– Transcript 239
R: Om, shanty, shanty, shanty, om. Good evening. It is wonderful to be with you once again. I love you with all my heart unconditionally.
When you take a look at the world around you and you see all the dastardly things happening everywhere you can take refuge within your heart. Which you do by letting go of the world happenings. By diving deep inside of your heart where there is peace and harmony and love. Your heart can save you from all the destruction happening in this world. All the things you see and hear everywhere. Take refuge in your heart.
Your heart of course is the Self, consciousness. It is all pervading, omniscient, omnipotent. So when you take refuge in your heart the whole universe changes for you.
Things will still appear to be going on in this world, but not for you. For you have contacted the universal omnipotence, omniscience. Yet it appears that I am talking about two different worlds, but I’m not I’m talking about one world, one universe. One Self which is you.
As you become spiritually mature, you become humble, filled with humility and love and you smile at the world, you understand its nature as Maya. It’s constant change.
You no longer hate the world nor love the world. Just observe the world, leave it alone.
You stop debating with people, arguing with people, trying to prove points. You just leave everything alone and leave everybody alone and you’re at peace with yourself and the world.
This happens automatically when you take refuge in the Self, in the heart. In other words your job is not to look for peace, for harmony, for justice, for love for these are fleeting things in this world. Your work is to take refuge in the heart, in the Self. Then these verities come by themselves. In other words you become a living example, a living embodiment of consciousness, of divine love, of peace. Whereas if you just look for peace and harmony in this world, you’re doing something external and you’ll never really find it.
Due to the fact that there is not really any love or harmony going on in this world, so-to-speak.
The Self is forever, never changing, never deviating one inch. It’s pure bliss. It is your friend. It is you! Learn to love the Self in the heart. Always wake up with a pleasant smile on your face, remembering who you really are. You can say to yourself, “I am the heart.” The heart is all pervading love. Therefore the universal ??? is love. Imagine waking up like that, with thoughts like that. Your whole day will be very pleasant, beautiful. You can hold onto it. Hold onto your heart. To peace and love, that’s in your heart. Really learn to love yourself. Not your ego but your Self. We were really the Self. Remember there is never two of you there is only one. And you’re trying to make the change from humanhood to the Selfhood. This is done by not reacting to the world again, by watching the world, seeing the world, observing the world. But understand that the world is like a play on the screen. The world is a superimposition on the Self. You are the Self.
Consequently your body and everything else is a superimposition on the Self. So there is only one.
You observe your body, you watch your body doing its thing, but you are not that.
You never were the body and you will never be a body. You are pure awareness, the absolute reality. As you think about these things you become them. The worst thing you can do is think about troubles and worries. Always think about the heart. Always think about the Self, which is forever. If you think about anything else it is only temporary, it comes and goes. The good things, the bad things of this world, they come and go. Think only of the Self, the heart. This is your reality, beauty, joy. This is beingness. This is the I-am that I-am.
Remember all the time it begins in the morning when you first open your eyes and get out of bed. That’s when you catch yourself. If your mind starts thinking about the work that you’re going to do and the problems of the day, catch yourself and change…make the change. Say to yourself, “I’m not my work. I’m not my thoughts that come to me. I’m beyond these things. I-am that, which has always been and will always be. That which remains the same forever. The substratum of all existence, the absolute reality, I-am that.” Just thinking about these things in the morning makes you feel wonderful.
I receive many phone calls. I had an interesting call this morning from a lady, an Indian lady at Phoenix which I thought was really appropriate, I’ll share it with you. She asked me, “Robert, in my house I have a beautiful picture of Ramana Maharshi and everyday I do puja to it, in the morning and in the evening. I play chanting tapes. I do aarti, the waving of lights. I put prashad at his picture. I pray to the picture of Ramana. I’ve been doing this for twelve years and nothing has happened. Isn’t Ramana supposed to give me some grace or something and enlighten me? That is how I’ve spent my time in twelve years, paying homage to Ramana’s picture and I feel nothing. Also when I go to sleep at night I think of Ramana’s form and face.” It is written in the Upanishads when you think of the gurus form and face, the guru gives you grace, blessings. “Am I doing anything wrong, what’s going on?”
I replied to her, “The answer to both questions is no. A picture cannot give you grace. No matter how much you pray to the picture, what you do to the picture, you can kiss the picture, do anything you like to the picture, it will not give you anything except plenty of peace. It improves your concentration. It will make your mind one pointed because you keep thinking of Ramana Maharshi and do podia to him. So it will make you more peaceful because it’ll make you more relaxed. It will improve your concentration considerably. And as far as seeing Ramana’s form when you go to sleep, his face and expect to get grace you cannot do this because he is dead, so-to-speak. You’re thinking of
Ramana Maharshi like…as a human being. Thinking he is in some astral plane. Ramana Maharshi has merged, been absorbed in the Self. He no longer has a form and only the form of a live Sage can give you grace. You can either do one of two things.”
“You can begin to realize that you can never find self-realization looking at a picture or thinking of the form of a dead guru, or you can find another guru, or a Sage, who is alive.”
“This doesn’t mean that you’re deserting Ramana Maharshi. You will always hold him in your heart. But you have to realize that only a live guru, a live Sage, can give you grace and self-realization. When a Sage drops the body, you have to understand that he is doing this for you. For a Sage never had the body. It is you who observes the body and sees he’s got a body. He never really had a body, the appearance is only for your sake.”
Therefore I said, “Stop doing pooja to Ramana. If you want self-realization go find a Sage and surrender to the Sage, this is important.” When the ego is too big you develop pride. When you have a lot of pride, a lot of ego, you never think of surrendering to the Sage, you think of getting something from the Sage instead of giving yourself to the Sage.
You must stop trying to get something from the Sage like self-realization.
Self-realization comes when you no longer think about it, when you no longer want it. When you totally surrender to the Sage saying, not my will but thine be done.
Keeping the Sages form and face before you all the time. The Sage realizes when you’re ready, then grace comes, liberation comes, but do not think of these things. Your job is to develop a tremendous humility. When I speak of developing humility, I’m not speaking of you becoming a stepping stone for people. Real humility is strength, power. Real humility means nothing bothers you anymore. Nothing has the power to disturb you, to upset your equilibrium. You have a tremendous compassion.
You develop loving kindness for everything, for the mineral kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, for the animal kingdom, for the human kingdom. You’re stepping out of your humanhood, taking a step forward in eternity. Not comparing yourself with other people. Not trying to do anything to anybody else. You simply see the Sage in your heart all of the time and then you finally become the Sage yourself.
But when you let your mind loose there is a catastrophe going on. Your mind will come up with all kinds of reasons why should not surrender to the Sage. Why you should do this, why you should do that. The mind will confuse you completely, this is its business, its job, its duty to confuse you, to make you go deeper in Maya. This is what the mind does. It makes you believe that you are an important human being, that you’re here to achieve great things, accomplish great works. Take a good look at the world, where are all the great works?
The most important job you have is to find yourself. Yet the funny thing is you were never lost. So if you were never lost where do you have to find yourself? Due to the fact you think you’re lost, we therefore use terms like finding yourself. You believe you are a human being with all kinds of problems, attitudes, karma, dogmas, yet that is not you at all. You are a god. You are freedom, peace, love. Act on these things. Become simple in your work. Simplicity is the key. Do not make your life complicated.
Do not go into too many details about situations, conditions. There is a power who knows how to take care of these things, your life. There is a power which created you so-to-speak and knows how to maintain you, sustain you better than you can. Yet most of you will not give it a chance to work. For you say I can do it better by worrying, by fretting, by trying to change people, change conditions. The hallucinating power stops, it becomes dormant, it will not work for you when you do not acknowledge it.
A good example of this is when you have a headache. The first thing that comes into your mind is to take a pill, an aspirin, buffoon. There is a power within you that knows how to take care of the headache. There is a power within you that knows how to heal you, take care of you. But when it sees the aspirin, the power says, “Oh well, you’re doing this yourself, so I will do nothing.” This is how it is for every situation in your life.
As long as you feel and believe that you are he doer, this amazing power which knows the way, will stop working for you. For you’re saying, “I am the doer, I can do it better.” When of course you can’t, and you always seem to be having problems of some kind or another.
These problems only come to you because you think you are the doer. What I’m talking about is to reverse your whole line of thinking, for you have been programmed in past lives, in this life. Science is beginning to understand this perfectly, we are all programmed in our linear thinking.
As an example: if you put a bunch of flies into a bowl and cover the bowl, for a few hours and then you open the bowl, only a couple will fly away. Most of them have been programmed to believe the bowl is closed and will not be able to fly out. They will fly around inside of the bowl, flying around even if there is no cover. Another example: in India when you train elephants you take a baby elephant and put a string around its foot and tie it to a post, to a tree. When the elephant becomes a big elephant, you put a chain around its foot and tie the other end to a tree. The elephant in one kick can tear the chain and the tree out. But the elephant remembers that he couldn’t do it when he was a little elephant, so he didn’t do it. He think he is stuck, he didn’t realize his own strength, the elephant’s been programmed. Another example for those who own a fish tank. If you put a glass between the fish, separate the fish, they can only go so far and after a couple of days you take the glass away, the fish will only go to that place where you had the glass before.
They will not go any further, they will stay separated. These are all substantiated cases and that is how we’re programmed, the same way.
Think about some of your programming. See what you believe. See how your belief system keeps you in prison of your own making. Think of something that you really believe, how you’re stuck somewhere, or something is wrong someplace, and you won’t give it up, you’re holding onto it. They’re simple things.
As an example: You believe if you go out in the rain you’ll catch a cold. If you walk in the rain without shoes you’ll catch a cold. This is not true, yet most of us believe this,
we’ve been programmed to believe it by our parents, our society. Many of you see what I’m getting at. You believe you’re human and that’s all you are. You’ve been programmed to believe this, that you’re a human being, you’re closed in. Where in truth you’re all pervading, you’re everywhere at the same time. In truth you are the universe. But even if I say this to you some of you can’t believe this and will not accept this, because of your programming.
Think of the situations and conditions bothering you right now. Something that upsets you. Some limitation you think you have. Do you really have a limitation? Of course not. But as long as your programming says you do, then you do, and nobody will be able to change until you give up the limitation, until you give up your programming. I tell you that you are infinite beings, you are not what you appear to be. You are totally free, accept this. It is truth about you. Act as if you were a god. A god is never disturbed by what they see, hear, taste…taste, touch or feel. A god doesn’t get angry or mad at anything.
A god does not judge by appearances. You are literally and virtually a god. Why won’t you accept it? Because of your programming.
You may believe what I’m saying while I’m here with you. Once we’re finished and you go your way, human traits come to you again, do they not? As you’re driving home you start thinking about being mugged, being car-jacked, what you’re going to wear tomorrow to work, how you hate your job, so forth and so on. This is your programming at work.
If you were totally free, as you’re driving your car, going where you’re going, going to work, you would never think of these things. You will be virtually happy with everything you do. You’d have complete and total happiness within you all the time. Things will no longer bother you or annoy you. Again you get to reverse your whole life style.
You’ve got to think in reverse. Go within, inside of the heart, dive deep, leave the external world alone. You dive deep within yourself, in the heart, where you will become free and happy and all will be well with you. Peace.
(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.