Transcript:
Robert: It’s good to be with you again. As long as you believe you are the body-mind phenomena you’re going to have problems and that’s that. I don’t care what kind of problems you may think you have, it makes no difference how severe, as long as you believe you are the body-mind phenomena you’re going to have problems. You may feel justified in having problems. You may feel it’s not your fault. You may feel it’s karmic. You may feel all kinds of things, but as long as you believe or you feel the body-mind, you will have problems, because this is the kind of world in which we live – a world that doesn’t exist, seems real to most of us. And if we believe we are the body-mind then we believe the world is real and we believe we have to pray to God for solutions. We do all these things and we still suffer. And suffering will only stop, not when God answers your prayers, but when you awaken to the truth of your own being. Then you’re born again, so-to-speak, in a new reality and all is well. But you may say to me, “But Robert, sometimes you appear to have problems too. Your car may blow up which it does all the time, or your physical body doesn’t feel too good, or something is going on.” My question to you is this, “Who sees this?” There has to be a seer and an object. You’re seeing yourself. When you catch onto your awakening the world does not change. You just see it differently, that’s all. You acquire a feeling of immortality, a feeling of divine bliss so-to-speak, where things no longer have the power to affect you. In other words, in the state of enlightenment cause and effect does not exist for you. But those who are living in the world are going through their karma, and they’re beholding themselves everywhere they look, for the world remember, is only a projection of your mind. Now what kind of a projection is it? It depends on your state, where you’re coming from. We’re all looking at the world and we see something different. All we‘re seeing is ourselves. There are no problems, none exist, none will ever exist. The only problem that exists is what? Who can tell me? SE: “Kuwait?” (students laugh) Robert: You’re close. What do I always say, why does a problem exist? It has to do with your nose. SK: Not to let your thoughts go past your nose, right? Robert: That’s right. You’re allowing your thoughts to go past your nose. That is the only reason you have a problem. If you catch yourself quick before it gets past your nose, where is the problem? The problem is in your thought, only in your thought. When your mind slows down, when the thinking process slows down, where is the problem? It doesn’t exist. But if you allow the thoughts to go past your nose then there’re all kinds of problems that you come up with. You believe this is wrong, and this is not right, and this is hurting me, and you become doubtful, suspicious and apprehensive, and fearful and so forth, because you’re thinking. You may say, “How can you exist without thinking?” Quite well, thank you. (students laugh) The trees do not have to think. The grass does not have to think. The world does not have to think of itself. Everything is taken care of. There is a power that knows how to take care of everything, and will also take care of your body, so-called, if you stop thinking. But as long as you think, “I am the body,” then you have to take care of your body, and watch it, and feed it aspirin, and cold remedies, and proper foods, and do all kinds of strange things with your body. But your body and your mind are not your friend. They come under a law of their own. Did your body ask you today, this morning, it was time to get up, you got up? Did it ask your permission? It does what it wants. You have nothing to do with the body or the mind. When you become depressed does your mind ask you if it can become depressed? It does what it wants. When you become fearful does your mind ask your permission? It does what it wants. When your body catches a cold does it ask you if it can catch a cold? It does what it wants. But what have you got to do with those things? A lady called me this morning from Santa Cruz. And she asked me, “How long do I have to come to satsang before I become self-realized?” So I told her, before I answer let me ask you, “What do you mean by I, and what do you mean by satsang?” And she hung up. I wonder why she did that. But it’s something we can talk about, or I can talk about since I have nothing else to do. How long do ‘I’ have to come to satsang? ‘I.’ How long does ‘I’ have to come to satsang? Does ‘I’ need to come to satsang? What is this elusive ‘I?’ What does it mean? How long does ‘I’ have to come to satsang? The reason you would call it ‘I,’ is because you misinterpreted the I. You identify the I with the body. So you’re saying how long do ‘I’ have to come to satsang. Then what is satsang? Sat means being, being with the Self. Therefore ‘I’and satsang are the same thing. What this means is satsang is your everyday experience. It’s not a place you go to. It’s how you live your life. I makes the separation where there is no separation. There is one whole and you are that. But as long as you are separating ‘I’ from your Self then you always question. I feel sick. I feel happy. I feel depressed. I feel out of sorts. Who is this I? Where did it come from? How does it originate? What is its source? Find out. Dive deep within and find out where the I came from. A good way to do this is before you go to sleep say to yourself, “I’m going to find my I when I get up this morning.” Just before you wake up, before you start thinking, the I presents itself as “I-am,” as pure consciousness. Catch it then. That’s the best time to catch it. As soon as you awaken in the morning, in that split second before you wake up and start thinking, before the thoughts come of the world, that is the time to catch the I-am, the absolute reality. For at that moment this is exactly what you are, pure awareness. And then a thought comes and covers it up. So remember this. If you ask yourself when you go to sleep, you tell yourself, “Tomorrow morning as soon as I open my eyes I am going to identify with my source, Iam,” and you will, even if for a second, it will change your life. As you keep on doing this every morning, every morning, every morning, the time between your awakening and the thought coming to you will become larger that space will expand, and expand, and expand until you are able to stay in the awareness. Of course at that time there will no longer be a you. There will only be the awareness. Try it, you have to investigate. You have to intelligently dive deep within yourself and find the source of your I. Do not accept your feelings. Do not accept your thoughts. Do not watch yourself feeling miserable, and you do nothing about it or you can become the witness to it. That will help too. But it’s better to ask, “Why am I feeling miserable?” and realize that you said why am ‘I’ feeling miserable, ‘I.’ I’m identifying with my body as ‘I.’ Again a mistake. The ‘I’ in itself is pure harmony, joy, happiness. But when you identify the ‘I’ with your bodymind, it becomes the personal I which doesn’t even exist. But you’re making it exist. You’re identifying with it. Why do you want to identify with your personal I? Your personal I never existed. Why have you befriended it? Why do you keep giving it power? Why do you make it grow? Take your power back. Expose your Self. The real you, and forget all this nonsense about a mind and a body and thoughts and the world and God and everything else that appears to be real. Compare yourself with no one. Be true to your Self. Never mind how much progress somebody else is making. Forget about Saints and Sages and other people. You are the only one that ever existed and there is no one but you. You are all the Saints, and the Sages and the seers. You are everything. Everything is the Self, and you are that. Why not awaken to this? Why do you want to play games with yourself so long? By believing in reincarnation that you have to come back again and again and again, and hoping to have a better life next time. There is no better life. As long as you are born of the flesh you have to suffer. This is the way of the flesh. Do not try to improve your life. You’re making a big mistake. For there is no question about it, if you use positive thinking and use your mind, you may appear to improve your life. But remember this world in which you live is a world of duality. For every up there is a down. For every forward there is a backward. For every good there is a bad. Therefore whatever improvement comes into your life it will last for a while, then will subside and then you’ll become miserable again. Then you will be happy again when you get what you want, and then that won’t last and then you will be miserable again. You’ll start sticking up for your rights and fighting for your survival. Then as you get what you want, you’ll be happy again. You’re like a yo-yo. You go up and down, up and down and no matter how much I talk to you about these things you’re going to keep on doing it. So why am I talking? I don’t know. I have no choice. You know, I never asked to do this.(laughter) Strange how things turn out. (laughter) SH: Too late now. (laughter) Robert: All I know is that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. All I know is that happiness is your true nature, that you are not what you appear to be and things are not what they appear to be. Nothing can ever happen to you. Why do you worry so much? What are you afraid of? Your life? You have no life. What you call your life is nothing. It doesn’t exist. It’s no thing. You worry about your hair falling out.(laughter) You worry about needing a new pair of shoes, you’re getting fat, what a waste of energy. Like feeding a dead horse. We’re all going to wind up in the cemetery so what difference does it make what you do? Last week I was talking to a body builder and he was telling me about his muscles. And what he does for this muscle, and what he does for that muscle, and how well he eats. So I told him, “That’s great, you’ll be the healthiest man in the cemetery.” (laughter) And that’s about the gist of it, why not use your energy for constructive purposes? Now this does not have to mean that you ignore your body. Your body will always take care of itself. As a matter of fact the more you practice your sadhana, or realizing your true identity, your body will be able to take better care of itself than you were ever able to take care of it, because it comes under a different law. It knows what to do. It will do whatever it came to this world to do, but it has absolutely nothing to do with you. When will you wake up to that fact? Stop thinking about yourself so much, about getting a new job, about losing your job, about working or not working. No one is ever happy. Those people who work are miserable because they have to work. Those people who don’t work are miserable because they can’t find a job. And when they find a job they join the miserable ones who can’t stand the job. Where is peace? Peace is your real nature. It’s within you. It is you. Look for it and you’ll find it. Seek and ye shall find. Whatever you identify with, that’s what you become. Therefore stop identifying with worldly things. Identify with your Self. Now how do you do this? It begins in the morning, as I told you before. That’s the time when your mind has been free, because you’ve slept, you’ve had a semblance of peace. Being in deep sleep is an unconscious method of self-realization. You’re realized when you are asleep, but you are unconscious so you’re not aware of it. You want to be consciously asleep. When you’re consciously asleep you’re awake. You’re awake to your Self, to reality, to what is, to I-am. When you get up in the morning, immediately before the thoughts come, identify with the Self. Now how do you do this? Simply say to yourself, “I – I.” That’s all you’ve got to do, “I – I.” You’re doing this before the thoughts come. Maybe in the beginning you can only do this for a couple of seconds, but that’s good. Even those couple of seconds will make your day fulfilled, and you’ll feel happy during the day. As time passes, as I explained before, the space will widen and you’ll be able to remain longer periods in “I – I, I – I.” Now when thoughts come simply ask yourself, “To whom do these thoughts come? They come to me.” And you hold on to the me. You do not let go. But do not concentrate on the me you just hold onto the me. You concentrate on the source of me, like you’re holding onto a rope, and you’re going to its source and you let go. Letting go is the source. Total awareness, absolute reality, I am that I am. Do not try to analyze this. Just allow it to be. As you keep doing this every morning, either watching the I, or asking, “To whom do the thoughts come?” you will notice a subtle change is taking place in your life. The first change you will see is you develop a semblance of peace which you never had before. You’ll just not be disturbed by anything and you’ll be surprised at yourself. You’ll notice the things that used to make you angry no longer have the power to do that. You’ll notice that the things you feared, for instance, depression, recession, loss of memory, whatever, your wife ran away with the milkman, maybe that’s a good sign, but these things will no longer disturb you. You’ll just feel good. You’ll feel good all over. And that will turn into pure happiness, you’re just happy, for no reason. Can you imagine what it feels like just to be happy without interruption, for no reason. It has absolutely nothing to do with the world. It doesn’t mean you’ll go round laughing hysterically all the time. It means you just feel happy. You hear about the war in Iraq and you’re happy. There’s no war in Iraq, you’re still happy. You work, you’re happy. You don’t work, you’re happy. You have possessions, you’re happy. You don’t have possessions, you’re happy. In other words it makes no difference what the world may seem to bring to you. You are no longer identifying with the world and its objects. You’re seeing the world as your Self, or you’re beginning to, slowly but surely. Everything begins to take on a projection of your Self. And since you are beginning to discover that you are pure consciousness, the world starts becoming pure consciousness also. It’s like going to a movie and the screen is pure consciousness, the images are the world. Prior to your awakening you’ve been identifying with the images and you have no idea there’s a screen. Oh you know it somewhere in your mind there’s a slight image of the screen, but you don’t think of that because the images are very entertaining. You watch a love movie or a war movie or this kind of movie or that kind of movie, and you get all wrapped up in the objects. But of course, if you try to go up to the screen to grab any object you’re going to grab the screen. This is what happens when you awaken. You realize that you are the screen, which is consciousness. And you realize that everything in the world, everything, the whole universe including God, is superimposed on you. It’s not reality, it’s a superimposition. But you identify with the screen, which is consciousness, and you tolerate the superimposition. Yet you realize it’s not you. You have nothing to do with it and you do not identify with it. So in the same instance your body goes through all kinds of experiences, good, and bad, and in between, but you are always aware that you are not the body and no body exists for you. You know in reality there is no superimposition at all. It does not exist. It appears to exist but it does not. It’s like hypnosis. You’re hypnotized to believe a white poodle is following you. And sure enough when you wake up out of the hypnosis, you keep looking back, you will actually see a white poodle. Your mind will actually picture the white poodle and you will believe it’s real. Nobody else will see it but you will, until the hypnosis wears off. In the same way we see people, places, and things and they appear so real to us. We identify with them and we suffer accordingly. But as you practice every morning, catching yourself between waking up and thoughts coming, little by little, slowly but surely, you will begin to realize yourself more and more. And the day will come when you awaken. Never mind how long it takes. Do not look at time. Think of how long it takes you to be what you are now. Be your Self. Identify with your reality. Try to be by yourself at times. Be aware that the world is egoless. The world has no cause, so where is the effect? If there is no effect if there is no cause. How could the world have a cause? Where would it come from? When you dream you can say that your dream has a cause. You are the cause, because you’re dreaming. But can you say that while you’re dreaming? While you’re dreaming and you’re in the dream, you believe that the world has a cause like everyone else does. And you get involved in everyday activities in the dream. You have good experiences and you have bad experiences. And then I come along and I tell you you’re dreaming, but you don’t believe me. You say, “I’ll show you if I’m dreaming, Robert,” and you pinch me. And I say, “Ow!” And you say, “See, is that a dream?” And I try to explain to you it’s a dream pinch but you don’t believe it, you think it’s real. Then you go across the street, and then you’re walking down the street, and a car hits you, and you’re bleeding all over the street. And I run over and I tell you, “You’re dreaming, don’t be too upset. It’s okay.” And you start cursing at me and shaking your fist at me. “How can you say that? Look I’m bleeding all over the place.” Then something funny happens. You wake up! Where does the dream go? Where did the blood go? Where did the car that hit you go? Think of your personal experiences that are upsetting you, right now. Think of the problems that you think you have even while I’m talking to you. Some of your minds are thinking of something else, problems and you believe it’s real. You’re thinking of who you like who you don’t like, what you’re going to eat for dinner tonight. All these thoughts come to you because you have not trained yourself how to deal with your thoughts and you’ve got preconceived ideas. You’ve have got concepts. As an example, you come and you look at me. You don’t see me fresh and new like you see yourself, but you compare me with Krishnamurti or with this guy, or with Bhagvan Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta or the garbage cleaner, or with the janitor, or whoever you wish to compare me with. This is exactly what I’m talking about. Your mind becomes filled with preconceived ideas. I am really nobody. I am nothing special. So what you see in me is not real. You’re seeing your own projections. You’re seeing yourself in other words. And if you have not developed yourself and have awakened to pure consciousness, then you’re seeing something worldly. And you make comparisons. You say, “I like. I don’t like. It’s good. It’s bad,” and so forth. You’ve got to take control of your mind. You’ve got to realize your mind and your body are not your friend. They feed you the wrong information. They appear right for a while but then it becomes wrong again. Do not listen to your mind. Stop the thoughts before they get to the edge of your nose. That’s all I’ve got to say. (tape break then Robert continues) Robert: …a postcard from Andy Kincart, it’s an interesting card he used to come to our classes when we were in Geoff’s house. Would you like to read it? Mary: “Robert you just came to mind simultaneously the feeling of a tensionless openness, as I gazed out the window at the smog shrouded city of Taitung below. The multifaceted pollution of Taiwan often feels like an instruction to desire to be better comes to the fore. The body-mind feels dense but I know it is just a passing cloud. Nothing changes the space. I have been reading, “I Am That,” daily often letting go of the message the words contain to get a gradual nebulous glimpse of Maharaj’s vision. Whether I like it or not my ship is burning, inevitably my ship of dreams. Richard Walker spoke to me about the fore-known truth that you’ve related to him. It all seemed clear when he stated them. But perhaps if you could write to me about them they could serve an important purpose, ??? purpose irrelevant. I share this only with you in spirit always. Peace Andy. R: So whoever has a tape on the Four Principles, would you make a copy so I can send it to him in Taiwan. I’ll start reminding you about our Christmas dinner and the celebration of Ramana Maharshi’s birthday which is December 30th. We’re going to combine them both. So remember it’s December the 30th. As I mentioned to some of you before everybody got here. People are calling me and asking me when the Thanksgiving dinner is going to be. (students laugh) So it’s December 30th for Christmas. Okay are there any other questions you’d like to ask about anything? SR: You said one time that as long as there is a feeling, there is somebody feeling it, like I’m feeling emotions right now. (R: Umm.) So that is the sense of what the I is. It’s like those things arising that you sort of take credit for whether it’s an emotion or a thought or a body feeling? (R: That’s the personal I.) Right. R: And all the feelings and all the emotions are attached to the personal I. When you get rid of the personal I everything else goes. Therefore the proper method is not trying to change your feelings or change your emotions but rather to realize that I is experiencing my emotions and my feelings. And you follow I to the source. When you get to the source of I, the feelings and the emotions will both subside. SR: I see that as kind of an addiction. (laughs) That’s what I want to be, I want to be those feelings and body sensations and all that and it really causes me to hurt the mind that belongs to myself. (R: Do you want to be the human emotions, the human feelings?) Well I thought I did until I faced that. Now I see that emptiness is so much better. R: See that’s something interesting you said, “Emptiness seems so much better,” now that sounds strange to most people. How can emptiness be better than human love or human happiness. Again there are no words to describe it because it’s ineffable. You have to realize what emptiness really means. Emptiness means that no-thing exists in it, no human concept, no human feeling, no human entity. Where there is total emptiness there is absolute reality. And absolute reality is total bliss, happiness and joy. And it’s omnipresence. So you not only feel it personally but you have become the whole universe and you see it wherever you look and you hear it wherever you listen. Somebody else maybe expressing some inharmony or some depression, man’s inhumanity to man may still appear to be going on, yet you are seeing your Self because you have become omnipresence and wherever you look there’s the Self. And the Self is pure consciousness and not you, so you see that everywhere you look. That transcends all the feelings. That is something you have to experience for yourself. The one who used to feel it has been destroyed, annihilated. Therefore there are no feelings and no sensations. But there is unalloyed happiness, absolute reality which is beyond human explanation, for the finite can never comprehend the infinite. There are no words to make you know how you feel. Experience it for yourself and find out. SR: Sort of like you don’t really know that there is anything beyond until the experience really happens. (R: That’s right.) And you can’t really get it any other way. R: That’s right. It’s gotta happen. If it doesn’t happen you’ll never know. SR: Someone asked are you willing to sacrifice forms of love for another to be willing to experience this, in other words give up the feelings as two separate entities when the love seems to come from the outside and it’s a real challenge to even consider. R: Well that’s a wrong phraseology because you do not give up anything really. SR: Maybe I’m not remembering but the effect with me was a re-see everything, kind of. R: Well what I’m trying to say is, do not think you have to give up anything. You gain, there’s nothing you really give up. You just see it differently. It doesn’t mean that if you’re in love with somebody of the opposite sex or the same sex whatever you prefer, that you’re going to have to give somebody up. Your love will just be different. You will be more open, more omnipresent, deeper. So you really don’t give anything up you just see it differently. You react to it completely differently. All jealousy is gone, fear is gone, emotion is gone. You no longer think of thoughts like, what if she leaves me or what if he leaves me? What will happen then? All that is gone because you become consciousness and you’re just happy all the time. And no one can ever take it away whatever they do. They can stab you they can cut off your head. They can take away your house or your car. But your happiness does not go away. Your happiness remains. It has nothing to do with things. So what do you think about all this? Is it worth the effort? Some people tell me, “I guess I just have to have a lot of faith,” that’s not true. As you begin to work on yourself, you see almost immediate results. As I mentioned before, your humanhood does improve in many ways, for you’re no longer attending to it. And when you no longer attend to your humanhood, universal law comes into play. It takes care of you better than you can ever take care of yourself. So you do see human results. And as you see results of course, it makes you jump in deeper. Until the day comes when you awaken completely and become free. Well, if you don’t want to say anything I’ll play some more music. Anyone want to speak about anything or whatever or you can go to hell whatever you feel like. SG: Robert there is something that I notice I’m aware of. As I really contemplate the truth again. I let projects that I’m very interested in doing, kind of slip. Which is definitely all right except that I have great joy when I finish that project and it’s manifested in a way from my past experiences, it brings me a certain amount of human pleasure. But I get into a dilemma if I may end up just letting it slide and slide which may be called procrastination through lack of ego energy behind it, to see it through. It’s a kind of a dilemma. R: Well of course that’s a human problem and I’m not really too interested in those problems because they don’t exist. But I will tell you again. If you work on yourself and you question yourself, “Who has these feelings? To whom do they come?” and realize I do, now that’s the personal I. Follow the I thread to the source and while you’re doing those things everyday the outer life will change. And you’ll find the procrastination going away. If it’s supposed to, or it may get worse and you’ll give up the project, but something will give. Which will make you happier than you’ve ever been before. But as you practice self-inquiry, things will happen to improve your humanhood and your situation. There is a law of the universe again, that knows how to take care of every detail of your body. Karmically you came here as a body, which doesn’t exist. As long as you believe it does, your body came here for a specific reason. And you’re going to go through that whatever it is. You don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to want it, you don’t have to desire it. Your body will go through whatever purpose it came here to go through. Therefore center yourself on the I. Follow the I to the source and become free. Again, everything else will take of itself. I know it’s difficult to understand and to realize, if I don’t take care of my needs and my wants and my desires, who will? That’s wrong thinking. We’ve been brought up to believe, unless I do it, it will not be done, that’s erroneous. Grab a hold of that I who has to do it and see who that I really is. It is the I that has identified with the work. When you remove the I from the work, then you become yourself and the work gets done better. Without any thought. Try it, it works. SA: Robert, it seems to me what you’re saying is that we can have our cake and eat it to. (R: Why not?) It doesn’t seem to work that way. Because we talked about that before about, creativity and imagination, and again and again it seems to me that in order to accomplish anything, there has to be this desire. And although you say — and I know your answer — you say that you don’t have to give it up, you say, continue with it, you say that detachment will get you to a higher level. But in actual fact it doesn’t seem to work that way. It seems that the only way to accomplish anything is to allow the desire to be kindled and to allow it to flame. R: Okay, I’ve heard what you said Arnold, you said, “It seems to me.” Who is this me? Get rid of this me and see if you have the same attitude. When the me is gotten out of the way, that kind of a question would not arise. But your work will go on even better than it did before. But get yourself out of the way, your small self, and see what happens. That’s all you’ve got to do. Just watch. In a calm gentle way, get yourself out of the way. The me. SA: Why should we want to persist with this if we accept that the teaching is true and that the reality is beyond, projected world, why bother with these things? R: Because who accepts? Your ego and it is still your ego that’s playing games with you. And your ego accepts and rejects. What would happen if there were no ego? You would have unalloyed happiness. And that question wouldn’t come up. But you have to find out for yourself. I can lead you to the vein of gold but you’ve got to do the digging for yourself. And if you work on it and see it for yourself what will happen you’ll see what I’m saying is correct. You have to investigate sincerely. Dive deep within yourself. Awaken and then that’s it. SX: (student asks about karma being a theatre). …and yet the theatre exists without any apropos. It would have existed anyway. R: Yes it does. For your karma, so-to-speak, which does not exist but you think it does, takes care of all that. Everything has been preordained before you came here. Whatever your bodies supposed to do, it’s going to do and whatever you’re not supposed to do you will not be able to do no matter how hard you try. So why fight? SX: The will always responds to the will of the ego? R: Yes, “To whom comes the will?” to the ego. If there is no ego there would be no will. The will is part of the ego. When the will goes everything else goes. SX: You speak of the personal I versus an impersonal I? R: The personal I is the ego and the will, same thing. (SX: And the impersonal I?) Is God or your Self. The absolute. (SX: The absolute?) The absolute. The real I is the same as pure intelligence, absolute reality. When you think of the real I, it’s omnipresence, it’s not personal. The I is the whole universe, everything. I am that. All this is the Self and I am that. SF: Is there another way of saying the same thing that the personal I is that which identifies with whatever it identifies with, and the impersonal one is that which doesn’t identify with anything. R: Sure you can say that if you like. You can say anything you like, just get rid of it. (laughter) SE: Robert, I know there are a lot of Jnani types in this room, but I wish we had more chanting. Chanting is good. I went to the Hare Krishna temple last night, great, fantastic chanting. R: I didn’t bring the chanting tape tonight. Some people tell me they hate to chant. (students laugh) Some people love to chant what am I going to do? SE: Have chanting. R: I have to do what comes so sometimes we have chanting, sometimes we don’t. But if you feel funny about those things, either for or against ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way? To whom does this feeling come?” And again you get back to the personal I. When you find the source of the personal I, all these needs and wants and likes and dislikes will disappear. And you’ll be free. SU: I was just wondering, if there is no God, why are we chanting, “Oh God beautiful?” R: It makes you mellow. Well, don’t believe it or disbelieve it. Do you believe you’re the body? (SU: Unfortunately yes.) Then there’s a personal God. Don’t you see, as long as you are the body, there’s also God. You have created your God in your image. But you believe in the body, so there is a God, you should. You just can’t say, “I don’t believe.” It’s just like I say, “Karma doesn’t exist. Reincarnation doesn’t exist. The universe doesn’t exist, the world doesn’t exist, God doesn’t exist.” But, as long as you feel or you identify with the body-mind phenomena, all those things do exist for you. So you’ve got to pay homage to the God of karma, Ishvara or maybe you’d like to call God, Jehovah. Whatever you like to call God. It is real because the body is real. When the body image falls away from your mind and your mind falls away, everything else goes with it. So don’t fool yourself. It’s not what you want. You can’t say to yourself, “I believe this and I don’t believe that.” Those are just dry words. It makes no difference what you believe or you don’t believe. It’s what you are which determines what happens to you. When you quiet your mind, your body and your mind will both disappear. So try to keep your mind quiet, keep it from thinking and everything will take care of itself. So as long as we believe that we are the body, chanting, music makes you onepointed. It mellows you out and makes you calm and cool and peaceful. Remember music soothes the savage beast. SG: Just on the subject of music, say that you do have a great love of music and precondition would say you’re a good performer. Just sitting in front of a piano without ambition or discipline you would never achieve anything. There has to be some discipline and ambition to extend. I know I’m speaking for myself. R: At a human level you’re right, that’s what I’m saying. As long as you believe you‘re the body-mind phenomena, what you’re saying is real. True. SG: Well this vacant Self can sit in front of a piano and I don’t know what would happen. (laughter) Nothing in particular would happen. I know that you hear it within yourself. All of the wonderful conversations that your mind creates your outward expression through them. R: Well first become your Self and then tell me what the vacant self is doing. Become your Self first and see if you want to play the piano. SG: I just think that this is a dilemma that not only I feel but this gentleman over here the idea that’s… (R: Which gentleman is that?) (laughter) I was thinking how I and Ed discovered Yogananda and Yoga when I was like 17 or 18. And I got very involved in it and then I reached a crucial point where my ambition was starting to come forth, but I knew what the truth was but I felt I hadn’t been able to decide. And I took up the Nathaniel Hill type thing. Where you have to rev up your engine of desire and focus in it and go after it and which I did. And it brought a certain amount of… (R: Of course it would.) …success. (R: Humanly it would.) Yes humanly and I kept wanting that the rewards of the spiritual pursuit would match those that, however temporary they were, that I could achieve in the unreal world. R: Look what you’re saying though, you’re saying, “I want this and I want that.” (SG: Right.) Who wants and who has to have? (SG: I don’t know?) Find out. (laughter) Yogananda was Yogananda. You’re talking about Yogananda, he’s a great person but remember he was not a Jnani. He did not teach the path of Jnana Marga. That’s a different path completely but it’s a beautiful path, if you want to go on that path. ST: What does this Jnana mean? (R: It means knowledge, absolute knowledge.) Oh I see, I see now. (R: Jnani. (pronounced yani)) Jnani with a G? (R: Depends from what part of India you come from?) SG: Do you realize how tough though it is for a person who is ambitious. (students laugh) You’re still trying to burn up your samskaras. R: You have to weigh all the factors, you have to see what’s going on. If you just realize that all of your ambitions will fall by the wayside soon because you will get to old to be able to practice any more and you’ll be in a wheelchair. SG: I can have a lobotomy if it makes me move on. (laughter) R: You can if you like, but when you have a lobotomy everything goes dumb. But here you’re becoming more conscious, you’re becoming your conscious Self, you’re finding out who you really are. But look at it this way, does what you call God want to play the piano? Does God have to have a profession? (SG: No, no nothing like that.) So when you become that yourself, you will see who needs the rest. SG: You know I do understand what you’re saying and I know it’s the truth, it is just in those moments like Wednesday or what not, where I start looking back at the new year thinking that if I haven’t given this to really seeing that this thing that I’m doing will never be manifested. R: As long as you’re coming where you’re coming from, you better get it done. You’re right. But while you’re practicing your profession also practice this. (SG: Yeah.) And see what happens. I’m not saying you have to give up anything. (SG: Yeah, who is to think that you could even combine the two?) Practice what I tell you and then see what happens. But keep up your profession. Don’t give up anything. And you’ll see for yourself. You have to investigate within yourself. As I tell you every once in a while, “Do not believe me, why should you accept what I say?” I may be a blabbering idiot. Don’t accept anything I say, but find out for yourself. Experiment with yourself and see for yourself what happens. SU: (student talks about practicing and doing while being human) R: As a human being you have to have all those things, of course. SU: (Two students try to explain what should be done in this case.) R: See you don’t know, remember it’s the ajnani that asks the question, so you’re coming from your viewpoint. But practice the teaching and find out for yourself what happens, and you’ll be surprised. SD: A student of Maharshi asked whether to give up her studies at university and just do sadhana and he said, your studies are for the mind and sadhana’s for the mind so why do you separate them? R: Yes, exactly, there’s no separation whatsoever. Your studies and anything you do is part of your Self. How can you separate your Self? You cannot. SR: You sort of think there’s a reality other than what’s happening here, the same questions come up. (R: Yes.) There really is no other, other than the Self. R: This is it. (students laugh) Except if you’re suffering you’re just not perceiving it rightly. But this is all you get, there’s nothing else. But what is the ‘it’ I’m talking about. The “it” is absolute reality, sat-chit-ananda, I am that I am. That’s it. But if you want to see something else what can I do? (Break in tape – pause) R: Is there anything to do when you awaken? Is there anything to do? (SH: To bring about awakening?) To bring about awakening? Is that what you asked me? (SH: Yeah…???) R: No, consciousness is self-contained. It is the power that knows itself. And it knows itself as, ‘that I-am.’ When you’re experiencing consciousness, everything else disappears, then you live spontaneously. You do what you have to do at the time and then go onto something else. And as I said before, the body will continue doing whatever it came here to do. But you will not be the doer. You will realize that I am not the doer. I am consciousness. That type of awakening will come to you and everything will take of itself, so you don’t have to worry about a thing. Be free and happy now. Do not concern yourself over those things. Realize your true identity and be done with it. SV: Having to do with the gentleman’s question. The question very often comes up is we have chosen the limited self. (R: It hasn’t?) Yeah, I can’t conceive of that because freedom can’t exist whenever necessity exists. Necessity has to do with two things. R: That’s for the human body, see catch yourself when you say, “I can’t conceive.” That’s when you’re supposed to catch yourself. And ask yourself, “Who is this I that can’t conceive.” Because ‘I’ can’t conceive, what does that mean? It means nothing. “Who am I?” In other words, don’t feel because you cannot conceive at this stage of your unfoldment that it doesn’t exist. But rather find out who the I is, who thinks it cannot conceive. Always go back to the I. And all the questions will stop. (SV: You say, “Follow the source of the I?”) No, I didn’t say follow the source. I said follow the I to the source. SV: Okay, that’s a little vague to me, you know. Years ago when I was involved with being a shop detective. The guy would get in the car and I would follow the car. (students laugh) R: Well I hope it’s not the same as being a detective. (laughter) (SV: What?) I’m glad it’s not the same as being a detective. Of course it’s different. Okay look at this way. Whenever something comes to you that you don’t understand instead of trying to figure it out mentally, ask yourself the question, “Who does not understand?” And the answer will come of its own volition, “I don’t.” Then you continue in the query and you ask, “Who’s this I that does not understand?” Who is, “I don’t?” And that’s the I you follow. You simply observe the I within yourself, like a thread. And you follow the thread to the end, the source. When you get to the source there will be a complete revelation of your true identity and you’ll be free of all questions. So whatever comes up use the same procedure. If you feel depressed or if you feel suspicious or if you feel angry, ask yourself, “To whom do these things come?” Then you will finally realize after doing this for a while, that all of your problems are attached to the personal I. And when you get rid of the personal I, everything else will go with it and you’ll be free. So you stop trying to solve problems on the outside. Who’s fault it is, and who did this to me and who did that to me and I’m feeling bad and this is wrong and this is right. You will know all of the time that all of these things have to do with your I, because you say, “I feel bad, I feel depressed, I feel suspicious, I feel doubtful.” They’re all attached to the I. And all you’ve got to do is to witness the I. Observe it, do nothing to change it but watch it. And watch it as it goes deeper and deeper into your heart. And one day it will just vanish and you will appear as you are. Practice and see for yourself. SC: Is what you’re searching for or observing the sense of I? Are you feeling for it? (R: The sense of I. Personal I.) You’re observing, you mustn’t sit there and concentrate, right? R: No you do not concentrate, you just observe it and watch it. And follow it to its end. You concentrate on the source and not on the personal I. That’s though observation. You witness the personal I, and follow to its source and then it will disappear. (SC: Well what happens if you concentrate on it, does it disappear?) When you concentrate on it, the personal I, it’s like concentrating on an erroneous conclusion. You’re concentrating on your ego, so your ego becomes stronger. The I will become stronger. Whatever you give you attention to, whatever you give your effort to, becomes stronger. See you want to give all your effort to the source, not to the personal I, because the personal I doesn’t exist. And you want to prove that by observing it in action, by watching it, by following it to the end. (SC: What do you mean, follow?) I mean by watching it. As you watch the personal I and you go deeper within the Self you will find that it comes to the end. You’re following the I to its culmination, the end, it happens by itself. SU: You just watch yourself, is that what you mean you become aware of what you’re doing or…? (R: You become aware that I am doing. Not what you are doing, actually but what I-am doing. “I – I” and you say to yourself, “I – I – I” and you go deeper and deeper within your Self.) SN: That’s not concentration? (R: No, you’re following, you’re observing, you’re watching.) Okay. (R: And one day that I will disappear completely. And you’ll be in peace.) SR: Robert, it sounds like you’re saying, don’t try to be the awareness but notice that you already are? R: Yes, same thing, you don’t try to become anything. You’re just getting rid of that which has been bothering you for all these years and that’s the personal I. SC: That personal I as far as I’m concerned, if you see a personal I in operation and looked at it, just observe it, it’s gone, there’s another one there, but it’s totally different from the one before that and there’s no connection between them. R: The I is always the same. Therefore as I said, the whole universe, all your problems, everything is attached to I. And all you have to do is focus on the I. And follow it and then it will disappear with all your problems. (S: That’s understandable.) Try what I mentioned before. When you go to sleep tonight, say, I am going to concentrate in the morning on my source, I-am. That’s not the personal I, it’s I-am and go to sleep. When you wake up, before you start to think about the world, you will remember what to do. And you will say, “I – I” to yourself. Then you will see the feelings that come with that, what will happen to you. SC: I did that the other night. The first thing that happened was, I was arising to gratefulness. I had kind of a dream or vision. (Students continues to talk about the dream.) R: Well that’s a nice dream, but you have to go beyond it. You have to ask yourself, “To whom did the dream come?” And again, “I dreamt.” It’s ‘I’ again, you go right back to your ‘I’ again, don’t you? Because ‘I’ had the dream and you want to annihilate the ‘I.’ Take out your gun and shoot it. You want to get rid of the ‘I’ completely. And all the dreams will go, everything will go with it. Don’t make it complicated, get rid of the I and you’ll be at peace. Remember to love yourself, to pray to yourself, to bow to yourself, to kneel to yourself, because God dwells in you as you. Peace. Thanks for coming have a great week, I love you. (tape ends)