– Transcript 213
R: Om shanti, shanti, shanti, om. It’s good to see your smiling faces again. I said smiling faces. (laughter) No frowns.
Jorge (SR): You’re supposed to look behind you.
R: Is there a frown behind me? (SR: No it’s a smile.) Well then good. (SR: Obedient servant.) You are. (laughter) I welcome you with all my heart it’s good to be with you again. I love you. All is well. Let’s go home. (students laugh) As most of you know, I receive many phone calls from all over the world. I received an interesting phone call last night about 8 o’clock. So I will share it with you. It was from Osaka, Japan. Somehow this Japanese lady got a hold of one of the transcripts. I asked her, “How did you get my phone number?” She related to me that she thought I was in Ramana Ashram. So she called Ramana Ashram and they gave her my phone number.
What are they doing with my phone number? (laughter) I’m glad the address is a box number at the back of the transcripts. (laughter) For the box person has already told me that many people have come looking for me? Let them pay homage to the box. (laughter) But anyway this Osaka lady asked me a question. She said, “Is the world really an illusion and is everything preordained?”
There is a lot of confusion about this. This is why we’ll discuss it with some of you here. I spent approximately an hour on the phone with her and when she hung up she was more confused than ever. I asked her to start with, “From what viewpoint are you speaking? From the viewpoint of the Jnani or from the viewpoint of the ajnani? Or from the viewpoint of wisdom or from the viewpoint of ignorance?” If you’re speaking from the viewpoint of the Jnani, from the Sage, to the Sage there is no world and there is no preordination. But to the individual souls, the individual ego, to the individual I, there is a world and preordination really exists. To the person who believes they are the body.
Now you cannot intellectually say, “I do not believe I am the body, therefore the world doesn’t exist for me, I can do anything I like.” This will never work. As long as you feel you are alive as a human being then no matter how intellectual you will say to yourself, “This world does not exist,” it will exist. Do not make that mistake. Believing that the world does not exist. For some people tell me if the world does not exist they can do anything they like. I can rob a bank. I can kill people. It doesn’t matter nothing exists. Of course the answer is, if nothing exists you wouldn’t be talking like this. If you really were aware that nothing exists, the world does not exist, you would be silent. There would be absolutely nothing for you to say because you do not exist either.Therefore who is asking this question? As far as preordination is concerned this is a truth for the ajnani. For a human being who is steeped in ignorance of the world. And you can tell yourself if you are or you’re not by the way the world affects you.
If you become depressed, discouraged, angry, upset. You think there is something wrong somewhere. You look at the world situation, you worry, you’re upset over it. This means that you believe you are the body and you are going through experiences on this earth. Therefore this world does exist for you. It is very real never think it’s not. And everything in your life is preordained, predestined. Therefore do not believe that you can do anything you like. Whatever you do is preordained.
So she asked me, “If I go and rob the bank is that preordained?” “Of course,” I said, “if you rob the bank then it’s preordained. You would not even be asking the question.
What you have to do you will do. What you are supposed to do every second of your life in this body and ???, what you feel exists has been mapped out before you were born.
Every turn you make, every finger you move has been mapped out before you were born.
So there is no use asking a question like this, if you can rob a bank or not rob a bank, just by your talking to me is preordained. Asking me stupid questions is preordained. It’s all preordained.
Do not concern yourself whether you’re going to do anything wrong or right. You are just one of the many actors on the stage of life. Everybody has come here to play a role, so-to-speak. Some people have to be the good guys, some people have to be the bad guys.
This is the reason we never judge anybody. This is the reason you should never call anybody evil or bad. It is really a role that they’re playing. And a person on the path of Jnana does not judge anybody or anything. They leave everything alone. They observe it, they watch it. Come to no conclusions. Good and bad is out of their vocabulary. Right and wrong has been transcended. This happens before you become fully enlightened.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in this whole universe least of all yourself. You no longer worry about yourself. For even though you still feel you are a piece of the body you understand that there is a grand bliss, a joy, an absolute reality that you can call God that takes care of you completely and totally when you surrender completely and totally to the source.
So you see you do not have to look after your life. You do not have to watch what you eat or watch where you go or watch what you do. For whatever you eat, wherever you go, whatever you do is the right thing for you at the moment. It is where you’re supposed to be. You are where you’re supposed to reap. Everything is in its right place.
If you learn to have faith like this you will grow. But if you keep believing I am the doer and I have to make things happen, otherwise nothing will happen and I will fall apart, then you will be making things happen all of your life. There will always be something to make happen. It will never end. Yet this is also your role that you have to play here on this earth. This is the destiny that’s yours. To do what you’re doing right now.
So, the person who understands what I’m saying does not consider the question any more, “Is the world real or false?” Remember if you have to ask that question, then the world is real and you have to act accordingly. In the same instance that person does not ask the question, “Is everything preordained?” For remember for whom are things preordained? Only for the ajnani, for the ignorant one. The only freedom you’ve got is to turn within and not react to anything. This is your freedom, your total and complete freedom.
And that is really a lot of freedom if you think about it. You can really see that you’re free, to that extent.
In other words whatever befalls you, you do not become upset, hurtable, angry, you merely observe it and watch it and you realize that is your stuff that you’ve got to get rid of. That is your stuff you have to go through. It makes no difference how deeply you’re suffering, if you’re suffering or how happy you are, if you’re happy. If you’re sick or healthy or you’re poor or rich. If you are married or single. If you are living in a hut or a mansion. These things are irrelevant. For what is relevant is your reaction to these things.
The person who does not react grows spiritually and becomes Master of the
world, so-to-speak.
When I tell you, becomes Master of the world, I mean that person begins to realize that the whole universe is an emanation of the self, of the mind. It is you who are creating all these situations. It is you who are creating your good and your bad, your right and your wrong, your happy and your sad, your rich and your poor, your healthy and your sick. It is you who are creating these things. Consequently you take a step backward and you observe this in peace and in wisdom.
You begin to look intelligently at the world and your reaction to it. In retrospect you look at your life where it’s been up to now. You realize there is no future except the future that you are going to create by thinking. You think the future into existence. Where else would the future come from? Is there a machine that churns out futures? How does tomorrow get here? Where does next week come from? Next month? Next year? The way of the world, the universe. Where does all these things come from? They come from yourself. You are the one that is thinking of these things and creating your past, your future and your present. Therefore the way to understand it is that there is no world, that the world is an illusion, that everything is preordained, is simply by not thinking about it. To not allow the mind current to carry you away into that type of thinking. It is the thinking that causes you to believe those things. And causes those things to become an expression.
To look real for you. So it’s always you.
To meditate, to pray, to seek right action. Again this is for the ajnani. For the person who believes they are a human being. For the person who believes they are a person, an entity, a self, an I. If you were the supreme wisdom, if you are the infinite intelligence, the absolute reality, the pure awareness would you have to meditate, would you have to pray? Would you have to do anything? Of course not. For the source does not pray about the source, because it is the Self. The one Brahman does not pray about the one Brahman because it is the Self. The enlightened one does not care whether the world is real or false.
For to the enlightened Sage there is no world that is real or false. The Sage is beyond all concepts. Beyond all preconceived ideas, beyond all imaginings.
The Sage does not look for out of body experiences or for contact without of body spirits or for anything else. The Sage remember, is all pervading, nirvana, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Parabrahman. To the Sage there are no thoughts, no ideas, no past, no present, no future, the true Sage can never be understood with the finite mind.
Now let’s talk about you. This by the way was the gist of the telephone conversation I was having with her. What do you do with your life all day long? What do you think about? Are you in control of your emotions, of your thoughts? Are you still allowing the world to show you what is going on? Are you still allowing the world to show you what is right or wrong, what is good or bad and you react to this? Are you still trying to change the world from bad to good?
If you are you can never awaken this way. You can never awaken to your true Self as long as you believe something is wrong anywhere. Something being wrong anywhere means that what you call God doesn’t know what he or she or whatever is doing. For they have allowed something to be wrong. But when you awaken to the fact that you are the God, you are the ultimate reality, and the whole world is manifesting from your mind and all you’ve got to do is blink and keep still, stop thinking, stop the thoughts from arising and everything else will take care of itself and you will be home.
The important point here is you have to stop the thoughts from rising. In order for you to do this you have to find the source to your thoughts. What is the source of your thoughts? You never answer a question like this. For if you answer this question it’s the ego answering the question. You may have read somewhere, where the source of your thoughts are but do not repeat the words like a parrot. A parrot maybe taught to say, “I’m not afraid of cats, I’m not afraid of cats, I’m not afraid of cats,” but the first cat that jumps into the cage it starts squawking and screaming its head off. This is like most of us. We go around repeating affirmations, words of truth that we read some place, we become like a parrot.
The whole idea is to be silent. Not to add affirmations or words to your garbage pail. It is already filled with garbage. By garbage I mean, preconceived ideas, dogmas, opinions, samskaras from previous lives, you’re filled with these things and you are a reacting machine, you react, that is what you do all day is react, react, react. Therefore when you try to learn more knowledge and you read more books all you’re doing is adding on to the garbage pail. Of course most of you realize, the highest truth is to delete, not to add. To get rid of the things you believe in now. So empty yourself out totally and completely. All of your ideas, your feelings, all have to be emptied out of you. When you become totally and completely empty there is nothing you have to do to fill it up again.
Emptiness is realization. Emptiness is Brahman. Emptiness is the Self. Emptiness is your real nature.
So do not concern yourself whether the world is real or if everything is preordained. Do not waste your time thinking about things like this. Wouldn’t it be more useful for you to say, “To whom do these thoughts come? Who is thinking these thoughts? To whom do they come? They come to me. Then who am I?”
I tell you this will be more useful for you. You’ve been wasting your time trying to find out what is real, what is false, who is enlightened, who is not, who is real, who is a fake, who is this, who is that and trying to make your life a certain way when the one is always looking after you. The power that knows the way will always take care of you and lead you to where you’re supposed to be.
Wake up! Be free!
Stop searching for something you already are. Stop judging others, leave everything alone. Dive deep within, deeper than you’ve ever gone before. Become one pointed.
Leave this world alone. You will be all right. No one really wants to hurt you or cause you any suffering. You are blessed. If you only knew what you were for an instance, you will burst out with joy. If you only knew your true divine nature, you would not be able to contain your happiness.
Make your life simple, live simply. If your life is too complicated then you do not have time to go deep within yourself. Remove the complications from your life. We do not do this physically. We do this mentally. By inquiring, “To whom do these complications come? Who needs them?” Remember when I talk to you this way, I never mean for you to leave your family or leave your job or drop everything and go into a monastery or a cave or anything else. All of this is done mentally. As within so without. As above so below.
The world responds to your new shape of your thoughts. The universe responds to your new being. In other words the universe always turns into what you are. Whenever you look at the world you’re seeing yourself never forget this. All of the images in this world, including your body, are like bubbles on the ocean, like waves. They come and they go but the ocean never changes the bubbles always change. They’re there for a while, they pop. They become part of the ocean again. Then another bubble pops up, lasts for a while and pops, part of the ocean again. And so it is with forms of this earth. Your body, the world that you see are simply the bubbles on the ocean. Do not be the bubble, be the ocean and become free. For you’re already free, awaken to it.
Feel free to ask questions.
Fred (SF): On Sunday there was a little discussion on out of the body experiences. And I thought of this guy in Vietnam, he’s a liberal, and this right wing nut beat him up and almost killed him.
When he was in the operating room he left his body and went up to the roof and over to the corner and he looked down on the operating table and he could see the doctors working on him and the nurses and he could hear what they were saying. (R: Umm.) And he tried to talk back but he felt a little disappointed that he wasn’t able to make himself heard. And it seemed to me that it must be real significant that an individual can see without his eyes or hear without his ears. Would you comment on that?R: All of this is from the mind. Just as we have this world, the dream world, we have a source which we call the astral plane which seems to be the source of the physical plane. We have the causal plane, the mental plane. In all of these planes different things are happening. But these planes are like the world. They really do not exist. They’re simply from the mind. All of these things do not exist in reality. What you want to do is transcend, transmute all of these planes completely, totally and absolutely. And they will never bother you again. (SF: Forget about them?) The reason out of body experiences are so important to us is because they’re different from our normal way of living. So do not treat them like a miracle or seem like something phenomenal has taken place, which it is. But when we talk about Advaita Vedanta, there is the one. The one that causes all these planes to be in existence, consciousness, pure unalloyed consciousness.
Consciousness is total freedom. When you go into out of the body experiences, then what usually happens is you come back to your body and you have to live your life again. Just go through life maybe feel a little better because you realize that there is no such thing as death, you were never born, you can never die. But if you talk to many of these people who have had these experiences the feeling gradually begins to go away. And they become very earthbound again.
Consequently the things you want to really do is to go beyond all these experiences, go beyond all the occult. Go beyond everything the human mind can understand, to that place where there are no thoughts, no movement, no questions, perfect bliss. Which is your real nature.
Fred (SF): Something you said earlier, reminded me of the story of Shankara-Acharya in the knowledge of the mad elephant ??? since he was proclaiming that there was nothing in duality, so-to-speak. Why did he seek shelter along with the rest of us - I have forgotten what he said but -
(laughter)
SH: You’ve forgotten the punch line? (laughter)
R: I think we told that story last week didn’t we? (SF: It’s very similar, not that particular story.) Not that particular story? (SF: Same idea, and I forgot what you said about it.) (laughs) Well when the Master came to him he was all beshevelled, the elephant threw him a couple of yards, and he said, “Master I thought you told me that all is well and God is looking after us and will take care of me?” So the Master said, “Yes, but why didn’t you listen to the fellow that told you to get out of the way? Because God is always looking after him too. You should’ve listened to him.”
SH: That was the voice of God.
Jorge (SR): Robert when we sense a light within, moving around inside our body, I guess we feel the limits because it’s running up against the walls of our body is that just another plane of the mind working?
R: When you feel the light within? (SR: Yeah.) It means you are going to have a big electric bill. The light within cannot be spoken of. When you really feel the light within it will totally and completely transform you. Many of us imagine there is a light within. We can tell if the real light within has been seen or not, by the way we react to life’s situations.
Again if the light within is real, you will be totally transformed into a new being. You will be at peace with yourself. Things will no longer frighten you. You will have compassion and love for everything. This is what this light does for you. (SR: This light seems to have some barriers within. It seems to be lighting up parts of the body but not all of it. Maybe in that state it’s still mental, huh?) Yes, I believe so. The mind can play many tricks on you and it does. The mind can make you believe all sorts of things. But again the experiencing of your self by changing your whole mode of living. Everything in your life will change if you have a true spiritual experience. You will not be the same person any longer. You can’t, because the light has burnt out all its gross feelings, it has burnt out all the ignorance and stupidity and nonsense. You become a refreshed blissful being. So you will know when the light is real. You will simply know it yourself.
And again if you have to ask the question about it then it’s not real. For when you have the true light there is no question about it whatsoever. You will be in the light and you will know what freedom means.
Fred (SF): There is no question about anything.
R: Really? So why do you ask so many questions?
SS: Is there any milestone between the human being and the Jnani? (R: Any what?) Is there any milestone between a Jnani and a human being? Then we can know where we reach. What is our progress then?
R: What will happen to you is you will no longer be a human being. The progress of your body is dissolved in the Jnani. (SS: So that is the last result, but in between is there any milestone that…?) In between you feel peace, you feel joy, you feel bliss. You have wonderful feelings. Things no longer upset you.
SS: So what I have to do in the daily life? Suppose I am a businessman or I have to drive a car? Always I have to react with the mind you know? And if I sit down for observing the mind then all of the whatever the experience of daytime that coming up at the same time. All the thoughts and everything, you know? If the whole day gone peacefully then I sit down quiet. If all day have the problems then I cannot sit down with the quietness.
R: You are to know that you are not the doer. You are not the doer. You do not have to sit down to find quiet and peace. As you work, whatever you do, realize you are not the doer, and inquire within yourself, “To whom does this work come? Who does this work? I do. Who am I?” You can say who am I? to yourself all day long. It is not a mantra. But you can repeat it to yourself continuously. It will remind you of your true nature what you really are. It makes no difference how hard you have to work, where you work or what you do. Just know I am not the doer. I am not the body. I am not the mind. I am! And do your work. And you will find your work is more efficient…
(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.