– Transcript 107
(The Five Prerequisites)
R: Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, om, peace, peace. Good Evening.
SD: Trick or treat. (laughter)
R: Happy Halloween! We only have one witch in here today, in the back, wearing a Jnani tee-shirt. So let’s say hello to the witch. (laughter) Hi witch. She’s back there. She’s wearing a Jnani tee-shirt. (laughter)
It’s good to be with you again this wonderful Halloween, beautiful weather, all is well. Right?
Since the beginning of time saintly people have endeavored to bring peace and harmony into this world. The results have never been positive. We’ve had a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, many others, many Bodhisattvas, who have come back to bring peace to this world. Yet it has never happened. How come? Why can there not be peace in this world? The greatest of souls have tried to bring this peace here, yet for some strange reason they have all missed the point. This world is not a world of peace. There have been periods when there has been peace for a while. They didn’t last long, and there were wars again, man’s inhumanity to man, strife, confusion.
These great souls, for some strange reason, did not realize that there is another world interpenetrating this world, the real world, the invisible world, where there is total bliss, total love, infinite peace. This true world is called consciousness, for want of a better term. It is the state of absolute reality, yet it is the invisible world. The same thing exists in each one of us. In each being, in each animal, in each plant, in each mineral, in each vegetable, there is an inner force. There is consciousness, the reality of all substance.
This reality can only be felt by human beings, so-to-speak. The vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom, cannot understand this invisible world.
Only human beings, so-to-speak, are able to transcend their humanity and rise above the so-called relative world, relative universe. Yet there have been very few who actually were able to see this. These very few beings, these very few people, would be considered selfish by most people, for they exclaimed, leave the world alone. Do not concern yourself with the world. The world is an illusion. Dive deep within yourself. Find yourself. If you discover the world within yourself, the invisible world, that is, which is the Self, then you will see what the rest of this world really is.
And there have been beings who were able to do this for some reason or another.
They left this world deep within themselves and became the Self. When the Self was discovered it became very clear that the entire world is the Self, the entire universe is the Self, there is only the Self. And the world just does not exist, as it appears.
I have repeated this many times, yet it is very difficult for most people to grasp.
The world does not exist. Only the Self exists. It is meaningless to most people and I don’t blame them, for they cannot do anything with it, so it seems. There is nothing they can hang on to. If you attend a sort of metaphysical church, and you get into the occult, you are promised a better life. You are promised that you will transcend your problems, you will be healed of whatever ails you, you will become a multimillionaire, your troubles will be over. Yet that has never happened except to the people it’s supposed to happen to.
But there have been those few people who somehow felt something within them, that there is a reality that knows absolutely nothing about this world. They cannot explain it but they feel it. And they begin to do the work required in order to transcend and transmute the entire universe, becoming free and liberated. They gave a name to these people, Jnanis, Sages, Masters. These beings, just by being themselves, become an asset to the world and to those who are ready to follow those steps.
I had a glimpse of this when I was thirteen years old. My mother used to take me to the country to buy chicken. She would pick out a live chicken and they would kill it for her. And I had to watch this. I used to turn my head in disgust and I would ask her, “Mom, why is this necessary?” And she’d tell me, “This is the way we do it. This is the right way.
We have to eat.” I could never understand or reconcile myself with the killing of animals in order to eat.
I didn’t really put it into words but when I went to sleep at night I would ponder this. I would say to myself something like this, “If there is a God how can God allow the slaughter of thousands of cattle, millions of pigs, chickens, what have you, so that human beings can be the cemetery to dead flesh?” And sometimes I would stay awake all night thinking of these things. “How can God allow this?”
Little by little, after months of pondering these things, it was revealed to me. I don’t remember if it came in a flash or over a period of time, but I realized what we call God is invisible. This God is not a person, place or thing, but is totally invisible and is all pervading, omnipresent. And if God were “love” how can these dastardly things taking place to animals be happening?
I came to realize that the invisible world of God has absolutely nothing to do with the so called human universe, with the relative universe. I somehow was able to comprehend that the world is an appearance, for it cannot be apart of God since God was all pervading, omnipresent, and God was love. Therefore this couldn’t take place in the kingdom of God. Yet it appeared as if it did take place. It must be an illusion.
I came to the conclusion that the whole world, the whole universe has absolutely nothing to do with the kingdom of God, and what my position was, my job was to discover this truth for myself. For at that time I didn’t make the transition into total consciousness. From that time on I came up with the statement, “All is well, and everything is unfolding as it should.” These things didn’t bother me too much any longer for I felt intuitively, “This is an illusion. It appears to be happening. This is a world of appearances.”
And I became contemplative, quiet. I no longer tried to resolve things. I sort of developed a witness consciousness.
This is why today, when I look at this world and I observe the universe, I am not disturbed. People who do not understand this think I am selfish. I don’t care. It isn’t that. I have total compassion but I know for certain that this entire universe is Maya. When I share these things with you, I relate my personal experience. You will hear these things again and again, for this is the way to bombard your consciousness with truth, until you finally give in and let go and surrender. Then you’ll be part of the invisible kingdom and you will have eternal happiness.
We can never have real happiness as long as we believe the world is real. It’s impossible! Due to the fact everything changes. No thing is ever the same and that is very evident. The whole universe is constantly changing. How can we have faith or believe in something like this, that is never the same? We have to make up our minds. Do we want to find reality or do we want to keep running around the world, becoming enthralled in the beginning, and disappointed in the end?
We begin to see it is the mind that keeps us in bondage. It is the mind that creates the body, the world and the universe. We cannot change other people. We’ve tried. It doesn’t work. We cannot change the world condition. We’ve tried. It doesn’t work. It makes no difference whom we elect president or what happens in the world. The conditions might change but there will never be a harmony and peace in this world.
It is only as we transcend and transmute the mind that we see something else. We actually see something else. We live in a different world. This is the reason I appear strange to some people, to most people, to all the people. I may see an accident, somebody dying. I will render assistance but I will be happy, for I do not see death as it appears. For some reason I look through that into the invisible world where there is joy and laughter, where there is peace and harmony.
What do you see? As you look in this world what do you see? You’re seeing the result of your mind. Your mind has been conditioned since you were born. Not only that, but you have a mind that has been through many lives, so it appears. You’ve had many existences and many worlds as a male, as a female, and you’re under the laws of karma.
Now I realize that some of you know that karma doesn’t exist, reincarnation doesn’t exist. That’s easy to say but aren’t you going through it? How can you say it doesn’t exist when you feel it nearly every day? If you have been totally peaceful today, if you have had total joy today, total bliss today, total harmony today, then you can say there is no karma, and there is no reincarnation, and there is no God, and there is no universe and there is no body.
But you cannot say that when you are moved by the world. You cannot say this when the world becomes meaningful to you. You cannot say this when you forget these things and you become enthralled by the world because things are going your way.
As I have told you many times, if I wrote you a check for $200,000.00 tonight, how many of you would be back here next Sunday? (laughter) I’d probably never see you again.
SK: I’d be back for more money.(students laugh)
R: You’re right! True! (students laugh) And also you will find that when you become totally bankrupt, or your wife or your husband leaves you, or your house burns down, you immediately call me on the phone. You come to satsang for you really want to get rid of your troubles, your problems, your physical ailments. That’s what you really want.
Can you now see what I mean when I say, “You shouldn’t go around saying I am absolute reality, and I am consciousness, and I am free, I am liberated, and that the world doesn’t exist, and karma doesn’t exist, and reincarnation doesn’t exist?” Yet it exists for you because you’re going through it. Do not allow your pride to get in the way. This is the ego telling you these things. You have to be totally honest with yourself. You have to see where you’re really coming form.
A Jnani has absolutely nothing to do with this world. The world, the universe, becomes totally meaningless to a Sage. It’s not a put on. It’s not imagining that, “All is well,” until some catastrophe hits you, and then you get upset, become violent, feel sorry for yourself, become depressed. You have to see where your at, where you’re coming from, what you’re really made of. You can never know the truth, that there is no world, there is no universe, there is no God, as long as you believe the body suffers, mentally or physically. Have you suffered mentally or physically today?
If you really want to get on the band wagon, (here goes these cliches again, get on the band wagon) if you really want to become a part of those few people in this world that have transcended the world, you have to do what they did.
The first prerequisite: Shut up. Be quiet. Stop debating. Stop arguing. Stop trying to prove a point. Even if someone knows something that you don’t, whether they share it with you or not, makes no difference, for you have to come up with your own truth.
There’s really no one in this universe that can hand you realization on a silver platter.
Number two: You have to let go. You have to let go so completely that it becomes scary. You have to totally let go mentally. You have to stop depending on person, place or thing for your self-worth. You have to start depending on the infinite invisible, on what you cannot see, taste, touch, or smell or feel.
Number three: You must look at the world but never react to anything. You must watch your feelings and your emotions, observe them, and as they come into contact with
Number four: You must develop a tremendous humility, a stupendous humility.
This is more important than anything else. If someone tells you something that you don’t like to hear you do not become upset. You do not hold it in. You let it go through you and it dissipates, for it has no energy except the energy you give it. You are responsible to yourself. If you fool yourself you’re just going to get disgusted in the end and give up all spiritual life, for you’ll say you’ve gotten nowhere, nothing has happened, it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t exist.
I suppose this is the reason I am with you. To tell you, “Yes, there is an invisible realm of perfection beyond this world, interpenetrating this world, that makes this world look like kindergarten.” Yet you must be able to see it yourself.
Number five: You have to want it so much that you don’t want it. You have to have such a strong desire to be free that all desire stops. When all desire stops there is a quietness, a stillness, that takes place within you. It is only when this stillness, this quietness, comes when you’re able to see clearly, not with your physical eyes, but with your spiritual eye, not with your little I, not with the I-thought, but with the I-am. And you will see in all directions. You will see up, you will see down, you will see sideways, you will see backwards. The only thing you will see is total perfection which is another name for pure awareness. You have to take this thing seriously and you’re not to be serious about this thing at all. You have to reject everything yet you also have to accept everything. You have to surrender and you have to realize that you are the Self.
There is something inside of you that knows how to do all this. You can help by becoming quiet, by becoming still, by not making a lot of noise, not making a big commotion. Let the world do what it will, yet you become silent and peaceful, compassionate, have humility. Just watch, look, observe, quiet the mind. Be still and know that I am God.
Fred (SF): The only thing that didn’t feel right was when you said that the great Masters were not aware of the invisible world. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away.”… (tape break) …and Maharshi said, “There’s only one consciousness equally distributed everywhere,” and then he went on from there.
SD: Yes, I wondered about that too. Did you really mean they didn’t realize it or…
R: I was speaking of those Masters, those great beings, that tried to make the world a better place in which to live.
Fred (SF): Seems to me that they were trying to get us to see that there is an invisible world.
R: Those who have been trying to tell us to go within, and the change must come from within, are the true teachers. But those who try to improve the world and try to improve the world to make this a better world, have not tasted ultimate reality.
Fred (SF): But you wouldn’t put Christ and Buddha and Krishna in that category, would you?
(R: No.) Okay SD: You mentioned an expression, Bodhisattva. What does that mean?
R: Bodhisattva. It’s a Buddhist tradition that when you become enlightened you do not go away, but you come back to help others become enlightened. (SD: Would that be the same as a Jnani?) Not really. Most of the Bodhisattvas are beings who try to uplift the race.
Fred (SF): Change the world.
R: To make this world a better place in which to live. But when the realization comes that the world never existed to begin with, trying to make the world a better place to live is ridiculous.
SD: You often mention the words transcending and transmuting and I wonder if you could define them both so we’ll know the difference.
R: Transmuting is a chemical change that takes place, a total change, a total chemical change that takes place in the body and you become a different person, a different being. When you transcend something you go through it from one experience to the next.
And transcendental work is when you go from one step to the next step, to the next step, to the next step. But when something is transmuted there’s a complete alchemy, a total change into a totally different being. (SD: And that could happen to a self-realized person?) That happens to a person, yes. When a person realizes the truth as expressed and intelligently looks at reality, effortlessly, entirely, then all of a sudden, like a flash of light, there’s a transmutation, and you become totally free. (SD: So transcending is sort of taking an overview about things?) Transcending is when you go from step to step. You go higher and higher. But transmuting is when you do it all at once. (SD: Oh, thank you.) SH: What happens chemically in the transmutation process?
R: The brain chemical changes to begin with. The brain cells, they seem to all of a sudden take on a new reality and they become the total servant of the mind. They no longer have their programming. All the programming disappears. The eons of programming, the past, is dead. It becomes totally annihilated, and you become a new person, an expansive person. (SH: And this is purely a chemical change?) It’s a chemical change in the beginning.
SD: Is it both chemical and spiritual? It sounds like it.
R: It’s the same thing. The brain surrenders to the mind, so-to-speak. The entire programming of the brain gives up to the mind, lets go. All the circuits become dead.
SH: It also affects the body too? (R: It affects the body, Yes.) SF: I had an experience once with LSD. Somebody said it’s all right to be Fred. I never had thought that was so. (R: It’s all right to be Fred?) When I had LSD. (R: Oh.) And I knew that was so, and the world was all right, and God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. But as soon as I came down all the thoughts and conditioning came back into my mind, and that’s where I am now. But I did experience it. I knew everything’s okay. I think that maybe with the LSD the
R: With some people, when they take drugs such as LSD and other drugs, they’re able to see and experience what you’ve experienced. But there are some people who have bad trips and they don’t have that experience at all. But of course, as you’ve just explained, you come down from it and you have to keep taking it again and again, and soon you become immune to it and you have to take three times as much to have the same experience, and then the experience becomes less and less. (SF: Well I had this feeling that probably God didn’t want me to fool with the stuff, so I quit it.) SD: Would it be though, a moment of realization? Not lasting perhaps, but would that be realization for that brief time period?
R: To an extent, not complete realization. That gives you a taste of what realization is. (SD: Because I had a friend who had a similar experience and he said he experienced a complete loss of ego, and even though when he came down he couldn’t get it back, neither could he ever quite forget that feeling.) It gives you more a feeling of bliss that takes you way up there, where you know that all is well. But it doesn’t take you completely through.
Jay (SJ): Robert, when you’re talking about the deadening of the… whatever happens to the brain, whatever you were saying that way, is that why if one recalls a memory, a picture of the memory never arises and no sense of reality arises, like just a thought or a reflection of a thought that never really existed. (R: What are you referring to?) Well in the brain like you might come up with a memory that at age seventeen you went to India or whatever happened, and there’s no picture with the memory. All the elements that call that a memory aren’t there any more. It’s just a verbal memory almost. (R: Are you speaking of the Sage?) Yes, after that occurs where the brain function deadens.
R: The brain no longer functions. But then, as you say, there is something there that remembers certain things spontaneously. (SJ: Right, but it’s totally hollow. There’s no picture of the memory, no reality to the memory.) This is true. Yes, you do not remember like ordinary people. There is something there. Certain things you can remember but there is no difference between those things and the present, or the past or the future. (SJ: They’re all hollow?) It’s all one. (SJ: And it’s all nothing. There’s no substantialness to it at all.) Yes. It has no substance.
SD: And that would be transmutation, right?
R: That’s transmutation. There are many times when I remember something, yet I don’t know if it happened yesterday, or if it happened twenty years ago, or if it happened many life times ago. But sometimes certain things come to me and I wonder where they came from. Everything becomes combined and becomes one.
SH: Do you just ignore them when they arise? When they occur? (R: I just watch them.) Watch them going past? (R: Yes.)
Fred (SF): I have something I’d like to check out. One of the beatitudes says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and I’m wondering if the heart is the center of the being, and if it’s pure, there are no contaminants in it, and the contaminants in the heart would be any thought, and if there’s no thought, at that point God can be seen, and then we have to go into what that phrase means, which would mean pure consciousness, or atman, or Brahman or whatever other word might be put to the ultimate reality.
R: Actually what it means is when you are pure in heart you become God. You become the absolute reality. (SF: It would be nice. Except it’s already so. Is that not correct?) So why don’t you believe it? (SF: I try.)
SD: How do we get from intellectual understanding, like he’s saying, where we understand it and yet we understand it with the mind, and the mind is what were trying to get rid of.
R: By looking at the words that are spoken with deep intelligence, effortlessly. (SD: And witnessing is that what you’re referring to?) Observing, looking, watching or of course, inquiring, “To whom does this come?” Whatever method suits you. But many beings have awakened simply by looking at the situation, observing it, intelligently focusing on it, and awakening can occur.
SV: What do the words “intelligently focusing on it” mean can you explain the meaning?
R: It means when you see “that” alone. When you look at the words, or the phraseology, or the situation, or the reality, and you’re able to see it with wisdom. When you see the total picture as something real, something of substance, you are intelligently looking at the situation, and feeling the reality of it, and that causes an awakening to you.
That’s when you look at a situation, say you look at Dana, and you really see her.
You see through the Maya. You do not see the outer layer but you look through everything and you see her as she really is. That’s looking at Dana intelligently, effortlessly. You’re looking at the spiritual Dana and that causes you to awaken.
SD: I have a hard time relating to this, but would the real Dana be the Self?
R: The real Dana is the Self. (SD: So that’s what we would look at?) He sees you as energy. (SD: As energy and as part of the oneness of all things?) As spirit, as reality. (SD: So he would see me as himself.) Something in him has grasped you as the real person, as the real you, which is himself. That’s why he awakens, because he becomes what he saw.
Jay (SJ): Robert, could I read something. Someone wrote me something that explains this also, somewhat succinctly. (R: Someone wrote you a letter?) Yeah. (R: Go ahead.) I’m going to read a little bit of the long version it’s very short anyway but… (Jay reads) ‘The past, present and future are projected from the stateless state, the transcendental fourth state, Turiya. You witness these states as on a cinema screen which is not affected by the states. Find out the substratum… (I guess is the most important part right here) …Find out the substratum of these states. “Who am I” who experiences these states? Find out from where the thought I arises from. Keep quiet, don’t move your mind, make no effort. Just in this no second make a leap.”
R: That’s good. Yes. Thank you.
R: The seeing becomes the being. Yes. (SH: You see Dana as she truly is.) And then you become that. (SH: And that’s what you are.)
Jay (SJ): Nothing conceivable to the mind whatsoever, so it’s no use even talking too much about it. Just doing that. (R: The mind has absolutely nothing to do with it.) SD: So the word seeing is really being used the same way you would use the word perceiving. (R: Yes.) Not seeing… (R: Not with your eyes. Perceiving your reality.) R: It is not as difficult as it sounds. No, actually all those things that were talking about happen instantaneously. It all happens in a second.
SL: So Robert, does that mean that we do have very short periods of enlightenment, when you say it happens within a second?
R: I was speaking of the entire experience of enlightenment. The experience that you never come back from. (SJ: Transmutation.) The whole thing happens in an instant.
SD: In other words one minute were asleep and the next we’re awake… (R: You’re awake.
Just like you woke up, right.) …and that’s it.
Fred (SF): Like gun powder. That’s what Maharshi said. (SJ: What was it?) It comes like gun powder that’s a simile to what Bhagvan used. (SJ: But I mean don’t be fooled. That’s how it came to him, you know, if it doesn’t come like gun powder then don’t be confused about that.) He said also, there’s dry wood and damp wood.
(silence)
Fred (SF): There is apparently one truth that we can learn from psychedelic drugs and that is there are states of consciousness than the one we ordinarily live in day to day. (R: Yes, true.) That’s the one thing that we can learn. (R: Umm, right.) The other stuff is no more or less important than our daily experiences in this state of consciousness.
R: Are you still taking LSD? (SF: Sir?) Are you still taking LSD? (SF: No that was twenty five years ago. No I got the idea I wasn’t supposed to fool with it. It was 1965 or 1964.) SD: You remember, you retain that knowledge.
Fred (SF): Of course it’s just in the mind, better there than not I suppose. (SH: What isn’t?) (silence)
Fred (SF): One thing I might say Robert, I come up here with these intellectual concepts. I realize they’re of limited value. But to have you corroborate my understanding makes me feel better. Okay?
R: Everything you say Fred is appreciated. (SF: Thank you sir.) We wouldn’t know what to do without you. (SF: I do not know how to take that?) (students laugh) SV: Take it a good way. (SF: Yeah thank you.) You got to use it to take somehow. (laughs) SD: I think the value of that I get from what you say Fred is that you’ve studied so much and what you do is corroborate with all the Masters by saying the same thing. Because you bring up different Masters and their teachings which you corroborate with Robert and that to me was the most thrilling moment in my life when I realized that they were all saying the same thing. So that is the value I get from your talking about.
Fred (SF): That is what awakened an interest in Eastern philosophy. Do you know a guy named -
an Australian who wrote some stuff under the name of Muni sadhu?
R: What’s the name? (SF: He wrote under the pen name of muni sadhu? He wrote that…) Oh he was a disciple of Ramana? (SF: Yeah he was a devotee.) I think I know him.
Fred (SF): He was an Australian. I don’t know his real name but he wrote that in these tradition, they never contradict one another. And I didn’t understand it like I do now but it was enough to awaken an interest and that was part of my karma.
R: True, real Sages don’t contradict each other. It is the disciples that cause the problems. (laughter) (SF: They argue, I’m right and you’re wrong.) My Master is better than your Master. (SF: Sir?) My Master is better than your Master. (laughter) SF: Sai Baba is different from Oral Roberts. (laughter) (SJ: But not too different from Jerry Palmer.) Or Jimmy Swaggert.
R: Or Peewee Herman. (laughter)
(silence)
R: Would you like to read the Jnani Mary? (SM: Oh yes.) (Mary reads the the confessions Jnani, refer to beginning of this book.) R: Thank you Mary. Do we have any announcements?
(Announcements for the return of transcripts after xeroxed and general talking) R: Next week Henry will give us all foot stools. (SH: I’ll be glad o hand them out, if you bring them.) We’re going to have a thanksgiving dinner on Sunday after thanksgiving.
Starting at 1:30 we’ll have music, festivities. Henry will do a soft shoe routine.
SD: And we all bring a main dish right? A vegetarian main dish? (R: Yes.) I’d like to see you do this Henry.
SH: He’s just an old joker.
SD: Those are nice soft slippers that you wear.
SH: He doesn’t know that I’m only a tap dancer not that soft shoe stuff.
R: We have some prashad.
S: Thank you Gerry.
(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.