– Transcript 95
R: Om shanti, shanti, shanti, om, peace.
Good evening. It is good to be with you again. I welcome you with all my heart.
For those of you who are here relatively short time, new people. I do not give lectures. If you are waiting to be given a lecture you will be disappointed. I do not do sermons or give spiritual talks. This is satsang. Satsang virtually means to be with the Self, not with Robert. Robert is just a name and a form. The Self is all pervading. Therefore when you are with the Self at satsang, you are the Self, you are consciousness. There is only one Self and you are that.
The words I speak are just incidental. It’s the silence and the space in between the words that is important. If you understand the silence correctly you will awaken to the Self. What you have always been. Which is your true nature. Happiness and peace are your real nature. This is the Self.
Everything we do is really a search for the Self, for reality. The thief who robs a bank is actually searching for happiness, for the Self and doesn’t know it. Even the murderer believes he or she is doing the murder for the sake of happiness. They believe this will make things better for them. It will give them more freedom. Wars, man’s inhumanity to man is really a search for freedom, for happiness.
The mistake that is made is those people do not realize that all they had to do was to turn within. They’re trying to find happiness externally. This can never be done for we live in a world of duality. Nothing is permanent. No thing is ever the same. It is like the search for the golden fleece. You will never find it externally to yourself. The answers you’re looking for, the happiness you’re looking for, the peace you’re looking for are all within you. You are that.
You therefore learn not to react to conditions, not to allow the world to cause you any type of reaction. For you realize the world changes from time to time. It is never the same. How can it bring permanent happiness? You have all the answers, there is nothing missing. Everything that you feel is your imagination. Everything that you perceive is your imagination.
The biggest mistake is that you imagine that you are a body. Therefore if you imagine that you are a body there must be other bodies also. You perceive thousands of bodies, millions of bodies everywhere. Simply because you believe you are a body. You then believe you are a mind and you think. And you bring the world into creation. You bring the universe into creation. But you are none of those things, you are pure intelligence. You are not what you believe you are. There are no problems. There is absolutely nothing wrong anywhere. What are you seeing? The world is your creation.
Have you ever noticed when you get up in the morning the first thing you think about is the personal self. As soon as you awaken you believe you are the personal self.
Therefore everything begins to rotate around your personal self. You believe you have to think about what you’re going to wear to work, where you’re going to go for lunch, what your co-workers are going to say to you.
What if I were to tell you that if you took your mind off your personal self an all pervading power would take it’s place and lead you in the right direction. Thus bringing harmony and happiness and joy into your life that is beyond your imagination, yes. All you have to do is to get the personal self out of the way. The personal self is the ego, the mind. All you have to do is get them out of the way and everything will be beautiful in your life.
This is hard to imagine I agree. For you have been brought up to believe that unless you take care of your situation, unless you look after your life and think about your life, bad things will happen to you. So you always have to be aware. You always have to be competing with the next person. You always have to keep up with the Jones’. Watch the news on television. See what’s going on in the world and you relate to those things.
But how many of you can give all that up and give up personal self and look at the universe as one gigantic whole (whole). Not diversity, not multiples, but one and keep your mind stayed on the one. Do you think your affairs will be ruined? Do you think you’ll get in trouble at work because you are not thinking of your work? Do you think all types of dastardly things will happen to you? On the contrary.
It has been revealed to Sages since time immemorial that if a person can take their mind off their personality, off the self then what you call God takes over and your life becomes a life of bliss.
I know this sounds far fetched and you think it takes a lot of spiritual work to get to a place like this but it doesn’t. You have to have the desire to go further with your life then where you are now. But you have to be able to become disgusted with the world as it is. Not because of man’s inhumanity to man but totally disgusted with a world of change.
You have to be tired of the world.
Whatever you put first in your mind this is what you become. When you become tired to the world and the world no longer has any feelings for you and you no longer have feelings for the world something happens within. You begin to go deep within. It happens by itself. Again how does it happen? You have disgust for worldly pleasures and for worldly situations that transpire in the world.
This is why a teaching like this is not for everyone. For some of you are only here to improve your humanhood. You do not realize that your humanhood is a product of duality. It can never go in one direction steadily. This is the reason why psychology, psychiatry have failed miserably. For the answer is not to find your human self or to lift yourself above problems or to learn solutions for your problems, that only lasts a short while.
What you really have to do is transcend and transmute the very core of your being. You have to become something else. That something else is absolute reality, pure awareness, consciousness.
You do not really become that, you begin to understand that you have to let go of all of your concepts, all of your preconceived ideas, all of the samskaras, all of the karma, all of the samsaras, all those things have to go. How do you get rid of them? By coming to the realization that they never existed to begin with. That’s right. They never existed. By coming to the realization that your body is an optical illusion. The world, the universe has no substance.
If you came to this conclusion, how would a problem affect you? It would be virtually impossible to be affected by a problem because the problem is part of the worldly condition. And if the worldly condition were transmuted where would be the problem?
The problem only arises because you believe the world is real.
When the world becomes nothing to you and the world becomes nothing to you only when you no longer react to person, place, or thing, do you then become free. And the freedom is your joy, your bliss, your happiness and your harmony. You know how far you’ve gotten on the spiritual path by what you feel all day long.
Just think about today, what did you think about? Where were your feelings? Did you allow yourself to become depressed? Did you feel that the world had something to offer you and you become radiantly happy because of something the world appears to have offered you?
Those are the things you have to transcend. Those very beliefs. That the world can neither hurt you or do something good for you. Those are the beliefs that have to go. And as far as all of your feelings that something is wrong, that somebody hurt me, somebody used me, somebody did something to me, forget all that.
First of all you realize that it’s all karmic. How can anything come to you of it’s own accord? Nothing just comes. For if you find that you had $100 000 in the bank and the bank folds, how do you react to that? Do you cry? Do you stamp your feet? Do you jump up and down? Do you commit suicide? You simply realize that everything is karmic.
There is nothing that comes from nothing.
When you’ve gotten that far and you’ve found peace, things no longer disturb you. You can then go further and realize that there is no karma. It never existed. It only existed for me at the time when I was frightened and I had no idea where things come from.
At that stage in your life karma is real. So you pray to God for relief. God comes to you in the form of a Sage or maybe a tree or a mountain or a book and makes you understand that the world is created by karma and the way you react to karma determines what is going to happen to you from there on end. After so many years perhaps you go further and you realize karma never existed, my body never existed, the universe doesn’t exist, God doesn’t exist. Only the Self exists.
And of course if it exists it cannot be the Self. So you begin to ponder that also.
The day will come when you will simply wake up and become free. You can tell if that is happening to you if you’re becoming steady. If your moods do not change. When you begin to feel the same all day long. You just feel happy, blissful, peaceful and it doesn’t change. There is no situation that you observe that can cause any change to come to you.
The doctor may predict you have cancer and you’ve got a month to live there is no reaction. For you realize, who dies? You win a million dollars in the lottery, there is no reaction, for you realize, “For whom has this come?” A car runs you over and they have to amputate your legs it doesn’t change your reaction. For you understand the body is not you. Then you know you’re making progress. You have not become self-realized yet but you’re way up there.
When you awaken you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you never had a body to begin with. There is no body that got hit by a car, there is no body that had cancer, there is no body that won $100 000 000, there is just no body. Therefore you don’t have to go out and save all your money and wonder what is going to happen to it. You do not have to save anything for a rainy day. For it never rains in a realized person. You do not have to take any precautions. You are simply in bliss.
Yet for all appearance sake, there appears to be a power, a mysterious power that always takes care of you in the right way. I know you’re saying to yourself, “How can this power be taking care of me if my legs have been amputated? If I’ve been diagnosed as having cancer?” In your present state it’s like the story of Sadie and Irving during the depression.
One day Irving comes home and says, “Sadie, this is black Friday we’ve lost everything. We’re bankrupt. All the banks have folded, the stocks have folded, there is nothing left. Let’s put our heads in this gas stove and kill ourselves. Let’s jump out the window. We have nothing left to live for.” So Sadie said to Irving, “Shh Irving, take it easy, don’t worry.
Everything is okay.” Irving said, “How can you say everything is okay Sadie can’t you see what I’m telling you? It’s black Friday we’re ruined. We don’t have a penny to our name.
Come let’s kill ourselves right now.”
So Sadie says, “Have something to eat. Have some chicken soup.” Irving says, “How can you talk about chicken soup? Can’t you understand what I’m telling you? Kaput we’re ruined. Everything has been wiped out.” So Sadie says, “No Irving I’ll tell you a secret. For forty years every time we made love I put away a dollar. And today we’ve got $4600 saved. Irving’s eyes opened wide and he says, “And to think I didn’t give you all my business.” (students laugh) And that is the way people think. But that’s not the way life is, the real life.
You have got to make up your mind that the world really has nothing to offer you.
You see, you have to take a chance. You have to take a chance to love what you call God
with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your being. To love God as yourself. And feel deep in the marrow of your bones, that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should.
When you start the ball rolling, the mysterious power that I’ve been talking about comes to your aid and protects you and watches over you, makes you understand that all is well. When you awaken others may see a car hit you and your legs being amputated but you know that nothing has happened to you. And again this seems very paradoxical and I know some of you cannot really comprehend this.
You cannot comprehend when a car goes over your legs and crushes them and they have to be amputated, that nothing has happened. Sounds impossible, sounds ludicrous, it does! But I can assure you it’s the truth. How can a body that never existed be destroyed? If the body were real then the experiences of the body would be real also and we would have to look for a remedy. But since the body is not real to begin with there is no remedy we have to look for. We just have to come to that conclusion, in our heart.
One of the ways you do this again is through self-inquiry. If it’s difficult for you to just awaken, through plain knowledge, through Jnana then you practice self-inquiry.
Those of you who can. If self-inquiry seems difficult then you must surrender your body.
I find the easiest thing to do is self-inquiry. I know all of you who are here tonight can practice this if you really want to. This is really a practice of negation. You are negating everything in the universe. Starting with yourself and everything that seems to appear in your mind, you inquire, “To whom has this come?” That’s all.
You have negated the whole universe and you negate all the thoughts by inquiring, “To whom does this come? Who is feeling this?” Say you’re depressed, instead of staying depressed or taking some valium or trying to do something else that you learnt to do, like for instance, they say if you feel depressed if you do physical exercise it will get rid of it, those things are only temporary solutions. When you inquire, “To whom does this come?” You’re seeking a permanent solution.
It comes to you then it comes to me, “I feel depressed!” You ponder the I. It is I that feels depressed and not you. You say this to yourself. You observe the I, you follow the I, you trace the I, the I goes back into the Self. The Self is the ultimate originator of everything. When you trace the I back to the Self, the substratum, you will realize that the I never existed to begin with. Therefore your depression and everything else that is bothering you also does not really exist.
You do not work on your problems so called, you work on the I because it is the I that feels all the problems. It is the I that believes all the problems. It is the I that has all of these preconceived ideas all these concepts. It is the I that experiences karma, samskaras, it’s all in the I. You therefore have to trace the I back to the heart center, which is the Self and be free. You have to do it.
Of course as I said, if you will just awaken now. The reason that most of you will not awaken is because you are steeped deeply in your beliefs. Your belief system is very strong. You feel things too deeply. You remember something that happened to you twenty years ago and you’re still feeling it. You feel the reality of this world very deeply. Therefore you will not awaken. Awakening comes easy to a person who can simply let go of the world.
Fred (SF): Can it not be said that realization consists of getting rid of the idea that we’re not realized?
R: Yes, negating everything, the same thing. Get rid of all of your concepts, your ideas, your beliefs. Become totally empty.
Fred (SF): Another thing I guess that has impressed me is, any of these stories about Sri Ramana Maharshi, the one where some fellow was dying at the ashram, the others wanted him to go see this fellow and he wasn’t inclined to do so and they thought that was very strange and finally he spoke almost to himself, he said, “They would be pleased if I went to see this dying man.” And he did go to see him. But he as the real Self knew that nothing was happening. But he went to see this fellow to please the other people and I guess that fellow who was dying. Can you comment on that?
R: Well of course. The form of Ramana Maharshi had to take certain action for the sake of the devotees. Therefore many times he did something for their sake because it pleased himself. He really understood that nothing was ever happening. No action was being taken. That all is well. But for the sake of the devotees he would sometimes take a little action just to please them. But again he had no mind, no ego and there was no one home to do anything. He was total emptiness. So to answer your question, “What do you think? Where are you coming from?” It always goes back to you doesn’t it?
Fred (SF): Well my idea was the same as what you explained but of course it’s still intellectual.
R: Get rid of your intellect. You never had it to begin with. Do not believe in it. We shouldn’t put ourselves down. When you put yourself down that is blasphemy. You should never believe and think, “I am not ready. It’s too hard for me. I’m only intellectual.”
That is what blasphemy means. If you have to think anything like this do not think at all.
But rather keep understanding that I is not the body, I is not the world, I is not the universe. I is really consciousness, absolute reality. I am That.
Fred (SF): Last week there was some discussion about the heart and the heart center and the idea that in the body it’s on the right side of the chest and it seems like most of us realize the center of our being is the heart and we write songs about it, like, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
R: We’re talking about the wrong heart. (SF: Well it’s said that it’s on the right side of the chest.) Yes but the San Francisco heart is the other one. (SF: Well he left his whole being there or My Heart Belongs To Daddy or Yours Is My Heart Alone…) (laughter) Can you sing it for us? (laughter)
SH: Sing it Fred. (laughter)
Fred (SF): One of the Masters said it’s two digits to the right of the center line. (R: Umm.) I think maybe Sri Bhagvan. (R: Yes.) And something really fascinating it says it in the bible it says, “the heart of the wise man is on the right but the fools is on the left.” And it’s possible for an individual it seems to show himself that this is the case, because if I close my eyes and say, “Who me?
and point to myself, in my case it would invariably be, of course I’m thinking about it for an awful long time but I’ll point to the right side of my chest or either onto my head which some individuals might think is the most important part of the body-mind. Can you comment on that?
R: Yes. This is all in the books. The reason for that is people want to know where the Self resides in the body. So this was made up so people could follow the I-thought to the particular heart center on the right side of the chest. (SF: Assuming that the body is real?) Yes. But I say to you that there is no body and there is no heart. But again there are some people who become totally confused. Where does God live in us? Where does consciousness begin in us? So we say, “It’s on the right side of the chest.” And you follow the I back to the spiritual heart center on the right side of your chest.
Jorge (SR): Robert I kind of went through a shock or a de-ja-vou feeling tonight because I realized that I’ve heard the same set of ideas four or five months ago from you. And four or five months ago when I heard you say, “Just focus in on the Self and forget about your body and the situation you’re in and the problems you’re facing or you’re trying to figure out and just focus on the Self,” I got turned on and I said, “Yeah I’m going to try that.” And now I hear the same set of ideas months later and I realize, what happened? I must’ve forgot as soon as I walked out the door.
R: (laughs) That’s usually the case. That’s why I have to keep coming back here every Sunday.
Jorge (SR): I was really turned on because I remember I asked you about it, “What a challenge I kept saying,” you said, “Yeah!.” Just keep thinking of the Self and face everything in life and just keep thinking of the Self? And boy I was turned on and the interest in the group was strong. I don’t know if the rest of them remembered but it’s like… I hate to tell you but it’s like I’m hearing the same lecture and nothing happened in between.
R: That’s common. That’s no surprise. That is why you have to vigilantly work on yourself, vigorously. (SR: It amazes me that I could be so excited and turned on and make like a dedication here and then completely forget it.) It’s par for the course, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Jay (SJ): Maybe anybody could raise their hands if they experienced that? (SR: Anybody else experience that?) One other person.
R: Jay wants to take count. (SR: But that’s shocking.) R: You would be surprised. How many people I meet originally for the first time and after one meeting they send me letters and telephone me and send me postcards, and tell me in person, “Robert, I throw myself at your feet. I am your mother, I am your father, I am your sister, I am your wife, I am yours do what you want with me.” I usually say, “Okay tell me the same thing in six months.” At that time they’re usually gone. They’ve found another teacher or they’ve gone somewhere out of town and like George says they forget everything.
This is usually a slow process. It requires dedication. It requires a gradual unfoldment without looking for objects, without seeking, time or space, without wondering how long it’s going to take. If you can have that attitude and just be at satsang that would be enough. You wouldn’t have to do any practice. But because life hits you squarely in the head and you lose your way again, you have to keep practicing sadhana over and over again. Simply because you’ve allowed yourself to react to life’s conditions.
But like I say if you forget about time, if you don’t think anymore, I want to be enlightened, you simply come to satsang. Something will happen, you will feel it over time. All of your samskaras will begin to drop away. Your karma will be burnt up. You will come to high conclusions by yourself. And you will be there. So take it easy. There is no rush. It took you a life time to be where you are now, maybe twenty lifetimes, maybe a hundred lifetimes, maybe a thousand lifetimes to be what you are today. Therefore sometimes getting rid of all your stuff does not come overnight.
Stop fighting. Stop being angry at yourself and stop reacting, all is well.
SL: Robert you were saying before that when we practice self-inquiry we should think of it as going down to our heart? (R: Umm.) If the heart doesn’t exist - well, what is the purpose of that, is it just to help focus?
R: It helps focus, it helps concentration. It makes you one pointed and it gives you something to go for. (SL: To go for you were saying?) Something you go after. Whereas if I didn’t tell you that everything would appear too abstract. So as you go into your heart you feel yourself awakening, becoming free and you feel happiness and you feel bliss. (SL: That source is equated to the one pointedness?) Yes.
Glen (SG): Robert, the heart is like a metaphor for the bliss and love that one begins to feel?
R: Yes. The heart is a metaphor for the Self. (SG: And it slowly becomes a home?) It slowly becomes you. You are the Self. There is no body, there is no heart. It’s like someone coming over to me and says, “Robert I have to take a rest I’m very tired.” If I tell you the Self never gets tired it will not help you. Because you are tried and you’re feeling tired.
You have not experienced the Self. So by my saying the Self is all peace and bliss and it’s impossible to be tired. Instead of telling you this I say, “There a bed, go take a rest.” And you’re grateful that I showed you the bed and you lie down and take a nice snooze.
And so it is with the spiritual heart. Where does the I go when I trace it? If I tell you at this stage of your development that it goes nowhere because it never existed you will look at me funny. For that kind of doesn’t help you at your present state. So I tell you there is a spiritual heart on the right side of your chest. That heart is God, consciousness the Self. And if you follow the I to the spiritual heart the I will eventually disappear and you will become the Self. That you can understand.
Now can you see why all these stories are invented? So the average person can do something tangible. I can sit here and tell you again. There is no heart, there is no Self, there is no I, there is no body, there is no God, there is no enlightenment, and you look at me, what do I do now? (laughter) So I tell you all these stories.
SU: Then why do I have to practice?
R: Because you do not believe that you are the Self and you will not awaken.
SH: Is it a belief? Do you believe you are the Self? (R: No.) Must be a direct knowing? (R: That you are the Self?) Yeah. (R: Direct knowing, yes.) It’s not a belief. (R: Direct awareness.) SF: If we believe we are going to become something it brings in the element of time and time itself does not exist
R: Yes. Time does not exist. Space does not exist. But as long as you feel that you are still the body then they do exist for you. Again it’s like you having a dream and I’m trying to awaken you but you will not awaken. You’re having too much fun. You don’t want to awaken, I’m shaking you and shaking you and punching you, but you refuse to wake up. This is the same thing. The reason we believe we die is because the Self is trying to punch us again and again to wake us up but we won’t wake up. So he finally gives us the final punch and we appear to die. (laughter) Then we come back and do it all over again or we appear to. Simply because we refuse to awaken.
SL: Robert you said at one point that to awaken we’re sort of predestined to awaken?
R: Yes, I also said that everyone is hell bound for heaven whether they like it or not. It’s the same thing. We will awaken! Everyone here will awaken eventually!
Jorge (SR): Robert where is the sense of sensing an inner light or a vibrational body, a subtle vibrational body. Where is that in the relationship to being in the I?
R: That is the I. That I sees the light. Remember the song “I see the light, hallelujah?” (laughter) I see the light, I hear the sounds. (SR: And the subtle vibrational body?) The subtle vibrational body is also I. Nada, I all the same.
Glen (SG): So the lights are on and nobody’s home, is that so?
R: When the lights are on somebody’s home. When the lights are off nobody’s home.
Jay (SJ): So that is all still the personal I?
R: It’s all externalized mind or personal I. It’s all in the I. Anytime you have an experience, isn’t I having the experience? No matter how high the experience maybe you come and tell me, “Robert I am having an experience.” So I say get rid of I and you won’t have one. (laughter) You don’t want to have an experience, that’s not the goal. The goal is to become a good for nothing.
Fred (SF): Any experience is in duality. (R: Any experience, yes.) SR: It’s more of a knowingness or a sensing or a feeling?
R: It’s pure awareness. knowingness, Jnana.
Glen (SG): And that’s not an experience?
R: No, it’s way beyond experience. That makes sense because to have an experience there has to be an experiencer. Somebody has to have an experience but if there is nobody how can there be an experience? Even the stories you hear about in the school of Jnana that claims in order for a Jnani to be real at the time of death the body dissolves and turns into a rainbow. There is a school of Jnana that believes this. But think for a moment, if there was never a body to begin with, how can it turn into a rainbow?ST: Where would such stories as that originate?
R: From the mind. (ST: From the mind?) Certain teachers.
ST: In historical context there is some point where a teacher taught such a… (R: Yes.) Was there significance to that teacher teaching that concept at that point? Like you’re using concepts with us to help us. Would that teacher use that concept to help?
R: Perhaps, but you would have to ask the teacher. I cannot speak for the teacher. I can only relate my own experiences. There is no body to begin with. So the body cannot turn into rainbows, or colors, or oranges or apples or anything else.
(silence)
ST: Robert is the knowingness it’s not grounded in any of the physical, it’s totally free of that? (R: Totally free.) Totally free. So this waking dream takes on the waking dream nature instead of being real it really becomes - you know it as unreal?
R: Just like the water in the mirage. The water appears to be real but upon investigation you will find out that it never existed. And so it is with the world. The world appears to be real but if you inquire and investigate you will find that it never existed.
Jorge (SR): So a person is talking to me Robert and they’re expecting an answer, my proper attitude would be to see all is what?
R: You do not fake it. You see what you see. You can’t imagine you don’t see anybody when you’re talking to somebody. (laughter) That’s foolishness. (SR: Do I have sense of knowing this that this is a cosmic sound I’m hearing? And when I open my mouth some cosmic answer will come out?) (laughter) On the contrary. (SR: On the contrary?) You do not act out anything. You’re not going to imagine that you’re something you’re not. You have to be truthful to yourself. But you have to work on yourself until you get to that place where you really feel and know and understand and you become aware that the whole universe is consciousness. And person, place and thing are simply a superimposition on the screen of life.
Jorge (SR): But if a person asked a question and I answered them with the thought that they are an individual person I’m only hardening my wrong attitude that they are an individual person. I’m only hardening this perception. So wouldn’t I be better off in just signing them off. (laughter) Then I don’t harden that misperception.
R: Tell me how many friends you have George.. (SR: What is more important enlightenment or having friends?) Enlightenment of course but the thing is, you do not want to make a fool of yourself. (SR: For a God it’s worth it? For enlightenment it’s worth it?) You want to understand where you’re coming from and be truthful to yourself and act accordingly. (SR: But then I’ll be stuck in duality?) No you won’t because you’re working on yourself. (SR: Which self?) Your own self. (SR: The personal self?) Sure you’re working to get rid of it.
Jorge (SR): I don’t see how I’m getting rid of it if I’m talking to the person as if he’s an individual self and I’m perceiving myself as an individual self I don’t see how I’m…?
R: Because you’re putting it on you’re faking it. (SR: No, no I’m not faking it.) If you’re not faking it, it will be a different story completely. Then you would see yourself and everybody else. There would only be one Self. (SR: Yeah that ‘s more what I need to hear Robert.)
Glen (SG): It seems like it’s a sudden reversal at what seems real now turns out to be unreal and what seems unreal turns out to be real. There is a sort of absolute reversal. Is there like a critical mass working on the self, you go along, you go along then all of a sudden this reversal occurs?
R: I don’t like the term critical mass. (SR: Do you like the hunky punky better?) Yes.
As you begin to do sadhana… (tape break)
Glen (SG): Robert why are people unwilling to do sadhana and yet they keep coming week after week?
R: Because the pull of samskara. The pull of past karmic patterns is very strong and it makes you worldly, but yet you’ve been touched by something, in a previous life so-to-speak. You have done sadhana you’re compelled to come here at this time. But still something is pulling at you, the world, the universe, it makes you very strong so you’re unable to do sadhana. But as you come here week after week, month after month, year after year, you begin to melt. Just like a snowman out in the snow and the sun comes. Day after day, day after day, the snowman begins to melt, melt till there is nothing left. So it is as you keep coming here, your personal self begins to melt. Until you’re gone completely and you come home.
ST: Robert, so life is, and it manifests all these individuals, all these creatures over and over. All these creatures keep shaping up and disappearing. Is it like a symbol factory, is it like it all appears in consciousness like is there a meaning behind the symbology. A cosmologic…
R: There is no meaning whatsoever. (ST: No meaning.) No meaning whatsoever.
You should ask yourself, “To whom does it come to? Who sees it this way?” And you will come to the conclusion that it doesn’t exist, it never existed, your body doesn’t exist and the question doesn’t exist.
We have prashad that one of our good friends brought. Delicious cookies all sizes and shapes. Pass it this way and you pass it that way. Eat.
R: Do we have some announcements. (SM: Yes, I do.) Listen carefully to these announcements.
(Transcripts handed out for xeroxing also students told to bring transcripts back) SM: Robert there’s just two words that mean the world to me and it’s silence and being.
Silence and Being. When you say those two words I just go off into nothingness. They are just beautiful and it’s so peaceful. It’s wonderful, that’s all I can say. (R: Yes.) (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.