– Transcript 233
R: (tape starts abruptly) …shanti shanti om. Good evening. (Students: Good evening Robert.) Welcome to one life to live. (laughter) On this beautiful Thursday evening. Everybody’s wet, it’s good for you, make your hair grow. (laughter) I bet you think you voluntarily came here. You came here because you had to come here. You had absolutely nothing to do with it. All this was prearranged before you were born and here we are. And you think you had something to do with it, you had a choice. You never had a choice to do anything really except to turn within and find out who you are, otherwise you’re like a puppet manipulated by karma. You believe you have freedom. Everything is predestined, preordained. There are no mistakes. Everything is in its right place unfolding as it should.
It’s when you react to life that the problems begin. You have been trained, programmed, since you were a little kid and now you are completely spoiled rotten. For you believe this is right, this is wrong, this is good and this is bad, this should be this way, this should be that way. And if it doesn’t work out the way you think it should you get mad, you get into a temper. You get upset.
Life is very simple why make it complicated. Life is simplicity itself. Leave it alone don’t try to change anything. Be here to enjoy, to love, to be. Never try to improve things or to change things but just to be yourself.
What is satsang? Or why are you here?
When a person begins a spiritual path it is no accident. Again they did not choose a spiritual path it happened by itself. As you are aware there are millions of people who have no spiritual path at all and the world goes on. But those of us who have a spiritual path have not asked for one it just happened to you due to the fact you came this way through karma. You’ve been this way before and you’re continuing the path.
When you first began you were like a little child, learning about God. Does God really exist? Who is God? You were very inquisitive. If you were really sincere in your heart the guru within pushed you forward. Forward to new vista’s, new understanding and you come in contact with a Sage at satsang.
Satsang means sitting at the feet of the Master. Literally sat means wisdom, consciousness. The Master, consciousness, presence is all the same. It’s not my consciousness or my wisdom. It’s not your wisdom, your consciousness, it’s just consciousness and wisdom. I don’t own it neither do you. So you come to sit in wisdom. You do not come to get wisdom. You do not come to give wisdom. You come to sit in wisdom, the wisdom which already exists. Which has always existed and which will always exist.
The wisdom which asks you, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is my purpose in life?” Those question arise of their own accord. There is no answer to any of the questions. Never seek an answer. If you ever come up with an answer it’s the wrong answer. Where there is no place to go, nothing to attain, no God to worship, there is no path whatsoever, there is not even satsang. There is no Master, there is no wisdom. Then what exists? Silence. Pure awareness, silence, the silence of the heart. Infinite silence!
In this silence creation begins. Creation begins when you start to think and you break the silence. In the beginning there was silence. Then you came along and began thinking and now we have an entire universe. You created it out of yourself. Everything that exists came from you and you don’t even exist yourself.
So how can you do this? How can a nonexistent being create a nonexistent universe? That is for you to find out.
Suffice it to say everything that you believe exists does not exist. Everything that you have faith in, does not exist. Your personal Gods, your body, your ego, everything you’ve believed in does not exist. What exists? Nothing exists. Then you ask, “What am I doing here?” Who says you’re here? You allow the mind to play games with you. To tell you you’re a man, you’re a woman. You have things to accomplish. Possessions to accrue.
You compare yourself with the people next door and you make a life for yourself.
Then you find out life doesn’t work like you wanted it to and you get upset. But the life that I’m talking about is like a moving picture, that only exist for a time then it disappears. And you look back in retrospect in your life, you will see that you’ve wasted so much time trying to improve things, trying to judge people places and things. Trying to make things go your way. All this means that you’ll be happy when certain things happen the way you think they should. Then when they do happen you’re not happy at all, or you’re happy for a short time and you become miserable again. You spend your time searching, looking, reading, trying to discover new secrets, everything is a waste of time.
There is nothing going on. Nothing is really happening. Become part of the nothing. Now you’re part of something. This something has to change. Everything that the senses behold must change. Do not allow your mind to think about these things. Do not allow your mind to differentiate between good and bad, right and wrong.
Now you know what I’m saying to you makes you think, “Well how am I supposed to live then? You’re telling us we’re not to do anything? We’re not supposed to react.
We’re not supposed to grow up in the world. We’re not supposed to think. We’re not supposed to create anything. Then why am I here?” Why are you here? What makes you think you’re here? Find out. Are you really here? Who is here and who are you? What are you?
An organism that has some sort of life to it, struggling all these years for survival.
Life in its essence is beautiful, but not the life that you’re living. There is a life that is so beautiful, so precious, so joyous, but it is beyond the senses. It is beyond knowingness. It is beyond all concepts. It is your real life. Some people call this life Brahman. Some people call this life consciousness, pure awareness, absolute reality. Yet if you don’t experience this you don’t know it exists. It is just something else in your life that you would know. That somebody else has said before.
You have to keep asking yourself this, over and over again, “What is reality? What is consciousness? What am I doing here?” Find out. Spend periods in the silence, where you observe your breath, where you watch your thoughts, do this as often as you can.
Never react to the world no matter what it shows you. Dive deep within the Self.
The way you dive within the Self is by not reacting to life. Every time you see a situation and you do not react to it, you’re going deeper within the Self. You are not who you think you are. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop looking at situations, yearning for better things. Believing that if you change your life style things will be better for you.
Learn to leave yourself alone. Do not interfere with yourself. And you will find you will become happier than you’ve ever been in your life, simply by leaving yourself alone. You have everything you need within you to become self-realized, to become liberated. There is nothing anybody has to give you for this to happen. You have all the tools to make it happen yourself.
Yet you insist on reacting to the world. It is this which keeps you back from self-realization. Who can hurt you? What can hurt you? Nothing but your thoughts, if you stop your thoughts you become unhurtable, where there is no one left to hurt. If you’re involved in your thinking process you become hurtable, where your thoughts will always bring to you in your mind certain instances. Certain things that you think will hurt you. If you don’t do this, if you don’t do that, even when you have to do certain things to keep from being hurt. All you really have to do is know who you are. That’s it! Understand your real nature, who you really are.
Forget about the past. Forget about people who have hurt you before. Drop everything, let it go. Let go of everything, everything. Hold on to nothing. Stand naked in the world without a foundation. With nothing to take refuge in. Then you’ll be cleansed completely, then you’ll become the ascended Master. But when you take refuge in this and you take refuge in that, this keeps you from your real Self.
As an example: In Buddhism you learn to take refuge in the Buddha, take refuge in the sangha and so forth. Yet when you do this you become an idiot for you’re holding on to something. You become dull, insensitive. Hold on to nothing. Yet most of us have fear. We’re afraid to do this because we won’t know what will happen to us. We feel secure when we take refuge in something. The security is your downfall. As long as you feel secure you will never grow.It’s like having money in the bank. You’re afraid to spend it. You’re afraid to be without an account. Some of you think this is your nest egg, you hoard it. You always look at the balance to see what you have. This keeps you for advancing spiritually.
Remember the Israelites of old when they were in the desert for forty years they were told not to save any manna. So they threw away the extra manna they had, not to save anything, and new manna was provided for them daily. This is the meaning. As long as you have something to hold onto, something to save you from something, you will never become free and realized. Most of us are afraid of having nothing. Yet nothing is absolute reality. Nothing is your savior. Nothing is reality.
Something on the other hand, is your enemy. Something will always hold you back. I’m not saying you have to give your possessions away, I’m saying possess all you will but not be possessed by your possessions. Do not believe that what you earn will be your security, it never works out this way. Your security is your Self, the faith that you have, the power that you have, the love that you have, this is your security, nothing else.
Yet most of us never live this way for we have been brought up to believe that we have to have something. For if we feel that we have nothing, we haven’t made it in this world and we become depressed, we compare ourselves with others.
Yet every great spiritual Master has lived from day to day, never caring at all what is going to happen the next day. But you say, “How can we do such a thing in the West?”
You say, “This is for monks, nuns. For people who have given up this world.” On the contrary, you’ll be happier than you have ever been in your life when you stop worrying about your possessions what you should have, what you shouldn’t have, for they are not your possessions nor are you your body. It is only the mind that thinks these things.
Why not surrender right now to the power which knows the way. Make up your mind this night that you’re going to give up everything, mentally. You’re going to let go of the past, the future, the present, you’re doing this right now this minute. You’re letting go of all your fears, all of your frustrations, all of your thinking. You are no longer concerned what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, where you will be, where you won’t be. You’re not worried about a job, income, people places and things, you have found freedom, absolute freedom. This freedom will take care of you, will guide you, listen to it closely it’ll tell you what to do at every turn. This freedom is really you.
Behold I make all things new. I will never leave you nor forsake you. I am with you always even unto the end of the world. Notice I-am. I-am is always with you. For I-am is you. I-am with you always. How can it be any different? I-am is consciousness. It is your very soul, your very Self. Every time you say, “I-am,” remember what you’re saying.
You do not have to say anything after that, just say, “I-am,” that’s the end.
As you go through the vicissitudes of life. Whatever you see just say, “I-am,” and everything will be taken care of. When something seems to be wrong in your life say, “I-am.” It’s very powerful. It will cause many changes in your life. Do not say anything after
I-am, just I-am, that is sufficient. Not I-am this or I-am that, just I-am. I-am knows what to do. I-am knows what you need. I-am knows who you are. I-am.
Let’s go within right now and think along with me along these lines. I-am, I have always been, I will always be. I-am is absolute reality. I-am is the truth about myself. I-am lifts me up in the mortal life to that place in consciousness where I am totally free and liberated. The world can no longer affect me in anyway. People places and things can no longer affect me in any way, for I-am. I have returned to my source, I-am. All is well.
(short silence)
Fred (SF): …(question starts abruptly) a talk on quantum healing. And in this talk he said, in this phenomenal world and the relative plane there, is a field of infinite possibilities and it seems to me that anything in duality is a possibility. In other words the sinking of the Titanic was a possibility.
The merging of Christ into Sri Rama Krishna was a possibility. When I saw beautiful colored lights dancing to some music that was being played when I was on an LSD trip, that was a possibility.
And when a great airliner takes off from Los Angeles with several hundred people and lands in New York six hours later within minutes of when it’s due that’s a possibility. Anything in duality is a possibility and it’s either real or unreal however I want to look at it. Is that right? (R: Yes.) Thank you.
R: Why not? (laughter) (SF: It’s possible.) Anything is possible. (SF: In duality, because it isn’t real in the first place.) (silence)
R: (tape starts abruptly) …say anything? About the weather?
SV: It’s beautiful. The grass grows and the pears need water and the apples and there is a hole in the roof. Depends how you look at it?
R: It’s neither lousy nor beautiful. (SV: Yeah. It’s nothing.) When you project your thoughts into it, it becomes what your thoughts make of it. (SV: You once equated the question, “Who am I?” with, “Where does I come from?” How are those two meanings connected? How do they connect?) Who am I? Actually means “What is the source of the I?” (SV: Yeah but how does it mean that. It doesn’t mean that to my brain.) What brain? (laughter) (SV: The brain that thinks it’s asking a question. I mean it asks, “Who is that lady so and so,” I’ll say, “well that’s so and so,” but it doesn’t say to me she comes from Germany. Those two meanings can’t connect to me.) You mean “Who am I?” and “What is the source of the I?” (SV: Pardon?) You mean “What is the source of the I?” and “Who am I?” (SV: You once you said it means that where did the I come from. Those two meanings don’t…) They’re the same thing. (SV: Yeah?) Where does I come from? Who am I? What is the source of the I? When you keep asking these questions to yourself, you will become still and quiet and peaceful and one day the whole thing will disappear, there will be no more I left. There will be no more Fred left. You will go with the I and you won’t have any more questions. So who am I? And what is the source of the I?
are synonymous, there’s no difference.
SK: They always trouble my brain just like Fred’s over here. I finally concluded that this nitwit of a mind just didn’t understand English.R: So use another language.
SX: Robert if you said everything is preordained why then I, wants to find out, who am I?
R: Because it’s the only freedom that you have. (SX: Well I am going to find out “who am I,” any way if it’s preordained that I will find out “who I am,” why am I wanting to find it out?) Everything is preordained as you say, but yet you have the freedom to find out who you are and go beyond the whole thing. When you inquire “Who am I?” what you’re doing is you’re letting go of everything. The preordination, the predestiny everything must go, it goes away, it disappears and you find out that you are Brahman, you are absolute reality. (SX: Yeah but even though that I do…how would I put it?) See when you realize that everything is predetermined, predestined, then you’re stuck, that goes for everything but, “Who am I?” releases you from that. It releases you from predetermination and predestiny. It makes you completely free. (SX: But why do I want to find out? If I do not even exist why do I, want to find out, who I am?) Because you don’t believe that you don’t exist. If you really knew that you didn’t exist you wouldn’t have to do that. But you don’t believe you don’t exist for you think you are somebody. Then you have to practice the practices to be nobody. Intellectually you are saying that I am nobody. I don’t exist. Then you ask the question, “Why do I have to do this for?” But if you knew you were nobody you wouldn’t have to do anything. There is nothing you have to do. So now it makes you realize this. So now when you inquire, “Who am I?” it’ll take you to this place where you will be totally free and liberated.
See you really don’t believe it consciously right now. You state it but you don’t believe it. So you have to practice “who am I?” and take it deeper and further into the Self where you’ll be totally free. Do you see what I mean? (SX: Well isn’t that preordained too, that…just like when you…while you’re here but you think that you’re doing something but isn’t it all preordained, it’s already…) It’s all preordained but to get beyond it, to transcend the preordination you inquire, “Who am I?” This takes you out, this awakens you, to give you total freedom, liberation. But if you don’t do that then everything is preordained and keeps on being preordained. The only freedom from preordination is to ask, “Who am I?”
To go within. Then you’ll break it all to pieces. You’ll break out of the shell of preordination, predestiny, karma. That is the only way you break away from it.
SP: The inquiry is also preordained right? The fact that I ask the question “Who am I?”
R: The inquiry has never been preordained. The inquiry is the freedom that you have. We have a certain freedom. If everything was preordained we would not be able to be anybody, be anything, we would be the same way all the time. Nothing would ever change. We wouldn’t get out of it. So when you ask, “Who am I?” it transcends the preordination and brings you to reality.
SX: But actually we don’t believe that we don’t exist? ( R: Yes.) We believe that we exist that is why we keep on thinking and doing what we think we’re doing? (R: Exactly.) And if we realized that we not even exist then we be not preordained? (R: Exactly.)
SP: You often say that we don’t have any choice in the matter except the choice to turn within. Do we really have the choice to turn within? (R: Yes.) Who has the choice to turn within if there…if we don’t ever choice in the matter?
R: The one who believes they have no choice. (SP: So there is only one choice that we have?) The one choice that you have is to turn within, not to react to any condition. (SP: That’s where I get confused. Who has the choice to do that if the thought is predetermined and there is no individual.) It’s all predetermined accept as a choice that is the only freedom you’ve got. If you believe you’re an individual then everything is preordained. So because you believe this you have the choice to ask yourself, “Who am I?” and turn within. (SP: Yeah but whether or not I do that, is that a choice is that one more event in the process.) It’s a choice. It’s the only freedom we’ve got, the only choice we’ve got. To turn within, to know the truth and the whole ball game is over. (SP: We make a choice to do that? It just does not happen as one more step in the evolution or whatever?) It is your choice, it is your freedom that you have to make. You have the freedom to make the choice.
SP: What’s the freedom based on? In other words who is making it? What kind of entity has the freedom to make a choice? Like for me everything that I do is based on a conditioning…
R: Yes it’s the ego that makes the choice. The same ego that doesn’t exist, the same ego that is preordained is also the ego that makes the choice. But as you turn within you transcend the ego totally and completely. You become free.
SP: Yeah, I can understand that part but I don’t understand how there is one choice out of the midst of no choice, do you know what I mean? I don’t get where there is an individual who has that some kind of volitional power to do the turning within. It seems like there it’s still integrated in the whole scheme of things. Maybe it’ll lead to the transcendence of the predetermination but it still seems to be in the realm of predetermination to turn within.
R: It seems that way but it’s not. The predetermination exists in all areas except when you say, “Who am I?” (SP: And what makes us say that?) Your spiritual practices that brought you here, throughout the years, throughout the centuries, you’re ready to say that now. Prior to this you weren’t ready to do this. You just went along with the game.
SP: The freedom to say, “Who am I?” is based on doing something in the past, so-to-speak.
Whether it’s spiritual practices or just reaching a certain level of some kind, trying to put it in those words?
R: By practicing spiritual sadhana all of these years, you’re getting to the point now where you can say, “Who am I?” (SP: So the sadhana is the preconditioning, the preconditions, the prerequisites to say, “Who am I?”) Yes, it has brought you to that place. Prior to that you wouldn’t want to do that. Prior to that you wouldn’t want to do that. You wouldn’t want to do anything like that. (SP: Right) Now you will.
(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.