– Transcript 98
R: Good afternoon. (Students: Good afternoon) It is a pleasure being with you again. I welcome you with all my heart.
If you are here for the first time you may think we’re a little crazy and you’re right we’re more than a little crazy. Do not pay too much attention to the words. Open your heart and let go of everything. Be happy. You have nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. All is well.
A while back I shared the four principles of Jnana Marga with you. Who can remember them? Anybody?
SY: Everything is a projection of the mind? The first one. (R: Everything is what?) A projection of the mind.
R: Yes. The whole universe is a projection of the mind. Everything you see in this world, everything that happens in your life is a projection of your mind. It has no substance, no value. You are the creation of the universe. What is the second one?
(students guess)
SE: We do not prevail. No beginning no end.
R: Yes. We do not prevail. There is no substance in back of your existence. You didn’t come from anything. You were never born. You can never die. You are no thing that you can ever imagine. And your life as it appears does not exist. What’s the third one?
Glen (SG): There’s no ego. Everything doesn’t have an ego?
R: Yes. No thing that exists has an ego. There is no ego to back anything up. You have believed all of these years that you have an ego and that you have to get rid of it.
There is no ego to be gotten rid of. If there is no ego there is nothing to do. There is nothing to fear and there is nothing to fight. And the fourth one?
(students guess again)
Mary (SM): Is it the understanding what realization is not?
R: Yes. The understanding what self-realization is not. You can never understand realization. But you can understand what it is not. Everything that exists is not. When everything is gotten rid of, realization appears by itself. They’re in the transcripts.
I’m going to share today and the following weeks coming the five steps to self-realization. Why are there five steps to self-realization because I just made it up. (laughter) Self-realization is itself what it is. It has nothing to do with steps. Self-realization is. It is no thing that you can ever imagine. You do not have to look for it. You do not have to try to find it. It is someone in the ocean deciding to give a course on how to find the ocean and everybody comes running to listen when they’re all in the ocean.
You are realization itself. It is your real nature. The reason I’m sharing these five steps with you is because the five steps are part of the personal self. The ego, the I-thought, the five steps are involved in them. When we work on the five steps in the relative world we become ourselves, awakened and free.
The first step is: Prayer and devotion.
The second step is: Effortless No-Thought State.
The third step is: Division of Light and Sound.
The fourth step is: The Void, and,
The fifth step is: Bliss.
Again realization is not a step. You discover you are that when the steps have been fulfilled. We’ll begin with the first. We got into this last Friday…last Thursday. We were talking about these things.
In the beginning when one first starts out on the path and even when one is on the path for quite a while, prayer and meditation or prayer and devotion are very important.
Do not believe that you have passed that state. Prayer and devotion go hand in hand. You become devoted to God who is within you and you pray to God within yourself. Yet you do not pray for things. You pray that God’s will be done through you, as you and this makes you devoted to the deity to whom you’re praying.
You surrender yourself. You give up all of your life and everything you think is important. Including your problems, your hurts. These things are important to you or you wouldn’t be carrying them around. You therefore give them up when you begin to pray aright. You no longer have to carry them. You begin to feel and know that this is God’s universe and God is appearing as form. Your form, the form of the universe, animals, minerals. Without God there would be no form whatsoever. Everything comes from what we call God. Therefore we react to everything as we would react to God with love and peace and compassion, with humility and with joy. Everything is God in expression. If everything is God and God is the substratum of all existence then everything is perfect. There are no mistakes. The mistakes come from your sense of personal I. When you feel something is wrong it is because you feel that you are a personal self. You have not surrendered to God through prayer and devotion. You must therefore begin to totally surrender, give up everything to God, forget about your troubles, forget about the world, just give it up.
As you begin to do this you gently slip into the number two state. The effortless no thought state. As you surrender everything your mind becomes completely calm. And you effortlessly drop your thinking mechanism. You sort of stop thinking. Your mind becomes sort of a blank. Do not confuse this with the void. It is a beautiful state of no thoughts. Let me also remind you that you usually do not slip into that state so fast. It may
take many years, many incarnations just to get through the prayer and devotional state.
You have to become really devotional, very prayerful to totally surrender your life so that your mind becomes still, calm, peaceful.
You begin to feel profound peace. A happiness you never felt before. The world no longer has any value. You feel good most of the time. As you continue along this path you gradually slip into the third step. You begin to see lights and the light increases. Whenever you close your eyes and even when you don’t close your eyes. The light is like the light of a thousand suns. It appears as if the world is on fire. Many of you have seen this. Also you begin to hear beautiful music of the spheres. You listen and the most beautiful music begins to play. Sometimes you get them both. Those are gifts of grace.
The whole universe is filled with light, it is pure light and beautiful music sounds.
Blissful sounds come into your life. If people do not understand this they believe this is it, this is as far as they can go. But it is only the beginning. As you sit in the silence and become absorbed in the light and the sounds you enter the void which is the fourth step. The void unlike the effortless no thought state is a deep joy. A deep love. You are totally free in that state. You look at the world, at the universe, at your fellow man and it becomes void.
There is no thing there but a deep love, a deep peace. Deeper then you’ve ever felt before.
You are still aware that you are still experiencing these states. The void is not dark and is not light. It has nothing to do with lightness and darkness. It is something that you have become. Something so wonderful, so grand, there is no description of that feeling. As you continue in this state you fall into the total bliss state.
Bliss is a word again that cannot be described. It makes happiness feel like nothing. It is not of this world. You do not even experience it. You simply enjoy it. When you are in bliss it is then that you lose yourself completely. The personal I, the personal self at that time no longer exists. It has been dissolved forever. It is a state that you cannot return from. It is not something that you feel when you are meditating then you get back to the personal self. There is no personal self. You are finished with your ego, with your personal self and with the I-thought. You have become nothing. You have melted. You have been destroyed. Yet you are alive. You feel that you are alive and you do not know how you live. For so called life that you have been experiencing previously no longer exists for you.
You have become the Self and you can laugh. For you realize that you have always been the Self. There never was a time that you were not the Self. You are free, totally free. The world is no longer the world that you once knew. You continue to see the images but the images are like chalk writings on the blackboard. And you are the chalkboard. You’re free, totally absolutely free.
Now there are many ways that this happens to you. Most people go through these states very slowly. There are some who go through all of the five states at one time for some unknown reason. They experience all the states simultaneously. It’s as if they’re jumping thousands of years in their evolution.How do you go through the states? Through the five steps? By thinking of them.
You use your mind, you use your ego to think about the five steps. You watch yourself, you work on yourself. Sometimes you do not have to work at all. They come by themselves.
Now let’s talk about you. Where do you think you are as far as the five steps are concerned?
SE: To the question, zero.
R: Do not put yourself down but be honest with yourself. You can tell by the way you react to life. Where your interest is. If you’re still fiddling in the world and the world is important to you then you know you’re keeping yourself back from experiencing the five steps. You look at your life, you see what interests you. The things in this world that are meaningful to you. The things that seem to make you happy. The things that make you worry, make you miserable. Those are all handicaps. Whenever you give your mind to a problem, to anything in this world you are keeping yourself back from going forward.
That’s why it is written, “Where your mind is that is where your heart is.”
We have learnt, those of us who are here that the world is not what it appears to be. There is no so-called permanent happiness in this world. You may achieve forms of happiness, they do not last. You learn as soon as your mind begins to think, you immediately grab hold of it and change it’s course. You slow down your mind by any method you can. You see your mind as your enemy. Your mind is not your friend. You do not train your mind, you untrain your mind.
You untrain your mind by just observing your own thoughts, by watching yourself think, by not reacting to your thoughts, not reacting to what happens in your world.
As you do this you begin to dissolve. You find peace. You find peace. You become free. You become love. You no longer talk too much. You no longer try to evaluate the world or your position. You no longer find fault anywhere. You become your own experience. You have expanded. You used to be concerned with yourself as a body, with your health, concerned with your affairs. But now even though you are involved in the world, you are not of the world. The world has no pull on you. The world cannot show you anything. It cannot do anything to you. The world is the same as your body. You are not the body, you are not the world, you are not your mind. You are something completely different. That something different is ineffable.
An example of this is simply when you look out the window. Most of you observe the trees, the hills. When the Jnani looks out the window he sees the space which is the substance of the trees. When the average person looks at the world they see forms, they see things. The Jnani always sees the space. The world itself is resting in space. That space is what is called consciousness. The forms come and go but the space remains. When you think of your body, think of it as space.
The form keeps changing from a baby to a young lady or a young man, to a middle aged lady or a middle aged man, to an old man, to an old lady and soon it’s gone but
it’s space remains. The space never changes. A new body come to play, the old body is gone. The new body takes birth in the space.
The so-called secret is to identify with the space. Your real nature has always been space. When you identify with space rather than with the body you have put an end to yourself as a body, as an ego, as a personal self. Space is all pervading omnipresent.
Awaken to yourself. Wake up!
Many people believe that creative intelligence is consciousness, the Self. People like Mozart, Beethoven, da Vinci, Plato, Aristotle all use creative intelligence and we look at that as being good. Yet that creative intelligence…
(break in tape)
…The body by itself is inert. It’s a piece of dead flesh. That cannot catch a cold.
How can a piece of flesh catch a cold. The body by itself can do nothing it is just flesh and bone. It is the creative intelligence that moves the body. The creative intelligence makes the body move like a puppet. Yet most of us believe that if we have creative intelligence that is good. It’s only another name for your mind. Even though it seems to create wonderful things. All of the great artists, the great musicians, the great philosophers have used creative intelligence. Yet it hinders you from awakening.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being a great musician, a great artist, a great philosopher or whatever you do. But the truth is, it is not the Self. The knot must be broken. When the knot is broken the Self shines forth as itself. And the way you break this knot or one of the ways is through self-inquiry. Just because you are creating something wonderful, say you’re Einstein, you’re working on the theory of relativity. As far as the human race is concerned we consider Einstein a genius. He used creative intelligence to discover many wonderful things through mathematics. Yet what good does this do the world. It may appear to advance the world a notch but it really builds up the ego. The question Einstein should have asked himself is, “Who discovered relativity? To whom does this come? Where did these ideas come from? Who formulated this theory?” and he would have realized that the mind did all this to expand the knowledge of the human race.
See it’s all a joke, the jokes on you. All these great inventions, all these great things that have come into this world. The things that you’re proud of, the art, the music, everything, is a big joke. Where does it go? What is the ultimate? It goes nowhere. It goes round and round. New generations come along, they use all this knowledge. Then civilizations are wiped out and everything begins again.
The wise person begins to understand that the Self is the reality and goes beyond everything. Let’s go of creative intelligence, begins to go beyond that by inquiring, “Who am I?” By following the I-thought to the source the knot finally becomes broken like a rubber band the body snaps into the Self. And the body appears to be alive as the body.
But to the one that this happens to, something wonderful has transpired. That one has become the universe. Again let’s go back to your life. You believe you’re a woman, you’re a man, you’re a boy, you’re a girl. You have experiences to go through. You have a life to live. You have a family to raise. A cockroach goes through the same thing. (laughter) And you step on the cockroach and that is the end of it’s existence. Perhaps we live a little longer than a cockroach and perhaps nobody steps on us but what are we accomplishing? What are we really looking for? Or what are we searching for? What do we want? It’s all nonsense.
Everything is nonsense. The whole lecture today was nonsense. I said nothing. Why am I sitting here talking? What has it done for you? What has my talk done for you? It makes you say to yourself, “What is he talking about?” Wake up! Awaken from the mortal dream.
(silence)
Feel free to ask questions.
Jorge (SR): Robert you mentioned today that when you look at forms and objects you see space. I think I need your help in understanding what you mean by space?
R: If you look at your body under an electronic microscope you would see a tremendous space between your atoms. It is this space that holds your atoms together. (SR: Robert I know all that but that doesn’t help me to see the space?) If you want to see the space you must turn within. Go deeper than you’ve ever gone before. Get rid of your body completely and you’ll be space. (SR: So I won’t see the atoms in the form but only the space?) You will see the space as you see the images on the blackboard. When you look at the images on the blackboard you see the images. But most people do not realize there is a blackboard behind it. They take it for granted. Yet the enlightened one knows the blackboard as the source of the images and they see through the images at the blackboard itself. Somebody may come and erase the images and draw new images. The Sage can see through the image to the blackboard and sees the blackboard as the source.
Or a better example is a mirror. A child tries to grasp the image in the mirror. All they can grasp is the mirror. But their attention is on the image. So the Sage realizes that the image is a reflection of consciousness and is able to see through that. He sees the images but only as reflections of light. But the space is the reality. The space is not space that you think it is. The confusion lies, for you feel that space is nothing. It’s really nothing but it’s a nothing that you can never understand. It’s a real nothing, an absolute nothing, a total nothing. Therefore you have to dive back within yourself and cause yourself to disappear. Then you will see space because you will be space. You can only see what you are.
If you believe you are a body then you see other bodies. When you know that you’re not the body, how can you see a body? Therefore find out who you really are and then you’ll see what you’ll see.
Fred (SF): Robert the Jnani is a so-called individual who has reached the bliss stage and up to that stage there is someone experiencing the first four stages and the fifth stage there is no experiencer there is just the experience, even the word experience doesn’t…?
R: The Jnani doesn’t experience any stages at all. There is no fifth stage for a Jnani.
There has to be somebody to experience the fifth stage. (SF: The Jnani is beyond the fifth
stage?) There is no experiencer. So a Jnani cannot experience the fifth stage or anything beyond the fifth stage. There is no beyond. The beyond doesn’t exist because the beyond means something behind something else. And there is no thing that has any value or any truth for the Jnani. Therefore there’s no stage that a Jnani is experiencing whatsoever. The fifth stage the fourth stage is only for the ego, for the body. (SF: Even the fifth stage?) Yes, because for a Jnani there is no fifth stage. When the ajnani explains it they talk about a fifth stage. But the Jnani himself has no one left to experience any fifth stage. There has to be an experiencer, there has to be an I. So you can say, “I have experienced the fifth stage.” If you say that then you have not. (SF: Yeah, he hasn’t and never will.) There is total emptiness.
Fred (SF): I’m trying to think out something in my mind to keep me talking about it?
R: You cannot explain it there is nothing to speak. There are no words that can describe it. (SF: I keep trying to put into words things that can’t be put into words.) It is beyond words and thoughts. As long as you’re able to explain it, it’s not that.
Jorge (SR): Robert, are you able to sense when a person is identified with their God Self?
R: There is only one Self. There is no one to sense anything. The one Self pervades everything and is everything.
Jorge (SR): So the mental focus of that form that you don’t see but which you’re looking at doesn’t change with the inner focus of that formless form when they switch from being identified with their body to being identified with the inner Self.
R: The Sage already sees the perfection, the end result. There is nothing else.
SH: That’s all he sees, nothing else, period?
R: That’s all there is. (SH: The rest has vanished for him.) The rest never existed. (SH: Well then it didn’t have to vanish.) Exactly. (SH: It wasn’t there in the first place.) Exactly. (SH: That’s neat. I like that. Very immaculate.) Immaculate conception. (SH: Without anything happening. It’s great. (laughs) Hey hey some fun.) SC: Did Jesus attain the state that we’re talking about? (R: You’ll have to ask Jesus.) ST: Robert what is the source of the light and the music that you hear…?
R: The mind. Everything comes from the mind, everything. All the beauty, all the ugliness, all the joys, all the sorrows, everything is of the mind. Kill the mind and you’ll be free. (pause) This is the meaning of the saying, “If you see Buddha on the road kill him.”
Because if you’re able to see the Buddha you’re seeing yourself, your mind. There is no Buddha, there never was a Buddha. So if you see anything that appears to be like a Buddha, kill him.
SH: Which is the same thing as killing your own mind? (R: Yes.) You can’t do that? There is no you to kill your mind?
R: Are you asking me if I’m my mind? (SH: When you say “kill your mind,” you’re asking an impossibility because there is no you to do it?) But you don’t know it. (SH: The hell I don’t.) Then kill it and be done for. (SH: Right. No one will do nothing.) You are nothing why do you want to do something? (SH: I don’t.) So be nothing and rest in nothingness. (SH: Thank you. I’ll work on it. Just don’t complicate it. (laughs) Keep it simple.) Okay.
SE: If you see an ego on the road, kill it?
R: Same thing. The Buddha is an ego. Whatever you see kill it. Kill the source of it.
SH: Sounds pretty blood thirsty. (R: It is.)
Jorge (SR): Just don’t hold onto things.
R: If you can drop it that’d be great. But sometimes you have to use the term, “kill it.’ To make you understand what you really have to do. You have to whole heartedly with enthusiasm… (SR: Let go.) …crush it completely.
SH: No compromise, become quiet radical? (R: Very radical.) Yeah totally radical.
R: Completely.
SL: Robert sometimes it sounds sort of paradoxical to me that you try not to be affected by the world or you become unaffected by it in order to become more compassionate towards it or to be more compassionate or it’s sort of irreconcilable, do you know what I mean?
R: When you automatically let go of the world compassion by itself comes to you.
When you do not react to conditions you become the epitome of compassion.
SL: But if you are affected by things, I am naturally affected by things because I am in the world and I don’t feel that my compassion is because I’m not affected in the world but rather because I am affected by what goes on.
R: It’s not really a compassion that you’re feeling. Your sort of feeling sorry for yourself. (SL: I’m feeling sorry for myself? Why?) Because you’re seeing a condition and you’re saying, “Thank God it wasn’t me.” You’re looking at a condition, whatever is happening in the world and you’re seeing it from your point of view. You feel sorry for the person that is going through something. But you’re feeling sorry for yourself. It’s yourself that is doing it, your mind. Whereas pure compassion let’s go of the condition. Does not carry the condition as sad. Sadness is not a little compassion. (SL: Non-judgmental.) When you feel sorry for somebody or situation that is not real compassion. Compassion is a great love. A great feeling of joy. A feeling that all is well. (SL: So you’re saying that it has practically a different definition than what I am saying compassion is…) It’s a way that you realize that this person is going through the experience that is necessary for his or her unfoldment and freedom. You understand that so you have a great compassion, a great love, a great peace for that situation. But most people look at compassion as something that they are thinking about themselves. They have all kinds of feelings and emotions in themselves. And when they see something going on, they cry, they become upset. They think that is compassion, that is not compassion. That’s a feeling of feeling sorry for yourself.
SH: Then compassion can only occur when the ego is in abeyance? When it’s out of the picture? (R: Yes, yes.) True compassion.
R: True compassion. In the meanwhile we should do the best we can to help others and not think about it, just help. Do the best we can. Try to stay happy, do not allow the
things of this world to get you down. Be cheerful. Just see the world as a changing thing.
The world is always changing it’s never the same. Try to keep your mind from going outward, pull it back in.
Nate (SC): Every experience is of the ego? (R: What?) Every experience is of the ego? (R: Every experience?) Yes. (R: Yes. Every experience comes from the mind. The mind is the ego. Kill the mind. Kill the ego. Kill yourself.) (laughter)
SH: Hallelujah!
R: And be finished with everything. Maybe if you changed your name Nate that would help. (student laugh) That’s the reason for this because in your old self you think you are a body and you think you identify with all the problems of the world. So when somebody calls you by your name Nate, immediately everything takes place in your subconscious and all the old stuff that you were before becomes very real to you. You associate all that with Nate.
Nate (SC): Umm. Well I want to say something, I did change my name once, really. (R: To what?) I think it was Isaiah legally of course I changed it back to Nathan but when it was changed to Isaiah it was very confusing because somebody call me Nate or Nathan and I probably answered or I wouldn’t answer and it was really very interesting. (laughter) Really, like Robert just said it was a strange sensation.
R: So what did you do? (SC: Umm?) What did you do?
Nate (SC): Well someone said that I should leave my name alone and that was a God name that was given to me from the old testament so I changed my name back to Nate and for a long time they had on my check DBA also known as Isaiah. I might mention this at the expense of everybody laughing at me but Nate means gift of God in the old testament.
R: But you do not identify Nathan with that. (SC: I want to but…) You identify Nathan with problems and… (SC: Yes, yes, I’m aware of that. I can tell you that I read, “I am That”
many times and I went to a friends house recently and I read “I am that,” and I understood it. Am I understanding it or is the mind understanding it I mean I could clearly know what Nisargadatta was saying…) Do you understand it intellectually? Or have you had a living experience of the truth? (SC: No it was deeper than intellectually, I know that. I was amazed when I read it, I just read different parts of it because I didn’t have much time but I could track really perfectly and the past meant nothing to me.)
R: How did you react to the world after that and to your personal problems? (SC: About the same.) So what good does it… (SC: But seriously there is a shift in fact the last time I talked to you about that with the group but I do feel something shifting inside of me. Not that I’m asking for anything I’m just saying.) Well when something is shifting inside of you, how do you feel about your body and about the world?
Nate (SC): I still feel in it, I can’t lie about anything like that but I feel something inside of me.
People that have known me for years have seen some change in me not that I’m asking for it. At the same time there is a fear there. I don’t know why?R: The fear is part of the old pattern. (SC: Oh.) Everything will go in its time. (SC: You mean that things will change and not the way of being in control, it could be that?) Well you realize within yourself that you don’t want to be in control of anything. There is no control. (SC: There is the clash back and forth listening to what you’re saying and the mind coming in and actually try to push out what you say, actually putting a blank up.) Do not fight it, let it be.
Observe it, watch it become the witness to it. Let it go right by you.
Nate (SC): Well when nothing seems to happen that is when discouragement comes in.
R: What do you want to happen? (SC: I want to be free of this pain that I have in my body and my soul so-to-speak, really.) Do not have a desire like that. Do not want to be free of your pain. (SC: Really?) Do not look for freedom from your pain. Do you know why? Because when you look for freedom from pain you believe the pain has substance and it’s reality, now you’ve got to get rid of it. But in truth and in reality there never was a pain.
There is no pain. You have to ask yourself, “To whom does the pain come?” Your Self can never have pain. (SC: Of course I feel pain, I’m aware of the I feeling the pain…) You feel the pain and you think you have to get rid of it. Try going the other way. (SC: Hmm?) Try not to get rid of anything anymore. There is nothing you have to get rid of because it never existed to begin with. It has no substance… (SC: I hear what you’re saying Robert.) Even if you feel it. Look at it.
Nate (SC): The idea is wanting to believe what you’re saying and I want to.
R: Remember again when I mentioned, “Your body in itself is inert?” (SC: Yeah.) It’s a piece of dead flesh. Where would the pain come from? If you’re unconscious you cannot feel pain. If your body is dead you cannot feel anything. So the body by itself has no feeling. The creative intelligence feels. (SC: So why would the creative intelligence put pain in me and other people. I’m not speaking only for myself because a lot of people are suffering.) That’s what you see. That is why in the highest teaching it tells you, see the truth about yourself first and then see who is suffering. In other words, find yourself, wake up yourself then you can see who is suffering. But if you are not awakened and you believe you are a body and a mind then you are going to see all kinds of suffering. (SC: Thank you.) But you’re making progress that’s good.
Nate (SC): Yeah. I am. I don’t mean the I-am. (SH: Why not. Progress is happening.) Something is happening. (SH: To no one.)
R: You’re doing alright Nate.
(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.