you are lifting yourselves up together to a higher frequency. This is because there’s only one Self.
Now, the frequency vibration of the Sage is a hundred million times stronger than the human vibration. This frequency is called divine grace. Now can you see why it says in all of the highest scriptures that to be of service to the Sage is the highest sadhana you can perform? For when you are of service to the Sage you’re mingling your aura with the sage’s aura. And, since the sage’s so-called form that emits an aura is a million times stronger than the human beings, the Sages vibrations, which is called divine grace, lifts up the human being to a high frequency and releases them from karmic influences and sets them free.
As long as you believe you are a human being you have to perform a service to each other, to everybody. When you awaken you will be yourself and you will be service.
You will be compassion. You will be wisdom. You will be an embodiment of humility.
How do you see life? What do you see everyday in your life? What do you feel?
Do you get so caught up in the world that you forget who you are, and you feel the world closing in on you? Are you trying to achieve goodness for yourself, trying to accumulate possessions, to become powerful, you can have name and fame in this world? What a waste of energy, what a waste of time. All of your name and fame, your possessions must go sooner or later. Your body must go, your belief system must go, everything must be let go. Whether you like it or not, it will happen.
Therefore, what do you do with your time? Most of you worry about something.
You look at the world situation. You look at your situation. You wonder what’s going to happen tomorrow. Why not let go of all that and work on transcending the personal self which is merely an I-thought? This should be your main goal. Never mind what’s happened up to now. You may be the happiest human being on the earth. You may be the most miserable human being on earth. They’re two sides of the same coin. As long as you are a human being it is not reality. The only thing that happens to a human being, their life keeps changing, changing, changing, consistently. There is always change going on, because this world, this universe, is not steady. It is not a solid.
No thing is solid in this universe. It is all vibrations, and the deeper you go into the vibrations, the quieter it becomes, until there’s total nothingness. The total nothingness is that substratum called consciousness, of which most of us know nothing about, for we cannot explain it, we cannot demonstrate it, we cannot know it, as long as our mind focuses on the I-thought and the personal self.
Therefore, Sages have admonished that we awaken, that we simply awaken. Yet most intelligent people cannot accept that. They believe in their senses. So the Sage has to invent a method, a way of awakening, and this is called sadhana, your spiritual practices.
You learn to sit and meditate on an object. It makes you one-pointed. It causes you to concentrate. Your given a mantra. These are only games, yet some people have to do these things.
The way to total freedom is association and service to the Sage. Why kid ourselves? This is the way we wake up. The Sage is really yourself. All-pervading. The first thing you should do is to surrender completely and fully to the Self. Let go of everything, your whole belief system, all of those concepts that you’ve had inside of you for so long, your analytical mind, all of your thoughts. They’ve all got to go if you want to become free. You cannot hold onto anything. You have to empty yourself out entirely.
I’m not saying that physically you have to give away everything you own, or leave your family or quit your job. I’m saying you have to do this mentally. It begins in your mind. As you do your work, as you work with your family, as you perform social work with the homeless, you do not feel that I am the doer or I am superior to them. I’ve got something and they do not so I am helping them. You’ve realized that you’re surrendering to God.
Everything is God, or karma. God is karma. You’re giving up your karma as you let go of everything mentally. It is only then that you will shine. For you have always shone, you have always been consciousness, but you got so caught up in the world that you have forgotten who you are. Remember who you are. Remember. Who were you before you were born? If you sit still the answer will come to you. Before you were born, I-am. You have always been I-am. All of your births, all of your deceases, everything that prevails cannot eliminate the I-am. You are I-am.
When you sit in the silence it will come to you. You will see how the body came to be, and how the body goes, and a new body comes to be, and a new body goes. But you are alive. The real you persists. Nothing can ever destroy it. Water cannot drown it. Fire cannot burn it. Whatever happens to the body in this world cannot eliminate the I am. It has nothing to do with your age, or whether your well or sick, or rich or poor. It is the Self.
It has always been and it will always be. It is you.
You never were a human being. You just have forgotten your real nature and you’re living the mortal dream. I ask you to awaken. I ask you to awaken now. Feel yourself awakening. Feel your body melting, dissolving. Yet no real change is taking place, for there’s nothing to change. You see, there’s no real body that has to be transformed. We’re not speaking of transformation. You’re not transforming your body into a body of light, or into consciousness, or into absolute reality. What appears to be your body is the Self, pure awareness.
This appears to be your body. And the body you look at in the mirror does not even exist. If your body really existed you would have a very hard time with it, to get rid of it. Your body, like the world, the universe, what we call God, has no real existence by itself. It is the Self which permeates the universe. Everything is the Self. That is why everything is sacred. That’s what Moses meant when he said, “The ground upon which I stand is holy ground.” There is no thing that has any life by itself.
Now can you see why, in your illusory state, you should be kind to animals, to the vegetable kingdom, to the mineral kingdom, to the human kingdom, why you must reconcile yourself with those kingdoms? Because they’re all God, and what you do to the world of appearances you’re doing to yourself.
Wake up! Give up all your foolish habits. There’s absolutely nothing to fear and nothing to fight. There’s absolutely nothing to overcome, nothing to rectify. There’s absolutely nothing to achieve, nothing to want, to desire. How can you desire anything when you are the universe?
What I appear to be sharing with you may sound like it is far away someplace, but it’s not. You are that. You are that. You are that infinite consciousness which knows no other. You are free. Enjoy your freedom.
You must think of yourself from now on as being unlimited beauty and joy, all pervading, self-contained. Nothing can ever harm you. The universe is not set up in it’s illusory form to harm anyone or to bring dastardly conditions upon any situation. What you behold in this world is an appearance, an optical illusion, a dream.
You can accept when you go to sleep, you dream. You can accept the fact that you may dream that you’re going to a satsang like this, and you are sitting there listening, absorbing. Then you wake up and there’s no one but you. In the same way, you awaken now to your total reality. This has been another dream.
You have to question everything. Do not accept anything without questioning it.
Ask, “Who’s feeling this? To whom does it come?” Realize that you are not the I-thought.
You are not the ego, nor the mind, nor are you the doer. Therefore, “Who am I?” and then whatever else comes to you, deny that also. If something tells you, “I-am consciousness,”
that has to be denied because I can never be consciousness. Negate everything that comes to you when you practice self-inquiry. Negate absolute reality, God, everything must be gotten rid of, all concepts. They’re just words.
When you awaken to your Self there will be no words that you speak. You will just become being, absolute being. Not being this or being that, just being, your true Self. Yet, in the meantime, as you are experiencing this mortal dream, deny all the experiences that come to you.
No thing has ever happened in your life that was not necessary for your growth and your unfoldment. If you believe that someone hurt you, or someone did something to you long ago, or your parents abused you, whatever may have happened in your life, you needed those experiences. I know it sounds strange, but you needed to go through those experiences to be here now. If it weren’t for the experiences you have had in your life, you’d be bowling this afternoon, or crying over something, or arguing with someone.
Therefore, every experience that you have had in your life has led you here. It’s all good.
There are no mistakes.
A day should not go by when you do not question, “To whom does this come?”
You have to remember to remember. You start in the morning and you go through the day remembering, “Not this, not this.” The good experiences, the bad experiences, the in between experiences, the boredom, everything that is going on in your life, you observe it, you inquire, “To whom has this come?” you watch, you become the witness. You never react. You understand that the power which maintains and sustains the illusory universe will take care of the illusion. Your job is to let go and let God.
Whenever I speak the word of God, I am referring to karma. God is the same as karma. Everything takes care of itself. You are in your right place going through those experiences that are necessary. Some of them may appear hard. Whatever appears hard surrender that. Give it up. Whatever appears to hurt you, do not think about it, or cry about it. Surrender it. Give it up. Whatever appears from anywhere, and these are also for good experiences, do not believe you are a body experiencing good experiences. You will always be disappointed.
Allow the so-called body to do what it came here to do. It knows what to do. But in your mind always feel that you are not the body or the experience, and question, “To whom does it come?” This is your job. This is all you have to do if you want to practice sadhana.
Of course, when I say to you, “Wake up now,” some of you may wake up, some of you may not. You will know when you wake up. You will be in an effortless, thought free state. The thoughts will no longer come to you. You will feel bliss. You will be the universe. So awaken now and forget everything else.
Feel free to ask any questions.
SE: Robert, many teachers, after they’ve had their enlightened experience, say they do not sleep. Their consciousness remains the same whether the body is sleeping or not sleeping, or the body doesn’t sleep. What happens to consciousness? With most of us there is an alternation of waking consciousness, deep sleep, dream consciousness, drinking consciousness, whatever, many different kinds of consciousnesses. But apparently, to the enlightened person, there is only one steady consciousness, the I-am or whatever you want to call it. What’s going on there? Have you any explanation?
R: You’re talking about personal consciousness. There is only one consciousness and that consciousness is all pervading. It is always that. There is never any other consciousness, there’s nothing that can interfere with it. It is always just plain consciousness.
When you’re sleeping, when you’re awake, when you’re playing, that is the dream. That is the delusion. That is like the water in the mirage, the snake in the rope. It’s an optical illusion that you’re sleeping, that you’re awake, that you’re playing, that you’re going through different experiences. Consciousness just is. You cannot say that true consciousness is sleeping or doing anything else. True consciousness is absolute reality. It is all pervading.
It is. Everything else is an illusion. (SE: So waking, sleeping, dreaming come to the consciousness or are appearances on consciousness?) Waking, sleeping, dreaming do not come to consciousness. It is all an optical illusion. It doesn’t exist. Nothing comes to consciousness.
Consciousness just is. But the way you think of consciousness, you’re thinking of it in a human form. That it’s a thing, that it’s something that happens to you. Nothing happens to you. No thing transpires. There’s no one who sleeps, there’s no one who dreams, there’s no one who plays, that’s all illusion. When you become consciousness you just become being, and that is something you cannot understand as a human being.
But I understand that I have to go to the bathroom.
(tape break)
SE: If a bee stings you what is your consciousness want to do?
R: I don’t have a personal consciousness so I will not do anything. If the bee stings me, it stings me. (pause) There’s a bee swimming in my apple juice. (laughter) (commotion about the bee)
R: So what else is going on?
SB: So Robert, this one state that underlies everything, it’s not the same as deep sleep, where it’s merged in like an unconsciousness, and it is not the same as waking, like we are now, where we are awake, but we are not awake to consciousness, we are awake to the personal I. It’s different from both.
R: It’s neither this nor that. It’s not sleeping. It’s not awaking. It’s beyond everything. It’s something that we cannot comprehend. It has nothing to do with the world. Try to remember that the world doesn’t exist as it appears.
SH: Does it exist at all? (R: No.) It doesn’t exist as it appears, but it could exist in a way that it doesn’t appear. (R: It doesn’t exist the way it appears, and it doesn’t exist the way it doesn’t appear.) Maybe, maybe, you took care of that one.
R: It’s hard to see that, I admit. Here we see a bunch of us sitting, talking, we see trees, we see bees, we see apple juice, we see Ed. But I tell you it’s not real. There is really nothing going on.
Jay (SJ): The whole thing is that you can’t see it the way you see it unless you see it, until seeing that it’s all… (R: There is no seer to see.) Yeah.
SB: Is it like a big soup pot? From your point of view there is no center? There is no center at all?
R: There is no center, there is no circumference, there is no soup pot, there is no soup. (SE: How do you expect any of us to believe you?) I don’t. (SE: Okay let’s go.) Good riddance. (laughter) R: What’s that Jay? (SJ: If people believe what you say it’ll prevent them from experiencing it.) True. It’s not a question of belief because what believes? Your mind. It is your mind that says, “I believe something,” or “I don’t believe that.” If there’s no mind, what is there to believe? There’s no belief system. There’s no entity who believes anything. There’s plain nothing.
Glen (SG): It seems to me it’s the opposite that I think mostly everybody believes you but no one understands it. I mean I wonder what we believe, we believe what we don’t understand?
R: You cannot believe what you don’t understand. You really don’t believe it deeply. If you believed it somehow there would be something in you that clicks.
SL: We trust. (R: In God we trust.) (laughter)
Jay (SJ): We trust in something but we don’t know what it is. And when you know what it is then you believe what he’s saying because it matches your experience.
Glen (SG): I think if you didn’t believe this you wouldn’t trek up here every week. (R: I’ve got nothing else to do.) Then we wouldn’t believe it.
Jay (SJ): But what do we believe, we don’t know what we believe? It’s just something an ideal…
R: Tell me what you believe.
SL: We trust that it’s all right.
Glen (SG): Well we believe that you’re not lying to us. (R: Why?) I don’t know… (laughter)SH: Yeah anything he says is a lie. (R: Exactly. Words are all lies.) SJ: But you are leading us to a place that is not a lie. So it’s worthy… (R: How do you know? How can you tell?) I don’t know. (laughs)
R: The only solution is to dive deep within yourself and see the reality. That is the only solution. There’s no reality in words, there’s no reality in the senses. Reality is consciousness. Consciousness is the atman. The atman is Brahman. Brahman is the Self. And that just is. It is nothing you can ever expect to know with your senses.
But as you become sincere, as you begin to give up the world, and the worldly things in your mind, something will awaken within you, and you will know. You will begin to feel total happiness, unalloyed happiness, a happiness you never felt before in your life. It is beyond human happiness. They call that bliss. And from that moment on the world will never be able to hurt you again, for the world has become your servant, no longer your Master.
So dive deep, deep within your Self and find the answers you’re looking for. What have you got to say to that?
SB: Who dives? (R: Who died?) Who dives?
R: Who do you think dives? Whomever you think dives, that is the one who dives.
As long as you believe you are the body then you are able to dive, because there’s somebody to dive. When there’s no longer a body, there’s no one to dive.
SH: Can consciousness dive within itself?
R: Consciousness cannot do anything but be itself. (SH: Diving is being itself?) Like diving in a swimming pool? (SH: No that’s too gross.) (laughter) S: Diving into ether.
S: Dive in the ether, yeah. Nothing diving in nothing. (laughs) SB: So really Robert, if we understand what you are saying, if a person understands there is nothing to do at all. You don’t even have to dive. You just come to rest in what is.
R: Or if you wake up, that’s it. We cannot comprehend the thing like consciousness that does nothing, yet is everything. It’s beyond our comprehension. The finite mind can never know this. That’s why we say consciousness just is. It is not this and it is not that.
Consciousness does not have to dive because consciousness already is. It is the ego that dives.
SY: Why did consciousness manifest? (R: It never did.) More on that please?
R: Consciousness is what we call absolute reality. It just is. It never does anything because there’s nothing to do. The only way you can comprehend this a little bit is by thinking of something that takes up all space and time. There is no room for anything. It is itself. There’s no teeny weeny space for anything to happen. That’s it. There’s nothing else.
Therefore it cannot do anything because there’s no space for it to do anything. It fills up all space itself. Everything else that you see is a mirage, an optical illusion. It is like hypnosis.
When you are hypnotized you can be made to do many things. Yet when you wake up
you don’t remember those things. They don’t exist. Do not allow the world to fool you with it’s good and bad. Go beyond the world to the twilight zone. (laughter) (long silence)
Would you like to read the Jnani Mary?
Mary (SM): Yes Robert. (Mary reads the confessions of a Jnani, refer to beginning of book) R: Thank you Mary. Do you want to sing a song Kerema?
SQ: Oh sure, I’d love to. Another one I’d like to share with you all. I’m never sure of a title, stick something there, “Road to nowhere”
(Kerema sings)
Out of the darkness, into the light. Struggling to break free.
From these chains that bind me to my misery,
Looking for something I cannot find,
With such a busy mind. Why can’t I just let go now.
Leave the world behind,
Well I’m on the road to nowhere it’s a place on no ones map And when I get there, I’m never coming back.
Out of my mind and into my heart, as simple as it seems I must rediscover what this really means
Over and over watching the scenes, images on a screen
When the movies over, we’re stuck with what remains,
Well I’m on the road to nowhere it’s a place on no ones map And when I get there, I’m never coming back.
R: Thank you Kerema.
SH: Me too. Bravo, bravo. (Everyone applauds Kerema) R: Any announcements.
(Announcements about parking outside of Henry’s house during satsang and car pooling) R: Always remember who you are. You are absolute reality, pure awareness, Parabrahman, Sat-Chit-Ananda, nirvana, emptiness, ultimate reality. You are not the body, or the mind, or the doer, God bless you, peace, om shanti, until we meet again.
You are free to roam the world.
(students laugh as 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.