– Transcript 201
R: Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, om. Peace, peace. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It is a pleasure to see you again. It is always good to be with you.
Every once in a while I ask you the question, “Why do you come to satsang?”
What is the reason that you come here? What do you want to achieve? What are you looking for? Perhaps some of you ladies come here to meet interesting gentlemen. Some of you fellows come here to meet some ladies. That’s okay, if that is what you’re looking for. Some of you come here to judge the speaker, to compare him with other speakers, other teachers.
Most of you are aware that in the greater L. A. area, most spiritual people are burnt out, so-to-speak. They’ve been to so many movements, so many teachers, so many so called gurus. They don’t know what to believe, what to accept. Always remember, the true teacher is in your heart. The real teacher is within you. A person who has gone within for many years, has become silent within, will be attracted to the same silence in the without. In other words, they will come to the place that agrees with the within. When you have attained a degree of spiritual knowledge, truth, realization from within, you will meet the Sage or the teacher without. It’s the same difference. There’s no difference whatsoever. But those of you who shop for teachers, who shop for gurus, who go shopping for spiritual life, will always be disappointed, for you will find some fault wherever you go.
And again, the fault that you find, is also within yourself. Everything is within yourself.
You’ve got all the answers. Don’t look to me for answers. You’ve got all the answers yourself, they’re within you. I’m only here to advise you that you are free and liberated. That’s all I’m doing. I’m here to tell you don’t need anything. Whatever you’re looking for, you already are, you already have. You are that.
It’s amusing and funny to me that so many of us are looking for enlightenment, looking for realization, looking for liberation, looking for peace, when we’re already immersed in that. Consciousness is our very nature. We are that. And the interesting thing is, you cannot put down consciousness in any way. There’s nothing you can do to it. You cannot taint it. You cannot dishevel it. You cannot burn it. You cannot kill it. It is all pervading. If it is all pervading, and you are that, how can you think there’s something that’s keeping you back from realization? How can you believe there’s something somewhere else that’s got hold of you, that’s keeping you back from seeing yourself, knowing yourself and being yourself?
See there’s no room for anything else. The Self pervades all space and time. There’s nothing else. So how can you think there is such a thing as sickness, lack, limitation, depression, and these things that some of us go on with believing we have a fight on our hands, something to overcome, that’s a joke, funny, ha-ha.
There is no thing that you have to overcome. There is no karma that you have to overcome. There are no samskaras. You’re not a sinner. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect just the way you are. You are the Self, the immutable Self, self-contained absolute reality. You have always been this. You are this. And nothing can tarnish this.
Just by understanding what I’m saying will liberate you, totally. You are perfect right now, this moment, just the way you are. There is absolutely nothing you have to do, or become, or read, or seek. You are that now. All you have to do is accept this. Nothing can change this, no matter what you think, no matter what is going on in your mind, what you may think is wrong with your life, what you may think is right with your life. None of that matters. You are freedom, total freedom, total joy, total peace, total love.
Think of a block of ice. Picture a block of ice. You’ve all seen a block of ice. And you pour a few grains of sand on the ice. What happens? The ice cleans itself, doesn’t it? It washes itself clean of the sand. So it is with consciousness. Consciousness always washes away those things that do not belong to it. The superimpositions, the images, the thoughts, the beliefs, are like grains of sand on the ice. Always washing itself free from anything that comes upon it. What I’m trying to say is you cannot affect consciousness. Nothing you can do can affect consciousness or change it in any way. It is your liberation. It is your freedom. It is you.
No matter what your mind tells you, no matter what your mind does to you, no matter how your body appears or what your body is doing, it’s a lie. It is not the truth.
There is only one truth, and that truth is the absolute reality, what we call God, Sat-Chit-Ananda, pure awareness. That is the one truth, and you are that. It’s you.
What have you been doing with your life? What are you thinking about? What are you feeling? There is nothing to let go of. There is nothing to change. For if you have to let go of something or you have to change something, you’re saying that something existed in your life that has to be changed, that has to be removed, and that’s impossible. Can’t you see that it’s impossible? There’s no room for it. For wherever you look there’s all pervading consciousness. Everywhere. There’s no room for anything else. This means you are totally free, totally liberated. Congratulations.
Do you feel liberated? Some of you don’t feel liberated. I can look at you and see this. What do you feel? What is there to feel except liberation? What are you afraid of?
What could possibly happen to you? You cannot die. You will never die because there is no such thing as death. You cannot suffer, for no one suffers. This may sound strange to some of you, but where would the suffering come from if we knew that a God, penetrating the universe, that is all pervasive and there’s nothing else. How can you suffer? Just to see this, to understand this, frees you from suffering.
Even when I say who suffers, or we say the ego suffers, that’s also for kindergarten people. There is no ego to suffer. This is something you must remember. Self-inquiry, that we practice, is simply a method to get us to the place where we see no one suffers, there’s nothing going on. But some of us do not have to practice self-inquiry, we can go right beyond it, and see there’s no suffering, there’s no one to suffer, there’s no one that’s hurtable, and there are no problems. There’s nothing to fix. Every time you try to remedy something, what you’re saying to yourself is something is wrong, and you have to take some action to fix it up.
But I’m telling you there is no place in this universe, where there can be anything wrong, for consciousness is the only power. So how can there be anything wrong, to begin with, to fix. Things like karma, samskaras, samsara, all these things are just told to you, so we can write books. And you can read these books and drive yourself crazy with them, one after the other, read hundreds of books. They give you names for everything on this earth, that names your suffering, and how to get rid of it. There’s no such thing. Why won’t you believe me?
There’s nothing going on that you have to remedy, or fix, or rectify. All you really have to do is turn within and realize that you are perfect, right now, just the way you are.
Do not try to analyze this statement. Do not try to figure it out. Just accept it, and do it, and be it. If you’d only say to yourself, “I am perfect just the way I am, and all is well, and everything is unfolding as it should.” That’s all you have to do.
But nooooo… You refuse to do that. Instead you want to think about it, try to figure out what it means, how it applies to you, and compare it to the problems that you think you have, and all you do is to perpetuate your misery. You are all gods, not gods in the making. You’re all gods right now. All there is of God, whatever was of God, is you, right this moment, this time, this second. You are that, right this moment.
Every time you look at yourself as a human being, you are committing blasphemy, for you are putting yourself down. Who told you you were human to begin with? Where did you ever learn that you are a human being, in school, in churches, your parents taught you? This is a lie that has been perpetuated since the beginning of time, that you’re a human being. You’re not human. You never were human. And no matter how human you think you are, the time will come when you will see that you’re not human, and you will rejoice.
Why not let this happen now, here, tonight. Why not understand your divinity right now and accept it. It’s not hard to do. Remember, there’s nothing to let go of. You do not have to affirm yourself to death, saying things like, “I let go now of all of my fears, all my sorrows.” There are no fears and no sorrows to let go of. There never were any like that. They do not exist. Try to remember there’s absolutely nothing to let go of.
There’s only to be. In other words, you do not have to redeem yourself. You do not have to pray to an anthropomorphic deity up in the sky somewhere. There’s nothing you have to do, for you are already that.You have always been that, and you’re that right now, beautiful, happy, joyous, fulfilled, complete, absolute. It’s wonderful.
Feel your freedom. Feel the total freedom that you’ve missed all these years. Feel it right now. There is no tomorrow, so don’t wait until tomorrow to feel you’re freedom, feel it right now. Do not wait until things get better in your life. There’s no such time. This is it.
There is nothing else.
If you cannot do this, or it’s too hard for you, then try to keep your mind stayed on God. If your mind is stayed on God, then everything will work itself out in your life. That means if you have decisions to make, things to overcome, if you believe you have problems in your life, whatever you believe, turn from this belief. Do not consider this belief any longer, this situation or condition, and turn to consciousness, to God, the same thing.
Allow your mind to rest on God.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because a fellow called me Tuesday night, a young boy. I had been doing some counseling with him. He comes from a foster home.
He’s been in jail a few times. And one of his counselors got a hold of our transcripts, and spoke to me, and asked me if I could talk to this boy, because he seemed to be spiritually inclined. So I’ve been seeing him a couple of nights a month, for about three or four months.
He called me Tuesday evening, and he told me he was in jail, if I could bail him out. So I asked him what happened. So he said, “I did what you told me to, I kept my mind on God. This is what happened.” He said he went into Lucky’s, and filled a cart up with goods, and walked out door with it, and a security guard caught him. So he asked me, “What happened? I kept my mind on God. Why did this happen to me?”
This is true with all of us. We think we can keep our mind on God, and this gives us license to do whatever we want. The truth of the matter is, if you kept your mind on God, and you were really in God, involved in God completely, what we call God, which is absolute reality, which is consciousness, you would never even feel like hurting anybody else. You can’t hurt anybody else, it’s impossible. It’s virtually impossible to hurt another human being if your mind is stayed on God.
When your mind is stayed on God, it means you have surrendered completely, totally, absolutely, to that which is divine, sacred, which is your Self. You have turned within, and given it all up to God. Therefore your life becomes a blessing. If you can do it, truly do this, not make a statement and talk about it, but truly surrender yourself so completely that you have nothing to think about, nothing to say, you’re giving yourself away to the universal intelligence, absolutely, then you will find things will work themselves out totally and completely. Every move that you make will be divinely inspired. Every step that you take will be divinely guided. Everything you do will be sacred.
So we’re not making an affirmation. We are simply surrendering ourselves to that which is. We’re just dropping ourselves completely, totally, to that which is, to that which
always was, to the universal intelligence, to the infinite presence, which is and has always been, and will always be, that perfect something, that you are right now, this minute.
Ponder these things. Think of these things when you get up in the morning, before you go to sleep, during the day. Understand that you are not alone. Look at the boundless space all around you. Understand that you are that boundless space, this is you. The body is a false image. It doesn’t really exist. It has no background. By no background I mean it never came from anywhere. The body is a bad dream. It therefore is up to you to stop thinking about your body, your affairs, your life, and surrender those thoughts to the Self, which is you, the infinite Self. It will take care of everything for you.
This has to be done by you. You can go through your life trying to overcome problems, trying to make things better for you, trying to hold on to the goodness that you’ve got already, but things will change as they must. So I say to you stop being human. Stop trying to work things out. Nothing really ever happened to you that you have to work things out.
If something really happened, you’d have a job on your hands trying to work things out. You’d really have a tough job, trying to straighten things out. It would never end. There would always be something for you to straighten out, something to fix. Turn from everything. Turn away to the one presence, to the one power, to one Self, the one which is unaffected by person, place or thing, yet which accommodates everything in itself.
I’m not saying to identify with anything. Do not look for identification with anything. Do not look for anything. Just be. See what I’m trying to say? Leave it alone. Do not try to change a thing. Leave everything alone. Just by leaving everything alone, you will become what you are. You will be aware of your own divinity, by leaving everything alone. The worst thing you could ever do is to try to change bad situations to good situations, for you’re playing with the law of cause and effect. Which means sometimes you’ll have good situations, sometimes you’ll have bad situations. You’ll go round and round this way.
Leave everything alone. Leave the world alone. You will find that when you do this, your so called body will take care of itself, it will know what to do, it will do the right thing at the right time, and it will be a blessing to everyone. Stop trying to make things happen for yourself. Stop comparing yourself to others. Live a simple life. The simpler your life can be, the better.
I know some of you think this is impossible, for you’re involved in so many things. You are afraid that something will happen if you give up the things you’re involved in. I’m not saying to give up anything. It all starts in your mind, not in your activities. Continue to do what you’re doing, but in your mind give up the fear, the frustration, the anxiety, that’s been motivating you, leading to all of these things, making you do all these things. This is what I’m asking you to give up, the mental state. Then your fears will follow. Your physical life will follow. Everything will take care of itself. When you become peaceful mentally, then the peace that is mental becomes physical, and your whole world will be a world of peace.
Always remember you are like a mirror. A mirror cannot see itself. It sees its reflection. What kind of a reflection are you seeing in your life? Everyone sees something else.
Be still. Stop struggling. Enter the holy shrine of your heart, and there find peace and joy. You have always been perfect and you will always be perfect. There’s absolutely nothing you have to delete or add.
Remember why? If you have to delete something from your life, or add something to your life, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “There is something else going on in this universe besides perfection, so I have to add something to my life or delete something in my life.” But I say to you there’s only perfection. Only the absolute reality exists. Only Sat-Chit-Ananda is. Pure awareness exists. You are that. You have always been that. You will always be that, no matter what you say, what you do, what you hear. You are totally perfect, totally pure, untainted. This is called the Self. You are the Self, right now, right this minute, right this second. Hearing me say this to you will awaken you, and set you totally free, right now. So be it. Peace.
(silence)
(break in tape. Students question has been cut in different places) SP: …on his road to peace your awareness discovers old childhood sorrow that overwhelms you a little…peace finding…reconciled with your own childhood?
R: You simply watch it like you watch a movie. When you go to a movie you watch the scenes going on. There is a beginning, a middle and an end, then you go home, its over. So if you’re able to watch it without any emotion, it’ll become weaker and weaker and weaker until it dissolves itself into nothing.
The problem is with most of us when we feel and see things like this in our mind we react to it. We react to it by feeling emotional, by feeling something. This increases the strength of that picture. But when you just smile and look at it like a passing show, let it all come let it show you whatever it wants to show you, just watch it, observe it, it will go and become weaker and never come back.
SP: This has been troubling me for a long time. I come from a background of doing primal therapy where the belief system is what’s therapeutic is to become conscious of old sorrows that we haven’t put down when we were children, the experiences that are within us. To feel that we are not experiencing so therefore we are not whole. To help to uncover these and to help feel the old pain and thus liberate them and become more able to get in touch with our inner self. That last sentence was my extension. To me if we could deny that old experience that is part of all of my body or whatever is to deny part of myself which is the opposite of what you’re suggesting, all these. (R: I’m not saying to deny it. You’re not saying to deny it.) What I’m saying is that I believe that it is needed to be felt, that is what I believe at this moment. And you’re saying you don’t have to feel what comes up from repression. I’m saying if you do not do that aren’t you denying part of yourself?
R: See you’re not denying part of yourself because it is not part of yourself. It’s a false image. It’s not the truth at all, it’s false. It never existed to begin with. Because you believe in the body-mind phenomena as being real and being powerful you have to go through all these experiences that you’re talking about to make yourself feel better. But then again it will never happen because when you get rid of this something else will pop up.
SP: Okay one more question about that. What about the reality, I can see the reality of, say for example, I’ll just use me, my childhood, something negative happened, my mother hit me, my father hit me or whatever causing me intense pain that I didn’t feel? Okay that was a reality, that was an experience that I didn’t fully experience are you saying that isn’t real also?
R: I am saying nothing is real. It is a dream. When you’re dreaming at night and you dream you’ve been misused as a child, you’ve been harassed, hurt and you’re having a dream like this. Your parents were abusing you. And I come into your dream and I tell you, “You’re dreaming this is not the truth about you,” and you look at me and you laugh and say, “what do you mean I’m dreaming, it’s going on it’s happening to me.” And then you wake up, it never existed, what happened? This life is like that. This life is not reality.
It appears to be real but it’s not.
SP: Is that why every human being almost in the whole world acts totally contrary to this because of their childhood, if that is an illusion? I’m not being sarcastic. (R: No of course.) But humanity, if you look at humanity it’s a horrid expression of what it should be. And it is my belief that it is because we have been brought up without love for the most part, that enables humanity to be and act without love. Are you saying all of that cause is also a dream?
R: You are totally involved in material being. You’re totally involved in humanity.
You are totally involved in consciousness, the consciousness of reality which you call life, this kind of life. But what I’m saying to you is totally different than what it appears to be.
It is not the truth that you’re speaking of. You’re speaking of man being born, having problems, going through life with all kinds of things prevailing in his life and then dying. But I’m denying this whole thing. This whole picture doesn’t exist. This whole picture is a false picture. It’s a mirage so-to-speak. It’s a false image. And once you transcend it, it gets rid of it. So we transcend the whole thing. Don’t deny it transcend it. It never existed and never will exist. It’s like hypnosis, you’ve been hypnotized, into believing this is true. It all appears to be true, it appears to be very real. So it takes a person who has been a long time in spiritual life to be able to see this whole thing as a mirage.
SP: Why does the mirage have to be such a negative mirage? (R: It doesn’t.) But I mean, the reality that is the mirage is one of war and hatred and destruction and if it’s all a mirage is there not a cause for it to be the negative mirage? Why couldn’t it be a nice mirage?
R: There is a nice mirage also. There is nice, there is negative, there is all kinds of things going on in this world. But this whole world is a dream. Everything that is going on is not true. It is like the sky is blue. The sky is not really blue. It is like the water in the mirage in the desert, there is no water in a mirage. Like the snake in the rope. All these things appear real but when you investigate they’re not real. So if you really investigate yourself and discover where all these things come from, you will see that they’re not real whatsoever. You’ve imagined them in your mind. You have created them in your mind. I know if you’ve been listening to something like this for the first time, it’s sort of difficult to understand and accept. I’m not asking you to accept anything but to investigate for yourself. It’d be better if you inquire, “To whom do these things come?” Inquire within yourself, “Who feels these things?”
SP: I’ve been following an Eastern spiritual path in addition to the therapy and my belief system and the work that I do. Trying to put the two together and seeing the obstacles to the path being what I perceive to be peoples blocks and peoples lack of ability to get quiet and stuff like that.
There always seem to be that illusion of experience that is energizing it, that is troubling that.
R: This all belongs to the I-thought. (SP: The I-thought?) It all belongs to the I feel this, I feel that. The I-thought must be traced back to the source. And you will find nothing existed like this. It is the I-thought that feels this, isn’t it. You always say, “I am this, I feel this.” I always appears when I was a child. I was this and I was that, you’re always talking about I. (SP: Sure.) Get rid of that I and see where you are then. Remove the I from your consciousness when you’re thinking from your mind and see where you are then. All these things have happened to the I and not to you. You’ve never gone through anything the I has. For what you are doing right now is identifying with the I, that you’re the I. I’m saying you’re not the I. You never were the I. But as long as you believe in the other things they will keep you back and keep hounding you, it’ll never end.
SP: I understand profoundly what you mean by the I and me. But when I was a child, children don’t say I am hurting, they just get hurt. Before they’re even old enough to have and idea of I. They’re causally impacted on by negative treatment or whatever. That, are you saying that whole event is an illusion? Whether I address it as I or not? That doesn’t somehow impact on their consciousness?
R: You have the wrong premise to begin with. You’re believing that this world is real and all these things are actually happening. So you can talk about this all day long, you’ll bring up incidences that happened in human life. I am saying get rid of the idea that life is human. Get rid of the idea that you are a human being to begin with. And all that will disappear. It’s when you go to a movie you watch a movie on the screen. The screen is the reality, the images are false. But then, yet when the images are on the screen they seem so real they cover the entire screen and you don’t see the screen you forget about the screen. All you see is the images. And the movie is about children suffering going through all kinds of experiences. And you feel this, you cry when you see it, identify with it. You have forgotten it’s only because the screen is there that the images can be shown. If there were no screen there wouldn’t be any images they would be all distorted.
So it is with human life. The screen of life is consciousness. The images are superimpositions on consciousness. When you discover that you’re consciousness not the image, you will be in a different ball game completely. For you will find that you are spirit.
SP: Do you know that to affect peoples emotions when they succeed in doing that? That it helps the situation or whatever? That they actually remove the I and it makes a difference on their emotional life? (R: I speak from experience.)
Fred (SF): I picked up a thing, got a new motto. “If there is something to think about it, forget it.’
(laughter) (R: Good for you Fred.) Another thing, sometimes we’re told to seek for something.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God. But if we seek for something there is an assumption that it’s lost?
(R: Exactly.) To be found? In which case if no one was watching they’re lost again. The real thing is to realize it isn’t a matter of finding it, it’s a matter of coming to realize that nothing has ever been lost. (R: True.) In other words our real nature is pure awareness. (R: True.) Another thing, recently you described action in such a way that I was reminded of the Indian concept of nish karma karma.
Which is action taken without any real reason. Without expectation and really without any purpose. And the ultimate reality is that all action is nish-karma-karma and similarly there is nothing a part from satsang because satsang is Sat-Chit-Ananda or Brahman or Shiva or whoever, otherwise any word we might put on it, is that assumption fairly accurate?
R: They’re very accurate. We’re always taking action. (SF: Sir?) We’re always taking action. (SF: Yeah.) But who takes the action? (SF: Not the small “i’?) Action and non-action are the same. There is no difference. For action is really non-action and non-action is action. (SF: Thank you.)
SK: Robert, when you were talking about action, I mean non-action, passivity, it also comes to mind the idea of inertia. Which is not a very good state, spiritually as opposed to being just vacant. When you sit in the silence for you there maybe a sense of being whole. Wholeness for us or for me there is a lot of vacancy where I don’t feel anything.
R: This happens in the beginning stages. You begin to feel vacant. Then you should inquire to yourself, “Who feels vacant? To whom does this feeling come? Who is feeling this?” Then you will be still, you’ll be quiet. And if it happens again you ask yourself again. As you keep doing this the day will come when it doesn’t happen any longer.
You’ll inquire, “To whom does this feeling come? Who feels vacant? I do. Who am I?” And you keep still. To the extent that you keep still, to that extent does reality ensue. And that feeling will disappear, the vacant feeling will go away. (SK: What is the antitheses of the vacancy? What replaces the vacancy?) The vacancy never existed. (SK: Well the vacancy is a kind of inertia.) The vacancy that is felt by you, is part of the mind. But didn’t exist by itself.
You’re giving it birth by thinking of vacancy. So when you keep still it will just dispose of itself because it never existed. (SK: So stillness is not the same as vacancy?) No. Who says you are feeling vacant? How do you know you’re feeling vacant? (SK: Well I identify the feeling, that is the word that comes to mind.) There is no such thing as being vacant. Whatever state that you are in you’re never vacant. You’re never really vacant. You’re in a state of emptiness where nothing is happening. That is the state prior to realization actually. (SK: Well is stillness a state where nothing is happening?) Stillness, when you’re totally still there is no thing happening. (SK: But yet it’s different from vacancy?) Very different. There is no one to feel vacant. There is no such thing as vacancy. Is there any vacancy in this universe? There is no vacancy, so why should there be vacancy in your head. A lot of people have vacant heads. (laughter) Remember you are a microcosm in the macrocosm. You are a replica of this entire universe. And this entire universe has power and energy. (SK: Well then vacancy there is no energy or power.) Exactly, so there is no vacancy. (SK: But when people feel vacant or they feel powerless or they feel isolated?) It’s a state of mind. Inquire, “To whom does it come?” It belongs to the I-thought. It is not reality. It’s a false image. Find out who you are and it will disappear.
Jorge (SR): Robert, if everything is consciousness and everything is perfect… (R: I hear a voice over my shoulder.) (laughter) (SH: George?) (R: Is that George, I thought that God was speaking to me. (laughter) Go on George.)
Jorge (SR): If everything is consciousness, how can there be a dream? How can there be unawareness if everything is awareness?
R: For whom is the dream? It’s for the person who believes that there is consciousness in the dream and the dream in the consciousness. The person who feels the dream as the problem. So how can there be a dream? There is no dream. There never was a dream.
(SR: If all is consciousness how can one see limitation?) One cannot see limitation. (SR: How can one be aware of limitation if all is perfectness?) The one who is aware of limitation doesn’t exist. (SR: How can one that doesn’t exist be aware of its existence?) It’s not, it doesn’t. The one that doesn’t exist is not aware of anything except the self, the self exists as everything. The person you’re speaking of is the mind. It is the mind that is aware of all these things that you are referring to. (SR: If everything is consciousness how can mind exist?) Mind doesn’t exist. (SR: How can I be so creative, as to experience mind if it doesn’t even exist?) You are not the creative person who is experiencing mind that doesn’t exist.
Jorge (SR): If mind doesn’t exist aren’t there a bunch of geniuses that are able to experience mind when it doesn’t even exist?
R: There are a bunch of geniuses doing what they’re supposed to be doing on this earth like everybody else is doing. There are people suffering, there are people creating, that is all part of Maya, the grand illusion. We are to get beyond this. (SR: How can Maya exist if all is consciousness?) Maya exists for words to be spoken to explain it. Otherwise there would be just plain silence. Maya never existed. It doesn’t exist. The self which you speak of doesn’t exist. Limitation doesn’t exist. Liberation doesn’t exist. Bondage doesn’t exist. All these things are just words, words, words. (SR: If all is silence, how can there be words?) Because the silence makes the words seem like words. It’s all a dream. The words are a dream, everything is a dream. How I talk like this is a dream, it appears to be real but it’s not. (SR: How can there be appearances if all is reality?) There are no appearances. What you are seeking for an experience of an appearance, they have an appearance but I can assure you that the appearance doesn’t exist. There never was an appearance. There is absolute void! Absolute reality and consciousness. Pure awareness. Which is absolutely nothing. So nothing exists and you are that. Everything else comes out of your mind that doesn’t exist. When you realize that the mind doesn’t exist all this will stop.
SY: Robert, do you mean when you say that the mind doesn’t exist that it doesn’t have any existence by itself. But it still comes out of consciousness. The consciousness is the only thing that exists. Is that right?
R: In a way. What you call consciousness is all pervading, the only power that is.
And everything that appears doesn’t really come out of consciousness. Consciousness is self-contained, absolute reality. It knows itself as consciousness and nothing else. So everything else is like an illusion. Like hypnosis, like you’ve been hypnotized to believing its real. It’s universal hypnosis. It looks real, it seems real, it appears real. But when you investigate it thoroughly you’ll see it’s all false. It never existed to begin with. Consciousness just is, it’s a power by itself.
To explain it in a way to make people understand sometimes we say, “Everything comes out of consciousness.” Because people expect it to come out of somewhere. But in the ultimate reality, there is nowhere for it to come out of. For it never existed to begin with. How can something come out of something that is all pervading? In other words there is no room for it to come out of anywhere. If what we call consciousness is everywhere present, omnipresent, all pervading, where would there be room for anything else to come out of. There is just no room for it. Consciousness can only exist as itself. And as we go further into it we find that there is no consciousness at all either.
SH: How does the hypnosis come about at all? It actually doesn’t? (R: Exactly, you’ve got it.) (laughter) Thank you. I thank myself. (laughter) R: See to some of us this appears sort of funny. Because we have to feel this in our finite minds. And the finite mind cannot go further than where it goes. It can never understand the infinite. When we get into the infinite realm of things there are no words to explain this properly. Because we’re trying to reason with our finite minds. And again the finite mind is very very limited. This is why I can say this to you that nothing else exists but the Self, but the Self doesn’t exist either. Yet with our finite mind we cannot comprehend this whatsoever. It sounds stupid, it sounds foolish, it sounds crazy. Yet this is the ultimate truth. Nothing exists. Yet the nothing is also bliss. Divine harmony.
As we unfold on this path we find goodness coming to us from all directions. We find peace of mind. And then we transcend the body and the affairs and world and everything else we’re absolutely free. This is why when you think of Advaita Vedanta the path of non-duality, it is a path for mature souls, not for everybody in this world. You cannot take the average person in the street and bring him into a class like this and make him understand one iota of what is going on. It’s impossible, they cannot understand it, they cannot comprehend it.
You have had to be in spiritual life for quite a few years, quite a few centuries, quite a few lifetimes perhaps to try to forward this kind of teaching, and become totally free and liberated from it. But I can assure you there are liberated beings who have become totally liberated and free and you are that yourself. So don’t bog yourself down with all kinds of thoughts and opinions and ideas that are worldly because these worldly things will never end. They go on and on and on, when you get rid of one thing something else pops up. Go to the source and become totally free.
Mary would you like to read the Jnani? (SM: Yes Robert.)
(Mary reads the Jnani refer to the beginning of the book for text) R: Thank you Mary. It is now time for prashad.
Oh, we have some announcements.
Mary (SM): Amelio has finished the book but it isn’t, this isn’t the original? (SA: Sample) It’s a supplement, yes, there is a picture supposed to be on it and all. These are all the transcripts of Robert’s put into book form and if you would like to order the book, I believe see Amelio. These will be out next Wednesday. And put the order in to Amelio and they are selling for twenty dollars.
They are beautiful. There is everything, everything you need to know. (laughter and comments) There is only fifty copies being put out right now and quiet a few of those are already gone.
R: Tell them about the bhandara…
Mary (SM): Oh yes, I’m sorry, yes we’re having a bhandara on Sunday. It’s the last Sunday of the month and everyone is invited. And also we won’t have satsang on Thursday we’ll have it in Wednesday. But the bhandara of course is on that Sunday and it starts at 1 o clock and it’s vegetarian and please bring a dish if you will please. And we’re also having a bhandara the last Sunday of December too.
Andy: If anybody plays music or knows any people that are musicians and they would like to perform at the bhandara, please talk to me. My name is Andy.
Mary (SM): And Sue has a slip of paper on the table there for you to sign up for what dishes you may bring so we don’t get all salads or all pastas or… so you can see Sue about that later if you like.
Were you saying something Howard?
ST: Well I just wanted to remind people if anybody that may be interested in living in an Ashram talk to me after the show.
R: Remember this class will be here again next Wednesday not Thursday. So don’t come on Thursday it’s Wednesday. Now it’s time for prashad. The real reason why you came here. Tony Lightfoot brought this but he was very sick he had to leave so he couldn’t get any. We have some ginger snaps. Have you ever been snapped by a ginger? (laughter) Wheat free cookies. Dark chocolate raspberry stick…
(prashad continues 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.