– Transcript 236
R: Thursday evening at satsang I was referring to the fact that if you want to become self-realized and find liberation, you have to drop your concept of God. The personal God. You have to kill your personal God. And I hit a nerve with some of you, for I had a couple of phone calls which were also…to the extent that they said, “Robert I’m a bhakta, I’ve been worshiping God most of my life. If I have to give that up it’s like pulling the rug from under me. I’ll be alone. When I worship God I feel good.”
Now as you know I never tell you to stop doing your spiritual practice. If you have to worship somebody outside of you, a God outside of yourself, be my guest. There is nothing wrong with this. It depends on the maturity of the individual, the spiritual practice you’re going after. Worshiping God is good at a certain level. But the time will come when you realize that the God that you’ve been worshiping all these years is none other than your Self. You are the one.
You say, “Robert how can this be? When I pray to God I feel good.” Well it’s like going to confession. The priest is in a cubicle, you’re in another cubicle and the priest goes, “Tell me all of your sins my son or my daughter. What sins did you commit this week?”
And you tell the priest all of your troubles, your sins. And the priest tells you to do a thousand “Hail Mary’s” and go and sin no more, and you feel great. In other words you’ve confessed all the stuff you’ve got inside to somebody, it makes no difference to whom. This is how it is when you worship God. It isn’t God that is doing anything for you, it’s yourself doing this to yourself. For where would the personal God come from? Is there room in this universe for your Self and a personal God? Of course not. You are the one. You take up all space, all room.
Again it’s like going to a psychiatrist or a psychologist. You feel bad and you go into the psychiatrists office and he says, she says, whoever, “Sit down on this recliner, lie down on the couch and tell me all about it.” And you can’t see him, they sit back of your face. They’re taking all these notes and saying nothing. You’re doing all the talking. As their time is up and you pay the money you leave and you say, “Boy I feel great now. She’s a great therapist.” But what has she done? Absolutely nothing! You’ve done it. You’ve emptied yourself out and you feel good.
Again so it is in worshiping God. So you see it is good to worship God for you people who have to do that, but one day you will have to get beyond it and ask, “Who is this God I’ve been worshiping all these years? Where does he live? What’s his name?
Who gave him birth? Where did he come from?” (or she) and you’ll start laughing. You will realize that all this time you’ve been worshiping your Self. This is why I tell you sometimes, “Pray to your Self, bow to your Self, love your Self, worship your Self. For God dwells in you as you.” There is nothing wrong with this.
At least you know that you’re doing this yourself. It’s all a game of the mind. It is the mind that brings all these things out and makes you do all these things. The mind seems to be a very powerful instrument. It can create anything for you, any situation that you like, but you’re in control not the mind. ??? mind tells you things about the past about the future, about now. And what the mind tells us causes us to worry or fear or to become anxious. If we realize what the mind is and how the mind works…
(break in tape, returns to students laughter)
(Robert continues)
R: Happy good Easter to you. Happy passover, whatever you’re doing. If you really understood that Brahman is all there is, would you take anything seriously? (students laugh) It is only when you get involved in the vicissitudes of life that you begin to worry, because you think you’re separate from Brahman, from God. This is virtually impossible. Always remember this it is virtually impossible for you to be separate from God, what you call Brahman, or absolute reality. If you really feel this in your heart, you feel joy all the time. There is absolutely nothing in this universe that can frighten you or make you upset.
In reality what can really happen to you? There is no such thing as death. There is no such thing as disease. There is no such thing as earthquakes, cataclysms, famine, yet they appear very real to us.
That is why I wear my natural face to make you understand how real everything is. The whole universe is a cosmic joke. Everything is funny. There is nothing to be serious about. I know you can tell me, “How about the starving people in Ethiopia. How about man’s inhumanity to man and how about the things going on in this world, in Los Angeles?”
Who experiences all of these things? Who is going through all of these things?
It’s as if we’re living in two worlds. One world is the God world where nothing can happen. Everything is beautiful all of the time. The other world appears to be a human world. Where you have problems, with so called death and sickness and cataclysms.
Where do you belong? Never mind what you see. Remember your senses are given to you as a human being. Which means your senses are a part of the false image. What you hear, what you smell, what you touch, what you see, what you feel, it’s all part of the dream, the Maya. It is not real.
That even when I speak to you like this, some of you really feel the reality of life.
You go into this world and you suffer and have problems, so you think. But are they real to you? They’re very real to you because you’re suffering from them. And I say to you there is a way to become free from all of this. Totally absolutely free!
In other words by turning within and understanding you’re absolute reality. Understand that you are one with all there is of goodness and bliss and joy. Nothing else exists. You have to prove this to yourself. You’ve got to experience this for yourself.
Every time you worry you’re denying the Self. Every time you fear, you’re saying something is wrong someplace. But again some of you are so involved in this, no matter when I say, you’re feeling the fear, you’re feeling the worry, you’re feeling the dastardly things happening in this life. But I’m saying to you this is not your life. It’s a false life. It comes from false imagination. It is something you’ve been brain washed to believe since you were little. In a world that doesn’t even exist.
You have to do something about your life style. Only you can do it. If you only realize that you are all pervading, omnipresence and nothing else exists, that’s your reality.
Yet you have to come to terms with it. You have to come to terms with it. I can sit here and tell you about it. But some of you are so far gone into this absolute foolishness of the world that you can’t drop it. It’s hard for you to drop it. But you have to drop it one day.
Either now or when you drop your body.
The trouble is when you drop your body you will only have a short rest and you will laugh at yourself and laugh at everything that you’ve done and laugh at your reaction to life. You will realize it’s not really you. And because you have not realized it’s your Self, you will have to go through another body and another body, another body, another body like you’ve gone through now. You’ve gone through thousands of bodies because we believe we are the body. That is the only reason we go through bodies.
Let me give you an idea how the mind works.
Compare the mind to the earth and compare the seeds to thoughts. So a farmer has two seeds. One seed is night shade, a deadly poison and another seed is a corn, it’s a food. A farmer plants both seeds into the earth, remember the earth is the mind. Is the earth going to say to the nightshade I’m not going to grow you? The earth has no choice but to grow whatever has been planted. So it will grow nightshade in the same abundance as it will grow corn, because you have planted the seeds.
Now the deeper the roots grow this determines how you can get rid of the seeds of the nightshade. If you dig up the nightshade in a couple of days you will catch it right away, if you wait a couple of weeks they will get deeper. A couple of months, a couple of years, the roots will go way under the ground you’ll have a hard time digging it out. So part of it will be growing, growing it will spill all over the place. This is the way your mind is now.
You have been brainwashed since you were a small child, you’ve got samskaras from different lives, all coming at you in full force. And you have a belief system that you react to everyday. You say this is good and this is bad and this is right and this is wrong, I love this and I hate this. All part of your belief system, the mind.
Now these roots have been planted a long time ago. Therefore to get rid of your negative thinking so-to-speak, you have to dig a big hole to pull out the roots. You do this by turning away from your problems, turning away from your situations, turning away from the world and diving deep within yourself. Continually, day after day after day, never looking for results. Never saying, I’ve been practicing a month now and nothing has happened. Remember how many years it took you to be the way you are. The things that your mind has accepted. The stuff you’ve got deep in your subconscious so-to-speak. It has to come up and gotten rid of.
This is why many people on a spiritual path like ours ask me sometimes, “Robert since I’ve started with you things have started to get relatively worse in my life. Everything is falling apart.” And I say, “That is very good. It’s a good sign, because you’re bringing everything to the surface.”
If things just got better for you materially, you’d just be adding on to what you’ve got already. But I’m trying to free you, totally and completely. To liberate you. And the way to liberate you is not by adding on goodness to you, good material things. It’s by getting rid of the stuff that’s been deep inside for many many years.
As you practice self-inquiry, as you practice observing yourself, being mindful, being still, all the stuff comes to the surface. And when it comes to the surface you’re going to feel rotten, you’re going to feel depressed, despondent. All kind of things may happen to you. But this is where you have to hold on and really really understand what’s happening. All the stuff that is coming up that has been there for years and years and years, centuries, thousands of years. It’s all coming to the surface you’re getting rid of it. Never waver. Never look for results. Never look for anything. Never allow experiences to tell you how things are. Never judge by appearances. The devotee that keeps still, looks, does not react, is not judgmental and keeps on practicing, practicing, practicing is a person who finally finds liberation.
Look at your lives many of you sitting here today. When I talk to you this way you listen to me and agree with me and say, “Yes.” As soon as you get to your home what happens to you? You revert back to what you were before. You’re sort of thinking about this and worrying about that and complaining about this and worrying about this person, what this person is doing and you expect to be liberated. You cannot be liberated this way.
You start gossiping about people.
You start finding fault in people. You’re not leaving everything alone. You’re not dropping everything. So you’re adding on aren’t you? Remember you’re either dropping everything or adding on to yourself. When you’re doing the range of things I just outlined you’re adding on to your stuff and you have more and more and more and more. You’re accruing more karma. Every time you see something wrong and you feel it, you’re accruing karma. Ponder this!
Every time you see something wrong someplace. Every time something bothers you and you never do anything about it, you’re accruing karma. But as soon as the first sign of negation come to you, as soon as the first sign of depression comes to you, as soon as the first sign of feeling out of sorts come to you, “Nip it in the bud.” Do not listen. Do
not carry it with you. Do not care what your mind tells you. Immediately ask yourself, “To whom does this come? Who is feeling all this? I am? What is the source of this I who feels all this? Where did the I come from? Is the I me?” This is the way you have to talk to yourself continuously, constantly. “Is the I me who feels out of sorts? Is the I me who feels disappointed? Is the I me who feels something is wrong?” and when you keep asking the question to yourself this way something will tell you, “No, it’s not you it’s I.” And you have absolutely nothing to do with the I. The I is not you. The I is merely a thought. It is not real. It is only a thought and when you investigate it properly it disappears like it never existed.
The wonderful thing about this is everything is attached to the I. That is something you have to ponder all the time.
When you start working on removing the I, you’re working on removing the world as you see it. All of your problems, all of your troubles and everything that you see, is all in the I. It is the I that feels all these things, not you, the I. When you look at the I objectively and you realize that it is not a part of you how can you suffer? You’ll say, “I is suffering not me. Go ahead I suffer all you want. You have nothing to do with me.” It is the I that believes that times are hard. It is the I who believes in disease, poverty, lack, limitation. It is the I who believes that people are trying to hurt you, people are talking about you. Not you, but the I.
As you keep practicing this again and again and again and again, the time is going to come when you’ll get it and you’ll be free and liberated. But it’s up to you! It’s up to you! Never mind what anybody else is doing. Forget everybody else. Again you ask, “How about helping others?” Of course you help others. You can help the homeless. Help the starving people in Ethiopia. You should never become hard and callous, due to the fact that you know the people that I’m talking about, are you. You’re not separate from anybody, you are everybody. Remember your real nature is boundless space.
When you begin to observe the truth in yourself you begin to expand and you take in the whole universe the whole world everybody, everything, the whole plant kingdoms, the mineral kingdoms, the vegetable kingdoms, the animal kingdoms, the human kingdoms, it’s all within you. So of course your nature becomes kind, gentle, peaceful. For you realize that whatever you’re doing to somebody else you’re doing to yourself. Whatever you think of other people you think of yourself. There is only one Self and you are that. When you begin to understand this you will begin to treat everybody as you treat yourself. As you want to be treated yourself. You will show mercy, forgiveness, when you’re watching yourself.
So to summarize: Your real nature is absolute reality, consciousness, Brahman, Sat-Chit-Ananda. And there is only you! There is only the Self and you are that. That’s all there is. But when you believe you’re something else. A human body, the mind, a world, personal God, then you’ll have to really work in order to experience this. Simply because we live in a world of constant change. Everything changes constantly, continuously, and change will come to you whether you like it or not. Therefore I say to you turn from the world, turn within, know the truth about yourself, looking at yourself constantly, everything else will take care of itself and you will be free and liberated and happy.
This is the truth about you what are you going to do about it?
What you’re going to do about it, you should run out and buy a pair of glasses like mine. (laughter) Then you’d show the world what you think. You are free to do what you want, the choice is yours.
(silence)
Feel free to ask any questions. (pause) Any questions?
(Robert plays talking doll puppet - a gift from Ed and wife Kerema to Robert) (students laugh)
R: No question that’s what you get. (students laugh)
SB: Is that the whole teaching?
(Robert plays talking doll puppet to answer as students laugh) R: That will answer all your questions.
We’ll play some more music. You wanna dance. (laughter)
Always expect the unexpected.
SB: Robert why is it that you can listen to music and you could be completely absorbed and there is no thoughts at all. And yet enlightenment doesn’t arise out of that?
R: Music soothes the savage beast, even you. You become soothed by listening to music. But it doesn’t go all the way it makes you go into a certain - it picks you up, it lifts you up, but it doesn’t enlighten you because it doesn’t go in that direction. (SB: It seems to get the mind in a place that it’s ready to meditate but…?) It does, true.
SB: You know it’s like you feel a lot of bliss and your mind is quiet and everything’s in harmony. But yet the mind is absorbed, it’s like distracted although there’s no vibration in mind yet there is…the mind is actually absorbed and then it seems like at that point it is like a jumping off point where I feel like I’m coming out of there even in the silence…
R: Yes music, art, all different of this world are like a spring board.
SB: Even like playing with an animal. (R: Yes.) When I come home from work and be real angry and full of all kinds of negative stuff and I play with this cat and feel a lot of love and pat it and everything and all this garbage goes out and I feel like in a place where the love starts coming up and then I feel ready for release of everything.
R: Yes, this is true. Music, animals, nature, art, but they do not enlighten you they just go in a certain direction, so far, and then you have to give it all up. ( SB: Even though the mind might be silent it’s still kind of absorbed kind of like an artificial silence. Is that true?) True yes. (SB: It’s still alive but it absorbs the moment.) You have to go beyond that. You have to go beyond everything…
(tape ends abruptly)
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.