– Transcript 227
R: Good afternoon. (Students: Good afternoon Robert.) I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again.
The question arises, “Who am I? What am I doing here?” If you investigate deeply within yourself you will find there is longing within yourself for the Self, to know who you really are. To understand who you are, what you are. This longing is in every human being, this longing for the Self. When this longing is deep enough, you gravitate or you attract to yourself a living teacher who is really your Self. There is only one Self. I am your Self. You have created me out of yourself. I didn’t just happen along, I didn’t just appear, you have made me what I am today. You’ve created me, you’ve made me and here I am.
The only thing I can give you is love. This is all I’m capable of being, love. This is why when I say, “I love you with all my heart,” I really mean this, I can’t help it. Sometimes it’s so hard to love certain people but I have to love I can’t help it. No matter what you may do, wherever you go, whatever you are, whatever you think, I love you just the way you are, unqualified. Love, that is all there is.
If you can only learn to love enough, if you can turn within yourself and love yourself with all your heart, with all your might, with all your being, then when you look at the world you will see yourself. For isn’t that what you’re seeing right now?
You’re only seeing yourself when you look at this world. You believe you’re seeing something else, but you’re not. You believe you see trees, people, sky, mountains, rain.
You’re only seeing yourself. Whatever yo think of certain people, whenever you look at people, whatever conclusion you come to about people it’s your self you’re talking about.
This is the first metaphysical principle of Advaita Vedanta. There is only one Self and you are that! So how can you possibly see something else. Ponder this. Think about this.
The one Self, the only Self, the absolute reality, consciousness, that self is active within you. When I say, “Active within you,” I mean there is no real you the way you appear. There is only the Self appearing as you. In other words there is not the body and you, there is no body. There is only you, the one. If we appear to see bodies, this is like a dream, hallucination. They seem real enough and we react to them, but if we can hold onto the first premise that there is only one Self and I am that, then you’ll be careful what you say to another person.
You’ll be careful how you look at another person, what you think of them, how you judge them. For in truth you’re judging yourself. There is only you. The whole world emanates from you. You have created this world out of yourself. Where else would it come from? It just didn’t appear out of nowhere. You have created this universe out of yourself and who you are.
Do you like your creation? Do you enjoy what you’ve made?
If you see something wrong anywhere you have to go deeper within yourself and find out who sees this thing that is wrong. Where did it come from? Did it just appear out of nowhere? Does somebody else have power to create situations, conditions? You are the only power. This is something you have to ponder deeply, to really understand. There is nothing going on without your consent. To react to a condition is pure ignorance. For there are no conditions there is only the Self and you are that.
When people become pure enough this way, and they get to understand what I just said and ponder it day and night and think about it. They will be attracted to the right teacher, to the right books, to the right situations, where you can go further and realize that you are the only one that exists. No one but you. You are the one.
Ponder this.
A question that I’m most often asked, “How can I tell if I’m making spiritual progress? Is there a sign? How can I know if I’m making spiritual progress on this path?”
The answer is very simple. When you look at the world what do you see?
Do you see the same world you saw five years ago? If your habits haven’t changed. Your judgmental-ism hasn’t changed, your ego hasn’t changed, your anger hasn’t changed, this really means you’re not doing anything. Not practicing anything and you will see the things that you are, outside of yourself. But, if you’re feeling more peace, more harmony, when there is strife going on, so-to-speak, you look right through it and you see harmony. You no longer are judgmental towards anybody or anything. Right and wrong, good and bad, up and down, forward and backward are all illusory to you, then you know you’re making progress, things are happening. Only you can save yourself.
Remember you do not know how much time you have left in this world, in your body, so-to-speak. You never know when you’re going to give up your body. What are you doing with your time? Do you waste it by worrying over nonsense or trying to change person, place or thing, or trying to get your own way, manipulation? You’re only fooling yourself. You must try your best to let go of this world, if you want to make spiritual progress.
By letting go of this world I don’t mean you have to go live in a cave and ignore everybody, I mean mentally. This all begins mentally. You have to mentally make the correction within yourself.
As an example: You go to a school room and you look through the window in a school and you see a teacher adding on the blackboard, two times two is five. That’s the wrong answer. You have no right to go into the school and beat up the teacher. I guess that’s what they do now. You can go to the teacher and become angry at the teacher and scream at her and say, “Look what you’re writing down, two times two is five, this is wrong!” Of course in her words, she is just trying to show the class. You really don’t know
what’s going on, you’re seeing a partial picture and you’re judging by the partial picture.
But your duty is to make the correction mentally. You see the difference? Mentally you’re saying to yourself, “Two times two is four, not five!” And once you’re made the correction you’re finished with it. That is how you should live in this world.
When you see disharmony, man’s inhumanity to man, wars, all the nonsensical things going on in this world, you mentally change it, by knowing the truth about these things. The truth is there is only Brahman, there is only the absolute reality and you are that absolute reality. There is only the one and you are that one.
As you begin to do this day after day, make mental corrections, the day comes when you no longer have to do this, for you now live in a higher consciousness, where there is no disharmony, no confusion, no chaos. You have lifted yourself up to a higher plateau. Even when I say there is no confusion, no chaos, no disharmony, I’m not saying it will stop being like that in this world. This world will never change, this world is the world that we see.
This world goes through certain universal karma and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. This is why you learn to leave the world alone. You learn to leave people alone. You learn to leave yourself alone. It all starts within yourself.
If you’re not satisfied with yourself, if you do not love yourself, how can you possibly love other people? Or be satisfied with other people? You will always find fault. That fault comes from a deep dissatisfaction, probably since you were a kid.
How do you remedy this? By staying the mind on God, on Brahman, on consciousness.
How do you do this?
By inquiring, “To whom does this come? Who sees these things? Where do these things come from? Where does everything come from? Where do I come from? Where does the sky come from? Where do the trees come from?”
If you do this often enough, you will be taking a step backward from this creation.
You will become the screen, the screen of life, on which these images project themselves.
But you always remember that you are the screen and you’re not the images. You will be able to observe the images and smile. You’ll see all the images fighting with each other, shooting each other, killing each other, being happy sometimes, being sad sometimes, going through all kinds of experiences. But you will smile and you will not identify with these things anymore. You have risen. You have risen to that place where there is only the screen.
The screen in this instance is boundless space. Boundless space when you look all around you, you see air. It’s nice to see the air, and you say this in the air. But it goes further than air, it’s boundless space. Boundless space is the screen of life, consciousness. And everything that you see with your eyes or with your senses is a superimposition on boundless space.In other words boundless space is like the book without the print. When the print is on the book you forget about the boundless space you forget about the white pages in the book. You now focus on the images which is the print. The print is not reality, the print is an effect. Reality are the white pages or the boundless space or the screen. You must ponder these things day and night.
When you ask yourself, “Who am I?” The picture of boundless space will come into your vision, the screen. And one day you will discover that you’re not this world at all, for this world does not exist at all. It never existed it has no validity. Where did it come from? How did it begin if it just appeared like a dream? In the dream you don’t have a beginning, the world just begins at any place, any spot. The dream just is, there is no beginning to a dream. And so it is, there is no beginning to this world. This world has no beginning it never began. It came out of you because you are consciousness. You are pure awareness. Anything that exists came out of you so-to-speak.
When you begin to inquire, “Who am I?” you’re pulling it back in. The more you inquire, “Who am I?” The more you pull the whole universe back in within yourself. You are the one. There is no one but you.
So you can see how foolish it is to become angry over something, to judge something, to think something is good, something is bad, something is right, something is wrong. You are supposedly truth students. Students of the highest truth. You can never get anywhere by judging this world, by coming to conclusions, by taking sides, by feeling angry. All it does is keep you back into humanhood, pushes you back into humanhood, thousands of years back.
Yet, sooner or later you will find yourself. We’re all hell bound for heaven, so-to-speak. But take a look at what you do with your life everyday. Catch yourself, watch yourself. You have to become very diligent. Watch your thoughts everyday. Watch your actions, observe yourself in action, observe what you do. Observe what is important to you. Where your mind is most of the time. Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Do you feel depressed, discouraged about something? How can you?
When you realize that you are a God, how can a God become discouraged or disappointed? You must always look at yourself as a God. You’re not a human being with problems. It’s not really you. You are Brahman, nirvana, Sat-Chit-Ananda. You have to feel this in your bones. You must keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.
Never let a day go by that you do not think about these things. There is an adage, if you think about God, God will think about you. This is true, if you think about reality, reality will think of you. But if you sink to the lower depths of society and think about all confusion and nonsense what do you expect? That’ll think of you. That will become your teacher and guru. It’s your choice.
This is the only freedom you’ve got remember, everything else is preordained.
Everything else has been mapped out. If you would only be aware of this why would you worry about anything? And realize everything is karmic that you see. Under the laws of
Ishvara, the God of karma, there is really nothing wrong and nothing right. Things are just the way they’re supposed to be.
Now can you see what I mean when I say, “All is well and everything is unfolding as it should?” Everything is in its right place just the way it’s supposed to be. There is no mistakes. If you don’t like the way things are then go have a talk with Ishvara, tell Ishvara your troubles. But when you start to flow with the universe instead of fighting it, not trying to change things to make them your way, you will find that all is well. Very well indeed.
So the only freedom you’ve got is to make a choice. Whom shall I follow this day, God or mammon? Who the heck is mammon? You have this choice to go toward freedom or go in the other direction. This is the only freedom we’ve got. We have no other freedom.
So be happy.
It’s now time to play stump the guru. Do we have any stumpers?
Mary (SM): Nothing. (R: No stumpers?) No stumpers Robert.
R: Well the guru wins again. (students laugh) Anything you like to say or add on or talk or ask?
Jorge (SR): There is no sense in trying to stump you because you wiggle out of everything. (students and Robert laugh) It’s like I stumped you right? What’s the prize I get for stumping you?
R: You get a cookie.
Jorge (SR): Yeah magic cookies?
R: We’ll see.
Anyone like to read? Ed will read from the Ashtravakra Gita?
(Ed reads)
R: Well thank you for coming. Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to pray to yourself, for God dwells in you as you, peace.
Go forth and multiply.
(students laugh 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.