– Transcript 163
R: Many of you are becoming restless when you sit in the silence. Many of you have come to hear a lecture, a talk. You’re making a grave mistake. You’ve been listening to words all of your life, and look at you now. Have you become self-realized? Have you awakened to the truth of your being? There are many words in this world that seem so eloquent, so profound. Yet these words are dry, philosophical. It is in the silence where the power lies. The highest teaching in the world is silence. There is nothing higher than this.
Many people wonder, when I begin to talk, many times I leave a big gap between sentences. Some people may think I am looking for words, thinking what I’m going to say next. I do this purposely. For it is in the silence between the words, the gap, that the true message is. The real words, the real power is in the gap between sentences. Ponder this.
This is very important. Why go on, and on and on with various stories, teachings? You forget about what I said in the beginning, and go on to other things. The words keep going, going, going, and of course when you leave here, you’ve forgotten everything that’s been said.
Again, the highest teaching in the world is silence. A devotee who sits with a Sage purifies his mind just by being here, or being with the Sage. The mind automatically becomes purified. No words exchanged, no words said. Silence is the ultimate reality. Think how everything exists in this world, through silence.
As an example, you grow from a baby to a mature person. There’s no fuss with it, there’s no talking about it. It just happens. It happens by itself. You have absolutely nothing to do with it. All the talking in the world, will not keep you a teenager. You may recite mantras and do incantations to stay a teenager and not grow old. Of course you get all kinds of facelifts, body-lifts. You go searching for the fountain of youth. Yet in that very silence you keep growing , maturing, getting older and older, so it appears.
The world in which we live, this earth, is revolving around the Sun, and the entire solar system is being hurled through space, in silence. We have no idea what’s going on.
We cannot feel the earth being hurled through space, yet that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Yet everything is so quiet, so peaceful.
Where there is noise, there’s death. Where there is silence, there’s life. True silence doesn’t mean just to keep quiet. True silence really means when you go deep, deep within yourself to that place where nothing is happening, where you transcend time and space, and you go into a brand new dimension of nothingness. That’s where all the power is.
That’s your real home. That’s where you really belong, in deep silence, where there’s no good and bad, no right and wrong, nobody trying to become enlightened or self-realized, no one trying to achieve anything. Just being. Pure being. Not being this, or that, or something else, just being. Not even being your self, for there is really no self to become. I won’t even say that you are the self already, because in reality there is no self at all. Those are more words to try to explain what God is, what pure awareness is, what absolute reality is. We call this the self. But what are these words to you? What do they mean to you?
They’re even in your way. You have to get to the point where you stop using so many words.
It is true that as long as you use your mind, you can accomplish many things. If you use your mind, you can do many wonderful things in this world, and many horrible things in this world. But is this what you really want to do? The mind is part of the world.
The mind is Maya, illusion. The mind connects you to the world of Maya. Therefore as you use your mind to accomplish great things, you’re getting further and further entangled with Maya, with illusion. I can appreciate that many of you want to accomplish great things. But again go back in history, look at this world. There have been virtually thousands of people who have tried to accomplish great things. Where are they now? Where are their accomplishments? Down the drain. You may say, “Look at all the scientific accomplishments that have been made. We have automobiles. We have electric can openers.
We have elevators. We have fine clothes. What has all this done for us?
Most animals are better off than we are, because they’re free. We’re bound to our possessions. We’re bound to our employment. We’re bound to our relatives. We’re bound to our beliefs. If you are truthful with yourself, you will see that you are in total bondage.
You’re not free at all. You talk about freedom. Freedom means when your mind has stopped thinking. When there are no thoughts, then you are in freedom. As long as there are thoughts you can never be free.
Of course to the average person it appears wonderful to have a sharp mind, a sharp intellect, to create great things in this world, to be a good architect, create beautiful thousand story homes, beautiful buildings. When you first look at this picture it sounds good, sounds great. But let two, three hundred years pass, what have you got? Rubble, a new civilization is upon this earth. All the things you have worked for to achieve, to accomplish, have been wiped out totally and completely, absolutely. In other words you’ve wasted your time.
I’ve told you this story before about the anthropologists, that were digging for the remains of a city in Egypt about fifty years ago. There was a great city that was alive, a great city with wonderful buildings and structures and architecture. But after working on the find, the dig as they say, for many months, many years, they came upon the sign. One sign was left and the sign said, This is my beautiful city, named so and so, which will live for ever. And the only thing left was rubble and sand.
No thing lives for ever. Change is the only thing that exists in this world that lives for ever, change. Everything changes. Yet you are here. You didn’t ask to come here to this earth. You didn’t ask to be male or female. You did not ask to go through the experience that you’re going through, good or bad, but yet you’re going through certain experiences.
Yet you’re egotistical enough to believe that you have the power to change these experiences.
You will not admit, or want to believe, that everything is preordained. Everything has been laid out for you before you came into this earth, in a body. Your whole sojourn on this earth was planned before you came here, the day you’ll be born in a body, the experiences you’ll go through, and the day you’ll leave your body. This appears strange to most people because they’ve never investigated. They’ve never turned within themselves, where the truth lies, to discover for themselves what they really are, what life is all about.
Most people are born, they’re brought up a certain way, a certain religion, certain work, certain jobs, live in certain cities, and they go through life trying to attain a lot of money, trying to become the healthiest person on earth, trying to look as beautiful as they can, and yet life passes them by, they get old and they die.
What does all of this have to do with the silence? Everything. It is when you begin to understand that words and deeds are useless, good deeds, bad deeds. The only freedom you’ll ever have is when you go deep into the silence, and you transcend, transmute, the universe, your body and your affairs. Ponder this.
Remember I’m not giving you a talk or a sermon. I’m not philosophizing. I’m not trying to make you understand how eloquent I am. I’m not here to do anything. I’m just here, God only knows why, and you’re here also. What does this mean? Absolutely nothing, doesn’t mean a thing. If you’re looking for the meaning of life you’ll always be disappointed, for life has no meaning whatsoever.
I know some of you become insulted when I say this. Your ego tells you, “I’ve come to this earth to accomplish great works. I’ve come to this earth to help the poor, to do great deeds.” People have been doing these things for time immemorial. Look at the way the world is today. Where is the peace? Where are the great accomplishments? Why do we still have man’s inhumanity to man? Why are all these dastardly things still going on in this world, when throughout the history of the world, there have been great souls, great beings, who have tried to make this world a better place in which to live, and it appears to becoming relatively worse? What’s the answer? There is no answer.
See, you’re always looking for something. You want an answer. You want to know what to do. You want a solution. You want to get involved with a movement. You want to stick up for your rights. All of these things are keeping you back from your realization of the truth. There’s absolutely nothing. All your needs, all your wants, all your desires are keeping you back from being nothing. It is only when you become nothing, that you’re something. But it isn’t easy to become nothing. It means you have to drop everything you stand for, everything. It means you have to let go of all your beliefs, all of your preconceived ideas, all of your concepts, all of your me’s, all of your I’s. They all have to go.
And do not look for answers. That’s the worst thing you can do. There are no answers. Do not think if you get into a teaching like this, your life will improve, you’ll become Superman, maybe Batman, whatever you like better, you’ll become a super being of some kind, you’ll be able to do great things in the world, accomplish miracles. What has happened to all of these people who believed this? They’re gone. No matter what you believe, you’re not going to be here this long. Your time is ticking away.
It is when you begin to feel in your heart, that you are boundless space, that something begins to happen. As you feel yourself as boundless space, all of your stuff begins to drop away. Yet you do not affirm to yourself that you are boundless space. You merely observe, you watch, you become the witness. You look out at the world and you see the trees, the mountains, the planets, are all hanging in space. All the things that you observe are superimposed in space. And you begin to consider your body. What appears to be your body is like the trees, or the moon, or the sun. It seems to be a thing of itself. And it is also hanging in boundless space.
Because you are able to observe this, and see this, and feel this, the realization will come to you that you must be this boundless space, for your body, and your mind, and the rest of the things of this world, to be attached to. And as you begin to consider this, the mind becomes quieter, and quieter, and quieter, until the day comes when it falls away completely. Then you become boundless space and yet you appear to be a body also.
This is a paradox. This is why it’s better to sit in the silence and not talk at all, for when we get to things like this, it becomes totally paradoxical and ridiculous. You are not a body. You are not a mind. You are this pure awareness. But do not accept the words I say.
Do not look at these words as a hook, that grabs hold of you. Let go of these words as fast as I speak them. When I tell you, you are boundless space, you’re pure awareness, do not hold on to what I tell you. Let go of it immediately, for when you hold on to it, it becomes a thing, some thing, and you add it on to the rest of the things that you believe. Yet when you see it, and you let go of it, you become it, just like that.
There is nothing to think about. Stop thinking. When you think, you spoil it. When you try to be it, you spoil it. The Sun doesn’t try to be the Sun. By its very warmth and light you call it the Sun. Do not try to be anything. This is why the silence is where it’s at.
This is the reason I put gaps between the sentences, so you can rest in silence before more words come to confuse you. There is something about the silence that causes the body-mind to disappear. Even though it’s ??? it still appears to be so. You still appear to have a body and mind, but in reality you know, yourself, that you are not a body or a mind, that you are all pervading bliss, that you are Parabrahman, beyond Brahman. Do not hold onto these words. Drop them as soon as I say them. Become empty. Absolute reality is your real nature, not in words. What is absolute reality then? It is the boundless space, the pure awareness, the Sat-Chit-Ananda, the I am.
You begin to practice this by not getting involved with people who talk too much.
I guess it means you have to get rid of your whole family, all of your friends, relatives. If you associate with people who talk too much, it causes an imbalance in your mind, when it becomes really impossible for you to do anything to be rid of the self, the personal self, the I. For when you have conversations with people, you are always talking about me, and mine and I. This is why I’m one of the most boring people around. I hardly ever have anything to say. Yet you come here to listen to me. Why do you do this?
Learn to be silent. You know you can talk and still be silent. When you are aware of your true identity, when you talk you’re like an actor, an actress, playing a part. Become aware of this. The actor on the stage plays his or her part very well, but there is something deep inside that makes them understand they are not really that person. They’re not the part they’re playing. They may play the part of a murderer, or lover, an old person, a young person. They may play various parts on the stage, in the movies, yet the actor is aware, “I am not this person.” They do not have to voice it, or talk about it, or say it, do they? They do not have to come running over to you and say, “I’m not the person you saw in the movie. That wasn’t really me. Please, it’s not me. I’m not really a murderer.” Everybody knows they’re acting. And you yourself know you’re playing the part, that you’re an actor.
So it is with this life. You have taken your role too seriously. You have taken your role as a male or a female too seriously. You have taken your role as a wife or a husband too seriously. You have taken your role as an employee or an employer too seriously. In other words you believe in your self, with a small s, and this is what keeps you bound.
You want to change all this. I know you want total freedom, total joy, total bliss, total happiness, without any fluctuations. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could be totally happy all the time, not just when you’re getting something good in your life. Not only when you get what you want. Everybody can be happy then, that’s nothing. If you won $50,000,000
you’re going to be happy, right? If you buy a new car, you’ll be happy. If you buy a new house you’ll be happy. If you find the man of your dreams or the girl of your dreams, you’ll be happy. That’s what you think. How long does it last? Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with these things if you see them in the right light.
Remember, I never advocated that you shouldn’t own anything, or that you should not love anybody, or that you should not be gainfully employed. The teaching is, possess all you want, but never be possessed by your possessions.
Stick with the truth. By all means always take time to sit in the silence. When you’re sitting in the silence, I’m not speaking of meditation. I’m speaking of sitting in the pure silence. And you do this by watching yourself, observing yourself, inquiring, “Who am I? Where did I come from?”
When I make a statement like this, many of you are still feeling, “Where did I come from?” means, “Where did my body come from?” I’m saying where did I come from?
Where did I come from? You separate your body from the I. You inquire within, asking yourself these questions, “What is this body? What is the mind? What is the truth about myself? Who was I before I was born? Who will I be after I leave the body?”
(Silence)
Remember the mind becomes purified all by itself. It didn’t need any help from you.
(silence)
SY: Can one act from the place of boundless space or are our actions in silence untenable?
R: No on the contrary, silence, reality is your real nature. It is what you are. When you acquire self-realization or when you awaken to your true Self, you automatically act the way you do now. Except that you will realize that you are free. You will have a profound joy within you, a boundless peace, a total happiness, that never changes. And you will function the way you do now. But you will know to the nth-degree that you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the I, the personal self. That you are all pervading omnipresence. You will not use words to know this, you will just know this without words. You will be aware of divinity without using words to describe it. Your essence will be in the whole universe.
That is why you can proclaim, “All this is the Self and I am that!” You will be in the trees and the mountains and the sky, in other people, you will be everywhere at the same time. And you will still be able to function like you do now. You will just be pure awareness, you will just be totally aware that you are the whole universe and beyond.
SL: Robert would it be a helpful exercise to eliminate the personal pronouns I, me and mine from my conversations? To remind ourselves or to stay aware…
R: But can you do that? It’s one thing to want to do that but it’s another thing to actually do it. (SL: Well it has been tried with friends in a type of game. To charge a penny every-time one slips or forgets. (laughter) Most friends consider it frustrating that it hampers all conversation or…) Of course. (SL: It seems really humorous.) It becomes a game is right. (SL: But would the game not be helpful?) No you don’t really have to eliminate I, me and mine. You just have to become aware that you’re not really that. It makes no difference what you say.
It’s what you think about what you say.
SL: Well you’d be surprised how much thinking it takes to eliminate those pronouns from ones daily speech.)
R: Of course but you cannot do it. No one can really do this. (SL: Who says nobody can do it?) (laughs) Any Sage, any person that you speak to, always speak when they’re speaking in the world, I, myself, mine. See what you have to realize is that you function as your normal self. There is nothing changed about becoming enlightened, about becoming realized. You will still function as yourself. But you will be aware of what self you are. You are not the personal-self you are the Self of the universe. But in everyday conversation you will still speak about I, mine and me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. (SL: No, not that there is something wrong but it will be a helpful way of staying in the moment correctly.) You will stay in the moment for a second and then you will revert back to what you are.
(SL: Well for a second is better than nothing.) I suppose. But you really don’t have to eliminate anything. There is nothing to eliminate. There is just to be. Just be yourself, and you will become your natural person. You will become your svarupa, the reality. Your nature will be bliss, pure awareness. It makes no difference what you say at that time.
You can have a conversation with someone. You can speak with everybody in this world. But nothing will phase you. You will not react to anybody or anything. You will be totally grounded in the Self. And what you do is secondary. We are not trying to become something that is different than other people and live in a different world.
As long as you’re wearing a body and it appears you have a body, you will function as the body no matter what you become. This is the paradox what I’ve been talking about. To others you will appear to be a body, you will appear to be like a normal person.
Doing normal things so called. But you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not the body or the mind. That you do not exist. That you’re nothing. That you will function as a human being.
SY: Robert just as you said, the mind will be purified by itself when one becomes enlightened, it’s I would say, effortless.
R: Not when becomes enlightened, when one sits in the silence. (SX: Excuse me?) When you sit in the silence in the presence of a Sage the mind becomes purified. (SX: Umm-hmm. Just as that happens by itself, enlightenment happens by itself, doesn’t it?) Say that sentence again. (SX: Just as the mind is purified by itself, enlightenment happens by itself?) Oh yes, definitely of course. It all happens by itself there is absolutely nothing you have to do.
SH: Anything that you do as a separate you prevents that occurring?
R: When you do something separate from yourself and you believe you are a body of course it prevents it. But you can do something separate from yourself and realize that you are not that. You’re not the doer. Then there is no karma. Nothing. Total freedom.
SP: Robert, I’ve read in Ramana’s books about when he says, when the mind dies or vanishes, it falls into the heart and he says that the heart is two inches to the left of the heart… (R: To the right.) To the right. And then he speaks about the omnitanati when it goes up to the head. What is your experience with that or…
R: This is true as far as it goes. In order to explain these things, what self-realization is, Ramana had to use those terms. Yet those terms are not really necessary.
Realization comes like a flash of light. And everything is gone and you are a new person.
you’re not really a person. You become nothing in a flash, in an instant. But when you explain these things to the lay people, to the ajnanis, people say, “How does it happen?
What goes on? What really happens when you become enlightened?” So there is a heart, a spiritual heart that is located in the right side of the chest and when you go to sleep at night the mind returns to the heart center. When you are in deep sleep you are realized but you’re unconscious.
When you begin to wake up in the morning you begin to become cognizant of your body. Then the mind comes from the heart back to the brain. It happens instantaneously. And then you say, “I am the body. I am the world.” And you’re totally cognizant of this world. Yet in truth in the highest reality none of these things exist. There is no such thing as a heart. There is no such thing as a body. So how can there be a heart center in the body. Again this is to explain to people who want to use their intelligence to try and figure what happens. But in the ultimate truth there never was a body. There never was anybody who had to get enlightened. There is no realized person. There is no non-realized person.
There is no universe, there is no world, there is no God. There is absolutely nothing. And you are that.
One interesting thing about Ramana, all he ever wanted to do was sit in the silence and be still and quiet. He never wanted people to ask him questions or to be around him or anything like this. It just happened that way. So of course when he gave a talk, which he never did, he only answered questions he had to speak to the person at their level of understanding. So all these different stories came to be about hearts and knots and the body, all kinds of weird things. Why go through all that, why don’t you just wake up? And be free.
These stories are interesting, just like Krishna. Krishna’s a blue man and he’s ??? in eight places there is a total explanation for all of these things. But what good does it do you? No Krishna ever existed. A blue man never existed. Yet there are voluminous books on Krishna. Talking about his exploits with the milkmaids. (laughter) They’re all interesting stories. But people got lost in the story and they forget about the reality.
What we’re trying to do here is trying to get rid of the stories in our minds. Especially the story of, we are human beings and we’re bound. We want to drop all this and become totally free and liberated. Which we already are.
Would you like to read the Jnani Mary?
Mary (SM): Sure.
R: Read the Jnani? (SM: I think my batteries are gone.) Lose your mind at that time.
Mary’s batteries are gone. (SM: My batteries are gone.) (laughs) She’s running out of energy.
(SM: No not quite.) (laughs) (SH: Prashad is coming, give her an extra shot of prashad.) (laughs) (Mary reads the Jnani refer to the beginning of this book) R: Thank you Mary. (Mary: Thank you Robert.) Do we have any announcements?
(Mary and Tony tell students about the transcripts and the copying of them.) R: The ones on the table are free.
Anybody else have anything else to say or forever hold your peace. It is time for satsang and prashad. Pears, fresh crop, rain forest. We have a rain forest. Chocolate junk…(laughter) …or chunk. (more laughter) Chocolate statues with no egg yolk.
(general prashad talk as 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.