– Transcript 248
No Date
R: It’s good to be with you again on this lovely Thursday evening. I welcome you with all my heart.
I love everyone of you unconditionally, just the way you are. All is well. Everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes. Everything is in its right place.
I receive many phone calls, as most of you know from some people all over the world. I always enjoy sharing the interesting ones with you. I received a call recently from Denver and the gentleman asked me, Robert, can you tell me the easiest way to become self-realized? What is the direct path, the really direct path, one that I don’t have to do any work? I want to become self-realized. I’m practicing atma-vichara self-inquiry for sixteen years. Before that I practiced Vipassana meditation. I’ve done yoga, and everything, but nothing ever happens. Is there a way where I can awaken to a simple practice?
I laughed and I said, it’s real interesting that most westerners want to be enlightened in one weekend. It’s taken you so many years to be where you are right now. Even though you’ve been practicing for many years, think of how many years you’ve been the way you are. It’s a drop in the bucket.
There is a way for a person to awaken, and that way is to stop thinking. Stop thinking. He says that sounds good, but how do you do it?
There are three steps to mind control. When the mind becomes quiescent, quiet, still, realization comes all by itself. There is absolutely nothing you have to do to bring it about.
As an example, the sun shines all by itself. Let’s call the sun the Self, consciousness, pure awareness. Yet every once in a while, clouds form beneath the sun. And the sun doesn’t seem to shine any longer. Thousands of years ago, people built statues, idols, Gods, temples to the sun, so the sun would come out and shine once more. But now, it’s sort of evolved. We no longer build statues to the sun or pray to the sun to shine. We realize that the clouds will dissipate soon and the sun will once again shine in all its glory and all its splendor. Your thoughts are the clouds.
Whatever you think, no matter what you think about, as long as you think, you’re covering up the sun, which is the Self. It makes no difference what you’re thinking, good thoughts, bad thoughts, or any kind of thoughts. All thoughts are clouds, all thoughts.
And they cover up the sun. So it is your true nature, is the Self. You’re really the Self, all pervading, reality. It is your thoughts that cover up the Self. Whatever you allow what you think, you cover up the Self more and more and more.You read various books, you take different courses, you go to different teachers.
They’re only coverings for the Self. You’re only covering up the Self. The Self will shine all by itself when you stop thinking. Stop thinking, totally, unconditionally. Stop thinking.
I’m going to give you three steps for mind control:
One, is to stop talking. Stop talking.
Two: have no opinion for or against.
Three: neti-neti, not this, not this.
We’ll start with, stop talking. Has all of your talking since you were first born, has it made any difference in this world? Has this world become a better world in which to live by your talking? Have you really accomplished anything by talking? Sometimes it appears you have accomplished something, but not really. By talking you accomplish very little. Asians, Hindus, American Indians talk very little. Most of them realize that talking is a waste of time. It is when they become westernized, they begin to talk like us. Talk, talk, talk, talk. They become part of a gigantic talking school. They go on forever talking, never stopping.
There’s a story about the American Indians. They will listen to the white man talk, telling them all kinds of nonsense. Then they say ugh, ugh. That’s their answer. In other words they’re saying, you wasted all my time talking nonsense. I don’t believe a word that you say. This is as much talking as we should do.
Many of you go to lunch with me, and there are those of you who hardly say anything. Some of you tell me all of your troubles. That’s OK. I’m here to listen. But if you notice I never answer. I grunt. I just say, “oh”, which means I’m listening to you, I can hear what you’re saying, but it doesn’t mean anything. So I grunt “oh”.
Talking doesn’t do anything for you. It’s when you stop talking, that things begin to happen. For every time you talk you use a lot of energy. You have to think what you’re going to say. It all happens instantaneously. For every word that you say, there’s a thought that precedes it. In other words you have to think about the words that you are saying.
But most of you don’t understand it because you talk so much. It’s only words that come out and you say this is all spontaneous. But then you have to think about every word that you speak. Whenever you speak, you’re cluttering your mind with stuff, till the mind becomes agitated. It never does you any good anyway.
Think of all the talking you’ve done since you were born. Think of all the talking politicians do, lawyers, doctors, and the world is worse because of it.
If no one ever said a word, the power that knows the way would take over and peace and joy would be on this earth.
For an example, take an orange tree. Does the tree ever talk about growing oranges? Or discuss it with the next tree? The orange tree doesn’t say a word. Yet lovely oranges grow all over the tree by itself. Wheat grows in the wheat fields. Bananas grow on banana trees. The sun shines just right and makes everything sustained and maintained in
a great way. No talking is done. Nothing is happening. But everything is happening. And so it is with us. When we learn to shut up by keeping quiet, not talking about thoughts in your mind, I’m talking about keeping quiet and keeping still in the mind also. Things will happen all by themselves.
Everything is preordained in any event. Everything is predestined in any event. So everything will unfold the way it’s supposed to. It doesn’t need any help from you. Every step of your life has been outlined. Every move you make has been determined before you were born. Therefore you don’t have to argue about anything. There’s no reason to debate about anything. Just keep still.
This is the meaning of ‘Be still and know that I am God’. Not talking, I am God, just be still.
Ramana Maharshi never used to talk. Sages and Jnanis hardly ever talk at all. I used to sit in the old hall at Ramana Ashram, in the corner, and watch Ramana handling the people. They would all line up to talk to him, to see him. He would just stare at them and hear most of their troubles.
He wouldn’t say anything. Sometimes he would utter a few words that were necessary. I recall one instance when a person came to Him from the Punjab. First day he told Ramana all of his troubles. It seems he was talking and talking and talking. Ramana looked at his attendant and said, “he comes in with all of his troubles, to whom shall I tell mine?” Meaning that it was the embodiment of consciousness, pure awareness. There is no one for I to go to. So whom shall I tell this to?
And so it is with us. We think we have problems. We think we have troubles, something wrong with our lives. But in truth and reality, those are the clouds I was talking about. All your so-called problems are only clouds. They’re covering the Self. As long as you identify with the problems and the clouds, you become sicker and sicker and sicker, covering your Self more and more and more. And so it becomes hidden, so that you are forgetting to think about the Self.
Your mind is continuously on your problems and your affairs and on your nonsense. Stop talking. There’s really nothing to, say. Everything happens in silence. Everything that is happening in the invisible world, everything. Do not believe that you are worth nada (nothing).
Think of all the beautiful words that have been written down in books for us, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, so on and so forth. How beautiful their words are but they made a difference in the world? They made a dent in the world? Look at the world. What have they done for this world? It would be better if we never heard of these people at all. For people take refuge in their words, and the world becomes worse and worse. So we have to come to the conclusions there wasn’t any answer. Talking is not the answer. So to straighten people out, to get your way with people, is not the answer. To win arguments, to try to win a point of view is not the answer. Stop talking.We come to step number two, mind control. Have no feelings for or against, for or against anything. Look at everything in the same way. Do not differentiate too much with things. This way you can reconcile yourself with the whole Universe, with the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. You’re not to see differences. Although it’s hard for most people. But yet if you want to awaken, you can’t see differences with people or with things.
It’s like going to a play. One person is the good guy and the next person is the bad guy. You take sides with the good guy. Then the play is over. There was never a good guy or a bad guy. It was just a play, actors playing a part. Therefore the difference was in your mind. It is your mind that creates differences.
As an example I always use the keyhole. You come to the door and look through the keyhole, and you see Mahatma Gandhi getting shot. That’s all you can see. You become very angry. You say to yourself, I see the murderer. Lets get him, hang him and shoot him. He killed Mahatma Gandhi. Then you open the door and you see the whole picture.
That’s not what you saw through the keyhole. You look to the left and it shows previous lives. He is the same as Mahatma Gandhi in different roles. In previous lives Mahatma Gandhi was a murderer and the murderer was Mahatma Gandhi. The murderer shot Mahatma Gandhi and the people shot the murderer and they are both dead. You look and notice they are in the astral plane now. They are talking about it and they say, well it looks like we chalked some karma for ourselves. Only when we come back again to this earth plane, this time I’ll be the murderer and you be Mahatma Gandhi. Exactly, let’s do that.
This is the way to transcend karma.
So you appear at this time and the same thing takes place that you watched through the key hole. Before, you saw only one scene. Now you see the whole picture.
Then you look to the right and you see both people are again laughing and smiling with each other. And you begin to realize nobody was murdered. And there was no murderer.
Nobody was killed Nobody dies. No one is born. No one prevails. You’ve gotten the whole picture. So you see certain things in your personal life. You become totally angry. Who offends you? You only see a small part of the picture You do not see the complete picture.
You only see the part you’re involved in. That’s all you can see. If you could only see the whole picture you would see there is nobody right and nobody is wrong.
As long as you keep reacting to things, you’ll have to do it again and again and again, and it will never stop. You’ll start laughing at yourself and begin to understand it is all God’s Leela. It’s all a play of consciousness. All of life is a play of consciousness. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. And yet it is not easy to get out of this plane. You say to yourself, I don’t wish to play any longer. I don’t want to play this game any longer. I want to be free, liberated. And when you make up your mind to be free and liberated, you’ll be led to the straight and narrow path where you have to go to meet the right people, the right teachers, right Dharma, right action, and never be involved again. Have no opinions for or against.
Now we come to the third step, mind control, which is neti-neti, not this, not this.
If you wish to awaken you have to deny the whole world. The whole world has to be denied by you. In other words everything that you see has to be denied.
From the moment that you get out of bed, all the thoughts that come to you, what your eyes see, what your ears hear, what your mouth tastes, what your nose smells, all have to be denied. These things have nothing to do with me, and I have nothing to do with these things.
I am pure awareness. I am not the body or the mind. I am pure consciousness.
Keep on denying your thoughts. Deny your life. Deny what you see all around you. The day will come when you will become absolutely free. For there is no one attached to person, place or thing. You’ll no longer react to life’s vicissitudes. You have freed yourself totally and completely. This is what you must do.
- Stop talking
- Have no opinion for or against
- And deny everything that you see
What do you do with your life right now? Where are you going with it? Are you happy, totally happy? If you only realized who you were, it would be absolutely impossible to think you were not happy. Happiness comes by itself. Happiness and the Self are the same thing, no difference.
As you begin to see everybody as your Self, a whole new world opens up for you.
The rest is up to you. You can begin practicing these things we discussed, or you can go on with the way you’ve been going on with your life up to this point. What are you going to do? It’s up to you. Be still -and know that I, am God.
S: Questioner asks question about Arjuna and Krishna and the battle.
R: Since he’s not the doer, then nobody is going to do anything. They appear to be going into a battle because it was their destiny. Arjuna didn’t want to fight at all. He wanted to break his sword. Krishna told him to go into battle and fight. This was his duty.
This was his karma, to go and fight. But not to be concerned with the fruits of the action, whether he is killed or not. Nobody dies and nobody is born. That’s what he explained to him. He said that even though you get killed, you will be a hero. If you don’t get killed, you’ll also be a hero, because you fought in the battle. So don’t worry that he got killed or not. It doesn’t matter, because in truth, nobody dies. So go out and fight. That was his message to Arjuna.
S: In other words everything is just an appearance in consciousness?
R: Exactly. But Arjuna, remember was not enlightened. Krishna realized Arjuna didn’t understand these things, and had to explain these things to him. So he told him to go and fight like he was supposed to because he was of the warrior class. He was a warrior. It was his duty to fight. But not to be considered as the outcome.
S: He had to follow his Dharma or he wouldn’t have been a warrior. (R: Yes, exactly.)S: (Asking about the dream state)
R: Both states are real, waking and sleeping. If you could only feel and realize that we are in the mortal dream right now. This is the mortal dream and all the nonsense going on will keep us dreaming longer and longer. The foolishness that’s going on, the fighting, the anger, and the nonsense going on with every day, keeps us bound to this mortal dream. In other words, you are dreaming. We’ll keep on dreaming until we let go. Stop fighting. Become non-attached, then well awaken and be free.
S: When doing self-inquiry, I’m feeling good and I’m feeling bad.
R: We should always be aware of what’s going on in our lives. Be totally aware of what we are doing, and work out our karma by not reacting to things. Don’t let things bother us or annoy us. Realize what’s happening all of the time and become free, becoming mindful. Watching ourselves continuously. See where we react to things. Watch when we respond to a situation that comes to us. This frees us. But if we just go through life allowing life to make us feel a certain way, we’ll have to have it over and over again. It never ends. We take on body after body after body until we give up and surrender to the Self. So the time will come when everybody will have to surrender to the Self. It’s all part of the Divine Plan. The only freedom we have is to turn within, not to react to things.
That’s the freedom we have. Everything else is preordained.
S: I do the same things over and over again until I must do something about it.
Answer: Yes, it depends on what you do about it. What are you going to do about it? If you come from a point of wisdom find out who is experiencing these things. Who is going through all this? And. realize the 1-thought is. going through everything, not you.
You have absolutely nothing at all to do with this. Follow the I-thought to it’s source. And then you become free. But if you don’t do this, you’ll have to repeat the same thing again and again, like you’re saying. The same thing will happen to you again and again until you stop reacting to it, and you begin to see it as it really is, the part of your thoughts and treat it like a thought. When the thought is gone, right action will take place in your life.
The whole idea is to remove the thoughts. The thoughts cause the confusion and your action. Once the thoughts are removed there’s nobody to act. You shine as the Self, as consciousness.
S: (Speaks about real nature being perfect.)
R: Yes, of course. This is all about real nature. Everybody’s nature is That. Everybody’s nature is perfection. When I gave you the example before about the sun, that’s it.
Everyone is the sun. Everyone shines perfectly. The dark clouds of illusion cover the sun, and the dark clouds of illusion make us feel something is wrong some place and we try to correct it. That’s when trouble begins. We begin correcting things.
(silence)
Om, shanti, shanti, peace, peace, 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.