– Transcript 193
R: (tape starts abruptly) …shanti, shanti, om, peace. Hello. (Students: Hello Robert.) Greetings. Salutations. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again. (Robert turns to the dog) It’s good to be with you Toku.
For those of you who believe that this world is real that this universe is real and most of us believe this because we react to it. So you cannot say that the world is not real or the universe is not real if you’re still reacting to person, place and thing. In other words as long as you feel your senses, the pressure of this world. As long as something is bothering you in this world you believe the world to be real. So, as long as you believe this you should also believe that the world is governed by divine intelligence, by infinite intelligence. This is true.
The infinite intelligence is also Maya but it’s a part of this world. Now as far as you’re concerned if you would allow yourself to believe this that infinite intelligence governs my life, infinite intelligence governs every iota of my being then you will be safe. You will not be a part of the world that suffers, so-to-speak. For when you accept infinite intelligence as your guide, as you’re being in this world you are then led in the straight and narrow path to ultimate victory in your life. This is true.
The world can only give you what you believe, nothing more, nothing less.
If you feel the world is full of thieves, cut throats, frauds. If you’re suspicious of everyone and everything then the world is going to show you exactly what you believe.
What will return to you will be your belief system, what’s in your belief system, will come back to you.
I’m not saying if you want something you have to believe that you will get it and you’ll get it or if you want to get rid of something you have to believe that you will get rid of it and you will. It doesn’t necessarily work this way because you’re dealing with it yourself as a human being. What comes to you are your deep inner feelings. What you attract into your life are your deep inner feelings. Your subjective feelings that some of you don’t even know that you have.
Your programming from this life and previous existences. All the programming that you’ve been through that perhaps you’ve forgotten at this stage of your life but the subconscious mind never forgets. It always remembers. What this means is that each one of you is drawing into his or her life that which you believe and feel in your subconscious.
You may have forgotten some things and you say, “I feel positive. I feel good about life. I love people. I trust people. I love the world. The world is beautiful,” and then some horrible condition comes upon you. This is because inside of you deep in your subconscious mind you have the opposite trait. You have a bunch of negativity inside of yourself, someplace inside. If you didn’t everything will be okay in your life. You would have no problems whatsoever.
What is a problem? A problem is simply that something that is not going your way, that’s all.
If you have a disease, if you’re dying of a disease this is no problem. What is this a problem? It doesn’t mean anything. For when you die what happens to you? Nothing. But yet you don’t understand this some of you. You feel death to be a threat. You feel death to be something horrible. Some horrendous enemy that sneaks up on you, like a vampire and grabs you and pulls you in some dark hole. Of course most of us here know this is not death at all.
Death is simply a change from where you are now, that’s all. There is nothing bad about it, there is nothing good about it. Just like your life right now. It isn’t good, it isn’t bad. But it is your thinking that makes it good or bad. It is the thoughts that you have allowed yourself to think all of these years. The programming that you’ve had all of these years that makes your life what it is today.
So look at your life, are you happy? Are you at peace with yourself. This will tell you where you are by the way you feel about things. But of course this is only true if you believe the world to be real and the universe to be real.
Now many of you may say, “I know the world is a dream. I know the world is Maya, an illusion,” and yet you react to it. You have feelings for it. You judge it! You condemn it! You love it! You have all these various emotions. Consequently you’re lying to yourself when you say the world is not real. Again if you believed the world is not real you would be at peace with yourself, total peace. You would not be concerned with person, place or thing whatsoever. By, “Not being concerned,” I don’t mean that you would just ignore everything you would do what you have to do have a great compassion, loving kindness, understanding and you’ll leave everything alone. For you would realize that whatever you’re doing you’re supposed to be doing. Wherever you are that is where you’re supposed to be. With whomever you’re living with that is who you’re supposed to be living with. Things are right just the way they are and you would also be radiantly happy.
But most of us are not like this are we? Again we feel the pressures of this world.
We get insulted by what people say to us. We get our feelings hurt, we judge. This shows us the world is real. You have to be totally honest with yourself. You can’t imagine you’re something that you’re not. But the good thing is that you can do something about it. But before you do something about it you have to see yourself as you really are.
You can’t cynically withhold yourself from the world and be obnoxious and arrogant towards people and not have anything to do with people and then say, “I don’t have anything to do with people because the world is not real.” As you know by now even if you don’t want to have anything to do with people you’re going to be confronted by people everyday and you’ll have to react to them. The way you react to them determines where you’re coming from.
Therefore you have to realize that there is a divine intelligence of infinite goodness, the power that knows the way. If you would but surrender to this power. If you would let go and let God so-to-speak by totally surrendering to this power that knows the way you will be carried forth in a stream of blessedness to your highest good. This is true.
But if you’re always condemning, judging, reacting and you keep finding things wrong everyday of your life and what you’re really doing in your brain and your mind and your subconscious is you’re saying, “This is what I want. I want more of this.” If you didn’t want more of something you wouldn’t think about it. You wouldn’t feel hurt by it.
You wouldn’t allow yourself to fall into the trap of cynicism, depression, animosity or any kind of negativity. You’ll be above this, beyond this.
But if you’re allowing yourself to fall into the trap you have to give up total mind, body and soul to the infinite intelligence that takes care of this universe. You can call this intelligence God, absolute reality, divine wisdom. It makes no difference what you call it.
You must surrender to it, totally, completely.
Of course in the ultimate truth none of this exists. In the ultimate truth I’ve been speaking nonsense to you. For the ultimate truth is silence. Total silence and total annihilation of your thoughts and mind and body. But as I said before we have to be true to ourselves and see where we are on the path. We may say, “We’re on the path of Jnana Marga,”
if you like and it’s up to each one of us to remove all of these thoughts, emotions, feelings, negativity, depressions that haunt us once in a while. It’s up to each one of us to get rid of ourselves, to annihilate yourself. To get rid of your little self totally, completely. To get yourself out of the way and to allow the divine circus to function.
You have heard it said that you are your own worst enemy and this is true, you are your own worst enemy. Why? Because you live in a universe of light and bliss and yet you’re not seeing or feeling this light or bliss. You’re feeling something else. You’re seeing something else. And in your erroneous thinking you believe and feel if only things were going this way I would be so happy. This is an illusion.
It really makes no difference which way things are going the only thing that matters is how you react to things that are moving along in your life. That is the only thing that matters. How you react to every situation that comes into your life.
You begin by learning to leave the world alone. Have no feelings for or against.
What do I mean by this, “Have no feelings for or against?” How would you be able to function? Yet there is truth in this statement.
As an example, you know the elections are coming up. Some of you like Clinton.
Some of you like Bush. Some of you like Perot.
Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with this as long as you do not become emotional over it. As long as you do not become wild and feel it in your heart and begin to stick up for your rights. Telling everybody how good your man is and how bad the other party is, see what I’m saying?
You’re not supposed to do nothing really, if you’re working with this world. You can get involved in the world but not mentally. That is the secret.
Physically you will do something, go out and vote if you like. Join the peace corp, protest, do whatever you like but mentally realize that it’s all a bunch of hogwash. In your mind be completely free. This is the way to live in this world.
Say you have to sue somebody in court. It doesn’t necessarily mean if you’re on a spiritual path you shouldn’t sue somebody in court and let the fellow step all over you.
But even though you sue him in court have no hard feelings. Don’t build up any hate against the person you’re suing. Don’t feel as if you’re winning the case or losing the case.
You are just doing what has to be done. In your mind you feel love, you feel peace, you feel joy. You’re doing what has to be done.
If you operate this way you will become very happy in this world.
But if you become emotional about things by really feeling them deep in your heart then you will be off and on like a light switch. When things are going your way you’ll feel great, when things are going against you, so-to-speak you’ll feel terrible. But if your thinking has been separated from your body you will not react whatsoever. You’ll just do what has to be done and you will be free.
In your mind you can ask the question, “Who am I?” In your mind when you’re suing somebody, when you’re voting for president, you can inquire, “To whom does this come? Who is taking this action? Who is doing all of this?” By working this way you will come to the realization that it’s the ego that is doing everything on this earth. The ego is working. You have to come to this conclusion yourself. By inquiring, “Who am I? Who feels this? Who is voting? Who is suing? Who is doing all of these things? I am.” The personal I.
As you keep practicing this way you will find you’re being released from your so-called obligations. Somehow your life is becoming simpler and simpler and simpler.
Where you will not have to sue. Where you will not have to go to court. You will not have to pass judgment. All these things will slow up.
A good example of this is what happened to the person I rent my apartment from.
I rent a condominium and the owner of the condominium is a young fellow who works for Macdonald Douglas. We were talking about a month ago. He told me a friend of his and himself own an apartment building with 39 apartments and they’re having so much trouble with it because of the recession. People are not paying their rent, he’s got twenty empty apartments, he’s got to be real careful who he rents it to.
I explained this to him, I said, “Stop worrying about this let God take care of it, that’s God’s problem not yours.” These are the words he understood. I had to speak to him from where he’s coming from. I realized he was Catholic. I told him to trust God and the way you trust God is by letting go of all your worries, all your fears of what might happen, that you may go bankrupt or something like this. Develop a positive attitude. Feel good about yourself. Turn your mind around and focus on God.
And he asked me, “How do I do that? I’ve been going to church all of my life and nobody has ever told me this before, to focus on God.” I explained to him, “You focus on God by inquiring who am I?” He didn’t know what I was talking about but he wanted to do something so he started practicing the entire self-inquiry.
It’s interesting to note when new people come into self-inquiry or a spiritual teaching like this they become very enthusiastic about it and see many good results. But it begins to taper off after a while as some of you know. You get tired of it. You make up all kinds of reasons why you can’t do it any longer. And some people give it up entirely.
But anyway getting back to my landlord he would do anything to make things change or whatever he did he called me yesterday and he told me a Japanese man wants to buy his apartment building just the way it is and gave him a fantastic price for it. And he was able to pay off the bank loan and make a good profit. So he is in the process of signing it. This is just an example of what happens to your humanhood when you turn away from the problem and look towards the infinite.
From the moment you were conceived, infinite intelligence has been with you. In every atom of your being there is infinite intelligence. It is your mind that keeps the infinite intelligence from doing its thing. Somehow the mind has become totally deluded. It believes strange things. Yet this is all an optical illusion but you don’t know it. So you have to work with what you’ve got.
You have to let go of everything. Do not concern yourself with your problems or your life and look to your mind. Observe your mind. Watch your thoughts. Observe yourself thinking. Observe the fears, frustrations that come into your mind but do absolutely nothing about them. Just watch. Leave it alone.
No matter how horrible the picture may be leave it alone, watch, observe, be still, rest in the silence. Your body will continue to do what it has to do. This has nothing to do with your body. Try to remember this I am not saying that you have to make your body do what you want. Leave your body alone. Your body will follow your mind. When the mind becomes still and quiet, the body will become still and quiet. When the mind disappears your body will disappear.
All of us sitting in this room are at a different stage of consciousness. Some of us are more advanced than others but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what you’re doing with your life. No one in this room should believe that the world has any power over you whatsoever. You are the power. If you feel the world or some situation has power over you is because you have given it the power. Where else would it come from. The world the universe by itself is passive, neither good nor bad. It is you that makes it what it is.
This is the reason why every one of us here look at the world differently. We live in the same world but we see it differently. We’re are seeing ourselves of course. We are seeing what we are. What else can you see. There are no sinners. There is no evil. Everyone is a child of God, so-to-speak. When you realize you are God’s child in God’s infinite goodness and love, as you work on that you will find soon that you are God. You are the infinite goodness and love. It is you. But you have to work from where you’re coming from. If you have to pray, pray. If you have to meditate, meditate. If you have to do a mantra, do a mantra. Do whatever you have to do to raise your consciousness.
Never say, “I can’t do anything else. I’ve done all I can. I’m stuck.” That’s a lie.
No one is ever stuck. For we live in a universe of flux, change, nothing is solid. So how can you be stuck. Everything is continuously moving, moving, moving, moving. You cannot be stuck anywhere or anytime. Do you see how you train your mind? You train your mind to stuck some place. You can’t go any further and you believe it. So to you you appear stuck. There is no such thing. All is well.
You are a very unique being. You are unique because you have within you fantastic power. After all you created this illusion. You created this Maya. It came out of you.
Your shakti is doing this. The power that you have has created all of these things. If you wish to uncreate everything you have to put yourself in reverse. Just like a car and go back to the source. When you return to the source you will find that you were never a human being, there never was a world, there never was bondage or liberation, there never was a God separate from your Self and you are free. Peace.
(long silence)
ST: Robert do we really have any choice as to whether or not we ???
R: In reality we have no choice everything is preordained but you should act as if it’s not. Imagine that there is no karma, there is no predestination and act accordingly and even when you do that it’s all preordained. (ST: In other words the ability to do that?) Yes.
(ST: So surrendering, you talked about surrendering ??? all that is something we should try to do…) Very much so. (ST: Whatever the results of it or whatever our thoughts are it’s not our concern?) Exactly if you can do that, that’s wonderful, that’s the proper attitude. Surrender totally and completely and leave the results up to God.
R: It is time for prashad…
(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.