– Transcript 118
(More On Spiritual Healing)
R: It’s good to be with you once again, this lovely sunny day. I welcome you all with all my heart.
When you come to Satsang, you come to meet your Self. The Self that you really are, shining, bright, happy, whole, and when you go out of your way to come to Satsang, like on a rainy day like this, you double your value. You’re only worth a penny and now you’re worth two cents.
It reminds me when I was sixteen years old. I used to go to Joel Goldsmith on Tuesday nights and I lived in the Bronx in New York. I had to go out into the snow. Walk to the train station. Change trains. Go down to Manhattan and walk about a half a mile to the hotel where Joel Goldsmith used to be at that time.
What compelled me to do this? I could’ve stayed in a nice warm house, reading comic books. There was no TV at that time. I used to listen to, “I Love A Mystery,” on the radio, but I would skip all that to go to be with Joel Goldsmith. Why? I don’t know. It just happened.
This is the truth for most of you here today. You have no idea why you’re here. If you have an idea you spoil it. There’s no valid reason for you being here. If you believe that you’re looking for something, you’re making a grave mistake. There is nothing to look for. You are here because you are you. You are satsang yourself. The whole universe resides as you and when you come together with satsangees you begin to feel and understand this truth.
You forget about your problems, your troubles, the things that you think are important, and you surrender to your Self. By surrender to your Self I mean you let go of all the thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires, wants. You allow the Self to chew them up, spit it out. Everything is dissolved and resolved. There is absolutely nothing wrong right now. If you begin to think about something wrong then there’s something wrong. But as you sit in silence and you stay centered in the moment, in that moment there is perfection, there is wholeness. All is well.
When you think, you spoil it. It makes no difference what is going on in your life or what’s going on in the world. If you can only be still and carry that stillness with you, wherever you go, you will be saved from the vicissitudes of life and the so-called world in which you live.The world cannot do anything to you when you do not think about the world. The only reason and the only time that the world functions, is when you believe in it. When you think externally the external becomes manifested as your affairs, and your life, and your situation. When you think internally, then what we call God, reality, happiness, joy and peace are manifested through you as you, everywhere. You find peace.
There’s nothing in the world that has any power. You are the power. You give it power every time you think. The world is your creation. The world in which you live, your affairs, your health, your finances, everything is taking place because you are you. If you surrender the you or the I-thought, thinking I have this or I feel this or I belong to this or I’m hurt by this. If you give up that I, surrender it totally, you will be the happiest being that ever lived.
True happiness permeates the universe. It is here, always.
Just as the sun is now shining, yet if you look outside you don’t see the sun, you see the clouds. It appears to be a dark day, but we know that the sun is shining. The sun never stops shining. The clouds hide the sun, the rain hides the sun, but the sun is always there.
And so it is that your reality, your happiness, your joy, your peace, your love, is always there, always. There never is a time when it’s not, but your clouds of doubt, your clouds of apprehension, of suspicion, the clouds of negative thinking. The clouds of thinking, cause you to believe that you’re a human and you have to solve problems. You have to go through different lifestyles. You have to try to find yourself. You have to go through all these ordeals before you believe that you are clouded and the sun is not shining.
You must awaken from this. You must awaken and see yourself for what you really are, absolute reality, pure awareness. You are wonderful, wonderful, you are. It makes no difference what your body is telling you or what the world is telling you. You are absolute intelligence. You are free, a joy to the world.
We’re all sitting here as individual personalities, but you are not a personality.
You’re not even sitting here. You are in heaven, heaven meaning the Self, pure. Never judge by appearances. Do not allow the world to tell you how things are. This is the reason satsang is so important, for as you come to a place like this, an awakening always takes place, even if it’s partial. And it’s like planting a seed, that has to be nurtured and begins to grow. The day will come when you’ll awaken totally and be free of this whole mess.
Something tells me I should speak a little bit about spiritual healing in regard to Advaita Vedanta. When you need to heal yourself or someone else of a physical or mental problem, you believe you have to invoke certain powers. You have to have a certain mental state. There is physical healing, mental healing and spiritual healing yet if you recognize the truth about yourself you will ask yourself the question, “Who needs healing? Who has to be healed? Does God need healing? Does absolute reality need healing? Does pure awareness need healing?” Just to believe or think that you have to be healed gives you the
Healing implies duality, a belief that there is a body that needs a healing. Yet if you look at yourself, who’s sick, who has a problem? Not the real you. The real you never had any problem, never can have a problem, doesn’t know what the word problem means. All you have to do is stay centered. You have to forget about your body and about the problems, stay totally centered. See your body, the problems as images on a screen.
On the screen there is a person who goes to the doctor, the doctor tells them they’ve got cancer and they go through chemotherapy, their hair falls out, their clothes fall off, they fall apart. All this is happening on the screen. Yet what happens to the screen?
Nothing, the screen remains the same, yet the images appear and go. It may be an image of a funeral. It may be an image of a birth, an image of a war. All these images come and go, but the screen remains intact. Nothing ever happens to the screen.
You are the screen! Yet you have to look at yourself as the screen you have to be able to see it, to feel it. And everything in life is a superimposition on the screen. Do not identify with sickness, with mental anguish. Do not identify with problems. You have to turn your mind away, turn it upward, turn it on itself by inquiring, “To whom does this come?” and realize who you are. There’s no one suffering. Only the images on the screen seem to suffer. The world appears on the screen in all its manifestations and changes, continuously changing, never the same. The screen is always the same. You therefore have to realize this. Lift yourself up. Do not be concerned. Nothing can ever happen to you. Nothing can ever happen to you, at no time.
Birth, death, rebirth, karma, they’re all illusions. It’s virtually impossible for you to die because you were never born. It’s virtually impossible for you to have problems, sicknesses, diseases, everything else that goes on in this world, because there is nothing sustaining these things, there is no power that sustains and maintains disease. There’s no power like that.
You may tell me, “Well I see it all around me. I feel these things in my soul.” Just think of what you’re saying, “I see these things, I feel these things,” that is your trouble, your problem. The I, that sees this, that feels this. If you would only get rid of that I. That’s all you really have to do. The I is the only thing, it’s not even a thing, it’s nothing. It’s only an appearance that makes you believe you’re worldly and you’re going through different difficulties. It is the I that does this. If you try to change your affairs and you’ve not changed the I, the same things will happen again and again.
The I has to be destroyed. The I has to be completely annihilated. Totally wiped out and you do this by abiding in the I. You do this by watching the I, by observing the I, by following the I to the source. The source is pure intelligence, pure awareness. The source is nirvana, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Brahman. You are that! Yet you will not believe it. You’d rather play with the world and go through various experiences. You will not realize, you will refuse to realize that the I is the only problem you’ve got. Remove the I and you will always be at peace. Believe in the I and all sorts of things will transpire in your life.
The I-thought is a dream. It’s not real, it doesn’t really exist, yet because you believe in it you have to practice self-inquiry. It is the only way for some of us to get rid of the I totally and completely. If you were able to look at this picture that I’m painting for you and see the truth involved, you’d be liberated right now, but most of you revert back to the I. And you believe in the I, for don’t you say all day long, “I am this and I am that. I feel this and I feel that. I feel happy. I feel sad. I feel sick, I feel well.” It is always the I that feels this, not you.
So in spiritual healing you have to use methods of mental, physical, or God realization techniques. This presupposes that you are a body and you have to do work on your body. You have a hard job. Isn’t it easy to practice the other way? To see yourself as a spirit, a universal spirit that has no dimension, no shape, that is nowhere?
Some of you are thinking, you’re allowing your thoughts to tell you things. You accept the thoughts and what they tell you and then you wonder why you worry or feel fear. The thoughts will bring up all kinds of things. They will allow you to fear, to be frustrated, to feel imperfect. Yet you must stand tall and observe and watch these thoughts. Do not give the thoughts any help by allowing you’re feeling to express into fears or frustrations, but rather watch these thoughts like a third person. These thoughts appear, the feelings appear, the fears appear. “But to whom do they appear?” you say to yourself. Do not deny that you do not feel these things. You’re not practicing denial. You merely look at your fears, you look at what’s happening in your thought patterns, you watch them, inquire, “Where did they come from. Where did the fears come from? Where did the depressing feelings come from? What are the sources of all the feelings that I’ve ever had?
Are there many sources?” I’m not speaking of apple sauce.
There is one source. There are not many sources. One source. That one source is omnipresence, all pervading. There has always been one source. There will never be anything else but the same source. That source is no thing. There are no things in this source, nothing, absolute nothing. That source is bliss, consciousness. That is your real nature.
Therefore where did the other thoughts come from? Where do all the feelings that I have come from? Find out.
You have to keep on asking. You have to have faith in your Self. Faith that there is power within you that makes the whole universe seem as nothing. Tremendous power, creative power, it is all within yourself. And you have the freedom to use this power any way you choose.
Most of us inadvertently feel certain things causing this power to make them come into our lives. For instance: we believe we can catch a cold if we walk in the rain without any shoes. Where did this belief come from? Someone told it to you when you were quite young, your parents perhaps, and you have proven this because every time you walk in the rain without shoes you catch a cold. So you believe it’s true. Yet this is a lie. This is a
Do not allow the world to show you certain things and then you react to them and think about those things. Rather think from within yourself. Think from the source of you’re being, from the absolute reality, as within, so without. What you feel within yourself, you will see outside manifesting in your world. You are the cause of everything that has ever happened to you. There is no God who ordains things to happen to you, who causes you to suffer. There is no suffering, no one suffers. It is you who creates your world, no one else.
This is why two people can be looking out the window, and one person will see the trees and the sky, another person will see darkness, ugliness, even death. You have been trained as a child to believe certain things and these are the things that have caused the problems in your life.
The body by itself can never become ill. The body by itself is just a lump of flesh with secretions, bones, it cannot do anything by itself. It has no power to live. It has no power to die. It has no power to do a thing, it’s a lump of flesh. Yet it comes to life like a puppet, manipulated by the puppeteer. Who is the puppeteer? Your mind, your mind is the puppeteer. All the beliefs you have, the erroneous thoughts, the preconceived ideas, the concepts. These are the things that have shaped your life the way it is today.
Consequently, if you don’t like what you see, if you believe there’s something wrong, if you have an illness or a mental anguish, do not run all over the world trying to cure yourself, rather go within yourself, that’s where the answers are and inquire, “How did I get this sickness? My body by itself is a lump of flesh, it cannot be sick or well, therefore it is certain thoughts that have caused the illness, the mental anguish, whatever. So how do I get back to myself, radiance, happy?” By following those certain thoughts to the source, by inquiring, “Who feels this? Who believes they are a body? Who believes they’re a sickly body, a problem oriented body? That may be the appearance, it may be a fact. But it is not the truth. So how do I get to the truth? By following the feeling of I, I’m sick, I am impoverished, I have mental anguish, following those thoughts to the source, in your heart.
Start when you get up early in the morning, that’s the time to begin something like this, and just understand within yourself that the I-thought has rushed from your heart center to your brain. While you slept the I-thought was in the Self, where it was supposed to be, there was no fear, no sickness, nothing. When you are in deep sleep all of your physical problems disappear, they do not exist. Think about that! When you are in deep sleep you are healed.
You are whole. You are complete. There is nothing going on because the I-thought is at rest in the heart, but as soon as you open your eyes, the eye jumps into the brain and becomes your body, and then the world appears as it appears. If you become cognitive of this fact you’ll reverse the procedure. You will make the I-thought go back from the brain into the heart center. When this is accomplished, it is called self-realization, enlightenment, awakening, liberation.
It is not as difficult as it appears. If you do it in the morning when you first wake up. Do not say, “I am late for work, I am hungry, I have to get dressed,” but become aware that the I-thought has become active and imagine - you can use your imagination - imagining that the I-thought is going back from the brain back into the heart where it was when you were asleep. Follow it. Abide in it. When you feel or imagine the I thought is back into your heart then there’s no thinking, the thinking process stops. You just are, and you live in a different world. There’s absolutely nothing wrong any longer. You feel liberated, you feel free.
These things you must practice. But if you have difficulty practicing these things, as we talked about on Thursday night, you merely have to be at satsang, sit in meditation with the Sage from six in the morning till nine and from twelve midnight till three in the morning. If you do this, you don’t have to do anything else. If you’re intellectually motivated, you’ll want to practice self-inquiry. If you do not wish to practice self-inquiry, sit in meditation at those hours and come to satsang.
We have some questions in the box. First question:
Q: (Robert reads) The state of effortless silence means realization. The problem is getting in that state, how?
A: (Robert answers) To get into a state of effortless silence, you merely have to observe your thoughts and examine what is going on in your head and mind. You watch your thoughts, every time when they arise you ask, “To whom do they come,” and you follow them to the source, as we explained before. As you keep on doing this, inquiring, “Who am I? What is the source? Where did it come from?” And you keep inquiring this way. The thoughts subside, slowly but surely, every time you inquire, “Who am I, What is the source of the I?” the thoughts become still, they stop fighting you and eventually you will be in a state of silence.
When you say, “Who am I?” or “What is the source of the I?” you do not answer.
You merely sit still until more thoughts come and then you do the same thing. You sit in the silence, other thoughts come, you inquire, “To whom do they come? What is their source?” You sit in the silence and you will notice the space in between “Who am I?” becomes greater and greater, before you have to go back to it again and the silence, the quietness, becomes more profound, until you start to feel an overwhelming peace and quietness. And one day an awakening will take place and you’ll be free. So to get into the silence, you have to get rid of your thoughts. And to get rid of your thoughts, you follow them to the source by inquiring, “Who am I?” or “What is the source of my thoughts?” And then everything else will happen by itself.
Q. (Robert reads) Happiness is the state prior to our own activity. Why our activity creates all the suffering?
Therefore catch it before it begins. Whatever happens to you, do not feel sorry for yourself. Do not give it power by fearing it, or by thinking that somebody is punishing you, or something has gone wrong with your life. Merely observe the situation, rise above it, by realizing this is all of the mind, the mind has created this, I am not the mind. I am pure awareness. And you’ll be at peace.
(Robert asks) Is that all? ( SM: Yes I think there were only two Robert. ) Oh.
(students ask question)
SB: Robert, all through history there’s been a tradition of great spiritual healings and miraculous healings taking place among true devotees. Can you explain how this works?
R. Certainly. When you are in a place like satsang, when you are with the Sage, the light of the Sage, the power of the Sage, the power of the satsang, becomes intense and a devotee who surrenders their problems, their will, all the nonsensical things they’ve been going on with, their fears and they give up these things by surrendering, then everything begins to melt in that power of the Sage, in that truth, in that reality and omnipresence and that all pervading goodness.
Therefore, since sickness is a nonentity, it never existed to begin with. You begin to feel perfection and the perfection vitalizes your so-called cells. All the atoms of your body merge in perfection and you are healed, so-called and a healing takes place in your body, for you have given up your thoughts. The thoughts are what caused the illness to begin with. The mind is what caused the problem. When you give up your mind to the Self, in the Self there is nothing but perfection. There’s only oneness, absolute reality and now you are merged in this reality. This reality is flowing through you as you and there is nothing else.
There are not two powers, one of sickness and one of healing, there’s no sickness and there’s no healing, there’s just absolute perfection, absolute reality. If there really was such a thing as sickness then there would have to be a lot of fighting to become healed. But since sickness doesn’t really exist, by giving this up, by surrendering this feeling, this thought that there is sickness or lack or limitation or anything else the one power, the one perfection, the one God, the one reality, the one pure awareness shines through, and takes over, and you are made whole.
Feel free to ask any questions you like.SD: I would like you to elaborate on that point because as you yourself have pointed out even some of the great Masters have appeared to suffer from illness. Rama Krishna and Maharishi and I would certainly think that they would be in the position of surrender or even beyond surrender so it must not be quite that simple that the appearance evidently sometimes will continue.
R. You always go back to that. Try to always remember, that it is we who see these things. We see the imperfections. We behold the death and the suffering. These Sages that you mention have told you over and over again, there is no suffering, I am not suffering, it is you who are suffering because you see me this way. It is the mind of mortal man that beholds all these infirmities. It is we who believe that a Christ is crucified, why Rama Krishna is dying of cancer.
It never happened. It appears to happen, and those beings which is most of the world, who are of that level, see these things with their eyes, feel these things with their feelings, hear these things with their ears. Yet this is not the truth about these Masters. This is only our limited vision. The same is true with ourselves, when we appear to be ill, when we appear to have something wrong with the body, we must immediately declare, “I am not the body!” There’s no body that can have anything wrong with it because the body does not exist. I am a spiritual entity. I am whole, pure. There is no limitation in me. We have to feel these things.
Therefore for the average person, they simply have to surrender. Surrender to the Self, meaning surrender to the highest thoughts. Surrender to the oneness, to the perfection, to the ultimate, become free by surrendering this way.
Now as you say Ramana Maharishi, Rama Krishna, Christ and others, who seem to have suffered some sickness or some disease, or from being driven with nails through their hands and arms, whatever. The world in which we live is at the stage, where we appear to see these things. And these beings appear to go through these things, for our sake, so we can awaken and realize nobody suffers, nobody dies, and no one has any problems. It is we who have to raise our vision. It is we who have to rise above this so-called death and suffering of humanity, of beings. No Sage ever suffered. No Sage ever died. For death and suffering do not exist. All is well.
SH: But they appear to exist?
R. They appear to exist, of course. This is the level of humanities consciousness.
This is the way humanity is at this time, where they can only see the appearance and believe in the appearance. Most of humanity cannot rise above this. Yet if we believe in a higher power and if we are this power ourselves, we will begin to do something to make ourselves rise above the limitations of humanity by practicing self-inquiry, by becoming observant of our thoughts, by surrendering, by coming to satsang, by understanding the truth. (SH: It’s really fundamental that we still identify with the body, by being a body?) It’s fundamental and it’s ridiculous. (SH: Yeah, but it sure is persistent.) It’s very persistent like a bad dream. There are some people who dream a horrible dream, and they wake up, and go back to sleep and the dream continues. And they wake up again and they fall back to
SB: Robert if we rest in consciousness then there is no duality, then there is no separate self that is abstracting itself from consciousness.
R: True. (SB Then there is nothing to do.) There is nothing to do if you’re in consciousness and you are consciousness and there is nothing else. (SB: No separate self anymore.) Right. (SB: So that is an easy way right?) Then do it. (laughter) SH: Nothing to do and nobody to do it.
SB: That’s what you do, isn’t it true Robert? (R: Who knows what I do?) (laughter) SH: Well you sleep from 3 to 6 that’s all because you’re on call the rest of the time. (laughter) Is three hours enough?
R: It’s plenty. But if you would all sit with me at that time you would see some tremendous changes coming upon you, I can guarantee you of this. If some of you tried this for a month, give it a month. Where you can sit with me from 6 to 9 and 12 to 3, miracles would take place. You would not be the same person you are now. If you do it less then accordingly whatever percentage you put into it, you’ll get out of it.
SY: Robert why do you sit?
R: Because there is nothing else to do. (laughter)
Fred (SF): Would this be involved being in the physical presence or just… (R: No.) …or just keeping you in the mind? (R: Whether you’re in Japan or Korea, you can be any place you like.) SD: But there is some strength in doing it at the same time. If you’re in Japan you would have to set your clock accordingly. (R: Yes, of course.) SF: Another thing I wondered about is, our real nature’s unconditioned, effortless, choice-less, pure awareness. The unconditioned… doesn’t a lot of our conditioning come from another life…
and I like the idea of breaking the word “nothing,” into “no thing,” we could also take the word another and make it into two words “an other life.” Not what happens to this particular psychosomatic apparatus. It was from this “an other life” that brought about some of the conditioning which transpires in my mind and since I react to some music, some of these girls sing some torch songs like, “Say it isn’t so.” They cause a deep reaction in me and I don’t know why because I never had that sort of thing… unrequited love, it was real deep within me the way a lot people experience. I’ve never had it in this life so I wonder if my reaction to that doesn’t come from “an other life?” Want to comment on that?R: Certainly, as long as you believe in karma and reincarnation then it certainly comes from another life. For the body has been here before in a different form and you’ve had feelings and thoughts and beliefs before that you carry over to this life. But if you feel that you are not a body and you work on yourself by not being a body, not being a mind rather realize that you are this effortless pure awareness then there is no one left to have had these previous experiences.
Previous experiences are from the ego. If the ego is destroyed, by awakening to effortless pure awareness then there never was anything wrong and you’re totally free.
And it’s just the same as people ask me, “Will I be punished for my sins? Will I be punished for things I did in the past?” and the answer is, as long as you believe you have done these things you will be punished because you’re under the law of karma, the law of cause and effect.
But if you can rise above the body where you are no longer an ego, you are no longer a mind then there is nobody left to go through cause and effect. It’s all transcended.
There is nothing there that can hurt you. There is nowhere for it to come from. We create our own punishment. The only way to freedom is to give up the body idea. As long as the body idea persists, then karma persists, reincarnation persists and the rest of the things persist.
Fred (SF): It’s like Lord Krishna realizing that Arjuna still believed he had a body, he was a body and therefore he was living in conditioning from what he believed, what Arjuna believed, was the past.
R: Umm. Arjuna believed that he was a warrior and he couldn’t get out of that belief. Krishna knew this so he told him to go ahead and fight. And he became the leader of a king, of a nation and won the battle. But if Arjuna was spiritually developed he would’ve just realized himself that he was Krishna. There is only one Krishna. Krishna is the all pervading Self. That is another name for Krishna, like Shiva, Vishnu, Brahman.
They are just another name for the Self. But we personify them into beings. But they’re all the Self. You are the same, you are the Self. Do not look at yourself as a body or a mind or as a person that has to overcome problems or a person that is suffering from past incarnations. Give all that up. Surrender it all and become free and liberated. (SF: Thank you.) SK: Robert in this - sitting with you period - sometimes I do self inquiry and sometimes I don’t and during the times when I don’t, sometimes it seems that my mind wanders a little more.
On the other hand self-inquiry has a sort of a structured busyness to it also. But sometimes I end up wondering what I should do, is the best attitude not to worry about too much…
R: The best attitude is to surrender everything and be still and when thoughts come, give them to me. Give all your thoughts to me, give everything that comes to me, say, “Take it Robert,” and keep your mind still. If that becomes a little difficult practice self inquiry or practice observing your thoughts. But the important part is just to sit there. The best way to do this is just to sit and when thoughts come, observe them, do not pay attention. SF: Bhagvan said, “Submit to me and I will straighten out the mind.”
R: That’s a good statement. You have to remember when the words are spoken, “Submit to me,” it is not me as an individual. Forget about Robert. You’re submitting to me as the Self, which is your Self. There is only one Self. Robert cannot do anything for you.
The Self is the Self is the Self, there is nothing else. So what you’re doing since you can’t see your self as absolute reality, you are surrendering to this self as an appearance all the stuff that has been bothering you by sitting with me. And then you will merge into the same consciousness that has always been, that is effortless pure awareness, that is all pervading omnipresent, that’s what you’re surrendering to.
(silence)
(Robert continues) Glen would you like to read one of your fine books?
SN: Can I save it for Thursday?
R: Want to save it for Thursday? Mary do you want to read the Jnani.
Mary (SM): Oh yes.
(Mary reads the Jnani refer to beginning of this book for transcript) R: Try to remember that all is well. There is nothing wrong. You are loved. The whole universe is on your side, everything is beautiful. Remember to love your Self, to pray to your Self, to bow to your Self, to worship you Self, for God dwells in you as you.
Peace. I love you.
We have prashad.
SD: Goodie. (laughter) (SH: Just what you’ve been waiting for, right?) Yeah, really.
R: Real good stuff.
(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.