– Transcript 145
R: …(Students: Good afternoon Robert.) It is good being with you again. I welcome you with all my heart. I love every one of you just the way you are.
There is only one way in which to transcend your problems and to find unalloyed happiness and peace. Who can tell me what that is?
Mary (SM): Stop thinking? (SF: Destroy the mind?)
R: Destroy the mind, to stop thinking. (SB: Drop it!)
R: Drop it. That’s all good but what do you have to become?
Mary (SM): Nothing? (SH: What you already are?) SB: Nothing?
R: Henry’s on the right track.
SB: Consciousness? (SM: We’re already consciousness?) Pure consciousness?
R: You have to return to what you are before you were born. What were you before you were born? Nothing. Nothing. If you can return to that while embodied that is called self-realization. If you don’t have to wait to die or to drop your body but you can actually return to that while you are in a so-called body then you will be in a completely different dimension so-to-speak.
You will see man’s inhumanity to man, wars yet for you there will be peace. You will see wholeness. Where there is a diseased body you will see complete health, total harmony. Where there appears to be lack or limitation you will see riches beyond your wildest dreams. For you have gone beyond the so-called relative world into the source of your existence. Yet you don’t really have to do anything or go anywhere you’re already there. Just the way you are right now. It is your thinking that makes you think otherwise.
It is your brainwashing that you’ve had since you were a little kid that makes you think something is wrong someplace, something isn’t right or that you have to do something to become self-realized. It means you have to let go of attachment to person, place or thing, mentally.
When you try to be a so-called do-gooder what you’re really saying is there is something wrong aren’t you? Otherwise why would try to do good? If you try to heal someone you must believe the person is sick or you wouldn’t try to heal them. When you try to help the homeless or do altruistic things in your life you are making believe in the play of Maya, that there is suffering and poverty and things in this world that exist and you are trying to stop this. Can’t you see what I’m trying to say? The world has been like this since it came into being as a dream. Which it really never did. But in this Maya in this dream there are people who do good and people who do bad. It is all part of the duality concept. There are people who maim, kill, rob and there are people who give, love and help. They are both impostors.
Yet I’m not saying to ignore the situation. When you ignore the situation you are also making a mistake because you believe in the situation. If you believe in the situation you cannot ignore it. Don’t you see? As long as you believe that something is wrong you’ve got to make it good. In other words when you see a person starving on the street who asks you for a piece of bread, you must give him the bread because you see him starving in the street. There will come a time when you will not see the person starving in the street and just by you being near this person this person will appease his hunger.
Without any material bread.
Everything in this world is Maya, it’s a trick, to keep you hopping, to keep you going along, to keep you doing something. Remember the opposite of bad is good. The opposite of wrong is right. You do not want to change opposites. We want to transcend opposites, where there is nothing. Where nothing exists. Where nothing exists there is total freedom. I’m not speaking of total freedom for you alone when I say this. The total freedom I’m speaking of is all pervading. If you become total freedom the total freedom that you become is omnipresence. Therefore wherever you look there is total freedom.
I’m not referring to a selfish personal life. Where a person wants to overcome their difficulties and overcome their problems and yet the rest of the world still has them. When you really transcend the world you have transcended it for everyone. Everyone in the world. Every sentient and insentient thing.
Tom what are you doing over that side? I’m over here. Transportation. (laughter) The world as it appears is neither good nor bad, right or wrong. Try to understand that when you get involved as a do-gooder it appears as if you are helping, but has poverty ceased? Will it ever cease to be? Has man’s inhumanity to man ceased or will it ever cease? Are all the dastardly conditions in the world stopping at all or do they appear to be getting worse? What has happened to all the do-gooders that have worked for freedom and peace and happiness and joy in this world? They pass away and no one ever hears from them again. And the world goes on with its foolishness with its nonsense.
This is a hard thing to say to the average person on the street. For they can never comprehend this. Most of you here know what I’m talking about.
The world is Maya, an illusion. When you get caught up in the illusion you play your part. And you get so involved in your part you believe this is what you’re doing.
That you’re being of service, you’re being of help. And all your friends encourage you.
They tell you how kind you are, the good that you’re doing to this world. There will always be people like that. Of course you can say that if everybody stopped doing good the world would go to hell. The world is already in hell. You don’t have to go anywhere.
The game is, we each have a part of this Maya, of this hell, this illusion. And we think we’re doing good. We think the things we do are wonderful. We help humanity. We
enjoy our lives so-to-speak. We do happy things. Do try to understand this is all part of duality. All part of the game. Karmically you come into this world as either a good guy or a bad guy. You have no choice. This is all duality. So you’ve got to play a role, as you work in the illusion, and you come back again and again and again always playing a different part, so it appears. One time you come back as a good guy the next time you come back as a bad guy. Like cowboys and Indians. One time you’re the Indian and the next time you’re the cowboy. It never ends. There is no end to it.
I’ve spoken to many people who have worked for peace in this world. Who have worked with the homeless, who want to feed the poor all over the world. This is very commendable, this is very good. But they all tell me the same thing they become disillusioned. For when you feed a hundred two hundred appear at your door again. When you feed two hundred, four hundred appear at your door. It never ends.
Of course you’re saying, “Well at least I fed the hundred that came to me. I took care of those who came to me.” This is true also, for as long as you are in that position, where again you believe there are homeless people suffering and there is injustice and cruelty in this world then you have to do your part to help overcome it. But as you work on yourself and you overcome the Maya, the illusion you do not become a person that does nothing. For you’re not a person any longer. The personality has been transcended, transmuted. You have become the nothingness in which the world is a superimposition.
You have become the screen instead of the players on the screen. As the screen there is absolutely nothing for you to do but observe and watch the players in action.
Yet when I say there is absolutely nothing to do it’s paradoxical because you still will do something. Realizing that you are not the doer. When I say, “As you realize you are not the doer,” you will not think of it in that way. When you are not the doer there will be no one to think I am not the doer. There will not be an entity who is not the doer. For if you say to yourself that you are not the doer then you are the doer trying to say, “I’m not the doer.” When you are not the doer there is nobody left. So you can’t say that, you can’t voice that. When you are absolute freedom you are like a leaf on a tree. A leaf on a tree rocks with nature, braves out the storms, sometimes it dies but the essence of the leaf never dies.
The essence is the same essence of you, pure beingness. You are pure beingness. Try to understand this it will save your life.
As long as you feel you have to do something in this world then by all means do something. As long as you feel that you have to do nothing in this world by all means do nothing. Yet the something and the nothing are two sides of the same coin. For there is somebody who has to do something and there is somebody who has to do nothing. You cannot say, “I am nothing.” For again if you say, “I am nothing,” it means that you are something. This is why silence is reality. Can you see this now.
This is the reason silence is enlightenment. As soon as you open your mouth you spoil it. As soon as you think about anything you spoil it. For everything you say is duality. You cannot say one word that has absolutely nothing to do with reality and not duality.There is not one word, one utterance you can make, that has absolutely nothing to do with duality. Can you think of a word that has nothing to do with duality?
You can say the word, “God.” The reason you’re saying the word God, is because you believe there was no God there. So you’re calling upon God. If God was always there why do you have to say God at all? So to whom are you calling upon? All concepts have to be transcended. Everything you believe, everything you’ve been taught, everything that makes any sense has to go down the drain. You must become senseless. Not say it or speak of it but become it without words. This is the only way to be free. Even when I speak of freedom it’s the same thing. The reason we speak of freedom is because we think we’re bound. Therefore we speak of freedom. What can you speak about? Nothing.
This is why when most of you see me in my personal life as it appears to you, I hardly ever talk. For what can I say? It’s not that I don’t want to talk there is nothing to say! It’s all nonsense.
I’ll ask a person, “How do you feel?” They say, “I feel terrible I got a pain in my head.” So I say, “Take an aspirin,” and you’ll say, “I did it doesn’t help.” I’ll say, “Squeeze your head with both hands,” so you squeeze your head with both hands. This may make it better this may make it worse, what difference does it make? You’re looking for answers.
You’re looking for perfection, for something to be, to become. And there is absolutely nothing to be or become.
Who do you think you are? You tell me I’m a man, I’m a woman. That is your gender. That is not who you are. You’ve been told you are that when you were born. You’re neither a man or a woman. But what were you before you were born? You were the reality.
Again it’s words, for if you were the reality then there has to be an unreality, then it couldn’t be a reality. True? Think about this. If you say, “I’m reality,” that’s only a comparison. There has to be an unreality somewhere for you to be a reality.
Yet most of us always want to be something. We’re not satisfied just being we want to be something. And of course what we want to be is better than we are. We don’t like what we are. If we’re fat we want to be thin. If we’re thin we want to be fat. If we’re tall we want to be short if we’re short we want to be tall. If we think we’re dumb we want to be smart if we’re smart we think we’re too smart. It never ends it goes on. Goes on forever. So how do you get out of all of this? First you’ve got to be tired of the whole game.
You got to be sick and tired of the whole game of good and bad, up and down, happy and sad, rich or poor, sick or healthy. You’ve got to be tired of everything. The whole game.
The whole universe. The whole world. Then when you’re tired of it, really tired of it, you keep still.
You stop talking so much, trying to prove points, trying to win debates, trying to explain to somebody what truth is, or what it isn’t. You learn to keep still. But you do not become a cold fish. You have manners, you’re loving, you’re kind not because you want to be this is your nature. When you feel your real Self you do not feel that you’re better than
other people or that you are good and somebody else is bad or that you know something somebody else doesn’t. This is the worst form of egotism.
The more realized you become the more you think you know nothing. There is nothing for you to know anymore. But when you realize the world is false and the world is only an idea in consciousness what can you possibly do in this world, what can you see in this world. What can you possibly do to help anyone? Yet by just being people appear to be helped when they are around you. Things change.
Yet most of you in this room today are still trying to change bad for good. You want to improve your condition, you want to have all kinds of fun and all kinds of joy in the world. And you go after it and you have it and it appears that you have it, again this is a trick of Maya. To fool you, to delude you this way. To show you’re having fun, you’re enjoying life. But remember the pendulum has to swing the other direction. And pretty soon you’re miserable, crying. You feel isolated, unwanted, unloved. So you go looking for love in all the wrong places. (laughter) And you find it. (laughter) And you play the game again. You’ve never been so happy in your life. The pendulum has to swing again back to the other side after so much time. You become upset, morbid, disgusted and your life goes on like this. It is then that most people start searching for answers.
This is why it is not really a blessing to have good karma, so-to-speak. For when you have good karma you don’t care about spiritual life. You believe, I’ve got good karma why do I need spiritual life that is for people who are suffering. Many people believe this you know. They tell me, “I’m living good. I’ve got plenty of money in the bank. I’ve got a home. I’ve got a car. I’ve got a wife. I’ve got children. I’ve got everything I want in life.
Why do I need spiritual life that’s for people who are suffering?” How deluded can you get? For this will all pass. Even if it goes on throughout the life. Remember change in the relativity…in the universe of relativity change takes all forms, and they goes through time periods. What I mean by this is your life right now is but a split second in eternity. That’s all your life is.
It appears to you as you live four score and ten, or whatever score you want me to put. And you had a good life for all the four score and ten. You have not searched for spiritual life. You are in the dream you have not come out of it. You’re deeply involved in the dream. You’re deeply involved in Maya. And if you know nothing about spiritual life and if you’re only aware of your goodness, your material goodness that is upon you and that’s all you know you have to experience the opposite. Therefore you may come back in an another life and you come back the way you left off, rich, in a good family. And then it will die down. It will begin to subside. Little by little you’ll begin to experience the other side of it, you’ve got to. So what may happen is you maybe born in a time where there is a recession, inflation, you lose all of your money. Your husband or your wife commits suicide. You have to go on welfare. This happens little by little in slow motion. So you cannot see it. For you’re looking at lifetimes. That you’re here today and gone tomorrow. And you believe if I’ve got good things in my life now. If I feel healthy and strong that is all I want, that will make me happy.
This is why you are told in the higher spiritual teachings, to forget all this. Do not think about being healthy, happy and wise, as they told you when you were a kid. Look at the world in which we live especially the capitalistic societies. The whole idea of living in a capitalistic society is to become rich. That does not mean any other society is any better.
It’s better than living in a communistic society, because in a communistic society you cannot own anything. They’re both Maya. They’re both a joke. The point that you have to realize again that as long as you believe in a world. As long as you believe in a universe as a fact, as an entity you’re going to have to come back again and again and experience everything over and over again.
I was listening to an old Alan Watts tape made in 1954. And Alan Watts is saying on the tape, “I’m sitting in Henry’s house and the birds are screeching I can hardly hear my self talk on the tape.” (laughter) The same birds that are singing now. The same thing is happening now that happened before. Alan Watts was here in 1954 and I’m here now.
(laughter) What has changed? And when we’re all gone it will continue. Big deal. (students laugh) In the year 2110 there will be people who have a meeting like this talking about the same things, same nonsense.
Nate (SC): Henry will be sitting there. (students laugh) (SH: I give up. It’s hopeless.) (laughter) R: And somebody will be saying, “In 1992 there was Robert sitting here listening to the birds. And Henry sitting there with a long beard. When am I going to leave my body.”
(students laugh) (SM: With the dog there.) (laughter) (SH: Too much.) R: And here we are. Where are we? So get rid of yourself and be happy. (laughter) Now let’s see for once who can stump the guru.
Q: (Robert reads.) Where is the mind on the deep sleep state?
A: (Robert answers.) What mind? There never was a mind. When you’re in deep sleep you’re referring to the mind that you think you’ve got. That mind that doesn’t exist goes back into the Self. When you go into deep sleep, the thoughts, the mind what we call a mind is simply a compilation of thoughts. Thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future. That is all a mind is. But when you’re in deep sleep there is no one to think you can’t think. Because the thoughts have gone back where they belong, into nothingness.
They become absolute nothing. No thoughts, no mind.
So when we explain it to people who think there is a mind, there is a self, there is a this, there is a that. We say that the Self or God is located on the right side of the chest.
That is where the spiritual heart is. When you’re in deep sleep the mind that has been active returns to the spiritual heart. Where once again it merges with the Self, which is the spiritual heart until you awaken. When you awaken instantaneously what you call the mind or thoughts rush into the brain. And you become immediately cognizant of I. I am the body. I am the mind. Then you become cognizant of the universe and the people and others and everything going on around you. It all happens instantaneously. Very fast.
But if you think about this before you go to sleep and you feel that the mind is going into the heart as you fall asleep, when you wake up you will continue with the thought that you fell asleep with. And you will be able to feel to an extent the mind coming out of the heart and going back into the brain where the light becomes evident. But do not become too technical about these things. Do not become exact or too intellectual about this. There is no mind. There is no heart. There is no body. There is no sleep. There is no time. There is no space. There is nothing. There is only Henry. (laughter) SM: Thank you Robert. That was the only question.
R: That’s the only question. A mind question.
SB: I have a question. (R: Bob has a question.) Robert how does the consciousness after it dies, how does it actually get reincarnated? How does it get… (R: What consciousness dies?) The consciousness plus the tendencies that the person left the body with. And the tendencies I’ve heard is what causes it - the patterning is what causes it to be propelled and impelled to take another breath. But how - what is that mechanism, how does it work? I mean it has to happen through the reproductive fluid. How does that pattern get into the reproductive fluid? How is it transmitted?
We know supposedly pick your father and something like that. How does it work?
R: In order for it to work you’ve got to work. As long as you exist a question like that is done exactly that way. And all these things come to pass. But in truth it doesn’t work because it never existed. (SB: Well let’s talk about the falsehood trip for a while. How does it get into the body of the person that reproduces that baby?) Consciousness you mean? (SB: Yeah.) Consciousness is always there. (SB: Like when after I died what happened to my consciousness plus the mind, the patterning. How did that pick that particular man as the father? How did it get into that reproductive fluid? How did that work?) This is all determined by what you are, what you’ve been. Your samskaras. Your latent tendencies what you were in a previous life or different lifetimes, in this life. Everything that you’ve been through. (SB: Is it like an all pervading pattern that just finds a person or consciousness that’s unmanifest. Is it an all pervading pattern that gravitates to a particular man? How does that work?) Imagine you’re a drug dealer and you got shot by the police. (SB: Okay.) Then the pattern, what you call the pattern leaves the body takes a rest and goes finds another suitable body to continue its existence from where it was before. And again continues. (SB: How does it go find another pseudo body out of a billion human beings how does it find that man that father, you know, what’s…) It’s like a needle in a haystack. It finds what it has to find. It finds itself where it’s been. It’s been a drug dealer so it’s been totally motivated by drugs…
(break in tape)
SB: …being propelled to a particular individual?
R: It’s like saying, “How do I wake up in the morning?” It’s the same thing. These things just happen. They go through all kinds of experiences… (SB: Nobody knows these things?) There is nothing to know. (SB: Nobody actually knows the actual mechanism whereby this divine minded consciousness actually becomes the reproductive fluid of this person or…) You’re looking for a mechanism, there is no mechanism. (SB: And yet we’re all here and yet something happened, something moved it into a particular body.) Part of the Maya, part of the delusion. It appears this way but it never happened like this. It doesn’t exist this way. It’s only an appearance. You’re talking of the seminal fluid. It doesn’t take anything it just continues, it’s a continuation of what you are and this causes you to pick the right person, the right parents, this is all karmic. There is nothing deep and profound about this. It’s just you continue from where you left off…
SB: Well how does the spatial universe where there is time and space is that…I mean when you die does that become an all pervading kind of a pattern that’s all over, and that if it’s only printed on a particular vibration that’s compatible. I’m looking at the…trying to…
R: You heard of the Arkashik records. The akarshik records of every human being.
Every movement they’ve made. Everything they’ve done. Is part of the akarshik records.
They are so intricate that it would take a billion accountants to be able to understand one iota of how this works. But everything is accountable in the universe. You’re accountable for everything you do, every movement you make. So say you lift your finger, it’s written down in the Arkashik records. You stick your finger in the water, it’s written down in the Arkashik records. You kill somebody it’s on the akarshik records. Everything you do is in the Arkashik records.
SH: Who wants to know about akarshik records? (R: He wants to know about akarshik records?) (SB: No I don’t want to now about akarshik records.) (SH: This is pure mythology.) R: Of course, this is what he’s talking about. (SB: No I’m not, I’m not talking about this reality.) What are you talking about? Reality?
SH: Yeah he thinks it’s real. The myth is real. (SB: I’m talking about relative reality.
(laughter) Yet which is maybe not real but here we are.) R: That is what I’m telling you about the relative reality, the Arkashik records.
Everything is recorded in the big book. (laughter) See what happens is every time you make a movement it’s recorded therefore when you leave the body that goes in the seminal fluid. Then the same thing appears again.
SB: When it leaves the body is it just a certain, is it a state, is it a pattern or is it all pervading or is it consciousness all over everything. And yet it’s still a particular pattern. How does it get there?
R: It moves through time and space… (SB: Is it a particular…) It’s a cell an atom. (SB: One atom in time and space and it moves through time and space and finds the right person to be the father.) You can say that if you like. (laughter) (SB: I’m just trying to know.) SH: Where does it get you?
SB: Nobody has ever said, nobody has ever explained this.
R: Because there is nothing to explain really. What is there to explain it doesn’t exist? Like a fairy tale.
SB: Yeah and yet everyday we have to suffer and work so hard and you say it doesn’t exist and yet the life right now is a disaster. You know it’s like a torture. It’s more real than all the reality
that we’re talking about all this reality. But all this reality, it might be reality but it’s not manifest, our everyday life is very very difficult.
R: But you’re saying our, speak for yourself. (SB: Well mine then.) Your life is like this and you’re seeing it this way and you’re trying to get out of it. But there is nothing that really happens to put you in it. The understanding is you were never in it to begin with. And that goes somewhere far away from you because as you say your experience hurts you. (SB: Yeah.) And you want to know why it happens this way, why it hurts you.
So you think about karma and you realize this is what you’re doing as a result of what you’ve done before. And you think it’s a result of something else. Therefore the right molecules and the right atoms come into play. Everything in the relative world that builds in the relative world comes into play and it happens through the atoms, through the molecules, through the cells. And the body is put together through the atoms that you need at this moment to experiences your experiencers and there you are.
SB: It is strange that the reality we don’t realize or experience directly but the unreality we experience and realize directly. It doesn’t make sense.
R: But you’re not really experiencing the unreality. You’re so bogged down in the unreality that it appears very real to you. Think of it this way. When you’re looking at a movie. You get excited about the movie. And it appears so real to you. Because you got involved in the movie, in the plot and what’s going on and you’re passionate about it.
You’re really feeling the movie there are many people like this. You’re crying when it’s time to cry, laughing when it’s time to laugh. But where does the movie come from. Light, camera. There is only the screen. And the light creates a reflection of the image. They’re images. They produce images, they’re a reflection of the light. It produces images on the screen and everything looks so real for you. So would you ask the people in the movie the same question? Would you ask the people in the movie, on the screen, how did you get like this? What made you this way? What made you be a murderer? What made you be a saint? There is no one to answer because it’s a reflection of light. Only the screen exists.
So it is with us. We are a reflection of light on the screen of life. And we appear to be going through all these things but we’re not. So it’s wrong identification. You have to give up the identification with the things that hurt you. And you have to see it in a different light. In a new experience you have to see the whole thing differently than what you see now. And when you see it differently things will change. But as long as you keep holding on to your hurts and the badness of your position it only increases the delusion. ( SB: And yet we’re still controlled by it. Even if you wake up, even if you have a realization you’re still controlled by it. By this system and this con game and all this. Because you still have to get up and go to work and…you’re under control, you’re always controlled. Even the Jnani is controlled you know.) On the contrary. (SB: Well it seems to me.) This is how you see the picture. This is what you’re seeing. (SB: Same with Ramana if he didn’t get food he would have died. As a body but that is not what he really is of course. As a manifestation he is controlled by whatever or whatever the power is controlling manifestation. His manifestation is in control by them not him as reality.) It doesn’t work like that. We as individuals see our own world. And we see what we are. And we’re seeing this as an experience but there is no such experience. A Jnani does not go through what you think he goes through. Ramana didn’t go through any suffering when he died. He would not die if he didn’t eat. But the appearance would be that he would. (SB: But the body appeared to be in pain. There was moaning, there was…) You’re seeing this. That is the way you look at it. That is the way you see it. That is the way it appears to you. But it’s not like that. (SB: Why would he moan if he wasn’t in pain?) You’re seeing the moaning. (SB: It isn’t really moaning even though everybody saw him moan?) He said himself, “I am not what you think I am.” Rama Krishna also said, “That no one dies.”
When he was dying and appeared to be in pain or going through all these things.
You’re speaking on relative terms only and relative terms do not exist. Like the mirage in the water, the water in the mirage. We think we see it and it doesn’t exist, it’s not there. Everything is like hypnosis, it’s like we’ve been hypnotized. Believing we’re in pain, we’re going through suffering, we’re going through things. This is why Maya is called Maya. This is what it’s all about. And then you want to know how technically how it works. Maya is Maya. Like a dream. You don’t explain to people in a dream how it works.
Why this person tripped and broke his leg. It’s all in Maya. Other people looking at Maya are so engrossed in it that it hurts them, it’s very real to them. Drop it! Don’t get involved in most technicalities for they pull you deeper into it. No matter what the answer is you’re looking for, the answer itself is an illusion. Whatever the answer maybe. You call it karma, Maya, seminal fluid, whatever you like to call it. It’s all part of the grand illusion. The important point is the more technical you become about it the more you’re pulled into it.
Fred (SF): Maharshi said the words of the great grandson are truth. (R: The words of a great grandson is truth. Well shoot the great grandson.) Do without him. I told that to a friend of mine and he said, “Yeah words are the gravestones beneath which the truth is buried.” I thought that was good too.
R: The words of the gravestones beneath which the truth is buried. Okay.
This is why I talk about the principle when you get into this teaching first. You have to practice divine ignorance. Where you say you don’t know what anything is. Everything appears as if it is real. All these things appear real.
(silence)
Do we have many announcements?
Mary (SM): No Robert we don’t. (R: We have no announcements?) No nothing at all. No.
R: We’re having the bhandara on the 26th. Put that on the calendar. Where you bring your favorite food. We’ll have music, dancing.
(general talk between students about bhandara.)
R: We have some delicious looking prashad. This looks good.
(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.