– Transcript 118
R: Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again. The holidays are over. Back to normality, whatever that means.
When I say to you, that all is well this is exactly what it means, unconditional, all is well, just the way things are. No matter how things look. No matter what you think. No matter what appears to be going on in this world. All is well! Think about this, just the way things are. There is nothing to add, nothing to delete. Just the way things are.
In the jungle lions are eating sheep. Monkeys eat insects. Man eats animals. All kinds of dastardly things seem to be going on in this world. You see things. You look at the world. There are wars. There is man’s inhumanity to man and in your personal life, all sorts of situations are taking place. There is a tendency to be judgmental. To see things a certain way and not like it, for you think it should be another way. Yet I can assure you, all is well. All is extremely well. Just the way it is.
The problem arises when you want to change something. When you want to put your energy into a situation and try to change it to the way you think it should be or when you see something that seems the way it shouldn’t be with someone else you believe it should be another way.
The problem lies within yourself. There are no problems in reality. There is absolutely nothing wrong. Everything is just the way it is supposed to be. I keep reiterating this point. Many of you see certain situations and you don’t like it. When you don’t like something it’s as if you’re telling god how to run the world. If you can only understand that the Self is all there is and you are that then you would understand that every thing that emanates from you is the Self. The whole universe emanates from your mind. You are in everything.
You are in the murderer. You are in the lion eating the sheep. You are in the monkeys eating the insects. You are in the good things and in the bad things, so called. Everything comes from you. This is your universe. You created it. Just the way it is. It’s your fault. (laughter). Why did you do this?
You can’t say you didn’t do it for as long as you believe something with feeling, you see something that you don’t like. Something horrifies you. Something upsets you, then you have created it, where else did it come from? Where did it come from if it didn’t come from you? Things just didn’t appear. They had to come through somebody’s mind. It is the mind that creates conditions.If you only realize that the mind does not exist there would be no conditions in your life to create or uncreate. The only reason there is a condition is because you’re allowing something called the mind to show you and tell you what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is up, what is down. You’re doing it. I want you to stop it.
Look at the mess you’re making of the world. (laughter).
Just think if you didn’t think. (laughter) We’d have joy and peace and love. But you keep on thinking, thinking, thinking, always thinking. You never stop thinking. You go to sleep you think. You wake up you think. All during the day you think. You’re always thinking, and judging and criticizing, condemning, wanting to change things. Yet again, when you want to do these things you are saying that God doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. That’s what you’re saying, for you are seeing something that you don’t like. The seer is at fault. The seer is always at fault.
I’m not trying to say that you bring conditions onto yourself. This is not a New Age philosophy where you think you are responsible for all the hurts in your life. In reality and truth there are no hurts. There is nothing happening. There is no one responsible for anything. But as long as you believe that you are human and you believe you are confronted with situations then in all appearances it looks like you’re suffering because you’re reacting to a condition that you don’t like.
What if you left every thing alone? What if you observe something and never reacted to it mentally or physically. You just left it alone. You didn’t fight it. You didn’t try to analyze it. You didn’t debate it. You just looked at it and left it alone and kept your mind centered on yourself. What do you think would happen?
You would have to become the Self. You would have to become effortless pure awareness, which is your true nature to begin with. But as long as you react to things, even your own body. When you believe your body is sick, your body has mental anguish.
Your body is suffering because of some condition, this is what blasphemy means, for in truth you are not that body. You are not that sick body. You are not that body that has mental anguish, that’s not you.
That body does not even exist. It’s as if you’ve been hypnotized into believing you’ve got a body that goes through all kinds of experiences and you’ve got a mind that thinks all kind of things and you suffer. But I say to you there is no such body. There’s no such mind. There’s no such world. How could this be? How can this be when you’re feeling it yourself when something has hurt you, when someone appears to have done something to you that you don’t like, when you’re suffering mentally or physically. How can you reconcile this with what I’m saying to you? Well, let’s look at this a different way.
When you believe you were born, all of these things were preordained in your life to transpire, or at least transpire sometime during your lifetime. So every thing in your life was preordained. The way you’re going to react, where you’re going to live, the way you’re going to judge. It is preordained when you leave your body Therefore everything
has been taken care of for you. You have absolutely nothing to do. You’ve absolutely nothing to worry about. That’s one way to look at it.
If you think your human, if you believe your human everything has been planned for you. Your whole life has been ordained, outlined. But now if you come to the conclusion that you’re not human, that you’re not the body or the mind, that there are no problems, you were never born and so you have nothing to do with your existence. There never will be a time when you will leave your body. You are the same, yesterday, today and forever. Absolute reality, self-contained, all pervading, Brahman, Sat-Chit-Ananda, nirvana, this is your real nature. This is what you really are.
Then why does the world affect you so? Why don’t you awaken? You don’t know.
You don’t know because you are already awake. There’s nothing to know. In order to know something there has to be a knower. Who is the knower? Never answer that question, for there isn’t any knower. A knower does not exist, consequently there’s absolutely nothing to know. There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to be or become. There is no enlightenment. There’s no self-realization. There is absolute blank! And you are the blankety, blank, blank.
Why do you think of yourself as a person that goes through experiences? Because you appear to go through experiences, this is the appearance in your life. You have one experience after the another. But don’t you have the same experiences in dreams? When you dream you dream that you are going through experiences, one experience after the other, yet you wake up and you realize it’s a dream. Yet you sit here and take life so seriously believing that’s the dream but this is reality.
Yet if I approached you in your dream you would tell me that this is reality. You would swear up and down that the dream was a reality and that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Yet, you woke up and you called the experience a dream.
What to call this experience? A mortal dream, a lie, delusion? Even by calling it names like this is a mistake, because there is someone left calling names. There has to be someone to name something so the someone is calling this is a delusion, calling this existence a lie. By those very thoughts the experiences become true and real for you. There is absolutely nothing you can do about your situation except keep quiet. Do you follow what I’m saying?
If you try to denounce the world and you keep saying the world is a lie, you will feel the world more deeply, for there’s someone whose saying that. It is that someone who has to be destroyed, not the condition, not the situation. For the condition, the situation is only an appearance coming from the someone. So do not work on trying to remove the delusion in front of you, do you see what I’m saying?
Do not do the meditation of trying to see the world as nothing rather try to imagine or see who this someone is who sees this world as nothing. It is that someone who has to be annihilated, not the affect but the cause. The cause is that there is someone thinking about all of these things. There’s someone trying to be self-realized. There is someone trying to end all their problems. There is someone trying to heal themselves or others. There is someone who judges.
It is that someone who has to go. And the name of that someone is I. It is I who does this. I am trying to become self-realized. But the I is already self-realized. For the I in reality, is Brahman. Pure awareness. This is the true nature of the I. Therefore the I that you think is real doesn’t even exist, for there can only be one I and that I is I-am, all pervading.
Do you see this?
It is the I, or the thinker, or the knower who has to be eliminated. For in reality there is absolutely nothing to know. If you are all pervading, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, what else do you want? You’ve got everything. You are everything. So when you try to know something, you’re making a grave mistake. This is a very important point.
Remember this.
In Advaita Vedanta, the knower is the last to go. What comes after the knower?
Silence! There is nothing else.
Just think how much knowledge you’ve gathered all these years. Reading so many books. Meditating for years. Seeing so many teachers. Having so many discussions, debates, arguments. Can’t you see now this is what’s been holding you back? This is what has been holding you back. For you have believed that you’re the knower. For you have to become a knower to become free. Yet no one has to know anything for there is absolutely nothing to know. Why is there nothing to know? Because there is only omnipresence, infinity, absolute reality and there is no name for this.
In other words, you cannot know absolute reality. You cannot know pure awareness. As long as there is someone who knows about it, it doesn’t exist. It’s only when you put an end to knowing that you become the Self. The Self has no shape, no form, no identity. It is no thing. Yet you are that. What are you going to do about it?
When most of you walk out this door you’ll start discussions, arguments. You’ll start thinking about your outside world. You’ll start thinking about your body, your material happiness, or your material suffering. And you’ll be back where you started. What I’m saying to you is if you could only learn to be quiet, in your mind. If your mind learns to keep quiet, it will become weaker and weaker and you will notice that all the action you’re taking has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Yet you will do things, go places, experience this so-called life, and you are doing absolutely nothing. For there’s no one left to do anything. There’s no one left to get sick, there’s no one left to be healthy. There’s no one left to be poor, there’s no one left to be rich.
There’s no one left to possess anything and there’s no one left not to possess anything.
There’s just no one left, and this is what gives you freedom. And the only way you can get to that place is to keep quiet. To be silent.
When you are silent, you live in eternity. You live in that split second, in the opening, the gap, between the world and your Self. And there’s no past and there’s no future.
There’s no body and there’s no mind. There is just that split second in eternity. And you are that!
No matter how many times I tell you this, you’re still going to get involved mentally. You’re still going to think and judge and go through all of these things that we’re talking about. If you do this then do not complain. Do not complain about your mental anguish, about your suffering, about your problems, for you’ll not give them up.
The only way to give them up is what? To get rid of the person who thinks they have them. Can’t you see this now? Not to imagine they’re not there. Not to think of something else. Not to try to resolve the problems and change bad into good. But to get rid of that thought, that feeling, that believes there’s something else besides the Self. And you do this simply by being quiet. Simple.
You just shut up. You stop making noises, called talking. You stop trying to win points. Who can out-talk who? Who knows more philosophy than somebody else. Who’s the right teacher? Who’s this and who’s that?
In a real devotee those thoughts do not even come to your mind. A devotee never thinks about things like this. A true devotee simply acts in the moment, and does whatever has to be done without thought, without criticism, without judgment and goes onto the next thing the same way, and goes through their whole life in total happiness, in total peace, and total joy.
The only way you can ever have true happiness and true peace and true love, is by keeping quiet. For love, happiness, joy, the Self, pure awareness are all synonymous, they present themselves when you are quiet. They present themselves when you are quiet. You therefore have to make up your mind. Do I really want to awaken? It’s so simple, yet so difficult. If you really want to awaken, you have to keep that thought first in your life. It comes before everything. If you really want to awaken, something within you will tell you what to do. You will know. For the reality, which you are, is already done. Therefore it will tell you from within what to do, to be yourself. All you have to do is to keep quiet.
You know you can carry on a conversation and still be quiet. When you speak words and you don’t really put any effort into them, you don’t really feel them, you have no emotion in them. Then you are quiet. Everything I am telling you, you can do mentally.
I’m not saying you should take a vow of silence. I’m merely saying, do not put any emotion into the words that you speak to someone. Do not take the words seriously. You have to live in this world. Therefore talking is necessary. But do not believe every word you say has something to do with your life or anybody else’s life or any thing else. Keep your words down to a minimum.
If someone talks to you and tells you something you don’t have to elaborate, you can say, “yes,” or “no.” It’s like going back to your childhood. It’s rather funny, as we grow up we try to be intelligent and we want to know many words and have long talks and great debates and we want to express ourselves so someone can understand us. Yet, has anyone ever understood you? Does anyone care about the words you speak? They’re interested in their words, they want you to hear them. And you want them to hear you. So you talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and you become frustrated, never getting anywhere. You believe somebody will appreciate you if you explain yourself well. Well, you’ve explained yourself, has anybody appreciated you? Nobody cares. (laughter) They just want to hear themselves talk. Drop it. Be rid of it.
(silence)
Feel free to ask questions. (pause) I guess nobody wants to talk.
SK: Robert, your last point, it seems to me, there are times when you are talking to a friend and there’s a kind of engagement and there is a caring and there is a communion and the words are not as important as the feeling, so that goes against my experience of what you describe?
R. Umm, this appears to be true. But in the long run, it doesn’t matter. As you keep talking about yourself to somebody else, your feelings are expressed, their feelings are expressed and you feel you have a loving relationship, that’s for a time only. You can have a loving relationship and speak little words, few words, or not speak at all. The words that come out of your mouth is to try to make the other person to see how you feel, about them, about yourself. Yet look at the way things are in relationships in this world. Relationships hardly ever last, there is so many problems and this is because of words.
As an example, when you want to marry somebody or want to live with somebody, you tell them all these beautiful words so they will accept you. But then when you’ve achieved what you want, things begin to sort of change after awhile and pretty soon you’re raising your voice and you’re using foul words. The thing has changed. It’s not the same as it used to be. As long as you’re working from your humanhood there will always be problems.
The thing to do is to understand who you are, first. Realize you are not the body or the mind or the doer or the knower or the speaker. This is not you. If you can realize this first before you talk, you will say very little and the little things you do say will be very meaningful. Something within you will speak the few words that you have to say and they will be the right words to cause a positive reaction. Do not feel you have to speak too much to anyone about anything. Truth is silence. Reality is quietness. Peace and love are stillness. Be still and know that I am God.
SD: Robert there’s something I don’t understand, in fact it’s hard to even formulate the question but you were talking about not trying to eliminate or convince yourself of the false appearances of things but simply to eliminate the self and yet Maharishi taught that you could find realization by the use of neti-neti, or by saying, “not this, not this.” This seems contradictory to me.
R. There’s no contradiction, when you say neti-neti, it is a method, a process of removing the world from your mind. What was the question? (SD: Well it seems to me that previously you were saying that you didn’t, shouldn’t try to remove the world from your mind but to remove the mind.) Oh yes, when you say neti-neti you are basically removing all of the objects, the worldly things from your mind. (SD: But isn’t that what you just said that we
didn’t need to focus on?) There’s no need to focus on that if you don’t want to. It’s just another method. It is easier to realize you are not the doer and you are not the knower, to get rid of the knower by keeping quiet. This is much easier. Neti-neti is another procedure, another process, just like watching your breath. Just like becoming the observer. Just like saying, “I am,” they’re different methods, different ways of doing the same thing.
We like to teach a direct method, where you simply awaken by keeping still. If you think you have to use methods, neti-neti is like using a mantra, it’s not any different to using a mantra. When you use a mantra you’re shutting out the world and thinking only about the mantra and the world disappears gradually but surely. When you use neti-neti you’re getting rid of every thing in the world the same way.
When you do what I said, when you do not talk, and you get rid of the knower and you’re getting rid of the person that says, “neti-neti.” You’re getting rid of the whole bowl of wax. You’re getting rid of everything. When everything is gone then you’re yourself. You have to use the method that suits you best. There’s really no contradiction, they’re just different methods.
SD: So I understand that, I understand what you’re saying that it would be simpler and more direct to simply eliminate the knower or the thought… (tape break) R. It is necessary to free you and become self-realized. If you want to practice neti-neti, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to get to the point where neti-neti has to go also. When you’re saying, “not this, not this,” and everything is gone, then “not this”
has to go also. So you come to a place where you keep still. The end result is always silence. The end of every practice is silence.
What is meditation for? Meditation is to make your mind one-pointed so you can become quiet and silent. A mantra can make your mind one pointed, so you can become quiet and silent. Neti-neti is to make your mind one-pointed, by obliterating the whole universe and you become quiet and silent. All these methods lead you to quietness and silence. So I’m just saying to you, “Keep quiet and you don’t have to do anything.”
Glen (SG): There is a real old story, the teaching story where a guru tells his disciple that everything is well. All is well. All is good. All is God. See God in everything. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to…and he’s walking along and some guy yells out, “Look out there is a wild elephant coming!” And the guy remembering his guru that all is well and everything is good and looks and sees the elephant coming and look and sees that it is Ram himself who appears as the elephant. And he admires the elephant and the elephant picks him up and throws him down and tromps him. And later on his guru walks by and says something, “Why didn’t you get out of the way?” And he said, “Well you told me to see God in everything?” And the guru says, “Well why didn’t you see God in the guy that told you that there is a wild elephant coming and get out of the way?” So my question is, it’s a matter of perspective, I get the feeling that the words that you use are saying that we should not interact with our environment or we should see everything as good and pure and whole, which it always is but isn’t it good and pure and whole to be politically active?
And to get out there and to sell those used cars? Or fall in love or go shopping, you know?R. Of course, I never said to be inactive. I said to be spontaneous, to be totally spontaneous. To do whatever you have to do, without believing you are the doer. That’s all. (SG: So I can still be politically active - but isn’t that exchanging good for bad though?) Exactly, you will not have an I, to be politically active. (SG: Uh-uh.) You will be politically active yet you will be totally free, because the I is not politically active. The I has been destroyed, there’s no I, therefore your body can do anything. So Ramana Maharishi died a horrible death of cancer, yet he never did that, it never happened, because he had no I to feel this. There was no I left to do what you’ve said, there’s no I to die, the I was destroyed a long time ago.
So I’m never saying you have to keep quiet and do nothing. As long as you are in this world as a body, the body will appear in the world of doers. But the point is, you are not that doer. Even though you’re politically active, you get married. You have children.
You go through life as a used car salesman, whatever you’re doing, it’s not you that’s doing this. That’s the paradox. (SG: So in other words you kind of go with the flow?) No, no, no, there’s really no flow.
SD: Uh oh. (laughter)
R: You are just doing what you are doing, but you are not the doer. See there are two worlds, I’ll explain this a little better. There appears to be two worlds the human world and the spiritual world. The spiritual world does absolutely nothing, but the human world seems to be doing everything. Therefore the first realization is that the spiritual world is within you and the spiritual world within you, you do certain things and you no longer believe you are the doer.
When the I is destroyed by inquiring, “To whom does this I come? Who is the I that is the doer?” And you keep silent and the I is totally destroyed, then you will be totally free, absolutely free. Yet to others the body will appear to be doing things. This is something that is a little difficult for most of us to comprehend. No one is doing anything.
Yet the work is getting done and people appear to be doing things. Yet nothing is taking place and no one is doing a thing.
SL: I had an experience sort of like that if it is like that? My daughter told me that she was going to have this painting that I painted. I thought that was kind of funny. I mean I hadn’t done any painting in a long time it was just… and now I find myself starting to paint and she didn’t tell me what it was going to be or something, I never thought about it the whole time. And I painted on this for two months. And I never knew where it came from and I never felt it had anything to do with me, at all it was just… but in the process when I was painting I always felt very at peace and it just happened. And then when I finally gave it to her she said it was exactly what she wanted and she hung it up in her house and she said, “You have to come and see this.” I came and looked at it and it never… I didn’t feel anything about it, it was just a painting on the wall. It could have been done by anyone. I could have as easily never seen it before. It was just… it was just done.
R: That’s a good example. Life goes on, your body is karmically inclined to go through certain experiences and it will but it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You
become spontaneous. Again the example is like a gigantic screen and there are images on the screen. One image is you. That is your body going through images on the screen. Your body is born. It’s a baby. It becomes older and it goes to school. It grows up, becomes a musician. Gets married has children. Gets old and dies. You are observing all of this as the screen. You are cognizance of all the happenings of your body going through these experiences. Yet you are apart from this. You are totally free of it. It never really affected you.
Now can you see how it works.
Images appear on the screen, wars, man’s inhumanity to man, civilizations come, civilizations go, all this is taking place on your screen, on yourself. Yet nothing is happening to yourself. The screen is not involved in the war. The screen is not involved in the birth or the death of the person. Yet on the screen the images are taking place. The screen remains the same. Silence, still, unmovable, never changing. Your true Self is the screen.
And all the things you go through in life are taking place on the screen.
Now the problem is you have misidentified yourself with the people on the screen rather than with the screen. Do you see what I’m saying? You believe you are the happening on the screen. You have forgotten that you are the screen. You have identified yourself with the person on the screen. Whereas a Jnani or a realized one, knows themselves 100%
to be the screen yet also the images also taking place as their body. And they’re going through all kinds of experiences. But they know, a 100 percent sure that they are the screen. The Self is the screen. Pure awareness is the screen. Sat-Chit-Ananda is the screen.
Absolute reality is the screen. You are the screen. Take your identification away from the body consciousness and become the Self.
Many people just by listening to this explanation, awaken!
(silence)
SD: Robert again a dilemma seems to me hard to get passed, that if you think I am the screen there’s still an I?
R: This is for the sake of talking. Forget about the I, there is only the screen. The screen is self-realization. The screen is the atman. The screen is absolute reality. The screen is God. (SD: But while in the process of appearing to try to awaken, we seem to need a frame of reference. And as long as we identify with the body we do think and even thinking of the screen, is thinking?) Yes. The time comes when you don’t think about the screen, you just are. As you keep practicing, as you keep awakening, as you keep doing the sadhanas that you have to do, the time will come when you just become. (SD: So I think you have just answered my next question which was going to be that it seems that sadhana’s involve thinking.) Sadhana has to involve thinking because you’re doing it. In the absolute sense there is no sadhana. There is absolutely nothing. There is not even a screen. The screen is for the sake of telling you the story of how it is, to an extent. Because how else would you explain it. But there is no screen. There are no bodies, there is nothing. But yet for the sake of explanation, that’s one way to see it.SK: Robert I just read something the other day coincides with this concept you’re just talking about and that was scientifically they show that light created molecules and atoms which created vegetables, minerals and human beings. And in essence what you’re saying is when I know that, all I really am is the light. But it appears that the light created all this stuff. (R: Umm.) And I get caught up in thinking that I’m the stuff instead of the original, the screen or the light.
R: Yes you can say that. We’re identified with the stuff. Get rid of your stuff!
SK: But at the same time it’s a psychological thing… you were talking about before, judging and comparing and criticizing and all this stuff right? I do that a lot. (R: Well stop!) (laughter) Just stop? Yeah right. (laughs) What I was going to say is, when I observe this, well that’s not me that’s… I see it out there, it’s not me, it’s out there. That’s what I tell myself. That I see it in everyone else and the world is just, it’s all wrong, like you said I’m trying to change it. So I’m judging it and comparing it. But that’s what I observe, but the observed, what I’m observing, I’m the observer and from what I understand it’s the same thing it’s really me. And to realize that I’m the criticizer and I’m really criticizing myself that is what I’m seeing. I’m seeing all my own stuff.
I just don’t want to own it so I say, “It’s you that is screwed up.” (R: Of course.) Right? (R: Sure.) And for me to own that, that is hard to do, I do not want to accept that. I’d rather find out that it’s you. (laughter) I mean that is a rude awakening to realize that I’ve got to own this stuff.
R: Of course you can only see yourself wherever you look. (SK: Right, I mean it’s simple but I don’t know…) Well that’s only one stage of it. (SK: Yeah. I realize that.) As you continue you realize there is no one who has any steps to begin with. (SK: Yeah.) It’s not you at all. It is I, the I appears to have it not you. So ask yourself, “Where did the I come from? Who gave it birth? How did it appear?” And as you inquire this way you will realize the I never existed to begin with.
SD: So at a point is there no realizer either? (R: There is no realizer.) So the seeking of self-realization once again… (R: is erroneous.) Is paradoxical. (R: Paradoxical too.) That too, yeah.
R: Certainly but you have to start somewhere. If you refuse to wake up by my telling you to wake up then you have to do all these sadhanas you have to do all these things. Until you come to the conclusion that there is nobody doing anything. But as long as you believe you’re still a body then you have to do those things that you have to do to find out that there is no body. That’s why all is well. That is why everything is in it’s right place and everything is unfolding as it should. You are where you are because of what you are. So there are no mistakes. You simply wake up and become free.
Glen (SG): So Robert what you are saying is it doesn’t make any difference what is going on in your head, any thoughts and feelings, nothing? It simply is, end. (R: True.) It’s like that? (R: This is true.) All this stuff flying up and you can just wake up and it doesn’t make any difference where you are at, where you think your at…If what you’re saying is the I is just an implication… you get this implication because of the fact that you think you’re in this body so you think this body must have an I, is that what you’re saying? (R: That’s true, yes.) Well it seems to be implied that there
must be an I here because there is this body because if he starts doing it on himself, it has to be tacked onto something, it has to be strung onto something you take the blame for it, in a sense?
R: Whenever you refer to your body you say I. I is your body. If there were no I you wouldn’t have a body. So you do no try to get rid of the body you try to get rid of the I. And then everything else goes with it.
Glen (SG): So even though all of these things seem to be coming down on ones thoughts, all your feelings, all your history, all your memories yet in any second you can just say, “I’m not doing anything.” (R: You can say that.) Yeah this is just going on and I’m it, but you don’t think it?
(laughter) (R: You realize the I is responsible for everything in your life and there is no I, so you’re free.)
(silence)
SL: Robert I’ve always identified the I with Christhood that what we were before we were here and will be with us through eternity. And so when I think of people that have gone on I always think that - how do I say this - I guess I’ve been kind of malpracticing and I always think that this same I is still being supplied from the infinite, but until they get rid of the I altogether they will still be on the cycle and will be back. (R: Exactly.) You see I’ve been malpracticing!
R: You’ve been doing well because you realize it now. (SL: Yeah.) Now you realize this. So everything is happening the way it’s supposed to. You were supposed to realize this tonight.
SL: Well I’ve been teaching my children that because when I think of their grandparents are gone or somebody is gone I have always just felt that I could make them feel secure that they would never be without identity. That they will always be supplied and they will be this to eternity.
So what do I say now? God will just be?
R: Just tell them, “That God is and that all is well.” (SL: And for someone that is on the beginning path, is that sufficient?) It’s sufficient. You can tell them that, “God will take care of them. God is them. They are God. God is within them. And there is only God which is the Self.” (SL: Yeah.)
SD: So would it be correct for her to say of diseased grandparents or whatever that they have gone back to being part of God or is that also a misnomer because I guess because you aren’t part of God you are God.
R: If you’re talking to children you have to make it simple. So they can understand. So you can tell them they’ve gone back to God, if you like. That God is everything.
God is love and they become love. And that all the whole universe is them. They are the whole universe.
SD: So even though it may be a slight spiritual misnomer you can tell them that they go back to being part of everything or part of God? (R: Yes.) Although beyond that would be the fact that they are God period, not part of anything.
R: For children you have to make it understandable. So you can tell them that they have melted into God and God is love and God is the whole universe. SD: And that would help her with the fact that God is eternal and forever.
SL: But I think that if God just is, it should just eliminate the time to explain through those words and go into God is, because if you’re saying that they are there then you’re still…I mean “they” might be back on the cycle and it’s not up to us, you should just let them know that God is always, period. Is that right Robert? Not try to get into having them consoled by God is because if you get into the point that…
R: It all depends in the evolvement of the children. It depends where they are.
What you can say, what they can understand. (SL: Um-hm.) It has to be understandable.
But as long as you make them understand that God is, there is nothing but God, the weeds, the flowers, the chickenpox, everything is God. (SL: When you were saying, “I-am, “
in the beginning of the… I’ve read so much I-am recently that in the beginning, didn’t you say, “I am?”) I-am is absolute reality, I-am is God. ( SL: Right, so couldn’t I say that they are just “I-am” still? You know, that they are “I am,” the “I am” that will never leave us that has never been born and never will die?) Sure you can say that. (SL: Well that’s what I say.) Well keep it up?
(laughter) (SL: Okay so that isn’t incorrect.) You’re better using simple language for children.
(SL: Yeah.)
SD: I think you need to use simple language for us. (laughter) (R: Speak for yourself.) S: Glen, do you want to read something for us? Explain what you’re reading.
S: In whole detail?
R: No just tell them what this means.
S: From Ashtravakra Gita, “The Heart of Awareness.”
You are pure, nothing touches you. What is there to renounce?
Let it all go. The body and the mind, let yourself dissolve.
Like bubbles in the sea all the world arise in you.
Know you are the Self. Know you are one. Let yourself dissolve.
You see the world but like the snake in the rope it is not really there.
You are pure. Let yourself dissolve.
You are one and the same. In joy and sorrow. Hope and despair. Life and death.
You are already fulfilled. Let yourself dissolve.
I am boundless space. The world is a clay pot. This is the truth.
There is nothing to accept. Nothing to reject. Nothing to dissolve.
I’m the ocean. All the worlds are like waves. This is the truth.
Nothing to hold onto, nothing to let go of. Nothing to dissolve.
I am the mother of pearl. The world is a vein of silver, an illusion.
This is the truth. Nothing to grasp. Nothing to spurn. Nothing to dissolve.
I am in all beings. All beings are in me. This is the whole truth.
Nothing to embrace. Nothing to relinquish. Nothing to dissolve.
R: Thank you Glen. (turns to Mary) Do you want to read the Jnani? (SM: Yes.) (Mary reads the Jnani)
R: Thank you Mary.
Do we have any announcements?
Mary (SM): Yes, we have transcripts and we have four more. I don’t have any myself so I had to take one of them. And this is “Beyond the World of Maya.” It’s the new one that just came out. It’s number 51 and I would like to have people make some copies if you would please.
R: We have prashad. Remember what prashad is, it’s the entire teaching and the teacher. So when you eat prashad you’re eating your teacher. (students laugh) SM: I’d just like to thank the people who brought back number 49, “What is, is God?”
(transcript 49) We have them on the table.
R: Be happy!
Glen (SG): Don’t worry, be happy.
(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.