– Transcript 243
R: Om, shanti shanti om, peace, peace. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It is wonderful to be with you again this hot, Thursday evening. You had nowhere better to go so you came here! Welcome! Good to see you.
Ask yourself the question, “Why do I really come to satsang?” And the answer will probably be, “To become free! To awaken, to become self-realized, to become liberated.”
Most of us understand that this is your real nature. Liberation is what you really are! But we’ve been covered over with ignorance, what we call Maya. We believe the world is real, it can hurt us, do all kinds of things to us and we react to the world. So your answer is really right. You want to uncover the ignorance and become free!
Now what happens when you become liberated? When you awaken to your Self?
You
have unalloyed happiness, total peace, unfathomable joy, infinite love. These are all attributes to awakening. Therefore, develop these if you want to awaken. For you will feel beautiful, wonderful all over and nothing will ever spoil it. In other words, if you awaken, you will not react any longer to the television, to the newspaper, to the people, what they say or think. When you awaken, you will know that all is well! All is exceedingly well in every area of your life. And your life will be the life of the universe. There will be no difference between you and the universe! Basically this is the reason why people come to satsang, to awaken!
You have read the books. You realize there’s a world of beauty, a world of joy, a world of love that interpenetrates this world. That brings you total happiness always, total peace that never changes. Whereas, now in the world that you’re living in, so it appears, certain things make you happy. Certain things make you sad. You react to what the world gives you, how the world treats you, you react to that. So you’re never really happy all the time. You never really have peace all the time. Your peace and your happiness is determined by what’s going on in your life.
Whereas, to an awakened being what’s going on in your life doesn’t matter at all.
You’re deliriously happy all the time! Whether they throw you to the lions, or you win the lotto, or your body is cut to pieces, or you have the healthiest body in the world, it makes no difference, for you’re totally peaceful all the time! You’re totally happy all the time! This is the reason why you want to be happy for you realize being happy feels wonderful.
Therefore, these are valid reasons to be happy. But you don’t want the happiness to end. You want it to be forever. This is what satsang is all about. This is why we’re here, to experience unalloyed happiness. To experience total peace, total joy!
Now, the main obstacle that keeps you from experiencing this joy and this happiness that I’m talking about is attachment to person, place and thing. It is this attachment that makes you earthbound. It keeps you reincarnating over and over again, so it appears, on this earth plane. For if you’re attached, you believe you are a body and a mind. When you believe you’re a body and a mind you’re going to experience all kinds of things in this world. You’ll experience worldly things and become attached to these things. You will believe that somebody, some place can make you happy. Somebody, some place can make you miserable. You will believe that if you attain this, you’ll be the happiest person on earth and if you do not attain it, you will be miserable all the time.
You believe if you can only have this person in your life, you’ll be the happiest person on earth. But when this person comes into your life after a while you’ll wish he never did. Because he’ll make you miserable! And so it is on this plane. So learn to be detached!
A good example of detachment is this: Let’s say you have a dream. In that dream you are a little person and you grow up. You get married and you buy a brand new home.
You buy a brand new car. You have three children and they grow up. And you live a relatively good life. And then you awaken from the dream. Let me ask you, how long are you attached to your children of the dream before you forget about them? How long are you attached to your wife or husband of the dream before you forget about them? How long are you attached to your car and house? And anything else that you worked so hard to get in the dream, before you forget about them? A couple of seconds? A minute? An hour? It’s usually minutes, you forget all about the dream. This is detachment.
If for some reason you did not forget about the dream people and the dream experiences, you wouldn’t be able to function. You’d be living in two worlds! You’d be living in the dream world and this world and you’d think they’re both real. So your nature makes you forget about the dream. You have enough problems to handle in this world. Imagine if all your dreams were on your mind all the time as if they were real! And so you become detached from the dream quickly.
Now you’re done with this world called the earthly plane. In this world you believe everything to be real also! And you do the same thing. You grow up. You elicit the things that you want to make you happy. You want to meet the right person to get married to and you become attached to these things. This is the problem, you become attached to person, place and thing. This is the only problem that you have.
Now, I’m not saying to be totally detached so that you have no feelings, no love, I’m not saying this at all. So being detached is totally different from what you think it is.
To be detached means you no longer feel an affinity to hold on to things.
You no longer have the necessity to own things. To hold on to them. You’re free from this. The more spiritual you become, the freer you become. For you no longer have to
obtain things, have things to make you happy. You leave things alone. You are no longer obsessed with people, places and things. But you have a great compassion and love for every body and everything. But you’re not attached!
In other words, when you’re with another person, you love that person. But you’re not obsessed with them. You don’t own them. You give them freedom to express themselves, yet you love. And if the person ever leaves, the love is still there. It didn’t go anywhere, for you are love itself! If you understand what this love means, it can’t come or go depending on person, place or thing. For love is always there because that’s what you are.
The attachment is gone. So, if your mate wants to leave you, or your car is stolen, or your house burns down, this does not affect you one iota.
For something deep within your heart tells you all is well. There are no mistakes!
You’re no longer hurtable. You can’t be hurt by any body, no matter what they do. This is true detachment. In other words, you can own things and not own them. You can have certain people in your life and not have them in your life. You can live in certain areas of this world and not live in certain areas of this world, it’s all the same. There is no difference.
Your life will not depend on external things or internal things. Think of what it means to live this way, how wonderful you will feel all the time. You’ll never depend on people again for anything, yet you love people. It doesn’t mean that you become sarcastic, obnoxious. It means that you become a loving being, an understanding being, a compassionate being. You leave things alone and you leave people alone. You turn within yourself. And all the answers are within yourself. All the answers that you’ve been looking for, everything that you’ve been looking for is within yourself! You will learn to depend on the Self for everything. Yet, you cooperate with people. You cooperate with the world, but you understand in your heart that the world is a passing show, a passing fantasy. Nothing is ever the same.
Consequently, you become unhurtable. The world cannot hurt you again, ever, no matter what it shows you. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got cancer, or you’ve got AIDS, no big deal, it’s okay. It’s only the body and you are not the body. The doctor tells you you’re in perfect health, all is well in your body - it’s okay, too. It makes no difference. See, they’re both two sides of the same coin. The only thing that’s going to make something happen to us is the way we react to them - the conditions. The only thing that determines what happens to us, is the way we react to a given condition. You are in control. You are in charge of your being, your body. You are the Master over yourself. It is up to you, always remember this!
This life is but another dream! And the only time you will ever awaken from it, know that something else, that something other exists even more beautiful than you could ever imagine, is by not becoming attached to anything. Own anything you want, but never be possessed by your possessions. Learn to live this way and you’ll be very happy all of the time. And one day you will awaken and you will laugh hysterically.You will understand this is only a dream. No matter how real it may be, it’s a dream. You are not what you appear to be. You are beyond anything you could ever comprehend. Learn to sit in the silence and be still. Because your true nature is infinite wisdom, absolute reality, pure awareness, consciousness. You do not have to do any methods to become free. If you weren’t free you’d have to practice all kinds of yoga, meditations, all sorts of things to become free. But since you’re already free, there’s nothing you have to do to realize it. So we don’t meditate as in Advaita Vedanta. We sit in the silence.
We sit in the silence and we watch. We work intelligently on our conditioning. We observe the mind. What is the mind, but a bunch of thoughts about the past and worries of the future, that’s all the mind is! We learn to stay centered in the here and now. We observe things happening around us but we never react. We act from our heart. But we never react!
As you begin to live this way, you’ll notice as the weeks pass, as the months pass, as the years pass something begins to happen to us. We’re becoming more peaceful, more loving, kinder, we feel happy most of the time. We’re on the path of self-realization. But if you’re arrogant, sarcastic, obnoxious, you have a bad temper, then you have a problem. For these are the things that keep you earthbound. They keep you attached to this earth. And you’ll come back again and again and again, unless you do something about it. It’s your choice!
This choice is really the only freedom you have. Everything else is predestined.
But you have the choice whether to turn within or to react. The choice is always yours!
Nobody wants to hurt you. We live in consciousness, it’s virtually impossible to be hurt. Consciousness accommodates us as images. Because consciousness is absolute reality, we’re absolute reality, also. Consciousness is all pervading, everywhere present at the same time. There’s no room for anything else. This means that you’re made out of goodness, love, peace, happiness, joy. This is what you really are! Focus on these things. Do not focus on the TV news or the newspapers, what people say or do. The world has been the way it is for millions of years. It’ll never change.
Your mission is to get out of this world. And you do this by becoming detached, by ridding yourself of the emotions that you have. I know some of you say, “Well, I’ve had a real hard life!” Everybody had a hard life at one time or another, forget about that. Live in the now, live in the moment.
Become free now! Become liberated now! If you live correctly in the moment you don’t have to worry about the future, the future will take care of itself! As far as the past is concerned, it can’t hurt you unless you think about it. Unless you think about all the things that happened to you in the past, then you bring them back again. You create them again in your mind, you bring them to life again. You must learn to let go of the past totally and completely. Not to worry about the future and feel wonderful right now. And you do this by taking time every day to sit in the silence observing, watching, inquiring, “Who am I?”
As thoughts come to you, you inquire, “To whom do these thoughts come? They come to me. I think them. Then, who am I?” The I-thought is the main source of all of your
problems. The I-thought, “I am this. I am that” Therefore, if you get rid of the I-thought, all of your problems will disappear with it. And the way to get rid of the 1-thought is to inquire, “Who am I? Where did the I come from? What is the source of this I?” The I-thought comes from your heart, your spiritual heart and moves into your brain. When this happens you become what you are now, a human being. And you say, “I need this, I want this, I have to have this, this hurts me, this makes me feel good.”
The object of self-inquiry is, of course, the act to return to the heart. So, you become mindful of the I-thought. When you sit in the silence, you watch it. And as this “I”
comes to you, a question comes to you, you inquire, “To whom does it come? It comes to me or the I-thought.” It is the I-thought that has the question. It is the I-thought that feels sad, upset, you inquire, “Who am I? What is the source of the “I”?” Who am I? Really means, what is the source of the I-thought. What is the source?
You ask yourself this question over and over again. One day there will be sort of an explosion in some of you. The I-thought will return to the heart and you’ll become all pervading, omnipresent, consciousness, the real Self, which you truly are! You will have unalloyed happiness and eternal peace forever! It will never leave you again. You will understand that you are not the body or the mind or the thoughts, but you are the substratum of all existence. You are the God that you’ve been praying to! You are Krishna, Jehovah, all of the gods that you’ve been praying to all of your life. You are that now! It is you.
It has always been you. You are that. There is no God apart from you. You’ve been praying to your Self. You are the God you’ve been praying to all these years.
Awaken to this truth and be free. Peace.
S: In the beginning of the talk you said that when enlightenment happens there will be great joy and great happiness and you’ll feel this way. Who is this you that will feel this?
R: The universal consciousness itself, it will feel itself. It is absolute joy, absolute love, absolute peace, these words are really all synonymous. The word that we want to use is bliss. Bliss means all of these words, absolute joy, absolute peace, absolute love is bliss, another name for bliss. So when you realize your Self, you feel the bliss that you’ve always been. It’s your natural state. (S: Our language is so dualistic. You said, “You’ll feel it” like it’s a you feeling it. There will be consciousness feeling what it is.) You’re right, of course, but to make you understand what I’m talking about we have to be dualistic. In reality there’s only consciousness and consciousness only knows itself. It knows nothing else but itself. And that Self is bliss and you are that!
S: Nisargadatta used to say that consciousness is unaware of itself. Unaware of itself as anything separate at all.
R: True, exactly, it is bliss consciousness, that is its nature. Its nature is Bliss. But since it is that, it doesn’t know it. How can it know if there is nothing to compete with, nothing to compare it with? It is itself by itself. It has no competition. (S: It’s conscious but it’s not aware of it as itself. It’s not unconscious.) Because It has no opposite. It has nothing to compare itself with. (S: That’s backwards … verbally that’s backwards. It doesn’t jive with the language. It doesn’t make any sense at all!) That’s why I don’t talk about it too much. It’s true: only consciousness exists and that’s it! So find out for yourself what you are.
S: You mentioned that attachment is what keeps you bound to the world, to people, places and things. And when you have children that aren’t grown and they’re so young and you’re their only source of refuge, you feel an obligation and make a commitment to being there for their sake and it seems a tremendous attachment goes along with that.
R: You have to understand what I say about children. What I said was not to be attached, but to have love and peace and joy in your heart. You’re their living father and be a high spiritual being at the same time. (S: There seems to be a lifestyle.) If you understand the truth about the Self and understand who you really are and what you really are, everything will unfold the way it should, by itself. It’s amazing how it works. When you become spiritually mature, everything unfolds the way it’s supposed to. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to leave your family and run away to India or someplace and live in a cave. On the contrary, it means you will become a better father than you’ve ever been. Because you’re not playing favorites. You’re not being attached. You’ll be able to be a good teacher to your children in the right way, because you’ll not be working from the selfish you or from ignorance. You’ll be working from wisdom. You’ll be an example for your children.
An example of wisdom, of total honesty, total joy, total peace. And the children will emulate you. So this is not a question of not caring about your children. It is not a question of not being a good father. If you become self-realized, you’ll be a good father. Try it!
S: You mentioned that you don’t have to do yoga and meditation because you’re already realized. How do you attain it?
R: By everything I’ve spoken about. Becoming still, sitting in the silence and observing yourself, observing your mind, observing your thoughts. Questioning yourself, “Who am I? What is the source of the I?’ Becoming quiet and still, watching you bodily functions, observing them. Watching your mind think. Becoming totally aware of yourself in action … what you do all the time, without reacting. And as you do this you notice that your thoughts become less and less. When you react to your thoughts, you try to stop your thoughts, they become more powerful. But when you do not react to your thoughts, you just watch them and have no feeling for them one way or the other, they become weak until they disappear in their entirety. When your thoughts disappear you’ll be free.
It is your thoughts that keep you bound. That’s why in the Buddhist scriptures they tell you to kill the Buddha. When you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him. It means if you have any thoughts about the Buddha, kill those thoughts. All thoughts are to be completely eliminated. When the mind is empty, truth will shine by itself. Peace.
(end)
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.