– Transcript 237
R: Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, shanti, om. Peace. Good evening.
I want you all to ask yourself this question, “Why did I come to satsang tonight?”
Ask yourself this question honestly, truly. “What is my purpose of coming to satsang tonight?” Do you wish to be entertained? Have you seen all the movies locally, and you have nothing to do, so you came to satsang? Do you come to satsang for social reasons, to meet people, see what’s going on? Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself the question, “Why did I come to satsang? Really, why did I come to satsang?”
There’s only one real answer. You’ve been in this world for many years and through practicing spiritual disciplines you’ve come to the inner conclusion that this world really has nothing to offer you. Even though there appears to be good things in this world, you understand and realize that there is also just a law of change. Everything in this world must change. Subsequently, there is absolutely nothing that this world can give you. You have to feel this inside.
Again, you have to wonder, “Who am I? What am I really? I never asked to be born. I’ll live a certain number of years and then I die, so-to-speak. What am I all about?
Where did this world come from? Who or what is God? Where did all the animals come from, the bugs and insects, the trees, the mountains, the planets? What is this all about?”
If you’ve been questioning yourself this way, then satsang is for you. You begin to feel and realize that there is something called self-realization. When you touch it, it will make you happier than you’ve ever been in your life. It will bring a profound peace. There will be no doubt in your mind about anything. For you will have surrendered your mind completely and you will be mindless. You have an innate feeling that the real you is boundless space. That you are connected to everything and everything is connected to you. In other words, you’re not just your body. The appearance of your body is a lie. The appearance of the world is a lie. You sort of feel this.
If you feel this, and this is true of people only who have been practicing spiritual discipline and sadhana for many years, many incarnations, then you have to find a Sage who has gone all the way and is experiencing realization. Only a Sage of this type can bring you forward and cause self-realization to come to you. Only a Sage who has realized himself or herself.
It’s up to you to find such a person. When you find such a person, you have to trust that person implicitly, have total faith in that person to lead you on the right path. If you have problems with that, you have to find another Sage. All the scriptures, all the books tell you that unless one surrenders totally and completely to the Sage, there’s no hope for realization. Now it is true there have been certain people in this world who have realized the Self without any help. These people are few and in between, very few. The average person needs a Sage who has gone all the way.
Who has gone beyond eternity, beyond questions, beyond the observer and the observed, beyond all phenomena, and realized all phenomena is a superimposition on the Self. Which means your body, the world in which you live, the animals, everything, the planets, the universe, is only but a superimposition on the Self. Like the writings on a chalkboard, you can write what you will on the chalkboard, then you can erase it and write something else. You can draw a picture.
But the chalkboard always remains the same. Only the images change. And so it is with a self-Realized Sage. The realization is that everything is the same phenomena. All phenomena is exactly alike. It comes and goes. But the Self never changes. The Self is silence, no words. There is no logical explanation for the Self. It is beyond everything your mind will think of. You cannot find the Self by thinking about it. Only by unthinking!
Removing thought.
When you find such a being who has experienced the Self, you have to learn to love this person, totally, completely, absolutely. You’re not really loving the person, you’re loving the Self. You may see a person in the Sage. But the Sage realizes beyond a shadow of a doubt, there’s no person present. Therefore, by loving the Self, you’re loving the Sage.
By loving the Sage, you’re loving your Self, the same thing. The Sage is none other than your real Self. The Sage is you! But you don’t know this, you don’t believe this, you’ve not experienced this. So you think the Sage is a person, a place, a thing. Consequently, all you can do is to love the Sage. That alone will suffice.
Now a Sage, having transcended the body and transcended the world comes from a completely different space than you do. And he or she may do things totally differently.
But you should know this: everything the Sage does is only for your realization. This is why the Sage or the Jnani exists for you — for your realization, no other purpose. It’s up to you to feel this, to realize this, to understand this.
You really have to learn to love the Sage! It is difficult for many of you to love at all. When you think of love, you think of human love. And you think of disappointments, sorrow. But when you love the Sage, it’s totally different, completely different. When you begin to love the Sage you immediately feel a bliss inside of yourself. You feel joy and happiness. Why? Because you’re loving the Self. The Self is all pervading, infinite reality, omnipresence. Loving the Sage is loving your Self. There’s only one Self. And you have to really learn to trust the Sage in everything you do.
There’s a story that reminds me of this. One day Krishna and Arjuna were walking down a path. Towards the evening they became tired, they saw a house. In the house was a mean old man. Through some method he acquired lots of money. He was very mean.
They knocked on the door. The mean old man came to the door and said, “What do you
want?” And Krishna said, “May we have lodging for the night and food to eat?” Usually the mean old man would have shut the door in their face, but he realized it was Krishna and Arjuna, so he reluctantly let them in. He had a scrumptious dinner for himself but he only gave Arjuna and Krishna bread crumbs to eat. And he had a comfortable bed, but he made Krishna and Arjuna lie down in the corner in the mud to sleep for the night. When morning came, Krishna and Arjuna were about to leave. Krishna put his hand on the old man’s head and blessed him and he said, “May you prosper abundantly.” And they left.
Evening came again. They came to another house. In this house lived a pious, wonderful, beautiful old man whose only possession was a cow. They knocked on the door and the old man opened the door and when he saw Krishna, he prostrated himself and he said, “What a blessing I’ve got to have Krishna and Arjuna come to my home! My home is yours.” He gave them his dinner. He made them sleep in his bed and he slept on the floor. And he praised them all night. When morning came, Arjuna and Krishna were about to take their leave, and Krishna put his hand on the old man’s head and he said, “May your cow drop dead!” and left. Arjuna didn’t say a word. But he was thinking about this all day. Finally he had the nerve to ask Krishna, “Master, I didn’t understand your message. The other night when we came into the house and this old man treated us poorly, was mean to us, you blessed him and told him, may he prosper abundantly. And last evening, when we came to this old man, pious old man who was wonderful to us, gave us dinner and his bed, you cursed him and said, may his cow die, drop dead. What is the meaning of this?”
Krishna explained, “My ways, Arjuna, are not your ways. And your ways are not my ways. You may see me do many things which you don’t understand. Never judge me by what you see me do. Only love me. You see, when I cursed the first man, and told him, may he prosper abundantly, I realized he would come back many times, many incarnations and have a lot of money, and his relatives would haunt him to get some money. And the IRS would come after him. His relatives would want his money. He will have many lives to work this out. He will suffer many lives because of his greed. Now when I went to the other old man, I realized that he was giving up everything for God. His only possession was the cow. And this was holding him back from self-realization. So when I removed the cow from him, then he will be self-realized. This is the game I play with people.”
The same is true with us. Never believe the Sage thinks like you or does the things that you do. A Sage may appear to you to be an ordinary person just like yourself. But that’s where the similarity ends. Never try to understand a Sage, his methods or what he does. Again, just love him. That’s all you have to do. If you can really learn to love the Sage, immediately you will see results in your spiritual life.
The first thing you will see, you will feel profound peace in yourself that you never felt before. Then you will feel joy in your heart that you never had before. You will feel love for everything, from the mineral kingdom, to the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. You may be going through some karma, perhaps. Remember for the Sage there is no karma. I know in some of the books it tells you that the reason the Sage does certain things is that he or she is going through some prarabdha karma, that’s left over and it will be all finished when he or she drops the body. This is a lie. These things were just written to appease the people.
I’m telling you there’s no karma for a Sage at all. What you see in the Sage is a lie also. As long as you see the Sage as a body, your thinking is erroneous. The Sage is not a body. Neither are you, because you don’t know it. Saying, “I am not the body” is not good enough. You have to experience this truth. What good is this teaching if you can’t experience it? Therefore the Sage tests you. You may have many personal experiences with the Sage. The worst thing you can do is become judgmental. Always remind yourself that the Sage is not coming from the place you’re coming from. Do not even try to understand the Sage. Just love the Sage, that is sufficient.
Again, when you really love the Sage, you will see very fast changes in your life.
This is more important than practicing self-inquiry, than being the observer or doing other spiritual methods. For if you’re loving the Sage, self-inquiry will become easier for you.
When you have a hard heart and a head made out of stone, it is difficult for you to love.
Therefore you look at yourself as an individual and you try to practice spiritual discipline and self-inquiry, being the observer, pranayama, mantras. Yet it’s the ego doing all these things! This is why in Advaita, no spiritual methods are required. No sadhana is required.
No discipline is required. Only to love. To love whom? To love the Sage as yourself, that’s all that’s required. Once you are able to do this, everything else will open up for you. It appears difficult in the beginning, especially for a Westerner. For you’ve been brainwashed to believe that you’re the ego and everything that you do in your life comes from the ego point of view.
You think you’re making progress, then something comes along that makes you angry and upsets you. And you feel you’ve lost all your progress and you’re nowhere.
And you become perplexed and wonder about this and you wonder about that. And you say you’ve been practicing sadhana for three or four or five years. Nothing has happened, twenty years, nothing has happened. You’ve forgotten one thing: to love the Sage as yourself.
Look back at your own practice and you’ll see that this is true, to really love, with all of your heart and all of your soul. True love means surrender. What do you surrender?
Your ego, what else? Give it all to the Sage, become empty, totally free and empty. Then I can assure you, you will feel such bliss and it will never leave you again. You will realize that irrespective of circumstances, all is well. You’ll understand that regardless of what is happening to your body, all is well. You will stop feeling sorry for yourself. You will stop judging yourself. You will begin to leave everything and everybody alone.
Another incident of this is when I was with Paramahansa Yogananda, when I was seventeen years old. He initiated me and he told me, “Robert, do you promise to love me, no matter what you see me do?” So I smiled and I hesitated. I said to myself, “What is this
guy going to do?” And yet I felt an overwhelming love and I said, “Certainly, yes, I will.”
And in the six months that I was with him, I’d see him go into different moods, become angry with certain devotees while loving other devotees. I remember a time during Christmas when many devotees wanted to go home to their families in the holidays. And one went to Yogananda and asked him, “Master, can I go home to my family for Christmas?” And he gave him a warm smile and said, “Yes, of course, go home and enjoy yourself.” Someone else would come to him and say, “Master, may I go home for the holidays?”
And he said, “What? How dare you ask me a question like this? Of course you can’t go home. You have no family. I’m your family. The only family you have is here, your brothers and sisters in Satsang.” And he would literally scream at him or her and never gave them permission to go home. I observed all this and I watched and I realized at that time also, I’m not here to judge him, to see whether he’s right or wrong, good or bad. And there were many incidences that he did in the ashram, that the average person would leave and never come back. But I realized that these were tests to see if people were fit or not. And so it is with us.
What are we really looking for? True spirituality is not easy. It means changing your entire viewpoint, looking at life completely differently. Trying to keep quiet most of the time. Keeping your mind quiet, never allowing it to judge, never allowing your mind to think too much on any one subject. You learn to catch your thoughts. When the mind begins to criticize, catch it before it goes too far. Realize the God within you — your real Self - can never lead you astray.
Ramana Maharshi did many strange things. All Sages do! I won’t go into them.
Suffice it to say, a Sage comes with a completely different background than you do. Do not try to train the Sage or mold the Sage into your image, like you do God! In other words, do not expect the Sage to do what you think he should do. Because after all who is thinking?
The ego! Who else? Realize this, always remember this. If you learn to surrender to the Sage, the Sage will always be with you and never leave you. When you’re asleep, when you’re awake, when you’re working, you will never be alone again! Love will always be with you.
But again, this is only for those people who have been through many, many spiritual experiences in their life, that have an inkling of what I’m talking about. You can’t pull a person off the street and speak like I’m speaking here tonight. They will laugh in your face and go their merry way. For these people have not yet even begun to learn the lessons of spiritual life.
When I say there’s no person, no world, no God, no universe, no life, I speak from experience. Unless you have the same experience, it’s better not to think, better not to speak. This makes sense. For when you stop criticizing, you stop speaking, you stop thinking. Only the true Self can emerge from you. Reality comes in to your existence. It has always been there. But you’ve awakened it. You begin by not believing anything the senses tell you. Taste, touch, hear, see and smell. Don’t accept what I’m telling you. You stop worrying about anything and everything. Stop worrying! Remember, all is well. You live in an intelligent universe that knows all about you and it can take care of you and meet all your needs in the right way. In ways that you know not of. Trust it. Have faith in that which you do not understand. Drop all fear.
It’s so funny to me that people fear something. There is nothing in this entire universe that has a basis in fear. Fear is a human emotion. If you have no thoughts there is nobody to fear. It is only when you begin to think and your mind draws pictures for you and you have all sorts of situations that may happen tomorrow or the next day or right now, and then you begin to fear. And you fear for one reason only. You do not understand who you really are! You think you’re a human being with all sorts of problems. And you say to yourself, “If I don’t think of these things, who will resolve my problems? How will my problems ever become resolved?” That’s why I say, do not try to think about them, just love the Sage and everything will be taken care of. But the answer to all this is simple. Do not try to figure it out. For there’s not time or space for a problem to begin. There is no time or space for fear to emerge. Time and space do not exist. Only the Self exists - the pure awareness, the absolute reality, nothing else. And you are that.
I know that some of you listening to these words, you go home and you forget everything I said. And then you become worldly again, start thinking about your income and your sickness, that people don’t love you, the job you hate, so forth and so on. But now when you begin to think this way, you have to catch yourself and think of the Sage.
How wonderful it is to understand these things! The rest is up to you. Peace.
Any questions?
Student: How do you tell a false Sage from a real Sage?
R: Your heart will tell you. If you are a sincere devotee, you do not have to worry about anything like that. Something within you will tell you what to do, where to go. But if you’re a false devotee, you will go to a false Sage! Like attracts like. Therefore you honestly have to take a good look at yourself, to see what you’re really interested in, what you really want. That will tell you a lot about yourself, then you’ll be attracted to the right Sage, who will concentrate on your frame of being, who you are spiritually, in consciousness. That’s why I always say everybody’s in their right place. There are no mistakes. Everybody’s where they’re supposed to be. There are no mistakes whatsoever. And there are no false Sages. Because a false Sage has false people. So they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, having a false teaching. Which is right, the way it’s supposed to be. So if you’re sincere, you will attract the right Sage.
That reminds me of a story. There was once a girl who was brought up in prostitution. And she didn’t like it, but she knew nothing else. She was only about seventeen, eighteen years old and she used to pray every day for her salvation, to become free from all this. She sincerely wanted freedom, but her whole family was involved in prostitution
and karmically she was attracted to that family when she was born. She would look out the window at her break and she would see a holy man in the market place across the street and he would be shouting and screaming, “Repent all you sinners, or you’re going to hell, love God.” She used to hear him and she said, “Oh, I wish I was like that, that I could love God and be like him.” And this went on all of her life. Finally the time came when she died, and the holy man died too.
So they came up to heaven, to the gates of heaven, and God came to the door, and he said, “You can come in here,” but to the holy man he said, “you can’t come in.” “You’ve got to go down to hell.” The holy man said, “Why? How come? All my life I’ve been preaching you are good, and your ways. I was telling people to repent, while this girl was in prostitution all of her life.” And God told him, “You’ve been preaching my name, but inside you, you were corrupt. You never meant what you said. You just wanted people to follow you and have a following. But this girl, even though she was a prostitute, she has a pure heart, so she will never be reborn again. She is self-realized now, while you will have to go back again and think about these things and learn to make your heart pure. Then you will be with the right people.”
So this is true with us. We never have to wonder where we will be, where we will go. It all depends on what we are. What you are speaks so loud it can’t hear a word you are saying! So you’re always in your right place, where you’re supposed to be. Make yourself pure. Dive into your heart center. Sit in the silence. Desire self-realization with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul. Cry out for God. And you will be with the right people. Everything will take care of itself…
(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.