– Transcript 230
R: Om shanti shanti shanti om. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again. I love every one of you, unconditionally.
When you look at me what do you see? I am simply made in your image. Always remember that you have created me out of yourself. I am what you believe I am, nothing more and nothing less. But you should always remember that you are observing yourself.
There is only the one Self and you are that. And we all see the Self sometimes through darkly colored glasses so-to-speak. If we were self-realized we would see perfection wherever we looked. We would never see anything wrong anywhere. So depending on whatever consciousness you’re in this is what you see in me or anybody else.
When you look at your world that you have created you’re simply seeing yourself.
You can see beauty and joy and love and harmony or you can see sickness and death, upheavals and hurricanes. You are free to choose what you should see. This is the freedom you have. To be able to see what you want to see, and then when you react to it this is where the problem comes in. For what you are doing is accruing karmic debts by seeing what you wish to see. But always remember that you are the seer. We’re all different we see different things. This is also true with the rest of our senses, hearing, touch, taste, smell, feel.
Remember the story of the ten people who were blind and touched an elephant?
You’ve all heard the story before. One person touched the elephants trunk and said it was a mighty tree. Another person touched the elephants foot and said it was a mountain, so forth and so on. But each person felt something different and in their mind imagined what it is. So it is with us.
No one of us are really seeing the right picture. We’re seeing what we are. This is all we can see. We cannot see anything else. We only see what we are. This is something we should always remember, for it will get you out of all kinds of problems. In other words whatever you see with your eyes do not believe it. Whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong. If you come to a conclusion, you come to your own conclusion, observe it and let it go.
Look at life as if you are looking at yourself. Remind yourself of this everyday.
Especially when you first get out of bed in the morning. What are you feeling? What are you seeing? What are you anticipating? It’s only yourself. In truth your Self is omnipresence. Your Self is all pervading, consciousness. Therefore you have the power to see whatever you like. In the creative principle called life, you have the freedom to do this. Yet if you only understood that there is only one life and that life is consciousness, the absolute reality, there is nothing else. It takes up all space, all time. There is only that one and you are that.
Therefore when you are looking at something that is different from that, it is called an hallucination for you’re seeing something that does not exist. In other words if you see anything except God it’s a mistake, it’s error, false imagination. For there is only the Godhead, the one principle, the one law, one substance and you are that.
It’s wonderful when you can understand this. This is reality. When you look at me you see a person. This is duality, for you see me separate from yourself. When you look at me and you see yourself then you are an advanced disciple. Think about this, ponder this.
It is very important to understand this.
Something else you should understand, there is absolutely nothing wrong in the whole universe. Always remember this. No matter what appears, wars, man’s inhumanity to man, earthquakes, cataclysms, there is nothing wrong. It sounds so strange to a beginner who has never heard anything like this before. And even for an advanced student it sounds sort of strange because you say, “Well I see all these things happening before me and how can this not be true? I see murders, rapes, man’s inhumanity to man wherever I look.” Who is doing the looking? Who is the looker?
That is what you always must ask yourself, “Who sees this? Who is the looker?”
And of course you will say, “I am.” Then you’ll start laughing because from practice you will see, I sees all these things going on in the world. I is the ego, the I-thought, not you!
You are the divine reality. But it is the I-thought who sees all these things, who observes all these things. Wants to come to conclusions, wants answers, for what? You will always be doing the same thing, looking, judging, comparing, when you finish with one thing, something else will pop up somewhere else, it never ends, if it is not this, it’s that.
It is like a tumor on your arm that the doctor cuts out and it grows somewhere else. When the doctor cuts that out and it grows somewhere else, it keeps appearing all over your body, because the doctor never got rid of the source, the source of the tumor. So it is with us.
Until we know the source of our being we will see duality wherever we look, until we understand our source and I’m not talking about apple sauce. Until that time we have to question everything we see. Who sees this? Who feels this? Who believes this? Who is afraid of this? Who is angry over this? Always go back to I-I-I-I, I am. Find out who the I is, where it came from.
And here’s another mistake some of us make. We say we’re not the body, for we put the emphasis on the body. We say, “I’m not this sick body, I am Brahman.” But what we’re doing is we’re admitting there is a sick body or a poor body or a wretched body or anybody. We’re putting our attention on the body instead of on the source. That is the mistake we’re making.
No body making mistakes. There is just no body.
The Self that you are takes up all time and space. There is no room for anything else. You must ponder these things. There is no space for anything else. There is no space for your emotions, your judgmental views, your concepts, your dogmas, your preconceived ideas, it’s not happening. It never happened. Yet most of us feel these things and we say that it’s the body that’s feeling these things. You’re steeped in duality when you do this. Because again you’re saying there is a body and there is me. There is truth and there is a lie. And you’re saying the lie doesn’t exist. But you’re thinking about the body and its manifestations and all its things that it goes through, the ramifications of it. In other words you’re putting all of your energy into something that doesn’t exist.
This is why some of us do not make any headway on the spiritual path. For we’re paying attention to the body that does not exist. By denying it, by imagining there is two of you. There is a Self and a body. And the body does certain things and the Self does certain things. No such thing is happening. There is no body to do anything. It appears that as you make progress on the spiritual path things will come along to show you this. You’ll be confronted in all kinds of situations. How you react to them determines where you’re at.
You can tell spiritually where you are right now on the path, by what appears real to you, what appears false to you, what disturbs you, what makes you happy, what makes you sad. It’s simple, test yourself everyday. Before you go to bed, ask yourself, “What did I react to today? What experience did I go through today. What mental anguish did I have today? What disturbed me today? What did I have to do today to try to straighten things out?” As if you have the power to straighten things out.
It’s so funny. We think we can actually do something to this world to make the world a better place in which to live, to make our condition more harmonious, to make people see our viewpoint, it’s all a joke. There is no viewpoint, there is nothing happening, nothing has ever happened, nothing will ever happen. You are free pure consciousness right now just the way you are. But you have to feel this, deep deep inside. I use the term deep deep inside and yet there is no deep deep inside, there is no deep deep outside, there’s no inside, there’s no outside, but for the sake of explaining things, for the sake of talking, I use terms like deep inside, jump deep inside, go deep inside. Where would you go? There is no body so there is no body to go deep inside. What exists that will go deep inside? A mouse? There is nothing to go deep inside. Yet when I talk I tell you these things to make you realize that there is something else happening that you’re not aware of, something so beautiful, so grand, so blissful. It is you, your Self. What you really are, just the way you are, when you’re in the silence. When there is no one to judge. No thoughts to fear. No one to fight, in that second you are God.
Again when I say you are God, again it’s a misnomer. You can never be God, what you are right now. Because when I say you, you’re thinking of the self, this little self, your small self, and when I say, “You are God!” You are believing you are God as a person. This is impossible. No human being can ever be God. But the you which is the absolute reality, which is Brahman, which is Sat-Chit-Ananda is God! So you have to get your body out of the way, so-to-speak. You have to get yourself out of the way and allow God to shine through as the Self, as nirvana, as Sat-Chit-Ananda. Think of yourself this way.
When you say, “I am the body,” realize you made a mistake. When you say, “The body is going through karma,” realize you made a mistake. When you say, “The body suffers,” realize you made a mistake. When you say, “The body does its own thing, separate from the Self,” realize you made a mistake. There is nothing separate from the Self.
The Self alone is. The Self is Brahman, period! end! There is nothing else. There is not a body that becomes Brahman, from practicing spiritual disciplines for years and years and years there will never be a body that becomes Brahman. Therefore do not dwell on the body at all. Always think of yourself as the Self, as consciousness, as pure awareness.
When your mind wants to think of the body or someone else’s body, immediately put a stop to this by simply knowing there is no body. There is nobody to experience anything.
How happy you will feel when you can just understand this. You will feel such happiness, such joy, such bliss. Just by understanding what I’m talking about. For as soon as you take the mind off the body, the mind becomes weak and starts to disintegrate. But if you keep your mind on the body or somebody else’s body, the body of the world, the body of the universe, it’s all the body, the same body — remember there is no difference between your body and the universal body. It’s all the same body. Because you think you are a body you think the universe is a body. But there is no universe and there is no body, it’s all an hallucination. This realization really brings you happiness, total happiness, total bliss, total joy.
Just to understand and know this, know it with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your being, that you were never a body and you will never be a body.
What about karma? What about reincarnation? Remember this is all an illusion.
You have to keep inquiring, “For whom is there reincarnation? Who reincarnates?” If your mind tells you the body does, laugh at it, laugh at your mind and say, “Mind there is no body and you don’t exist either.” Talk to your mind like that and it will become weak. It will begin to dissipate. It will stop controlling you. But as long as you believe the condition has power over you, and you react to a condition, you’re putting yourself into a living hell. You will fear, you will worry, you will fret. You will do all sorts of things to make your life be the way you think it should be. And you go through your whole life this way.
One thing after another, one thing after another, it will never end.
Why not right now, for once in your life, say to yourself, “I will never react to a condition again. For I realize that every condition comes from a body, a mind, and there is
I know I can tell some of you this until you turn blue and I turn green, we’ll be all kinds of colors, and nothing will happen. Nothing happens because you’re still attached to the world and its manifestations that you will not allow anything to happen. There has to come a time in your life when you begin to trust the power that knows the way. When you totally surrender the ego, your anger, all the things that have been keeping you in the lower realms, you have to let go of all of these things.
I know you’re saying to yourself, “Well if I stop thinking, if I stop judging, nothing will go right. I can’t just let go of this. I can’t just let that happen.” But to whom are you addressing? Who are you talking to? You’re dealing with yourself, that’s all. (laughs) Nobody else. But it is yourself that has projected a certain picture of the world and now it’s yourself that is trying to straighten it up. This is so funny to me. Yet we keep doing this constantly, we never stop.
We think we’re so important we have to straighten somebody up, we have to straighten something up, we have to know something, we have to have an answer to something, we can’t sleep. We turn and toss all night. We want to know the answer. Catch yourself! Ask yourself, “Who wants to know the answer? Who needs an answer? What will the answer do for me? Make you feel good for a couple of minutes?” Know absolutely nothing. Have no knowledge. Become a babbling idiot, you’d be better off.
Go into the silence whenever you can. Become silent at every opportunity. Again how do you resolve the problems of your life? By becoming still! Not by looking for answers. Why? Because all of the answers come from the same source, the ego. How many answers did you come with? Were they very intellectual? Were they stupid? Who called on the ego? It is the ego that prods you onward, and you’re allowing it to happen. The choice is always yours. This is the freedom that you’ve got. To follow your ego or surrender your ego. That’s the truth you’ve got. And life presents to you all kinds of situations. So you can make a choice. Everyday you’ll be presented with situations. All kinds of situations for you to make choices. The choice you make determines what happens to you. Is anything more important than your salvation?
We’re so concerned with other people, world situations, we’re so concerned what we read in the newspaper, what we watch on television. Try to understand that these things have been going on since the beginning of time. This is a play of consciousness. This is God’s Leela, Maya, and many of us are getting caught in it continuously, everyday, by feeling something is wrong. When you feel something is wrong what are you really doing? Aren’t you saying that consciousness, God, doesn’t know how to do things right?
The ego will have to show him how to do things right by taking certain action in your life?
That’s what you’re really doing, subconsciously.
A person who is on the verge of enlightenment will never react to conditions. Will never say this is wrong, this is right, this is good and this is bad, this is up and this is down, there is no reaction. For it’s all an illusion and you’re reacting to an illusion, isn’t that funny? You’re reacting to conditions that are illusory? But to you they are very real, and this is called hallucination. It is as if you’re watching a movie on the screen, and you don’t like the bad guy and you say, “I’m going to kill this bad guy, I don’t like him at all,”
and you run up to the screen and start punching the bad guy, a second later you take out a gun and shoot him, take out a knife and stab him. It’s all happening on the screen, but in your mind it’s real. You believe the person is for real, so you’re doing all of these things.
But if you just sat still and allowed yourself to watch the whole movie, you’ll see it comes to an end. And then what’s left? The screen, the images have all been wiped out by themselves. So you didn’t have to worry about the bad guy or the good guy or any guy they all disappeared, the screen is empty, and so it is with life.
Have we stopped reacting to things, have we stopped looking at the world and seeing something we like, something wrong, something good, something bad. To the extent that you can stop seeing that, to that extent will these things disappear of their own volition and you will be able to look right through, through everything. You will know the truth, that the whole world is consciousness, nothing else. For consciousness is self-contained absolute reality, nothing else. And absolute reality is pure awareness, nothing else and you are that. Peace.
(silence)
Mary would you read the Jnani? (SM: Yes Robert.)
R: What Mary is going to read is “the Jnani,” it talks about the body having experiences and going through certain things. This is for people who need to know these things.
Remember in truth there is nobody going through anything. The body never existed and never will exist. There is only the Self. But if we didn’t say all of these things and we didn’t have these writings there would be no teaching, you would probably be better off. To have a teaching you have to make up all of these things. Make you believe there’s a body that you have to get rid of, that does things by itself, and the self which watches. No, there is no such thing. There never was a body and there will never be a body, whether it’s a universal body or a physical body or any body. It’s all mind and there is no mind. So you figure it out. (students laugh)
(Mary reads the Jnani refer to the beginning of this book for text) (tape ends abruptly during the reading)
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.