– Transcript 124
R: Good evening. I trust that everyone is comfortable, peaceful, relaxed.
Make yourself comfortable if you’re not comfortable. Feel free to stretch out your legs, to relax. Lie down on the floor. Take a nap. Nothing is unholy here. All things come from the same relative plane.
I notice a few new faces here tonight. I welcome you with all my heart, and I ask you not to believe a word I say. Words are just words. Do not take them too seriously. The reality which you are is beyond the words. Think of the words that make you angry, words that make you happy, words that make you fearful.
All these words seem to have power, but in reality you give them power. It’s you who give the words power and make them meaningful, so that when somebody says a certain word you may cringe, or even smile or even cry. To think that words have this power over you, whereas in truth words are completely meaningless unless you give them the power.
And who are you? You are effortless pure awareness, absolute reality, consciousness. This means you’re totally free. You have no past and you have no future. You just are.
You have always been and you always will be. Happiness is your birthright, your nature.
Peace, joy, love are your reality. You are that. All is well.
Some of you have been remarking to me the fantastic benefits you are achieving by sitting with me in the silence at the appointed hours of 12 a.m. to 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. to 9.
a.m. You’ve been making wonderful progress you tell me. But still, you tell me, things come into your mind, thoughts. You cannot stop the thoughts. As you sit in the silence thoughts come, thoughts arise.
Well, if thoughts didn’t arise you would not have to sit in the silence. The reason you’re sitting is because the thoughts still control you. If you transcended the thoughts, and you’ve transcended the I-thought, there would be no one to sit. No one would be left.
You would be absolute reality.
Therefore when you sat you would not really be sitting. You would appear to be sitting, but you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no one to be anything. You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the doer. Therefore when you discover who you are you find there is absolutely nothing to do. Yet you are doing everything.When you sit in the silence with me at those appointed hours, what should you do? You should practice self-inquiry, inquiring, “To whom do these thoughts come? Who am I?” Practice the I-am meditation. Of course you should do these things in order for them to bring you into the silence, where there is no thought and there is no mind.
Some of you ask me further if you may envision my image when you sit in the silence. When you envision my image, do not think of me as Robert. You may envision my image, this is good, or the image of any deity you choose, whether it be Ramana Maharshi, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, anyone you would choose, but realize that this image is not a person. That’s very important. This image is consciousness. It is the self. It is your self with a capital S. It is not a body as it appears.
Consequently, when you envision the form of a deity of any kind, the form to you is the all pervading self, omnipresence. You are seeing your self, in other words. By using the form of a deity in the silence, and keeping your attention on that deity, you are seeing God as your self. You are feeling within your heart the Buddha, Sat-Chit-Ananda, nirvana, and this is all pervading. This is your self.
While I am talking to you, a word came to me, and I will follow it through. The word is repentance, which is interesting. When we think of the word repentance we think of somebody walking along with a sign on Hollywood Boulevard, saying, “Repent, the end is near.’ When we think of the word repentance we think of the word in biblical terms, perhaps “You should repent,’ meaning to remove your sins and not be an evil doer.
This is a negative connotation.
It comes to me that repentance really means to return, to return. To return to what?
To return to the source. And I’m not speaking of apple sauce. To return to God, which is within your heart. To return to absolute reality, to watch, to behold, to lift your eyesight into the heavens, which means to awaken to your self, to return to that from whence you came. And you may only do this by giving up your self, giving up your ego, surrendering the mind, transcending the body, becoming totally absolutely free of bodily consciousness.
This is what repentance means.
We’re not talking about changing your life, thinking about the so called bad habits you may have, and trying to remove them. You cannot do these things because you’re working on the relative plane. It becomes very difficult. When you try to remove a bad habit a new one comes to take it’s place. What we’re talking about here is to lift your vision higher, to forget about your habits and your mistakes, your frustrations, things that have happened in your life. Drop it. We’re talking about raising your consciousness to the absolute plane of reality, where there are no habits, no world, no universe, no person, no doer, where there is only I am that I am, your true self. You are that.
As you begin to identify with reality the lower forms will take care of themselves.
They will take care of themselves because they do not exist to begin with. It’s strange for me to say that all of your habits, all of your preconceived ideas, all of your concepts, do not exist. They have never existed.
Where do they come from?
It’s like the water in the mirage. When you go to the desert you see a mirage. It appears real to you. You try to grab the water and there is sand. There is no water. But you’ve seen it. You experienced it and you would fight for it. And so it is with life. So it is with life in the big city. Everything appears real. Everything appears as if it has power, as if something is happening. Yet in truth and reality they do not exist. This has been my experience.
I’m not sharing with you something that I’ve read in a book, or something I heard from a teacher somewhere. I’m sharing with you my experience. There is no world. You are not a sinner. You have never done anything wrong in your life. You are pure, absolute reality. You are effortless, choice-less pure awareness. You are the light.
Have you ever thought of yourself in this way? All of your life you have believed you are a body, going through experiences. Yet if you look at your life, you are not the same person you were twenty years ago, the same person you were when you were a baby. When you were conceived you were no larger than the size of a pinhead. Look at you now.
Can anything be real?
You came from absolute nothing, and now you’re sitting here with a certain amount of years to you. You have arms, you have legs, you have a head, you have internal organs. And all of these things came from nothing, from no where. This means your true nature is nothing.
You are no thing, yet you appear as if you are something. You appear as if you have a life. Somebody told you to go get a life, and you got one. But what are you going to do with it? No matter what you do with your life, it’s going to end, is it not? Or so it appears. You have so many years left on this earth and you’re gone. All the pride that you have, the ego that you have, everything you’ve worked for, everything you fought for, everything you’ve believed in, is kaput, gone, nothing.
So what is the purpose of everything? Why do you exist? To die? Find out. Find out for yourself. Find the truth for yourself, for no one can really give it to you. You are the power. You are the glory. You are the universe.
You are not what you appear to be, but will you not find out? Ask yourself. When you truly ask yourself, “Who am I?” the answer will eventually come. You will know. But yet most of you are concerned with your material life, and this is what keeps you back from finding yourself. You are concerned with your humanhood. You’re concerned with the clothes you are going to wear. You’re concerned with the people in your life. You’re concerned with your job. You’re concerned with the world situation. You’re concerned with politics, and I could go on, and on and on.
It is written in the scriptures, “Take no thought of what ye shall eat, what ye shall wear, or anything at all, but think ye first of the kingdom of God, and all of these things shall be added unto you.” That is a very wise statement. First find yourself. First awaken to yourself. Then see if you’ll be concerned with your body. When you understand who you are you will see if you’ll be concerned with politics, or with the universe, or with anything else. Find out who you are first. Find yourself.
Do not go around trying to straighten out your life. You can never straighten your life out, for that’s the way life is. All of the things that are happening in the world today, have happened before, and before that, and before that, for millions of years. There have been many civilizations on this earth. They came and they went. And now you are here believing that you can make a difference.
You hear that so much on TV. “I can make a difference.’ What about you can make a difference? You are dust in the wind. We like to attach so much importance to ourselves.
Our ego is so enlarged. We want to think we’re somebody. Remember, after you die, within twenty years or so everybody will forget everything about you. You won’t even be remembered. Your children will have children and they will have children, and you will not even be a memory.
Therefore I ask you to find out, “Who am I? Who am I, really? What is my real nature? I couldn’t possibly be this body that changes, changes, changes all the time, and then dies. And if I look at the world, the same thing is happening to the world. It keeps changing, changing, changing, never the same.” And we go along with it. Never realizing what is happening, we become befuddled, confused. We’re trying to make some kind of sense out of livingness, but it has no sense, for you are not whom you appear to be.
Consequently, you have to find out who you are by following the I-thought to the source. You have to inquire within yourself, “To whom do all the thoughts come? To whom does the world come? To whom does my ego come? To whom does the universe come? To whom does God come? To whom does everything in this whole universe come?”
And you will realize very soon, “It comes to me. I feel it. I think it. I perceive it. I enjoy it sometimes. I fear it. But I see and feel and think all these things.”
This now gives you an idea of what is going on. You begin to understand that the I is experiencing this world. Not you, but the I. You are not going through these experiences, but the I is.
Who is this elusive I? Where did this I come from? Who gave it birth? How did it arrive?
You ponder all these questions, and you finally ask, “But who am I? Where did the I come from?” Yet you never answer that question. You sit in the silence inquiring, “Where did the I come from?” And as thoughts keep coming to you, you inquire, “To whom do they come? Who is thinking these thoughts? I am? Who am I?” This is really the highest way to remove all doubt and set you free.
Let me remind you again. Do not try to change your thoughts, or to change your life style, or to work on your bad habits, or to try to remove fear, and the rest of it. Rather you lift your vision high, to the highest, by following the I-thought to its source. And one day you will discover something interesting. Your body will appear to melt, to dissolve.
The world, the universe will appear to dissolve. Your God will appear to dissolve. Everything you stood up for, everything you have believed in, all of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, will dissolve. And you will find yourself as omnipresence, all pervading consciousness. You will discover that you’ve always been the ultimate reality, ultimate oneness. You are the I am. You are free.
You will appear the same. You will look the same. You will not be able to explain this to your friends or family, but you will become one of the few that have transcended the world. There will no longer be an ego or mind or a thinker left. You will know and experience unalloyed happiness, total bliss. No thing will ever disturb you again. Yet you will not sit still. The body will appear to move and do things. Yet you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not the body. You have awakened. You have become free.
One of the methods we use to make our minds one-pointed so that we may ultimately annihilate the mind, is the “I-am’ meditation. This has helped virtually thousands of people throughout the world. And if you practice this diligently, preferably when we’re sitting together in the silence, between the hours of 12 a.m. to 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., You will see amazing results ensue. We’re going to practice this now, so that you may practice by yourself at home.
(end)
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.