Robert

It's good to be with you again. Always remember what Satsang really is. Some of you come for the talk.

The talking is incidental. It's “being” that matters. Just being.

Not being this or being that. Just being. Being means consciousness.

Absolute reality. So your being, is consciousness. Some of you also think that means being with me.

But there is no me. So how can you be with me? You're simply being.

Being with the Self. Being with pure awareness. And still some of you say, “well Robert, you're pure awareness, and we love being with you.”

That's another mistake you're making. There's no me and there's no you. There's just plain being.

And when we come together like this, the being becomes intense. And the so-called humanity becomes transcendent. Therefore bear in mind that Satsang is always being.

Never mind the words. Just to be here is all that is necessary. I was walking in the park this morning.

Here comes the words. With my dog as I usually do every morning. And I meet interesting people in the park.

Some strange people and some interesting. After walking around the park twice, I sat down on the bench. And I do some power breathing exercises.

So some elderly gentleman sat down near me and started to eat a sandwich. He had a book. And he put the book down with the face towards me.

The title of the book was The Bible or the Gospel According to Thomas. So I became curious. I said, “who's Thomas?”

So he said, “he was a scholar who lived during the time of Jesus. And this book is from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a transcription of the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is hard to get.”

He explained to me that the church that is deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls will not allow the general public to see them. Because it will make an upheaval for the church.

But anyway, after we talked about it, I took the book to look at it. And I opened it up. And I opened it up to a page that was about Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet.

And I just happened to read in the middle and it said, I have not come to bring peace. I have come to set father against son, mother against daughter, brother against brother, sister against sister. I have come to teach no-mind.

No-mind. And this was about 3500 years ago. We attribute the no-mind teachings to Zen Buddhism.

So apparently, this was about 1500 years before there was a teaching of no-mind. And that's what we're going to discuss today. Isaiah said, quote, “I have not come to bring peace.”

What was he talking about? If you look into the life of every sage, they didn't come here to make you happy. They came here to take away your so-called human happiness.

They came to show you that human happiness is transitory. It is not permanent. They came to upset you, to upset your lifestyle, not to bring you happiness.

We still have a tendency to believe that when we get into a spiritual teaching, all of our humanhood will improve drastically. If we're sick, we'll be healed. If we're poor, we'll be rich.

If we have mental anguish, we'll have joy and happiness. But that's not a spiritual teaching. Your feelings and your life, so-called, and your body have nothing to do with spirituality.

You've got to understand this once and for all. True spirituality goes beyond the relative world. It has absolutely nothing to do with the human condition.

Yet you've heard me say many times that your humanhood also improves. So it sounds like a contradiction. But what I meant was this.

When you make the transcendence, when you awaken to your true self, you have no idea what's going on with the body. You're in a different dimension, so to speak. You just have nothing to do with the body at all.

Even though you appear as the body to others, even though the body is so-called tangible, even though you may appear to others to become old or fragile or whatever, the sage knows he or she is consciousness. When you use the term consciousness, it transcends everything. Therefore, you're not the body and consciousness.

You are consciousness, pure awareness, and that's what you are when you awaken. Now, I know this is strange and it's paradoxical, but you appear to be walking through the world just like everyone else. But you're not everyone else.

You're not human at all. You are of a different world, and this is ineffable. It is only something to be experienced.

When I say you are not the body-mind phenomena, that's exactly what I mean, literally. You really are not the body, and you've heard me say this numerous times. Yet, look how many times today you've identified with your body, believing you are the body.

So you can't say that you're self-realized when you're still identifying with the body. And the words are really plain and clear. You have to not identify with the body when you're awakened.

You have nothing to do with the body. Yet, at the same time, the body goes onward. It continues.

It persists. That's how it appears. But that's an appearance.

For the sage, it does not exist whatsoever. There is no body that exists. So, apparently Isaiah was a sage, besides being a prophet, when he said, “I have not come to make peace.”

He speaks like an [abbot does], who comes and seems to make problems in the world, with people, to awaken them. And it seems like in every family, in generation after generation, there's one person who feels this teaching and steps out of the crowd. Then there's conflict, because the family doesn't understand where you're coming from.

This has been true with Buddha, with Jesus, with Ramana, and many, many others. Who had to leave their families, there was no other way. But, do not take this as a license to leave your family.

If something like that ever happens, you will know. Yet most people who read these books, they want to emulate these sages, so they leave their family, and that's for the wrong reason. You do not leave your family because you're not happy, or because things aren't going your way.

That means you're still human. Remember Ramana when he left his family, when you read his life story, when he was 17 years old? He didn't have any enmity with his family.

He loved them. He left them because it was God's urging within himself to leave and go to Arunachala, where he stayed for the rest of his life. He didn't plan it.

He didn't say, things aren't going well for me with my family. It was all spontaneous. So this is what Isaiah meant.

I have not come to bring peace. We have to understand these things. And in the end he said,  ”I have come to teach no mind.”

So again, when you hear a teaching like that, that you are not the mind, and you try to share this with your family, you cannot because they don't understand. You therefore keep it to yourself, and you work on yourself until you become totally free. At that time, it's not even necessary to believe your family because there is no family.

There is nobody. There is no mind. There is total awareness.

It therefore makes no difference where you are. You can be in a cave. You can be in a mansion.

You can be in a hut. You can be anywhere. It doesn't make any difference.

And wherever you wind up, it's good. But you never plan. You never say, I'm going to do this, or I'm going to do that.

It happens by itself. A good example in our time of this is Stephen Rockefeller. You've heard of the Rockefellers.

He stepped out, gave up on his inheritance, and became a Buddhist. And now he spends his time teaching Buddhism all over the world. He had millions of dollars.

He gave it up. He's happy. He's at peace with himself.

It was inner urge to do this. He never planned it. It just happened.

So let's talk about us. Where are we coming from? Take a look at your life.

Only you know yourself. Nobody else does. You know if you've got joy within yourself, if you've got compassion, if you've got love.

And that's speaking of material existence. I'm speaking of spiritual love, spiritual compassion, spiritual joy, spiritual bliss. Do you have that?

You can't fool yourself. You can't imagine you do. How do you see the world?

What do you see when you look at other people? Do other people still bother you, annoy you, make you angry, upset you? Are you always trying to correct others to your view?

Do you want everybody to see your viewpoint? As long as you feel this way, how can you think that you're self-realized? All those feelings would vanish.

There would be no feelings like that. When you awaken, you become the embodiment of love. You allow people to make mistakes.

You don't love people because they're doing what you want. And you don't want them to do what you think they should do. You leave everybody alone, regardless of who they are.

So you have to examine yourself. Do not try to change the world. Do not try to change anybody else.

But work on you. Realize that the higher teachings of Advaita Vedanta exist in reality. And the way to get there is through atma vichara.

But realize you've got to do the work. Yet don't be angry at yourself. Do not be disappointed.

If a month, or two, or three, or four, a year, one, two, three, four years, even a century passes, and you do not believe you've made progress, your belief system has to go. When you practice atma vichara, you do not look at the clock. You forget about time and space.

You become gentle. And you practice. No matter how many times you fall back, it doesn't matter.

You never compare yourself to anyone else. You never put yourself down. And you never reflect your ego.

And you do not tell too many people what you do. You simply practice. Do your work.

Whatever your work is, practice every chance you get. But you also do not become a fanatic about it. And do not think you're going to make progress because you practice twelve hours a day.

Time has nothing to do with it. It all has to do with God's grace. When your time is ready, you'll become like a ripe orange.

You'll drop off the tree. And you'll be done. But do not compare.

Do not even compare yourself with yourself. Leave yourself alone. Simply do the work that has to be done.

And become free. You have to heed these words. And you have to follow the path.

And on the way to awakening, you help others. You're compassionate. You're a joy to be around.

You're loving. You're kind. Those traits will develop by themselves as you practice.

But yet, on the other hand, try to develop those traits also. In other words, say you're practicing the spiritual practice. You're asking, “Who am I?”

And you're following it through. And after about two or three hours, you get up and you go to work. And you have a car accident because somebody passed a red light and hit you with their car.

Now, if you're really on the path and you've really been practicing, you will not become angry. You will not yell and scream and make a big fuss. You will understand that everything is karmic when you're not awakened.

Therefore, what has happened is right. You would actually go over to the other driver and say, Thank you. Strange or true?

Because it doesn't matter. As an example, something happened this morning. I've got a friend in San Diego.

She's a devotee of an Anandamayi Ma. And she was with her for 12 years. She was with her when she died.

And she's already advanced in many ways. So she had a new Honda. She came down to see my daughter who lives close to me.

Well, she woke up to see that her car was gone. At first, she thought they towed it away. But I told her they do not tow cars at night.

So after checking, she found out someone stole it. Now, the point I'm trying to make is she didn't react. That's what's up.

She laughed about it. And she wished the thief good luck. She hopes he makes good use of it.

Of course, she called an insurance company and they'll take care of everything for her. But see, that's the way to handle something like that. Everything that happens to you is preordained.

So what's the sense of becoming angry? It's not going to do you any good. Remember, when you feel out of sorts, you become angry.

You're going to have to repeat that situation over and over again until you become detached, whether it's in this life or other lives. So forget about reacting. Isn't it better to ask yourself who reacts, who's angry, and observe and watch yourself and hold on to the I because you'll come to the conclusion, I'm angry.

I am angry. Because such and such happens to me. But is I my real self?

The I that is angry, who is that? What is that? That's my ego.

That's my mind. It's not me. So I watch myself being angry and I realize it's I that's angry.

I is angry. I am that I. And you hold on to the I and you keep asking the question, what is this I?

Or who am I? Where did it come from? You follow the I to your heart center on the right side of your chest.

That's the source, consciousness. Absolute reality is your heart. And the I came out of there.

So you have to follow it back in to the heart center. When you really do that, you become free. So every time you have an emotion, every time you think you have a problem, every time something happens, never react.

Really ask yourself, to whom does it come? Who's feeling this? I?

Where's the I? Where did the I come from? Who gave it birth?

And you hold on to the I. When you get tired of saying, who am I? Or where did the I come from?

You can change it to I, I. Which means I am that I am. I, I.

That's how you hold on to the I. I, I. And when that becomes boring after a while you do the I Am Technique with your respiration. You inhale, you say, I Your Excellency Am. I Am.

If you do that enough, without looking for results, without watching the clock, without watching the days go by, and the months go by, and years go by, you just do it, and you leave the world alone. Something has got to give, and you will awaken. Any questions?

[Long Silent 30sec Pause in audio]

Feel free to make any comments, questions. Throw things at me. You can spit on me.

Do whatever you like.

Speaker 2

How is that stuff going at that doctor that you were taking the vitamins from…how’s that going?

Robert

To the doctor?

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Robert

Who’s asking?

Speaker 2

Yea…it was me. I remember one day…[inaudible talking]

Robert

Oh yea…well I have to take it for about a year.

Speaker 2

Yeah. But how’s it going?

Robert

Sometimes….You have to be taking [inaudible] for about a year before you see results.

Speaker 2

Yea. Are you taking all the other stuff too?

Robert

Some of it, not all of it. I'm not a fanatic about those things.

Speaker 2

Yea no, I understand.

Robert

I take them and then I ignore them.

But I drink green slime every day.

Speaker 3

But what all is [glucosanol] supposed to do?

Robert

It’s supposed to build up your immune system and your brain cells.

Speaker 2

This guy devised something specifically for… [inaudible]

[Conversation is difficult to transcribe for a few minutes at this point in audio due to cross talk. Possibly speaking about a form of medical treatment Robert was going through at that time. What is interesting is how Robert remains unattached to the conversation but aware at the same time.]

Robert

Yeah. But particularly your brain cells. And it supplies dopamine to the brain.

Speaker 7

Remember when I was telling you about dopamine and chewing gum?

Speaker 9

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7

Have you tried it?

Robert

No.

Speaker 7

I gave you a pack.

Robert

Oh, Trident, I forgot about it.

Speaker 3

Oh they  have a chewing gum that has...

Speaker 7

No, I read an article that said chewing gum helps your brain to release dopamine, so it could be helpful.

Speaker 3

Oh, I thought you had chewing gum with dopamine in it.

Speaker 7

No, dopamine comes from the brain.

Robert

Actually, you can't take dopamine itself. It won't go to the brain. That's the problem.

Speaker 3

Well, it doesn't pass that barrier .

Robert

It doesn't pass. So you have to take something that activates the cells.

Speaker 9

I see.

Robert

The neurotransmitters.

Speaker 7

Neurotransmitters. Yeah.

Robert

Right here, right? [possibly referring to something someone in the room is suggesting]

Speaker 7

I gave you that article that I printed. Did you read that, Robert? That one of the guy down at USC?

Speaker 7

Did you get a copy of that?

Speaker 2

I thought the doctor was going to use... I gave it to you.

He's supplying you with everything, maybe, as a [test model].

Robert

No, you have to buy the stuff yourself. Why are we talking about this?

Speaker 3

Why not? What else is there to talk about? You said to talk about anything.

Yeah.

Robert

I guess you're right.

Robert

Okay. Talk, see if I care. 

[The conversation goes on for 22 seconds of a Speaker inquiring into Robert’s medical treatments.]

Speaker 3

You say everything is preordained. There are no exceptions to that.

Robert

As long as you believe you're the body, everything is preordained.

Speaker 3

Well, what if we don't believe [that something is preordained?]

Robert

Then nothing exists.

Speaker 3

Then nothing is preordained.

Robert

There's no such thing as preordained.

Speaker 3

All or nothing.

Robert

There's only emptiness…consciousness…pure reality.

Speaker 3

Beingness. Same thing.

Robert

It's all the same thing. It's for the body.

Speaker 3

It has to do with the body mind.

Robert

Where would these things come from? They can't exist by themselves. There's no validity to their origin.

It's like a dream.

Speaker 3

Why do they arise at all?

Robert

They don't.

Speaker 3

Why do they appear to arise?

Robert

To whom do they appear to arise?

Speaker 3

No one.

Robert

See, there's a question again. I'm always throwing that question back to you. Because the one that thinks they appear to arise is the problem.

Speaker 3

Right on, Robert. You hit the nail on the head.

Robert

There's no appearance and there's nothing arising. But that's difficult to comprehend when you're not experiencing it.

Speaker 3

It doesn't make any sense.

Robert

It doesn't make any sense. If it made sense, it wouldn't be valid.

Speaker 3

It sort of smells like it's true. It hasn't…[someone is laughing in background making it hard to discern speakers remarks in audio]

Robert

What you're saying is true because this is what causes us to go on the path. There's an intuitive feeling that awakens within some of us. And we know that something is there.

So we strive for it. That's what happens.

Speaker 3

We strive for it and get in   our own way by striving.

Robert

We get our…[in audible]…the way. That's the first mistake.

Speaker 3

But the striving itself is an obstacle.

The striving is an obstacle. But in the beginning stages, we strive to realize that we don't have to.

Speaker 3

That too has to go.

Robert

Everything's going to go. Nothing remains. Not even the hair on the chin, the chin, the chin.

Speaker 3

Sounds nice and empty.

Robert

Who knows?

Speaker 4

…a problem in  getting attached to self-inquiry? [crosstalk]

Speaker 3

It's the final attachment.

Robert

That's actually a good question. If you feel you become attached, then you have to see it intelligently and let it go by asking yourself, who's attached to self-inquiry?

Speaker 4

It's like a your cake and eat it too.

Robert

Yes

Speaker 3

I tried, Doug, it didn’t work.

Robert

What did you try?

Speaker 3

Having my cake and eating it too.

Robert

Oh. If you like cake, that's not okay.

Speaker 4

But you sort of get rid of your attachment by questioning your attachment.

Robert

By asking to whom it comes. Everything that comes up, you ask yourself, to whom does it come? And that's how you get rid of it.

This can go on endlessly, but you keep it up. What else have you got to do?

Speaker 3

Endlessly? Do you really mean that?

Robert

Whatever you've got to do.  

Speaker 3

There must be an end?

Robert

There's no beginning. So how can there be an end?

Speaker 2

Robert, is ah…I don't do self-inquiry that much at all.

Robert

You don't? Throw him out. [Group laughter]

Speaker 2

 I have a question.

Lately, I find occasionally being in the mind, and then if I use self-inquiry, inquiry brings me right back really quickly, like automatically, back into a state of [inaudible]. But my question is, should one use self-inquiry… does the state eventually become totally permanent when there is no mind existing whatsoever to bring one slightly in to the mind experience?

Robert

Well, when you awaken, what do you need anything else for? All these processes are for people who are not awake. Once you awaken, what do you have to practice self-inquiry for?

Speaker 2

Well, I don’t know that’s why I’m…

Robert

Of course not. You don't. You don't need it. Who needs it?

Self-inquiry is for the ego. If there's no ego, there's nothing left. Who's to practice?

Speaker 2

So when one just gets to the state where the duality creeps in in some way, then to use self-inquiry in those times...

Robert

Of course, if the duality creeps in, you practice self-inquiry.

Speaker 2

Isn't there a point where...

Robert

No, something in you will tell you. You will know. You will know where you're at by the way you react to life's vicissitudes.

Speaker 2

No, I have a really good understanding...I guess, you answered the question. Self-inquiry… when you're in that state, you don't need anything else. There's nothing else.

Robert

Of course, like meditation. Who meditates? The ajnani .

And once you've passed that stage, does God have to meditate?

Speaker 3

Who's He?

Robert

Whoever. Pure awareness, OK? Does consciousness have to meditate?

Speaker 2

So what happens is there's some kind of awakening, but it seems to take to deepen or, I don’t know what, stabilize?

Robert

No, there's nobody to really awaken. You never awaken. Awakening just is.

Speaker 7

It's more like you disappear, isn't it?

Robert

Like you never was.

Speaker 3

Awakening is and you arn’t.

Robert

When you get to that point, there's nobody to awaken. You're just pure being. And that's what you are right now. Pure being. But you won't accept it.

Speaker 3

Why wouldn't he?

Robert

He doesn't want to. He wants to play games. You want to play hide and seek.

You hide yourself and you go seeking it. And you say, there you are, and it eludes you again.

Speaker 2

Well, at this point, there's never total, whatever you just said, whatever it's called. It's never away. Yet once in a great while, I experience it today.

I don't know how to describe it other than just the mind starting to get into the mind or something. Or maybe just starting to identify with the mind rather than being in that place all the time. And then if I just immediately do self-inquiry, I promise I'll do that today.

Robert

And what happens when you do self-inquiry?

Speaker 2

Right back into this state of non-duality.

Robert

No, you're not in this state of non-duality.

Speaker 2

Why?

Robert

Because you wouldn't be doing self-inquiry.

Yeah. But you've lifted yourself up to a place of peace. But it's still human peace.

Speaker 3

There's still duality there.

Robert

There's still duality, yes.

Speaker 3

Then how can there be peace?

Robert

There's human peace. Human peace, human anger.

Speaker 8

You're still identifying with it.

Robert

Yes, you're still involved in your humanhood. Because whenever you get into a real awakening, there's silence. Quietness.

There's no one doing anything. Because there's no one left to do. The two have been eliminated.

Speaker 3

Then that's true peace.

Robert

That's true peace.

Speaker 3

And you never leave that state.

Robert

If you leave that state, it will never go away.

Speaker 3

That's the state that you were permanently in.

Robert

Who knows?

Speaker 3

You do. Who will if you don't?

Robert

Because I've got nothing to compare it with.

Speaker 3

You have no way of knowing. There's no you in that state. There's just that state.

Robert

That's it.

Speaker 3

Full stop.

Robert

That's it.

Speaker 3

So when you say, you in that state, it's a misnomer. It's wrong phrasing.

Robert

Exactly. If I were to say, I'm in this state, I’d be lying

Speaker 3

[Laughing] That would be lying. You’d be a fake then.

Robert

That's right.

Speaker 6

How would you put it then, if you could, would you say that your humanhood is gone?

Robert

There's nothing to say. Because there has to be someone to voice that.

[14 seconds audio cut out]

Speaker 6

Robert, when doing self-inquiry, it seems like there's a… who is angry, I am angry. That also seems okay by itself... Sometimes there may be sort of a praying inward toward peace or quietness and who and toward That. It seems they’re such different kind of experiences. I think of them as both I-I, sometimes come up with saying, this can’t be the same I. This can’t both be I.

Robert

As you continue to practice, this small I will eventually merge into the big I. And everything will take care of itself. You just be the observer and just watch what's going on.

And if it comes to you, grab hold of it and ask, to whom does it come, no matter what it is?

Speaker 6

Whom does it come, seems like a direct path home.

Robert

Yes. And then you'll say, it comes to me.

I think this. It comes to myself. Then what is this my?

Who is me? Who am I? And you never answer.

And you wait a little bit and then you ask the same thing. Who am I? Who is I?

And you wait and then you ask the same thing. And if anything else comes up, you go back to the beginning. To whom does it come?

No matter what it is, it makes no difference what it is.

Speaker 4

It seems like when I do that, it's very difficult to get a real authentic question. I mean, someone calls up on the phone and says, who was that? Who called?

I mean, I'm really interested. But then I say, well, who am I? It's real hard to get a real question mark at the end of it.

It has to be the same kind of inquiring as I would to a question normally.

Robert

Because you're allowing your mind to rule you. In a gentle, peaceful manner, ask yourself the question.

Speaker 4

But it seems to be a different quality of questioning of other questioning.

Robert

Then ask yourself to whom is it a different quality? Who thinks this? Who has these thoughts?

All thoughts must go. The mind must stop and become quiet.

It seems like it's a question. When you ask a regular question, you're kind of looking for an answer. This seems to be a question where you're not particularly looking for an answer.

Robert

That's right.

Speaker 4

So that seems to be the difference.

Robert

You don't want to answer. No answer whatsoever is necessary. The answer will eventually come by itself.

Speaker 4

But you could also want the answer.

Robert

If you want the answer, it won't come.

Speaker 3

Is a negative answer okay? Like, who am I? I'm not the body.

I'm not the mind. And leave it at that?

Robert

No, because when you say, I'm not the body, I'm not the mind, you're voicing an opinion. It's better just to ask.

Speaker 3

But the opinion is true.

Robert

I know, but you don't know it. So your ego is voicing the opinion. It's better to pose the question and say nothing.

Speaker 5

The purpose, Robert, is to slow down the thoughts, right?

Robert

To slow down the thoughts, exactly.

Speaker 5

Whatever comes, comes.

Robert

Whenever it comes, you ask the question again. To whom does it come?

Speaker 6

But to say that you want the answer, I mean, that doesn't have to imply a verbal answer.

Robert

It's the ego wants the experience. It makes the ego stronger. It reflects the ego.

Speaker 6

Even if the experiential answer reflects peace and quiet?

Robert

Yes, even then. Because when you pose the question, like Roy just said, the mind becomes quieter. But if you have a need for peace, that's thinking.

And that's a thought. The thought has to go. By inquiring, to whom does the thought come?

To whom does the thought for peace come? Everything has to go. The mind has to become empty, totally emptiness.

Speaker 4

It seems to have this other quality, a sort of rhetorical quality, like when you ask... someone does something, you ask , well, who do you think you are? And that's like when I do something, I say, well, who am I?

It sort of has that... who do you think you are? That quality to it that seems to quiet the mind down.

This having a general conversation.

Robert

Whatever works for you is great. If that quiets the mind, by all means, use it. The whole idea is to quiet the mind.

Make yourself thoughtless.

Speaker 3

Is it okay to use the repetition of I am the breath?

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 3

And then shift it into the who am I occasion? Yes. It sort of comes naturally.

Robert

Yes, There's nothing wrong with I am.

Speaker 3

I am. Well, but who am I?

Robert

Good, that's good.

Speaker 5

Robert, it seems that when the self-inquiry goes deeper, Diego may get more sophisticated and may render states of bliss, blankness, self-emptiness, in which there is still an observer. And people may confuse that they are advancing, making an advance in that.

Robert

That's possibly right.

Speaker 5

Whereas when really somebody is tapping or hitting the Self, that has such a radical quality that there will be no doubt in the one who experiences or experiences when it happens.

Robert

You're right. When you experience the real Self, you'll know it. If you just experience a sort of emptiness, that's not the Self.

So go further. Go beyond it. Inquire to whom does the emptiness come.

Who's feeling emptiness? As long as there's someone left to feel emptiness, it's not that. The feeler has to go.

The observer has to go. The observer and the things observed have to go. So if you're still able to observe emptiness, that's not a realization.

Speaker 5

Or observing any so-called state.

Robert

That's the same thing.

Speaker 2

What about memory?

Robert

That's all spontaneous. That's all part of your being.

Speaker 2

I've had an experience where I remember something someone said to me.

And when I remember...I felt as if I went into my mind or such, and the mind went into self-inquiry. I don’t know, something like that.

Robert

It's just like a question we talked about last week. When someone asked me if I see people or if I just see space, it's the same with the memory. As long as this body appears to be, it has to function.

So you have a little memory here and there. You see people just like everybody else. And you appear quite human.

But I suppose the difference is I realize what this world is. It's a no-thing. It doesn't exist at all.

Of that, I'm sure. But otherwise I appear just like you. So if I didn't have a little memory left, if I weren't able to function like a human being, you wouldn't see me at all.

I'd be gone.

Speaker 4

Memory is necessary to continue the existence of God?

Robert

Is it necessary?

Speaker 4

Yes, if you imply that, it would seem as though you'd be gone.

Robert

By gone, I mean I will be the same as I always was, but you will not be able to see me. 

Speaker4

The body would disappear?

Robert

It  wouldn’t disappear but seem to die, that would be your appearance. 

That's how you’ll see.

Speaker 7

Do you realize what you always was?

Or what you always are?

Robert

Do I realize? Say that again?

Speaker 6

Well, I...You said something and...

Robert

What? You mean if I give up the body?

Speaker 6

Yeah, you know who that is…like life, or the consciousness.

Robert

Well, as far as I'm concerned, I've got nothing to give up. Because there was never the body to begin with. So I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. There's nowhere to go and there's nothing to do. There's just plain consciousness. And I am that.

Speaker 4

It's your simplifying it, isn't it?

Robert 

[It's your doing.]

Speaker 3

But, isn't it, Robert, that it seems that the way we see it, there is an interrelation with this dream from the Jnani, when he has the body as compared to...that's the way I suppose, when the body, quote-unquote, leaves the body, when the jnani leaves the body. It seems that the relationship with this dream is...Is he still aware of that?

Robert

He's been aware forever. The Jnani is always aware.

Speaker 3

Right.

Robert

And the awareness never changes.  He's aware with the body or without the body.

Speaker 3

So within this dream, we still see that the Jnani relates to this dream....

Robert

That's how you see it, yes.

Speaker 3

But also when the Jnani seems to abandon this body, that still continues, even though we are not aware of it.

Robert

Exactly. Nothing changes for the Jnani. The change is in your perception. There's nowhere to go and there's nothing to do.

Speaker 4

Does Jnani still have dreams?

Robert

Sometimes. While he has the body, you mean?

Speaker 4

I mean, when he goes to sleep at night, does he have dreams?

Robert

Hardly.

Speaker 4

Visions?

Robert

Hardly. [Sometimes.]

Speaker 4

Just traces? Or is there a dream?

Robert

Slight traces. But there's no difference in dreaming, awakening, and sleeping. It's all the same.

Speaker 4

The same as deep sleep?

Robert

It's being awake in sleep.

It's the state of awakened  sleep.

Speaker 4

Awake in deep sleep?

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 4

Jagrat Sushupti?

Robert

That's it.

Speaker 4

Ah.

Robert

Exactly.

Speaker 8

Is it the same like lucid dreaming, where you are aware that you're dreaming. Is that sort of an akin analogy to enlightenment?

Robert

The Self is the witness in the dream state, the waking state, and the deep sleep state. So the Self appears to be going through it. But he is always aware of all three states.

Speaker 2

When you say the Self is the witness, really we can't understand what that means because we can't think that the self is witnessing these states.

With our understanding of witness, it's only being in these states, in the presence of these states, but it's not aware of it in the sense that we understand awareness.

When you say that we are consciousness, we are awareness, we are bliss, we have no understanding of what these words mean according to what you're saying because we only understand it in terms of ourselves, our own understanding.

And when you say awareness, we think of awareness according to our own experience, but what you're referring to is beyond our experience.

Robert

Okay?

Speaker 8

You're going to have to put us in the state.

Robert

You are!

Speaker 4

You're always already there.

Robert

It never was a time when you were not.

Speaker 4

But we're dreaming otherwise.

Speaker 2

But isn't that true though?

Robert

It's true for you.

Speaker 2

You gave a talk last week that we can't understand what these words mean, consciousness, awareness, bliss. It's ineffable, as you said. So if we try to understand it in terms of our own conception of awareness, it's not that. It's something other than that.

Robert

That's why you should become still and just pose the question, to whom does this come? That's all you have to do. Do not get involved in so many words.

Speaker 5

Sometimes, Robert, I experience dreams that it doesn't really matter if the dream is a happy dream or a nightmare. There's a witnessing that goes on, that’s witnessing the dream. Is the witness that similar?

Robert

In a way. But you're still observing all these things with your mind. Your mind is still active.

And as long as your mind is active, it's not in a true state.

Speaker 5

Would that be like a Sattvic state?

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 5

A dream state?

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 5

It doesn't really matter what's going on.

Robert

No, you have to go beyond all that. Ask yourself when you wake up, to whom has this come? Go beyond everything. Okay, let's become still again. Go through the I AM meditation now, with the respiration.

When you inhale, say I.

When you exhale, say I am.

If your mind wanders, gently bring it back.

[Audio cuts out then back in] 

Om, Shanti…peace…peace.

Robert:

So really, we've got lots of wrong reasons for coming here. This is Satsang. There really should be no talk, no lecture.

You come here to meditate, to observe yourself, to observe your thoughts and actions. To see what's going on within yourself. I am yourself. Therefore, when you observe yourself correctly, you see I am.

In this body is not a lecturer. This body is not a minister. This body is not even a talker.

I do so for your sake. But if the average person comes here for the first time, I would be most boring, because I speak in a monotone and I reiterate many things over again. You have to understand what Satsang really means.

It means being in the presence of your own divinity. Being in the presence of your own consciousness. Do not look at me as something separate from you. Most public speakers, ministers, philosophers, they plan their speech, they research it all week, they come prepared, and when they leave, everybody says, what a wonderful talk.

But nothing happens. You feel good for the moment. When you go home, you revert right back to your old self.

If you know the true reason why you're coming here, it will make a tremendous difference in your life. You're coming here to awaken, to awaken from the dream of maya, the dream of a personal I. You're coming here to find peace, happiness, to awaken to your real nature.

Therefore, your being here is a meditation in itself. The modality I use to help you is silence, not words. There are no weekend seminars.

There are no special mantras. There is no initiation. There is nothing.

That nothing is everything. You believe you are the doer. And everything you accomplish, you think that you did it.

That's a lie. You don't even exist. You weren't even born.

How can you be the doer? There is no one who does anything. And yet, everything gets done.

That's a paradox. Everything gets done because you believe you're the doer. When you realize you're not the doer, everything gets done in a better way, for you stop identifying with the object and the subject.

You become free of all attachment. As long as you believe that you're responsible for anything that takes place in this world, you have a problem. You will have to go through that experience over and over and over again until you realize that you have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

You are pure consciousness. Your real self is absolute reality. I tell you, you have nothing to do with this world.

I know some of you are saying, then why am I here? Well, in reality, you're not here. Where are you?

Nowhere. And everywhere. Some of you say, well, I want to experience all the happiness I can while I'm here.

Then you come under the law of karma and duality, which means you go up and down like a yo-yo. When you get what you want, you become happy. When your possessions are taken from you, you become disillusioned, and you cry.

Then you get what you want again, you become happy. When change comes along, you become angry. This is like a person who goes into the hot sun when the temperature is 100 degrees and gets burnt and then runs under the shade of a tree.

But after a while, when he's cool, he forgets the hot sun, goes back into the sun and gets burnt again, then takes refuge under the tree again, forgets about the sun, how hot it is, and goes back into the sun, gets burnt again, then runs under the tree again. As you can see, only a fool would run into the sun and get burnt and then back into the shade and then back into the sun. Yet that's exactly what we do with our lives.

We believe erroneously that person, place and thing bring us happiness. There is no thing external to you that can ever bring you happiness. Why?

Because happiness is your very nature. You are happiness all by yourself. When you go after happiness outside of yourself, you have to know that it's a temporary condition, as many of you have so experienced.

You can't wait to see this certain movie. You've been waiting for it to come around, and here it is. So you pay your five dollars and you see the movie and you're happy, but then it's over.

What now? Now you've got to look for another thrill. You believe you've got to find something to make you happy.

So you search and you scheme and you plan and sure enough you get it. That lasts for a time. Then it must change as all things change and you become disillusioned again.

You haven't learnt your lesson. You're still looking for happiness and joy outside of yourself. Again, it's like going back into the sun, getting real burnt and then running into the shade and then going back into the sun again.

You do this again and again and again and you never learn. Pretty soon you're old and tired and it's time to leave your body. So the disillusionment still continues.

You feel and you say to yourself, “well, now I'll find real peace when I leave my body. I'm finished with this rat race.” But no, because there's nowhere to go.

If you believe that you're the body then there are many bodies. When you drop one, you take up another and you continue the game of hide and seek. It never ends.

Until one day you become so disgusted with the world and with life that something within you leads you to the right book or the right teacher or the right something. And you begin to feel that there's something else. So you become a seeker after truth.

You begin to read many books. You discover there's something like Zen Buddhism, different forms of Buddhism. There's the Tao.

There's mystical Christianity. There's the Kabbalah. Yoga.

Various forms. Hatha, Raja, Karma yoga. You get involved in occult subjects, astrology, numerology, whatever.

And you think you've discovered something. You go life after life after life being involved in those things. Yet if you're a true seeker, something else will touch you and you will discover a guru, a teacher, who is just right for you at the time and you will become a disciple.

Yet you will still have doubts and apprehensions. You will turn off and on like a [wordless] person. You will stick to the same philosophy for a while.

Zen Buddhism. You will read about all the Zen teachers available and you will go to Tibet to find one, to Japan, to stay in a Zen dojo, you will run to the Himalayas. You will read all the Zen books you can find, which will keep coming back to this one teacher.

And that's what makes you a disciple. Again, this goes on incarnation after incarnation. Yet if you're really sincere, something will touch you and you will realize I and my Father are one.

If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. You will begin to feel that you are one with your teacher, that the teacher is within you and without you. The teacher within you pushes you forward and the teacher without you pushes you inward.

You begin to understand that the only thing you have to do is to get rid of the idea that you are the body-mind phenomena. Thus you become a devotee, which means you become one-pointed, interested in one path. You ultimately become the path and you awaken.

Most people, of course, never even get to the point where they become a seeker. But we don't look at most people, do we? Again, many think that a path like this is selfish.

For instead of trying to help the world, instead of trying to make this a better world in which to live, we're only interested in our own awakening. But the truth is, unless you really awaken, you can never make this world a better place in which to live. Why?

Due to the fact that you are the universe, right now, just the way you are. Therefore, if you're filled with anger, animosity, greed, avarice, and the rest of those things, so is the world. You have created the world.

The world is an emanation of your own mind. What you think of yourself, you think of the world. If you're filled with fear, then the world frightens you.

If you're filled with greed, you believe everyone else is greedy. The world is a reflection of you. That's all it is.

When you awaken, you see a new world. You're in heaven. When you awaken, you realize the real self transcends the universe, and the world is like a dream. It exists, but as a dream. The self or consciousness is the reality, and I am that.

I am doesn't mean Robert, and you know what I'm talking about. I AM is consciousness, absolute reality. Therefore, when you awaken, you can state, I am that.

You're no longer talking about your individual I. You're speaking of the whole universe. I AM That.

Now everyone becomes that also. Remember, I AM is omnipresence. I am That.

This is why a realized person can only see himself or herself. They do not see what other people see. They see love, harmony, peace, joy, happiness.

Simply because they have discovered their real nature as happiness, pure awareness, absolute reality. They no longer are the personal I. They have risen.

You're no longer going into the sun getting burnt and then going back into the shade tree. These people are always under the shade tree. No thing external can ever happen to them again, as in birth or death or in between.

The universe does not prevail for them. For they are egoless. That's how you bring peace into the world.

If you go back in time, there have been people trying to make this a peaceful world from time immemorial. No one has ever succeeded. It is the nature of this planet to be what it is.

No matter how you try to improve it, it will never happen. Why does it seem sometimes as if the planet is improving? Because of time and space.

It will improve to a certain degree, and then people will start talking about the golden age, so forth. Yet we'll only go so far. Then we'll start to regress again and go back into the dark ages.

This is the dream of maya. When you identify with the body, mind, or the world, and you believe that you are the doer, you keep coming back again, and back again, and back again, at different phases of the world's evolution. You may come back in the dark ages, during the Inquisition, be tortured.

You may come back during a sort of golden age period, where there's more harmony and peace in the world. Yet you're living in a life of duality, which means you have to experience both. So you go back and forth, back and forth.

Again, like the man going into the sun, getting burned, going into the shade, and back into the sun. It never ends. And let me remind you again, there are too many people I speak to that are suffering, and they say, well, soon I'll give up my body and I'll find peace.

As the story goes, when you leave your body, you do take a vacation. You take a rest, where you review all of your karmic activities. Remember, all of these things I'm telling you is a lie.

I'm telling you these things because you want to hear it. And as long as you identify with the body, it's true. Or it appears to be true.

You take a rest. Then you either pulled back, or you go back voluntarily into another body. And you continue the game.

Until you get sick and tired. As I mentioned previously, when you get sick and tired of the game, you become a seeker of Truth. And you evolve that way.

The question, therefore, is what to do. How do you begin? You begin by taking a good look at yourself and reviewing your life in retrospect.

Asking yourself, who has gone through all of these experiences? And you will realize I have. You will start to think, when I was a little boy or girl, I had such and such an experience.

When I grew into a teenager, I had such and such an experience. But you're always referring to the first pronoun, “I”. You're saying I had the experience when I was a little girl or boy.

And I'm having my experiences now in life. Something within yourself will make you think, it's always “I”. I always return to “I”.

“I” had this experience, “I” had that experience. “I” was born. “I” went to school.

“I” went to sleep. “I” got married, “I” got divorced. Always “I”.

Who is this elusive “I”? And where does it come from? How does it arise?

It doesn't exist when I'm sleeping. It's only when I wake up I start thinking of I. At that time I can say I slept.

Where does it go to when I go to sleep? It doesn't appear to be around. You begin to feel that all of your problems, concern themselves with the I.

So you say to yourself, well if I get rid of this I, everything else will go also. And that's true. You therefore start looking for ways to get rid of the I.

You begin to understand the only way to get rid of this I is to question it. Where did you come from, I? Who gave you birth?

And to follow it to its source. So you ask yourself the question, what is this I? Where did it come from?

Who am I? If you are sincere, you will follow the I to its source, which is the Self. The I, or the personality, will therefore dissolve into the Self.

This is called awakening. People give names to this. It's called moksha, liberation, self-realization, reality.

People attach all kinds of names to it. All you've really done is to become yourself. That's all.

There's nothing mysterious about it. You do not have to repeat sacred mantras or go to certain schools of ancient philosophy. Everything you're looking for is within yourself.

There are people who always come to me and they ask me, “Robert, we should get together with the people who have been with you for a long while and have a special class where you can give us the highest teachings.”

There are no higher teachings. This is it. What else is there?

Destroy the I and become free. So, Satsang is when you come to a place like this and you're not wondering what I'm going to talk about. You have not come to hear me speak.

It's a place where you come to meditate, to awaken, to see me within yourself. So, I am yourself. If you can only remember this, you will stop running all over the place looking for lecturers and listening to speakers.

The proper thing to do is to find somebody you have an affinity with, a teaching, someone who does not talk too much, and you just sit and everything will take care of itself. So, as I said in the beginning, I wasn't going to talk too much, and I did. It always happens.

And the reason I do is because most of you want to hear me talk. But the day is going to come when you come in here and I won't say a word. Then we'll see what you do.

Any questions?

Student

So, why do you talk?

Robert

Who knows?

Because I feel that most of the people here come to hear what I've got to say. So, I try to explain certain things. But I try to emphasize over and over again talking is not going to do it.

It may inspire you for a while. It may give you a good feeling. But as you already know, when you leave here, as soon as you get to the car, you revert back to yourself.

And you start thinking who you're going to listen to tomorrow. That's called the seeker, as I explained before. And that's good to an extent.

But it will not awaken you. And the only time you will awaken is when you realize I am myself. I have always been myself.

There's only one Self. That Self is called Satchitananda, Parabrahman, Absolute Reality, and I am that. When you say, I am That, it will include everyone.

The whole universe. That's the time you will awaken.

If you do not understand what I've been talking about, ask some questions if you want.

Student

So, Robert, the reincarnation is an illusion?

Robert

The incarnation never existed, and it never will exist. But it appears to exist. You cannot deny it if you believe you are the body.

As long as you believe you are the mind or the body, and as long as you believe in the world, that the world is a reality, then so is the incarnation. That's an interesting question because there are many people who say, I don't believe in reincarnation. I'm not going to accept it.

Yet they accept that they are the body. Therefore, why should there be only one body? If you are accepting that you are the body, then there can be two bodies, four bodies, twelve bodies, a hundred bodies, a thousand bodies.

Why only one? And that's what reincarnation is all about. You are causing it to yourself by your erroneous belief that you are the body.

Therefore, you don't deny reincarnation. You ask yourself the question, to whom does it come? And you will realize yourself that it comes to your body, not to you.

You have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Speaker 3

So since it's not I having to do everything, I have to not to worry?

Robert

Well, it's easy to say not to worry. Do the first calamity that comes along, do you worry or not? Firstly, you should see yourself. As long as things are going your way, and you're relatively happy, because you've got what you want, what if everything stops for you? Will you still be happy? Will you not worry? It's easy to say, don't worry, be happy. But how many of us can do that? We only do it when things are going our way.

Speaker 7

Even if we could not worry and be happy, what good is that?

Robert

You are realizing yourself when you are not worrying and being happy. You're into bliss. Into harmony and joy. [Interuption in audible] No, that has nothing to do with ego. When you're in the ego state, you cannot possibly be completely happy. Because your happiness is dependent on things. See what I'm saying, Jerry?

Speaker 7

If you're just happy, if you're a blissful state, there's got to be more. It seems like there should be much more than just bliss?

Robert

Well, who asks the questions? Remember, you're asking the questions from  you're a viewpoint. But when you experience real bliss, you become the universe. The creator. God. Love. It's a completely different ballgame. You become self-contained happiness. And since you're omnipresent, there's no comparison you can make. Because all of your comparisons have been transcended.

Speaker 4

So on a relative level, even more than just...It's very hard between the absolute level and ultimate. Relative level is such a thin line. But I've been trained in a sense to...that there's much more than just bliss. In other words, if you're just sitting in your own bliss and you cannot come out of that to... What more is there?

Robert

When I speak about bliss, I'm referring to absolute reality, to consciousness. You become an instrument of love in the world. Of peace. Your very presence causes harmony and peace to people. Your very presence is a blessing to the whole universe. Because you are the universe. It has nothing to do with human understanding and human knowledge. And it has absolutely nothing to do with human bliss or human happiness. It's beyond comprehension.

Speaker 4

Then Ramana was a doer? 

Robert

On the contrary. Ramana Maharshi didn't do anything himself.

Speaker 4

Yea…yea, things happened.

Robert

[In audible word] didn’t have anything to do with it.

Speaker 4

Well, you can deny anything you want to other people that experience such things.

Robert

So they believe it's because of him. It's their belief that makes it happen.  

Speaker 4

I don’t know. Things happen without them thinking that this was going to happen. As far as I know. I don’t know factual. 

Robert

Well, for being in the presence of a sage, all kinds of things can happen.

Speaker 4

So just as someone might get up and go to the bathroom, a sage might wink his eye, then maybe spontaneously some other something could occur that an outsider would take as a power, a demonstration of power.

Robert

Yes, but a sage says nothing purposely.

Speaker 2

Right, so in that way, a power can be demonstrated spontaneously without the sage being the doer.

Robert

Well, the sage does not have any power to demonstrate. But I understand what you’re saying, it happens like that.

Speaker 2

Yes, so that's how it would occur. If one really had real strong faith, and real strong faith in all of this, then rain or shine, roof or no roof, food or no food, they would just be dedicated to realizing the Self.

Robert

You cannot make it that simple. It has to do with God's grace, which is always available. And you awaken to that Grace. You can't influence it.

Speaker 6

Were you a student of Nisargadatta Maharaj?

Robert

I wasn't a student of his, but I was with him.

Speaker 6

Are you also familiar with Singh [inaudible word]?

Robert

No, I don't know him.

Speaker 2

You knew Nisargadatta directly?

Robert

I knew Nisargadatta.

Speaker 2

Did you spend much time with him?

Robert

Six months.

Speaker 2

Six months?

Continuously?

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 5

Was that before you were with Udaya Maharshi?

Robert

No, that was after.

Speaker 2

After. What kept you there for six months?

Robert

I was interested.

Speaker 2

In what?

Robert

In watching his actions. I was there in Basako [as an interpreter].

Speaker 2

Ah.

What was your conclusion after watching his reactions?

Robert

My conclusion is all is well. And everything is unfolding as it should.

Speaker 2

[Slight chuckle] Only me and Gautam, that covers it. When you want to end the conversation. [Laughter]

Speaker 3

When we were talking about not doing anything, even we really don't do anything, I wondered if anybody else has been able to look back after talking with you [Robert], look back over their lives and see that really, we didn't cause anything to happen.

Robert

Well, ask everyone else.

Speaker 3

It all seems like a miracle looking back. I don't believe in luck, especially, you say in fate or something. But it seems if one believes in good luck, then they have to believe in bad luck.

Robert

Find out who the I is who wants to believe in anything at all.

Speaker 3

Mmm. But is that true about…do you know that about all of us, Robert,  that we really don’t do anything in our lives?

Robert

I only know myself, and you are myself. Therefore, you are absolute reality, pure intelligence, emptiness, nirvana, ultimate fullness, consciousness, Parabrahman.

Speaker 6

But you cannot see her personality or my personality, can you?

Robert

I don't look at personalities.

Speaker 6

So that's your answer, you cannot see it. If you wish to, can you see it or not?

Robert

Look at it this way. You take a screen and you put images on the screen. The images keep changing. They have all kinds of personalities. But the screen remains the screen. If you try to grab the images, you grab the screen. So I feel like the screen and the world and its images are superimposed upon the screen. I see everything, but they're not real to me.

Speaker 6

But you do see everything.

Robert

Yes.

Speaker 6

So in other words, you have access to my life story. If you wanted to, you could see my life as it is.

Robert

No, I can't.

Speaker 6

You cannot?

Robert

No. Because there would have to be somebody to see that. And there's nobody left to see anything.

Speaker 2

Spend a few days over at Robert's house. You’ll get this.

Speaker 6

I’m grateful.

Speaker 5

I hear, of course, a lot of conversation and sometimes I think I talk too much. But I'm glad that I'm selfish in a particular way and I want to be even more selfish in that particular way. And I want to be more selfish in doing what I need to do  concerning myself about myself rather than anything else. So that works get done.

Robert

Concern yourself only with the understanding that you are not the I.

Speaker 6

Yeah, I see me. That’s what I mean by the selfish. Like the selfishness that she [heard].

Long pause in conversation

Student 7

 A lot of people from different spiritual backgrounds came to Ramana and they had things going on or difficulties in whatever path or practice they were doing, was he able to help them?

Robert

He never helped anybody voluntarily, he simply sat on his couch and everybody was doing whatever they wanted to do. And he asked a couple of questions now and again and kept silent most of the time.

Speaker 7

That was it.

Robert

When people used to come to him with all kinds of problems, he would look at his attendant and he would say, They come to me and want to me help them with their problems, to whom shall I go? With mine.

Speaker 3

That makes me a little confused.

Robert

He was not the door.

Speaker 3

All right. Well, so I don't care if he wasn't the doer. Fine.

But there's a body [rise...*in audible]

Robert

How can you how can you help people with problems? He's not a psychologist.

Speaker 3

I know someone who's not a doer. And someone came to them and had some kind of problem in their practice dealing with a part of their body. And lo and behold, the person's body went up and performed some kind of function to the outside eye.

And that person was helped in their practice.

Robert

By his very presence, people were helped.

Speaker 3

Is it true that he taught through silence?

Robert

Yes, very true. He was silent most of the time.

Speaker 3

That was his central teaching.

Robert

Yes. And people got all kinds of things out of his silence. Just by sitting in his presence, all their troubles vanished.

With some people. Not with all people, with some people. There were others who came in to see him and they left and they said, he's just an old man.

I saw nothing.

Speaker 6

What is that feeling you feel?

Robert

What do you mean?

Speaker 6

Well, when you seem to be in the presence of someone, you seem to feel something.

Robert

You're feeling your real self, your own bliss, joy, happiness. That's beyond words.

Speaker 3

The feeling changes from being in the presence of a different teacher.

Robert

What's that?

Speaker 3

Well, the feeling's different in the presence of different teachers, to me.

Robert

Yea, it's like confusion. Because you get this feeling, then you get that feeling, you get this feeling, then that feeling. Because you never really change.

The whole idea is to get a feeling to go deep within yourself. And a real sage gives you this feeling that you want to dive deep within yourself, deeper than you've ever gone before. And you do, and you become free.

Speaker 6

So this feeling is, in a way, kind of a demonstration. You feel that feeling, then you go away. You want to have more, indeed, dive within yourself, and you have it no matter where you are.

Robert

You want to hold on to that, yes. And you hold on to it by practicing self-enquiry.

Speaker 2

Could you please tell me something about Sufu? Is that a genuine practice to worship God, or is it just a...

Robert

I'm not so familiar with this, so I can't explain it to you all. All practices that lead to God are good.

Speaker 5

I won't answer your question about Sufu, but I met Pak Sufu once, you know. And what I experienced at that time is totally beyond words. The only words I know is the Biblical words, the peace that passes understanding.

That's a very faint explanation of what I experienced when I passed him by.

Robert

What happened after that?

Speaker 5

Nothing, I guess. I knew he was supposed to be in that house that day, but just the same...

Robert

What happened to your feeling? Did it go away?

Speaker 5

Oh, yeah.

Robert

Why?

Speaker 5

Don't ask me. It wasn't permanent.

Speaker 3

Don't all feelings go away?

Robert

Well, he was speaking of an exalted spiritual feeling.

Speaker 3

Those come and go, too.

Robert

They come and go, but why do they go? Because we're not doing the right things. There's something about our practice that is limiting us.

We should therefore dive deeper within ourselves.

Speaker 3

Is it ever a question of not practice?

Robert

What do you mean?

Speaker 3

Meaning we're not doing something right with our practice. Could it be that we're not doing enough? Enough practice?

Robert

That's possible.

Speaker 3

My teacher told me if I ever was unhappy, just do so much more practice. And he was right.

Robert

For some people that's true, for some people it's not. You cannot pinpoint it.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I understand.

Robert

You cannot say it's this or that. Everybody's different. But everyone exists.

Find out who exists.

Speaker 3

So a teacher we're in the presence of is touching something within ourselves. And it could be a different aspect. And maybe that's why we feel a different feeling?

Robert

That's true. It's up to you to dive deeper than you ever did before. And become totally free.

Speaker 2

There is a saying about the music of the spheres. Are you capable of hearing that kind of music?

Robert

Again, there has to be somebody left to see spheres and hear spheres. All the music of the spheres is of the mind. All phenomena comes from the mind.

Get rid of the mind and it will all stop.

Speaker 2

Okay. You're talking now. That's phenomena too.

How does that go together with your all-pervasive consciousness and your mind talking?

Robert

The body talks. The body acts. The body does what it came here to do.

But I have nothing to do with that.

Speaker 2

Can the body hear the music of the spheres?

Robert

No.

Speaker 2

It cannot.

Speaker 3

If it came to my house, it could.

Robert

You've got a tape?

Speaker 3

I have a CD. *In audible cross talking laughter*

Speaker 4

Some of these questions may have to do something with so-called Siddhas. What's exactly a Siddha? Is he an enlightened being who got the illusion?

Robert

A Siddha is a person who's been working with Kundalini. And the Kundalini has risen. And powers have developed. But a Siddha is not a sage.

Speaker 3

Actually, that is a limited understanding of the term, Robert.

Robert

Okay, explain this one.

Speaker 3

Siddha means perfection. And someone who's perfected is considered a Siddha. And I think it's been...

Muktananda, since he was... they called it Siddha Yoga and all that kind of stuff, and they related it to Kundalini. But in that way, someone could be called a Siddha in a particular tradition, so to speak, or attainment, like a Siddha Bhakti, or a Siddha Jnani, or something like that.

But Siddha means perfected.

Robert

So it's semantics. Forget about Siddhas, forget about everything. Find your true self and become free.

Speaker 4

People were attracted to this business of powers, clairaudience, clairvidence, whatever you call it. And they equalled that with enlightenment, or with sagehood. That was the reason of my question.

I think those... It's a question of semantics. I think Siddha is, as Gary says, also perfection.

But there are also so-called Siddhas, which tend to gather and tend to manipulate kind of powers in order to impress their disciples. And I don't think those are sages, or... I don't know if I'm right.

Robert

This is true. That's why I told you to not go after the Siddhas. Do not follow the Siddhas.

Follow the I and become free.

Speaker 2

So you're saying the Kundalini is not worthwhile to go after?

Robert

In my opinion, anything that leads to powers is dangerous because it keeps the earth bound. Bypass them, go beyond them. It is true that as we evolve, we do develop Siddhas.

But the Upanishads and other spiritual works tell you to go beyond. And not to get caught. Go beyond everything.

The example I use is that the king invites you to his mansion, to his kingdom, to share the kingdom with him. But he has 200 acres of beautiful property. And when you drive through the gates, you see the beautiful flowers, and you become interested in agriculture.

You forget about the king. Then a few years later, you remember, and you start driving towards the king again. But now you see beautiful mountains and beautiful shrubbery and beautiful dancing girls, and you get involved with that, forgetting about the king.

Each thing you get involved in is a Siddha, a power. But if you go straight to the king, you'll share the kingdom. That's the difference.

Speaker 2

You said that your body is acting, and on the other hand you say that you are all pervasive. Aren't you the body that wants?

Robert

I tell you my body is acting for your sake. Because that's how you see it. In reality, no one is acting and no one exists.

The body does not exist.

Speaker 2

No one is acting, no one exists. Why does it all happen?

Robert

It doesn't. It occurs to me.

Speaker 2

It doesn't happen at all?

Robert

No.

Speaker 2

So in other words, God didn't create anything?

Robert

There is no God's created thing.

Speaker 2

Nothing is created by God?

Robert

No.

Speaker 2

But yet he makes it all possible.

Robert

There is no God to make anything possible.

Speaker 2

No?

Robert

No.

Speaker 2

I thought that God is perfect.

Robert

No. As long as you separate yourself from God, God does not exist.

Speaker 2

Well, I'm only a part, a portion of God, in a sense.

Robert

Then you remain a person. But in reality, there is no creation, there is no God, there is no realization, there is no illusion, there is consciousness.

Speaker 2

Now, what I'm trying to get to is, why is there such a big universe? It's not just because of me. When I would vanish, there is still a whole universe left.

Right?

Robert

That's how you see it.

Speaker 2

So, but isn't there a fundamental I-ness, like you say, or we all say God, which is undivided, which is perfect. Right? Is that correct?

Robert

There is nothing apart from you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, let's forget me for now. I'm saying that...

Robert

So, if we forget you, we forget everything else, too.

Speaker 2

No.

Robert

Because if you don't exist, nothing else exists.

Speaker 2

It's only my point of view.

Robert

When you go to sleep, and you sleep, what exists for you?

Speaker 2

My point of view. But all the rest point of views are... We know that there are hierarchies, and minor creations are...

Robert

You never [*don't or doubt] It just appears like that.

Speaker 2

It just appears. But the appearance is enough for us to be in illusion.

Robert

Because you believe you are the body.

Speaker 2

Well, I don't have another choice. I don't have a choice besides... You know, when I wake up, I'm in the body.

Robert

That's not a choice to you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I have no choice.

Robert

Well, why don't you ask yourself, to whom does it come?

Speaker 2

Pardon me again?

Robert

Ask yourself, to whom does the body come?

Speaker 2

To me.

Robert

Ask yourself.

Speaker 2

When I wake up, I'm in the body.

Robert

When you wake up, the sky is blue.

Speaker 2

No.

Robert

But if you go and investigate, the sky is not blue. It's an illusion.

Speaker 2

The illusion part, yeah. This is something that...

Robert

Everything you're telling is an illusion. But you think it's real because you identify with it.

Speaker 2

Do I have a choice? I don't.

Robert

Sure you do.

Speaker 2

It doesn't seem to me.

Robert

Well, find out if you do.

Speaker 2

Well, I've been trying, but there is no choice. When I wake up, I'm in this mind. And that's it.

Robert

Well, that's how it appears to you. You have to ask yourself, to whom does the mind come? Who feels this way?

Speaker 2

It comes to me when I wake up.

Robert

Who's me?

Speaker 2

Me. Who's me? It's my individuality.

My point of view.

Robert

Hold on to that point of view. To me, I.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's all I have, my point of view.

Robert

Follow the point of view. I. The point of view is I.

My. Follow that to the source. And your point of view will disappear.

Speaker 2

But you do agree that there is creation.

Robert

No.

Speaker 2

No.

Robert

Consciousness is a word that's used to describe beyond phenomena. Emptiness. You cannot go beyond that with your finite mind.

The finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite. But you can experience it.

Speaker 2

Are you totally happy right now?

Robert

[Long Pause of 1min and 30 seconds]. Yes… Yes…. I've got a process to share with you. Can somebody bring me the bag?

[End of Audio]

Robert: I can assure to you, I can swear to you that you are not the body-mind phenomena. I can assure to you, I can swear to you that you are not the doer. That no matter what appears to be is not. No matter what experience you're going through mentally, physically or otherwise, it is not the truth about you. The truth about you is absolute reality, parabrahman, sat-chit-ananda, pure awareness, ultimate oneness. This is what you are. Why don't you believe me? You think you are a frail body that goes through the world for maybe seventy, eighty years and then that is the end of you, but that's not so. You are not that body at all. That body does not even exist. It appears to exist. It appears to exist as the personal I. When you investigate the personal I you will find that there is no body, no mind, no world, no problems, no God, no universe. You are that! You are that absolute consciousness which was never born and can never die. You are that absolute reality that has always been and will always be, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Know who you are. Do not depend on the world for your sustenance, for your maintenance. But dive deep within, deeper than you've ever dove before. Deep within, deeper and deeper and you will see the truth that you are omnipresence. You are pure consciousness. This is the truth about you and there is no other truth. Accept it, be it. There is a certain question that people ask me continuously. People from this group, people I've never saw before that call me on the phone, people I meet in the park, homeless people, aliens, wretched people, people of all nationalities. What they ask me is this: As I am practicing atma-vichara, self-inquiry in the process will my humanhood improve. In other words what they want to know is while they're doing this sadhana, whether it's the I am meditation or self-inquiry, it may take weeks, months, years, will my personal life improve. If I am sick will I become healthy, if I am poor will I become rich, if I am miserable will I become peaceful so forth and so on. The way I answer this is, first tell me what you mean when you say, "Improve your humanhood?" What do you mean by that? And the answer is: I mean to make myself a better person. To get a better job. To be able to buy a new car. To be able to get rid of the cancer that is eating up me. To get a companion, a mate that is compatible with my way of thinking. Will all these things happen while I practice. We'll discuss this for a while. This question presupposes that you are a human being and you wish to improve your humanhood. What you are really doing is building up your ego making it more powerful. What is a human being to begin with? If you looked at a human being under an electric microscope you would find something very interesting. You would see billions of molecules and if you look deeper you would find trillions of atoms, that make up the molecules. You would see space in between the atoms. If you were as small as an atom, the space between the molecules would be the equivalent distance between the planets, between the earth and mars, the earth and jupiter, the earth and the sun. There is space between the planets also. That space is consciousness. And the space out of the body is also consciousness. What I am trying to say is that there is one space and you are that space. Your body is in a state of flux. Your body is not what you think it is. It only appears to us to be solid. Just like every other thing on this earth, the chair, the radio, the rug, the wall. These things appear to be solid but they are not. What determines your body as compared to the wall is the movement of the atoms. How fast they move or how slow they move. The atoms of the body are moving at a certain speed. They become a body. But again if you see what I'm talking about you're really space. You are not the body because the space between the atoms is larger, more than the atoms themselves. And the space becomes expanded taking up all of space. What is behind space? What causes space? What is the substratum of the space? You are, your real nature, absolute reality. So you see you are not what you appear to be. By trying to improve something that does not exist brings upon itself suffering. For you are identifying with the appearance rather than with the reality. As long as you identify with the appearance you go through all sorts of living conditions, all sorts of experiences. And you try to improve your living condition, as it were. You are wasting your time, for in this world you have to experience both sides of the coin. When you improve your human condition something happens sooner or later so that you may improve an experience the other side of the coin. For every up there is a down, for every forward there is a backward. Then who are you? Who is it that wants to improve their condition? That is the first thing that you should ask yourself. Who wants to improve the human condition? And the answer is always I do. Then "Who am I? What is the source of the I that wishes to improve the human condition?" As you begin to search for the source you will find that the I disappears. As you begin to realize the truth about yourself, that you are not the body-mind, you are not the doer, happiness ensues. This happiness comes all by itself as a result of your realization that you are not the body-mind. But you still ask, "If I'm not realized why can't I live a total harmonious life in my illusion?" It's impossible. Everything that is born, so-to-speak, must die. You begin to die as soon as you're born. But what does happen to you, to the extent that you begin to know the truth, to that extent do you begin to transcend the so called human condition. In other words your body may still have cancer and you're no longer trying to heal it of anything. You're simply identifying with the reality. To the extent that you identify with the reality, to that extent do you no longer feel a body with cancer. So to other people you may appear to have cancer, you may appear to be deteriorating. Like Ramana Maharshi did before he left his body so-to-speak. Like Rama Krishna and many others. The people see a deteriorating body, but the Sage does not have a body to deteriorate. He just has no body. The body does not exist for him. This is the problem because when I speak of this I know a lot of you get lost. How can there be nobody when I see? Ask yourself, "Who sees? What do you see?" You see poverty, you see man's inhumanity to man, you see this and you see that. The seer that sees has to be transcended. There has to be a seer to see these things. When you ask, "Who is the seer?" Both the seer and the object seen dissolve into the nothingness from whence they came. This means you should not accept what is seen. Let the world spin, let people go through their karma, leave things alone. Let the higher power take care of the world and universe, but you identify with the real Self. The Self that is the omnipresence. The Self that is the higher power. Know that you are that. You are no longer a limited personality. You no longer are a frail human that's dying of cancer or experiencing lack or limitation or experiencing happiness, human happiness, or experiencing vibrant health. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to waste away. He may believe in his body but he's getting weaker as he gets older. He's wasted all this time identifying with the weightlifting room. When he could've become free and identified with reality. Nobody lives forever. No situation remains the same forever. Everything ends in this world so it appears. Everything has a beginning a middle and an end. But you are not that, you have nothing to do with that picture. You are immortal, you are nirvana. You must begin today to stop judging by appearances. The more you begin to feel this the less you talk. For what is talking all about. Except to talk about the world and people and things. Think how long you've been talking since you were born. You started with dada, mama and you expanded your vocabulary. You thought you were doing something great, you've wasted your time. The more words you know the larger the ego. The less words you know the closer you are to the Self. What has the Self to say, to whom shall it talk to, itself? The Self is self-contained consciousness. Aware of itself, itself is omnipresence. So to whom shall it talk to, itself? It is perfect bliss consciousness. There need be no words, just a look, a touch, a glance is all you have to do. Yet you say, "How can I do this? I work for a living, I have to eat, I have to earn my bread and butter, I have to talk." Don't worry about details. If you dive within yourself and you spend most of your time thinking about the I am, practicing self-inquiry, the details will work themselves out. You must not believe that it is up to you to work out all the details of life. There is a higher power that knows where the appearance of your body is supposed to be and what work it's supposed to do. Trust that power. You will find out one day that the power is none other…is you. That power is your Self. But until then trust the power. I like to call this power, "The current that knows the way." It's a beautiful power, it only knows love. It wants you to become a living embodiment of love. It wants you to merge with itself. Yet as long as you identify with the world you can never know reality. As long as you identify with your personal I, by always voicing what I feel, I feel hurt, I feel angry, I feel sick, I feel depressed, I feel happy because somebody gave me something, I feel good because I'm getting my own way. That I has got to go. The whole world, the whole universe, people places and things are attached to the I. If you follow the I to the source the whole universe will disappear. And the question arises, "Then what? If the universe disappears will I be in outer space? Will I be in a fog?" It's a paradox. The universe disappears, yet you exist in the universe. Your body will continue going about its business but you will not be identifying with your body any longer. You will not even feel that you are in the body. But you will feel the body is in you. You will feel like a gigantic screen. Where all the items of this earth, trees, plants, flowers, bugs, murderers, lovers are all superimposed on the screen. They are on the screen and you are the screen. The screen is not in them. So it's a misnomer to say that, "God is in me." The body that you think you are is in God and consciousness. Just like the body you draw on the blackboard. But the body you draw on the blackboard is not the blackboard. The blackboard is self-contained and you may draw items on the blackboard and erase them and draw new items on the blackboard and erase those. That is like life going from one life to the next life, from one experience to the next experience. The whole universe is superimposed on consciousness. When you change identities and identify with consciousness everything disappears. Yet you continue experiencing not as an ego but as the Self. And what do you experience? Pure awareness. You are aware of the truth, the reality. Your body will continue its sojourn through the world doing whatever it came here for, but you will not be your body. Again this is paradoxical for you appear to be your body but you are not your body. You become a living embodiment of pure happiness, total joy and bliss. The world can no longer fool you or disturb you. You have a feeling of deep immortality. You know without words that nobody dies because nobody was born. You understand and realize without words that there is no causation for the universe. Nothing ever brought it into life. It has no cause. If it has no cause, again you ask, "Where did it come from?" And the answer is it didn't come from anywhere. It's like hypnosis. You are hypnotized into believing something is real that is not and to you it's real when you come out of the hypnotic trance, you are part of the waking world again and that something that appeared real is gone. So it is with this world, it appears real, yet it's like a dream. You wake up and the dream is finished. When you wake up out of your mortal dream the idea of body-mind, doer is also finished. Now is this teaching practical? Is finding your real nature practical? Of course it's practical. Remember you do not become a burden on society by practicing self-inquiry and coming closer to the truth. Many people still think that they will stay home everyday and just meditate. I remind you again it doesn't work that way. If you were meant to be active you will be active. If you were not meant to be active no matter how much you try to be active you will not be able to do anything. Again do not concern yourself with details. Simply practice everyday. Be aware everyday. See who becomes frustrated, see who feels slighted, who is hurtable, see who is trying to give a one upper-ship on somebody else, see who competes with others, see who you are. Find out the truth. Become free. It's wonderful to realize that your real nature is parabrahman. Beyond consciousness, beyond words and thoughts, beyond human experiences of any kind. That is how you bring peace into the world. Not by trying to make up peace slogans or demonstrations, but by becoming self-realized, awakening. Then automatically your consciousness expands and people feel it and they too automatically begin to turn within. In the beginning do not concern yourself with these things whatsoever. When you awaken then see if you want to bring peace to this world, because I kid you not, there is no world to bring peace to. We are looking at things from both sides. When you still believe in your humanity you want to do good deeds, you want to bring peace to the world, make this world a better world in which to live but the further into truth you go, the more you become self-realized the more you are able to see, "I am the world. All this is the Self and I am that." And you live a wonderful life. Again it begins as soon as you wake up in the morning. Try your best to see the fourth state of consciousness beyond waking, sleeping and dreaming. The fourth state is between sleeping and awakening. Try to catch yourself there. People tell me they try and just can't. If you keep trying you will. That place where there is no thoughts. A place where there is no thinking of any kind. That still place, that is bliss consciousness. Before the I comes out and starts to do it's dirty work. Just before the I wakes up ask yourself, "Where did the I come from? What was its source? Who am I?" And the last thing before you fall asleep, same situation. When all thoughts stop and you are about to sleep, catch yourself in that state and ask, "Where did the I go? The I seems to be disappearing as I fall asleep. Where is it gone? What is its source?" And yet as you sleep as you dream as you awake there appears to be another I that is the observer of you sleeping, awake and dreaming. That is the real I, that is consciousness. Actually there is only one I but as long as you identify with the body it appears to be a personal I. As you begin to become aware of the higher I the personal I simply disappears, for it never really existed. And the large I comes into play, which is pure awareness. (tape break) You will find something very interesting happening to you. You are becoming happier and happier for no reason. Your fears just melt away. Your past dissolves. The new man is born. All the guilt dissipates. You have awakened. Try it, it works. We are one big happy family here. I'm sure you have something to say or questions to ask, feel free to do so. SU: Robert I find the concepts of immortality, those in the physical and in our state of being, why have we chosen if we are immortal, why have we chosen this mortal, fearful part of this life, what is it about? R: You have never chosen it. You have to ask yourself, "Who has chosen?" and you will find out that the I that you think has chosen doesn't exist. You never chose to be mortal. The mortality of you doesn't really exist. It appears to exist as personal-I. As you follow the personal-I to the source, you will find that the mortal never began and the mortal never ends. There is no mortal at all. SU: So there is no mortal? (R: No.) So we are immortal? R: You are immortal. That is your nature, you appear to be mortal. It's as if you are watching a movie and on the screen you see all of the different pictures. They cover the screen. You have no idea the screen exists, but the reason you are able to see the pictures is because of the screen. And if you try to grab the picture you're going to grab the screen. So it is with us. We as mortals are superimposed on consciousness and we appear as mortal. It's all part of the grand illusion. That is what is called maya. It appears to exist but it doesn't. When you awaken you will realize that there never was a time when you were born. And there will never be a time when you cease to be. So the mortal is false. It's an appearance. SC: Is it possible that if one does some of the things like I've said and there is an armor around us and the armor could be broken we could see our true Self? R: You can only go so far with that method that you explained. To go all the way comes through self-inquiry. You have to get rid of the person who breaths, as well as the breath. It's all part of the false identification. From the breathing techniques that you just explained to us, it improves your physical status it makes you feel better as a mortal, but that is as far as it goes. To truly break away from that you have to ask yourself, "Who breaths? Who is a better mortal? Who is healthy?" It's the ego, be rid of the ego and you'll be free and blissful, and happy. (SC: You know as you talk and it's true and I've heard this over and over, it just seems like throwing a ball against the wall, it comes back. The ball doesn't penetrate the wall.) What you see is what you get. So if you see your stuff that you put out coming back, and it does, stop seeing. Go beyond seeing. Find out who the seer is and what is seen, they are both the same. The seer and the seen are the same. Go beyond that. SC: It's almost like … I know I'm talking but, it's almost like you're talking Greek to me in that sense. Unless you understand Greek it doesn't mean anything.) R: No it's a little different. (laughter) For you simply have to inquire within yourself, "Who doesn't understand?" It's always going back to you, "Who doesn't understand? I don't. Well who is this I that doesn't understand? Where does it come from? Who gave it birth? How does it originate? It seems to originate only when I open my eyes in the morning, the I begins its work. So what is its source?" As you identify with the source, the I will disappear and you will be free. SC: How did it happen to you? R: Well that is a story in lesson number four. (SC: I mean was it gradual?) No. (SC: Or like that or… (flicks fingers)) R: I was sitting in the school during high school when I was 14 years old taking a test. I'll make the story succinct. All of a sudden I found myself disappearing, merging into consciousness, not as a body but as pure awareness itself. My body had merged, like melted, but I never went anywhere, there was no change. As consciousness, I realized that there's no body. No body exists. There is only consciousness itself expressing itself as pure awareness. I don't know how long it lasted but the next thing I remember is the teacher shaking me and that experience has never left me. (SC: It wasn't a preparation like we're doing it just happened out of the blue, I mean…) It just happened out of the blue. SS: It seems to me that there is no screen. R: There is no screen but for… (SU: Screen.) Screen, I agree with you. There is no screen, there is no consciousness, there is no self-realization, there is no reality. Then there is silence. So if there is no screen then there is no words. In order to explain these things we need illustrations and words. But you're right, there is no screen. SN: Robert isn't self-inquiry though a very advanced state, one should be established in concentration before that becomes effective. So when you say to find the I, abide in the I, follow it to its source. To find the I, requires one-pointedness and if that is difficult is it useful to do japa to try to have that concentration to even find the I and to inquire … to do the inquiry? R: It depends on the maturity of the person. Not everybody can do the selfinquiry, you're right. The next best thing to do is to surrender, totally and completely to God. Give God your ego, your life, everything. You have no will of your own. And as you do that you can practice japa, mantras. Those help to make the mind one pointed and prepares you for self-inquiry. But you can know yourself where you are coming from, by the amount of attention that you can hold on self-inquiry. If it's a little too difficult don't worry about it, surrender completely. Surrender completely, everybody can do that, sing bhajans, do mantras. If you are sincere, whatever you do you will be led to the next step. The current that knows the way will take care of you if you are true to your Self. SN: Also isn't there a difference between witnessing and self-inquiry? R: Oh yes. Self-inquiry is not witnessing. Witnessing is very good, it helps. To become the witness of your thoughts without trying to change them, to become the witness of everything. But when you practice self-inquiry you ask, "Who is the witness?" The witness is still attached to I. The witness ultimately has to go and then there is pure awareness. (SN: It seems that in witnessing the thoughts still come and go but in inquiry if you get into the state of abiding in the I there is almost a cessation of thought, there is only I am-ness.) When you abide in the I you are I am-ness, itself. When you watch your thoughts you are still the ego. SH: So the thoughts have to come and have to cease completely before that step can occur? R: Thoughts have to cease completely. There is no one left to think. There is nowhere from which the thoughts arise. And there is no place where the thoughts go. They just cease as if they never existed to begin with. (SH: Which is true.) Yes. SS: But they appear again? R: To whom do they appear again? (SS: Consciousness I think?) Thoughts cannot appear to consciousness. (SS: To whom can they appear to then?) To no one. (SS: To no one but as I say, but they come out of this consciousness they are received and then come out.) They do not come out of consciousness. (SS: They are consciousness.) Consciousness is self-contained. Nothing can really come out of consciousness. (SS: Is it the self-contained, is it this I, is it this ego?) No it's self-contained as I-am, not as the ego. (SS: It's everything.) The ego is an illusion. The ego never existed. Consciousness cannot give birth to an ego? (SS: How did this arise? If you become consciousness and you become … and you are silent. The silence ends and it seems that these thoughts appear. They just appear.) If you are in the true silence then no thoughts will appear. (SS: Ever?) Ever. They will just be spontaneous. They will appear to keep your bodily functions going. (SS: But even if they are spontaneous they're there?) They are just to keep you going as a body. But that doesn't exist at all. That is an illusion. SC: Do thoughts come to you? R: As I function, thoughts appear to come. I raise my hand, I talk. I eat. So the thoughts are there doing those things but they do not go further than my nose. SH: Why do you let them go that far? (R: I don't.) Good. (students laugh) R: I am not that. But that is what appears to happen. I can sit here and tell you that I have no body, even if you are looking at me. There is no mind there is no appearance of a body, even. Yet you tell me, "No you're wrong I see it, so it must be true." But if you catch yourself when you say, "I see it." You'll find the culprit, I. I sees it. Find out who the I is that sees the body. The body and the I are attached to each other. If you get rid of one you get rid of the other. See life is like an optical illusion. I go back to the illustration of the sky is blue. You look at the sky and you say, "What a beautiful blue it is." Not today. But if you investigate you will find out there is no sky and there is no blue. It's an optical illusion. It's like the snake in the rope, which is another illustration. If you are in the dark and you see a rope coiled up you'll think it's a snake and you'll get fear and you're frightened to death. But when you turn on the light you see it's only a rope. Once you discover this you can never be fooled again. SS: But that was a rope? R: There was a rope but it was not a snake. (SS: But there was a rope or you wouldn't have seen the snake?) (students laugh) You thought the rope was the snake, but you find out upon investigation that it was not a snake it was only a rope. So in the same instance, you think I am the body but upon investigation when the light is turned on in your consciousness you will see that there is no body. There is only consciousness. There never was a body. (SS: Where does the rope come from? Is the rope the Self? Where did the rope come from?) The rope is just an illustration the rope is just there. The rope you understand, it appears to be a snake to some people and frightens them. So your body and your affairs sometimes appear frightening, but that is just like a snake it doesn't exist, it's a rope. You are pure consciousness and you are bright and shining. SE: What if you think it's a rope and it's really a snake? (students laugh) R: Well you've got a problem? SH: Then you get death. (laughter) (R: Then you really have to work on yourself.) SY: If the sky being blue is really an illusion, why do we all share the same illusion? Why can't we see the sky, different people see the sky in different colors. R: It's like saying, why don't we all have the same dream? We dream individually. No two people have the same dream. In the same way no two people see the same thing the same way. You see the sky is blue in different ways. But collectively we see the sky is blue. This is called the grand illusion. We all come from the same oneness, the same delusion. There is only one. There are not many. So the collective consciousness of humanity appears to see the same thing because it's coming out of the same bag. When you destroy the illusion you no longer see the fake sky, you see reality. You no longer see yourself as a human being. You see yourself as the universe and the sky, the moon, the stars are all taking place within yourself. SY: What is it when you can see something actually change shape like right in front of your eyes, like a persons head. For instance you're looking at a persons head and it can change into something ancient, like another ancient person and it can change into different shapes and forms and colors? R: It means you have been taking too much LSD. (loud laughter) (SY: No I mean without any LSD, without any drugs.) Well somehow your brain has become a little warped (laughter again) and you're seeing all these different things. The idea is not to see these things. There could be many reasons, hallucinations, too much thinking. There are many reasons why we see things change and shapes change. But the truth is we have to go beyond that and you have to ask yourself, "To whom does this come? Who sees these things?" It's all part of the personal I. Everything we're talking about is part of the personal I. Shapes, people, places, things, occult visions, astrology, numerology, it's all part of the personal I. As long as we get stuck in that scene we have to repeat it again and again karmically, so it appears. Until we get loose of the personal I and we become the Self. So all these things, visions, dreams, everything is part of the personal I. SF: Robert, in the illustration of the rope and the snake how do you explain within that context, how do you explain the rope? R: The rope is an illustration of reality. (SF: As the Self or something…?) As reality, as the Self. The rope exists but the snake does not. (SF: Uh-huh. Right.) So when you see the snake you have fear but when you turn on the light or when you awaken in consciousness, you see the rope. You see yourself as the way you are pure, pure awareness. So the rope illustrates the Self. (SF: Right. So if we don't know the Self it's a real mystery?) The Self is a mystery when you don't know it, that's right. (SF: Until more or less…) R: Even if you realize it's a mystery you're on the right track. When it makes you think about it, it makes you say to yourself, "There must be something else than what I appear to be. This can't be all to me than there is. Going to sleep at night getting up in the morning, going to work, watching TV, there must be something else." That is the beginning of wisdom. And then you start asking, "What is this something else? Who is it? Is it God? I can think of God. Who thinks? What kind of God am I thinking of? Where did these thoughts come from?" And then one day you'll say, "I think them. Wow this is amazing. All these thoughts that I've been looking where they come from, I is the one that thinks them. Therefore if I eliminate the I the other thoughts will go also and I'll be free." So you spend the rest of your life with self-inquiry, eliminating the I. SG: So Robert the whole thing is a full blown hallucination. It's what we're experiencing. If you know it’s hallucination it gets you out, moving out of it? (R: Yes, of course.) It has that quality like life beyond LSD but you can't quite get yourself off the trip? But you know somehow… R: …there's got to be an answer. (SG: Yeah but somehow this is sort of unreal.) And the answer is always within yourself. And if you inquire deep within yourself the answer will come. SC: It just struck me that, how about these monks that live up in Tibet are they doing the same thing, self-inquiry? Sitting in meditation, living an austere life? Is that their motive? R: It depends what sect they belong to and what they are doing. I have no idea what they are doing up there? (SC: I mean not only in Tibet, but India and around the world?) There is no need to go to a monastery. For you have to take yourself with you. And if you can't think now about your real Self it will be worse when you go to a monastery. (SC: I didn't mean that I meant the men who were in those monasteries.) Who knows where they are coming from, they are probably all reading playboy. (students laugh) (SC: That's a big one!) We have no idea what they are doing. Forget about them. (laughter) Find out what you're doing. SK: Robert, it seems like in the practice of self-inquiry that there is a different kind of spectrum of thoughts, there are random thoughts and there are highly charged emotional thoughts like anger and there are perhaps things that are very close to having perception. Like you're kind of doing self-inquiry and there is a loud disruptive noise right near you and there are semantic perceptions like a pain in the body. Those all essentially are handled the same way as far as self-inquiry is concerned? R: Everything is handled the same way. (SK: But it seems to be all the same type of thing but the experience is different somehow?) It's all attached to the I. The difference is in your mind. (SK: So when some of those things seem more disruptive to handle when doing selfinquiry and when they persist is it best when you can and something will get…) The disruption is the best teacher you can ever have because the disruption makes you see that you have to go beyond it. (SK: Well let's take the most disruptive can be physical pain so if you were saying, "Who am I?" and then it's there again. Do you go to "Who am I?" again?) No if you have physical pain, you should ask yourself, "To whom does the pain come?" Do it that way. "Who experiences the pain?" Again, "I do." Then you say, "Who am I?" (SK: And so it benefits…) It slowly does benefit, of course. (SK: As diligently as possible.) R: Practicing "Who am I?" for the average person is really the greatest psychotherapy that was ever invented for it gets rid of emotional problems, by inquiring, "To whom does the problem come?" And then you realize that you are not the problem, I is. So where did the I come from? It didn't come from anywhere, that is the realization you come to. It never was born, nothing gave it birth, it's a liar. Then you're free. SN: But "Who am I?" is not a mental process? R: No, and it's also not a mantra, it's simply inquiry. You're inquiring. See what happens to the mind when you inquire what it is, it gets weaker and weaker until it disappears. That is the only way to annihilate the mind. By investigating it and realize that it doesn't exist. (SN: When you say to investigate it, it sounds like a mental process again?) No you're simply looking at your mind and asking, "To whom does it come?" It's true you are using a little of your mind to get rid of your mind. That's the only instrument you have got to use. When you investigate your mind with your mind, it dissolves, it dissipates. It becomes transcended. (SN: Yeah but the idea of abiding in the I seems to give a different feeling than investigating the I?) Abiding in the I is the same as investigating the I. You're abiding in the I, that means you're watching the I. You are holding on to the I. You're looking at the I most carefully. And as you keep investigating the I, following the I thread to its source, the I just is gone. SF: So Robert there is a sort of a sequence in self-inquiry. First comes the "Who am I?" That's number one. Number two, the thoughts slow down the mind tends to dissipate or disappear little by little and abiding in the Self may or may not happen, but that's not my concern. I just keep on self-inquiring and the most that I could hope, if I hope for something is that my thoughts slow down and abidance in the Self may or may not come up, it's not my concern, again… R: What you're saying is true. Nothing is your concern. You should have no concern whatsoever. (SF: I just keep asking myself, "Who am I?") This is a real radical teaching, it happens differently to different people. There are some people just by asking, "To whom does this come?" And there is sort of a flash and everything is gone and they're home free. There are other people who have to carry it through and do what you said. Don't make it a practice with number one, number two, number three, number four. (SF: Oh that's for explaining it, sort of.) R: Yeah, but when you're doing it yourself let it come naturally do not force it. For instance, when you react to a condition and you catch yourself, do not force anything to happen or to take the place of the reaction. In a gentle calm way, observe what happened and something within you will say, "Who reacted" and something else will come and say, "I did. Then who is this I who reacted? Where did it come from? What is its source?" You do everything in a calm gentle way. You may have to go through all the steps and you may not have to go through all the steps. Do not have any preconceived ideas about this. Have no concepts. Simply allow whatever happens to happen. (Music played with Mary singing) R: We have a lot of prashad today. We have to eat until we bust. Do we have any announcements? Ed. SE: Easter, next Sunday is Easter and at six o clock, we're going to have it here, we're going to have a bhandara. And one more interesting thing is for some of those who feel doubts from time to time, one of the persons that recently has requested Robert's talks is Jean Dunn who has written … is a student of Nisargadatta, written the "Seeds Of Consciousness" and "Prior To Consciousness" she said, his talks are fascinating and she gives them to her students and her friends up there in … where she lives in Vacaville, just thought you might like to know that. R: Is Vacaville not a prison? (SE: Yeah she is in prison there.) (laughter) SL: Also there is a list on the table that I put up there for the bhandara and if you could just put down your name and what you're bringing so we have an idea… (tape ends)

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Robert: Om, shanti, peace. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It's good to see you again. It's very commendable on your part that you can be here tonight. After all, you could be watching TV, you could be going out with your girl friend or boy friend, you could go to a good movie, you could go get drunk. Student: Then what am I doing here? (students laugh) R: I don't know. Ask yourself. But you decided to come here and that means something, not to me, but to yourself. It means that you're tired of the world, to an extent. It means that you realize what this world really is. It's not bad, it's not good. It means that you want to wake up, so there is something within you pushing you. All you have to do is to quiet your noisy mind and allow it to happen, that's all. You do not have to go through rituals, initiations or anything else. You simply have to quiet your mind and everything will take care of itself. Let me ask you a question. What do you think is the difference between this teaching, Jnana Marga, and the rest of the yogas, prayer, religions and whatever? What is the basic difference? Who can tell me? SJ: Jnana Marga is not concerned with anything of a relative nature, not even calming the mind, really. (R: Well, in a way that's true.) SG: No object?(R: In a way that's true also, but there's a more rational explanation.) SF: There is nothing to be obtained. Just to recognize. R: Well that's true too. Actually, the answer I'm looking for is this: In every teaching besides Advaita Vedanta, there's a personal I. Think about that. Let's take Hatha yoga. The I learns postures and the ego becomes expanded. Because you can say, "I can stand on my head and twist my feet," and you give it a Sanskrit name. (laughs) But you still say, "I can do this," so the I has become inflated. SJ: Or it can be, right? (R: Sure.) It can be, propensity is worth a bit. R: Take raja yoga, the eight limbed path, now these things are good. There's nothing wrong with these things. I'm not putting them down. But there has to be someone to learn the jamas, nijama, the virtues. There is somebody who is learning all these things. The I has learned to become virtuous. Take Kundalini yoga. I am focusing on the chakras, on each chakra. There's always I and I and I. Take prayer. I am praying to God. Again there's nothing wrong with these things, but the reason we call this the direct path is because this is the only teaching that investigates the I. We're not interested in effects. Whatever the effect may be, we realize that the I is behind it. We realize that if we find the I, and follow it to its source, everything else will be wiped out and we'll become free. This is why it is called the direct path. Also what is the difference between meditation and Jnana Marga, because I mean most of you realize that on this path it is not really necessary to meditate? So what's the main difference between meditation and this path? SJ: There has to be someone to meditating. R: True, but that's not the answer I'm looking for. In meditation there's always an object of your meditation. And again the I is concentrating on certain words, mantra, or whatever. Therefore you're not getting rid of the I. You're concentrating on something else, where you exclude everything except that mantra or the words of your meditation, whether it's God, or whatever. In this teaching you simply inquire for the source of the I. "Who am I? Where did I come from?" Even when I say to you, "Where did I come from?" some of you are relating to your body, aren't you? You're thinking where did I come from, as a body? But that's not what we mean. You want to know where the I came from, not where you came from. If you find out where the I came from you will realize that you do not exist. You never did and you never will. That's the point. Where did I come from? And as you get used to this kind of thinking, whenever you use the word I, you will never refer to your body again. For instance, if you have a cold you usually say, "I have a cold." Only now you will catch yourself and you will laugh, because you will say, "I has the cold." Sounds like bad English. "I has the cold. It has nothing to do with me. So where did the I come from that has the cold?" And as you follow the I it will lead you to the source, for there's no I and there's no cold. You can use this method for everything. "I am hungry." Well catch yourself, and realize that I is hungry. I is not my real Self. I is hungry, yet my real Self can never be hungry. I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm happy, I feel beautiful, I feel wonderful. It's all the same thing. As long as you are referring to your body you're making a big mistake. Separate yourself from I. There's only one I actually, and that I is consciousness. When you follow the personal I to the source, it turns into the universal I, which is consciousness. Begin to catch yourself. Begin to realize your divine nature. And you do this by keeping quiet. The fastest way to realization is to keep silent. Yet you have to know why you are keeping silent. This is why you can't tell this to the average person. If a person has no inkling of Advaita Vedanta, you cannot say keep silent. For to them it means just to be quiet. They don't realize it means to go deep, deep, deep, deep within, to that place where absolute reality lives, and that's the silence. Actually the human body cannot keep silent. There's something else that enters the silence. It has nothing to do with your humanity. It's only after years perhaps of meditation in previous lives, that you can be mature enough to really know what this path is all about. When I give you these practices, it's not for you as a human being. You appear to be able to go through it as a human being, but I can assure you your humanity has nothing to do with it. When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace, bliss consciousness, pure awareness. That's what the silence is. It's not being quiet. It's beyond that. It's not just quieting your mind, like I say all the time. It's understanding that there's no mind to quiet. When you realize there's no mind, you automatically become silent. When you still think you've got a mind, you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can't. How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort? You can't do that. It's not the effort that makes you quiet your mind. It's the intelligent understanding that you have no mind to begin with. Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself. If you have to meditate, by all means meditate. This path is never against any other method, due to the fact they all eventually lead to awakening. You have to do whatever you have to do. But for those who can understand what I'm talking about, and realize you're dealing with no mind, no body, no world, no universe, no God, an awakening comes immediately, because there's no one who is sleeping. Do you follow this? If you think you've got something to overcome, if you're going to believe you've got to work on yourself, you've got to make some kind of effort, it will be hard. After all, who makes the effort? The ego, who's telling you all these things you've got to overcome? The mind, you think you've got to overcome your bad habits, you've got to overcome past karma, you have to overcome samskaras. That's all a lie. I realize that I talk about these things sometimes. It sounds like a contradiction, but I am sharing with you the highest truth. There are no samskaras to overcome, because they never existed. There's no karma to overcome because it doesn't exist. But for those immature students, they have to work on something, so we explain to them there's karma, there're samskaras, there are latent tendencies that have got hold of you, and you have to transcend them. Yet I'm telling them a lie. But they really need to hear that at this time of their evolution, otherwise they couldn't work with anything else. But the truth is, you have nothing to overcome. Think about that. If you had something to overcome you would never overcome it, for it is the nature of mind to play games with you. As soon as you overcome one thing, another thing pops up, and you have to overcome that. When you overcome that, something else pops up. Say you have a drinking habit, and you say, "I've got to overcome this." You may overcome it. It leads to a bad temper. Then you have to overcome the bad temper. It leads to telling lies. Then you have to overcome telling lies. It never ends until you begin to realize I has nothing to overcome. Then you start working on the I. It is then you finally realize it's this personal I that's been giving the trouble. That's an advanced state, but that's also a lie, due to the fact the personal I never existed. But you don't know that. Because you think the personal I exists, you have to use self-inquiry to lead you to the place where you realize the personal I does not exist. It never has, and it never will. Yet wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just sit down and realize all this in a flash and become free. We will not allow ourselves to do that for some reason. We want to play the game of overcoming. So we say, "I've got to work on myself. I've got to practice. I've got to meditate. I've got to be alone. I've got to do this and I've got to do that." But I say to you tonight, there's no thing you have to do. You just have to realize what I'm saying and awaken, and that's it. Again, who has to awaken? It's all a pack of lies, but I'm using words. How can the Self awaken? The Self never went to sleep. Do you not realize who you are now? You're not a mortal human. There are no words to express what you are. You have to find out. So you practice. But while you're practicing your sadhana, keep in back of your mind someplace, there's really no one who practices. After all who does the practice? It's your body and your mind. If you can only remember there's no body or mind that exists, then there's no one to practice. So while you're practicing, remember that.(laughs) I know you're going to walk out tonight and say, "Well, what do I do now?" (students laugh) Look at it this way. As long as you feel body consciousness, and as long as your mind, so called, still has the power to make you feel this way and that way, then you have to do some practice. Otherwise your body-mind will control you. The highest practice is atma-vichara, self-inquiry. The reason I'm talking to you like this tonight, is because I can feel that all of that who are here have been through many paths and you're not newcomers, so you're ready for this. You're ready to hear that there's no practice, there's no God, there's no enlightenment, there's no past lives, there's no you, and you're free. People still want to know, when everything is gone, what's left, what is the substratum, the cause, the underlying cause of all existence? There has to be something that holds it all together. Says who? There's nothing to hold together. Remember also, that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. So when I say there's nothing that holds any thing together, I mean there's nothing that words can describe. When I use the words like bliss or pure awareness, consciousness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman, and Parabrahman is very powerful because it means beyond Brahman. What can be beyond Brahman? Silence. There's no such thing as Parabrahman, due to the fact when you think of it, it signifies an object to you, for instance, a place to be in. A place to be in the silence, that is Parabrahman. You're wrong. There's no place, there's no silence and there's no Parabrahman. Then what is there? Find out. Only you can know yourself. For there are no words to describe it. You have to come to terms with your life. It takes total honesty to do that. You can't go on fooling yourself. Look how you run around from pillar to post. You go here, you go there. You're always searching, you're always looking, you're always striving, for what? Some of you think that you're going to find a teacher up in the sky someplace, and you're going to go searching for that teacher until you find him or her. No such teacher exists. When you finally settle down and start going into the silence more often, your teacher will appear to you and you will find he's none other than yourself. You may ask then, "What am I doing here with you people?" I am your Self. I can see that very clearly. There's no difference between you and me. When you feel depressed, when you feel angry, when you feel out of sorts, that's me you feel. When you feel happy, when you feel enlightened, when you feel beautiful, that's also me you feel. All this is the Self, and I am that. Some of you still think I'm talking about Robert. Robert has nothing to do with this. I'm speaking of omnipresence. I'm speaking of no-thing. And I think to continue speaking is a waste of time. (silence) Om, Shanti, shanti, shanti. I'm just going to sit here like this and you can do whatever you like. If you feel like asking a question, ask a question. If you feel like making a statement, make a statement. If you feel like throwing me out of the door feel free to do so. (laughter) SS: Purely an academic question… (R: Umm.) Unimportant but… (R: Everything is important.) Pardon me? (R: Everything is important to you.) Okay, Advaita Vedanta, what does the term translate and where is it from? Who created that term and when? R: The ancient Rishis in the Upanishads, they came to the conclusion, and most of them never knew each other, that there is only ultimate oneness. Advaita Vedanta means, "The Oneness of the Vedanta." There is only ultimate oneness and this was about four or five thousand years ago. They handed the teaching down by mouth to mouth, from person to person. Again the interesting point is, in those days there were many Rishis and it came through them, they just awoke, they became realized and the message was always the same. The same message we're presenting here. So it's a very old antiquated teaching. (SS: When that was written down what was it written down in?) The scriptures called the Upanishads. SJ: The Veda's is a big body of work and the Untas or the end of it is Vedanta, which is the cream of their work. SG: Robert you spoke of, there was no need for initiation and I was reading Osbourne and a lot of other devotees of Ramana, talking about the initiation of Ramana's glance. (R: Umm.) From their perspective and from their imagination that there was initiation. They even had a court case… (Robert laughs) …they took Ramana to court saying that you initiated me as Vedanta. R: Well this is from their own perspective. They feel that is what happened. Just like many people who were in front of Ramana, used to claim that he did this for them, he healed them, he saved their lives, he did this, he did that and he denied everything. But they all claimed that because of him all these things happened. A Jnani is never aware of anything they do because there is nobody left to do anything. It's like a burnt rope, it's good for nothing. ST: And Robert you call that absolute awareness. (R: I call what?) A burnt rope like you say is that absolute awareness? (R: You can say that.) Okay and there's nothing left, no knowledge, no nothing. (R: Yes.) Is there a state where there is awareness of the minutest detail? R: Is there a state where there is awareness of the minutest detail? In reality there is no state at all. (ST: And how can it be created?) (tape break. Tape restarts abruptly) SR: Robert, from the perspective of doing practice. (R: Doing what?) Doing practice. (R: Uh-huh.) Are the words, "Who is I?" as appropriate as "Who Am I?" R: If it's good for you, if it works for you, it's good. Whatever works for you? If you were able to say, "Chocolate bar," and you felt something and it worked for you that'd be great. (SR: What does working for me mean beside from feeling good?) It means that for you it means something sacred. It means something wonderful, something that you wanted to attain. That is the beginning and all of that leads to silence. Beyond words and thoughts. It automatically leads you there. That is why I said in the beginning, "All methods are good." For instance: If you have a mantra and believe in the mantra and keep repeating it over and over again. The day will come when the mantra becomes less and less for you and the silence becomes more and more, until you drop the mantra all together. The mantra is only to make you one pointed. So you can exclude other thoughts but then the mantra has to go too. With the blow of the nose you awaken. (Laughter) SS: What about his question about the "Who is I?" If there is no small I and there is also no big I… (R: Umm.) In that sense it doesn't make any difference but if I'm asking, "Who is I?" small I - this is a very different kind of a feeling of a question from asking, "Who am, big I?" R: Yes, due to the fact when you inquire deeply, "Who is I?" the I begins to disappear. It turns into the big I which is pure awareness. So you use that method to lift you up and make you free. SN: Robert, what if you ask,"Who am I?" and you get confusion and from that you get fear? R: Then you have to ask yourself, "To whom does this confusion and fear come to?" And realize it comes to me, then you say, "Who am I?" again. "Who is this I that feels fear and confusion?" And keep still. And the fear and confusion will ultimately disappear because it never existed to begin with. ST: Robert how did this illusion start? (R: It never did.) Why is it here then? R: It doesn't exist. (laughter) See that is your perception. (ST: Why do I have perception?) Because you believe you do. (ST: Why do I believe?) That is what you want. It's like when you are hypnotized you see things that don't exist. SL: But how do we all get hypnotized to be able to make a butterfly and a snowflake? R: We never did. It appears that way. But nothing ever happened. (SL: It's the agreement of illusion is what baffles me.) The what? (SL: The agreement of the illusion between us… (R: (laughs) …this ego and that…) It baffles you? Then ask yourself, "Who is baffled?" I know some of the answers I give you sound like a cop out. (laughter) But believe me it's the highest truth. (SL: We believe you.) (laughter) See I know some of you want real profound answers. (more laughter) You want me to talk for a half hour and we go into all kinds of technical terms, why? SR: Robert, my name is Richard. (R: Hi Richard.) I want to thank you for allowing me into your home. (R: You are welcome.) I've been on a spiritual quest for many years in this life. And something is happening with me and happening to me in the past two, three months from a certain individual, in my living situation. Although I've been coming here briefly, I'm using as much as I can what you have talked about and what has entered my heart but in truth, I still do not know how to deal with my pain and my stress and unfortunately the reality is, is that my body hurts and my head hurts at times and I become nausea from the unpleasantness that…well what I call my karmic reality of my life. I know that everything is an illusion but it is hard for me to dismiss, to over ride what I'm actually going through. And that is where I'm at right now. R: I understand perfectly what you are saying and I have great compassion for you. But look at it this way: What's the worst thing that could possibly happen to you? Is there really anything to fear? What is the worst thing that can happen? SR: You see it's not that I even fear death so much anymore you see I just don't want my life … see I just turned fifty-five in January and to be very truthful I have now nineteen months and eleven days of not using any mind altering substances including pretty much caffeine now. But I feel like I'm being reborn and things aren't veiling me over like substances that I have used for thirty-five years. And I don't want my life to have been in vain and I've been searching for realization for a long time. And I come here tonight and I swear like this is the first peace I have felt in a long time. R: Everything will work out for you. (SR: Excuse me?) Everything will work out. SR: I keep hoping that. I really do and I have flashes of moments that it's okay, you know and then something happens and I am downward spiraled and sometimes I really fear for my life more often I fear for my sanity and I've got to keep remembering that God doesn't give me any more that I can handle and I just keep hanging in there. R: Try to remember the one who is concerned is your body. It is your mind telling you all these things. But in truth what difference does it make? What can really happen to you? Nothing. Look at me for instance, I'm good for nothing, I have no visible means of support. I'm not worth anything, I've accomplished nothing in this life. So that is wonderful. (students laugh) What I am trying to say is that you are probably better off than most people. All is well, you'll be okay. ST: Robert. (R: Hello.) You have mentioned you have a lot of compassion. If somebody says that I have compassion that does mean it should have some influence or is it just an empty word? Or should real compassion have some deep meaning that there could be something done about the dilemmas of life? (R: You can take it anyway you like.) SJ: Here's something interesting, there is a guy in the war and he is being interviewed or something. He is in the first battalion where they are going to start ground war. And he says, preparing for a battle here and it makes the Southern California gang wars he grew up with seem like a schoolyard shuffle and then he's quoted," If old J.C. up in the sky pulls my card there is nothing I can do about it, is there? (students laugh) (SG: Is that Advaita?) (students laugh) R: That's good. If I can only make you understand that it makes no difference what the body goes through. If Saddam Hussein tied me to the rack and cut off my fingers and my toes and poked out my eyes, what can I do? What difference does it make? I am not that. It is the ego that makes us feel sorry about ourselves and our lot in life. Always remember that there is always somebody worse off than you. No thing is ever that bad, rejoice. (pause) For those of you who don't know we're having an Easter celebration. The last sunday of the month at six o clock. We're going to have eating and music and other music and have a lot of fun. So feel free to come, but bring something to eat for at least thirty people. (students laugh) S: Is that the 21st? R: The last Sunday of the month whatever it is. (SM: Do we have a satsang at 2 o'clock first?) No we'll have a satsang at 6. It'll give people a chance to be with their families during the day. (SL: So then we'll be eating after that?) We'll be eating after the satsang. And then we'll have music and tell dirty jokes. (laughter) I notice that nobody checks with Henry anymore when we want to do something at his house. (students laugh) SK: Who's Henry? (SH: That guy checked out last week. (laughter) He's old hat now.) R: Henry is very kind to allow us to wreck his house like this. SL: Robert when we meditate is there a way to avoid hypnotizing oneself rather than being in awareness? R: Well sure, you simply use the method of your meditation to bring you to the place where you are not hypnotized. What makes you think you are being hypnotized? (SL: Because I seem to lose the time, I lose awareness, but I am quiet and my mind might be going on but I don't even know it.) Well what makes you think that you are hypnotized? You probably are going deeper into yourself. (SL: I don't really know what hypnotism is, but it has occurred to me that way.) Well you are better off if you don't know. (SL: But it's felt as if I might just really have been asleep?) That's good! Even if you are asleep the work is carried on while you are sleeping. And when you wake up it will continue. You definitely are not being hypnotized, don't even think of it. You might ask yourself, "Who believes she is being hypnotized?" And you will come to realize it's your ego that makes you think that. Yet in reality that is not happening. But every-time you feel that is true that you are being hypnotized, ask yourself, "Who is being hypnotized?" and you will realize that it's only for the ego and not for you and you'll go beyond it. SG: Is there other techniques that will bring you into a state of, I think it's called laya? (R: Yes.) Does there seem to be a place for peace to keep all the tendencies you haven't cleared them out yet? (R: Umm.) How does one know the difference? R: You will know because you will feel a bliss, you will feel a joy that you have never felt before. You'll know. There is quite a difference. It's like being asleep and being conscious. When you get into a real Jnana state, you are consciously asleep, you are aware but not of the world and you will know. SL: Who will know? (R: Umm?) Who will know? (R: You will know.) Who? (R: You.) Phew. (Students laugh) Who would I be? (R: Whoever you want to be. Whoever you think you are.) SG: Robert does momentum count? (R: Does what count?) Momentum. I mean if you keep this up does it tend to reach a critical mass? It's like a feeling when I come to the stage, it seems to build to build up some momentum where the thought is, if I didn't, I would lose it. R: In a way that is true, in a way it's not. (SG: Thank you.) If you're speaking of realization it's like when you are in a room filled with darkness and you trip over the furniture and you can't see where you are walking. So you finally figure out where the furniture is, and you miss a few pieces. But once in a while you bump into it. But then one day you hand accidentally puts on the light switch and the light comes on and the darkness has been dissipated. And it will never be dark again, that is how it works. You bump into things spiritually, you have a few small awakenings, little things happen, but when it really happens it's like turning on the light. It happens all at once and you are free. (SG: Can it happen like a sunrise?) Excuse me? (SG: Can it happen like a sunrise? A gradual dawning and finally the sun?) The real awakening comes when the sun is in its full glory. But there appears to be slight awakenings like the sunrise sometimes. But the real awakening comes all at once. SE: And you know when that happens? (R: Oh yeah, don't worry.) (students laugh) SL: Robert you said you feel no pain, does that mean you also don't really enjoy a hot shower either? R: No I didn't say I didn't feel no pain. I said it doesn't matter. I like a hot shower also. Not too hot. SJ: It's an experience, it's not a concept to believe or not believe. That is why you can't grasp it, you just experience it. R: The hot shower? (SJ: And everything else.) Don't make the shower too hot. SL: Hot as you can stand it is the best way, we all know that. (laughs) R: I never take a shower as hot as I can stand it. (SG: Do you like a hot shower that it doesn't matter to a Jnani?) No I don't take a hot shower. (SG: You don't take a hot shower?) I take a medium shower between hot and cold. (SG: You like a medium shower but it doesn't matter, is that what you are referring to?) I get wet. (students laugh) (SG: I didn't understand your words.) I never thought about it whether I like it or not. (SG: I really what to know about the pain. If the pain doesn't matter. Do you just like pain?) Do I just like pain? (SG: Yeah.) Why would I like pain? (SG: You may not, that's what I was just trying to find out. It seemed like you said you like a shower. You like some kind of a shower.) Medium. (laughter) (SG: You've got this liking for medium showers, is there any liking or disliking for pain?) Pain it's the same thing, medium. I don't feel it as much as the average person but I can feel something, if that is what you mean? ST: So Robert you are never asleep right? R: Never asleep? I'm asleep but I'm aware I'm asleep. (ST: Awareness?) I sleep about three hours a night. (ST: But you are still aware…) I'm always aware, yeah. (ST: Then what do you do in those three hours?) Nothing, the same thing I'm doing now. What do you want me to do? (students laugh) SL: Do you dream? R: Hardly. (SL: So when you are aware is the awareness the same as it is when you are not sleeping?) It's always the same. (SL: Are your dreams good if you have dreams ever? Or are there any value to them?) Well the last time I had something like that was more like a vision. But then there has to be someone to have a vision. But I was flying through the air and I went to Arunachala the mountain in Tiruvannamalai, by Ramana Ashram. And I went into the mountain it was hollow inside, and inside there was Shiva and Ramana and Vishnu and Krishna and Jesus and more people I didn't recognize, and Moses. We all smiled at each other and we walked toward each other and we became one beam of light which turned into a lingam. And that's it and that was a couple of years ago. SU: I didn't hear, the beam of light turned into a what? (R: A lingam.) ST: Is there any truth to the power of a lingam? (R: If you believe in it.) SH: That's a nice dream. (R: Could be worse.) (students laugh) SS: When you "woke up" in the morning, did you then, …no because you knew you were having a dream while you were having the dream? (R: I was aware of the whole thing yeah.) SH: So the body then goes to sleep nightly, lies down in bed and konks out but you never go to sleep? R: The body doesn't really konk out. The body just rests. (SH: Yeah, and you are observing the resting.) I'm observing the resting, yes. Some of you who only come on Thursday nights are not aware that we've got transcripts of some of these lessons. And we have lessons one to five they are free of charge. (SJ: Except on Sunday. (laughter) Well they are going to be free from now on. (laughs) The fellow who prints them up, went to a lot of trouble so he was charging for them so I told him not to do that. I think the way we should do it is when we get some of these lessons some of us should make five or ten copies each and hand them out to each other. That would be the best way, so Ed doesn't have to make two-hundred copies by himself. S: Yeah every time. (silence) SF: Robert if somebody goes to the satsangs and doesn't understand English? R: It doesn't really matter, as long as they are here that's all that matters. Satsang transcends language. SG: They are probably better off. (R: You're right.) (laughs) Often I could fall asleep when you're talking, does that make any difference if I sleep in a church. Does it make any difference? R: It doesn't really make any difference, no. There is a very subtle vibration in a satsang and it goes into your heart whether you are sleeping or whatever you are doing. As a matter of fact if I remember correctly, before we came to Henry's house, we used to have a guy who came to satsang and he'd lie down on the floor, stretched out and go to sleep. And he always used to tell me he felt the best he's ever felt in his life. He seemed to have made the most progress than anybody else. (students laugh) (silence) SG: There seems to be a difference between the Sunday and Thursday nights, like Thursday nights seem to be a little deeper, is that just my perception? R: Well nothing is done on purpose. Maybe because there is no music Thursday night? SJ: Maybe there is less new people also. (R: Could be that.) SU: It's the dog. (R: It's what?) The dog. (R: Dog.) (laughs) SS: When you say it's important to be here and it's not a matter of language because you could be sleeping and you do not understand the language. It would be equally beneficial to walk down the street with you, right? (R: If that's what you believe.) What if I had satsang with a person who wasn't realized? And what if we both just sat there and tried… what is it about it that makes… are we open to it or is it that there is a vibration coming that we're getting or what is it that makes it beneficial even though we don't comprehend the language? R: Apparently what they say in the scriptures is a person who is realized has a very positive influence on others. It's like a light bulb. The average light bulb can be twenty-five volts … or watts but then you put a hundred watt light bulb and you get a brighter light. So the more realized a person is, the more watts he has. And so the people around him feel the illumination and they also become illumined. So satsang is about a thousand watt light bulb. And those of you who are twenty watts or thirty watts or forty watts increase your wattage by being here. Speaking of wattage, Alan Watts is on the radio did you know that? Every monday 2 o clock, on Pacifica. SS: Did you know him? (R: No.) I know him well, he used to come here, have parties here. (R: Really?) Yeah this was one of his party places. (R: I heard he was quite a party goer.) Oh he was. (laughs) SL: His girlfriend was my room-mate. (SH: Yeah? Give us the low down of discovery.) I pass. (students laugh) SH: You don't approve do you Fred. (laughs) He was a great entertainer. (R: He was.) And that's how he looked at himself, as an entertainer. He had no pretensions at all. (R: Yes I know. I know, that's true. He was very down to earth.) He never claimed to be enlightened, never. SL: Now that's a back handed compliment. (laughs) SF: What's the best way to give thank you to a Jnani, Robert? R: The best way to say thank you to a Jnani? (SF: Yeah.) By losing your ego. (laughter) That's a good point Horat. Being devotional you give up your ego to the Jnani. As if you are praying to God. You say, "Take my ego God I no longer want it." SS: But in what sense does the Jnani care one way or the other? R: The Jnani is just an instrument to relieve you of your ego. There is a sort of a contradiction you're right, because there is a lot of love and a lot of compassion. Never believe that I don't care. A Jnani usually cares more than anyone else on earth, but it's different. (SS: I guess you talk so much about … I mean it just gives a person an image of that suddenly you would be full of joy as if you hadn't been the moment before and so it's … I mean it suggests this variation in your moods or feelings or fullness that doesn't… but of course you are that!) (students laugh because it didn’t make sense) SH: You say that a Jnani cares more than anybody on earth but it's different. How is it different? R: It's different because it's a universal care. A Jnani sees you as the infinite. Sees you as already being realized. So a Jnani has a great compassion a great joy because he sees you as himself. (SH: Uh-huh.) SJ: Or like knows you? (R: Same thing, yeah.) SG: Is that exercise a thing of the personal I? (R: No there is no personal I involved.) Is it the Self? (R: The Self.) Exercising through a human being? (R: There is only one Self there is no human being. There is one Self and I am That. When I say "I am," I'm not saying Robert. I am, consciousness is that. The one Self.) SH: But that one Self does appear to operate through a body-mind? (R: That's how it appears, yes.) In that particular body-mind, right? (R: If you say so.) What do you say? (R: "Who am I?") I don't know. (R: Neither do I.) Okay that ends it. (students laugh) (R: If you don't know then I surely don't know.) SG: In a way a Jnani couldn't really have compassion or any relationship because relationship implies two, I mean that just… (R: There is a thin line when you talk about that because there is a relationship and yet there is not a relationship. On one level there is a relationship another level there is not. But if there is a relationship it because you need it, so there is a relationship.) On the highest level there is no relationship. (R: True.) SJ: You could just as easily say that all there is, is a relationship it seems because it's all unthinkable to the mind. It's beyond the mind. (R: You can say that. You already said it.) I did, didn't I? (laughter) (tape ends)

Robert: Peace. Good afternoon. It's good to be with you again. I consider this my spiritual family. We are all one, there is no difference. People still ask me, "Robert, what do you see when you look at us? Do you see energy? Do you see consciousness? Do you see a play of lights? Do you see emptiness?" If I saw any of those things I wouldn't be able to function. I see what you see, you! The only difference is, I realize I am not the body. And when I say, "I'm not the body," I'm speaking of the universal body, which contains you. Therefore, if I'm not the body, and I see that, I see that you are also not the body. I simply see the world as superimposed images on the screen. But I'm always aware that you are images. And so is the body, and so are the trees, and the sky, and the planets, and the animals, and the insects, and everything else. For some reason I'm always aware of that. I'm aware that it's like a bubble, and the bubble bursts, and the reality expresses itself as consciousness. Therefore I see you as you see me, but I see you as consciousness, the reality. Or I see you as I see myself, as a screen, and the whole universe is simply a superimposition on the screen. I do not see you as a human being. I do not see this radio, or the lamp, or this table, as a entity of itself. I see it as consciousness. This doesn't mean that consciousness manifested these things. As I always explain, consciousness is self-contained, and only manifests itself. These things are like optical illusions. They do not really exist, as a dream does not really exist. In the dream you're carrying on, you're flying back from New York to California, you're experiencing all kinds of things in your life, and everything appears to be real. But you wake up and the bubble is burst. So I guess the only difference between you and me is that I'm always aware of that. If you're always aware of that, there's no fear. Fear only comes when you believe the world to be real. When the world proves to be an illusion, where is there fear? What in the world can upset you, if you know the world is but a dream? You may say, "Well it may be a dream, but I don't want to be hurt in the dream. I want my dream to be smooth and easy. I want to be happy and harmonious and healthy." If you think in those terms, you are not aware yet of what consciousness is. Consciousness transcends all of that. Consciousness is divine harmony. None of those things exist. I realize that's hard to comprehend. The worst things can appear to happen to my body, to my affairs, to my life, yet I am aware that it's not happening. I'm not imagining that it's not happening. I'm not repressing it. I'm not saying to myself, "Robert, you've got to see only the good." It's beyond all that. There is no good. There is no bad. It's total freedom, total liberation. Look at it this way. You have an idea what God is because God has been branded into your head since you were a little kid. Can you imagine God having fear, of anything? Or God going through any kind of experience? Or God saying, "This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, I'd rather have this than that?" There is no duality in God. So the universe is ultimate oneness. Ultimate oneness is another word for divine harmony. It is beyond all concepts and preconceived ideas. The human mind cannot comprehend it. Suffice it to say that all is well. It is when we begin to quiet the mind that you come closer and closer to this understanding. It's when the thoughts begin to stop, when they slow down, that you become more aware that all is well and the reality comes to you by itself. As long as you keep identifying with the world and the things of this world, you can never know the truth about yourself. And again you may say, "Well, I've got to function in the world. I've got to work, I've got to have a family, I've got to look after my interests." Who says you don't? But it has nothing to do with you. You have to understand that your body will take care of itself. The dream will go on by itself. You will do whatever it is you came to this earth to do, without you thinking about it, without you trying to make something happen, without trying to straighten out anything in this world. This is what I mean when I say, "Be yourself. Just be yourself. Live in the eternal now." That's being yourself. Be spontaneous. Allow the world to unfold as it should. Do not be judgmental. Look at everything fresh and new, with awe. Have reverence for all of life, and ask yourself, "Who am I?" Then things will begin to happen. The closest thing you can come to, to having an experience of quiet mind, is chanting. Chanting has a vibration in the nervous system that actually causes the mind to slow down. There are many people who cannot do atma-vichara, self-inquiry too long. And for those people who are practicing self-inquiry, sometimes you are meant to take a break. So put on a chanting tape and chant along with it to yourself, or out loud, and you will find that you go deeper within yourself and the mind begins to become quiescent, still, calm. So let's do that right now, shall we. (Chanting) Some people tell me they like the talks better than anything else we do. Some people tell me they like the chanting better. Some people tell me they like the question and answers better. Some people tell me they like the silence better. Remember what this is. This is satsang. It's not a lecture or a musical festival. Everything we do is important, even if I spoke about the weather and nothing else. It's being at satsang that causes something to take place within your consciousness and lift you higher. There was once a holy man who died and went up to heaven. He came to the pearly gates and banged on the gate. And God came out and said, "What do you want?" And the holy man said, "I am your servant. I have come." And God came said, "Sorry, there's no room for you here. Goodbye," and left. The holy man was perplexed. He sat down in front of the gate and started to ponder. "Why didn't God let me in?" And he sat for two years thinking, "Why couldn't I get into heaven?" And finally it came to him. So he banged on the gate again and God came and said, "Who are you? What do you want?" The holy man said, "I am your servant. I have converted thousands of people on your behalf. I have preached the bible to millions. I have done good deeds. Let me in." And God said, "Sorry, I don't care what you've done, there's no room in here for you," and went away. This time the holy man was really disturbed. He couldn't understand this. "Why won't God let me in?" he said. So he sat down in front of the gate again. Centuries passed. Remember he was dead anyway so it didn't matter. He was pondering why God didn't let him in. Then it came to him. So again he got up and he banged on the door, on the pearly gates. God came out and said, "Who are you? What do you want?" And he said, "Lord, I am your humble servant, but I must confess my sins. I have had sexual affairs with my female devotees. I have eaten meat and told people I was a vegetarian. But I confess everything to you. Can I come in now?" So God looked at him and said, "I don't care what you do, there's no room for you here." And went away. Again the holy man said, "What is this? I've done everything I can. I'm going to sit at this gate if I have to sit here for all eternity, until I find out what the problem is." So he sat for years and century after century, pondering. "I confessed my sins to God. I confessed my good deeds to God. I want to get into heaven. Wait a minute, who is this I? Who is the I that committed sins? Who is the I that committed good deeds? Who is the I that wants to get into heaven? Who am I?" And all of a sudden he started laughing. It came to him. He rolled over in laughter and he got up and banged on the gate. And God came and said, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am yourself." And God opened the gate and said, "Come in. There never was a room here for me and you." And so it is with us. We claim we want to be self-realized. We do not realize that we are already self-realized, and we just have to let go of believing, "I am the doer." It makes no difference what you've done in the past. It makes no difference if you've done good deeds or bad deeds, as far as self-realization is concerned. Once you know the truth, you become free. The truth is, there is no past. There never was a past. The universe has no foundation. There is nothing to hold it together. Therefore there is nothing that you have done that can keep you out of heaven, so-to-speak. Now remember, this doesn't give you license to go out and hurt people and rob banks, and do whatever you think you want to do because it doesn't matter. That's not what I'm saying at all. As far as you're concerned, as long as you believe you are the doer and you are the body-mind phenomena, everything you do has to be accounted for. The lord of karma is going to get you, as long as you believe you are human and you are the body. Then you can't get away with anything, for you run into the law of cause and effect, karma, and you have to deal with the personal god, Ishvara. Henry likes Ishvara, good friend of his. SH: That's your dream. (laughter as Robert continues) As long as you believe you are human, you are the doer, and you are a personal I, then there's a personal god, and that's where prayer comes in. You can pray to your personal god, and you will be helped. Your personal god will take care of you if you surrender and submit to him or her, whatever your personal god is. But when you submit you are giving up your ego, are you not? You're saying I am nothing and you're everything. This helps you. As you keep going in that direction one day you will awaken to the fact that the god you've been praying to is none other than yourself. For how can this god be separate from you? Where would he live? What would be his nature? You begin to understand, I am that. You find freedom in yourself. You begin to see that god is not within myself, actually, I am in God. What I call God, is consciousness. I am conscious. I am aware. I exist. I am. And there's nothing else. You begin to see yourself as omnipresent. You are no longer limited to your body or to the personal I. You have broken through, and you live in glory. Your job is to keep the mind from wandering. The mind has to be held by you, to stop it from thinking. Stop it from going berserk. The mind is not your friend. It makes you human. It makes you believe you are a body, separate. As soon as you can see that your body is an emanation of your mind, it has no existence whatsoever except in your mind, you also begin to see that the body of the universe is the same as your body. Therefore it is a manifestation of mind. This brings a semblance of freedom. Bondage begins to break up, when you can see this. You look at the world and you realize the world is the Self. I am that Self. There is nothing else. You want to share this truth with your friends, with your family and with your associates, but you cannot, for there are no words to describe this. Everywhere you look, you see freedom. Everywhere you look, you see love. All the trivialities are gone. The judgments have dissipated. You have nothing to fear and nothing to fight. All is well. It comes as an idea. Have you ever seen those cartoons of a light flashing when somebody gets an idea? Something like that happens to you. It's as if you're awakened from a long sleep. In this awakening there is no past and there is no future. There is just beingness. You have just become yourself. You have not become anything foreign or anything strange. You simply awakened to yourself, and you feel wonderful. You have to ask yourself, "Who do I really think I am?" And you can tell by the amount of sorrows or happiness or human endeavors that you go through. If you believe you are human then you experience human happiness, human sadness, you go through human experiences. You can never know the Self that way. But as soon as you stop reacting to your human goodness… There are people who tell me, "I've never had a bad day in my life." So I tell them, "You're just as stuck in your good days that you are in your bad days. For realization is not having good days." Try to understand that human goodness has nothing to do with this. Human goodness is karmic, and when the karmic patterns wear off you will experience the opposite. You want to go beyond, beyond all understanding, beyond all conceptual thinking, beyond all intellectual concepts, beyond anything that is known to man, and of course that's silence. Everything leads to silence. It is in the silence that you experience pure awareness. It's in the silence that you experience bliss. It's in the silence that you are. You are not any thing that you can describe. You have become the pure Godhead. You have awakened. Why not awaken now? Why continue to play games? Wake up. Know who you are. Be yourself. Leave the world alone. Again, your body, as it appears to you, will function in the world. And it will do whatever it came here to do. But leave it alone. Do not interfere with the process. Do not react to any conditionings. Keep identifying with the Self. The Self is I-am. You simply become aware that I-am. That's how you identify with yourself. You feel, "I-am, I-am, I-am." If anything comes after that, inquire, "To whom has this come?" I am not this and I am not that, "I am." Even if the word God comes after I am, your mind is playing tricks on you. Ask, "To whom does this come? The word God?" I am will suffice. That's all you have to be is I am. Everything else is redundant, superfluous. If your mind tells you, "I am the body," again inquire, "to whom does this come?" Whatever words are put into your mind, get rid of them. Listen to the silence. Listen to I am. (long silence) Some people wonder if it's good to ask questions. Some people are afraid to ask questions because they think somebody will think they are stupid. Nothing can be further from the truth. The answer to that is yes and no. There is a certain point about this teaching, you may be wondering about, something you do not understand, so you should ask a question. On the other hand if you come in here with the right attitude, all your questions will be answered from within yourself. Therefore do not feel strange if you ask a question. That's all part of the teaching. There might be something going on that you'd like to know, that I haven't covered. Therefore feel free to ask any question about spiritual life or anything else. Doesn't matter what you ask. I don't have the answers, but you can ask anyway. SG: Have you found a deepening as you continue, a deepening of the experience of your Self, has it deepened as time has gone by, or has it stayed the same? In other words when a person realizes that, does it continue to deepen and mature with time or…? R: There is no deepening involved, you either become awakened or you're not. But on the other hand the appearance is, you become more peaceful on the path. And all the things that used to disturb you, seem to dissipate. (SG: So there is a process as realization occurs, there is a sort of process…) It's not really a process for realization. (S: Yeah.) It's a process for yourself to become a better person. But awakening comes by itself. And it has nothing to do with that. But the appearance of what you've said happens also. (SG: As a better person you continue to be a better person after that self-realization?) No, not after. After selfrealization there's nobody left to be a better person. The better person comes before. On the other hand, there have been thieves, murderers, who have, all of a sudden for one reason or another, have become self-realized. It depends on the person. But again, you're either awake or asleep. There is no in between. Once you wake up you realize that you've always been awake. There never was a time when you were not. But before that you go through all kinds of games and rituals and experiences, sometimes. It all depends on the maturity of the person. (SG: What if the person is immature and they have, as you say, a realization itself. That immaturity, is that healed in the course … in the presence of self-realization? Is that immaturity healed and so the person becomes more established in their…?) If a person awakens, there is no question of immaturity. Those questions are gone. For again, there is no one left to be mature or immature. You're just awake. And all concepts are finished. All the things we're talking about go on before awakening. But once awakening comes, there's no question. (SG: So those beings, those - I'm sorry to keep going…) That's okay. (SG: Those individuals, those so-called sinners who suddenly have realization, what happens to all those tendencies, those samskaras? Are they burnt up in that realization?) Completely burnt up. They never existed. (break in tape) R: (tape begins abruptly) …has the bubble gone? There's no bubble because there is no one to experience the bubble. SU: But you said that the divine harmony was part of the bubble, or did you? R: I didn't say it exactly like that. (SU: You didn't say it?) I didn't say it exactly like that. There appears to be a bubble which is a manifestation of the world, but the bubble bursts, and then there is total freedom. The bubble is the world. It's like a bubble, like a dream. Once someone bursts the bubble, the dream is over and you're free. So where is the need of a bubble? There has to be someone to experience the bubble. When there is realization, the experiencer and the experience, both have been transcended. In other words, there is no one to experience anything. (SU: You won't experience the freedom either.) That's right. Freedom is only a word that's spoken before realization. For whom is there freedom when one is realized? One becomes freedom. There is no such word for the realized person. SG: If someone is sleeping, can you go over to the student, shake him and wake him up? Can you do that to me? R: Walk over and wake you up? As far as I'm concerned you're already awake. But you have to be able to see it yourself. (SG: Can one person do that for another person, help another person to wake up?) That's very rare, but it's possible. That usually happens to a person who in many lives has been on a spiritual path, a high path, and then through a touch or a glance, they go all the way, and they break through maya, and become free, that's possible but very rare. As far as asking if I can do that, there's no I left to do anything. If I did something like that, there would be a me and a you. But there is no me and there is no you. There is only ultimate oneness. So I have no reason to do that. If you can understand, there is one Self, there is no one left to do anything for anyone else. The doing is part of the dream. When the awakening comes, there is only one, there is no doer. People who do things like that are yogis. But Jnanis never do things like that. Yet there are people who claim that that's happened. Many awakened people in the time of Ramana Maharshi used to claim that when he looked at them or touched them by mistake, caused the awakening process. He denied everything. That's why it depends on the maturity of the individual. Anything is possible. SB: Does eating a non-vegetarian diet cause the awakening to take longer or prevent it. R: As far as I'm concerned, it's morally correct to be a vegetarian. The quality of the soul becomes purified and you come closer to realization. Eating meat makes the human body gross and pulls you down to the earth. That's why they speak of the three gunas in all spiritual teachings. Meat eaters have tamasic qualities, which are the lowest qualities of humanhood. Therefore it's better not to eat meat. Your thinking becomes clearer, you become more purified, and you're able to absorb the higher teachings. Spiritual aspirants should eat satvic foods, which are grains, fruits and vegetables mainly, some milk now and again. And they should eat small meals. And perhaps observe a day of fasting once a week. Food should not be very important to you. Whatever is set before you, you should eat, and not think about it too much. People get lost in food these days. Which food is right? Which food is bad? Which food makes you live long? Which food makes you healthy? In the end, everybody drops dead anyway. So really it doesn't make that much difference. (SB: You said the soul becomes more purified, what is soul?) Soul is something that the human body thinks it has. As long as you believe you're human, then there is a soul that leaves the body after you drop your body. And it goes into the astral plane and plays games with itself. But as you begin to understand that I am not the body or the doer, then for whom is there a soul? There is no body, there is no soul, there is no astral plane. There is only the Self. (SB: Isn't the soul identical to the Self when it is purified of all mind?) No. If the soul were identical with the Self, then there would be duality, there would be two. There would be the soul and the Self. (SB: Isn't the soul the Self?) No. (SB: When it is purified of all personal I and mind? The soul cannot become purified. The soul is part of the personal I. The Self is soul-less. Why would the Self need a soul? (SB: So then you're saying the soul is the mind?) The soul is the mind. The soul is the personal-I. (SB: Okay.) R: All those things are manifestations of your own thoughts of the mind. But in truth, there is no thing but the Self, and I am is that. We get caught up in all these concepts that keep us earthbound. For instance in my diet, I eat grains and fruits and vegetables, but I don't give much thought to it. My body automatically gets up and it goes for the food it needs to sustain itself. Yet I have nothing to do with that. SS: If I am not my thoughts…not being my body, this being my life, I'm looking at everything as if through it, and I don't see how I can live my practical aspects of being the body and with all the things I have to do in this stage of life? R: If you really knew you were not your body, that question will never come to you. (SS: Pardon me?) That question would never come to you, due to the fact that your body will always take care of itself. Who grows the oranges in the orange tree? Who grows mangoes in a mango tree? Who grows the grass? Who takes care of the world and the earth? The same power that takes care of all the things on this planet, will take care of your body. You don't have to worry about it. Everything will be okay. Your body will not walk into the street and get hit by a car unless you are day dreaming. You will be awake. Being awake is not being in a stupor or walking into walls, or getting hit by a car purposely. Being awake is being aware. Everything just happens spontaneously. But it happens better than you can ever imagine, if you were thinking about it. Therefore be yourself and you will see what transpires. See I picked up a glass of water and I drank a little bit. I didn't think about it. It was spontaneous. I didn't say, "I wonder if I'll be able to drink the water. I wonder if the water is pure and fresh, or if the glass is going to break." It's the same with your body. When you stop thinking about your body, it'll take care of itself better than you can ever do it. SU: To those of us who have expressed verbally, "Oh, I'll never get this, or, it seems so difficult, or, it may take life-times," you say, "don't say that." Is this from knowing that our words have power, because our lives have power to create what we expect? R: As long as you are in the physical plane, words and mind do have power. The words come from your mind. When you say something negative about yourself you're keeping yourself earthbound. Even if you make a mistake, realize you made a mistake and forget it, and go forward. Do not dwell on the mistake. Do not dwell on the error. See what it was, correct it if you can, and go forward. But keep your mind on your Self, on I-am, and you will find everything will go well for you. SL: In the bible it says, "In the beginning was the word." Was that teaching meant to show us that our words are powerful, that they begin a process? R: They're actually talking about a primeval word "Om." The first current of creation was "Om." That was the word. And out of that came creation. So if you want to go back into creation you chant Om, and you'll get to the cause of creation. But we teach and we understand that there never was a creation. (SL: Except that when were living on this level there is?) So you have to ask yourself, "For whom is there creation?" and you'll find out that it never existed. No thing has ever been created. (SL: In the exercise that we say in the morning — we understand that everything is a projection of my mind, but in fact we're working on this level to tell ourselves that we are not realized?) No, you're not doing that at all. You never want to tell yourself that we are realized. (SL: Now, that we are realized.) Oh, you are realized? (SL: Is that what you're saying?) What you are really saying is, everything that you observe with your eyes is a manifestation of your own mind, and your mind doesn't exist. So there is nothing that exists. First you realize everything comes out of your mind, everything, everything! And then the realization will come that your mind doesn't exist, and you'll be free. SG: When realization starts, I believe Ramana Maharshi used to say that it occurred on one side of a part of the heart area it starts in the heart area. Is that in your experience, mainly in that area where the heart is or…? R: The reason Ramana Maharshi said that is because people wanted to pinpoint him. They said where is God located? Where is realization? So he pointed to the right side of his chest and said, in the heart, the spiritual heart. That's trying to make people realize it’s someplace. But in truth, there's no heart. There is no spiritual heart. There is only the Self. There is only absolute reality. But to those naive people who need a place to work from, he'll point to the heart center. (SG: So there is no specific center itself. The body is no longer a part of man's feeling.) You never had a body, so why would you want to feel things in your body? Anything that's felt in the body is part of the illusion of a body. Remember when I'm speaking of your body I'm referring to the body of the universe, for what you see as an individualized body, you will see many bodies. But when you realize there's one body, and that is the body of the universe, then everything becomes one. And then that goes, and there is no body whatsoever. And you become free. (tape break) SU: You put so much on freedom? R: We're not putting too much on freedom. It's just a word. It's a word to explain that you're not what appears to be. You're not bound to anything. There's no bondage. There's no limitation. Therefore freedom is the word that expresses that. You are not earthbound, and you are not bound to your body. That's a lie. (SU: But you are not bound to not have a mind either. You're not bound to anything. You can be — you can have a dream and not have a dream. The minute you say, "Oh it's not right to have a dream, it's not right to do this, it's not right to do that.") I'm not saying it's not right. I never use those words. (SU: I don't mean you, but it’s kind of understanding, kind of makes you nullify everything that is. And what is that could be beautiful.) Anything that's beautiful in this world is temporary. (SU: So, what's wrong with that?) What's wrong with that is you're living the mortal dream. And whatever is temporary has to come to an end, and then you'll experience the other side, unhappiness. (SU: Do you experience everything?) You experience everything as a mortal being. But who wants to go through life experiencing good and bad, bad and good, up and down. And then you have to die and go through all kinds of rituals, and karma's, and repeat it again and again and again. You want to get off the wheel and become everlasting joy, bliss, pure awareness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman. You want to go beyond what appears to be. Remember it's your mortal self that sees the goodness and the badness of the world. So surely you don't want to stay in your mortal self. You want to go beyond, you want to go beyond yourself to eternity, to total bliss. But if you don't want to then stay where you are. This is why I always say, everyone is in their right place. There are no mistakes. I'm merely voicing where I'm coming from. You can listen, or you don't have to. You can practice, or you don't have to. The choice is always yours. You see, our relationship is different from what you think it is. It is not a gurudisciple relationship really. I am nobody's guru. I am just here, and you can look at me anyway you like. I didn't ask to be a teacher. It just happened. So here I am and here you are. What are you going to do about it? (laughter) You can shoot me, you can do whatever you like. SL: Cream puffs or with a pie. You suggested last week that we hit you with a pie.(laughs) R: Do that. (students laugh) SR: Remember when you said, here I am, here you are. I got thinking, "How did I get here?" But I couldn't remember and I still don't remember how I got here. I know intellectually there is something that could be totally from my mind. But I thought could that be from my intellect at the moment is a very strange state of affairs. Whew. SK: Robert from your orientation or whatever orientation is happening around here is there any value to heart center experiences? R: Heart center experiences? Yes, because a heart center experience fills you full of bliss and makes you realize there is something higher, and there is something else taking place. It lifts you up. There is nothing wrong with that. (SK: Apart from nothing being wrong with it, is it useful for the process of liberation as apposed to…?) Nothing is useful for liberation, except realizing I-am. Every experience you have, including your heart center experience, you have to inquire and ask, "To whom does this come?" Eventually everything has to go, including all spiritual experiences. (tape break then Robert continues) If you truly wish to repent, just sit in silent meditation and see the perfect reality within. For all manners of error merely arise in erroneous thought, and like the morning dew before the rising sun, can perfectly be eliminated through the benevolent light and wisdom. Do we have some announcements Ed? SE: By popular demand, Easter Sunday Bhandara has been moved from 2 to 6. And there is a new talk back there, of Robert's talks. And beginning next week we're going to handle designer loin cloths as part of the … forget it. (SL: Not a bad idea. Is that the new dress code?) SE: New dress code, right. (laughs) SL: Another announcement, it's Edward Muzika's birthday today! (happy birthday wishes from everyone). Robert: Let's sing happy birthday. (Everyone sings happy birthday to Ed as tape ends)

Robert: Peace. Good evening. It's good to see you again and be with you. Try to remember that I'm not a speechmaker or a minister or a philosopher. It's not words you want to hear. Many words can be spoken and nothing said. The answer you are looking for is within yourself. Everything you are looking for is within yourself. When I say within yourself I don't mean your physical self. I mean within the Self. The Self is not within you. You are in the Self. So when I say everything you're looking for is in the Self it includes your physical body and everything else. Everything is the Self, and you are that. All is well. From your upbringing you've probably heard of the word blasphemy. The only blasphemy that exists is the fact that you believe that you are human. That's blasphemy, to believe that you are a human being. It's the ultimate lie. You are not what appears to be. No thing is what it appears to be. Then who are you? You have to find for yourself. Is there really a you? Are you really an individual? Are you separate from a tree, an animal, the world, the universe? Is there any separation? Find out. Do you really exist? Find out. Do you have a purpose in life? Find out. Again, it's blasphemous to believe that you were born as a human, and you prevail and you dissolve. That's true blasphemy. It all begins when you awaken in the morning. That's the time that you should work on yourself. As soon as you open your eyes you should make a statement such as, "I am pure awareness." But never believe that your personal self is pure awareness. You're saying I am is pure awareness. Your personal self, your ego, the personal I, can never be I am. That doesn't even exist. Therefore think what you're saying when you say, "I am pure awareness." You're not speaking about your little self. That doesn't count because that doesn't even exist. You're speaking of I am, pure awareness. Awareness of what? You're aware of something, for you claim, "I am pure awareness." You are aware of the fact that I am is consciousness. Pure awareness is consciousness and I am is that. Do you realize the revelation when you really know what you are saying, and you announce it with feeling, where you disregard the body-mind phenomena and you simply state the truth about yourself? I am pure awareness. Awareness of I am is consciousness. When you make such a statement, you will notice that you become blissful. You just begin to feel wonderful all over, due to the fact that pure awareness, I am, consciousness, expresses itself as bliss. They all really mean ultimate oneness. But as you express yourself this way, as soon as you open your eyes, something profound happens to you. You begin to feel the joy of your Self. You begin to feel total happiness, goodness, and then you can state, "All is well," and you will know and feel that you are the beginning and the end. You will understand what sat-chit-ananda means. You will know Parabrahman. You will feel a divine emptiness, nirvana. You will be at peace, for you will understand that you are the universe, and no thing exists but yourself. You are the Self of the universe. Just to hear this, doesn't it make you feel good, when you realize your divinity, that you are not a man or a woman, that you are not reincarnation or karma? There never was a time when you are not. That you, are all-pervading, transcendental bliss. Abide in your true nature. Stop believing that you are a sniveling human with problems. For whom are there problems? How can you, pure consciousness, absolute reality, think about a problem? Even if you say, "Well, life still goes on. I've got to meet my bills. I've got to go to the doctor. I've got to do this and I've got to do that." That's blasphemy, that's what you call blasphemy. Not that you're not going to do it, but your body has nothing to do with you. Your body-mind and all of its affiliations, does not even exist. Even Jay who thinks he's blowing his nose, that's an illusion. You think, "I've got a cold. I've got an allergy, I've got to go to work tomorrow morning, I've got to wear my clothes. It is this, that keeps you from realization. You'll wear your clothes. You'll go to work. You will do whatever your body came here to do, but don't worry about those things. Do not concern yourself about those things. The more human you are, the more you will say, "If I don't take care of these things, who will?" What are you talking about? There is only one I, and that is consciousness. Try to get it through your thick skull that the powers that be, know how to take care of all your needs and meet them most abundantly. There is something that cares about you, the great mystery. Something loves you, when you get your bloated nothingness out of the way. As long as you believe that you've got to solve a problem, then you will have to solve a problem. Something will take care of you. Put first things first. And the first thing you have to remember is that you are pure awareness. You can tell yourself that. "I am pure awareness." Sure it's the mind that does this, but there is something that grabs hold of the mind and annihilates it as you turn into I am. These are the things that you should think about. I know it sounds strange when I say this, but do not concern yourself with the world. The world was here, with all of its destructive mechanisms, before you came upon the scene. It will be here after you leave. People who do not understand Jnana Marga, Advaita Vedanta. They say it's your duty to help others, to make this a better world in which to live. But they do not understand that if you awaken and you become liberated, you become others. You are others. There's no one to help. This doesn't mean again that you will do nothing. Your body will appear to be helping, to do all kinds of things. But the truth is, when you help yourself, you help others. And when you help others, you help yourself. It's all one. You wonder what to do with the rest of your life. Should I work? Should I sit home? Should I join the army? Shall I become a dictator of a country? All these great thoughts go through your mind. Do not allow that to happen. Catch your mind. Catch your mind thinking and stop it. The mind is necessary as long as you are a human being. You make decisions. You know what's wrong or right, good and bad. Your mind creates the world of duality. But as you progress in the spiritual life you begin to realize that the mind is a hindrance, not a friend, for it brings up all the things of the past, and worries about the things of the future. Who needs a mind like that? Therefore take control. And again, the best time to do this is early in the morning, as soon as you wake up, for the first thoughts that you think about will carry you through the day. And before you fall asleep, the thoughts that you think about before you go to sleep will continue when you wake up. So fall asleep understanding that I am pure awareness. And you'll have a tendency to think, when you say, "I am," you're referring to your physical self. Catch yourself when that happens. Your physical self can never become enlightened. The finite can never know the infinite. The personal I can never become the universal I. I am is pure consciousness. So you're consciousness. Conscious, not personal, not "I am this," or "I am that," but pure consciousness, existing as I am. I am that I am, absolute reality, beingness, nirvana, sat-chit-ananda, emptiness. I Am that. If you focus on those things during the day, before you fall asleep, when you wake up, most of the time you will discover an amazing secret. You will discover that your work is being done better than when you were thinking about it. Everything will unfold the way it's supposed to. Yet you have to, sort of, in a way, feel that in the beginning. Make yourself feel it and put it first in your life, before anything else. Think, if you will, of what comes first in your life now. It may be your husband, your wife, your job, your house, your car, your friend, your ambitions, your desires. This is what is keeping you back. You have to desire to rid yourself of past mistakes, past experiences. Stop thinking of the future. And this is hard for most people to do, for they are always anticipating the future and worrying about the past. Yet this is exactly what they have to do to let go, of past and future problems. Your physical life is already planned, and all you have to do is to unfold beautifully into it. Everything will happen the way it is supposed to. You have to remember there is no evil in the universal, so nothing evil can ever happen to you. If you think it can, it's because of your imagination. You have a certain concept, a preconceived idea, of how you think things should be. And of course you're always disappointed because things are never the way you think they should be. Yet everything works out for your benefit, due to the fact that there's nothing in the universe that can or wants to hurt you. Everything is on your side, from the minutest blade of grass to the giant cosmos. Everything is on your side, due to the fact that you are that. Everything is on your side because there is only one. There is ultimate oneness, and that ultimate oneness is perfection, absolute reality, consciousness. That is omnipresence, all-pervading. So where is there room for evil? Where is there room for anything wrong? Why do you worry? Why do you fear? Why do you become upset? The power that brought you to this class, knows what to do to continue your spiritual growth. But you have to put it first. It's like the story of the student who was in a class like this, and he kept asking his teacher, "Teacher, explain it more. I don't understand, tell me more." And this went on and on. And at the end of the class, when all the students left, the teacher told that particular student to stay here, and then he told him, "Follow me," and he took him to the edge of a river. And he said, "Look into the river." The student did, and he pushed him into the water and held his head underneath the water until he nearly drowned. Then he pulled him up by the hair. And he looked in his face and he said, "What is it you wanted more than anything else in the world, while you were under the water?" And all the student was able to do was to gasp for air. And he said, "Air, air, air." And the wise teacher said, "When you want to awaken as much as you wanted air, you will." This is true of all of us. Just take a look at your personal life. Just for today, what did you want more than to awaken today? If you were angry, then you wanted that, more than awakening. You see, whatever you put your feelings into, that's what comes first in your life. If something upset you? Then that became your God. You wanted that more than anything else. If you were in doubt that became your God. Whatever turns you on, whatever turns you off, became your God for that time. And that's what you give your energy to, so you increase that condition. As an example, if you are having problems with somebody, the more you think about it, the more you fuel it. The more you try to take any kind of an action to stop it, or to prevent it, or to change it, the more you are saying, "This is the truth about me." How should you react to something like that? You should not react. Something within you will do what it has to do, and you will be at peace if you will allow it to do so, first things first. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all of it's righteousness, and all of these things will be added unto you," which means first things first. Focus your attention on the Self. Realize that you are pure awareness, that you are aware that I am consciousness, resulting in bliss. Therefore you are a body of bliss. Not as a human body, when I use the term body, I mean the body of the universe. You are a body of bliss. Bliss is your nature, and in that bliss there is nothing wrong. Calm down, mellow out, relax. You are the body of bliss, and your divine nature is consciousness. You can never have anything wrong in your life unless you put your mind on it and make it so. This is why you have to control your thinking. Do not allow your mind to tell you what's going on. If you learn to live in the moment, if you learn to center yourself and stay only in that moment, then you will be expressing consciousness, for consciousness is a moment thing. Consciousness is not yesterday or tomorrow. Consciousness is this moment. It's the gap between yesterday and tomorrow, the fourth stage of life. After waking, dreaming and sleeping, then there is consciousness. So putting first things first will alleviate all of the negative conditions of your life, if you have any. It will awaken you. And as you work on yourself, and your mind brings up all kinds of things, as it will sometimes. In a very gentle way ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" and keep still. And of course the answer will be, "It comes to me. I feel out of sorts, I feel depressed, I feel as if I'm not getting what I want, I feel that somebody is taking advantage of me." Further questioning, "Who is this I? What is its source? Who gave the I birth? Where did it originate from? Who am I?" There is never an answer to the question of, "Who am I?" By doing this process you will immediately feel better. And every time the mind brings up something else, you use the same procedure. "To whom does this come? Who is feeling this? I am?" Just by saying, "I am," it will immediately take you out of your personal thoughts about yourself and lift you higher to what "I am" really is. Yet if you don't feel that, you can ask again, "Then who am I?" And you keep doing this over and over and over. Someone called me the other day and told me, "Robert, I've been practicing for twelve years, and I feel despondent and I feel depressed." So I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because all my friends are enlightened except me." I had to laugh. "How do you know?" "They told me." How can you explain that there are no others? It makes no difference what anyone else is doing. Let them all do what they will do. What does this have to do with you? When you try to straighten things out, when you try to change other people, when you try to make other people do what you want, you're holding up your spiritual progress. Bless everyone and let them go. Leave the world alone. The world doesn't need your help, thank you. This world, remember, is an emanation of your own mind. Therefore you are seeing yourself when you look at the world. As you begin to go within, you will realize that you've always been within. There's nowhere to go. The within and without is the same, pure consciousness. It begins with you. I can sit here and talk all night, but what are you doing about your life? How do you see yourself? Forget about time. Even though you say, "I'm getting older, I haven't awakened yet. I hope I awaken before I die," this is all false thinking. No one is getting older, and no one has to awaken before they die, because no one dies. Get rid of that type of thinking. Forget about your age. Forget about your body and identify with consciousness. Identify with your Self. If you can just do that, everything else will take care of itself. I can promise you that. Be happy. Be radiant. Have a good word for everyone. Stop thinking of your needs. They will be met if you stop thinking about them. How will they be met? Remember there is only ultimate oneness. And the ultimate oneness has never needed anything. It is self-fulfilling, self-contained, all-pervading. So the one who thinks they need something is the deluded self, the personal ego, the I. But reality is present here and now. This means that you are fulfilled here and now. There is no thing you need and there is nothing that has to change. I'm not saying you're going to keep on suffering if you think you're suffering. What I'm saying is simply that the one who thinks they're suffering is deluded. No one suffers. Take your mind off the pettiness and begin to realize that your mind is causing you to feel these things, the belief that you are a body and a mind. Begin to dwell on, "Who am I? Who is going through these experiences? Who thinks they're getting old? Who thinks they will not make it in this life? Who? I. I do. Who am I?" Continue the work. Do not worry about the world or other people. Work on yourself, diligently, constantly. Never let up, and you'll find that you become happier and happier. The old you is fading away. And you will awaken to yourself. Any questions? (tape break) SK: (tape starts abruptly) …So this person is saying deal with the contents. Look at what is. Now what I just got from you what I just flashed on, what he is saying is dealing with what is, is keeping me in the now, I think? R: You're right, if you are thinking about your problems and dealing with what is, then you are stuck in that place. You have to let go of what appears to be and identify with your real nature which is God or consciousness. And to the extent that you can identify with your real nature, to that extent will you find that everything is resolved in your life. It's not the other way around. If you are dealing with psychology it is. For all psychologists and psychiatrists and mental people will tell you to deal with the problem. But you realize that even if you deal with the problem and even if you seem to resolve it a new one pops up again. (SK: I don't understand that?) And another one pops up and it never ends. (SK: What I'm saying, it's duality I guess. Instead of looking for peace in the world, there isn't any peace in the world there is violence in the world. So if I look…) No, no, no, no, no. There is no violence in the world and there is no peace in the world. Do not say one is different than the other. They are two sides of the same coin. But rather ask yourself, "Who sees the violence? For whom is there violence? For whom is there peace?" It is the ego that is part of those things. (SK: Yeah I understand, I understand.) Get rid of both. (Robert continues) We have a tendency to look at what is going on in the world. We see the Iraqi situation, there was a war, there is man's inhumanity to man and we tend to say, "I see violence." Violence is for the ego. Violence is for the personal I. Therefore, "Who am I? Am I the personal I? Am I the ego? If I am then there will be violence and I will have to help to alleviate it. But if I am consciousness that is completely transcendental." It is like you are a chalkboard and the violence are images that you draw on the chalkboard. They come and they go, the images, but the chalkboard always remains the same. So the world comes and goes but consciousness always remains the same. It never fluctuates. Identify with consciousness and become that. And you will be free of all these concepts. SV: Robert I have a question. If one is serious about realization, can one do it by himself in solitude by practice alone or is it necessary to be a devotee to a teacher or guru? R: It depends on the person. It is very difficult to go all of the way by yourself. There are very few people who have done this. For it's difficult to transcend the mind. Being in the presence of a teacher who has transcended will cause you also to transcend. Being by yourself with the world pushing in on you from all directions makes it more difficult but it's possible. (SV: By being in the presence do you mean by just attending satsang?) Yes, just being in satsang is sufficient. (Robert continues) Most of you think that you came here because you wanted to. But that is not true. You're being here tonight and being at satsang most of the time, there is something within you fulfilling itself. You have earned it there are no accidents. If you took the average person walking in the street tonight and brought him or her to satsang. They would be filled with fear and run out of the room because their evolution has not come to that place as yet. This is why I say, do not concern yourself with others. Rather look to yourself. If you have been devoted to yourself at home, understanding that you are the Self that you are consciousness and you've been pure to yourself, something will guide you to your next step of spiritual unfoldment. Everything takes care of itself. But you have to take the first steps. This is why there is no one here tonight that has not been in spiritual life for quite a while. Otherwise Jnana Marga will be foolishness to you. So you are where you are supposed to be. The universe never makes mistakes. SK: Robert… (R: Umm.) …You said a part of reasoning, I'm telling myself that I have a pure consciousness. I do that, how do I get myself to that place where I believe that or am I just in another delusion? R: See you already made a mistake because when you said, "I am," you are thinking of your physical self aren't you? (SK: But that's what I heard you say.) I am… did you come late? (SK: Pardon.) Did you come late? (SK: No.) Were you here from the beginning? (SK: You spoke of pure consciousness.) When you say when you wake up, "I am pure consciousness" or "pure awakening, pure reality," you are referring to I am. You are not referring to your physical self or to what you think you are. I am is consciousness, I am is pure awareness, I am is not your body it has nothing to do with you. That is why I repeat this so much. When you say, "I Am," you are not referring to your body or to your state of being. You are referring to absolute reality, to parabrahman. So when you first wake up and you say, "I am pure awareness," immediately you will get a feeling of joy and bliss. (SK: How do I differentiate? Do I know that is the truth or a delusion or am I in another fantasy with that?) Do not try at all to know. Simply make the statement and leave it at that. Now when questions come up like you just asked, "I wonder if I am saying the truth or am I in illusion?" ask yourself the question, "To whom comes those thoughts?" That’s how you follow it up. "Who thinks they are in an illusion," or "Are they fooling themselves. To whom do these thoughts come?" And follow it through. If you do that, you will wake up one morning and you will state, "I am is pure consciousness," and you will be in bliss. (SK: Just by saying the words?) Just by saying that and identifying with them in their reality, but again if anything else pops up in your mind ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" And follow it through. You're killing two birds with one stone. That's a terrible expression isn't it? (laughter) Who wants to kill two birds with one stone? That's a terrible expression isn't it? Who wants to kill two birds with one stone? Who came up with all these expressions? (SK: Nobody.) (students laugh) R: If you think about that you'll see you're getting double credit because you are saying, "I am is pure awareness," and when the other thoughts pop up in your mind you're asking, "To whom do they come?" So you are attacking yourself from all directions. Something has got to give sooner or later. But put it to practice make it work for you. (SK: So by doing that it creates a surrendering, a giving up, a letting go?) You can say that, yes. But if those words come to you as you are doing that again, ask yourself, "Who has to surrender? Who is there to let go?" SU: So Robert is it that which recognizes itself? R: That which you speak of is self-contained consciousness. It only knows itself and you are that Self. SK: What happens when ego intercedes? R: Ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" Whatever pops up you do the same thing, "To whom does this come?" SI: Robert, asking, "Who is aware of this?" be equivalent? R: Who is aware of this? (SI: Yeah who is aware of whatever comes up? Is that the equivalent question?) Well that is not too clear. It's better to ask, "To whom does this come?" For all different thoughts arise. You have to take them one at a time. If you say, "Who is aware of this?" it's sort of ambiguous. But if you're feeling some kind of fear or you think you are wasting your time, you merely ask, "To whom does this come? Who feels this? I do. Who am I?" SG: Robert I almost feel like I've been hearing this and it's just occurring to me that I'm missing something very basic, I don't know what it is exactly, but it's who is asking this question? R: Ask yourself, ask yourself, "Who is asking the question?" Whatever comes up go right back to self-inquiry until you get rid of everything. (SG: In this life is there an entity other than the mind that is operating?) There is no entity at all. Nothing is operating. What is operating are your thoughts that appear to be operating. So you must keep asking yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" SK: When I said it's trying to be an empty vessel. It's identifying with an empty vessel? R: No, again, you have a concept of an empty vessel that has got to go. All concepts, all ideas, all preconceived ideas have to go. If you think you're an empty vessel then you keep seeing yourself as an empty vessel and that keeps you back. It's all got to go. SG: Then the one that asks the question must go also? R: Of course, the one who asks the question is like the stick that stirs the fire. You throw in all the twigs and you keep stirring. In the end you throw in the stick also. It all has to be burnt up in consciousness. SJ: After you throw in that stick it takes a while for that stick to burn though? Is that like the aftermath or…? R: Says who? (SJ: I'm asking?) If you believe it takes a while it takes a while. (laughter) But why should it take a while? Your real nature is here now. (SJ: Speaking to us.) (laughter) SL: Robert in the silence which doesn't seem to last very long before thoughts come up. Also I'm aware of this physical grip. Something like when I'm aware of the thought I'm also aware that with this thought has come this tension. And when I can really release the tension I can stay in the moment. Can you help me with that? R: Yes you are making it complicated for yourself. As soon as you feel tension ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" (SL: Yeah, I realize that.) And then keep going down further. (SL: Is that related to the thought at all or is it just…?) Of course it is. Tension is related to all thoughts. Thoughts bring tension and tension brings thoughts. (SL: I'm not aware that the thought is a tension provoking thought. They just seem to be just arrive to me.) Then no matter how they come, ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" No matter what it is use the same procedure until you get rid of everything. SK: Can I use the same procedure when I experience physical pain? R: Yes, sure, you may ask yourself, "To whom does this pain come?" And you will realize that it's your ego that feels it. So when the realization comes that you are not the ego, the pain will disappear. SK: Pain disappears? R: Why not? Where does it come from? It's part of the body. The belief that you are the body. When that belief is eliminated, everything that goes with it is also eliminated. SK: What are useful way or ways to work on for disbelieving we are the body? R: What are useful ways…? (SH: How do you get rid of the body idea?) That's what we've been talking about all night. (laughter) Ask yourself, "To whom does the body come?" SK: Robert is this not - all these thoughts — is this not a manifestation of ego? So what would the process - I can't kill the ego, that's my belief maybe I can - What is a process to go beyond that? Does the ego reconstruct itself through a series of spiritual growth or do I have to watch for that constantly? R: As you continue to work on yourself the ego like a balloon begins to become deflated and it bothers you less and less. As you keep inquiring, "Who am I? Who am I? To whom does this come?" Your ego becomes smaller and smaller until it finally disappears. SF: Robert when I'm inquiring, in the process of inquiry when I seem to face silence, I should ask, "To whom does this silence comes to?" R: If you are thinking about silence you ask. The real silence is not a thought. (SF: Right.) So if you are thinking about silence, ask, "Who is thinking about silence? To whom does the thought come?" (SF: Yeah, if I'm aware or I believe that I'm aware of certain silence for it’s erroneous thinking about it?) The real silence comes when there is nobody to be aware. The one who is aware has been transcended. (SF: So in that position there is no need for any…) No. (SF: …"To whom this comes to?") No, in that position there is only silence. (SF: Right.) It doesn't come and it doesn't go. It just is. SG: What relationship should we have to the body, body-mind phenomena, the personal I? R: You shouldn't have any relationship because it doesn't exist in reality. This is what I meant before, that your personal I and your body will always take care of itself. It has nothing to do with you. Your job is to identify with consciousness and your body will take care of itself. SK: If a person was born in the jungle or something, lived their life according to the natural way of life, no concepts, no ideas. Would that person be in the silence atmosphere? R: It all has to do with karma. It depends on your karma. (SK: I thought you said there wasn't any karma.) There isn't. But you are speaking of a person being born in a jungle.(laughter) So as long as somebody is born there is karma. (SK: Well unconditioned then.) Well if you understood that there is no karma, there wouldn't be any jungle and there wouldn't be anybody being born. But as long as you feel there is then there is karma. (SK: And you are caught up in it.) Sure and all kinds of stories, you have analogies, stories, predicaments, it's all karmic. It doesn't exist. SL: So it's all just to stop the thinking. (R: You've got it, that's it.) (laughter) SL: You said that when you had your realization that you haven't learned anything since? (R: Okay?) Did you go to school then after that? (R: Nope.) Nope? (R: Nope.) SJ: Actually noone went to school. (SL: Oh, okay we're back to that.) (laughs) R: What would I do in school after that? (SL: Well you became a psychologist, am I correct?) Nah (laughter) (SL: Then you were a fake psychologist?) I faked it. (SL: Faked it. But you've read things, you've read…) I still read things. (SL: Umm-hmm, but as you said justifying what they were about rather than - like you've never read all the works of Shakespeare?) Not really, I've been through it, I know about it and I have read lots of books, but it's meaningless. (SL: But not to learn but just to see what they are about?) Just to see what's going on. SK: Robert can I ask you what your relationship was with Krishnamurti… he deals with I guess he deals with more of looking at the contents… R: Well what can I say? (SK: I don't know?) I didn't have any personal relationship with Krishnamurti. He had a message. SV: Robert in inquiring doesn't there come a time like you just have to stay silent and you feel yourself just being drawn in. Do you still look at it, as long as you are aware of it, do you keep still questioning it? R: As you keep asking yourself, "Who am I?" You become quieter and quieter until the day comes when you stop asking and you remain in silence. (SV: But I'm talking about during the inquiry, like you have an experience of like, almost like your awareness is going somewhere, is to keep questioning continuously?) You automatically do what you have to do. As you keep questioning you will find that you are becoming calmer and quieter and more blissful and you will question less and less. (SV: But as long as you are aware you question?) As long as you're physical you question. Okay, let's close our eyes for a few moments. Pay attention to your respiration. Become the witness to your respiration. Realize that the breath is part of the bodily procedure, but yet you are able to watch it, to observe it. You become the witness to your breathing. If thoughts come to you simply observe them also and go back to watching your breath. Now ask yourself, "Who is the witness?" Who watches? "I am." With your breathing, inhale and say "I," exhale and say, "am." (tape ends)

Robert: Good afternoon. It's good being with you again. I welcome you with all my heart. There's some of you who come hear to hear me speak. This is not exactly right. The message is between the words. The words themselves are fine but the real message is in between, in the silence, in the quietness. That's where reality is. The less you talk the more you achieve. Learn to be quiet. Learn to find time at home where you do not speak. The world will still go on without you. You don't have to worry. The power that runs this world does not need your advice. When you become still, quiet, you make a connection with a great power, and then things happen. I would like to acknowledge you, not by name, but just to acknowledge you. There are those of us who believe that in the transcendental state you do not care about anyone or anything. This is not true. I am aware of each one of you. I am more aware of you than you'll ever know. I may not talk to some of you or say anything, but I know all about you. How do I see you? It is true that I see everything as consciousness. Imagine consciousness as a gigantic screen and you are images on the screen. So I am aware that I am the screen and you are the images of myself. There is only one Self and I am that. Therefore I am aware of both, that your appearance exists on the screen, yet you are the screen, or you are consciousness, but you are still seeing yourself as an image, as a body, whereas I see you as consciousness and also as the appearance that you see, as a body. But I know the truth. Therefore I am aware of you. There are some of you who come to see me from far away. We have people here who come from San Jose, Santa Cruz, San Diego and other far places. I'm aware of that. Thursday it was a rainy day, yet we had quite a few people here. That's why I explained, first things first. If you're really interested in your spiritual life, if you really wish to transcend the body, you've got to make this first in your life. You cannot compare satsang to watching the TV, or going to a movie, or going bowling or anything else. If you put satsang in the same category, then there is a total confusion within you, and you don't even know what you want. But where you put your energy, where you put your life force, what you go after with all your heart, with all your soul, this is what you ultimately become. I appreciate you. I appreciate those of you who support me financially, who put funds in the collection box. Most of you realize this is my only source of income at this time. I appreciate that. Always remember whatever you give of yourself, you're giving to yourself, because there's only one Self. When you give away your love, you give your joy, you give your truth, you give your happiness, you give your finances, you give whatever you give, it's like your right hand giving to the left hand. If you took away all space and all time there would only be one person. The reason we appear as many, is because of time and space, maya, the illusion. It appears as if there is time and space. Therefore there are many. But as you go within yourself, as you begin to identify with pure consciousness, time and space seem to disappear, and wherever you look, you see yourself, for there's no room for anyone else. There is only one Self. This is why you should never be angry at anyone, never judge anyone, never become upset with anyone or react to any one, for you are really doing it to yourself. Whatever is going to happen will happen. Your job is not to react. Your job is to understand that everything is predestined. You are in your right place where you are supposed to be. If there is anything that appears in your life that you don't like, it's wrong to try to change it. It's right to go within yourself and see the truth within yourself. And then the appropriate changes will come by itself. Change no one. Change nothing. React to no one, react to nothing. Do not live in the past and do not worry about the future. Stay in the eternal now, where all is well. So I acknowledge you. After all you are me and I am you. There's no difference. I love you all, for I love the Self. Love and the Self are synonymous. And since the Self is omnipresent, how can I not love you. Love is consciousness, absolute reality. We are all that. Why do you see others? Why do you see perverse situations? Why do you see all these dastardly things that seem to be apparent. Your eyes are meant for you to see, but to see the truth, whereas with most people the eyes see an object and sends the message to the brain, according to your programming, and you react accordingly. When you begin to realize it's all a game, no one is born, no one dies, and in between no one prevails. There is only God, pure awareness. There are many methods to use to recognize this truth. This is why I share these with you. Not everyone can practice atma-vichara, self-inquiry. Therefore I share these other methods with you. There are many things that you should do. How many more years do you think you've got in your body? Why go after the fleeting things that change and disappear. Forget about trying to win the lottery. Forget about who's hurt you. Forget about your sins of omission and commission. Let go of everything. Be yourself. Do not react to the world. Do not even react to your own body. Do not even react to your own thoughts. Learn to become the witness. Learn to be quiet. I know sometimes you get up in the morning and you feel out of sorts. You may feel depression, you may feel the collective unconscious of the world, which is a negative vibration. You should immediately snap out of this by realizing this is not the truth about me. The truth about me is I am love, I am consciousness, I am absolute reality. Identify with the truth about yourself. Do not allow your mind to tell you one iota of negative thinking. Catch yourself. It makes no difference what position you're in. Do not believe and think, "Well, when things get better I'll have time to do this." There's no such thing. You've got to start where you are. You've got to be yourself now and forever. Things will never change. Get rid of your arrogance. Develop humility. Become humble. By that I don't mean become a door mat for people to step on. In humility there is strength. You understand the truth, therefore you do not get involved in pettiness, in nonsense. The truth shall always prevail, regardless of appearances. People were bored, then a war started. It became exciting for some people. Something to do, to get rid of their boredom. Now the war is over and they become bored again, always looking for excitement, looking for something outside of themselves. I can assure you my friends there is nothing outside of yourself. Remember the whole world is a projection of your mind. Never forget this. It is you who make the world real. The world picture is very strong in your mind, and the stronger your mind, the more real the world. This is why in all the higher teachings we are told we have to destroy the mind. What do they mean by that? The mind is known to be a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worry about the future. That's all the mind is. As you begin to understand your true nature, the mind settles down and goes back into the heart, where it's supposed to rest. The heart is the Self. Therefore the mind becomes the Self. The Self is the universal. The universal is absolute reality, which results in bliss. Therefore your life can be blissful while you're still in the body. You do not have to give up anything really. You simply have to put everything in the right perspective. You can work, you can play, you can go on vacation, you can do anything you like, but you'll always be aware of the truth of your being, that's all. Do not think when someone attains liberation they have to go and live in a cave and forget about the world. On the contrary, you're in the world but not of the world. You see through appearances and you become happy. Now one of the ways of quieting the mind is chanting. It has been known for centuries that chanting makes the mind one-pointed. It works through the nervous system, bringing peace and tranquility to the mind. Then the mind disappears of its own volition. Let's do that now, shall we? (Chanting) Anything to stop the mind from thinking. I receive mail from various parts of the world and sometimes, when I think it's apropos, I share it with you, for many people have the same questions. We're going to do that now, Mary. We have one of the letters from Taiwan who by the name of Andy used to come here. He now lives in Taiwan and he's been practicing these things. This letter will describe how he's doing. Mary: This was written on February 19th: He says: "Dear Robert, Namaskar. I'm happy to say what a joy and a precious gift it is to know you and have your presence in my life. From our first meeting I felt a warmth and friendship that I've continued to find companionship as well as pure shining light of my own true being. I share thanks. I am writing now with a feeling of needing to express something that has been a source of ambivalence and unclarity for quiet sometime. I often experience a subtle conflict that seems to result from infrequent but clear insights into my true nature which render all other spiritual issues irrelevant and unnecessary. In other words when the truth is clear as it often is when I hear your words or more accurately what they express there simply is no consideration of anything else. What could possibly be worth considering including the question of the truth. But this is not a living understanding my mind is mostly busy and continually dreaming. However even though these moments of living clarity are rare and elusive. Just having reference to them sort of dissipates any motivation toward spiritual action even when I desire it. This must sound quite comical to you as it does somewhat to me as I write it. That is why perhaps I have neglected to acknowledge it concretely until now. It's always felt more worthwhile to just go back to the whole truth on whatever level it's perceivable at the time. Knowing it's the only reality and all else is BS. Yet here this body is feeling that the only real purpose of living is to realize fully my true nature and embody it in every breath. My day to day experience says that I'm far from this, but the echo of insight says there is nothing but this. Every time there is inquiry, every time there is meditation which is never with prescribed intention, this conclusion is quickly reached regardless of the experience of identification. Regardless of reaction, attachment, aversion these are all insubstantial appearances which are of one consciousness and to say that is, to say far too much. The meditation renders the life of Andy Kincart unworthy of consideration. I guess Robert the essence of it is doubt. The ego's last stand, like yeah right you think you know the truth when your life is like this. But it's not just that I don't, don't doubt the insight, the simple clarity is beyond doubt. It just feels like there is something more to come to fruition and it's really not even like I desire for something to be fulfilled in the sense that I will be relieved of suffering. But I'll read the words of Maharaj or yours, of your experience along with his or your advice on actions to do, or ways to be. But when I go through the words to the space that he or you are coming from I just feel like, why? What is being done to what? And that even feels like too much consideration to give to the issue. When I mentioned doubt, I think I was referring to the doubt of fear that my understanding is largely intellectual. Based on experiences of clarity. But even as I write this it sounds ridiculous. Why am I entertaining these silly thoughts? The understanding is all there is and there is nothing to do but to dwell in it. Well with saying that, it feels like this letter expresses through embodying some of the cyclic ambivalence that arises from me. I beg your pardon if what I've shared is boring and monotonous. I'll leave you, so-to-speak, with something I just wrote a day or two ago that brought me back to the place I belong. With the understanding that all forms are of one universal being. Which is void of any existence what can be done. Can there even be anyone to carry this understanding. The truth is regardless of it's acknowledgement through understanding. So how does the form pursue its own emptiness? See the nature of emptiness already within the form and there will be nothing to pursue. See that the seer as well and even the seeing are all empty and illusions of memory. Just be quiet and allow the light of awareness to burn away the clouds of forms in perpetual change. Only pure being is free of form and change and becoming. Just be by burning through the illusion of identified perception. The kingdom of heaven is now, simply give up all lies to the contrary. Once again the friendship which shares our being is a true joy. Andy" Robert: Now, Ed would you answer that letter for me. SE: His understanding being said. R: In essence, tell him he's too wordy and all of his experiences are a manifestation out of his own mind. And he has to become still by going deeper within himself and if anything comes up tell him to catch himself and through self-inquiry ask, "To whom does it come?" SM: What did you want Robert? (R: That letter.) That letter? Or the other one. R: This one. And send him lesson number three. Now there's one more if you would like to read Mary. SU: Robert didn't it show a rather good understanding he said, I create exactly reality with regardless of the understanding, that is regardless of mind or concept or anything else so it sounds to me that it was coming from a very quiet place? R: It's a good letter and he shows a lot of understanding but all he has to say is, "All is Well." (SU: Regardless of the understanding?) Yes, because if you really had an understanding there is nothing to say. See that is something we all have to realize. It's not how much profound knowledge we know intellectually. It's how much we don't know. We have to transcend the mind that wants to be worthy and profound. We have to go beyond that to wake up. As long as your mind is filled with beautiful poetry and beautiful quotations and profound knowledge you can never become free. The idea is to give it all up. Then in your freedom you know all these things but there is nothing to say. Would you like to read the next one? Mary: All right, do you want the letter part first then the card? R: Read the card first. (Mary: The card first, okay.) Dear Robert, Thank you so much for showing me the trust that I can have for myself and that everything is truly all right. With love and oneness Jim. And then heres a little letter from Jim also. Dear Robert, Enclosed is a cheque sent to me from Joan whom I knew ten years ago in Syracuse. She was a spiritual friend and I have been sending her your tapes. From the letters she has written to me they seem to be beautifully changing her life. If you feel inclined you could write to her. I am sure this is actually a lot of money for her to be sending. Take care love and blessings, Jim. Joan is in New York. Robert: Ed would you send her lessons 1, 2 and 3? We conduct all of our business here. (laughter) We have to understand that we do not come here to overcome a problem. We do not come here to acquire profound knowledge. We do not come here to memorize words that I say, or books that you've read and you memorized, the beautiful quotations, and you're able to repeat these things. We come here to empty ourselves. It's only when you become an empty vessel that the truth, which you really are, can shine forth. When you have too much head knowledge you keep yourself from awakening. When you have too much book knowledge, you keep yourself from awakening. This is why words are always inadequate. You are already liberated. All you really have to do is to get rid of those things that tell you you're not. When thoughts come to you, when ideas come to you, whatever comes to you, realize that's not what it is. Netineti, not this, not this. Reality is your real nature. You don't have to go anywhere to find it. You don't have to travel the world looking for teachers. All you have to do is become humble, have humility, go within, and the truth will reveal itself. It makes no difference what your condition may be. This is totally irrelevant. You can be rich or poor, sick or healthy, deformed or otherwise. Makes no difference. It has nothing to do with reality. It's like you go and see a movie and you identify with the plot and the actors and the actresses. Then the movie ends and you're nowhere, for you've spent all your energy identifying with the actors and the actresses, the roles they're playing. This is what we do with our lives. We identify with conditions, with situations. We try to protect our interests, and that's only ego. We have no interests. We own nothing. We come into this world with nothing, and we're going to leave it with no thing. What you do in between birth and death determines what happens to you from thereon in. If you're like most people and you've been bound by the earth, identifying yourself with earth things, believing you are the body, you'll come back again and again as a body, until you wake up and realize it's all a dream. You have to wake up. There's nothing else you have to do but wake up. Forget about the world. I'm speaking of mentally. Allow your body to do what it must, but mentally forget about the body, the world. Keep your mind on your heart center. Practice self-inquiry. Become the witness to all of your movements and to all situations. Do not react to anything. Watch. Behold how the world keeps changing day after day after day. Realize that you are not the world. You are watching the world, but you have really nothing to do with the world. You are consciousness, you are the Self, this is your true nature. Identify always with the pure Self. It's like the story of a bird who lived in a gigantic tree. The bird represents most of us, and every time it would eat sweet berries on the tree it would be cheerful and happy and sing. But when the season changed, and the berries became sour, he would stop singing and become angry. Isn't this like us? When things appear to be going our way we say we are happy, because we are getting what we think we want. But when something does not go our way, we become despondent and angry. One day the bird was flying around the bottom of the tree and it looked up to the top branches, way far up in the air. On the top branch it saw a translucent, beautiful, gigantic bird, smiling and happy. And the little bird said, "How I wish I can be like that big bird. I'm going to fly up there and discover what makes this big bird happy." Isn't this like most of us? We get tired of the run around of life, and we discover some truth that we go after. But look what happens. On the way up to the big bird, when the little bird was a quarter of the way up, flying up, it saw some delicious berries on one of the branches. It therefore forgot all about the big bird, landed on the branch and started to eat the beautiful, succulent berries. When they were all finished, there was all these sour berries left. So again it became despondent. Again it's like us. In the beginning we go after truth, after reality. But if something wonderful happens to us materially, or physically, we forget about it. We say I can go after that later when things are bad. And we get caught up in our experiences. So when the little bird became despondent enough it remembered the big bird. It looked up and there it was again, sitting so majestically on the top branch, translucent, shining, happy. And it said, "This time I'm going to go right up to the big bird and find out its secrets." Halfway up again it saw a branch with beautiful berries and forgot about the big bird once more. Just like we. We search for truth, we read books, we see teachers. But let's say we win the lotto, and we have a million dollars. How many of us will continue to search? Not too many, I'm afraid. We'll get lost in riches and what they can buy for us, until the IRS comes knocking, or your relatives steal your money, or the stock markets go down, and you become despondent. That's like the little bird eating sour berries. After it was despondent enough, again it remembered the big bird. That's like us. When things get too bad, we start thinking about God. So again the little bird started to fly up and up and up, and this happened again and again, until when it was three quarters up and the berries became sour again, it got completely disgusted and said to itself, "I'm tired of sweet berries, I'm tired of sour berries. I'm tired of the whole game. I don't care about anything I see on this tree again. No matter what I see on this tree, it doesn't make any difference. I'm going straight to the big bird." And that's like some of us. When we've been kicked around by life enough we become determined to go all the way in the pursuit of truth. So the little bird started to fly closer and closer to the big bird. It bypassed all the sweet berries and the beautiful berries it saw on the tree. And the big bird became more and more translucent, and shining, and beautiful and majestic. And it finally landed right in the center of the big bird. And when it did, it found out something very interesting. It found out that it was the big bird all along. So it is with us. When we finally awaken we will realize we've always been awake, there never was a time when we were not, and become free. Let's sing, "Oh God Beautiful." (After singing Robert continues) Many people ask me is there any short method that I can use when I become depressed or disillusioned. When I start feeling out of sorts is there anything I can say besides practicing self-inquiry? Is there a little fast method some words that I can use as an affirmation? Well we don't use affirmations because they are just the workings of the mind. But there is something you can do that is very simple and you hear me saying it all the time. You can interrupt your feelings and your mind, worries, thoughts by merely saying, "All Is well." You hear me saying this all the time, "All is well and everything is unfolding as it should." When you say, "All is well," it contains everything that we teach. All is well means that everything is the way it should be. There are no mistakes. There is absolutely nothing wrong. No matter how things may look, no matter how things may appear, if we believe something is wrong, it's because we misconstrue the way things really are. When you say to yourself, "All is well," a calming effect takes place in your nervous system and you find that you become relaxed and peaceful. For in reality you are saying, "Nothing is wrong, nothing has ever been wrong and nothing will ever be wrong." If I think it is, it's because I don't understand. So, "All is well." Remember you have been brought up to believe certain things about life. How your life should be. In other words you have been brainwashed. Just about everything you believe is anti-reality. Think about your belief system. The way you think that things should be in your life. Things shouldn't be any way in your life. Things just are, they come and they go. You have no life. You are reality. You are the Self, and that's not a life that's just being, pure being. Pure being is your real nature. I reiterate again. Stop looking and stop judging at appearances. Leave the world alone. Stop coming to conclusions. Do not be for or against anything. Be easy with yourself, be gentle to yourself. Catch yourself when your mind starts telling you all of these depressing things and starts worrying you. Realize that you are greater than you can ever imagine. You are God in all its essence. You are not a piece of God or a parcel of God. You are the whole. You are absolute oneness, nirvana, emptiness. You are the Self. Why not accept this? All you have to do is intellectually accept the truth and the intellect will cause it to go into the subconscious, the subconscious will go into the reality, the reality will turn into consciousness and consciousness will express itself as bliss. This means that while you appear to be wearing a body, it will be a body of bliss. Others will not see it like that. But you will not be concerned with others, for you are others. And as you see your body of bliss, of course it includes the body of the universe because your body of bliss is omnipresence. Therefore you see everything as bliss and you have unalloyed happiness, joy and peace. (tape break, tape starts abruptly with students laughing) …(laughter) You do not have to agree with me. Feel free to condemn me, to crucify me, to do whatever you please. If there is anything that needs clarification or something you don't understand or something about your spiritual life or anything else, we're one big happy family here. So if we get into a fist fight don't worry. SB: Robert when you are looking up at the ceiling are you seeing the ceiling or are you absolutely not connected, your consciousness is not connected to your eyes at that time? R: I'm not aware of what I'm looking at. I'm not doing it for any reason. (SB: What are you aware of?) Of you, asking a question. I'm not aware of anything, I'm just blank. (SB: So you're dwelling in consciousness at that time.) I'm not dwelling in anything, not even consciousness. I'm not dwelling. To dwell in consciousness there has to be somebody to dwell in it. So if there is no somebody who is to dwell in consciousness? Consciousness is your real nature but body does not dwell in it. Nothing dwells in it. Consciousness is selfcontained. Self-contained absolute reality. It is just pure being, there is no dwelling. The dweller has been destroyed. (SB: So is it like absolute release from everything?) Well again there has to be someone to be released and no one was ever born that needed to be released. There is just is-ness, pure being. (SB: It seems to be inconceivable to the mind?) We don't care what the mind tells us. Let the mind think it's inconceivable. Be in control of the mind, don't let the mind be in control of you. Go beyond the mind. Ask yourself to whom does the mind come and you will realize you never had a mind to contend with. Fred's getting cold, "It's all in your mind Fred." (students laugh) SJ: Robert, you used to always come out and just tell everyone to wake up. I wonder why you are not doing that as much. I think maybe that's what we need here. R: Well when you say, "All is well," it's the same thing. All is well means you are absolute reality and you wake up. SG: I think we need a joke then. (R: I'll stick your thumb in the electric fan.) (laughter) SK: Robert you mentioned something earlier that one of the things preventing getting in touch with being at home or whatever, is humbleness and removing the arrogance. In my daily life I see that pretty often lately. How my ego does not want to give up, there is not much humbleness. To be humble seems to be the hardest thing in the world to tell somebody. You know I'm really sorry, make amends and stuff like that. And that is as far as my humbleness goes. That's what I'm dealing with it on my spiritual plane, you know. R: To be humble and to have humility, you don't really have to apologize to anyone, but in your own mind you apologize to yourself for believing you were a person who can make another person angry. You reconcile yourself. It's not something you do to anyone else. When you reconcile yourself with the whole universe you automatically become the living embodiment of kindness and compassion and then, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Everything will take care of itself from then on. SD: Is reconciliation the same as forgiveness or is it forgiveness so-to-speak? R: When you reconcile yourself with the universe, you are coming to terms with your own Self. (SD: Right if we come to terms with ourself is that the same as forgiving yourself?) Yes of course, because your real Self never had anything to forgive. So when you come to terms with yourself you become total joy and total bliss and all sins of omission and commission have been transcended. (SD: I guess what I'm saying is that even the word forgiving implies an ego action.) Yes it does. That is why I said in the beginning that you don't have to tell somebody you forgive them or ask for forgiveness. (SD: That is why reconcile would be better than ask for forgiveness.) You reconcile yourself with the universe and you automatically become the truth, the reality, consciousness. SK: But would that forgiving another person in a sense be more like and ego deflating situation? I mean to do it by myself at home, I can do that, I think I can, but to do it to another is person very difficult. R: In a way like Dana said, when you ask for forgiveness or you forgive somebody else, it's the big ego that does that because you think you are good. You say, "Now I have forgiven that person. I have asked that person to forgive me." It's like saying, "I can do it again and again." But rather forget about that, but go within yourself and ask the question, "Who needs forgiveness?" And you will realize that forgiveness and your ego are synonymous. When there is no ego there is no idea of forgiveness. There is just loving kindness and compassion and everything is reconciled. And things take care of themselves. SD: So you are saying you wouldn't have to make amends, for example? R: No, amends are from the past. Forget about the past, stay centered in the moment. (SD: So loving yourself at the moment…) Is good. (SD: …is great because you love everything.) But remember you are not loving yourself as an ego. (SD: Right.) Most people get confused when I say, "Love yourself." They love themselves the way they are and they say, "I don't care what anybody thinks, this is me and I'm going to stay like that. I love myself." (students laugh) That's the self that has been getting you in trouble. (laughter) Realize that there is a Self within you as you. That is beyond comprehension. That is God and that is the Self you love. (SD: And how could God need to forgive himself.) Exactly. SC: Robert going along with that, what about guilt? If you harmed someone in the past and is still haunting me, you know? R: It's the same as forgiveness. When you know the truth about yourself all guilt is transcended. It's like being born again. The past becomes dead wood. And you go forward into the new dimension, as consciousness. (SC: It just keeps nagging at me, you know?) Well you've got to work on yourself. You have go to ask yourself, "To whom comes this guilt?" It makes no difference what you've done in the past we've all made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes as long as you've got a body then everyones made mistakes. But as you stick to the truth, as you adhere to your true nature, as you work on yourself through selfinquiry your guilt ridden self will begin to disappear and your true nature will come forward, at that time there will be no one to forgive and there will be no guilt feelings. But when you feel guilty it's because you are identifying with the body and the body does all sorts of things. (SC: I think it's more than that. It's what I have done to the other person.) That was in the past, this is now. As you know the truth now, you grow out of that. But as long as you're still thinking of yourself as a body you will be ridden with guilt feelings it will not go away. This is why it appears that nature doesn't make us remember our past lives. You feel guilty now, can you imagine if you knew about your past life? (laughter) Then you would really commit suicide. So nature makes you forget. You'd surprised what things that you've done in previous existences. SD: Does suicide necessarily keep you on the karmic wheel? R: Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. It depends from where you are coming from. (SD: What if it's only ???) Then you will immediately return and you will have to go through it again. (SD: Is it worse for that person?) It's about the same, depends. There are many things to consider. (SD: What would be an instance when you can transcend karma and still commit suicide? Would that just be something like a woeful leaving of the body more or less?) Well you have an understanding that karma doesn't exist and you realize that your life has been a mess, but it's not really you. And you have an inkling of the truth of reality, but you no longer wish to have a body. As long as you stick to the truth, at that time suicide doesn't make any difference. (SD: Would you be like reincarnated however under those circumstances?) It depends on your realization. (SD: Umm.) How deep your realization is. (SD: But if you were fully realized it seems like you probably wouldn't reincarnate anyway.) If you are fully realized you don't have thoughts like that whatever because you are not a body and you have transcended the past and the future and everything else. So it's a completely new ball game. Don't get hung up on reincarnation and karma. For you are aware that they really do not exist. They only exist for the person who believes they are the body-mind phenomena. Do not think next time I'll come back in a better life. Forget about that. Rather ask yourself, "To whom does this life come? To whom do these experiences come?" And get rid of everything at one time. Realize it's the personal I that has gotten you into trouble all of these years. Follow the I thread to its source and become free. SK: Robert, I have heard what other people say, "Look at what you are not, rather than see what I am." A process of elimination. R: Yes, that's what we were talking about before. (SK: Trying and finding out what you are not. All is false.) Yes. You are not only not your faults but you are not your body. When you realize I am not the body I am not the world. I am not the conditioning. I am not karma I am not reincarnation. I am not my mind, I am not my blood or my heart. Whatever is left in the end is what you are. SJ: That seems like a good process because when you are left at the end you don't know what it is anyway. You've negated everything and you are left with yourself and you don't ever really know what anything is. Sounds a very good process. R: It's good to work on that but there is so much to negate you never finish. (students laugh) (SJ: So what would you do?) You keep going and going and going it never ends. I am not a leaf, I am not a worm, I am not a cockroach. It's easier to follow the personal I because all these things that you are not are attached to the I thread and as you go following the personal I to the source and you ask, "Who am I?" Everything falls away and you become free. SL: Why is the world not interested in these teachings? R: The world is the world and if you look at the evolution of the planets. This planet if you go by astrology and you go into those things — that don't exist — this planet is equivalent to a third grade schooling and beings are just running around doing all kinds of mischief. So they are interested in the world and worldly things, not in reality. Leave the world alone, find out who you are and then you won't be interested in what the world is or isn't because there will be no world for you. SD: Robert I can — at least it lets me understand rather that I am not the body and perhaps not with the mind but where does personality fit in, or these traits or the compilation of experiences that individualizes a person? R: Personality is the ego. Your personality is you, as an ego. It is a combination of all the things you've been through and all the things you know as an ego. (SD: It's easier for me to realize that, "I am not a body," but I'm not used to, "I am not the ego.") You are not the person. The person is the ego. When you follow the I thread back to the source the ego is attached to the I. The I and the ego are synonymous. So when you look at the I and you hold on to the I and go to its source the whole thing will go away, the ego, the personality. You become your radiant Self. (SD: Is that how the ego is afraid of annihilation because I think we all have to get lost in the same routine?) Well of course the ego is afraid of annihilation. The ego mind is very powerful and it will fight you at every inch so that you do not destroy it. This is why it's usually only through self-inquiry that the mind is used to get rid of the mind. Other methods usually enhance the strength of the mind. They make you think that you are powerful and that you've got siddhi's and you can do all kinds of things. It increases the power of the mind. It makes you into an ego maniac. So this is why we don't want to develop siddhi's, powers, occult knowledge. We want to transcend all of these things and become free and liberated. And the best way for doing this is to ask yourself, "To whom do these things come? Who wants powers? Who wants to rule others?" ST: Robert, the same thing with virtue, is that correct? R: The same thing with virtue, that's correct. Virtue and non-virtue are two sides of the same coin. Virtue comes from the mind, it's from your upbringing that you say, "I am virtuous because I live this kind of a life." Get rid of all the concepts, all the preconceived ideas about virtue and non-virtue. They've all got to go to become free. If you think you are virtuous, you think you are proud. They are both of your mind, makes your ego stronger. I'm a virtuous person I don't drink. I don't fool around, I do nothing I'm boring. (students laugh) All those concepts have to go. Another good form of meditation is in relaxing yourself and saying to yourself, "I, I." What you are really saying is, "I Am That I Am." But you are shortening it, you are saying, "I, I." Let's try that now shall we? Make yourself comfortable and relax. Become happy within yourself. Listen to your breath and with your respiration say, "I, I." You inhale you say, "I" you exhale you say, "I." And notice how good you begin to feel, it happens very fast… (tape ends)

Robert: Good evening. It's good to be with you again, I welcome you with all of my heart. It's nice of you to come here and get in out of the rain. Something to do. You got tired of watching the war on TV. It's over. SH: No more war. R: Now you can come here. It's interesting to note how much you are looking for self-realization. When I say, "How much you're looking," I mean self-realization is nothing you look for. But you think you have to look. So you come here and this is good. Whatever you put first in your life that's what you achieve sooner or later. By taking the trouble to go out into the rain and driving on this mountain path to come here, shows that you are interested in your Self. When I was about sixteen years old, I lived in the Bronx in New York and I used to go listen to Joel Goldsmith. Anybody heard of him? (um-hm) He was in Manhattan. In the middle of the winter I had to take the train, change and take a bus. The temperature was maybe seventeen degrees but somehow something in my heart made me go because I wanted to be there. Not particularly to listen to what he had to say, because I already knew what he had to say. But I just wanted to be in his company, with like minded people. It's the same thing here. When you go out of your way to come to satsang, especially in inclement weather when it's hard for you to do. Especially when you can be in a nice cosy home watching TV or drinking wine or whatever you do at home. You have come out of your way for spiritual life. This means something, not to me but to yourself. It means that you are on the path and that is all you need to do. Now your attitude at satsang is important. What kind of an attitude do you have? What do you expect? Those who expect nothing get everything. If you expect me to say something profound you will always get disappointed. If you expect me to make a great speech you will always get disappointed. If you expect me to give a sermon, again you will be disappointed. But if you expect nothing, then my nothing and your nothing merge and becomes everything. So your attitude should be, no attitude. You should never have any attitude and you shouldn't expect anything. That is called empty mind. When your mind is empty your true Self automatically emerges and you feel a great joy. You feel a great happiness, a great bliss. You begin to feel awareness, joyful awareness. You just become aware not of something, you become aware of no thing and the no thing is consciousness. So by coming here with an empty mind you feel pure awareness. You don't really feel it because you can't feel pure awareness. You become pure awareness. How do you become pure awareness? You become conscious of pure awareness. You can't really become anything. The personal self can never become pure awareness. The personal self can never know consciousness. When you came here with an empty mind, you gave up the personal self. Therefore you experience pure awareness as consciousness and that results in bliss. Bliss you can feel. Pure awareness, consciousness you cannot. But in order to feel bliss you have to become pure awareness. Which means to be aware of something, to be aware of consciousness. When you are aware of consciousness, but who's consciousness are you aware of? Not yours because you don't exist. Consciousness exists but you don't. Therefore you can never say that, "I am experiencing pure awareness," or "I am experiencing consciousness." You cannot say that because I can never experience those things. Therefore when somebody tells you, "I think I am experiencing consciousness?" Look at that person funny because I can never experience consciousness. I can never experience pure awareness. Pure awareness and consciousness just are. They are not this or that they just exist as themselves. Now somebody tells you, "Well in the Upanishads and the Vedas it says, I am Brahman." So they are saying that they are Brahman. No, they are not. Now get this and remember it all the time. They are saying, "I am is Brahman." They're not saying, "I the personal I is Brahman," or "consciousness." They are stating their true confession that I-am Is Brahman. I-am is consciousness not you. You don't exist. But I-am, Brahman, consciousness, pure awareness, bliss are all synonymous, they happen at the same time. The reason we speak about these things is because of time and space. When you are the body speaking, time and space appear to exist. When time and space appear to exist you have to use words to explain what you mean. So you say your real nature is pure awareness. Aware of what? Aware of consciousness, which leads to bliss, which is absolute reality. Yet these words are all synonymous they all mean the same thing therefore a realized person to make you understand that they all mean the same thing is silent. Now can you see why silence is the ultimate teacher? As long as you use words you confuse yourself and you confuse people. But as you become silent like Fred the real Self becomes domineering and the personal self rushes back into the heart. Therefore those of you who talk too much realize that you are the most confused, for words merely confuse. And remember again because you believe you are the body time and space exist for you and in that space and in that time you are speaking words. You have to speak them one after the other so that somebody else who appears to be like you listens to your words and then they react. They become happy if you said something nice and they become angry if you say something ugly and life goes on. So the reason we come to satsang is to understand that there is no body, there is no mind, there is only the Self. The Self cannot be explained by words, can only be experienced as pure being. And that being is consciousness, that consciousness is pure awareness which is absolute reality and results in bliss. This is why you hear me say so many times that the first sign of progress on the spiritual path is when you begin to feel a profound peace within yourself. That's the bliss I'm talking about. You perhaps not experienced it completely but you just feel a profound peace that you never felt before. Things that used to bother you cease. People who made you angry cease making you angry. They haven't changed, you have grown. Words become meaningless. You begin to spend more time by yourself and you become very, very happy. The question therefore arises, do you mean if I become self-realized that I have to be by myself? I have to become a hermit? On the contrary, I'm talking about mentally. For instance: There was a birthday party in my family recently and there were about fifteen-twenty people there. As usual I sit in the chair and watch. And there was all kinds of noise and dancing and everything going on, but I am eternal peace. It makes no difference what anybody does or says. I am at peace. I do not say, "I can't stand it in here there is too much noise and I have to go be by myself in peace." I am at peace wherever I go. You see the difference? Those of you who believe or think that you have to run away from your environment or from certain people because they drive you crazy, these people are a blessing in disguise. For they make you see yourself. What do they make you see? They make you see that you are not at peace with yourself. Do you really think that if you go to a monastery or to an ashram or to a cave you will be at peace? If you cannot be at peace at a party? Don't you see? Wherever you go you've got to take yourself with you. And if you are not at peace where you are, if you go to a cave to live by yourself you'd go insane. Your mind would drive you out of your mind! (laughs) Which is good! The world is your laboratory, where you practice on yourself. Do not try to escape from the world. Do not try to change things, but watch yourself, see what you're all about. Watch the things that upset you. Watch how many words you use during the day. How you talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Watch how you react to what people say. How many of you react to your TV? You watch a program you laugh if it's funny, you cry if it's sad, you get angry if they do what you don't like you are not in control of yourself. The TV controls you. I know a person who turns on the TV as soon as they get out of bed and they turn it off at about twelve o'clock at night when they go to sleep. They can't stand to be alone without somebody telling them something. Because when they are by themselves without a TV or without a radio, their mind drives them crazy. All sorts of thoughts pop up, so to escape they watch the TV. And then before they turn off the TV they are already thinking what am I going to do now. So they go to a movie before the movie's over they are already thinking what am I going to do when the movie is over? They go bowling, they've got to be doing something all the time. They cannot be alone because their thoughts confound them. You have to examine yourself. You have to see who you are. You have to begin to understand, you are not the doer and become still and relaxed and peaceful with yourself. The way you become peaceful is by realizing I am not the doer. I didn't ask to be born the way I am. I didn't ask to be born of certain parents, in a certain country, at a certain time. I didn't ask to be born into an impoverished family or into a wealthy family or into a spiritual family or into an atheist family or into a family of agnostics. You didn't ask for that yet you find yourself in that particular family. If you are fortunate enough when you get to the age of reason you begin to question, "How did I get here? What am I doing in this environment? Who put me here? What is my purpose?" As you sincerely ask yourself these questions, the answers will be revealed to you and you will begin to understand that everything was predetermined, preordained. If you are fortunate enough to come under the tutelage of a guru, or a Jnani it will be explained to you that you may appear to think that you were born into this particular family under these circumstance but in reality that is not you. You are not that. You are boundless. You are free. You are of the unborn. You have always been and you will always be. That is your true nature. Can you imagine learning these things when you are young? Having this type of understanding? That even though I may appear to be a body. Even though I may appear to be doing something. In reality I am doing nothing and I am not the body. And if you are not the body and you are doing nothing then who is doing the work? And the answer is, noone. There was noone ever born, there is noone who subsists and there is noone who disappears. And you are that noone. Now as I share this with you, what do you personally think you are? The first mistake you make is to believe that you are the personal I. Identification with the body. That's your first mistake. The second mistake is that your mind identifies with the world. And the third mistake is that your mind and body reacts to your environment. We therefore begin with the body. You say to yourself, "I exist, there is no doubt about this, I exist. But who is this I that exists? It's the personal I. Yet when I go to sleep I am not aware of that I. But yet I still exists even though I am asleep. And when I'm dreaming, I dream about all kinds of things. Yet I say I dreamt." I is always persisting itself to remind you that you are I. And you keep identifying with I, most of your life. When you begin to question, you begin to question your own existence. "How can I exist the way I am? For when I was a baby I existed as a completely different body. As a teenager I also existed but I was different than I am today. And look at me today I exist as I am today. But I, I, I, always seems to be present. Therefore, who am I? Who am I really?" And the questioning begins. You have shown yourself that you are not your body because you've been different at different times of your life. You've appeared different so you cannot be the body that seems to appear one way at one time and different ways at different times. Am I my mind, how can I be my mind. My mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts, thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. So I cannot be my mind. Therefore what am I? If you ask sincerely something will tell you within yourself that if you get to the source of the I, all your problems will be over. So you start thinking about the source. As you think about the source you think of nothing because the source of the I is no thing. And you begin to see that the I that has been confronting you all of these years has to have a source and the source is no thing. If the source is no thing how can there be an I? Now you begin to wake up and you laugh at yourself. You finally realize, "I don't exist, I never have existed, I don't exist as consciousness, I don't exist as pure awareness, I just don't exist. But the source is omnipresence, is ultimate oneness." Then you can say, "I am the source." Because at that time you will realize when you say, "I am," you are not referring to your body any more you are not referring to your mind. You are referring to God, to pure awareness, to consciousness, to absolute reality. At that state you don't even think of those words. For as I mentioned before those words only exist in time and in space. And in your realization you understand that there is no time and no space. So there are no words, there is only the source and you become free and liberated. Now I know some of you don't even know what I'm talking about. So let's ask some questions. ST: Okay so Robert is there an almighty God? An all knowing God? R: Aside from you? (ST: An almighty, all knowing God?) Beside yourself? (ST: No that's not what I'm asking. I don't want to relate myself to God. I'm asking you is there an almighty and all knowing God?) What do you think you are? (ST: No I'm very limited.) Then there is a God for you. (ST: No that is not what I'm asking. I'm asking you if there is a God? An almighty, all knowing God?) For you? (ST: Forget me. I'm asking you.) As long as you believe that you are limited there is. (ST: No I'm asking you, for you is there an almighty, all knowing God? Not for me, forget me.) Why should there be one for me and not for you? (ST: Well there could be, I don't know?) Then there are two Gods, or three Gods, or four Gods. (ST: Well maybe I don't know of them, and you do.) I don't know of any God? (ST: You don't.) No. (ST: So all this teaching I have perceived is all baloney?) Sure. It's all baloney. (laughter) Now what? (students laugh) (ST: Just wanted to know if that…you know?) That is why I say, "Words are all baloney." The more you talk the less you know. If you can become still and go into the silence and ask sincerely, "Who am I?" Then you will know who God is. It makes no difference what I think. (ST: So there is no all knowingness? All pervasiveness?) I don't know? What do you think? (ST: I don't know? I'm not there.) What's the difference what I think or what I know? What good does it do you? (ST: I'm just trying to see what you would…) Find out for yourself! (ST: Well I've been trying but I could not find anything in that sense.) Try harder. (ST: I've heard of people who claim they know a lot more than I do, you know. People who I have been in contact with which they have told me that they have merged with eh, …who knows?) Well when somebody tells yo that be careful. (students laugh) How can I merge with anything. There would have to be two of me, a mergerer and a mergeree. There is noone to merge. (ST: Well how do you explain intelligence? In my opinion nature is intelligence.) You don't explain intelligence you become intelligence. (ST: Yeah but if you are intelligent you're supposed to be able to demonstrate intelligence?) Says who? How do you demonstrate it, by talking? (ST: No, let's say if I was nature, I would be able to create flowers, trees whatever, right?) How do you know you don't? (ST: Well I know I am not able to create.) Who knows? (ST: I do, as I'm sitting here.) That is the answer, "Who is the I?" What I are you talking about? You are talking about a personal I? And a personal I can never know anything. Except the world as it looks. So the whole idea is to transcend the personal I and you wouldn't have that question. (ST: But you seem to say that if you are in the awareness of the higher I or what you call it the "I am" presence or whatever. You are just in silence there is no knowing involved, is that so?) That's so, silence. (ST: And silence creates intelligence?) No, silence doesn't create anything. (ST: Doesn't create anything?) Because nothing exists but silence. Silence is synonymous with the Self, with consciousness, with pure awareness it's the same thing. You see the difference. Silence isn't created. Silence is that. (ST: I understand that but still when it goes into pure awareness, awareness meaning to be aware of everything…) To be aware of consciousness. (S: Pardon?) To be aware of consciousness. (ST: Yeah but that would imply that you were aware, like all knowing, aware of everything, aware of pure awareness.) What do you mean by everything? (ST: Like I say, all knowing, represents to me pure awareness.) You are referring to knowing about material things? (ST: No not just that, everything, from the highest to the lowest, the whole scope.) But there is no highest and there is no lowest. (ST: Okay I just made that in a sense that there is multiple differences, a diversity in oneness, let's say?) No there is not, no there is not at all. There is only oneness and there is no diversity. (ST: But there is unity and then there is diversity we have many things in the universe.) To you. That is how it appears to you. That is your precept. (ST: Okay.) That's your opinion. That is how you see it. (ST: But then you are saying when you are in pure awareness you do not know anything?) You are nothing. As far as this material world is concerned. When you are nothing you are everything. (ST: Okay.) I know what you are referring to. You are still interested in Siddhi's, powers. (ST: No I'm just referring to, like people to God or to religious God, you know. Most religions believe in a God who knows all.) But what do you care what most religions believe, what do you believe? (ST: I don't know?) Find out. (ST: I'm guessing.) Question. Question yourself, find out! (ST: That is what I've been trying to do but I can't find my answer so…) Go deeper. That is all you've got to do. Ask yourself, "Who doubts?" Find out and get rid of that person. Then you'll be free. (pause) Feel free to ask anything or say something. Throw a pie in my face. Do whatever you like. SG: Robert, I don't know whether this is just something I want to say or maybe see what you think about it. I am beginning to think that this state is, maybe I've read it before … the problem is that it is beyond our senses. It's beyond seeing, feeling, touching, hearing… (R: Indeed.) …therefore it is, it's a whole other thing it, we can't perceive it in any other way that we are accustomed to perceiving it. (R: Exactly.) And also my explanations of things are also limited because they're all done in terms of my senses. (R: Exactly.) And so this state is beyond that? R: Exactly. That is why you have to go into the silence. Where you are not disturbed by words and people and things and go deep within the silence and then you experience the bliss of the silence. And you become free… (tape break) …beyond things. Words cannot describe it. ST: How old were you when this happened to you? R: What happened to me? (ST: When you went through this state?) You make it sound like a catastrophe. (students laugh) I was fourteen. (ST: You were fourteen?) Umm. (ST: And you've got a family and everything?) Yes. (tape break) R: (tape starts abruptly)…people are crying, people are moaning, it's not that bad you know. SU: Robert are children closer to their I am? R: Are children closer? (SU: Yeah.) Definitely, because they were recently born and they have not been brainwashed by the world yet. Just like animals. So they are much closer to themselves then grown ups are. Grown ups become opinionated and brainwashed and brain dead. (laughter) SG: That's truth. R: That's why we have wars and man's inhumanity to man. Can you imagine fighting over a piece of land? It's ludicrous. Or fighting over anything? Yet this is the way of the world. Children in their natural state do not really fight until they learn from grown ups. So become as a little child. What this injunction means is to see the world with awe, fresh and new. See everything as a miracle and wonder where it all came from? Again if you sincerely inquire, "Where did the world come from? Where did the trees come from? Where did the animals come from? Where did the insects come from?" If you ask the question deep within yourself, the answer will come that it's all a projection of your own mind. It comes out of you just like a dream does. When that answer comes to you, you will be happy. You will be at peace. SL: But didn't you say it doesn't exist? R: It doesn't. (SL: How can something that doesn't exist and then it makes us happy?) No the happiness doesn't come from that. When you look at the world with awe and you see the miracle of creation… (SL: That's easy.) …and you inquire, "Where does this come from? How did it get here?" If you are sincere enough the answer will come through you that everything came out of your mind. Is a projection of your mind and the answer makes you happy, to know. ST: But if somebody dies? The mind is gone but the body is still going to be here. R: If somebody dies? (ST: Yeah.) The body is going to be here? (ST: The corpse is going to remain here, whether you are here or not.) That is how you see it. (ST: No. Everybody sees the corpse.) Everybody who thinks the same way who sees the corpse. (ST: Yeah, so that is something that…) What does that mean? (ST: …isn't attached to the mind. The corpse is not a product of the mind then, when the mind is gone?) The mind doesn't go anywhere… (ST: When you die what happens?) You don't die, nobody dies. (ST: What is the process of dying? Do you simply become unconscious like you fall asleep? What is it?) You are thinking that you die, but you don't die. When you are awake you watch everything like a movie. Nobody dies. (ST: Life energy leaves the body isn't that an effect?) No that is on the relative plane. (ST: Pardon?) It's on the relative plane only. That is how it appears and as long as you believe you are the body mind that is true. (ST: No that is not what I'm saying. I'm saying the body is separate from the mind, it appears to be because if a man dies the body is still here but it's a dead corpse.) That is how it appears. But to whom does it appear that way? (ST: To everybody who sees the corpse.) No. To the person… (ST: No the person is gone, he is no longer here.) No you are still a person… (ST: Pardon?) You are still a person. As long as you still believe you are the body you go nowhere. (ST: No, no. Robert the person is dead, he's gone, he's maybe in heaven or who knows where that person is.) So how can you be dead? If he goes to heaven how can he be dead? (ST: He is no longer in the body. If the person is still in the body it's still alive.) So you have gone to heaven? (S: Yeah.) And you have left your body? (ST: Right the body is dead, here just a corpse.) And you have left it and gone to heaven? (ST: Pardon?) You have left your body and gone to heaven? (ST: Yeah.) And the corpse is lying on the floor, dead. (ST: Right.) Says who? (ST: Everybody knows that.) No they don't. (ST: A corpse is a corpse. It starts rotting immediately when the mind finds out, she leaves.) That is how it appears just like everything else in the world. (ST: So why does it start rotting?) To whom does it rot? Who sees it like that? (students laugh) It's just like you are saying, "Why is the lamp on? Why is room blue? Why is the sky blue? Why does everything exist the way it appears to exist?" Who is doing the seeing? (ST: Because there is intelligence involved in it.) But who is doing the looking? Who is doing the seeing? (ST: Everybody his own way.) Forget about everybody, talk about yourself. As long as you see these things you have to ask yourself, "Who sees?" And you will realize that your ego sees all these things. All these things happen to you on an ego level. But if you go beyond the ego it doesn't exist. (ST: Are you saying, nothing exists then?) Nothing as you know it. (ST: Yeah.) See all the things you are telling me is coming from the point of view that you are at now. (ST: Right.) That state that you are in. (ST: Right.) But there are other states. (ST: Tell me Robert how do you see if somebody dies? What do you see? What is happening?) I see through it. (ST: But what actually do you see? What happens?) Nothing happens. (ST: Nothing happens?) Nothing happens. (ST: Something must have happened or you wouldn't see a dead corpse here?) Look at it this way, when you see a reflection in the mirror what happens? Does the mirror suffer from the reflection? Does the mirror see the reflection? The mirror remains the mirror, but the reflection appears to be in the mirror. But the reflection always changes. (ST: What happens to an ordinary person who dies a normal death in bed, let's say. What kind of tremor or what kind of experience do they go through?) But you are talking about them. Speak about yourself. (ST: Mate I've not died yet, I don't know?) So you are saying in other words, when you die what am I gong to go through? (ST: Yeah okay, yeah.) You will go through whatever you are going through now. (ST: What?) If you stay the way you are, you will go through… (ST: I'm asking you for the process what if that…) But there is no process because there is no death. But as long as… (ST: What is happening when I fall asleep?) You dream. You sleep. You wake up. (ST: Okay is that the same experience as falling asleep?) There is no going to sleep when you die. (ST: Well what is the difference between falling asleep and death?) Falling asleep is when you are still conscious. (ST: No, if I fall asleep I don't know nothing nobody's here, if I was asleep right now I do not know what's going on?) But your real Self is conscious. What you really are is always conscious. (ST: Yeah.) It's consciousness. (ST: Okay. My question is if you could just explain to me what's happening when you die? Not just falling asleep not just…) What I'm trying to tell you is nothing happens. (ST: Nothing happens?) You want something to happen. (ST: There is some kind of process happening there.) It's happening to you as long as you believe what you believe. So you will go through a process. You'll appear to leave your body. You'll go to the astral plane, take a rest or vacation and then you'll go back into another body. And you will continue forever because that is what you believe now. (ST: Well not necessarily, I grew as a Catholic so I have no experience of reincarnation, you know.) So what experience do you have as a Catholic? (ST: None except their teachings.) R: As you believe it is done unto you. So whatever you believe now, that's what happens to you, forget about others. Do not think about other people think of yourself. That's the whole point. Whatever you believe about yourself now, that is what happens to you when you die. In other words if you believe you go to heaven and hell, that is what you will do. But it is all a reflection of your mind. You are creating all those states. Therefore find out, "Who is doing all of this? To whom does this belief come?" Find out and be done with it and you will be free. Do you see what I mean. The mistake you are making is you want to bring everyone into the picture. There are no others. Whenever you want an answer to a question, it's between you and the questioner, you and your Self. So ask yourself, "Where do I go after death? Who wants to know? I do. Who am I? Who am I?" And when you find out who I is, all your questions will be answered, but it's always between you and your Self. Never mind the other people. SV: Robert there are people who have been listening to teachings like this for fifty or sixty years. They could stand in a room and have an angry outburst in front of other people or to someone, they can vent your anger, say unkind things, be hostile and think of the rut and then after doing that they can sit in a room and glare at people and give them hateful looks. And they think that they are self-realized, can you comment on that? R: Well of course people like that are growing and they are trying and one day they will awaken, so what's to say? We must learn to have compassion for everybody. (SV: I understand. Could you comment on the stupidity of that host. To be angry and not know that you are angry is to be deluded?) Well nobody is stupid. Somebody who is angry will one day ask the question, "Who is angry?" And they will begin the path. (SV: True, let it begin.) But what matters is what do you see? (SV: I already know that.) If you feel the anger then you have to work on yourself. (SV: I understand. Until they've seen that they haven't even got on the path yet, they think they are already at the end.) Well forget about them. Leave them all alone. (SV: Well I'm just trying to help them out the right now.) That's okay. Just be your Self. That's how you help. Can you see that? (SV: I understand.) When you become yourself you are omnipresent and your vibrations go into everything. (SV: I understand.) ST: So do you feel one with me? (laughter) There's no me, there's no me, practically. There is only you? R: There is not me and there is not you. (ST: Okay.) And I can't pick you out and say… I can't pick you out and say I feel one with you. (ST: Huh?) I can't pick you out and say I feel one with you. I feel one, period. (ST: Yeah but if you feel one you don't give a damn about me?) (students laugh) SH: Oh yes he does. (students laugh) R: Because I give a damn about me I give a damn about you because there is only one. I am you. (ST: It appears to me like that. You are too self-centered you don't know nothing about what's your business, how you feel doesn't really … it's none of my business right?) SH: Well you think I'm the separate self, like you believe you are… (ST: Yeah fine. That's the reality to me.) Is that true? Question it. (ST: According to Robert no, according to me yes, you know.) Well you can question it. Some time you will. (ST: Well maybe?) R: Be gentle with yourself and watch the things you say. (ST: But can you be practical in that sense?) Of course. (ST: Yeah?) Of course. (ST: Because how free are you in that state?) Totally free. (ST: Totally free?) True. (ST: You still have to maintain your separate existence, like when we talk to each other.) That's how it appears. (ST: Yeah and also you cannot express yourself in a way that there is oneness. That I feel it. You couldn't express yourself to me that I feel it that there is no separation. As two persons speaking to each other I mean.) I can only be my Self and you can only be yourself. (ST: That's what I mean. This is the dilemma of humanity that we cannot see oneness in each other. I am just myself and I have nothing to do with the rest of the people.) On the contrary because if you remember when I say, I'm myself, I'm not speaking of Robert I'm speaking of the Self that I am. (ST: That is what I mean. Can you not as Robert can you be oneness that you express?) I don't have to feel oneness. Oneness already exists. (ST: No, I mean you express it to the individual? That the individual will feel oneness with that almighty oneness.) It's like asking for Gods grace. (ST: Yes that's what I'm saying.) God's grace is always present… (ST: Okay.) …but it's a mature person that can feel it. (ST: It's only a mature person…?) …that can feel it. (ST: I was just recently reading a book of Clia Prophet, you know and she says prayer only works if you have a degree, meaning demand to God to manifest his grace.) So what can I say? (ST: I don't know.) R: Everybody says all kinds of things. SR: I think what Rama Krishna says, "The Grace of God is always flowing, you have to run through it with your sails." (R: Umm, that's good.) SS: Robert a few years ago my eldest son had a profound spiritual experience. He was with a large group of people in the presence of a Master and he said he really couldn't explain it to me. He said that words don't explain it but he felt the oneness of everything and he said that people looked at him after that experience as though he were different. As though he was special, as though he was as something really different had happened to him and what he experienced as nearest he could tell me was that he could see them and he felt that they were looking at themselves when they saw him and he kept telling them, don't you know you are seeing yourself? And then after that he said mum it's so easy, it's so easy, it's right there, just right there. Could you comment on that? R: Yes, that's the example I gave of the mirror. Look at me as a mirror and when you look at the mirror you see yourself. You see your reflection, but that doesn't change the mirror. I see a reflection superimposed on myself, but I realize I am the mirror and not the superimposition. Therefore the whole world is a superimposition on the Self and when people become the Self, there is only one Self. And superimpositions are reflections of that Self. But your son realizes that he is the mirror and everything else is a reflection. It comes and goes but he never changes. The whole universe is that Self. And he is that. Do you follow that? Is that clear? SS: Yes very clear. But he wasn't able to retain that state, he tried very hard for quite sometime to keep that state but it was very difficult for him in the world to retain it. He's been trying to get the state again since. R: He had a glimpse of reality. (SS: Yeah he did.) That's good. SD: Why would it go away or become dimmer? R: Because it wasn't fully developed. SJ: What do you suggest to fully develop that kind of state? R: To go deeper within and to be able to see that you are consciousness by keeping silence. (SS: I do remember him telling me that he did want to stay quiet. He wanted to stay silent but that was very difficult to stay in the silence.) If he would ask himself continuously, "To whom does the world come? Who is experiencing the noisy world?" And follow the I to the source, he would become totally free. SD: Robert would you explain again your answer to the Master Maharshi's teaching as to the explanation of what the Self is? R: What the Self is? You want to know what the Self is? (SD: Yes.) Umm, what is the Self? The Self is the Self when everything else is removed. When the world is removed, when the thoughts are removed, when the mind is removed, when the universe is removed then the Self is left over. (SD: So the Self is both everything and nothing. It makes up all that is.) Everything is the Self and everything is no thing. SH: It doesn't seem to make much sense. (R: That's good.) SG: It's not supposed to. R: You’re making progress. (SH: Thank you Robert, it's the sweetest thing you've ever said.) If it made sense you would be in trouble. (laughter) SG: So in that "I Am" condition is there no experience whatsoever? R: For whom is there an experience? The experiencer has been eliminated. SL: Is that the continual state of your day? What is your day like? What goes on inside? R: My day is like everybody else's day. (SL: But how can…? it's a trap, I knew that, I shouldn't have asked the question.) (laughs) There is nothing special about me. SD: Except that you're awake and we're not, or we don't think we are. (laughs) R: Well to me that's just natural. SL: You have experiences but there is no experiences? R: What kind of experiences do I have? (SL: Well thinking about your day?) I just go through the day spontaneously. (SL: Excuse me?) I go through the day spontaneously, doing whatever has to done at that moment. (SL: But you do not experience it?) I'm not the doer, I watch myself doing, but I realize that I'm not the doer. (SL: Is that all there is to it?) That's it, simple. What do you want? (laughter) (SL: That's really all there is to it? There's just standing back and realizing that life is beautiful. (laughs) But if it doesn't exist why is there even an adjective?) You become spontaneous and the adjective is consciousness. You realize yourself as consciousness like the screen and you enjoy watching all the pictures on the screen. But you understand that you are the screen. (SL: So if a person is going through this alleged life, enjoying everything and not reacting but simply being spontaneous then is that all there is to it?) That's it. (SL: Besides knowing that, besides even living that there is still an experience?) For whom? (SL: Well, like the experience that her son had. Probably most everybody here sees everyone else here as themselves.) Again never mind everybody else. Speak only about yourself. (SL: Well that sounds, sounds egotistical?) It has to be because if you know you are egotistical that is how you get rid of the ego, by knowing you are an ego first. So that's a good point. (SL: But what are we all lacking?) Nothing. (SL: We are lacking an experience?) No we are not. See that is your point of view. (SL: Then we are exactly where you are then?) Of course. (SL: If we live in beauty and in love we are where you are?) Forget about living in beauty and love. (students laugh) SH: If you throw out the beauty and love then you're there. (students laugh) SL: Well if we're living the miracle then, as you said everything is a miracle? R: And you ask yourself, "To whom does it come? To whom does the miracle come?" (SL: To nobody.) That's right. So you're nobody. You're no body. You're just no body. You have no body. Now you've got it. (long silence) If you truly wish to repent just sit in silent meditation and see the perfect reality within. For all manners of evil merely arise in erroneous thought. (tape ends)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. I want you to ask yourself, "Why did I come here this afternoon? What's the purpose of coming here?" You're looking for something. You're looking for a solution, the answer to a problem. You're looking to change your life. You're looking for something outside of yourself. And as long as you do that you'll never find it. Truth, reality, rests within you. There's no problem on earth that enough truth cannot solve. By truth I mean understanding your reality. Understanding who you really are. It makes no difference what the situation may appear to be. It makes no difference what's going on in the world or in your life. If you would only turn within yourself, everything would be resolved, everything. It begins by first resolving yourself, and then the world follows suit. This is the only way, for remember, the world is only an extension of yourself. What you see within yourself, what you feel within yourself, you see and feel in the world. This is why all the great Masters and Sages have told us to, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and it's righteousness, and everything else will be added unto you." In other words, find out the truth about yourself. Of course if you don't like yourself, if you think you're a sinner, if you think you made mistakes and you're no good, you're going to see those things in the world, and the world will respond to you accordingly. People who have problems with people, who see the world as a vicious place, who only see negative conditions, do so because they're seeing these things within themselves. The world is very flexible. It has no mind of its own. It has no cause, no substance. The world merely turns into you. You are the world. There's nothing else but you. When you unfold, when you discover the truth about yourself, that you are absolute reality, that you are pure consciousness, you will see this wherever you look. You are not what you think you are. Investigate, find out, discover it for yourself. You're not what you think you are. You must stop identifying with your humanhood. You must stop believing that you are flesh and bone, and you have only four score and so forth in which to live on this earth. For in truth the earth does not exist as it appears. You do not exist as you appear. And your so called problems, situations, are not what they seem. You must go beyond it. Find out. Do not believe me. Find out for yourself. Dive deep within yourself. Try to understand that you are not the body. You may appear to have a body, but you're not the body. The world is not the world that you think it is. Nothing is as it appears. There is a substratum of all existence. It is love. It is absolute reality, pure awareness. And the substratum is your existence. That is what you are. You are God. The person is not God, the body is not God, but you are God. If you identify as God how can you possibly have a problem? Can God have a problem? Can God feel depressed? Can God believe something is wrong? The reason you will not accept the fact that you are God is because of your orthodox upbringing. You still believe God to be an anthropomorphic deity up in the sky, and if I tell you you're God, you think it's blasphemy. That only shows me that you are identifying with your body. You believe you are a body, and there is a God somewhere up in the sky that you've got to pray to, and if he is in a good mood, hell give you a boon. If he's not feeling too good that day, hell throw a lightning bolt at you. People still believe that. The question is, what do you believe? It's your life. What you believe, what you accept, becomes your life style. You create it, you cause it. This is why everyone sees a different world. We see ourselves. It stands to reason therefore, why not see your real Self? Why not experiment? Why not begin to believe that you are God? What is God? God is consciousness. What is consciousness? Something that is conscious of itself as pure awareness. And all of that is not someplace outside of yourself. It is you. You are that. The whole universe is yourself. The whole universe is happiness, joy, love, peace. But you will never see that in the world until you see it within yourself. You must consequently practice seeing yourself as a loving person, as a kind person, as a joyous person. And then you will drop the person, and you will see yourself as omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence. You are the power. There is no other power but you. Many of you, most of your lives, have been dwelling on occult powers, trying to find the golden fleece, so-to-speak, outside of yourself. It has never been outside of yourself. It's like the story I told of the Kimberley diamond mines. This Englishman decided to go to Africa to discover mines, diamonds. He heard there were diamonds in Africa. So he sold all his possessions and he moved to Africa, bought a little hut, and everyday he went out searching for diamonds. Years passed and he got disgusted. He was never able to find any diamonds. So he put an ad in the paper to sell this piece of property and the shack that he lived in. Somebody came to see him, to buy it. His name was Kimberley, and he sat down on a rock and signed the papers. When the guy left Kimberley moved a rock by mistake, and saw a diamond. The diamonds were always at the place where he started from. They had been at his feet all the time. And that's how the Kimberley mining diamond fields were discovered. It's a true story. Everything you're looking for is within you. Stop searching outside of yourself. Everything you want is within you. The potential, the possibility for everything you can imagine is within you. You are a universe unto yourself. But when I say Self, I don't mean with a small "s." The omnipresent Self is your real nature. Think about that. (tape break) A question I'm asked over and over again is, "While I practice self-inquiry, atmavichara, Jnana Marga, how shall I act in the world? What shall I do in the world as I keep practicing? What should my attitude be? If everything is preordained, it's going to happen anyway, so what should I do in the world?" Well, it is true that everything is preordained, but you should act as if it's not. You should forget about that, and not think, "It doesn't matter what I do. I can be evil or I can be good, what's the difference? If it's preordained, I'm supposed to do it anyway." On the contrary, act as if you are making the decision and you will have to suffer the consequence of what you do. That's how you should act in the world. You should develop loving kindness to everyone and everything, not only to human beings, to animals, to vegetables, to minerals. You should treat everything with loving kindness. You should acquire a good disposition and stop getting angry. You should develop joy within yourself, humility. You should not be concerned with what the world is doing. You should not be concerned with what appears to be happening to you. But every reaction of yours should be based on love, on peace, on loving kindness, compassion. Do not try to analyze it. Just become it. The world will react to you accordingly. After all you are the world. And as you practice on yourself, automatically what you give out comes back. Leave people alone. Do not try to change anyone. Do not look for problems. Do not allow your mind to think past your nose. Yesterday is gone and it can never come back. Every human being makes mistakes. Do not regret the past, it's part of your learning experience. You are not a sinner. You are not a bad person, makes no difference what you've done. The deed may be evil, but you are not. Look at yourself as total existence, and act from there. Expect nothing and you'll never be disappointed. Give of yourself. Expect nothing in return. Why do I do what I'm doing here? Why am I sitting here talking? What do I want? I'm not looking for name or fame. I'm not looking to be recognized as anything. It's just a happening. I never asked for it. It happens by itself. My experiences in self-realization, I never asked for it, I never went after it. It unfolded by itself. This means that everyone can experience self-realization. But you've got to take it easy. You've got to stop fighting the world and stop fighting yourself. Let things unfold as they may. Do not react. The signs of spiritual progress are thus: You may still get angry, you may still get upset, but now you are aware of it. Prior to this, prior to your practice, you have allowed your anger to take you over completely, let's say. You became your anger. But now as you're practicing "Who am I?" self-inquiry, you notice that when you get angry you are aware that you are angry. And you begin to laugh at yourself, and the anger goes away. You notice all of your emotions and all of your moods that you've had all of your life are declining. And when the situation confronts you of a negative condition, you are able to observe it and not immediately react. You watch, you become mindful. What's happening to you is you're separating yourself from the condition. You're beginning to understand, "I am not the condition, I am not my anger, I am not my depression." It is true you may still get depressed and have various moods that I mentioned before, only now you are beginning to watch, to observe, to see. You're catching yourself and you're asking the question, "To whom does this come? Who feels out of sorts? Who is feeling depressed?" You may still not understand completely, but you're beginning to realize slowly but surely that you are not the condition. Then you realize you are not the body because the condition is part of the bodily feelings. And you begin to see and realize, "There are times when I am happy, there are times when I am depressed, there are times when I am angry. But I is always present. Therefore who am I?" And just by asking that question you begin to feel good. You realize there's a war going on in Iraq, people are dying. But what is the truth about this? What is the reality about this? And the answer comes, I am. I am is the reality. Then where does the war come from? Where does mans inhumanity come from? Where do all these dastardly things in the world come from? And as you keep inquiring, you will realize that I have nothing to do with these things. Yet all these things are attached to the I. The war, the bad disposition, the hot temper, the anger, it all belongs to the I. Then you begin to know, "I see the war, I feel it, I feel out of sorts." You begin to know that as you follow the I to the heart center everything disappears. The reason that everything disappears is because it was never real to begin with. What is real can never disappear. The reason that I can say truly to you that the world is not real, it's like a bubble, like a dream, that disharmony is not real, that your body is not real, is because somehow I have been able to see the fourth state, and experienced the fourth state, beyond waking, dreaming and sleeping. And that fourth state is the reality, whereas everything else appears to be reality. Therefore the war appears real, very real, the world appears real, your body appears real, but you are not that. You are beyond that. Yet if you have not experienced this state of consciousness, you can never really know that it exists. I'm speaking to you of a state of perfect peace and harmony, a state of absolute goodness, of nirvana, of sat-chit-ananda. This is a true state. It is real. It is real to me, just like this world is real to you. And even if I were involved in the war with bombs dropping on me, guns shooting all around me, I would not be afraid. Not because I'm an idiot, but because I know what exists and what doesn't. To me it's like a chalkboard. I am somewhat like the chalkboard and somebody draws on the chalkboard, Iraqis fighting Americans, people getting killed, people getting bombed, and that appears to be going on in the blackboard. Then somebody comes with an eraser and erases it, and it's gone, but the blackboard remains. Then they draw another picture, that war is over and everyone is living in peace for a while. And everybody is quarreling over land, they're quarreling over property, they're quarreling over jobs, over employment, and everything else, and then that's erased. But the blackboard remains ever the same. So somehow I am aware that I am like the blackboard. And all these happenings are superimposed on consciousness. The blackboard is consciousness and I am that. All these happenings are like reflections in the mirror. You can't grab them. You can only grab the mirror. The mirror is always the same. The chalkboard is always the same, consciousness is always the same. But somebody asks, "That's all right as far as a blackboard goes and as far as the mirror goes. But how come those incidents seem to appear? How can this world seem to appear?" And the best analogy I can give you is due to the fact that most of these things are ineffable, these higher realms. There are no words to express them. There is nothing you can do to explain it, but they're an analogy. And the analogy is of the dream world. You go to sleep tonight and you dream there's a war, and you're in the army and you're fighting, say, with the Iraqis, and you get wounded. Then I come along, and I tell you, "This is not real. You never got wounded, and you never fought. No one is killing and no one has been killed." And then you say, "They have. There, I'll show you." And you shoot me. And I appear to be killed. But then you wake up. All this was a dream. It never existed. It's difficult to say to you that the world is a dream, because it looks so very real, and some of you really feel the world very deeply. But I say to you that the deeper you get involved in the world, the more the world controls you, and the harder it is to break away. This is why self-inquiry is called the direct path, because it is found to be the fastest way to awaken. You simply look at yourself whenever a situation in the world confronts you, and you ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" Say you're watching the TV tonight, and you're seeing all these soldiers getting killed. Instead of feeling the situation, ask yourself, "Who feels this? Who sees this the way it is? Who thinks it’s real?" Of course you have to do this by yourself. Don't let other people hear you. They'll send you to the happy farm. Merely look at the situation, try to understand that it is a part of the dream, and even though you feel it, it is still not real. This is the beginning of wisdom, when you can at least say this to yourself. Most people cannot say this because they don't believe it. The world is so powerful to them, that even if they say, "To whom does this come?" the world gets to them first and makes them believe they're foolish. Why everyone can see there's a war going on. These people are just not mature yet to practice self-inquiry. Therefore what they should do is submit to God. They should say something like this, "God, I have no idea what's going on. I don't know if this is real or not. Help me to know. I surrender to you totally, completely, body, mind and soul. Do with me as you will. Reveal the truth to me," and wait. All of a sudden you will start feeling very happy. And if you practice this enough, submitting yourself to God, surrendering completely, the day will come when you begin to feel that the God you've been surrendering to is none other than yourself, and you will be able to practice self-inquiry. Now if you can't even do that, if you cannot submit yourself to God, you should practice mantras, sing Kirtans, pray, but do something. Do not let a day go by where you do not do something. If you have to pray, pray. If you can submit yourself to God completely, do that, but the highest and direct path is self-inquiry. Whatever happens in your life, whatever you see, ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" Do not attempt to analyze the condition. Most of you like to talk about your condition. Say you're going through some kind of bankruptcy. You're going through it? Do the best you can, but do not dwell on the condition. Dwell on your sat-chit-ananda. Dwell on your pure awareness. Dwell on God. If you have to, imagine your heart on the right side of your chest. I'm speaking of your spiritual heart. It has nothing to do with chakras or your physical heart. The spiritual heart is in the right side of your chest. Why is it there? Well, look at it this way. When you speak about yourself, you always point to the right side of the chest, don't you? Say, someone says, "Hey, you." You say, "Who me?" and you point to the right side of your chest, because that's where your spiritual heart is. You do it inadvertently. You do not think about it, but you do it because that's where your spiritual heart resides. You can see a ball of white light in your spiritual heart, a sphere of light, radiant brilliant light. And in the center of the light, you may see your favorite saint or Sage. Perhaps if you're of the Jewish tradition, you can see Moses, if you like. Christians can see Jesus. Arabs can see Saddam Hussein, if you want to, or Allah or Mohammed, whatever they please. Whoever means something to you. Just by doing that alone, you will feel a sense of peace and relief, and you will feel good. And after a while, see your favorite Sage expanding, expanding, until you are totally immersed in the Sage. The Sage has become as big as your body. And see the Sage expanding also, expanding again further and further, and go on with it until the whole universe is immersed in the Sage. Then realize there is nothing but that Sage, and I am that. Where else would I be? If the whole universe is immersed in the Sage, I am also immersed In the Sage. I and my father are one. If you have seen me, you have seen the father. That's a beginning. Everything leads to self-inquiry. The reason I am sharing these things with you, is because you need to practice something. Do not get caught up by the world. Do not allow your feelings, your emotions, what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you touch, to affect you. Transcend it. If you think of God, God will think of you, because you're one. Therefore it stands to reason that if you keep thinking of your problems, and your needs and your wants, they will also think of you, and you will be caught up in all of this. So getting back to reality, this world and this universe and everything in it is like a dream. Where did the dream come from? The mind. Where did the mind come from? The Self? Why would the mind come from the Self? It doesn't. The mind never existed. It's like the examples of hypnosis I give you. In hypnosis you can imagine something to be real that is not. It doesn't even exist. But yet as long as you're hypnotized you believe it does. We're all hypnotized. We're hypnotized into believing the world is real, my body is real, my mind is real, my fears are real, and we react accordingly. As you practice these things you'll begin to catch yourself. You'll catch yourself reacting and you'll laugh at yourself. It makes no difference how serious you think it is. As long as you can catch yourself and say, "Wait a minute, who is going through this? Who is feeling down and out? Who feels terrible? I do. Well, who am I?" And you follow the I thread to your heart center. You abide in the I. You hold on to the I. Still the mistake some people are making with this method of self-inquiry is that they are concentrating on the I. I've told you this before, you concentrate on the Self. You abide in the I. By abide I mean you follow the I, you observe the I, and you follow it deep into your heart. But your focus is on the source. The source is consciousness, the only reality. There's nothing else. The more you think of words to explain these things, the more confused you get. This is why it's important, when you go to a teacher, to make sure that the teacher has been able to realize this for him or herself, and not something they read in books or heard somewhere else. That's the only way you can cross the ocean of delusion. With a person who's been there. As I mentioned before, when you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, the only help you're going to receive is the consciousness of the psychiatrist or psychologist, not what he read in a book, not his schoolwork. He may know the subject matter backwards and frontwards, but if his life is all screwed up, and he has no idea what life is about, but has a good memory to memorize books, you're going to get out of him or her what he or she is. You can only get from another person what they are, not what they say. So you may get a good feeling when you leave the office and it feels as if you have been helped. But as you know, it goes away shortly or it turns into a different problem, due to the fact that you've only been able to be helped on the level of the therapist. What he or she sees doesn't make any difference. So it is with spiritual life. All the answers are within yourself. If you are sincere, and if you really want to awaken with all your heart and your soul, the guru within you will lead you to a guru outside of you. And the guru on the outside will push inward, and the guru on the inside will push outward, and you will awaken. So you have to analyze your life right now and see where you're coming from. Do not fool yourself. Do not play games with yourself. See where you're really at, what you really want, what you're really looking for. And try to understand that one of these days, you're going to leave it all behind, maybe tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Going after material things as you know by now, does not bring happiness. Karmically what you're supposed to have, will come. Compare yourself with no one. Be true to yourself. Learn to love yourself, to be yourself. Always understand and know that you are not what you appear to be, that you are sat-chit-ananda. You are ultimate oneness. You are pure awareness. You are Parabrahman. That is your true nature. Attend to that nature. See it. Feel it. Worship it. Become it, and you will be free. (tape break then tape restarts abruptly) R: …all kinds of crazy questions. SC: I'll ask a question. In the analogy of the dream where the Iraqi was wounded and he woke up and it was only a dream? In the dream the soldier was wounded? How about in reality? It's probably happening right now over in…? R: Well that's the point I'm trying to make. The reality is a dream because when you are dreaming about this, you are saying, "That's reality." You swear up and down it’s reality. It's just like if we were dreaming that we were at satsang right now and all of this is going on. You're dreaming it and I tell you, "Nathan you are dreaming," and you say, "no I'm not!" I'm talking to you right here, sure you are but you are dreaming that you are talking to me. But you can't see it and you can't accept it. But then you wake up. (SC: You mean when you wake… I got it, I got it… (laughs) yeah right. I haven't woken up but I got it in my head what you are saying that I woke up and…) You're living the mortal dream. You believe that your personal world is real. (SC: I do.) And that is why you get affected and that is why it hurts. (SC: Umm.) But as soon as you can convince yourself somehow. When you can go deep within yourself and you can see that this world is not what you think it is. (SC: It's such a strong feeling though, this…) Of course it's strong. That's because you believe you are the body. (SC: Yeah that's true.) R: You start by realizing that you are not the body and when you can come to that conclusion then the world will no longer be real to you. (SC: How can one feel that they are not the body?) By realizing that the body changes. You were not the same body you were twenty-five years ago. (SC: You mean twenty-five days ago.) (laughs) Of course. So how can you be the body because it changes, changes, changes. When you were first conceived as a body you were no larger than the size of a pinhead and look at you now. You are bald and grey and you're falling apart. (SC: Yes I know it's true. Yeah you're laughing but I am really aware of my mortality and it's really no joke…) That's what I'm telling you. (SC: …and only a person who — when they hit seventy or whatever, is eighty, the reality is there. I'm going to tell you it cannot be denied.) But if you look at the past and you will see you were different, you look different, everything was different… (SC: Yes, yes.) So how can your body be real, what kind of a body are you? Are you a real body as a teenager? Are you a real body as a baby? Or are you real now? (SC: You're saying the body is an illusion?) The body is an illusion, it doesn't exist. (SC: But I feel this. I know I've been silly probably all the way through.) Sure you feel it but if we were talking about the dream in the dream world you would feel it also. (SC: No the dream world would be a dream.) No you would think it’s real. Say we were dreaming right now and you say, "Look Robert this is real." You're dreaming that, you think this is real. Do you follow? Then you wake up. (SC: Yeah I follow. Now these are both dreams, one dream I believe and the other one I don't.) Because you are living the mortal dream. (SC: Yeah right.) You're attached to this world and believe it’s reality so it hurts you. (SC: It's frustrating is all I can say. (laughs) When you think you've got it, like a bubble, you know you've got it and it's gone.) You have to ask yourself through self-inquiry, "Who is frustrated? To whom does it come?" (SC: I haven't been doing that, I'll be honest.) Of course I know you haven't. But you've got to do something. (laughs) (SC: You what?) You've got to do something. You've got to practice some kind of spiritual discipline. If you want to make progress you've got to put some effort into it. You cannot just exist in the world and go from meeting to meeting to meeting and expect to find something. You've got to buckle down and do the work. SL: Robert when the I am discards the body, the physical body, is that what you mean when it has no beginning and no end, it's just a continuum? And how does it decide to take on another physical body? R: I-am doesn't do those things. I-am doesn't take on another body and I-am has nothing to do with the body. I-am is consciousness. But you are speaking from your mortal viewpoint. You are speaking from I the ego. The ego takes on a body. The ego has to do all these things. But if you realized I-am you would be free of it. You've got nothing to do with these things. (SL: Would it still happen?) Nothing would happen because nothing happens in consciousness. There would be nothing to happen. (SL: Does it appear to happen?) It appears but only to the ego. To the ego it appears as if you have a body and you have a mind and the world is real. But to consciousness there is only consciousness and nothing else. (SL: And that exists?) As yourself, concentrate on your Self which is consciousness. By asking , "Who am I?" And if you do the "I am" meditation that will also lead you to freedom. So keep practicing. SB: Robert can I just make a statement, tell me if it's true? Is awakening from the dream the mortal dream? Awakening from the mortal dream only happens by virtue of realization, not by understanding this mentally. We can understand what you are saying mentally and convince ourselves mentally that this is a dream? But that is not going to awaken us but by virtue of realization that we will see that it is? R: Yes, but you have to start somewhere. You have to use the mind to destroy your mind. It's like Ramana's example of a thief becoming a policeman to catch a thief. (SB: So by establishing in consciousness which is the practice, that will eventually… then it will come up, you will be established in that.) It will eventually awaken you. (SB: And realization will happen.) To the extent that you make the mind rest in the heart and you stop thinking. (SB: It's just simplicity itself by just establish in silence of consciousness.) Yes. The mind is the big problem because the mind thinks. All these practices are simply to make you mind quiescent. To make the mind quiet. When the mind is quiet realization comes of its own accord. So all these practices are to quiet the mind. SB: It seems to be too overwhelming to take a whole day and try to do this. What I do is I take…can I be silent for one minute just one minute, maybe if we take it small doses can we be completely released just from one minute or thirty-seconds? Maybe that's a place to start? Just silent for thirty-seconds, fifteen-seconds, and then increase it? R: And as thoughts come ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" (SB: And fall back into that silence.) And go back into it. (SB: Okay, it seems overwhelming to try to take a whole day and do it. I do it that way but…) Whatever you have to do, do it. As long as you are doing something besides reacting to the world. (Robert continues) We're a strange group of people because we are not going to allow the world to overcome us. We are going to realize what the world is and become free. So that makes us different to most people. Keep it to yourself. If you try to share this with friends or even family there is a tendency for them to put you down. And then you will begin to believe that maybe you are wrong. So you have to become strong. You have to really want this. SB: If you feel very loving without any reason, any cause, causeless is that an indication of something? R: Oh yes that's a high spiritual state. If you have unqualified love that's great. (SB: Like if you just look at the animals, it's like an unbelievable miracle and just the simplest thing, just an animal is unbelievable.) Everything is a miracle. A bug, a cockroach, they're all miracles. SS: But they are not real? R: But they are miracles because they appear real. (SS: This isn't real, gosh fantastic - I'm hung up on those…) Imagine that you are in the dream and that you are dreaming this. You are dreaming this whole thing right now and you are going like this, and then you wake up. So you were dreaming all this. (SS: When we wake up Robert is it still that wonderful? Is it better than watching cockroaches… not the right words…) (laughs) Another word for awakening is bliss and bliss has no explanation. (SS: If you look at both states? Are there both states?) There is only one state. (SS: Oh yes, well this ain't bad.) Both states is duality. There cannot be two states. There is one underlying cause for everything and you are that. (SS: There is only one state. There is not the dream as a state?) That is for the ego. The ego dreams. The ego has experiences. (SS: But you exist on this plane too?) As what? (SS: A Jnani?) What you see is what you get. SN: But the dream can be bliss too? R: The dream can be bliss but can't be the real bliss because the real bliss is beyond the dream. (SN: We're always questioning everything can't we just be as that word, I mean it seems to me that it is the ego that says that this is not bliss?) Say that again? (SN: It seems to me that if this ego or the I who says that this bliss that is, is not bliss?) Any bliss that you experience in the dream or in this world cannot last. It must change. For every good there is a bad. For every up there is a down. This is a world of duality. (SN: It seems to me that it could last, why couldn't it last? Maybe I'm not capable of it. There is no reason why this bliss could not last.) No. Due to the fact that the world is made up of atoms. And the atoms of the world come and go and change continuously. So the bliss that you experience in this world is made up of worldly atoms… (SN: Only atoms?) Excuse me? (SN: Where do the atoms come from?) The dream, it's all part of the dream. They do not exist. But when you are explaining the dream you go back to creation, to atoms. (SN: I don't understand why atoms are part of the dream, who is doing it?) R: You are doing it through your mind. When your mind is quiet everything stops. All of creation stops. When your mind is active, atoms are born and they create more worlds and more bodies. So the idea is to stop your mind from functioning. Then you become free. (SN: But even if I stop my mind from functioning the atoms will still be going on?) No they won't because you created them with your mind. It's your mind that created all of the… (SN: I understand they're not going for me but they will be going on for someone else and I still think there is still someone else beside me.) Don't worry about someone else. If you understand the truth about you, you will understand the truth about someone else. (SN: So then that's true for everybody else. Truth obviously but still… what happened before there was any human beings?) There was nothing. There was no thing. (SN: I don't see how we could say that.) Well from your point of view you say that. (SN: From my point of view I don't know.) But you are making a statement. Ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" Investigate, go within yourself, find out. Question yourself until you get down to the barest I. (SN: I feel very finite.) Ask yourself, "Who does? Who feels finite?" You have to do it to yourself. What you are trying to do right now is to listen to my words and try to see if they are real or not. But as I say most of the time. I don't want you to believe me. Do not believe a word I say. Why should you? Find out for yourself. Question yourself and see if I'm right or wrong. SD: Robert would it be helpful to ask, "To whom does this dream come?" R: Of course yes, sure. "To whom does this dream come?" (SD: But you could apply that to everything then?) Everything. (SD: Like in the four principles it would be sort of like the first principle.) Yes. Remember the dreamworld is part of the personal I. When you say, "Who am I?" you're referring to all the worlds. The dream world, this world, the psychic planes, the astral planes, the causal planes. "To whom does this all come?" It all comes out of my mind. When there is no mind everything stops. (SD: Then how should that we agree on anything? I mean how are we all projecting the war in Iraq or…) Because we're all dreaming the mortal dream. (SD: We're all dreaming the same dream?) We're all dreaming the dream. We're not all dreaming the same dream. You are dreaming the dream that we're all dreaming the same dream. (students laugh) It's your dream. SB: So Robert the essence is for us to wake up is to be established in consciousness? Deeper and deeper… (R: Of course.) …more profoundly silent to infinity? R: And then the one who is established in consciousness disappears. And there is only consciousness. (SB: And the thing will, it'll come up by itself, it'll bubble up by itself.) It doesn't really come up because there is nowhere for it to come. It just is. It appears and we can see it. (SB: So if we're really serious about this we will have to practice being established in consciousness otherwise all the mental understanding is a waste and all the talking is a waste.) Exactly. SC: I'd like to ask a question. I heard Douglas Harding speak the other day. Are you familiar with him? (R: Yes.) He says you look out and you look in at the same time? R: Because there is no out and there is no in. (SC: When I look at you I am seeing my feelings. When You look at me you are seeing your feelings.) SG: You're projecting yourself. (SC: Pardon?) You are projecting yourself. R: There is only one and that one sees itself. (SC: So by looking at you or anyone else I'm really seeing myself, my feelings.) Yourself, yes. (SC: So how about an inner feeling comes up? When I look out I see myself and when I look in I see nothing because of this…) If you really look in you will see reality, if you go deep enough within yourself. And you'll see yourself. (SC: Which is emptiness, which is nothing?) I don't like to say it's nothing. It is a thing that cannot be described. It is bliss. So we use words like parabrahman, beyond Brahman. It is beyond reality. (SC: It can't be put in words?) The finite can never describe the infinite. It's impossible to talk about that. But it can be experienced. (SC: Even momentarily.) Yes to an extent. SB: Who experiences it? R: The Self experiences the Self. (SB: Experience isn't a good word then because to experience you have to have an experiencer, experiencing something.) You experience a glimpse… (SB: Oh, okay.) …And then the experiencer disappears. (SB: Well the whole English language has to be thrown out because it's irrelevant.) The English language is part of the world situation. (SB: Maybe if you threw out the English language you can throw out ourselves also. (laughter) The little self, I mean the ego self.) Not really because if you throw out the English language without throwing yourself out then you won't communicate with anybody. (students laugh) SH: If you throw out the subject and the object then there is just pure experiencing left? R: Yes. Of course. (SH: Which is much closer?) Yes. So you don't look to throw anything out, look to transcend. Transcend the body, transcend the mind and become free. SX: It looks my mind doesn't want to, I'm not going to find anything through my mind, the mind can only see the mind? That's all I see? R: The mind is a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future. (SX: And the other part is that God can only know God? So the mind can only know the mind and God can only know God.) Yes you can say that. (SX: And the mind doesn't want to give up. I mean mine doesn't. I don't want to give up anything. I think there is nothing here, that's what my mind tells me. There is nothing here why waste your time looking. I do the work but I see that's what's been going on all my life. I'm doing nothing here why waste my time?) The mind is what keeps you to the earth. (SX: Yeah.) It keeps you earth bound because it’s part of your body, remember. But when you ask the question, "To whom is this mind and body?" (SX: The mind gets boggled. It boggles my mind.) You simply say, "To me, I feel it." Who is the I that feels it? Where did the I come from? Who feels that's their mind and body? Who am I?" And keep asking, "Who am I?" And the day will come when something happens and you awaken. It has to. SC: Can you do this … does it have to be done consciously? Do you have to verbally say, "Who am I?" or can you think it? R: You can think it. (SC: You can.) Of course. The mind doesn't know whether you are verbalizing or silent. You know it. It doesn't matter if you are silent or verbal. SP: Robert is it necessary or useful to practice celibacy to practice self-inquiry? R: No, you don't have to. SX: So you've mentioned hypnosis before or it's like coming out of being de-hypnotized? R: You can say that, yes. You wake up. SQ: Robert about ten years ago I had meditation and only a few times since then, there was a moment where I just felt I was gone. I didn't realize it until I felt myself returning. There was nothing there. I didn't know about time or anything there was nothing at all to record. I felt myself, it felt like I was aware of my body again. There was a tremendous amount of joy. Was I in that state for a short time or…? R: You had a spiritual experience. If you are fully in that state there is no return. But there are glimpses of the state. That is not the complete state, there are glimpses of it where you can see that there is something worth fighting for. SD: Is that what Samadhi is? (R: That's what samadhi is yes.) SX: Well how can you do that when the mind just doesn't want to leave? R: If you practice certain forms of meditation there will be a time when you bypass the mind. (SX: Yes I've experienced that but when you say, you are going to leave and not come back?) By "not come back" I mean, you do not come back to your old way of thinking. You stay realized all the time. You're no longer fooled by the world. The world becomes subservient to you. SA: How is it Robert that you are just appearing in our dream? Is it that we're dreaming you're here? Is that's what's going on? R: The whole thing is a dream. My body's a dream, my talking is a dream, your sitting there is a dream. Reality is beyond that. (SA: And why are you here?) No reason. I am not going to give you an altruistic answer and say I came back for your behalf (laughter) Like the Buddha did or somebody else did. I never asked to this at all, it just happened. I don't consider myself any body important. I'm just like you except I see reality, it's no big deal. SH: But doing practices is dreaming too whatever it may be? R: Of course. (SH: But it's the type of dream that may awaken you, if you don't watch out?) (laughs) Yes, exactly. (SH: Let it catch up with us.) It's like the thief becoming a policeman to catch the thief. SE: The fourth state becomes the first state? (R: The fourth state becomes the only state.) And the first three states disappear? (R: Yes.) SB: Robert in some of the books they don't call it a state, they call it a non state because a state is something you come in and go out of. So they don't like to call it a state. R: So call it a non-state whatever makes you happy. (students laugh) What's the difference what you call it? I have been getting good reports about the I-am meditation and we should all be practicing that. When we do it together here good things happen. That is why I always include this. So let's practice it shall we? SB: Robert if we're saying, "I am" the mind is still thinking though, right? R: The thief becomes a policeman to catch a thief. So you have to use your mind to get rid of your mind. (SB: So it's slowing it down?) It makes it quieter and quieter and quieter. (SB: But isn't there after the I-am meditation that you should stop the I-am meditation and be in consciousness?) No. Another name for consciousness is I-Am. So the I-Am becomes consciousness. They are both the same. (SB: But by saying, "I Am" the mind is still working?) In the beginning. (SB: Okay.) It slows down as you keep saying it. (SB: And will it stop eventually?) Yes. (SB: Oh.) SC: Then there is hope. R: Of course there is hope for you Nathan. (SC: Well according to the other teachers like Ramesh - I'm quoting what I heard - It will either happen or it won't happen there is just nothing you can do to make it happen.) Well that's true because you don't try and you don't read books or try to see every teacher in the world to make it happen. When you are ready to go within yourself and you become still and quiet and stop thinking, it will happen. So let's close our eyes and become still for a couple of minutes. First become aware of your breath. Relax your body… (tape ends abruptly)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. It's good to be with you again. Once in my house nobody was home. I sat down in front of a picture of Ramana Maharshi and I stared at the picture. When I looked at my watch twelve hours had passed. What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, I have nothing else to say, so I thought I'd share that with you. Something you should bear in mind, if you want to awaken and find peace, is that you can make certain statements to yourself, or out loud, which will help in the awakening process. One such statement is, "I am consciousness. I am consciousness." Think of what that means. I am consciousness. All three of those words mean the same thing. When you say I am you're not referring to your physical self. You're referring to omnipresence, and when you say consciousness, again you are referring to omnipresence, to the Self. It's like saying God, God, God. "I am consciousness," means the same thing. They're all synonymous, all of those words. Now what is consciousness and what does consciousness mean? We hear all the time, those of us who have been practicing Advaita Vedanta, "Everything is consciousness." Then are you consciousness? The way you appear does not seem to be consciousness, but you are. The word consciousness denotes a power that is conscious of itself. It is not conscious of you as a person. It is conscious of itself. When you understand what this means you realize that consciousness is also another word for pure awareness. Pure awareness is consciousness. Just think of the word awareness. What does it mean? You are aware of something. You are aware that you are consciousness. All those words are synonymous. There is only consciousness as pure awareness, and I am that. Said with the right understanding this will immediately awaken you, to an extent. Now when you realize that you are consciousness as pure awareness, it equals bliss. Now we have another word to ponder, bliss. I am consciousness, as pure awareness, expressing as bliss. That's powerful stuff. You're dealing with dynamite. If you say these words with sincerity you'll disappear, you'll evaporate. Think of that. I am consciousness, as pure awareness, expressing as bliss. Bliss is another word for consciousness and awareness. Those words cannot really be defined. They can only be experienced. When you realize that you are bliss, you are no longer the body. You become something else completely. People see you as the body but you are not the body, and you know that you are not the body. You feel something so wonderful that in the beginning stages you start crying, you start laughing, all at the same time. The body does this. It's an expression of bliss. Every cell of your body becomes bliss. Bliss is your real nature. Consciousness is your real nature. Pure awareness is you. Therefore as you ponder these things something definitely begins to change within you. "I am consciousness, total awareness, expressing as bliss." Now what does this do to you as a human being? It transcends your human experience. It lifts you beyond the relative world into reality. There is no explanation. You try to explain this to your friends. You cannot. As a matter of fact, you find that your friends disappear because they think you're crazy. And you probably never needed those friends to begin with. You begin to identify with the substratum of existence. You are no longer part of the world of effects. As you are aware, this is a world of effects in which we live. There is no permanency in this world. Everything comes and goes. To identify with the world is to suffer. Therefore to find the truth is to experience bliss. No matter what you may acquire in this world you still suffer. As long as you believe you are the body-mind concept this is what causes suffering, if only because of deterioration. As most of you know, as soon as you're born you start to die. It's therefore foolish to be satisfied only with a material existence. I realize even as I say this, if I wrote some of you a cheque for $10,000 I'd probably never see you again, because you would think foolishly you've got something special. But that will be gone soon, or you'll worry about it. There is nothing in this world that can really bring you true happiness. No, I'm not a prophet of doom. I'm telling you the truth. It is only as you discover your true identity that the real happiness and the real joy begin to be expressed through you. You don't have to wait until you are self-realized. Even if you believe that you are the body, still, just by understanding that there's something greater, something higher, something more beautiful, begins to make you feel good. Or shall I say, as you dis-identify with the world, as you begin to disassociate yourself with identification of the world. I'm not speaking of leaving your job or going away from your family or changing anything at all. I'm speaking mentally. As you disengage your mind from worldly attachment, goodness takes its place, to that extent. Say for instance, as an example, you really love your job. You've been working for fifteen years and you love your job. As long as you love your job something will happen to you to make you change your mind. Some kind of suffering will ensue. But if you realize, "This is the work I'm doing now, and I do this work because this is my karma, or this is where I find myself, but I am not that, I am consciousness, appearing as total awareness, expressing as bliss. That is my true nature." As you begin to identify with the higher power your job will become more smooth and perfected than you can ever imagine. You're no longer thinking, "I love my job." You're beginning to understand that you are an embodiment of love yourself. Love just is. It has nothing to do with the job at all, and you become happy. Happy not because you've got a job, not because you own a home, not because you've got what you want, but you become happy because you realize happiness is bliss, happiness is consciousness, and consciousness is all that there is. And everything takes care of itself. So you see, you do not have to make any physical changes. You do not even have to question, "Shall I stay here or leave here? Shall I stay with this person or leave this person? Shall I stay in Los Angeles or go to San Francisco?" There is nothing you have to do but remember who you are. Isn't that amazing? All you have to do is identify with your reality and everything will take care of itself. The place to begin is your own mind. When you get up in the morning make that statement to yourself, "I am consciousness, appearing as total awareness, expressing as bliss." Do not focus your attention too much on your body, or on your work, or on your home, or anything else that has to do with the personal I, but lift up your thoughts. Your mind will automatically come to rest in the heart, all by itself, and you will experience bliss, all the time. You do not really have to think about these things. You simply have to remember. For when you voice, "I am consciousness," you are speaking the truth about yourself. When you say I am John, or Mary, or Jim or Henrietta, you're speaking a lie about yourself. And the lie pulls you deeper, deeper, deeper into materiality. But when you say, "I am consciousness," and you sort of ponder that for a while, all of a sudden you start to feel good, for no reason. You just became bankrupt, but you feel good. A family member died, you feel good. You just feel good. I'm not saying you make a fool out of yourself, and say, "I don't care what's happening." When you feel good the way I'm describing, spiritually good, you have a great compassion for everyone, for everything. You give out loving kindness to everything, to humans, to animals, to vegetables, to minerals. It's all the same. It's all consciousness. And finally it dawns on you, there's a whole universe that is none other than myself. I am is the universe. Therefore from that moment on, when this realization comes to you, you understand that whatever you give outside of yourself, you are giving to yourself. If you give out hate, you're hating yourself. If you give out love, you're loving yourself. Now speaking as a person who is just beginning to unfold, once you awaken completely there is no longer any hate, there is no longer any love, there is no longer thinking about giving out or taking in. There are no others. You just become silence. But on the path to that you see signs. You notice you are becoming kinder, more loving, more compassionate. So when a family member dies you have a great compassion, a great love, and you help the suffering family members. You do not say, "I don't care." Many people take these teachings the wrong way. They believe they're not supposed to care, I don't give a damn, attitude, but that's wrong. You just understand. You give of yourself completely, simply because you are the Self of all. There's only one Self. That Self is consciousness, pure awareness, bliss. All the words are synonymous. Therefore when you get up in the morning, think of these things. Start your day thinking of those things. The worst thing you can do in the morning is grab a cup of coffee and put on the TV. And you can see why. Because you're influenced by what's going on the TV. The TV becomes your God, or the radio, or the cup of coffee. Rather think of yourself, as consciousness. Think of the highest truths. Then if you need a cup of coffee you can drink the coffee while you realize the coffee is consciousness. If you want to watch the TV, as long as you realize the TV is consciousness it makes no difference. But until you can see it that way it's better not to watch too much TV. Think of how opinionated you are right now. You have your ways. You have your ideas, your opinions. You stick up for your rights. What rights? You're simply sticking up for your ego. You want the world to know this is me, and you're making a big mistake, because you're inflating the ego. The ego gets bigger and bigger and you think you're more important than anyone else. So when you get on the spiritual path, many times life comes along and pulls the rug from under you. This is to make you understand that as a human being you're nothing. It doesn't mean a thing. This is why so many people tell me, "Robert, since I came to you things have gotten worse in my life." And always I say, "That's good. Now you're beginning to make progress." If humanly things got better would most of you take this path? Unfortunately not, let's face it. The only reason most people come into spiritual life is because usually their life is all screwed up. (students laugh) Am I wrong? And they're looking for answers, therefore that's good. The people who are not here, their life is all screwed up, but they don't know it yet. (students laugh) So you're ahead of the game. And again the reason things go wrong in your life when you're on the spiritual path, is because of your meditations, it's because of your practice. You're bringing all of your past karma to the surface, not only from this life, but from previous experiences. It's all coming up, only you have learnt how to handle it. Whatever happens to you, you don't start crying like you used to do, or get upset, or get angry or get mad. Instead you ask yourself calmly, "To whom has this come? Who is experiencing this?" And soon you will say, "I am," only you will realize that the I you are referring to, the personal I, is your ego. And you will conclude that only your ego is going through this experience, not you. And you'll be happy. And when you become happy and you have not reacted, then that experience will be done with. You will not have to go through that again. The reason you go through experiences again, and again and again in your life is because you react. Whatever you react to becomes a part of your life. But, let's say you go home tonight and you find your house is burned down. If you say, "I am consciousness, I am absolute reality expressing as bliss," and then you ask, "to whom does this come?" you will be safe. You will realize that this too shall pass. And you'll probably wind up getting an insurance policy that you had, and you'll get more than the house was worth. And you will have to move somewhere else, and you will find more happiness when you move than what you had before. In other words, everything is in your favor. There is nothing against you. You must always remember this, that no matter what you're going through, no matter what appears to have come upon you that you consider negative, it's a blessing in disguise. Sounds strange, but true. It's a blessing in disguise, believe it or not. If you handle it in the right way, and you work through it by not reacting to it, it will turn into something so beautiful you can't imagine. I can assure you of this. But, if you react you may win, you may get your point across. That will only last a short while. Then you'll have to go through the condition again and again, perhaps with other people, and you'll never know why you suffer so much. The choice therefore is yours. Whom shall I follow this day, God or mammon. God of course is consciousness. Mammon is the world. That's the only freedom you've got, to make a choice whom you will follow. If you turn within yourself and realize your identity you'll be safe. If you weep with the world, you will continue to weep. It will never end. So you begin in the morning, and you try to remember during the day, "I am not the body, I am not my experience, I am consciousness, expressing as pure awareness. I am bliss." And as soon as a situation befalls you that you don't like, you ask yourself, "To whom does this come? To me? Who's me? I am. Where did the I come from? What is the I? Who am I?" And you abide in the I, following it to its source. Its source of course is the statement that you just made to yourself, prior to that. "I am consciousness, expressing as pure awareness, resulting in bliss." That is the source. In that source there is no personal I. In that source there's nothing happening. In that source all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. That source is you, and you are the universe. I'll take questions. SV: Robert I have a question. These different ways that you teach like, "I am" and "I am consciousness." I was wondering is it better to just stick to one instead of mixing "I am" with "Who am I?" R: No not really. You know why? Because it becomes boring after a while for the average person. I've known so many people who have worked with "Who am I?" and they give it up after a month because of boredom. Nothing is happening. The human mind is made like that. It becomes bored after a while with anything. So when you are working with "Who am I?" and you see that nothing is happening after a while, you give up the whole practice. But when you have something to fall back on and you can change then you will start seeing results. (SV: But should one stay with one like what I'm doing "I am" sometimes the question "who am I?" also arises in between the "I am.") Then work with that. (SV: So it's okay to work like that?) Of course. Make your spiritual practice simple. (SV: Also in the "I am" is the "I am" stressed more than the silence? Or does the silence follows…) The silence is the I am. (SV: That should be emphasized?) The silence is very important. When you say, "I am." It is the ego speaking, the mind. When you are silence then you are in reality, consciousness. Consciousness is really silence. All the words I spoke tonight are from silence. Everything leads to silence. When you practice "Who am I?" the purpose of the practice is to become silent. If you are practicing it correctly after a while the "who am I?" stops all together and the silence becomes very strong. So silence is the greatest teacher. SG: Robert, is saying, "I am consciousness" the same as saying, "I am Shiva?" R: Yes, it is. But when you say, "I am Shiva." You usually think of a form or some people do. When you say, "I am consciousness," it's more omnipresent. It makes you see that consciousness is the universe and everything in it. Especially for Americans because they believe Shiva is an idol, or a person or a form, a sort of a limitation to Americans. Therefore it's best to say, "I am consciousness," but it's really the same thing. SK: When I do the "I am consciousness," it tends to invoke a kind of quality of beingness. That seems to be different from the silence which is just a sort of blank. R: Yes, whatever it invokes simply become the witness. Watch, observe and that will go away and silence will ensue. (SK: But it's not only silence, it's a very lovely feeling of a kind of full emptiness.) Well what's the question? (SK: Well I'm just questioning the difference between this full emptiness and the emptiness. In other words, if emptiness being a blank as opposed to this quality that seems to be kind of a beingness.) When there is a quality present it's still the mind. Emptiness is total emptiness, it's unqualified, it's bliss. But it's no quality whatsoever. It's something beyond explanation. It's a state of nothingness. Yet it's the state of God, of total awareness and yet it's beyond that too. But as long as you are feeling a quality try to go beyond that. Where you feel absolute zero and that is the true state of silence. Does that make sense to you? (SK: I'm not sure about the words in a sense. Certainly this quality it invokes is quite pleasant and it's almost as if it brings a kind of a foreground, feeling of a kind of open full space as opposed to chatter or blank.) That is a good place to be, but as long as it invokes anything at all, pleasantness. It's not the ultimate. The ultimate is beyond that. (tape break then starts abruptly in the middle of a question) SY: The looking at his picture,(Ramana) 12 hours went by without you being aware of it? R: Oh yes. (SY: Same situation? You're not really there?) When you are in the silence there is no time, there is no space. Those things do not exist on that plane. SF: I get questions come up and then I realize what am I going to do with the answers I don't have the question. (laughs) R: You are getting smart Fred. (students laugh) (SF: And I get the answers and the questions and I throw them both out. It's about time too.) SH: What took you so long? (laughter) (SF: I don't want to put myself down) SV: Robert can I ask another question? (R: Of course.) Can you tell me like which is the most direct way. Is "who am I?" the most direct way if you don't get bored with it? R: "Who am I?" is the most direct way, yes. That is a wonderful way to go if you can handle it. You can also change it to "What am I?" You have to go with your nature. It's some peoples nature to say, "I am that I am." If you learn to become still enough then whatever you have to do will become revealed to you. It will come of its own accord. Be gentle with yourself. Be like this dog. He doesn't care what's going on. He's just happy. SF: (talks about dog) He's very disrespectful, he's snoring. (laughs) R: He's being himself. (SF: A lot of good that will do him.) How do you know? (SF: I don't.) (SH: He's doing okay.) The dog is blessed to be in Henry's house to see all these different teachers that come here. It's a special privilege for a dog. SJ: I think the teachers are blessed to have the dog here? R: That is true too. (students laugh) I have been told by a lot of you that you have been making wonderful results with the "I-am" meditation. That things are happening. So we will continue practicing that. Let's do it now. Make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes if you want to. And the first thing you do is relax every muscle in your body. After you relax all your muscles, you simply begin to watch your breathing. If you have ever practiced Vipassana meditation you do that. You become aware of the sensations in your body and you watch your breath. (pause) Now you ask yourself the question, "Who watches? Who is watching the breath?" and the answer is, "I am." With your respiration you inhale you say, "I" and you exhale and you say, "am…” (tape ends)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. Anyone here for the first time? I ask you not to believe anything I say. Don't believe a word of it. Why should you? When I tell you that you are sat-chit-ananda, that you are absolute reality, why should you believe me? After all, you believe you've got problems, and you believe you are living a life of humanity, and you're part of the community, and you've got a job and a family. That is your reality. Why should you believe anything else? But I ask you to have an open heart and ponder the things that we discuss. I am not a philosopher. I am not a preacher. I am nothing. And our teaching is a teaching of silence. Even the words that I appear to speak are words of silence. If you listen to the silence you too will become silent and experience the bliss which you are. To begin with, chanting is very efficacious. It is something that makes your mind one pointed and allows you to accept the realities as outlined. So we're going to do a little chanting first. Everything we do is part of the unfoldment. All is well. (chanting) Looking at some of you, you look too serious, as if you're carrying the whole world on your shoulders. No thing is ever that bad, so I guess it's time for Robert's two finger formula. Put your right index finger in this side of your mouth, and put your left index finger in this side of the mouth, and pull. (students laugh) That's better. This world is a cosmic joke. Do not take it seriously. Everything will take care of itself. You are not who you think you are. As most of you know, I walk my dog every morning in the park and people start talking to me and we have nice conversations. I have been talking to a certain gentleman for about three months and I gave him one of the lessons that we put out now. And by the way I think these lessons that Kerema and Ed so graciously transcribed are very important for you to have and read, for it is the entire teaching, if you are interested. And to digress a moment, the way you should read these lessons is not like you read a book, but when you get hold of a lesson, go over the whole thing first, read it through, and then every night before you go to sleep, take a paragraph and ponder on the paragraph, for the whole month, until you get the next one, going over paragraph, paragraph, paragraph. Don't read it through and go on to the next one. Assimilate it and digest it. And if you do not have any of the lessons and wish them see Ed after the meeting. He'll take good care of you. Back to the park. So I gave this person a lesson to read and I saw him this morning. And he said to me, "You know what's wrong with you Advaita Vedantists? You only think of yourselves. All you care about is moksha, awakening, liberation, self-realization. But what about the world? What about the war and man's inhumanity to man? The new age philosophy only talks about me, me, me." Of course we have nothing to do with new age philosophy, and I'll take the remainder of the time this morning to sort of answer that question, because that's a valid question, and it's in the minds of many people today. There's a war going on, there's man's inhumanity to man, which has always been so. What's going on? What's happening? Well, the way I usually answer a question like that is I ask him, "What do you mean by peace, that you want peace in the world, and you want us to pray and meditate for peace?" That was his request. He requested, he said, "Why don't you Advaita Vedantists pray and meditate for peace in the world, to end the war?" What do you mean by peace? What is peace? To most people peace simply means having the world turn the way that they want it to turn. If everything goes their way, in other words, they've got peace. If they have everything they think they should have, they're peaceful. But there is something else. You can only give the world what you are yourself. In other words, you cannot be confused, and angry and upset and walk around with a peace sign, shouting peace, and hitting everyone else over the head with your sign if they don't agree with you. Peace is your real nature. But it's been covered up for years, as the clouds cover the sun. You do not say the sun doesn't shine any longer. You realize that in due time the clouds will dissipate and you will have the sun shining once more in all its glory and splendor. So it is with humanhood. There are certain people, because of God's grace, karma, they're able to understand the truth about the world, about reality, and these people become the peacemakers, for they become an example. By their very presence peace follows. They do not go out and try to demonstrate for peace or talk about peace. They become an example. A rose need not declare, "I am fragrant." By it's very presence it exudes fragrance. A being with peace in his or her heart need not say, "I am peaceful and let's make peace in the world." By their very presence people become peaceful. Another way to look at it is this planet earth is unfolding the way it's supposed to. We can say that this planet is a third grade planet and everything is happening on this planet the way it was intended to. There's a greater power than you can ever imagine that looks after the welfare of the planet. It's not your business to really get involved. What is this power? You can say God or Ishvara. As you know I'm going to deny it all in the end. But for the sake of talking, something takes care of this planet and doesn't need your help. If you observe the animal kingdom you'll see that there are lions who eat sheep, but yet there are a lot more sheep than lions. It's a cleansing process. The earth cleanses itself after a while and we have what we call a war. Now I know some people don't take this lightly, what I'm saying right now. Everything is necessary. There are no mistakes. No mistakes have ever been made, none are being made, and none will ever be made. Your job is to find out who you are, and then you will understand what's going on in the world. Take, as an example, if you were the size of a molecule and you were in the earth. Someone plants a rose seed. In order for the rose to grow the seed has to be destroyed. And if you are the size of a molecule standing next to the seed, it would seem like a nuclear holocaust, a nuclear explosion, as the seed becomes destroyed in order for the beautiful rose to grow. In the same way, everything that happens on this planet is necessary. If you do not understand, do not judge anything or anyone, but work on yourself. As you awaken you will find that you begin to see clearly. You begin to realize that you are the Self of the universe. Everything in this universe is an emanation of your own mind. You are creating everything that exists. You will understand this and you will rejoice. Yet you must do what you must do. It is the dharma of yourself and the dharma of the earth to unfold the way it does. Everything is right. As an example, there was once a traveler who was walking down a dirt road. He saw a sadhu on his knees bending down, looking at something. The traveler was curious. He kneeled down next to the sadhu. He noticed something very strange. He noticed there was a puddle of muddy water and there was a scorpion trying to cross from one side to the other. And every time the scorpion got to the middle of the muddy pond, the muddy water, it would begin to drown. So the sadhu would pick up the scorpion, and the scorpion would sting the sadhu, but he would put the scorpion down on the other side. And again the scorpion decided to walk across the puddle and begin to drown. So the sadhu would pick up the scorpion, and the scorpion would sting the sadhu. And he would put down the scorpion on the other side of the pond. And he did this over, and over and over again. The traveler said, "Excuse me sir, but can I ask you what you're doing? Why are you doing this? Every time you pick up the scorpion you get stung?" The sadhu looked at the traveler and he smiled and he said: "It is the scorpions dharma to sting, it is my dharma to save." And so it is with us. As we go through the vicissitudes of life we're always finding something that does not please us, as if we were that important. We try to change people, places and things, to no avail. There have been peace movements since time immemorial. There have been wars since man first came on this planet. There has been man's inhumanity to man since the beginning of time. What does this all mean? It means you live in a world of constant change. Everything is always changing, a world of duality. For every back, there's a front. For every up, there's a down. For every forward, there's a backward. When a jet plane flies it has to have friction to oppose it. This is all duality. But who are you? That is the question. Never mind the world. Begin to leave the world alone. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It doesn't matter what you're going through. It doesn't matter where you live or what you do. This is all preordained. This is all karmic. What matters is how you react to what's going on. What matters is what you see, what your senses tell you. This determines what is going to happen to you, thereon in. The first step you should take is to realize that you exist. You can never deny your existence. So you may say to yourself, I exist in this world. I hate my job. I hate my family. I hate the world. I hate everything. But I exist. Then you ask yourself, "Who is it that exists? Who exists and who's going through these particular things that are disgusting to me, my job, my environment, the war that I see everyday on television? Who is going through all this? Is this reality? How can this be reality?" The thinking person begins to ponder these things. You begin to realize it's a mystery. But if you ponder these things enough, there's an inner guru within each one of you that will awaken, simply by pondering the questions of life. And the inner guru will push you towards the right book, the right teacher, the right situation, where it will be explained to you what life is really all about. And sometimes there is no outer experience that you need. With your pondering and with the grace of God, which is always available, you awaken to your true nature. However it happens, the first step is to be dissatisfied with life. I don't mean where you feel sorry for yourself. But be dissatisfied by realizing everything comes to an end. What was the use of being born and working and slaving when I'm going to die in the end anyway? What is life's purpose? And one day something within yourself will tell you, life has no purpose, as we know it. But then you say, "I exist," and you go back to your existence. As you have pondered this long enough, and gone over this in your head, over and over again, something will finally catch on and you will say to yourself, "All of these years or months I have been saying I exist, I. Who is this I? It appears to be the same I that says I am awake, or I feel hurt, I feel angry, I feel upset, I dreamt, I slept. There is always this I. Where does it come from? Who gave it birth?" And you begin to ponder the I. You think about the I. By thinking about the I, you're following it. Just by thinking of I, I, I, you are following the I to your heart center, without even knowing what you're doing. See, you do not have to understand the ramifications of how this works. You just have to do it. Do not try to figure out what's going to happen. Do not try to ask yourself, "I wonder if I'll be enlightened tomorrow?" but merely look at the I without qualification. The steps that you take will be made available by themselves. You simply have to take the first step, to be curious, to be dissatisfied with the world, to realize that you exist, and then to realize that you exist as I. And you remain on the I for as long as it takes. It's called following the I. You will go deeper, and deeper, and the next realization that comes to you, will be that everything, everything in this universe is attached to I. My job, that's I, I've got this job. My family, I has a family. My disappointments, I has been disappointed, and onward, and onward and onward. The whole universe, all the physical existence, including your body and your mind, is attached to the I. Wisdom begins to take over and you laugh at yourself. You say, "Wait a minute. I no longer have to try to change conditions. I no longer have to get even with anyone. I no longer have to feel out of sorts. I simply have to follow the I to its source. And to the extent I follow the I to the source, will I experience my own reality." The wisdom comes to you also, "My own reality isn't really mine. It is simply called reality. It is omnipresence. What this means to me is this: When I discover my reality I will also discover the reality of the universe. For I am the microcosm in the macrocosm. The universe is simply an extension of I." You therefore begin to spend all of your time abiding in the I. This becomes foremost in your life. Everything else becomes secondary if you really want to wake up. You become mindful of all of your actions. As you react you catch yourself and you say, "I reacted." But you're getting to the point where when you say, "I reacted," you're no longer speaking about yourself. You say something like, "I has reacted, I got angry." You see, I is becoming separate from you now as you advance. "I felt disappointed." And you keep laughing to yourself because you beginning to understand that I is not I. You ask, "Where did I come from? Who gave it birth?" And all the time, remember, you're following I to its source. On the way to the source you notice that your life physically appears to become more comfortable. You're becoming happier. The things that used to annoy you stop. Your anger has left you. Your moods are becoming transcendent. You're becoming even minded, one-pointed on the I. One day, as you keep following the I, as you keep abiding in the I, you find that your mind stops working. I don't mean you drop dead. I mean your thoughts have dissipated and you have found the silence. Now you stop abiding in the I and you begin to abide in the silence. You sort of realize you're finished with the I. Now you've got another battle, so-to-speak. You go deeper and deeper in the silence. This is an advanced state. You have now reached the second plateau where you begin to see occult things happening in your life. You begin to envision geometrical figures. You hear the sound of ohm. You're able to understand what people are thinking before they tell you. You have expanded your consciousness. But this is also a beginning stage. You do not get caught up in that stage. This is why a true aspirant of Advaita Vedanta needs to have a teacher that's been there. Otherwise you may believe that the sounds you hear, the lights you see within, the figures of Saints and Sages that appear to you, you begin to believe that they're real, and you get caught up in that. It's like the example I always like to use. A king invites you to his kingdom to share the kingdom with him completely. But he has 150 acres of land and you have to drive through the acreage before you get to the king. On the way you see all the beauty, and the clouds, and the mountains, the grass and the wonderful flowers. You become enthralled, and you stop your car and you get out, forgetting about the king. You spend years enjoying the flowers and the beauty of the land. Then one day you remember the king again. So you get back in your jeep, or your Rolls Royce, or your bicycle, and you're on the way to see the king again. But then you see beautiful caves of all sizes and dimensions, with lovely creatures coming in and out. So you stop to examine them and you become so enthralled that you forget all about the king and you spend years. You remember the king again and you start driving. The same thing happens again and again. The years pass, and you've lost your opportunity. If you had driven straight through and ignored everything, you would have been able to share the kingdom with the king. But instead you got caught up with the beauty of the land. And so it is with realization. According to your karma you went through the occult realms, you may perhaps materialize things, tell peoples fortunes, do all kinds of occult things, astrology, and you forget what you're searching for. That's why it says in the Upanishads that the one who becomes waylaid, and has fallen in the occult realms, will have to go through thousands and thousands of reincarnations before they get out of it again. So we ignore the occult. We're looking to awaken. We're looking for liberation. And in your mind you bypass everything. You say, "I don't want to see visions of Saints. I don't want to have powers, siddhis. I do not wish anything of the sort." And you go beyond. The silence is becoming more acute. You're going deeper and deeper into the silence, and your consciousness is expanding. Your awareness is expanding. You finally begin to understand that you are consciousness, and that consciousness is pure awareness, and that pure awareness is absolute reality, and all of that is bliss. You have become satchit- ananda. You have become Parabrahman. You have become nirvana. And then you are able to say to yourself, "Everything I behold is the Self, and I am that." You have become liberated while still in the body. You have become a jivan-mukta, a free soul. It doesn't mean you stop functioning. You still do, perhaps, the same things you've done before, only this time the only vibration you can emanate is love. You have become an embodiment for peace, and joy and happiness, yet you do not think of those words for you have simply awakened to your true Self. Now you see the world differently. You see the world as a superimposition upon your Self. You are the Self, and the world and the universe is an appearance. It is real to others, for they believe that they are the body-mind phenomena, but your body-mind has been transcended. You have become space while in the body. You have become free. Wherever you look, you see yourself, and because you are an embodiment of loving kindness, peace and harmony, that's all you can see. You cannot explain this to anyone for there are no words to describe it. People are looking through their senses. They see a war, they see man's inhumanity to man, and you keep silent for they will not understand. For all you see is love. All you see is joy. You are free. It all begins with you. Won't you begin today to awaken? It's worth it. Let's sing oh God beautiful. (After everyone sings) This is your meeting so we'll have some questions. Feel free to ask anything you like or make any kind of statement do whatever you want. SU: Robert I have had some massive experiences with the occult and I take it that just getting through that it is just necessary to, with some help from the guru, but not to react to it and see that it's all unreal, is that right? R: Of course what you do with something like that is you simply understand that all these things come out of your own mind and you ask yourself the question, "To whom do these things come?" realizing that they come from me. And since I am absolute reality those occult things really do not exist. They never did and they never will. But you exist and you are an embodiment of divinity. You are absolute reality. Where there is absolute reality there is no place for occult or anything else. In other words, the more you focus on your reality the weaker the occult becomes. Due to the fact that the occult has no real power except the power that you gave it yourself. Now you are taking it back by focussing your attention on yourself, the absolute awareness. And the occult cannot stand up to that. It will dissipate and go out of your life. Focus your attention on your absolute reality, on your real Self and you will be free of it. Do you follow that? (SU: Um-hm.) Good. SB: Robert how do we know that sometimes we have a good day and you just wake up and all of a sudden you just feel full of joy, for no reason. How do we know that that's a joy from the Self or if it's a joy from the ego mind? R: As long as you feel that you feel that you are full of joy, it's from the ego mind. For the real Self has no feeling like that. The real Self is just a beingness. There are no words to describe it. (SB: Well isn't there a joy of beingness?) No there is no joy of beingness. There is just beingness. Only a human entity can experience joy. Bliss is not joy. Bliss is absolute consciousness. Ultimate oneness is bliss and that comes by itself. That is another word for beingness. But the average human being feels a joy when nothing is happening sometimes. But as soon as the first thing happens that they don't like, their joy disappears and it's changed to worry and fear. So simply observe your joy. Say to yourself, "Is that really me? Who is experiencing this joy?" As you pose those questions the real bliss will ensue and you will find that it never leaves you. That when you go to sleep you are not really sleeping you are in bliss. When you wake up you are in bliss. There is no longer anyone sleeping or anyone waking. It's all one continuum and you are that. It has nothing to do with human feelings. Is that sort of clear? (SB: Is that the bliss of life? Is that the bliss of life itself? Life as it is…) The bliss of life itself has nothing that can describe it, it's silence, it's knowingness, it is the Self, it is beingness, it is you. Your whole body is a body of bliss. (A student is moved by the silence and says) Oh, oh, oh, oh. (students laugh) SH: All bliss. (laughter) (R: She’s blissed out.) (more laughter) (SG: She's tired.) SE: Robert there are many expedient devices such as the presence of the teacher, the teachings themselves, like some Advaitans emphasize, practice of self-inquiry, chanting, many, many expedient devices, which ones are the most powerful? R: Satsang and being in the company of the Sage, after that comes self-inquiry and then whatever. (SH: Can satsang occur without a Sage being present?) Yes, to some people. Some people feel the presence by the grace of God. And they do not need a teacher, they do not need people, they need nothing. But those are very few and in between. Rather than wonder about these things dive deep within and right action will ensue by itself. In other words, don't think to yourself in the beginning, do I need a teacher, do I need satsang, do I need a book, do I need anything or can I just sit here by myself and everything will happen? Do whatever is presented to you. The inner guru as I've mentioned before will move you if you ponder your own existence. And the next step will be taken for you. So there is really nothing you have to do except ponder your own existence. Everything else will take care of itself. SV: Robert when you ask the question, "Who am I?" do you actively seek the source or do you stay in silence and follow it? R: You stay in silence. But, when you are practicing with "Who am I?" you just don't say, "Who am I?" once and forget it. You say "who am I?" you wait a few minutes and you say, "who am I?" again and you wait a few moments, and as you keep practicing day after day the space in between "Who am I?" will become larger and larger and larger. And in that silence you will discover who you are. SF: Does that mean that automatically when it gets larger and larger you are asking for "Who am I?" will take longer in terms of minutes or seconds. I mean you ask, "Who am I?" and then you keep quiet, and then later on you ask again will there be a longer period of time in between? (R: Yes.) By itself? (R: Yes.) So you will automatically keep your mouth shut when it's ready to come? (R: Yes.) Thank you. R: Your words will not help you. Silence is the best teacher. SV: Robert, Ramana always suggested we actively seek the I, the source of the I? R: You abide in the I. You always abide in the I until the I becomes transformed into the Self. In the beginning remember abiding in the I is abiding in the ego, in the mind. As you continue to abide in the I, the I becomes the real I, which is the Self. Because there is only one I, not two and you are that. So abiding in the I is following the I thread to the source and the source is I-am. SH: The ego then is an emanation of I-am? R: Yes, the ego has never existed to begin with. (SH: But the appearance is there?) The appearance appears to be there. (SK: Superimposed on it.) Yes. (SH: And that appearance arises from the I-am?) No. (SH: What occasions it's arising?) R: The I-am is another name for absolute reality or consciousness or bliss. I-am, consciousness as I mentioned before in previous meetings is self-contained. It only knows itself. It does not produce this world. It does not produce the ego or the mind. The ego, the mind, the world, the universe, God is non-existent to the Self. As long as you believe you are the body-mind, the world, the ego, everything else appears real to you. And then you also believe that consciousness creates these things. Why would consciousness create it? It has no reason to. Remember it's like you have been hypnotized. That's why you believe you are a body and that's why you believe you live in a world of many bodies. (SH: What is that hypnotism about?) No thing. (SH: How does it happen to occur at all?) It doesn't. (SH: How does it happen not to occur?) It doesn't not occur. It neither occurs, it doesn't occur. (SH: What's going on?) Nothing? (laughter) SJ: We want to know. (SK: What's cookin'?) (laughter) R: Nothing is going on and nothing ever went on. It is all a product of your mind that doesn't exist. SL: Is the bliss also an appearance? (R: Excuse me?) Is the bliss also an appearance? R: The bliss is something that cannot be explained in human terms. So what you call bliss is reality, and these words have no physical or verbal meaning. They can only be experienced as being. There are no words to describe them. SE: So everything you told us is a lie? R: A big lie, a blatant lie. That's why I say, "Do not believe a word I say." It's a lie that might bring you on the right path. (laughter) SV: Robert I've got one more question on saying, "Who am I?" Are you looking at the ego asking the question or is it like the witness asking the question, "Who am I?" Who is asking the question? R: Both, both, first the ego asks the question and after a while the witness asks the question. And after that there is no witness and there is no ego and there is no question. Let's sing a song first. Give people a chance to think. With their no mind. (tape played then Robert responds to students comment.) R: Good. (students laugh) I know it's sort of difficult to do some of these things. So this is why I sort of devised the "I-am" meditation which really helps you get started. And you should try to do this in the morning and the evening. When you are alone without being disturbed. Let's practice this now. You sit in a chair, you close your eyes and become comfortable and you focus your attention on your breathing. You look at your breath, you watch it. You become aware of the sensations in your body. If other thoughts come in, simply observe them also and gently go back to listening to your breath, observing your breath. You do not emphasize your breathing. You breath normally like you always do. Only you observe it. If you feel uncomfortable, you watch yourself feeling uncomfortable. Whatever feelings, sensations come along, you simply observe them and let them go. Do not become angry at yourself. Do not have any goals, desires. Simply observe your breathing. (pause) After doing this for approximately five minutes you ask the question, "Who is the observer? Who is the witness that has been observing my breathing? Who is the observer?" And the answer comes, "I am." With your respiration you inhale you say, "I" you exhale and you say, "am." When you do this for quite a while you will find yourself doing it all during the day. You will find yourself becoming "I-am." So with your respiration inhale and say, "I" to yourself, exhale and say, "am." Pay no attention to anything else. (long silence as tape ends)

Robert: I'd better be careful what I say. Tapes are being made. They are being transcribed in the lessons and I've got to watch my mouth. SM: They're great. Every time I read them I get more out of them. Robert: Om namah Shivayah. Om shanti. Peace. I should really let you take home a blank tape tonight, and say nothing. Then Ed can transcribe it and have blank pages. And those pages can go all over the world and there'll be nothing. And everybody will become enlightened. Everyone is still looking for words. Words are meaningless. When you listen to words you're really taking the power away from yourself. You have all the answers. All you have to do is to become still long enough and everything will be revealed to you. Then what am I doing here? I'm simply a mirror for yourself. I'm here so you can see yourself, your true nature. There's no difference between you and me. What do you see? What you see is what you get. You can see your own divinity as the Self, or you can see the personal I getting involved in all kinds of problems. The choice is always yours. Identify with the world and you suffer accordingly. Identify with your true nature, the Self, and you're happy and blissful. Of course your true nature is omnipresence, pure intelligence. Therefore if you are experiencing your real nature, wherever you look you see harmony and peace, because you're seeing yourself. Many people still ask me, "Robert, how can I tell if I'm making progress on the path? How can I be sure?" There are many signs. The first is a sense of peace, when you are no longer disturbed by worldly conditions. The world appears to go on. You begin to see it as a picture, a movie. You begin to recognize what the world really is, an expression of your own mind. And when you can do that the world will never harm you again. It will lose it's power over you. Of course your body is part of the world, and so is your mind. You therefore have to give up those also. When there is no thought for the body, no thought for the mind, and no thought for the world, then divine right action is taking place in your life and everything becomes joy. Everything becomes love. Without you thinking about it, without desire, without need, you become free. Another way to know if you're making progress is you're no longer disturbed by any condition. You may lose your job, you may lose a family member, you may go through various experiences, but you're not disappointed, because you're able to see through the experience to the other side. And the other side is the fourth state of consciousness besides dreaming, sleeping and waking. And in the fourth state of consciousness there's always happiness, for that is the substratum of every thing you see. Again the choice is yours. You have the freedom to identify with the world, to identify with your Self. There is no one, there is no thing, that can harm you or disturb you or bother you if you focus your attention on God or the Self. Yet most people do not understand how to do this. How do I focus my attention on God? By remembering I-am. I-am is the first name of God. When you think of I am you're invoking the name of God and you're focusing your attention on God. So, when you have some kind of problem or something disturbing you, if you feel out of sorts, if you believe something is wrong, if the war affects you, you do not have to turn off your television, or change your environment, or change your circumstances. You simply turn within and invoke the name of God by saying, "I-am." What happens when you do this? You're really saying, "I-am absolute reality, I-am pure awareness, I-am nirvana, emptiness, ultimate oneness, I am sat-chit-ananda." All this transpires when you simply say, "I-am." This is why, in the beginning stages, the I-am meditation is very important, with the breath. When you're doing that you're pushing all your false notions, samskaras and the rest of the garbage out of the way, and you're coming into your true identity. You can tell if you're making progress by how happy you're becoming. When you see you're just happy, without any condition making you happy, then you know something is working. If you need something or someone to make you happy, the same someone or something will make you sad. When the person who makes you happy leaves your presence you'll be sad. When the thing that you're enjoying is taken away from you, you'll be upset. Therefore do not depend on any condition for your happiness. Happiness is your real nature. All you have to do is to invoke I-am, and you're radiantly happy right there. People still believe that they if become enlightened, or awaken to themselves, they will have to stop working or stop going out, they will just want to be by themselves and they will care about nothing. On the contrary, remember that you are not your body. Your body will carry on and do whatever it came here to do, but it has nothing to do with you. And that's hard to comprehend for some people. I am not my body. Your body is the body of the world, and as long as you identify with your body you have to identify with the world, because the universe is the body of God. You are the microcosm in the macrocosm. That's got to go or you'll be playing games in the world, in the universe. You may acquire occult powers, you may do all sorts of things with the chakras, but you're still working out of the mind. All these things have to do with the mind. Do not play these games. Go beyond that. Do not seek anything. By not seeking you'll find. By seeking you will lose. Everything is planned, everything is preordained, and everything is on your side. There is absolutely nothing against you. If you really knew what was going on you would rejoice. If you really, really knew what was happening you would cry for joy. The universe loves you. What you call God loves you. Brahman loves you, for you are that, your Self. Therefore your nature is love. When I say these things love you, I am reversing the process to make you understand that your nature is love. It is your love that creates the universe. It is your love that loves. Otherwise where would it come from? So to make people understand that their nature is love, I tell them the universe loves them, God loves them. But if you think about it, where would the love come from? Is there a power outside of yourself that generates this love? Of course not. You are the only power. You are the only love. There is no one besides you. Yet you are not what you appear to be. Stop identifying with worldly conditions. Every time something comes up simply say to yourself, "Iam," and the I-am will begin the process for you. The I am is like a switch. Whenever you get caught up in the world you merely turn on the switch by saying, "I -am," and all of a sudden you'll find that you begin losing your identity and you merge into your own consciousness. When I say that you merge into your consciousness I do not mean that there is consciousness and there is you. What I mean is you really awaken to your Self. You awaken to your true nature. There is not a consciousness hiding somewhere and you have to go and find it. Consciousness is you. Simply stop thinking. Quiet your mind and you will begin to shine. Do not plan for things. Forget about goals. Forget about desires. Simply work on quieting your mind. And as you unfold you will find that things are getting better for you. Life appears brighter, more harmonious, more loving. It happens by itself. You merely have to slow down your thoughts. Do you see a difference between this and psychology? You're not trying to resolve your problems. You're not trying to figure out why something happened in your life. You're going the other way. You're trying to become quiet, peaceful, no words, no thoughts. That's when things happen. You have to make up your mind in which direction you wish to go and realize that the more talkative you are, the less you're going to awaken, because talk is part of the relative world. The voice has been given to you to express the material world. When you quiet down your voice, when you become still, then reality begins to shine forth of its own accord. Now you can see why some Saints and Sages become silent and they do not talk for years and years, perhaps never, for they realize that talking is a waste of time. If you do not believe me, think back on your own life. Since you were a kid, look at all the words you used, all the words that come out of your mouth. What has it done for you? I know some of you are saying, "I can't function if I don't talk. I've got to express myself and people have to know what I mean. How can I work? How can I relate to my family? How can I do anything if I don't talk?" Of course I'm speaking of mental quietness. As I'm talking to you now I'm not really saying anything, for within me there is quietness, stillness, emptiness. Yet words come out, but they affect me not. This is what I mean when I tell you that your body will continue its work by itself, yet you have nothing to do with it. For you're looking at me and I appear to be a body and I appear to be talking, yet I'm not. I'm not a body and I'm not talking, but it appears to be doing that, just as the world appears to be real. The talking and the body's all part of the relative world, that's how it appears. But as you become quiescent, calm, still within, the world begins to disappear. Your body disappears, but you still see it, and you still see the world. That's the paradox. I see you, I'm talking to you, I see my body, yet they don't exist. Nothing exists, but everything goes on. There's no one to do anything, but the doing continues. To find out what I'm talking about you have to turn within. You have to see yourself for who you are. You have to stop thinking that you're Robert, or James, or John, or Mary, or anyone else, and begin to grasp that you are consciousness. You have no shape. You are not limited. You have no distinguishing marks. You are total freedom, like the air, like space, and yet you are conscious. Remember consciousness is conscious of itself as absolute reality. So when somebody asks a question, "Do I have to give up my life to become consciousness?" You never had a life to give up. You are consciousness. But until you have experienced it for yourself it seems silly, nonsensical. But as you come to satsang, as you begin to understand, as you invoke the I am, as you practice self-inquiry, as you become mindful, as you do all of these things, the body begins to drop away. I don't mean you die. I mean mentally the body drops away, the mind drops away, yet you're still you, and you appear human to all the people that you associate with. But you know who you are. You become fearless, for how can an illusion hurt you? How can the dream hurt you? It cannot. Yet you have to prove this to yourself. Worlds come and worlds go. The earth is billions of years old. Every couple of years science tells us that the earth and the universe is older than we ever dreamed. There have been many civilizations on this earth. They come and they go. We're just another speck of dust in the universal plan. Everything you worked for you're going to have to leave. The intelligent person begins to see that there is no substance behind the world, there is no real cause and they stop identifying with worldly things. Remember that this doesn't mean that you stop acting. Everything takes place mentally first. You disassociate yourself mentally with the whole universe, and when that happens the mind disintegrates by itself. After all, the mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future. That's all the mind is. When you begin to recognize that the world is like a dream, like a bubble, the mind becomes weaker and weaker, and one day it just dissolves. It really doesn't dissolve because it was never there to begin with. Yet you awaken. We call it an awakening, and you realize that I and my father are one. You just become the unity of all existence. There is no longer any diversity. You have become the imperishable Self. Remember when I say you I'm referring to consciousness which is omnipresence. Therefore you have become the Self of the universe. Everything that's transpiring is transpiring within yourself, and you watch, you observe, like you watch a movie. The movie has a beginning, a middle, and an end, then you go home. So you've expanded your awareness and you realize that the world has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it's gone. You are simultaneously the world and you are consciousness. You become free. Another reason you shouldn't react to any condition before this happens to you, is because you do not see the whole picture. Imagine you become terminated from your employment. You feel upset. You've been working for twenty five years and now you no longer have a position. The average person would become very upset. But as you observe, and you realize, you know, as I mentioned one Sunday back, you're simply looking through a keyhole and you're seeing limitation. You're limited. For you can only see one part through the keyhole, and the part that you see is that you are terminated from your position. But when you expand your consciousness it’s like opening a door, and then you see a completely different picture. You see that karmically you deserve to have been terminated, no matter how it seems. And as you go forward, when you look you will see that if you stayed in that job, the building would have blown up, and you would have been destroyed physically. And as you keep looking you will see nobody dies, nobody is destroyed, life never began and life never ends. You are able to see the whole thing. This is why a person who is on the spiritual path gradually begins to expand their consciousness and the door opens wider and wider. You're able to see more clearly. Therefore you are not disturbed, for things are not like they appear. The end result is nothing is happening. Nothing ever began, nothing is going on, and nothing will ever end. You are simply bliss consciousness. You are sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman. You are a spiritual divine being. Water cannot drown you and fire cannot burn you. You were never born. You can never die. Your true nature is the Self, and your Self is the Self of everything, and all is well. Any questions? SG: That part about choice that you mentioned. Do I really have a choice. Have I chosen my life or have I been just a pinball and just been affected by it? R: As long as you believe you are the body and the mind you have no choice. But as you begin to understand this you realize that the choice you have is to turn within yourself. And to realize that you are not the body or the mind. That you are not the world. This opens up new vistas for you. You are able to go further and examine that. You start to see that your real nature is consciousness. All this happens by choosing to turn within. And that is the choice you've got. Everything is preordained. If you didn't have that choice you'd be an automaton, a robot. Where you would never have the chance to progress any further and as you realize not to identify with the world you begin to identify with the Self automatically. The way you identify with the Self is simply by not identifying with the world. And the Self appears by itself. Of course that's your real nature. Your choice is always to identify or not to identify. (SG: And when you said preordained, I mean that's like predestined and…) Yes. Everything is predestined. (SG: So why do I have to do anything?) Because if you did nothing you merely become pretty human and you'll have to be… (SG: Well I might be predestined to do that also? Is it…) R: You are predestined to do that as long as you identify with your body. Then you are predestined to have another body and another body and another body and it goes on eternally. It's all a game. But as you turn within and you stop identifying with the body then it becomes clear to you that there is no predestination, there is no karma, they are nothing. You become free. So you have the choice to get off the wheel by not identifying with the body any longer. By not identifying with predestiny. By not identifying with karma… (tape break then continues abruptly as student readies tape to continue recording) R: The problem always appears to the one who believes they are the body. When you begin to see that you have nothing to do with the body, then the problem dissolves by itself. And of course you can do that by asking yourself, "To whom does this problem come?" and the answer will be, "The problem comes to me. I have the problem. I appear to have this problem. Where did the I come from? What is the source of I that appears to have a problem?" The source is always consciousness. And as you inquire, "To whom is the problem?" or "Who am I?" consciousness will eventually take over and you will become free. Do not hold onto your problem, do not try to solve it. Try to understand that I has the problem. The personal I. And follow the I thread to the source. It's called an I-thread because everything is attached to I as a thread. Your idea of a body your mental concepts, your preconceived ideas, they are all attached to the personal I. By trying to resolve the problem another one will pop up sooner or later. So get to the source and the source is the I. there are not two I's. Many people make a mistake in believing I is the ego, but there is a real I that is my Self. I try to explain to you there is only on I and that I is yourself. It has no problems, it has no misconceptions, it is pure consciousness. That is who you are. As you follow the I it brings you awareness, reality. Your Self appears by itself and you are home free. Remember you are not trying to become I or become the Self. You are already that. You are simply following your error, which is your belief in an ego, or your belief in a personal I, to the source and then you are awake. Do not go into profundities, do not make it complicated for yourself. Just realize I am that. I have always been that there is nothing else. I am free now and stick to your guns. Do not allow the world to change your thinking. Hold on to the I. So what do you think? Is it going to rain tomorrow? R: Will the war ever become resolved? (SH: Probably not.) R: See you think and you think and you think. Stop thinking about those things. You may think that is very selfish and in the beginning it looks selfish. When you see man's inhumanity to man, what's going on in the world. Yet you have to understand that if you identify with those conditions you simply become part of those conditions. But if you identify with yourself you become a light in the world of darkness and that's how you help the world, by becoming your Self. Not by thinking about the problems. Since the beginning of time we've had wars and we've had peace demonstrations. That is part of the duality. You have a war and you have to have a peace demonstration. One brings the other. Yet the person who wants peace and the person who makes war is of the same limited consciousness. They both have to awaken. You can't be limited and bring peace to this world. For you can only bring yourself to the world and what you are is what you get. A better example is: If you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist you can only get what the person is, not what they've learnt in school. So if the psychologist, psychiatrist is limited in their understanding about life, they may have a PhD hanging on the wall but it means nothing, they will simply give you their confusion and their misunderstandings. For they can't give you anything higher but what they are in consciousness. And you will leave the office thinking that you've been helped, but of course by the time you get back your problems are attacking you back from all directions. It keeps going like this and going like this until the psychiatrist gets tired of you not getting healed and gives you drugs. And the drugs make you forget everything for a while and the game continues over and over again or until you wake up. SG: And this so called suppressed, repressed feelings that you had all your life, that's the body? So identifying with that or not even identified, just conscious of it. You could be in a good place and then all of a sudden something happened and you are right back to where you were. It just sucks you right back into that old feeling. R: And the way to handle that is to ask yourself, "To whom do these feelings come?" and follow it down. Always practice self-inquiry. "Who has these feelings? I do. Who am I?" and wait. Ask yourself again, "Who am I?" and wait. Something will begin happening. The suppressed feelings will become transcended and you will feel better than you ever felt in your life. But you have to do it, not think about doing it. SN: Is "who am I?" and "I am." The same thing? R: Same thing yes. (SN: They're both the same?) I suppose. "Who am I" is a name for God and "I am" is a name for God. SF: Do they work in any different way because you are saying it gives the same results. Do they work the same way? R: They're all the same. (SF: It just seems to me that the words are different but do they work the same way? They work the same way. SD: So, "Who am I?" is not really a question? R: It appears to be a question but it turns into a statement. (SD: It could be, "I who am.") It could be what? (SD: It could be "I who am.") You can use that if you like as long as you understand what you are doing. SF: I always pause after the "Who am I?" I don't know this but when I say, "Who am I?" when the words have finished the thing isn't finished there is still like a few seconds something goes out. Like a pause and then you start again, it feels like something like I have to wait. So I say, "Who am I" and then again at that moment it'll start again it just seems to be right to wait because the thing or something is not finished yet? R: Something within yourself will take care of it for you. You just have to use the procedure and you'll be taken care of. You will know what to do next.) (SF: Is it okay to change from one to the other one or should we stick to one?) You can change. For once in a while you get bored with the same routine. Change it to something else. SK: Does it get mechanical? R: Not of you keep changing. You can practice mindfulness. Watching your breath. Watching the sensations in your body and then asking yourself, "Who watches." And you say, "I am, Who am I? Who is this I that watches?" There is no answer there is silence. And in that silence everything takes place. SF: Is "Who am I?" and "I am" the quickest procedure, quote unquote. R: The quickest procedure is silence but those methods are simply to make you silent, that is all they are for. The idea is when you get down to "who am I?" there is nothing. but the reason you say "who am I?" again is because your mind starts to think again. To keep your mind from thinking you say, "Who am I?" But the practice will make you silent more and more. SM: How about surrender Robert? R: Oh yes, Mary said, "How about surrender?" Every once in a while you can say, "Not my will but thine." And surrender everything to the God within yourself. That is for the person who cannot use the method of self-inquiry. It appears to be too intellectual for some people who are steeped in religion. You therefore can surrender completely to God. But you have to surrender totally. Not just partially. In other words you can't surrender the things you don't like only. You have to surrender your whole life to God. Everything. You have no existence of your own any longer. The only existence is God. SF: And that means not surrendering with the idea of becoming free? R: You just surrender without any idea. it leads to the same goal, liberation. Because when you are surrendering you are giving yourself away, your small self. You are surrendering your body and your mind and everything else. Just like in self-inquiry. Then what is left over? Consciousness. For you have given everything away to God. (SF: For some people that would be easier for me it seems harder.) Whichever method suits you use it. But by all means do something. Do not allow a day to go by where you do not give up your identification with the world. Either through surrender, or through self-inquiry, or through mindfulness, or through observation. Do whatever you have to do. But do not let a day go by when the world has a hold of you and you do nothing. If you can take the time to sit down in a chair and practice these methods. If you have no time to sit down in a chair, do them while you are working or whatever you are doing. There is always something you can do. There is no such thing as I don't have any time. You have enough time to do all the foolish things you do. (laughter) So take the time to do this also. SG: You were talking about Gods will, "thy will be done," are you saying something about there is a God? There is no will, like that? Why would I put a will on something? R: There really is no will, but from the stage you are coming from you are preferring God's will than your own. So you are saying, "Thy will be done." which means God's will is always goodwill. So you are referring to the consciousness, to the absolute reality, to the oneness to the perfection which is called God. So if Gods will is done then you will awaken to your reality because that is Gods will. Reality, perfection, pure awareness. SD: So thy will be done is the same as surrender isn't it? R: Yes. So you are saying, "Gods will rather than my own will," because my will is human and it's nonsensical. So Gods will is your invoking your higher Self. SG: I start my day off with turning it over more or less, as I get out the door… R: How do you do that? (SG: How do I do that? Through meditation and using the whole thing of I-am.) As soon as you get out the door the world has grabbed you. (SG: Yeah, my old behavior, the old same cycle starts again.) So simply ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" that is all you have to do. Ask yourself, "Who is going through this?" and then something will start automatically within yourself. Just by asking that question, "To whom does this come?" So let' s practice this together shall we. Make yourself comfortable and you can close your eyes to… (tape ends)

Robert: I see we have a few new people here. If you came to listen to a lecture, forget it. I am not a lecturer. If you came to listen to a sermon you'll be disappointed. I do not give sermons. If you came to hear something profound, again you will be disappointed, because the only thing profound here is you. I am merely a mirror and what you see is what you get. Imagine if you will, that you're looking into a mirror. Do you like what you see? Do you see divinity or do you see a sinner? Do you see a radiantly happy person, or do you see a miserable depressed person? Wherever you look you meet yourself. Whatever you see in the universe is nothing else but yourself. As a matter of fact, there is nothing but the Self. What do you see? Think about that. Chanting is very helpful to make you one-pointed, to put you into a state where you can absorb your own reality. So let's do a little chanting together, shall we? (tape resumes after chanting) Have you ever wondered where everything comes from? Think about that. Where does everything come from? SM: The mind. Robert: The sun, the moon, the trees, the universe, everything. When you look at the variations of the world, the amount of insects, animals, the various animals, trees, vegetables, the variations of leaves, flowers, human beings, where do they all come from? How did they get here? Someone may say, God created them. Yet what do you know about God? Who is this God? Someone else may say, "Well, it's consciousness. Everything comes out of consciousness." How do you know? Have you had that experience? Someone else may say everything is Parabrahman, beyond God, beyond the infinite. How do you know? Have you experienced it? One of the best answers I had to that question was an answer that Ed gave me yesterday while I was talking to him. He said, "Robert, the more I see you, the less I know. I don't know anything. I doubt everything." And that's profound. Because that's the truth. To know something, you have to first know nothing. The more you think you know, the less you are. Yet where did all things come from? How can we explain it? Whatever you say caused it, what caused the cause? What is the explanation for life? It is infinite, but where does it really come from? I can answer that by telling you a story. When I was around ten years old my uncle took me to see a hypnotist. He was a pretty famous fellow at that time. He was also a magician. There must have been about four hundred people there, at Town Hall, downtown New York. He picked out certain people. He asked for volunteers first. I told my uncle, "Why don't you volunteer?" He said, "Okay," and he did. And there were about twenty-five volunteers who sat on chairs on the stage. He spoke to each one of them. He told most of them to go back to their seats. He picked five people out of the bunch. My uncle was one of them. He proceeded to hypnotize them and he made them all do funny things. But what I really remember is my uncle. When he was finished, before he unhypnotized everyone and brought them back to this reality, he said to my uncle, "When you come out of it, you will go back to your chair, but when I clap my hands, you will imagine there's a black widow spider on your neck." And I was really laughing. He clapped his hands first and my uncle came out of it, out of the trance, and he said, "Was I hypnotized? I doubt it." He went back to his chair. The hypnotists started talking about something else. Then he stopped and clapped his hands. As soon as he did that, immediately, my uncle started squirming and slapping his neck. And he told me, "Robert, there is a spider on my neck. See where it is." And he stood up and started wiggling and slapping himself all over. The hypnotist clapped his hands again and my uncle came back to the natural state, the human state. When I looked on his neck there was a red welch on his neck, like a spider bite. Where did that come from? There was no spider. Where did the bite come from? Who put it there? SJ: Did he get sick at all? (R: No.) His mind wasn't that powerful then huh? R: He didn't get sick at all. When the hypnotist clapped his hands everything came back to normal. But the welch, the red mark, was still there. The same power that caused the red mark to be there causes this universe to be here. In other words, no thing. There is no cause for this universe. Another illustration is this. There was a monk sitting in the classroom with his teacher, and the teacher is explaining, "All things come out of nothing." And this monk was interrupting the class by saying, "How can that be, Master? That sounds impossible. How can that possibly be?" And the teacher said to the monk, "Do you see the fig tree outside the window?" "Yes, teacher." "Go out and bring me a fig." "Yes, teacher." He proceeded to bring the fig and put it in front of the teacher. The teacher said, "Break open the fig," he did. "What do you see?" "Why, thousands of seeds." "Take one of these seeds and here's a razor blade, and cut the seed open." It took him a long time, but he did. And the teacher said, "What do you see?" Well, in a fig seed there is only a hollow. And the student said, "Nothing, teacher." And the teacher said, "Correct." The nothing that produced the fig tree is the same nothing that produced the universe. It's an optical illusion. The universe does not exist as it appears. It's an emanation out of your own mind. Yet the world appears real. How can it be an emanation? Well, how can my uncle's neck become red, as if a spider bit him, there’s no spider? I'm sure many of you, when you were children, used to stand at the railroad tracks and look way down in the distance. It would appear as if both tracks became one, optical illusion. When you're in the desert and you're thirsty, you see an oasis with water, but as you investigate it closer, there's nothing. No thing exists, it's an illusion. This world appears to be a world of effects, no cause. The world is egoless. It didn't come from anywhere. How can that be? Think about when you're dreaming. Does your dream have a beginning? It just begins. Everything is already there. The trees are there, flowers are there, people are there, situations happen. Everything just begins. There is no beginning. There is no cause. Yet where did the dream come from? Psychiatrists and psychologists tell you the mind, the nerve impulses in the brain cause the dream. The world and the universe are just like a dream. But how does it affect you? Being a world of effects, the whole world is impersonal, totally impersonal, until you identify with certain situations and you make it personal. As an example, take a cold. A cold is impersonal when it doesn't affect you, but you have been brainwashed to believe that you catch a cold. Therefore when people have a cold, instead of just watching and not identifying with the cold, something within you subconsciously from your upbringing believes a cold is normal and you say to yourself, "Everybody catches a cold." And sure enough, you do also. I recall when I was about nine years also, I used to run out every day when it snowed in my t-shirt, and play in the snow. I would do this every day my mother didn't see me. I had fun. I'd throw snowballs, build a snowman, yet I never caught a cold. One day my mom saw me going out in a t-shirt and she screamed at me, "Robert, get back in the house and put on your coat this instant or you'll catch your death of cold." Sure enough that day I caught a cold. Why? Because I identified with what my mom told me. After all she's my mom, she must know what she's talking about. Let's take something else, a cancer. What we call cancer, again, is impersonal. Yet when some of us identify with it we appear to have it also. If we looked at cancer like we do a cold, the cancer would disappear by itself. Yet what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you've been diagnosed as having cancer? Death, and so you start deteriorating. But in reality there are no cancers. There are no colds. There's nothing but consciousness. Yet, you are seeing the world, you are believing the world and you are identifying with the world. It's not the world or any condition that has come upon you. You have created your own condition by what you have accepted, believed, and identified with. Take a look at your life right now. Think what's going on in your life. Are you happy, are you miserable, are you healthy, are you sick, are you rich, are you poor? Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is everything you are is what you have identified with, somewhere, somehow. There is no power outside of your Self. There is no world outside of your Self. There is no creation outside of your Self. There is no universe outside of your Self. There is no God outside of your Self. You have given birth to all of these things. You are playing a game with yourself. You're putting on an act. Why? Ask yourself. This is called, in Sanskrit, leela, the grand illusion, the grand play, or maya, which is the grand illusion. You identify with the world and you suffer accordingly. Think about what's hurting you right now, what upsets you and makes you angry. Something you have to do, something that's going on at home. It makes no difference what it is. The fact remains that you’re giving it power because you are identifying with it. Now to solve that problem all we have to do is to change identification. We have to start identifying with the reality. But you say, "I don't know what the reality is." Then all you've got to do is to get rid of that which is not the reality, and the reality will come by itself. In other words you have to realize and start working on yourself. By knowing that I am not the world, I am not the physical universe, I am not my situation, I am not my body or my mind. Therefore who am I? That is the question. You never answer. You merely remove the obstacles, for you can never really know who you are by verbalizing it. It is only in the silence that the ultimate truth comes to you. It is only when your mind becomes quiescent, calm, like a motionless lake. A motionless lake reflects the stars, the moon, the sun. But a lake that’s noisy, vibrating, reflects absolutely nothing. In the same instance, a being whose mind has become motionless, whose mind has become calm, relaxed, peaceful, begins to reflect their own divinity, begins to reflect pure awareness, nirvana, emptiness. That always comes by itself. The ultimate reality is already there. You do not have to search for it. No one can give it to you. You have simply to remove the things of the world. A person asks, "Am I to give up the world? Am I to give up my profession, my family, and go and meditate in a cave?" Of course not. You are to give up these things mentally, not physically. Physically you give up nothing, but mentally you begin to realize, "Everything in my life is an emanation of my own mind." As you start to give up these things mentally, by realizing, "I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not the world, I am not any condition," you will notice you become calmer and calmer, happier and happier. Yet your body will continue to do whatever it came here to do. But the things will be done better, for you are not interfering with them. You are no longer interfering in trying to make things happen. As an example say you're a salesman. Before you used to plan and scheme how you're going to make the sale. But with this new knowledge there is no one to plan and there is no one to scheme for your mind is becoming empty. Yet your body will continue it's work of being a salesman, and because there was no one to interfere, you will become a super salesman. Why? Because the real nature of the universe is total joy and total bliss. That is your real nature, for you are the universe. And, as you get yourself out of the way, the same power that appears to grow the grass, that causes the flowers to bloom, that grows oranges on orange trees, will take care of you. You have nothing to fear. How do you start? By realizing you know nothing. Not by trying to be smart and recite affirmations that you learnt in a book, but to realize, "I know absolutely nothing. I have no idea how a tree got here. It just appeared. What came first, the seed or the tree? I don't know. How did Henry's dog get here? Where did his dog come from? Where did the first dog come from? Nobody knows. Where did the earth come from, the moon, the stars?" You have to admit to yourself divine ignorance, that you know absolutely nothing. That's how it begins. This is also why the great Sage Lao Tze said, "The more you talk, the less you know. The less you say, the more you know." Why? Because when you talk you're talking about the world and worldly things. What else do you talk about? And since the world doesn't really exist the way you think it does, then you don't know too much. But the less you say, it means you're beginning to go within, to dive deep within yourself, where your reality is. Then you begin to become your reality itself. That's how it begins, by saying, "I know nothing." The next step is to realize that you exist. That's the only thing I'm sure about, I exist. Who exists? I do. Well, who is this I that seems to exist? Where did it come from? I don't know. Who doesn't know? I. We're back to I. So something within you begins to tell you that I is responsible for everything I believe. Where did I come from? Who am I? You begin to search for the source of the I. You do not affirm where the source is. There is no use affirming the source is consciousness if you have not experienced it, but what you do is you follow the I to its source. How do you do this? By asking yourself "Who am I?" or "What am I?" Taking a pause and asking yourself again, "Who am I?" As you keep practicing this something very interesting is going to ensue. You are going to find that you’re becoming happier and happier, that you’re acquiring a feeling of immortality. You don't know why. You just feel it. All these truths become revealed to you. You start to understand that there never was a time when you were born, and you don't even prevail now as a body. There will never be a time when you disappear. You, as consciousness, has always existed as pure awareness, as absolute reality. This will all come to you. You will try to share this with your friends and your relatives, yet you will not be able to, for there are no words that can describe it. What has happened to you is you have merged in consciousness. You have become the Self and you realize that the whole universe is none other than yourself. There are not two selves, or three selves or four selves. There is only one Self and you are that. It becomes very clear and very evident to you. Then you become an asset to the world, for you treat everyone as you would treat yourself. This is all done automatically. I'm trying to use words to explain it. When it happens to you those words become foreign. You become a living embodiment of consciousness. Consciousness is your real nature. What you think you are now does not exist. It is mass hypnosis. The situations you are involved in are false. Nothing is as it appears to be. Therefore begin to work on yourself. Find out if what I'm saying is true. Do not believe a word I say. Experiment on yourself. You do not have to go anywhere. Just where you are yourself at home, begin to spend more time diving within yourself, watching, witnessing. When thoughts pop up, simply ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come? To me. I think them. Who am I? What is the source of the I?" As you do this, my friends, I can assure you a marvelous change will take place in your life, sooner or later, and you will become free. No one is doing anything to anyone. We are not the body or the mind, either subjective, or objective or universal. It only appears that way to you when you’re dreaming the mortal dream. But when you wake up that no longer exists. SL: How do we know that we were always here and that we will always be here. Isn't that just a theory? R: It's a theory if you have not experienced it. (SL: How can you experience that?) Find out for yourself. Go within. (SL: Then if you experience it your mind is still there.) How do you know? Your mind is what hinders you. (SL: The mind is a part of the source.) No, it's not. (SL: Everything is.) Nothing is because nothing exists. (SL: What do you mean nothing exists?) To be part of the source means that the source had to produce these conditions. That's what you’re implying. But in reality what you call the source, or absolute reality, only knows itself as consciousness. It doesn't know anything about this. You do. You know that there is a world, but the world really is not there. What you call the source only knows itself, that's all. But find this out for yourself. (SL: But then you're saying everything always existed, the dog always existed too.) In the appearance. (SL: We're an appearance too.) Your body is an appearance, the world is an appearance, but it's not really you. You are not the world as it appears. You appear to be. (SL: But we all work together. It all goes together.) No, it doesn't. It appears that way. But there’s no one to work together. There are no others. It's just as if you tell me, "The sky is blue." But if you go into the atmosphere you'll find that there is no sky and there is no blue. It doesn't exist. (SL: But I'm relating to you because you're there. Without you being there I don't have the same illusion, if that's what you want to call it. If the dog isn't there I don't have the same perception, even though that perception, that leela, whatever you call it, is very important.) That's how you see it from where you are coming from. (SL: I mean, just being, I don't mean it's important to the person as a person. It's important because that's what life means.) To whom? To you. (SL: To me. That's my life.) That's how you see it right now. But let's imagine you are in kindergarten. (SL: Kinder…pardon?) (Laughter) Kindergarden. SK: No, grade school. R: In grade school. When you were in kindergarten that was your life, and that's all you knew. (SL: Fine.) But then you grow up. (SL: Good.) And now you're somewhere else, and you're saying, that's your life. (SL: Good.) But life is a series of growing. (SL: Good.) Therefore you'll grow out of what you believe now, one day, and you'll see something else completely. (SL: But you know that after certain stage you begin to suspect that this is so. But I still feel grateful to the flower, to whatever is here.) When you were in kindergarten you felt grateful for the spit balls you were throwing and the hair you were pulling. That was your reality. So now this is what you are telling me about yourself is your reality. But there is more to it than that. (SL: I don't mean to contradict you.) You can! (SL: But if you obliterate all of that, then you have to be nothing!) That's it, you got it! You got it. That's it! When you become nothing, you're everything. SJ: Is there ever a point that one feels they know something? R: There is nothing to know because you are everything. Consciousness knows itself. (SJ: So there is no knowing. There's not going to be any knowing.) There is no knowing as it is now. There's just pure awareness, total awareness, pure intelligence. You know yourself. (SJ: And you know everything else as yourself, but as to where it came from, what it is, you don't really know?) That all becomes clear to you. It didn't come from anywhere because it never existed. It's only an appearance, and it appears real to you at this time. But there will come a time when all of this will be gone and you'll be free. SB: So Robert, the only thing to really do is to hold on to the nothing, but then there is nobody to hold on to it. R: When you follow the I to its source the I dissolves into consciousness, which is called nothing, no-thing. An another word for that is bliss, harmony, love, you become a living embodiment of that and you can't explain it because there are no words. Remember the finite can never comprehend the infinite. You can only find the truth in the silence, not by words. (SB: To the mind it looks like zero, but in reality it’s reality. Right?) The mind is zero. (SB: It's just the opposite then. The mind thinks it's something and that the nothing is zero. And in truth what you're saying is, the zero is the real reality and the mind is really zero.) Well you can say, "All the world loves a lie. Therefore when I tell the truth, it thinks I'm telling a lie." SK: So the dreamer can't wake up because he's not dreaming a dream. (R: Exactly.) I don't understand that. R: No one is dreaming. You appear to be dreaming as long as you believe you're a body. But when you awaken you will realize that you've always been awake. There never was a time when you were anything else but pure consciousness. SG: Would that be referred to sometimes as your soul, then? R: No, the soul is part of your mind. The soul doesn't exist. You're giving credence to that. Just like reincarnation, karma and the rest of it. As long as you believe you're a body, then all these things are true and real, but as soon as you realize you're not the body or the mind everything else becomes redundant. SB: It's like the soul is supposedly an individual and you're saying there is no such thing because there is only consciousness, which is not an individual. R: It's the same thing as people believe, when they die, their soul becomes something else. You go to a causal plane, or an astral plane or whatever. That is true for people who believe they’re the body, because you are creating all these things, but as soon as you wake up to your true nature, none of that exists. ST: Robert, how do we appear to you? R: As my Self. There is only one Self. When I speak of myself, I don't mean as Robert. I mean as consciousness. There is only one ultimate reality and I-am is that. SB: But you see our body, right? You see a body. R: Yes. I see a body like a mirror sees reflections. You see reflections from a mirror, but you're not the reflection. You're the mirror. In the same way, I see everything as a superimposition upon the Self. There is one Self, and I-am is that. (SB: Can you see actually consciousness? Does consciousness have an appearance, a physical appearance?) Nope, I see you. Like when you go to a movie and you see the images on a screen. You forget about the screen and you think the images are real. But if you try to grab them you grab, the screen, because there really are no images. So I see you as consciousness. So I see the screen rather than the impressions. (SB: But you can't see it with your physical eyes. Do you feel it or do you know it? A knowingness way of it or beingness way of it?) I experience oneness. (SB: Oh.) Everything is one. Things come and go but the oneness never changes. (SB: Then you feel that you are each person.) No. I feel that I am a unit, unity. There's one. Nothing is divided. There's only oneness. SK: Do you feel it or do you know it? (SD: Omnipresence?) R: Omnipresence. Feeling and knowing are both wrong. There is a state of being where you just become that, and the only other word for it is silence. (SB: Is it a great happiness?) Total bliss! (SK: One of the songs you play says existence, knowledge, bliss. Is that true?) Sat-chit-ananda, existence, knowledge, bliss, those are all part of reality. That's all reality. But it's beyond that. You’re looking for words to explain it. Again remember, the finite cannot describe or explain the infinite. There are no words to describe it. You've got to dive within yourself and prove it to yourself. This is the reason I tell you so often, do not believe me. Do not believe a word I say. Why should you? But dive within yourself and find out. Prove it to yourself and then come and argue with me. Let's sing some more songs. (After singing) SQ: Did you say that there is no karma and there is no reincarnation? (R: Yes.) Would you put karma on the current Middle east crisis? R: The current Middle east crisis is a part of the illusion. (SQ: It’s an illusion?) It’s part of what you see. It's something that you have created in your mind. (SQ: Well I think right now they’re not coming from my mind.) Sure they are. Right now we are sitting here too, but that's your perception. The whole idea is to transcend the perceptions and we see something else completely. (SQ: What is my perception?) What you’re telling me. (SQ: Why would I…unclear) Of course. it's like you are having a dream and in your dream we're talking like this. And you are telling me what you just told me and I'm telling you it's a dream. But you say, "No Robert it's not, can't you see we are all sitting here? I can walk over and pinch you," and you come over and pinch me in the dream. And you say, "There is a war and there is a war going on in the dream." Everything is happening, but then you wake up. (SQ: I can't really understand. Why is there no karma and no reincarnation?) Because you believe in it. Because you believe in it. Only because you believe in it. (SQ: Well.) That is why it exists. (SQ: But then why are you saying they don't exist?) I'm taking of my own experience. (SQ: But can you prove it? (students laugh) I mean I can't really understand what you're saying.) I don't want you to. (SQ: I know but it's different.) Whatever I would tell you wouldn't matter because they’re just words. This is why I say, "Find out for yourself." (SQ: Well I have.) That’s where you are right now. But there’s more than that. (SQ: Oh. I know there’s more. Are you saying that you are better than I am?) No I'm not, I'm worse than you are. (laughter) (SQ: But you don't know that. How do you know that?) Because you just told me. (laughter) (SQ: These are just words.) That's right they’re words. That’s why we’re talking. (SQ: So if you go into consciousness there's nothing?) What is pure consciousness? (SQ: Well I would think that from what you say, I hope we can communicate in it or God consciousness whatever you want to call it. It's just consciousness.) Why do you say something that you haven't experienced? (SQ: Well I had experienced it because you said so.) So you've experienced it? (SQ: Yeah I have experienced it.) Then you'd have nothing to say. (SQ: So, I don't know about that. Your statement of no karma and no reincarnation I'm solving that because I’ve found them to be true and so have lots of people.) Well enjoy it. Enjoy it (SQ: Well you've got to find your own concepts. You learn to ride on the things you feel are correct.) Dive within yourself and find out. Go deep within yourself. The answers are there. (SQ: Okay I think I understand there’s no argument.) SG: Well why should there be reincarnation if what we really are hasn't been born and doesn't die? R: But we don't know that. (SQ: Yeah but if one experiences that like an explosion in the self.) Then there is nothing else. (SQ: Right. But I wondered about, why should there be reincarnation of a person if all we truly are isn't born and doesn't die?) Because she believes she is the body. As long as you believe that you are the body there is not one body, there are many bodies. (SQ: I can't agree with what you're saying Robert, that I am not the body. I know that I am not just the body, I know that.) But you believe in your body. You believe that your body is real. (SQ: Well for now.) Why should it be otherwise now? (SQ: You also said there was no soul?) Umm, for whom is there a soul? For the body. (SQ: Yeah.) As long as you believe that you are the body then there is a soul, there is karma, there is reincarnation, then there is God there is everything. But as soon as you transcend the body then it all disappears. (SQ: Robert are you an atheist?) Umm? (SQ: Are you an atheist?) (Robert laughs) I believe that God is all things. What we call God is another name for consciousness. SK: Did you meet Nuni Yogananda? (R: Which one?) Shri Ramana Nuni Yogananda? (R: No.) SN: How did we get in the state of hypnosis? R: You never did. You believe you did that is why everything happens. But you are completely free. (SN: I am, but my mind isn't.) As long as you believe that it'll be bound. You have to go within yourself in the silence and see for whom the mind is. (SN: But how can you speak of freedom if you see you're still bound by the laws of mortal existence, you're breathing yourself?) Say that again? (SN: But how can you speak of freedom if we can see with our eyes that you're still bound by mortal existence that ties you to logic?) You use the mind to destroy the mind. So when you examine the mind it disappears because it never existed. (SN: But can you prove transcendence of the body by ceasing the breath and heart beat?) By ceasing what? (SN: The breath and the heart beat?) Ceasing the breath and the heart beat has nothing to do with transcendental meditation. It's just totally another feat of the mind. (SN: But transcendental that we use is beyond reason and even beyond the mind.) If you go beyond the mind you become free. Everything else is of the mind. (SN: If you are still longing for breathing and eating then you must be part of the body which isn't separate of the mind.) It's all part of the mind. But when the mind is transcended the body will still eat and will still do everything it does. But it has nothing to do with you. ST: Robert the last time we were talking about angels. (R: Umm?) Is there such a thing as angels? (R: In your mind. As long as you believe you are the mind and the body. Angels exist, the devil exists, everything exists. But as soon as you realize who you are, then you become free and liberated.) SL: But isn't that part of the creativity? Like an artist to make a painting because he wishes to? (R: The creativity comes out of your mind.) Yes but of your own free will. (R: Of course. As long as you think that you are the mind you can do all kinds of things.) But you know that they don't exist but you enjoy the play. (R: Who enjoys?) Whoever is here. (R: Who is that?) Whoever it is. You won't catch me on that one. (Robert and students laugh) (R: When the mind is gone everything is bliss and everything takes care of itself.) Yeah but mind is also bliss.) (R: The mind is a conglomeration of thoughts. The mind is a bunch of thoughts of the past and the future.) SX: Is emotions just generated by thoughts then? R: Yes. Everything is part of your mind and part of your thinking process. That’s why the mind has to be transcended. (SX: Your story about the fig. At the centre of everything is nothingness.) Emptiness. (SX: Emptiness?) Emptiness is consciousness. SK: And the mind has a hard time accepting that it doesn't exist, is it right? R: The mind will not accept it at all. So you have to examine the mind by watching it, by being mindful. By asking, "To whom does the mind come?" SX: So it's ultimate fear is death then? (R: Fear of death?) No thought, no life for the mind. (R: The mind does that. The mind plays all kinds of games. Death, birth and everything else in between. When the mind goes everything goes.) SD: Does that mean that once the mind has been transcended there is always emptiness? R: There is emptiness as consciousness, as bliss. It's not emptiness like you know. It's a cessation of thought and there is a total joy. A total bliss that is beyond understanding. That takes its place. Let's try to experience it. You can practice this in the privacy of your home. So close your eyes, try to focus your attention on your breath. Just watch yourself breathing. If any thoughts come to you just ignore them. Become the observer of your breath. (pause) Now ask yourself the question, "Who observes the breath? Who is the witness to my breathing?" And the answer comes, "I am." Now this is the meditation. With your respiration as you inhale you say, "I" as you exhale you say, "am", "I am." (tape ends)

Robert: Someone told me last week, "Robert, you gave a great talk on Sunday, and you will probably attract millions of people." They were wrong on both counts. First of all, I do not give talks. You have to get to the point where you are tired of listening to talks. Then you will begin to make headway in spiritual practice. As long as you still want to hear talks you have a long way to go before you wake up. It's not the talk that's going to do it for you. It's a click that takes place inside yourself when you are in the right state of consciousness. Satsang is to bring you to the right state of consciousness, without words, just by being, then everything happens by itself. But if you come to listen to a talk it becomes intellectual, conceptual, ideas, words, and that causes confusion. So what attitude should you have? Even when you hear me talk you should not believe I'm talking. You should open your heart and allow your real nature to express itself, and it will, if you allow it to do so. And as far as crowds are concerned, I am not interested in having crowds. I am not ambitious, I have no goals, and I'm not seeking anything. I'm doing what I came here to do. I didn't plan it. I didn't say I want to be a teacher, as compared to the electrician, or as compared to a positive thinking teacher, or as a philosopher or a preacher. I'm none of those things. I am nothing. You can perhaps say that I am a mirror for you. What you see in me is what you are. And as you meditate on yourself you will begin to see me as your Self. For in truth there is only one Self. And you are that. Expect nothing, and you'll have everything. Be spontaneous. Concern yourself only with the present. Forget about the past and do not worry about the future. Be what you are, absolute reality. Now what is absolute reality? It's really the fourth state of consciousness. There is sleeping, dreaming, and the waking state. That is a limitation for us. But there’s a fourth state, that is called by many names, absolute reality, pure awareness, nirvana, emptiness, many other names. Most people never get into that state in this life, for no one has told them about it. They are satisfied with dreaming, waking and sleeping. That's like kindergarten. And there are people who are afraid of going into another state because they believe that they've got to give up something. They feel they'll lose something if they experience another state of consciousness. In reality, you do not lose anything. The fourth state is simply extended awareness. It's like this. Imagine you're looking through a keyhole and all you can see through the keyhole is someone being killed by someone else. You see a man killing a woman through the keyhole, and all of your concepts revolve around that. That's how we see the world, through a keyhole. We see a part of the picture. But let's say you open the door instead of looking through the keyhole. You would look to the left, and you would see perhaps in a previous life the woman killed the man. It's in reverse. Now in this life the man is killing the woman, and you would understand what's going on. Then you would go further. You would look to the right and you would see they're both together again, laughing and having a good time, and you would realize that no one killed and no one kills. It's all a game. You would see the complete picture. But as long as you only look through the keyhole you're going to see a limited view of things and you become judgmental. This is why we’re told not to judge, because we only get a limited picture. Everything that you see in your life is looking through a keyhole. When you awaken the door opens, that's all. You then understand why everything is happening, and where it comes from. This is the reason why Sages remain so calm and they never react to anything. Not because they don't care. They see the whole picture. The door has been opened for them. And they see the person who wins the lottery and has fifty-million dollars. They earned it, somewhere, somehow. There is no such thing as luck and there is no such thing as chance. And then they see the end picture, when they wake up, they laugh at the whole game. For no one lost anything and no one won anything. It's like a movie. The movie has a beginning, a middle and an end. And when the movie is over there's the screen. The screen is the reality. The movie is just impressions upon the screen. All impressions have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most people go through their life as an impression. They react to everything they hear, see, smell, touch and taste. They're always angry, they're always mad because they are not getting what they want. This is looking through the keyhole. As you begin to go within, as you take time to forget a little bit about the world, and you begin to ask yourself, "From whence cometh the world? Where does the world come from?" and you begin to investigate within yourself, "Where does my world come from? How did it originate?" As you begin to do this every day, every day, every day, as you begin to question yourself, "Why was I born? Who am I? Why am I going through this experience? Who is going through this experience?" the more you do this, and the less you react to your conditions, the sooner you will awaken. So awakening isn't something you have to search for. Awakening isn't something that somebody can give you. Awakening is your true nature. It's your real Self. You are already awake but you believe you’re asleep. You believe you’re human, that you are the doer. You believe all of your experiences are real. And then, if you go a little higher, you think all of your experiences are karmic. But I say to you there is no karma, and there are no experiences. You are bright and shining just the way you are. But if you want to play the game of karma, you can. It's a game. Now where did it come from? You created it out of your mind. There are those people who teach courses on karma, reincarnation and they believe that's it. So naturally you are creating your own destiny. And the joke is you keep coming back again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, having all sorts of experiences, until one century from now, or one billion years from now, you get tired of playing the game. And you say, "Wait a minute. I seem to be going around in a circle. Does it ever end?" And then you finally ask the question, "For whom is the game? Who believes in their humanity? Who believes in their experiences? Who is it that seems to suffer or who is it that seems to be happy?" Remember human happiness and human suffering are two sides of the same coin. There is no difference. You get tired of the whole thing. So you pose the question to yourself, "For whom is this karma? For whom is this world? For whom is this game? Who has to go through these things?" But instead of doing this most people go to psychiatrists, to psychologists, to preachers, to ministers and so forth. They never get the right answer, because those aforementioned people tell you how to deal with effects. You go to a doctor and you say, "My arm hurts when I hold it like this." So he says, "Don't hold it like that." And that's what we all do. We’re looking for answers from external means, and you can never get an answer to your problems or to anything from the world, because the world changes continuously. One time the answer may be this way and another time the answer may be that way, depending on circumstances, depending on the time. As an example, fifty years ago if you had a cold and you went to a doctor they would draw blood. They would give you all kinds of antibiotics and they would give you everything that was in style in those days. Today if you have a cold they do something else. Everything changes and people who are going to do what's in vogue at the time, but the real answer is within yourself. The solution is within you. Yet you go about it in the wrong way when you're looking to solve a problem with another problem, which is your mind. You cannot use your mind to solve a problem, because your mind is the cause of the problem to begin with. And you cannot ask anybody else for the solution, because they are using their mind to give you the solution what they think is right. The answer of course is to know your Self. When you focus the attention on your Self with a capital 'S,' the problem becomes resolved automatically. How do you focus your attention on your Self? By asking, "What am I?" or, "Who am I?" Simply ask, "Who am I?" when anything takes place in your life that you wish to change. Do not try to change the thing that is disturbing you. Even if you do it'll pop up somewhere else. Go right to the source. "What is the source of my depression? I am. I am depressed. Who is the I that is depressed? Where did it come from?" You never answer. You just have a listening attitude when you ask the question. and the answer comes back you say, "The depression comes to me. I feel it. I have it." Then you have to realize that it’s the ‘I’ that has it, because you just said, "I have it." So the ‘I’ has the problem, not you. It is always your personal-I that has the problem. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. Just understanding this, awakens you. ‘I’ is not the Self. The personal-I is the ego. So when you say, "I don't feel good, I don't feel happy, I am worried," or anything else in life, even when you say, "I feel good, I feel wonderful," you're still talking about your personal-I. And your personal-I is part of the world of duality. Therefore when you say, "I feel good in the morning," the first thing that comes along that you don't like you'll say, "I feel bad." You do not want to use that method. What you want to say is to yourself, "This has nothing to do with me. I feels bad. I feels good." That's not bad English, it’s just showing you how to talk to yourself. I is separate from you. You have nothing to do with I. Just being able to see that resolves your problem. If you will try it you will see I'm right. When you get depressed, when you feel out of sorts, when you feel something is wrong, when you feel angry, or whatever, ask yourself, "Who feels this? I do." And then realize, "I have nothing to do with myself." Your perfection is always shining. You are pure consciousness. You are not the personal-I. Let the personal-I have all the problems it chooses. It has nothing to do with you. But observe for yourself, become the witness to the fact that the personal-I has the problem, and not you. That's all you have to do. Just watch it and look, intelligently, and see where the problem comes from. Then you ask, "If the personal-I has this problem and not me, where did the personal I come from to make me feel that I've got a problem?" That's the mystery. Don't try to be smart and answer the question, because it's your ego answering. Ask yourself, "Where does the personal-I come from?" Or you can just say, "Who am I?" or "What am I?" You never answer, yet you will notice something very interesting beginning to happen, when you get to that stage. You'll notice that you're starting to feel better, and better and better and you even begin to laugh at yourself. Why? Because you're going to the source of your personal-I. And the source of your personal-I is absolute reality, consciousness. Which means, of course, that your personal-I does not exist. It never existed. It's an optical illusion. You don't have a personal-I. And if you don't have a personal-I you do not have any of the problems that come with it. This means that you are not the body-mind phenomena. You are not the doer. You are not the sufferer. You are not the person that you think you are. For all these things are attached to the personal-I, and if that goes away everything goes away with it, and you become totally free. Then you begin to feel omnipresence, for your real Self is not personal. Your real Self is the Self as the universe. Your real Self is everything. Everything is the Self. You realize that your body is sort of an impression on the Self, but it has no power of its own. It doesn't even exist. The Self exists. Consciousness exists as itself and not as the body. Where does the body come from? If the body doesn't exist, why do I see it? Ask yourself, "Who sees it?" and we get right back to the personal-I. For the answer is, "I see it. Who am I?" You're back to the personal-I again. Don't you see? If the personal-I is gone there is no body, there's no mind, there's only consciousness. But as long as you believe there is a body, there's a personal-I. Therefore you cannot say, "I am consciousness appearing as a body." That's wrong. Consciousness does not appear as any body. It doesn't have to. Consciousness is always selfcontained pure awareness. It is something we cannot even discuss, for there are no words to describe it. It's something you have to find out for yourself. But I can tell you for sure, it has nothing to do with your body. It has nothing to do with your experiences. It has nothing to do with karma. It has nothing to do with your God. It has nothing to do with the universe. It has nothing to do with self-realization or liberation. It just is. And it is beyond our finite thinking. There are no words to describe the infinite. It's enough that you do away with all your concepts of body, mind and I. Everything will come by itself. Your job is to get rid of the concept of I. Your job is to get rid of the idea that you are a body, and that you are a mind, and that you are a doer. Always remember, what appears to be a body will do whatever it's supposed to do by itself, but it has nothing to do with you. If you can only see it like that for one day, you'll be amazed at what happens to you. Try this experiment tomorrow. When you get up and you just open your eyes and get out of bed, do not pay any attention to yourself as a body. In other words, just become mindful, like they teach you in Buddhism. Watch yourself getting out of bed. Watch yourself going to the bathroom. Watch yourself brushing your teeth. What I'm trying to tell you is that your body will do everything without your help. It's only when you identify yourself with the body, or as the body, that the problems begin. But if you do not identify yourself with the body you'll be happy. For happiness is your true nature. Really happy. Not happy because something came your way that you like. You will be happy-happy for no reason. You'll just be happy. You will not go about laughing all the time, or getting hysterical about it. You will just feel an innate joy. Yet your body will appear to go about its business. It's like the example I gave you of an electric fan. You pull out the plug but the blades are still turning. So when you practice that experiment, and you don't pay any attention to your body, you'll pull out the plug and you're watching your body going about its business. It will go about its business as long as it has to, until the allotted time comes when it falls and drops and you're rid of it. Or the blades may stop turning before the body falls, and you become totally immersed in the Self. Then it's a completely different ball game. It becomes sort of difficult to explain, because you are no longer the body, yet the body appears there for people to look at. It seems to be real. But you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nobody, nobody’s home. There is no mind and there’s no doer. And people who talk to you and say, "But I see you doing. I see you thinking and I see your body." So the example you give them is the electric fan. You pull out the plug, but the blades are still turning. So you see the body is still functioning. What has happened to you is you have entered the fourth state of consciousness, beyond waking, beyond sleeping, beyond dreaming. You have expanded your awareness. So the point I'm trying to make is this. You do not have to be afraid that you'll lose something if you go into the fourth state of consciousness. Some people say they have a family and they may think, "Well I'll lose interest in my family, I'll lose interest in my work, I'll lose interest in my children, I'll lose interest…" it doesn't work that way. Your body will still be the same as it was before, as far as appearances go. You will do a better job than you ever did in your life. You will be more loving. You'll be kinder. You'll have a great compassion as far as your body is concerned. Yet you will realize, "I am the Self. I am is the Self," same thing. "I am that I am." It will be very clear to you and you will make your life simple. You will not find fault. You will not react. You will simply be your Self, and you'll be happier than you've ever been in your life. But again, there is nothing you have to give up. There is nothing you have to lose. Some people think you become disgusted with the world, and you become a hermit. That's not true. Can't you see, to become disgusted with the world, there has to be someone left to become disgusted. And if there’s nobody home you cannot be disgusted with anything. So anybody who comes to you and they tell you, "I'm enlightened and I hate the world. I have nothing to do with people any longer. I have to live by myself now," smile at them, and realize they’re worse off than they were before, because there is an I left who is personal. They're telling you, "I have to be alone. I have to get away from the world and I have to go live on a mountain top." A self-realized being can be anywhere. They don't care where they live. They can be in the market place and be just as happy as they are if they’re living in an ashram. It doesn't make any difference. They're home wherever they are and they are always filled with joy. They can be in Iraq and get bombed. It wouldn't matter to them. They get bombed, they get bombed. They don't, they don't. There are no preferences. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should. So the question arises, "Why do I have to go to all this trouble so I can become selfrealized?" That's really an ignorant question. Remember your real nature is light, consciousness, sat-chit-ananda. You're not trying to be self-realized. You simply want to get rid of the stuff that tells you you're not. For someone has told you, or you have read in a book, or because of previous sadhana that you have practiced, that to be liberated means an end to the dream of maya. And you have stated what maya is, you realize it's all illusion, you want it to come to an end. So you put the practice first in your life. Whatever is first in your life right now is what you are. Think what's important to you and that's your life, for you have chosen. But if you want to become liberated and awaken to your Self then you will deny everything that has to do with the personal-I, mentally. It begins in your mind. Do not attempt to change things physically. Remember that if you try to change things physically you have to suffer the consequences. Everything begins and ends in your mind. You begin by wondering or looking for the I, where it goes every night when you go to sleep. Where do I go? And from where does it arise? When you first awaken in that instant, there is no I. But as you keep waking up all of your problems, all of your troubles, all of your worldly things, become aware to you. The I is awake. I feel this, I feel that, I feel everything. Where was the I prior to that? Where did it go before I woke up? And as you are falling asleep, the same thing. As you know before you fall asleep, the I leaves you. Where did it go? And you're sound asleep without the I. As you think about these things, as you ponder on the I, this is pure meditation. This is the highest meditation, following the I to its source. Who needs these worldly things? Who feels hurt when they are gone? And who feels happy when they have them? Watch your attachments. Become aware of what you really are. See what bothers you the most, what annoys you, what makes you angry, what makes you upset. Watch yourself. And always realize, and I'll reiterate this over and over again, and I'll tell you about this all the time, always be aware that what is happening to the I is not you. You are not the I. You are consciousness. You are sat-chit-ananda. You are absolute reality, pure awareness. That is your real nature and that’s who you are. You are not the I. And the way you find out your real nature is by following the personal-I to its source. Finding the source from where the I arises, and finding the source where the I sets. As you practice these things you're practicing pure meditation, and you will be free. Any questions? SF: Robert I have a question. Inquiring "Who am I?" and the affirmation, "I am" which one is more potent or quicker or are they the same? (R: It depends on the maturity of the person. They're all different, use "I am.") From my perspective, mentally saying a mantra is better than vocal saying. Is that also crying for "I am?" (R: Mentally saying it is better than what?) Mentally than having to say it aloud? (R: It makes no difference. When you say it to yourself you can say it during the day or when you are around people or everything else. When you say it out loud you have to do it by yourself.) (laughter) SF: Another question I think is important but is chanting more advantageous than listening to music? Like om, or any of that kind of music? R: Again it depends on the person. Chanting is very, very good. The purpose of chanting is to make your mind one-pointed. So you can realize that you are in silence and you are quiet and you’re still and you’re able to sit in the silence. As you know when you chant for about fifteen-twenty minutes or a half hour, you feel very comfortable and very relaxed and very mentally still. Your mind becomes still. Then you can watch your mind more closely. You can ask, "Who am I?" more sincerely after a chant and the question will go deeper into the Self. But when you are doing worldly things for instance coming home from work. You have your mind on the TV and then you ask, "Who am I?" it's more superficial. It doesn't go in deep enough. But when you chant for a while and then you say, "Who am I?" or then you say, "I am." It goes much deeper into consciousness. (SF: So the question is: Is chanting better than listening to the music?) I should think so, yes. Because your entire being gets involved with the chant. SK: Robert, just a question about the loss of body consciousness. It seems that in the morning it seems there is a real body consciousness and as the day progresses then I sort of lose it. R: Well as you observe yourself in the morning being body conscious ask yourself the question, "To whom does it come? Who feels this?" and then it will come to you that, "I feel this." I feel that I am the body. Ask yourself further, "Who is the I that feels it is the body?" And then the answer will come, "I do." So you ask, "Who am I?" It always goes back to who am I? And you follow it to the source by repeating, "Who am I?" SK: It seems that it is more clear in the morning, the first half of the day. I'm not saying that I feel it all the time, but I still feel peace in the morning and then if I go on to the afternoon or evening it seems to be less. R: Sure because when you get up in the morning you have just come out of deep sleep and you are in the state of pure reality without knowing it. As you awaken from it you’re feeling the left over of the reality that you were in before. It stays with you so you feel blue and mellow in the morning but as you go into the day you become involved in the days activities. You hear about the war and you hear peoples problems. You pick up the collective unconscious of the human race and your mind really gets involved with the world. So you lose the "who am I?" But if you practice enough and you always catch yourself no matter what time of the day it is. You catch yourself thinking, you catch yourself getting involved in the world and you watch yourself and you ask the question, "To whom is this happening?" You will find that as the weeks and months pass you are becoming more mellow, more peaceful, more relaxed and happier and you’ll make headway. But stick to the practice under all circumstances. Let nothing stop you from practicing. And again if you can't practice sometime or if you get tired of practicing that method become the witness. Become mindful. Watch what your mind is thinking, become aware of what your body is doing. Become aware of the sensations in the body and mind. Then you can ask yourself, "To whom do these come? Who has these feelings? Who feels this? I do. Where does the I come from? What is the I? Who am I?" And remember always that the whole world is attached to the personal-I. When you abolish the I everything else will go with it and you’ll be free. ST: Robert did you say that when you are in that kind of awareness, you could be bombed or in another view, is it also the case it could be that a leader as Hussein or George Bush could be doing stuff if you not trying to be the doer. (R: Okay so what’s the question?) Well is it possible to be a realized in a position like those people? R: Oh I see what you mean. A self-realized person will never become a Saddam, it's impossible, because you are purifying your body to an extent. Where what appears to be the body becomes simple, uncomplicated. Your needs are very little. You do not become involved in bombing countries or doing anything like that. If you read the ancient manuscripts of India there have been many kings who were enlightened and they ruled for thousands of years as the stories go and they had peace and love and harmony in the country. So a truly enlightened person their life becomes harmonious, peaceful, joyous. They do not become involved in those things. It's unnecessary. SS: Are you saying that an enlightened being couldn't be a leader nowadays because it seems all governments are corrupt or not straight forward. (R: That is what I'm saying you wouldn't get into that situation. You would have to get involved in the situation.) But it would be beneficial for the world if you have an enlightened being as a leader, right? R: On the contrary because it means forcing enlightenment on others and you can't do it. You have to allow karma to have it's way. What I mean is you leave the world alone. The more awakened you become the less you have to do with the world. But yet you are the world, it's a great paradox. The Self is the Self of the universe and the world, but yet your body has nothing to do with those things. (ST: What do say about taking on karma. If an enlightened being was a leader he could take the karma of the whole nation?) He doesn't take on any karma because he would never be in that position. SH: But there were enlightened beings before… (R: Yeah.) And they were leaders for sure. SG: In the Gita, Arjuna the great warrior became a leader. (R: Arjuna was a great warrior but Krishna never did anything. Arjuna was a warrior, he was part of the warrior class. He was not awakened.) Excuse me?) (R: He was not awakened. Krishna told him to fight. But did Krishna fight?) He did fight because he was a warrior. (R: Because that is what he was. But he's speaking of the enlightened person himself. The enlightened person is Krishna. And he didn't fight.) SH: Arjuna was identified with his Koshotka. (R: Yes.) He had to fight he had no choice? R: Exactly. But a Krishna never fights. (students discuss this.) R: So you will never find a person who is enlightened who gets involved in those conditions. (SG: So what is an enlightened person?) Nothing! (SG: Yeah so that is what I mean he does not contribute either in a negative way or a positive way, he does nothing.) By his very presence he's a light in the world, by doing nothing, by not acting. SJ: Not to be condescending but on the outside you appear that you are very active. I'll bring up Delai Lama here. He’s very active. (R: The Delai Lama is a wonderful person so was Ghandi and others. But a self-realized person is always the Self and really does not get involved in anything. But the body may appear to be doing things.) So for example same for the Delai Lama? (R: Yes.) ST: That’s what I meant actually, that was my question. You may be self-realized and still be a Saddam Hussein or a George Bush? (R: No. You wouldn't be a Saddam Hussein and you wouldn't be a George Bush.) ST: Why can't you take on karma? (R: Don't have any left.) Not personal karma I mean world karma? (R: Because there is nobody left to take it on.) SG: In the world? (R: No in the person, he asked why can't an enlightened person…) He doesn't want to take the responsibility that’s not what he is after? SF: There is nobody left in him. SJ: There is no perception of karma because it doesn't exist anymore. R: There has to be somebody to take on karma. SG: If you thought it that way then the enlightened person because there can be karma for any person? (SH: There is no person there. The person vanished.) The person vanished yeah but the person is there because we see him and he is real. (SH: That is your idea of what you are seeing.) He's real, he is because if you go and lift the arm there is something there. R: Well that's your perception. SH: It's the way you look at it. SG: Well you think it’s everybody's perception. Each one of us has a different perception… (R: Yes.) …but there is no final word as far as I can see. (R: Find out for yourself.) I beg your pardon. (R: Find out for yourself. Go within yourself and find out.) It's as if there is a reality that you speak about. And there is also a reality of everyday, people get bored and suffer and enjoy food and die and then. I should like to pay respect to both realities. (R: Well do that.) Do you do that? (R: No you can do that, I don't do it.) Yes I do that. (R: Good.) One can do that. One can accept the reality that you are speaking about, it everybody's choice but there is also suffering beings, animals, plants, people, joyful being that I would not want to miss. (R: Well then keep coming back again and again and enjoy it. That’s your choice.) Right, well that's one possibility. (R: As long as you enjoy the things of this world you have to come back again and again and experience them.) It seems to me that one has to pay respect to other human beings? (R: Of course you do. Noone is saying not to do that. But you are speaking of two different levels.) Yes I see that one level doesn't fit in with the responsibility of the other. (R: In the relative world you should practice loving-kindness and peace and harmony and happiness, if that's your karma. But your karma could be that you become a murderer. You can't tell. That is why I say, not to get involved in the world but to find yourself first. And then see what you do.) You said first well then if I find myself first and I find myself doesn't exist then I don't have anything to do. (R: Then you'll see, then come and tell me. Find yourself then come and tell me what you want to do.) ST: Is it possible Robert that you can say that I have a body and there is a world? (R: Sure you can say that. You can say whatever you like.) What I'm trying to say in my perspective I'm realizing I'm not the body but I have a body and I have a mind. (R: Who has a body? Who does?) I do. (R: Who are you?) I am the background of all the paths of my awareness. (R: That is what you think you are. But you are pure intelligence.) Yeah but you call it that but that's what I'm feeling that I have to include my body and my mind. My mind can go millions of miles away out to a star. It's some millions of miles away and I'm sort of making contact of that life. (R: In your mind.) In my mind. Right it's just my mind but… R: So when you work on yourself and you transcend the mind you'll be free of that. (ST: Right and I also feel that I am astral projected. What do you say about that?) That is out of your mind. All that comes from your mind. Those are occult games that you play. It keeps you from becoming free, if you keep identifying with the occult world. Go beyond that. (ST: So you say that soul is still a part of the mind.) Yes, the body, the soul, God, extra terrestrials, planets, spirit everything comes from the mind. When the I goes all those things go also. (ST: What keeps you localized?) Your belief that you are the body. (ST: You are not the body and you are still localized?) We’re going back to that game again. That's your perception. SG: Well it's good to say well that is your perception but that is still not the final answer. It's an opinion. (R: Who's opinion?) Well it's yours? (R: I don't have any opinion.) Well you just said that to him, that what you were saying, it was just perception, so that is your opinion? (R: That is his perception I'm telling him but it's not an opinion it's a fact. It's a relative fact because that is what he sees right now.) Yeah so this moment it is a fact for him. (R: But I'm not speaking of any opinions. I'm answering him at his level. That is his perception.) Don't you think that that is your opinion. (R: No.) ST: So truth, beauty and goodness is a fact of your state of awareness, isn’t it? (R: No.) It's not a fact? Why then are you making differences, you say a realized human could not be a world leader? (R: I'm making differences for your sake.) But you said you could be anywhere in the market place but you could never be a George Bush or a Hussein? (R: No I couldn't.) Why is that? (R: Because there is nobody to be that.) SH: That's the final answer. SG: So there is nobody to be that, so you couldn't be Michelangelo or Leonardo Divinci. (R: That's right.) So like, it's all the same equation? (R: Exactly.) SF: You know I looked up the word 'relative' in the dictionary, according to relative sense it's not really so. My dictionary tells that because relative depends on something else for its existence. The dictionary itself says, "Relative is what it seems to be." But it has not self-independence. R: Yes. When we speak of absolute terms. It's difficult to explain. What I am doing is I am trying o answer you on your terms. For you to perceive it. SH: But in your case there is nobody left to be anything period, full stop. (R: I'm totally empty.) That's right, nobody there. (R: Nobody's home.) So it's not possible to be anybody or anything? (R: That's it. But if I talk like that most people would not be able to understand what I'm talking about. So I answer you on your terms.) ST: I have listened to Jim Kline and he talks in a similar fashion as you do, but he says that he has a body and he has a mind and he uses it when he pleases. R: Good for him. What can I do? SF: Very simple, you don't have to believe Robert and you don't have to believe Jim Kline you can go and find out for yourself and then see. (SJ: Yeah don't believe yourself either.) (laughter) SG: But I think for us to understand everything is tied up to it. (R: Well the point is not to understand it at all.) Kind of. (R: If you understand it you've got a problem.) (students laugh) What did you say? There is no problems did you say? (R: No if you understand anything I say you've got a problem.) ST: Robert what kind of experience is your daily experience. What's going on? You still have the senses, you see obviously you are looking at me. (R: Whatever happens is going on.) Yeah okay. (R: Whatever happens at the time.) But you still have the same functions, what are the differences between my body, my body has its functions receiving and sending. It's like a receiving and sending station. (R: There is no difference between my body and your body.) Yeah, right. You are still functioning, right? (R: That’s what you see. That's your perception.) No what I'm saying is what's your experience? (R: I don't have any experience.) None. (R: No.) Whatsoever. (R: No.) Let's say your body was in tremendous pain right now. Excruciating pain. (R: What have I got to do with that.) What would it be like for you. (R: My body would be in pain that's how it appears to you.) No, no, not to me, to you, I mean. (R: Don't worry about me, that's how you see it.) But I'm asking you what will happen, what will you experience? If you were in excruciating pain? (R: I experience whatever you expect me to experience.) No. I'm not talking about me. I'm asking you what is your experience? (R: It has to do with you because you perceive me as you perceive yourself.) Are you saying you cannot have pain? (R: There is nobody to have pain.) There is nobody. (R: But the body will appear like it has pain.) (Robert drinks water) SG: Did you feel that water. Did you feel that water touching your mouth? (R: Sure.) SF: It looks very clear to me. May I ask you, "What's the real question that is bothering you?" (ST: I don't know what you mean by that?) I mean there are honest questions and there are questions that are not too honest. Really what you are after? I mean what's your real question, the bottom of the question? (ST: I don't know I have no statement I'm just here to…) Sometimes we make questions not precisely because we want to know something deeply. We make questions because… SJ: We aren't aware of what Robert meant by that. (Robert's speech) SF: …Right that could be the case. (SM: That's the purpose.) Yeah. SH: It's incredible that somebody could really be totally, completely dis-identified with their body and their mind (students agree) He cannot accept that and he keeps challenging and asking and asking to try to defend itself. (R: And that's good.) And that's where he's at and that's great. It's what we’re here for. ST: I think I'm at the truth, you know. (SH: Of course you are!) R: That's good. (tape damage) SF: Are you taking some of Robert's suggestions and working on yourself? (ST: Are you asking me personal questions?) Yeah I'm asking you personal question. (ST: I will refuse to answer that because I'm not here to be questioned.) That's okay. ST: Yeah but I'm not coming to have any suggestion from you, I'm here for Robert. SJ: We’re all here for Robert and you don't listen to what he says then what's the use in keep on going just keep on doing this, you know. Maybe we could wait for Robert outside until you're ready to listen. R: No he's only come three times let him be where he is. SH: He can only hear as much as he hears at this point. You can't rush the process. (R: Of course.) He’s doing fine. SG: Different teachers makes me ask questions why have all perceptions? Or the perception that there is no perceptions? Why not include rather than exclude. It seems to me that the "who am I?" question which is the most profound of all is too improve everything. If you answer the question you have to include everything in the world. And at the end, I don't know because I have not arrived at the end. It's not a question of excluding but a question of including? R: See what happens is this. To include something there has to be somebody to accept, or somebody to listen or somebody to argue. But if there is nobody there, there is nothing to include where would it go? There's no place left… (SG: Then there is no question then?) There is a question for you, yes. (SG: There is nobody there?) There is nobody to answer. (SG: So there is no subject and object?) No there’s not. SG: No subject and object. I was wondering, when that question was first asked, is it known when the question, "Who am I?" which is the basic question of all philosophy, religiology, psychology. When was it first asked because I knew about Ramana Maharshi that he was the first one that asked that question but before him when was it asked? R: It goes back thousands of years when illusion first descended. (SG: When what?) When illusion first descended. SF: Quite a few thousand years probably. (laughter) SG: He doesn't ask any particular question? (R: Umm?) This one. (R: He knows.) He knows? (laughs) (R: He goes to sleep and he's happy.) R: Okay let's become still for a couple of minutes. Make yourself comfortable. Focus your attention on your breathing. Listen to your breath. Become the witness to your breath. (long silence) Peace. Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to pray to yourself, to bow to yourself because God dwells in you as you. I love you all. Peace. (tape ends)

Robert: Good afternoon. Yesterday evening I received a call from my brother who lives in Indianapolis. I haven't spoken to him in fifteen years. The first thing he asked me is, "Robert, are you still good for nothing?" and I said, "Yes I am, thank you." Then he went on to ask, "Have you accomplished anything worthwhile yet? Are you still a nothing?" So I said, I've accomplished nothing, and I am nothing, thank you. Are you something?" He went on to tell me his accomplishments: "I own a hardware store, and I bought a house and I sent my family to college, my son and daughter. I've got stocks and bonds. What have you got?" And I said, I've got nothing." So he said, "Why don't you give it up and start living?" So I paused a moment and I said, "Are you happy?" and there was a long pause. He didn't answer. So I asked again, "Are you happy?" He changed the subject. Then he started to relate how the IRS was on his back, how his wife was running around with some other guy, and all kinds of troubles. So we ended the conversation saying, "If you couldn’t be good for something, I'd rather be good for nothing." But I am good for something. I'm good in relieving constipation. Friday a lady called me from San Francisco. I never heard of her before, and she told me, "Robert, you saved my life." So I said, "I did? That's interesting." She said, "Come on Robert, you know you saved my life. Admit it." So I said, "Tell me what I did." So she said, "I've got your picture hanging in the bathroom." "That's nice." And she went on to explain, "Yesterday morning, I was really constipated…" SH: One look at you… (students laugh) (Robert continues) "…and I thought I was going to die," she said. "I was turning blue and all kinds of colors. I couldn't get up and I looked at your picture and I said, “Robert, help me!” And you came out of the picture and you hugged me, and relieved my constipation." (students laugh) SH: Bravo, you've made it Robert. (students laugh) R: So I said, "Well! Isn't that interesting?" And she told me that I was kidding and knew I did it. She wouldn't believe it when I told her I didn't know what she was talking about. This is not the first time I've had experience with toilets. About two years ago, at about 12 o'clock, midnight, another lady called me from San Clemente. And she said, "Robert, my toilet is stuffed up, please do something." So I said, "I think you've got the wrong number you want a plumber." She said, "No, I don't want a plumber, I want you." So I said, "You mean you want me to come over with my tool box?" She said, "No, I want you to do something, whatever you have to do." So I said, "OK," and she hung up. She called me back the next morning and said, "Thank you Robert. Everything became unplugged in the toilet." So you see, (students laugh) I'm good for something. SH: The sacred plumber. (laughs) R: Now the question arises, can a Sage be in two places at the same time? Is it possible for somebody to think of a Sage, and be in communication with the Sage physically, yet the Sage is not there, he's somewhere else? When I was in Benares, in India, I went to see a Jnani that nobody ever heard of, called Swami Brahmadanda, which means, The Staff of God. He has three disciples that had been with him for about 50 years. He was about 90 years old. And I was invited to sit by him. I think I was the first westerner to get that permission. So I sat with him a few days, listening to him say nothing. He was mostly silent. On the third day I was with him he announced to his disciples, three of them were devotees, that his body is in pain, it's arthritic, but he has work to do. He hasn't finished his work on this plane. So he's going to leave his body tomorrow at 3:00, and take on the body of a younger person. He said somebody will slip in the street, it was raining, and will crack his head, but I will take up that body. So I listened as I usually do, and we couldn't wait for tomorrow to come to see what happened. Nobody cared about the fact that he was going to die. We wanted to see if he could do what he said. (students laugh) So at about 3:00 he was sitting in the lotus posture, he actually stiffened up, and he did die! I felt his pulse; no pulse, pinched him, nothing happened. The body was an empty shell. And we fooled around with his body for about a half hour to see if we could bring him back to life or whatever, nothing. We heard a commotion outside and we went out and sure enough, a young man from Benares had slipped on the wet street and hit his head. There was a crowd gathered and there was a doctor there. He was pronounced dead. All of a sudden, he got up and ran into the forest. Noone has ever heard from him again. Explain that one. There are things going on that are very unusual in this world. Most Westerners never experience those things or come in contact with people who have. There is also the story of a great saint who was passing through the town. And in that particular town there was a snake, Boa Constrictor, who used to devour little children. They beseeched the saint and said, "Master, please help us. We're all afraid this Boa Constrictor is going to kill our children again and again and again. Can you do something to help us?" So the Master said, "Yes I will." He went over to the snake and spoke snake language and said, "Snake, I want you to stop devouring these little children in this town. Leave them alone. Promise me that you will." And the snake said, "Yes, I promise." He couldn't say otherwise to the great Sage. Six months passed. And the Sage was going through the town again. He saw a crowd of children, forty or fifty of them, playing in a circle. He went to look. And there was the snake, in the middle of the circle, all bloody. The children were throwing rocks at it, kicking it. The snake was nearly dead. The Saint chased the children away and went over to the snake and said, "What's the matter with you? Why do you allow yourself to be beaten like this? Why don't you defend yourself?" So the snake said, "Oh Master, I listened to you, I can't help it, when you told me not to harm the children. I have become helpless." Then the Sage said, "You foolish snake, I told you not to bite. Did I tell you not to hiss? And this story is simply the fact that most of us think we have to get into a temper and fight because we're spiritual. The truth is, we can make a lot of noise and do nothing. When in Rome do what the Romans do. We can put on an act. Sometimes when I go to the bank and I want a loan I put on a three piece suit and a tie, and act normal. They'll throw me out anyway, but at least I tried. But the reason I'm telling you this story is because this particular Saint who did this thing with the snake was seen at four places at one time, in various different cities in India. People said he couldn't have been there at this time because he was here. And in another city up north, they said, "No, he was here." So the question again is, can certain Sages be in three or four places at the same time? The answer is yes. This is a phenomena, but is very, very possible. When you realize your omnipresence, when you have an inkling who you are, that's all you have to know, who you really are, that you are not the body-mind phenomena, that you are absolute reality, that you are consciousness, that you are undivided. This alone allows you to be present everywhere at the same time, because you are everything. Perhaps that is why the people on the toilet were able to see me, yet I'm not aware of it. I don't have to be aware of it, due to the fact that to be aware of it I would have to be somebody else. I would have to be the person who is aware, and the person who appears somewhere else. But there is only one. And those of us who have faith in Sages and Saints, can actually talk to them, see them in the physical presence, yet perhaps they have been dead for many years, or they're also somewhere else in a different country. All these things are possible. When I mentioned also one day here, many times I have visions where I am walking with Ramana Maharshi along the Ganges. And we're discussing simple things like the weather. This is just another example of the possibility of being in two or three places at the same time. Now a vision is not a dream. A vision is an actual experience. It is a phenomena happening in the phenomenal world. Anything is possible. Never believe that something is impossible, because it limits you. Even if you have not experienced anything yourself, have faith in yourself, that within you are all possibilities. Of course, the first thing you should realize is that there will never be a time when you disappear, or die, because there was never a time when you were born. You have always existed as consciousness, and you will always exist as consciousness. And even if a person is a skeptic, they say, "Well I'm not consciousness, that's ridiculous. I'm conscious that I'm a body, because I can feel myself and I am conscious of your body, because I see you and I can feel you." And you can scientifically prove this, that you're not a body. You can say to such a person, "Are you the same person you were when you were conceived?" When you were conceived you were no larger than the size of a pinhead. Yet it was you. And then when you were a young boy or girl, you were no longer the size of a pinhead, you've turned into somebody else. When you were a teenager, you were also someone else. Now you're a man or a woman or whatever, and you're someone else again. You are not who you think you are. If I put your body under an electric microscope I would see space and atoms, trillions of atoms revolving in the space, and the space would have tremendous gaps between the atoms. The space is consciousness. The atoms are superimposed on consciousness and they appear to create what you are now. So you see, you're not really the body. You're a bunch of atoms. You're in a state of flux. You’re constantly vibrating. You’re not what you appear to be. So when you identify with your body you've got problems. Who can tell me why? Why do you have problems when you identify with the body? SH: You’re in flux. R: Yes exactly that’s the answer. The body is never the same and you will always be disappointed. The body is skinny at one time, then you say, "I'm too thin." The body becomes fat, you say, "I'm too fat." The body loses its hair, you say, "I am going bald, I've got to do something." The body becomes old, you say, "I've got creaks in my bones." You're never happy. You never understand what's going on. And if you live just to make money and you have lots of possessions, there is nothing wrong with that as I always like to say, possess all you want but never be possessed by your possessions, for if you think something is yours, everything has to change. It might be yours for a short time. Then you have to give it up, either voluntarily or forcefully. And you're always crying, you're always bitching, you're always complaining, you always think something is wrong, but the only thing that is wrong is in your thinking. You are allowing your mind to dictate to you and tell you what's what. When you finally wake up slightly, you begin to understand that the mind is not your friend. The mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future. That's all your mind is, thoughts, thoughts about the past and the future. If you listen you become disturbed for you bring the past into the present, and then you become concerned about the future. People read the newspapers about a recession, man's inhumanity to man, war. Who becomes disturbed? The mind, you can never be disturbed because you are egoless. You are sat-chit-ananda. You are Parabrahman. You refuse to believe that. You still believe that you are human and your name is Mary, or Robert, or John, or Jack or Jane, and you are deeply embedded in that belief system. Therefore you also believe the world is real, conditions are real, the universe is real, and you invent God in your own image and then you pray to this God that you have invented in your own image, just like you're talking to Santa Claus. You believe in an anthropomorphic God, and you ask God to give you this, and give you that, and take this away from my life, and take this person out of my life, and bring this person in my life. It's all a very funny game. Yet it helps when you pray for you're relieving yourself. You're becoming sort of peaceful, for you believe that this God up in the sky will answer your prayer and make you happy. And many times your prayers are answered. Such is the power of the mind. This mind is very powerful, it appears. It can create things. So you better be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Yet the time comes, in our evolution, when we truly understand what the mind really is. And we begin to observe it, realizing that it functions without us. We begin to watch the mind in action. We watch it making us depressed. We watch it making us angry. We watch it making us happy. We watch ourselves when we accomplish something great, and we think we're important. Just the watching alone causes you to go further in your evolution. For it shows you that I possibly cannot be the mind for I have been watching all this time. I have been watching my thoughts bring up the past and make me unhappy, bring fears into my life, as if something bad is going to happen in the future if I don't watch out. We've been watching the mind do this to us. Then we finally say to ourselves, "Who is this watcher? Who is this person that has been watching the mind?" We honestly have to say, therefore, "I don't know. I don't know who I am. I have no idea who has been watching, but I have to admit ‘I’ have been watching. All these years I thought that when I said ‘I,’ I was referring to my mind. I believed my mind was ‘I.’ But now as I watch myself getting angry, as I watch myself becoming depressed, or becoming happy, I realize that I am separate from my mind. Therefore, “Who am I? Where did I come from? It's amazing that I am able to watch my mind doing all these things to me. But now I know that there is an ‘I.’ Who is this I? I don't know. How can I find out?" By becoming silent, through silence. By allowing my mind to empty itself of all thoughts, and as I keep on watching my mind in action, without responding, I notice something very interesting happening to me. I notice that I feel happier. I feel more peaceful and I feel more powerful. I notice that I've lost my fears, my frustrations, and even my searching for truth has slowed down, for I am beginning to understand that there is really nothing to search for. It's all here. Everything I've always wanted is here. Amazing discovery. Yet I still don't know who I am. But I'm beginning to understand that I do not have to know who I am. It is not necessary to know who I am. Do you follow? I doesn't have to know who it is. What an amazing discovery. I don't have to go around searching for the I, or wondering who the I was that has been watching the mind in action all these years. I simply have to become still. Be still and know that I am God. And the watching all these years has caused me to become still. In other words, as you practice observation of your thoughts and mindfulness, your mind becomes quieter, and quieter and quieter. And to the extent your mind becomes quieter and quieter, to that extent does your consciousness become revealed to you as absolute reality. Now when we talk about absolute reality, or Parabrahman, there are no words, for everything I would tell you about that would be superfluous. We therefore learn to keep quiet. We no longer get involved in complications. We keep our lifestyle simple. We actually stop worrying about the future, about our existence or about anything else. Something tells us from within that the same power that knows how to make apples grow on apple trees, flowers bloom so beautifully, mangos grow on mango trees, wheat grow in the fields, and yet there's just enough sun, just enough rain, just enough of everything to sustain and maintain their growth. Something tells me that the same power knows how to take care of me. I can therefore be myself, silence. Silence is consciousness. I no longer have to make something happen, and I no longer have to worry about tomorrow. I no longer have to concern myself with what other people are doing. I can let go of all of this and I will be taken care of. The realization again comes to you that what you call your body is not your body, but is also consciousness. It appears as a body. As you keep evolving you keep seeing consciousness wherever you look, for you have seen your Self as consciousness and you know there is only ultimate oneness. Therefore everything must be your Self. Everything becomes your Self and you are that, and you're at peace. From that moment on everything takes care of itself. What appears to be your body comes under karmic law, the law of cause and effect. Remember, that's an appearance, and your body so-called, came to this earth for a specific purpose. It will fulfill its purpose without any help from you. That's the important part I wish you will remember. You will be fulfilled without thinking, without wanting, without worrying, without any kind of concern. All your needs will be met. Everything will unfold the way it's supposed to. There are no mistakes. No one came to this earth to suffer. I know there are some of you who believe, "Well I must have committed some great sins in the past, perhaps in previous lives, because I'm sure suffering now." Are you really suffering? Is there such a thing? Think about that. The only reason you think you are suffering is because the world is not turning the way that you want it to. Isn't that true? You think you should be this instead of that, you should live here instead of there, you should have this instead of that, and that's what causes you to suffer. But when you become one-pointed, and focus your attention on your Self - with a capital S - it is virtually impossible to suffer because suffering doesn't exist. Now you can see, perhaps, why people like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, Christ, and many others, who appeared to be suffering when they died, literally told their disciples, "No body suffers. I am not suffering. You’re suffering because you see me suffer." That's been difficult to understand up to now, but when you realize that you're not your body and nothing is the way that it appears, it's literally easy to understand. So again, the secret is to investigate yourself within yourself. The external world can never prove anything to you. The external world is a world of effects, a world of illusion, a dream, maya, leela, a play. Do not stake your claim in the world. And let's say that you even have good karma so-to-speak, like they say, and things are relatively fine in your life. You think you've got what you want. You've got a great job, you're making a lot of money, you're living with someone you love, you've got a great house, you live in a place where the temperature is always 78 degrees, and you're relatively happy. But, according to the so called laws of the universe, that has to change, simply because the universe is in a state of flux. Everything must change. If you have not found yourself in this life, and you simply die like the average person, you are going to have continue and experience the opposite of what you have been experiencing. This is the reason you should not just become apathetic to spiritual life because things are going your way, and say like some people say, "Oh, spiritual life is just for people who have problems." Be careful. Begin within yourself. Realize that you are not the person you think you are. Try to understand every day, "I am not my body-mind. I am not anything I appear to be. Then who am I? I must find out." And your factory of intelligence is within yourself. All the answers are within yourself. You begin, of course, in the morning, when you try to catch yourself in consciousness. Just before you wake up there's a gap between sleeping and waking. That gap is your true reality. Try to catch yourself in that gap, just in the moment you open your eyes, before your mind takes over. It is absolute nothingness. That nothingness is the absolute reality. As soon as your mind takes over, ‘I’ takes over, and that spoils it, for you say to yourself, "I am awake." And then your day begins. I have to go to the bathroom, I have to eat breakfast, I have to get dressed, I have to hurry to go to work. I have to do this and I have to do that, and you're lost in the day. But if you saw yourself as consciousness and you were able to see the gap between sleeping and waking, you will be in bliss all day, total bliss. Then, when you go to sleep you do the same thing. You try to find that gap between waking and sleeping just as you are falling asleep. There is a gap just before you actually fall asleep. That gap is who you really are. That gap is consciousness. It is absolute awareness. It is nirvana. It is you. It is I am that I am. As you keep searching for the gap you will find it. If you remember to do it when you got to sleep and when you get up. And you continue when you first get up. You say, "I am awake. Who is the I? I dreamt, I slept, now I am awake." If you glimpse the gap you will realize that that gap is also called the fourth state of consciousness. Sleeping, dreaming, awakefulness and the gap is the fourth state. It is your reality. Even being intellectually aware of this helps. So you say, "I know that there is a gap there and I haven't caught it yet. So I can ask myself, who is the I that slept, who is the I that dreamt? Who is the I that's awake? Who is the I that’s looking for the gap? It’s the same I. From whence did it arise? It seems to arise when I wake up and it subsides when I go to sleep. Where does it go? It goes into the gap. Into that space between sleeping and waking and waking and sleeping. And also when I go to sleep, ‘I’ think. I think about my problems, I think about my days work, I think about people, I think about everything. The ‘I’ is doing all of this. All of a sudden as I'm falling asleep the I begins to weaken. I stop thinking. Where does the ‘I’ go? It goes into the gap." So you think of this in the morning as you get up. And you continue by saying, "Well who is this I? Who am I? What am I? This I, I, I is always available for me." During the day you follow the ‘I’ and you find out you're saying, "I feel good, I feel bad, I feel angry, I feel upset, I feel rich, I feel poor, I feel this and I feel that. Who feels? ‘I.’ Can there be a time when I do not feel?" And something will say to you, "When you get rid of the I you will no longer need to feel anything. You will be in the gap." So you start to work with the I to get rid of it. And you get rid of it by following it to its source. The source is the gap. The source is consciousness. You do this by simply asking the question, "Where did the I come from? What is the I?" When you do this often enough everyday, everyday, awareness will start to come to you. Awareness will open up to you. You will begin to realize that everything you talk about is actually attached to the ‘I.’ ‘I‘ is the first pronoun. Everything else comes after that. To be upset you have to say, "I'm upset." You can't just say, "upset." For you laugh at yourself and you won't be upset. But when you say, "I am upset." Then you start to feel bad. You begin to see that everything is attached to this ‘I.’ And you hold on to the ‘I.’ You do not concentrate on ‘I’ you concentrate on consciousness the source. You follow the ‘I’ deep into the heart. You do this by diving deep within yourself and inquiring, "For whom is the I?" or saying, "Who am I?" Then you take a pause and you say, "Who am I?" again and again and again and again. Pretty soon you will identify the pauses in between I's with the same gap between sleeping and waking and waking and sleeping. And everything will merge and you will become free. And you will be yourself and you will live happily ever after, and that's it. So now let's do a little chanting. (chanting) Any questions? Feel free to ask anything you like. Bob? SB: When you call for us to awaken are you saying that we should awaken to consciousness? Wake up from being a mind and awaken to consciousness, awaken to silence? R: Wake up to your Self. Wake up to who you really are. Wake up to peace, to happiness, to joy, to bliss. Wake up to your real nature. Your real nature is love. Wake up to that. Everything else that you experience with your body and your mind is false. And so when you wake up, you realize that I am absolute intelligence, absolute reality, I am that I am, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman and that means happiness. So every cell inside of your body, so-to-speak, tingles with happiness when you wake up. Wake up to your own happiness. Discard your thoughts, discard your body, your mind and be happy forever. Wake up. SJ: Is it true that after you experience your Self like that, you experience everything else the same. Made up of that same substance? R: When you experience yourself as sat-chit-ananda, you realize that this is your nature as omnipresence. You are no longer an individual. Your individuality has merged into Brahman. And the whole universe appears as consciousness. So you are no longer Jay, and you no longer have the problems and the attitudes that Jay used to have. You’re free, you are the universe, you are the source of all creation. Nothing! You become nothing. When some one tells you, “You’re good for nothing,” you say, "Thank you." (laughter) SJ: Another word for nothing would be everything. Is that true? R: Well you are not everything because you are no-thing. (SJ: Which allows you to be everything in consciousness?) Yes, you realize that everything is a superimposition on you. Like the markings on the blackboard. You are the chalkboard and everybody draws images on the chalkboard. But you know yourself as the chalkboard and as the images. Only you realize that the images on the chalkboard are not real because they can be erased, and if you try to draw an image you draw on the chalkboard, if you try to grab it. You grab the chalkboard. It's impossible to grab the image. There’s only the chalkboard. In the same way you know your Self as consciousness, as absolute reality, and everything else is a reflection. SM: Does enlightenment come all at once or in slow stages? R: It appears to come in slow stages, but the truth is it happens all at once when it happens. As I always tell you the story about the Buddha when he was sitting in meditation under that tree his devotees were around him. And prior to that experience he experienced all kinds of things at all kinds of levels. But when he decided to sit for 30 days or even till he died unless something happened, finally after about 24 days or so he opened his eyes. And his devotees asked him, "Master what happened to you? Have you seen God?" he said, "No." "Have you become enlightened" he said, "No." "Well what happened" and he simply said, "I am awake." For there was noone to become enlightened. There was noone left to become anything. Just awake, pure reality. That happens all of a sudden. Just as when you turn on the light in the darkness. The darkness immediately disappears. When you turn on your own light, maya ignorance disappears. Then you are home. It happens when you don't want it to happen. For as long as you want it to happen you have to get rid of the somebody who wants it to happen. For the person who wants it to happen is keeping you back. And that is the personal ‘I.’ Therefore silence is the best way to wake up, not by chanting mantras or prayers or incantations. Those things may bring you a little peace. SJ: How can it not be like that? It could be like that as well as the experience? R: That leads you to silence. It's the silence that awakens you. SH: Is all thought then related directly or indirectly to the false notion of the personal I? R: Yes, all thought is false. When you believe you are the personal I then you think. Because the thinking is of the ‘I.’ I think. I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about that. (SH: No I, no thought?) Exactly, when the I goes everything else goes. When the I goes there is emptiness. It's like cleaning out your drawer. Everything has to be cleaned out of it before you can have an empty drawer. In the same way your mind has to be completely clear before the Self emerges. And you do that by getting rid of the personal I. (SH: And that is through persistent observation of the minds activity as ego right?) Yes, by watching, by inquiring, by being observant, everything will happen by itself. SG: The silence is a little bit like a shifting ground for everything. Your silent and you awaken and you go into sleep and sleep to the dream and silence there is always that silence where the shift is taking place between states of ego? R: Not really, in the silence, there is no thing happening. The silence is consciousness. And consciousness is self-contained. Consciousness is not the cause of anything but itself. Everything else is an illusion. (SH: Does it cause itself?) It only knows itself. (SH: It doesn't need a cause?) No. It’s self-contained. (SH: You said it causes itself?) It causes itself to be itself but what I actually mean is it is self-contained and knows itself. SJ: Is it like recognizing itself? (R: It knows itself as itself, but as nothing else.) SH: But that’s a little different from causing itself? (R: It doesn't actually cause anything.) So it doesn't cause anything?) (R: No it knows itself.) SJ: And when we come back to our little self, then we recognize that we recognized that silence? (R: No, you don't come back to your little self.) Okay. (R: If you come back to your little self you will never experience anything else except intellectually. There is no coming back. The point of no return. There is no where to come back to it's been destroyed.) Even if one just gets a glimpse of it? (R: If you get into the highest revelation of the truth and you become a living embodiment of the truth. Your body is gone, your thoughts are gone, the I is gone there is noone to come back to, it's all finished.) So we do seem to get glimpses of it? (R: You get a glimpse of it but you don't get a total reality.) Yeah, enough to talk about it. (R: Yes. The total reality is the point of no return. SA: How much is the freedom going to be? R: As much as you want to spend. By spend I mean giving up your ego. How bad do you want to give up your ego. Some of us are so caught up into our lives that we think are important, that we’re actually afraid to give up the ego in its entirety. Because we are afraid of the unknown. We say something like this to ourselves, "At least now I know where I am and what I've got, or with who I'm with. But if I give everything up, I might just be nothing at all." But, the nothing at all is God, what you call God. The nothing at all is bliss. It is something that cannot be explained or cannot be defined. But if really knew what it was you would fight like hell to get there. SJ: Robert from the bottom of all of our hearts we appreciate you coming so much. Sacrificing to come here to teach us. (R: It's nothing.) (pause) SF: Is this the silence I'm hearing? (R: Are you hearing the silence? Don't ask me, ask yourself.) SE: So your true nature is most easily grasped in the transition states between waking and sleeping. Between deep sleep and dreaming. (R: Yes.) And it's always there potentially. (R: Yes.) In those pauses. The body-mind mechanism can most easily become aware of consciousness itself or its true nature at which time it ends because it seems like a busy work and it no longer has to do that? R: Yes. As you focus on that gap everyday the gap will become wider and wider and wider. Until you get the full meaning of it as absolute reality. Then you no longer come back. (SE: It's like a fault line where consciousness or where the truth can come through more easily than when you’re fully conditioned during the middle of the day when I'm working or doing something like that?) You can say that, yes. SJ: And that we realize that is who we are rather than the body-mind? R: Yes. You begin to feel it greater and greater as you keep experiencing and as you keep practicing. (SH: And that continually erodes and burns away the illusion of being separate?) Yes it does. Your body consciousness begins to lessen and lessen and the gap becomes larger and larger. (SK: That is when you begin to become good for nothing?) (laughs) Yes then you become a good for nothing. SF: When you talk about the gap getting larger and larger you mean it gets more intense not that it lasts longer in time? R: You are beginning to lose yourself in the gap. And you are losing all your materiality and your mind. So when someone tells you, "you're losing your mind," that's another compliment. Just like you are good for nothing so say thank you. And they say, "You're losing your mind Fred!" say, "thank you" (SF: You've started it long ago.) That is what I've been trying to do. I've been working it for years. (SF: When you’re using "who am I?" You put your attention on the pause that follows?) Your attention’s on the pause, the pause is the source. So you ask, "Who am I?" and you wait. You ask again and you wait. You ask again and you wait. And something interesting will happen after a while. The pauses will become larger and larger just like the gap and you will begin to feel a bliss and a happiness and a joy. It will give you an idea that that's you’re about to go. Until you jump in completely and become free. SE: So the same kind of pause between the breaths. So when you practice I-am there is also the transition at both ends of the breath? It's much smaller it's harder to grasp. R: Yes. When you inhale and say, "I" and you exhale and you say, "am" the same gap is in between I-am. There are so many things you can do, but you have to do it. SB: Robert you've said also in between the thoughts? R: In between the thoughts, exactly. Your job is to become aware of these things. Not when you go home from here, you start worrying about yourself and your body and your image and everything else. Forget about yourself and remember the things we learn here. SB: Last night I was listening to music. Funny thing is when I got home from work I was really tired. I couldn't even stay up and I put on this fantastic music. And all the tiredness of the body went away and I stayed up all night in ecstasy listening to this music and it was like the mind was gone, I was pure love, pure emptiness and just soaring, soaring, flying. Is this a mental happiness or is this a touch of something? R: It can be mental and can be a touch of something. But why did you come back. See now you are yourself again. (SB: I haven't got the tape recorder.) That’s what I mean. (SB: I have to carry it with me all the time.) SJ: What's it called? (SB: You know the phantom of the opera the lady who sang, Sarah Brightman, All I ask of You? She has a new album that just came out and it's unbelievable.) R: That’s why they say that music soothes the savage beast. It makes you calm and relaxed but you are still a beast. (laughter) (SB: Could that be a trick though if it's just a mental happiness? Just to pacify the mind maybe not it?) It's like the tapes we play here. They calm you and make you peaceful while you listen. (SB: So it's like a jumping off point.) Yes. (SB: It was nice because it showed me something. But why can't it be like that all the time without the music.) Yes. (SB: It's just like a place to see and then to jump off from.) So what you should've said is, "Why can't I find the I all the time?" And follow the I to the source. (SB: That felt like the source.) Well it made you happy for a while so that's good. But it has to go away. But if you find your real source you will be happy all the time. (SB: It seems in that place there is no tiredness, there's no needs. It's funny how the mind gets tired and angry and then all of a sudden you put on some great music and you're not tired and you're not angry and the whole world is changed and you can stay up forever.) Because you are in another vibration that feels good to you but it's temporary. Let's sing another song. (After music played) Is there anything else you would like to talk about, say, ask? SB: Robert talk about the silence. Does the silence have to be a certain purity of depth of silence absoluteness before it happens? R: The true silence is when you've dived deep, deep within yourself and you've passed all the material world and all of the states of your consciousness, (that you call your consciousness), and all your karma and the whole universe is gone behind, you've left it behind. Then you are in the true silence. The true silence is not quietness. It is absolute reality. (SB: Is that the true satsang also?) Sure a satsang is silence. SH: Always reside in that silence or is there something going on? (R: Yeah.) I mean it isn't silent when we're talking and when you are talking, a disturbance to the airways? R: It appears that's how it seems. That is how it appears. (SH: Well there is a disturbance to the airways? Otherwise I wouldn't hear you.) For whom? For whom is there a disturbance? (SH: Umm, for noone I guess) That’s right. (SH: But the motion is there?) There appears to be a disturbance. (SH: There appears to be motion.) Just like there appears to be a body. There appears to be thoughts and there appears to be a personal I. It's all the same. SE: The gap is always there, it's just that at certain moments there is nothing but the gap? (R: Yes.) And that’s what we have to become attune to? The nothing but the gap states. Then you become aware of it at all times. (R: You have to become nothing. You're right!) SH: Or realize that you are the gap? (R: You can do that too.) That’s all there is? (R: That's it!) That's awareness full stop! R: Right, there is nothing else. It's all Henry. Henry is all there is. (laughter) SB: When you first started you said the atoms were superimposed on consciousness. That implies two, atoms and consciousness? R: Everything is in the same category, I. It all belongs to the personal I. The Atoms are attached to the personal I, the molecules. (SB: But what are they?) The cells. (SB: Are the atoms consciousness modified?) No. (SB: But what are they?) The atoms are like the body. They’re an appearance. (SB: So it doesn't really exist. But it is consciousness? Is consciousness an emotion or is consciousness at rest?) It's an optical illusion. The only thing that is true is yourself, which is consciousness. Everything else is not here. But appears to be here. Like a dream. That includes your atoms, your bones, your lungs, everything. SJ: Robert, it sounds a little bit like either the most advanced way to look at it or a very sloppy way to look at it? (R: Well you can look at it anyway you like.) Well what I mean is, this chair here. It has the form of a chair it appears as a chair but it's consciousness. (R: Everything is consciousness.) It is consciousness? So it is not per se that this is a dream or an illusion unless it's on the highest level or like I say sloppy. Because how can people if they need a bridge understand what is happening? If this is an illusion, if this is a chair, consciousness is taking appearance of a chair. R: As long as you believe that you are the body-mind, then you look at a chair and the chair feels solid. And you believe the chair is a chair. So you’re saying it’s consciousness but that’s just intellectual. (SJ: No I mean the experience of it as consciousness.) There is only consciousness. That's all. (SJ: But if there is only consciousness and it didn't even take on the appearance of form, then I don't see how you can walk with the body and walk from one place to another.) Well, you can't see. (SJ: Yeah.) That doesn't mean it is not so. It's like when you are having a dream, and all these things are happening in the dream. And I tell you the dream doesn't exist and everything you dream is false. And you tell me no. You tell me the same thing you are telling me now. This is a chair and it must be consciousness. So I'm saying consciousness is all that there is, and then you wake up, it's all gone. (SJ: Wake up and the dream is gone.) The dream is gone, everything is gone. SB: So we can't really understand it until we wake up. (R: That's right.) And consciousness wakes up to itself? (R: Exactly now you got it!) SK: Where does love come in to this? R: Love is another name for consciousness, but not the love that you know. It is a love that cannot be explained. There’s really a love that is absolute. If you really knew how you were loved you wouldn't be able to stand it. That’s how powerful it is, but it's synonymous with consciousness and absolute reality. That’s the reason why you should never think or believe that you are being hurt or there’s anything wrong. That’s blasphemy. What you are really saying is, "I deny consciousness. I deny love." And you cause yourself to suffer. But when you identify with pure love you are identifying with consciousness. And then everything is okay, just the way it is. SF: (Question about whether everything will occur in its own time.) R: Oh time will take care of itself of course, you’re right. That's true. Even if you do nothing at all you'll go through lifetime after lifetime so-it-appears, lifetime after lifetime a million times until you wake up. What we are trying to do here I suppose is awaken to the truth before we leave. SK: What happens to you after you awaken, if you don't come back here, where do you go? R: When you wake up, you stay where you are. There is nowhere to go, there is nowhere to come back to. You just are. You are your Self, you're omnipresence. (SK: That's true when you are not awake also.) Yes, but you don't know it. It's only intellectual. When you wake up, you are actually that, and there is really no place to go and no place to come back to. (SK: Is there more fun in that place?) Yes, you are. You just are. You are an embodiment of love, of consciousness, and that embodiment is omnipresence. ST: Robert do you agree with the Kalpas Orionis? R: The Kalpas were written to satisfy the longing for people in as far as years are concerned. How long the universe lasts. How long the body lasts. How many eons it takes for the universe to come back again. And you go into Brahman and Shiva and Vishnu. That’s for the benefit of the people. But in reality it does not exist. SH: When you just are, there is no you. So it's a misnomer. (R: It's a misnomer?) Yeah. (R: There is no you to experience anything.) No, so you say then you just are? But there's no you… (R: There is no you and there’s no are. It's just a want for a better word. You're nothing.) A limitation of language? (R: Yes. You become good for nothing.) Yeah so will I, at last. (students laugh) SI: So then what is the reality of will and choice to consciousness? R: The reality of will and choice is an illusion. The only choice you have is not to identify with anything that happens, not to identify with yourself as a body-mind. That’s your only choice you've got. Everything else is pre-ordained. (SI: That's a choice.) What's a choice? (SI: What you said.) The choice not to identify with anything. Play some more music. (After music is played) The meditation technique we are going to practice now to help us with breathing is: "Who am I? I am Absolute Reality, I am not the body." And the way you do it is you inhale and you say, "Who am I?" and in that gap you say, "I am absolute reality." And when you exhale you say, "I am not the body." So with your respiration again, when you inhale you ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" Before you exhale you say, "I am absolute reality." When you exhale you say, "I am not the body." Let's do that for a while. (pause for practice) Do it in the privacy of your home it helps tremendously. Thank you for coming. Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to bow to yourself because Go dwells in you as you. I love you, peace. And that's all she wrote. (tape ends)

Robert: It’s good to be with you again. This week I got an unusual amount of phone calls, more than I usually get. People are telling me they feel depressed, out of sorts. I asked each one of them, "What are you doing all day?" and they said, "I am watching the war on TV." Is it any wonder they get depressed? When you still believe that you are the body then you also believe in other bodies. Consequently, when you watch a war on TV all day long, then you're feeling those bodies that are getting killed, and so you feel depressed. Do you see what I'm saying? If you believe you're the body-mind phenomena then you are also the body-mind of the whole universe, because there is only one body and that's the entire world. In other words you are everyone's body. Naturally you will be affected by seeing bodies being killed in the war. The smart thing to do is not to watch, but work on yourself. Raise your consciousness to such a high state that you will be above and beyond the war and you will see it from a different perspective. Everything is consciousness, everything. When you ask, "What is consciousness?" there is no valid answer, so I remain silent. Therefore you can say that consciousness is silence. When someone asks me to write a book or give a lecture, then I have to explain consciousness in about fifty different words, and each word has another fifty words to explain that, and those words have another fifty words. So a voluminous book is written, with eight-hundred pages. What does it say? "Everything is consciousness." I could have written one page, and in the middle of the page I would say, "Everything is consciousness." The rest is a blank. This is the reason why I do not write books, because there is nothing to say. See how confusing it is? We read so many books during the week. You usually do not remember what you read, and if you do, it’s intellectual. You’re using somebody else's words, where in truth you should be using your own words and having your own experience. I don't know what consciousness is, but I am that. If I knew what consciousness was it wouldn't be that, because I would be voicing a word, and the word would be limited, by the very voicing of the word. So consciousness is a no-thing. It's nothing you can pin down. It's nothing you can describe. It's nothing you can write a book about. Consciousness is silence. Sometimes I say, "Consciousness is absolute reality," and those are more words, and I have to explain absolute reality. Consciousness is ultimate oneness, pure intelligence. Consciousness is all of those things. But what are those things? Again they're just words. Sometimes I say consciousness is love, bliss, sat-chit-ananda, knowledge, being, existence. Those are just words, and you get a good feeling from the words, but the feeling doesn't last too long, for you have not digested the words. You have not become a living embodiment of consciousness. The only way you can do that is by keeping still. If you want to solve any problem in life do not try to solve it verbally. Become quiet. It is a known fact that people like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and others, when they had a mathematical equation to solve, they would sit in their rocking chair for hours in the silence and everything would be revealed to them. That's how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, if you read his life story. He used to spend hours sitting by himself in the silence, and everything was revealed to him scientifically. So it is with you. If you want the answer to any problem, do not run to a psychiatrist, or a lawyer, or even a doctor, but sit by yourself and listen. Yourself has all the answers. Why? For, as we discussed Sunday, every atom of the universe is within you. You are that. You are the entire universe. You are the microcosm in the macrocosm. Therefore all the answers in the universe must also be in you. All of the solutions, all of the wisdom, all of the happiness and bliss you've been searching for, it's within you. That's what Jesus meant when he said, "I and my Father are one," and also, "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." He wasn't talking about a person called the Father. He was talking about a universal principal of harmony, of bliss, of joy. He was speaking of consciousness. It's within you. It is you. You are that. You have always been that. It isn't far away. It's right where you are. And as you sit in the silence, and think of these things, you will begin to realize something very interesting. You will begin to realize and understand, "Well, if my body is consciousness, it cannot be a body, for it cannot be both. It cannot be consciousness and my body. So it’s duality." So as you start to think about the word consciousness in the silence, it is revealed to you that you have no body. There is only consciousness. And it doesn't seem strange at all. For when you begin to understand and fathom what consciousness really is you will realize it is self-contained. Consciousness knows only consciousness. It doesn't know the universe. It doesn't know bodies. It doesn't know problems. It doesn't know wars. It doesn't know man's inhumanity to man. It doesn't know anything you know. It only knows itself as pure awareness. And as you sit by yourself in the silence this becomes perfectly clear. And all of a sudden the realization comes to you, "I have no problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the world. There is nothing going on. There is only consciousness." I know this sounds strange to some of you because you're so identified with your body-mind that you say, "What about the experiences going on here? What about this? What about my rent that I have to pay next week? And what about my husband who left me? And what about my job that I have been terminated from, that's all very real." Of course it’s real because you are identifying with the body. So it is very, very real. There are not two worlds. There is not the world of the body, and the world of the universe, and the world of your problems and affairs, and also the world of consciousness. There is only consciousness and you are that. Just listening to this sets you free. It sets you free from all doubt and limitation. You begin to feel immortality. You begin to understand that you were never born. How can consciousness be born? And if you were never born how can you die? What dies? Well, some of you say, "The body," but I tell you there is no body who dies. There is just nobody home. There never was a body, there is no body, and there never will be a body. If you can't see that yet, or feel it, don't worry about it. All I ask you to do is to sit in the silence. Everything will be revealed to you. This is why I always tell newcomers, "Don't believe me. Don't believe a word I say. Find out for yourself." Everything I share with you is from my own experiences, not what I read in a book or what someone else told me. When I went to see Ramana Maharshi in 1947 I went to confirm my own experiences, and I laughed when I realized there was someone else who felt what I felt. This teaching appears abstract to some people, but it's not really abstract. It’s truth. It’s reality, it's your reality. Someone may say, "This is too highfaluting for me. I want something practical. I want to improve my humanhood. I just want to live my life out, and be a millionaire and be healthy, and have a mansion." In other words you want to have what you think you should have. So does everyone else in this world. But are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Statistics show that there are more suicides amongst the rich than the poor. Therefore if being a multimillionaire is so great why are there so many suicides? Simply because everything must change. We live in a world, as you know, of constant change. And if you don't accept that you suffer. As I explained Sunday, your body, what you call your body, is in a state of constant flux. It's never the same, just like the universe. There is nothing solid. There is nothing permanent about anything in the universe. Everything is in a constant state of vibration. What appears to be this body vibrates at a certain rate. What appears to be a dog vibrates at a slower rate. What appears to be the chair vibrates at a slower rate also. The more gross something is the slower it vibrates, but everything vibrates. Everything is composed of atoms and energy with tremendous space between. Nothing is solid. When you realize that your body is not solid, and is not what it appears to be, how can you still identify with it? Foolish. You can tell to what extent you are identifying with your body by the way you react to situations. If a situation still makes you angry, or uptight or depressed, then you know for sure you're identifying with the body. On the other hand, you don't go to the other extreme and say, "I don't care and I don't give a damn about anything." If you didn't you wouldn't say it. It's not a case of not giving a damn. The more evolved you become, the more compassionate you become, the more you show loving kindness to everything, to the mineral kingdom, to the vegetable kingdom, to the animal kingdom, and to the human kingdom. You show total compassion, loving kindness. You become an embodiment of love simply because everyone is you. "I am my brother and my brother is me," as Emerson said. There is no differentiation between you and Saddam or Bush or anyone else. So you don't humanly love these people and you do not humanly hate these people. It's just an experience that the world is going through. Remember when you believe in your body, then the world is becoming very real to you. And this world is a third grade world. Like the third grade in school. There are other planets and other galaxies, there are fourth grades, and fifth grades, and sixth grades, and high school and college, but that's all an illusion. Yet if you identify with the body-mind phenomena there's a whole series of planets, just as there's a whole series of bodies. It's all the same. Don't you see? As long as you believe you are the body then there are millions and billions of bodies, and the world is a body, the universe is a body. So there are millions of worlds. There are trillions of galaxies. There are trillions of universes. And all this happens because you believe you are the body. Isn't that something? So can't you see now it's your fault that everything is happening in this universe. You are the creator. Everything is an emanation of your mind. It's you who think up these things that are going on in the world today. If you want to stop it, if you don't like what you created, stop identifying with it. Instead dive deep, deep within and identify with your Self, which is consciousness, absolute awareness. As soon as you begin to identify with your Self then the whole world becomes your Self, as within, so without, as above, so below. Can you see the picture now? What you are seeing in this world is your Self. If you don't like what you see do not try to change person, place, or thing. Change your outlook. And you have to be able to catch yourself, all day long. Do not get caught up in a situation if you feel out of sorts, and you feel disappointed, and you feel depressed because someone spoke harshly to you, or someone told you something you didn't like to hear, or someone did something to you, or whatever, that's why it appears in most instances that if someone really evolved to a high state the worst of conditions sometimes seem to befall that person. And when the worst of conditions befall you it's a blessing in disguise. It means you're growing and all these things are coming to you to prove to you and to show you that you are not that. And so you turn within and see the truth, identify with the truth. “I am the imperishable Self, the absolute reality, pure intelligence, emptiness, nirvana, ultimate oneness. I am that.” Then when you open your eyes you will see a different universe. You will see love, harmony, joy, bliss. You are seeing your Self. I therefore ask you the question, what do you want to see in this world? Condition, after condition, after condition after condition? Even if, because of karma you are living a relatively good life, it means nothing. Even if you are living a relatively happy life, you have perfect health, you have a perfect wife or husband, you have perfect employment, you have a perfect income, you have a perfect home, you have perfect children, it means absolutely nothing, for there is a law of the universe that says everything must change. And as long as you are identifying with the universe, you must go through those changes. Now you may not find much of a change in this life. But remember what you call your life is but a split second in eternity, (finger snap) like that, you're here and you're gone. Because of time and space you think you have seventy, eighty, whatever years to live. Nope, your life is but a split second in all eternity, then you‘re gone. If you have not found your reality or your Self, you may come back again to this planet or to another planet, and the person who is living a relatively good life here, has to go through the change. You may be born during the dark ages, when the world has gone back around again, and you may get caught up in the inquisition, where you’re caught as a spy or something, and you’re tortured, and your toes are cut off, and your fingers are cut off, and your tongue is ripped out, and you go through happy experiences like those. That's the other side of the coin. That's why I say if you are living a relatively good life, do not say to yourself, "I don't need this teaching, I've got everything I want." I've heard so many people tell me this. They say, "This teaching, Robert, is for people who are miserable, who are not fulfilled." I don't even answer those people. They are deluded into believing that because they've got the good things in life that's it. Little do they know, the experiences they're going to go through when the change comes, whether in this life or another life. That's why the smart thing to do is to transcend all human experience, for human experience is a big lie. In reality there is no human experience. There's no experience whatsoever. There is no foundation for creation. Only consciousness exists, and you are that. Any questions? SL: I have a question or a comment. (R: Good.) I think I've watched more war on TV and felt less depressed. (R: Less depressed?) Because of your exercise. And I know that I have to do it myself but I can't get it from an outside authority. But I know when I left here on Sunday, the power of the exercises, the “who am I questions were so impressed that I could sit and watch war and I didn't get depressed by this. And when I left on Sunday I said to myself that I should take - even though you didn't give us an exercise that I could give it to myself and as you have always been saying this is what we must do at every moment. But I didn't do it and suddenly Monday I woke up and for no reason I was just depressed it was as if somehow I had risen myself this entire week and maybe somethings were waiting around and they all came up. It still may be a higher ground because I have been seeing things more clearly. If something is sad emotionally it's an outside force and I know better. But I still emotionally… R: Yes. That’s a good comment and question. That’s why I do not give you exercises every week because they become a crutch. And you begin to depend upon them. You look at the "I am" or the "who am I?" as if it is an entity by itself, as if that is your savior. But I say to you, you’ve got to transcend even that and be able to sit in the silence. And go deep, deep within yourself, where you become I am without the words. It is therefore very well in the beginning of teachings like this, not to watch too much TV, not to watch anything, not to read too many newspapers. Not even to read a newspaper. But to try to work on yourself continuously. For as you said, you may build yourself up for a while and then you’re able to take all these things, wars, confusion whatever is coming your way. But the world gets a little too much for you after a while due to the fact that you have not transcended completely. I had some people calling me also and telling me they feel depressed and out of sorts this week and they didn't watch the TV. What happened? What happened is this: They are still identifying with the body and they are picking up the collective unconscious of the human race. So in todays world there is a fear in the collective whole. People are worried about the war. It's like a negative vibration that goes into the atmosphere. And many people that are passive pick it up. They wake up in the morning they feel out of sorts, they feel depressed and they have no reason to be, that’s what is happening to them. The way they should handle it is this way: They should observe themselves and see what’s happening to them and then ask themselves the question, "To whom does this come?" Of course the answer will come, "This comes to me. I feel this." Then you ask, "Who is the I that feels this? Where did that I come from? Who gave it birth. Who am I?" and you do not answer that question. If the feeling still persists you do it all over again. You ask, "To whom does this come? To me, I feel it." After a while you will begin to realize that all of your depressions all of your out of sort feelings, everything even the good things are attached to the I. The first pronoun I. You begin to understand, I don't want to change my depression into happiness for that’s two sides of the same coin. What I want to do is to transcend the I and everything will go with that. And you do that by asking the question, "Where did the I come from? What is I?" or "Who am I?" whatever you like, and then you wait and you ask again and you wait and you ask again. If you are now bombarded by other thoughts you repeat the procedure over again. To whom does this come? And you go through it again. You have to have patience and realize that what you are doing is very important and one day something will happen and you will realize who the I really is and what it is and you will be free. ST: Excuse me Robert, there is a saying in the Veda's, “there is no beginning but there is an end.” (R: Where does it say that?) Well different teachers have told me that. R: Well what they really mean is the saying, "All is Brahman and I am that." If that is what you were referring to? (ST: No. A clear statement from a lot of teachers that there is no beginning but there is an end.) How can there be an end? (ST: Through ignorance probably?) Excuse me? (ST: Through ignorance, an end to ignorance.) Oh I see what you mean. There is an end. (ST: Yes but no beginning. I don't understand what they mean by no beginning.) There was no beginning to begin with. But when you got caught up in maya there will be an end to that. (ST: Right.) That is what it means. (ST: I guess so yeah.) There never was a beginning and there never will be a beginning. But you somehow came along to believe that the body is real, the mind is real, the world is real and the universe is real. That belief has to come to an end. (ST: Yeah. That will come to an end.) Yes, sooner or later. That’s what I was talking about. (ST: What I didn't understand is that why they say there was no beginning.) Because there is no substance, there is no substratum. There is nothing that began the universe. But you came along in this world like a dream. But it has no beginning. As example when you are dreaming does the dream have a beginning. You don't dream about Adam and Eve. The dream starts somewhere. There never was a beginning but it ends, doesn't it? You wake up. So the dream had no beginning but had an end. ST: Wow. I understand what you’re saying but in the ritual consciousness I still would say that I remember a dream from the beginning was such and such. R: But it wasn't a real beginning. (ST: Something started to happen. I felt myself dreaming that.) You didn't feel yourself dreaming you just started dreaming. That you’re in a palace, or riding in the plane, or you’re married with children. (ST: Right.) But you didn't start from a beginning when creation was born. There is no beginning. That is just a continuing dream. (ST: If that is what is meant I don't know that is what…) Yes that’s whats going on. (ST: …I'm questioning. And the other thing what I'm questioning is like you say you are beyond all that. All this is the maya stuff, right? Is that what you say?) I have nothing to do with maya. (ST: You have nothing to do with maya. You are full of unconditional happiness and love? Is that what you are saying?) That’s what you are saying. (ST: No, no, no I'm asking you what you've experienced. What do you experience right now?) Peace. (ST: Peace, but you are not in ecstasy right now?) Ecstasy is a human word to describe a physical term. (ST: No I mean but you are experiencing ecstasy? Isn't that ecstasy?) I experience nothingness, which is total joy and bliss. (ST: Okay why doesn't that translate to the body that you feel so ecstatic and smile and…) It would translate to the body if there were a body. But there is no body. (ST: Okay so you’re functioning in this world?) That’s how you see me. (ST: Yeah with this body.) You’re speaking from your experience. (ST: Absolutely yeah, even if I'm not around if you are by yourself you are still functioning through a body?) How do you know if you don't see me? I'm only functioning as far as you are concerned when you see me. (ST: Huh?) You’re creating my body. (ST: No. If I'm not around and you are all by yourself you still express yourself in you walk around right?) How do you know? (ST: It's obvious to me.) It's obvious to you? (ST: Yeah.) That's your opinion. (ST: No it's not an opinion. It's an awareness of mine.) (students laugh) It's your awareness and it's what you think. So why should I be doing what you think?) (ST: No I'm not saying that you are supposed to do what I think.) That’s what you just said. That’s what you see and what you believe. (ST: You are denying your body but the truth is that you are a body.) That is your truth. Not my truth.) (ST: No it's also your truth.) Because that is what you see. (ST: Come on touch yourself, touch yourself.) Of course. (ST: Yeah. So what do you touch?) Nothing. (ST: Oh that is denial. That is denial.) That’s your opinion. (ST: Absolute denial. SJ: I don't share that opinion with you. (ST: I don't talk to you either.) (students laugh) R: See what you are doing, you are identifying with the body-mind and you are putting me in your identification. But somebody else would see me otherwise. For instance, if I ask everyone in this room when they look at me what do they see? I would get twenty different answers. Somebody would say, "I see a wonderful human being." Somebody would say, "I see a sick person." Somebody would say, "I see a healthy person." Somebody would say, "I see God." Somebody would say, "I see a body." So you are telling me what you see. That's all. ST: Yeah but there is still somebody there. You say the lights are on but nobody's home. Is that what you are saying? (R: No that’s what you’re saying.) No but is that what you experience? R: I experience my Self. (ST: So if you experience your Self, couldn't you be the Self plus the body?) Why, why should I be what you want me to be? (ST: This world is not an illusion it's real but it's something that emanates from the whole awareness you have.) Well if I'm not a ??? why should I say that? (ST: Because there is no life to the world and the highest truth as you see it is one. You’re saying it in a sense.) Let's put it this way. Imagine if you will you are having a dream and we’re sitting like this in your dream. And we are talking back and forth together. And I am saying, “I am not the body, I have no body,” and you are saying, “yes you do.” And then we look at each other and you wake up, what happened to the dream. It was all a dream. The same thing is happening now. All this is but a dream. It appears real. But when you wake up you realize that it's gone. ST: Practical speaking you are living a life, I live a life. And you are still here. Until the body actually gives up, doesn't function any more, then you’re gone. R: The body doesn't give up because there was never a body to give up. (ST: But I bet you Robert that you are going to stick around until your body is not functioning any more.) That’s what you see! If you can only get that clear. That’s the experience you are having now. If you had my experience you would be speaking like I’m speaking. But you are speaking from your experience and you want me to accept what you believe. ST: Yeah I'm not trying to make you accept anything. What I'm trying to say is from an individual point of view as I am it doesn't make sense to say, “I don't have a body.” Even if you are in your highest state it doesn't make sense to me to say, “I don’t have a body,” because everybody can see your body, not just me everybody can see you. R: If it doesn't make sense to you then don't say it. (ST: No but you’re saying, "I don't have a body." But you really have one.) But that’s my experience. (ST: Well that's your experience. My argument to that experience is what is the sense to say, "I am not a body" if you really have one?) But that’s what you see. SJ: I think he agrees with you too. It's his practical experiences that he doesn't have a body. ST: How come you cannot express infinite joy? (R: I am.) Why don't you look like so full of joy. (R: Again you want me to be what you imagine it to be like.) SH: It's a projection of your own false imagination onto Robert. You want him to be what you think someone who is enlightened should be, that's nonsense. (ST: No that’s not what I am saying.) Yes it is. Exactly what you are saying. (ST: Why isn't consciousness, the highest consciousness project itself as being something everybody will run after, you know.) SD: But we do. (students laugh) SH: You don't see that that's your idea about it. But you’re projecting your idea and insisting on it being valid. It may be a bunch of nonsense. It’s what's going on in your mind. (ST: Absolutely it goes on in my mind.) It's your image that you are hung up on and you are projecting it onto Robert and insisting he ought to be the way you imagine he should. SM: You’re getting mad! SH: No I'm not I'm trying to clear it up. This is getting redundant and stupid. We go around and around getting nowhere. (SM: You see Robert where you’re coming from that is all that is. You see everybody from where you’re coming from.) I didn't understand it before either, but now I understand it. I see Robert from where I'm coming from. I see you from where I'm coming from too, everybody. You are just a reflection. Robert's a reflection of you. ST: Hold on, I'm not trying to upset your group here. I'm not trying to make an argument against you. I was asking Robert a question what I feel about total bliss and consciousness and in my opinion, I'm just a person I'm not a guru or teacher or nothing like that but as a person I see consciousness to be blissful and uplifting to everybody as soon as you recognize it. SM: That's words, that's words, but you can't see him. ST: I mean total consciousness should be beyond words. (SM: That's right.) Totally experience it without having to look for it. R: Then you can't see it. (ST: What?) You will not be able to see it because it's beyond words, beyond thoughts and beyond space. (ST: So can I feel it?) You can feel it. When you become it you’ll feel it. (ST: Yeah, so, if I feel it then I don't need to ask questions I don't need to seek anything but I am it.) Then you should do the practices and you should practice within yourself to be able to feel it and become it. (ST: Yeah but what I'm saying is can this spread like immediately I cannot realize that. There is something there which I really want.) You mean can I give it to you? (ST: Yeah there is something there that I really want, I want to go after that, this is what I really want, what I'm here for.) Then you have to be receptive and you are receptive when you empty your mind, no thoughts. (ST: I mean anybody even if you are not receptive. If you are like an innate object or something that even will start to vibrate and say, "Oh I want to go after this.") You’re speaking of siddhis. You’re speaking of powers. You’re speaking of a completely different teaching. We’re not trying to give out power here. Or become occult in magic and be able to do strange things. I know what you’re looking for. You are looking for proof. You want me to be like Sai Baba and materialize ash, or materialize a medallion. (ST: What is the difference between you and Sai Baba?) I don't know? We are all the same spiritually. But this is Jnana. This is Advaita Vedanta. This is not Cashmere… (ST: Yeah.) So it's a little different to what you are used to. (ST: I've been studying both sides. Forgive me but I just…) It's okay. (ST: In my opinion I just wanted to hear it from you, why aren't you always smiling or be always in rapture, you know? That's how I picture beauty.) Who pictures that? (ST: I do.) Who are you?) (ST: I guess as you say, "I'm everything," right?) But are you? See what you are doing is you are repeating my words. What do you think you are really? (ST: No I know what I'm speaking of I'm just a person. That I know.) So if you are a person then you are an ego. (S: Absolutely.) So if you are an ego you are part of the world. (ST: Absolutely.) And you see what everybody sees in the world. (ST: Yeah.) So why should I become what you want to see? (ST: No I'm not saying that you should become what I want to see.) But you say you want to see radiance and smiles and bliss. (ST: That’s not what the world is.) I know but you said that is what you want to see. (ST: No I want to see consciousness in total freedom and beauty.) What do you see now? (ST: What do I see now? An old man sitting here and talking to me.) Okay, so change your opinion go within yourself and find out who you are. Then you will see me like you. (ST: If I see you as me then there is no more bodies, huh?) You are speaking of yourself now. But if you work on yourself and dive deep within yourself and lift yourself up a little, then you’ll see me as your Self, because there is only one Self. ST: Well that's a theoretical thing to me. But as long as I have to function my body. I don't have to deny my body. I know I can say that I am beyond the body true but I also have a body. R: Who said anything about denying the body? I never said you must deny your body? I say you do what you have to do with your body. As long as you believe you are the body then you have to take care of it and you have to be careful of what you do. (ST: Yeah that’s what I have to do.) So do it. And everybody's happy. (ST: I don't think I have to wait around for that.) Then do what you have to do. But don't see anybody else as you. Everybody is different. (ST: Absolutely. I see everybody's different. I understand that.) So you’re giving your attributes to me. (S: No.) Of course everything is coming out of your mind. Everything that comes, where does it come from? It comes from what you know. (ST: No when we have a conversation what you speak comes out of you and what I speak comes out of me.) Exactly, so you’re seeing the whole class from your viewpoint. (ST: Yes of course.) So you’re saying your viewpoint is correct and that’s all there is your viewpoint. (ST: No I see that you have a viewpoint too otherwise we wouldn't be talking.) I'm speaking to you to make you understand that you should be silent and go deep within yourself. And everything will take care of itself. (ST: That I understand. I have no quarrels about that.) Then everything will take care of itself. But you’re all right, keep up the good work. (ST: Yeah thank you. Sorry it takes too long.) SF: No you’re totally honest from your point of view. (ST: Yeah.) One of the crucial things that I've learned is to ask myself, "What am I assuming?" From that point of view and then I look at the assumption. And I find the assumption from this point of view is false because I'm assuming and I sure don't see Robert the way other people see me. (ST: Yeah there are all points of view.) And I realize that I come from a very strict point of view. I don't at this moment know that there is a road outside there. Now you would say half an hour ago I was driving up in my car on the road. But right where I'm sitting I think there is a road outside but I don't really know it in an absolute sense. I can assume it, that's not a unreasonable assumption. But most of the assumptions that I had when I looked at it were unreasonable. And maybe you are making some assumptions that you assume for other people and that’s what's going on. I've not really thought about Robert' smiling too much maybe you would like to do something maybe not. (ST: I did not say that do you understand…) I'm just saying that you know, if he doesn't smile too much… (tape break) SJ: Robert’s just riding reality and if there is a problem then he has to maybe prescribe something to the best for your silence. After you prescribe silence you just be silence and you get there. From your picture you maybe so many years away from enlightenment and when it happens you probably all of a sudden you see it. ST: I wish, I wish. SH: A dangerous assumption. (students laugh) (general talking and laughing between students) SF: (Student describes experience of confusing vibrations on the right side of the chest (spiritual heart) to stomach vibrations which he thought was the real thing.) R: It's not stupid at all Fred because it made you realize that it was not the spiritual heart. (SF: Yeah.) Sounds very useful. (SF: But I know my physical heart is not where the stomach is. That is where the vibrations went and therefore the vibration that went back to the stomach couldn't possibly have anything to do with the spiritual heart.) But all the mistakes we make is not because we’re stupid it's because it shows us it's a mistake and we have to grow out of it. It makes us go onward. SF: I was assuming that the spiritual heart was on the other side of the physical heart. That is what I was assuming. If the assumption is wrong the point of view is wrong. Like what is happening here. I did happen to know that the assumption I was operating on because it usually the law. You've got to see what the assumption is based on. I have things to learn so I have to see what I'm assuming at this point of view. But I know I'm assuming things and when I come here I'm assuming things. But I know that my assumptions are mine and not his. But I'm expected to dance, it's okay! (R: Maybe next week huh Fred.) (laughter) SH: It's okay to have false assumptions they drop after a while. When you see they are false they drop. There is nothing wrong with it. You don't have to put yourself down for it. SF: No I'm not putting down it just happened. SG: There is a stage when you look at these teachings you examine as being enlightened or not and then there seems to be a point where it doesn't even make any difference what can enter your mind. R: Well that is true. You are coming here to be with your Self. I am only your Self. There’s no teacher and there’s no student. There is just the Self. Eventually you see that. There is no separation. SH: That bothering made sense. (students laugh) Right on. Bravo. SN: Robert has often said that when you are in a burning building you don't stop to admire the pictures, you get out as fast as you can. That’s like the Buddhist story of the man who was shot by an arrow. Rather than to pull the arrow out to save himself, he wanted to know who shot the arrow and while he was cursing and booed his father and so on and so on and so on, rather than pull the arrow out to save himself he needed to know the answers to all these questions. And when some intellectual came to see Buddha, they asked him all these questions of the universe, the existence of thoughts all these mythological and morphological questions. And the Buddha sat silent. He didn't respond to these questions because he knew that the answer to these questions would not change you at all because becoming awake has nothing to do with knowing the answers to these questions. R: That is a good point, Jay. SN: I want to know if you could comment on something Robert, when you are observing yourself and feelings arise is the idea to stop the feelings or just be nonattached? In the same way when thoughts come, when you are observing thoughts the idea to stop the thoughts or to not be attached to the thoughts. R: There are two ways. One is to observe them, become the witness to them and just watch without trying to change things. Even if you do that they will dissipate and become weaker. The other way is to grab them and ask to whom do they come. Who has these thoughts and realize it's your ego, the I that has the thoughts and then you ask yourself but “where did the I come from?” So you use the method which is more convenient for you at the time of your evolution. SN: This is kind of related to the question I asked last week about samskaras. You said the fan about the electricity cut off the fan continues to spin. We may appear to do the same but in actuality we are not the same the question connected with that in that perhaps if the actions continue if there is no identification we don't react. R: What you are saying is true and the example I gave about the fan about the power being cut off is for the sake of others. But as far as I'm concerned there is no fan there is nothing going on, there’s no reaction to anything. But when you see a teacher that you are talking about and the teacher is acting in a funny way, yet people say he's enlightened that’s what you are seeing at that time. So you give the example of the fan when you pull out the plug. But the blades are still spinning the teacher is working out the balance of his karma. That’s how it is to others. But to the one who is experiencing that, there is no karma, there is no fan, there is no working out anything. There’s no existence there’s only consciousness. And consciousness is silence. So the answer would be, if something like that appears for you or you see something like that do not try to figure it out but sit in the silence. SN: Well I'm not speaking so much from terms of observing someone else's positive vibes. Within my own experience the difference between reacting and identifying. Say for instance if someone dies you react with mourning but you don't identify with that mourning. (R: You can say that yes.) So I am trying to make the distinction between reacting with the identification whereas some may think that when there is, when one is awake there is no reaction. The point I'm trying to make is it's not a matter of reacting but a matter of identifying. R: Yes, when I saw a dog being killed. A car ran over the dog and the dog was dying, tears came to my eyes but then the next moment when it was all over it’s like it never happened, it was gone. There was no longer any remorse or anything else. But at the time that it did happen the body had tears. SN: So we should not think that the person who has awakened is just an empty shell of reaction, there’s just no identification to reaction? R: There is no identification but the truth is, nothing like that is really happening. (laughter) SJ: There is not even a question of identifying, there is noone there to identify. SN: I'm speaking from my own experience. I see that when an occurrence happens I observe myself. In that observation I see a reaction and then I see if there is identification. If I identify with that reaction then it lingers if I don't identify the space is there. R: But you are making it too stretched out. Just look, observe and know who you are, that’s all you have to do. Know the truth about yourself and don't think whether you are identifying or not identifying and go through all that stuff. Merely realize, "To whom does this come? I feel this. Where does the I come from?" And you’ll realize the I doesn't exist and if the I doesn't exist the condition doesn't exist because the condition is part of the I. The solution is always transcending the I. That's a good name for a book "Transcending the I." We’ll have to write a book on it. SH: Got a lot of pissy sayings. The solution is always transcending the I. It's a very pissy saying. (R: I know what you mean, Henry. You’re okay Henry.) I feel the same way about you. SG: (Questions concerning identifying with the body and it’s elimination) R: As long as you identify with the body and the mind then what you’re saying is true. There is karma and there are conditions and the body came to this earth to fulfill its karmic purpose. But as soon as you transcend the idea that there is a body or a mind and you become no thing then everything else becomes redundant and you become free of the whole thing. So all the works of Shakespeare and William Blake, Edward Carpenter and all these other people, we are finding more of them mystical but they have to do with the body and the mind. It all has to do with I. I am having an experience, I am spiritual, I feel God. As long as there’s an I to feel God or to have an experience then it's not real awakening. When there is real awakening there’s no I to have any experience. For the I has been transcended. In other words there is nobody there to have any experience. You’re totally free, and when you’re free you don't feel an individual personality. You feel as if you are the Self of all. You feel your omnipresence. Your personality is gone. So all these voluminous works that have been written are really for the I. I have experienced this and I have experienced that and I have travelled the world and I have searched and searched and I have found this and I have found that. There’s always the I, I, I. It's so simple to me that if the I goes everything else goes and you're free. It's very funny. Now most of us have so many books we read but if you had a glimpse of who you really were you wouldn't even be interested in reading another book. S: Just reading a lot of books and don't have any sadhana, huh? (students laugh) R: That's a good point. Only unfortunately with some people they become real bookworms and the books become crutches. They have a whole library filled with books. And if something happens they have to turn the page in a book to find the solution. Or to memorize certain words. Or to read a certain chapter to make them feel good. But if they burn all the books and they're left standing naked, without any crutch or without anybody to depend on. Then that will help them more than the books. SU: When you were awakened when you were fourteen, did you read anything after that? R: I glanced through things to confirm my feelings. So I did look through books because I didn't know what I was. I had no idea what happened. SU: But after you had left Ramana Ashram? R: I still glance at books now. But I do not glance with my finite knowledge. (SU: So it's just curiosity?) I will see who the writer is and what they’re writing about. I'm not trying to learn anything or acquire new knowledge or acquire anything. But just in the use of the amount of words they use. They take one sentence and they make a really big book. SJ: What about school? R: But as long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena it's very important. All these things are important as long as you are a part of the world. If you do not learn these things at school then you will suffer. You will not be able to get a good job. You will be on a low income rate. So if you’re going to be a part of the world by all means study go to school and learn all you can. In the meanwhile work on yourself until you've transcended and become free. SU: What is it that caused you to awaken? Do you know what that is? R: Nothing that I know of. I had no interest in anything except football and boxing. (SB: You were a sort of an ordinary student?) That's it. Again, I never asked for anything. SH: You had no teaching? (R: Nothing not part of the world.) You hadn't read any literature? (R: Hadn't read anything.) It just occurred? (R: Occurred by itself.) (SU: A gift?) R: It appears to be a gift when you look at it like that but I am sure there was a time and a place where I worked for eternity. Somewhere somehow. SH: Why do you think that? (R: Because that‘s what they say.) But who cares what they say? (R: Because it was in the books.) (students laugh) SL: Even though you know everything? (R: I know everything? I know nothing!) (students laugh) Oh come on. (R: Really, I know nothing!) SF: Yeah he means what he's saying. R: Of course I know everything that I know absolutely nothing! (students talking and laughing) SF: Some people seem to have a feeling that they know everything. It's a feeling but it doesn't mean that they know how shoe polish is composed of. There's a feeling there to learn everything. R: Well not when you transcend there is no feeling whatsoever. There is nothing. (SU: So nothing you feel.) If there were a feeling there would have to be someone left to feel. ST: Are you at liberty to stick around or to leave. (R: Where would I go?) I mean transcending or leaving your body. (SH: As Ramana said, "Where would I go?") R: That's true. This is why I always say that you are omnipresent. You are everywhere to begin with. All this is the Self and I am that. So where can I go? (ST: If your body would die you wouldn't be around for us.) That’s your viewpoint. (students laugh) SF: Robert I had the consideration that if your body left that you would still be with me. (R: You’re right!) I had realization weeks ago that if your body went to China you would still be with me. R: There are many times that I have visions that I am with Ramana. We have a conversation and we take a walk on the banks of the Ganges and we talk. Nothing ever dies. (SU: What are you talking?) About things. (SU: Really?) Like the weather. No really. (SB: You talk about the weather and…?) Talk about anything. SH: Whatever. (SD: About things that don't exist?) (students laugh) ST: Do you have a choice to stick around forever like you are now? R: The way I am now, I will be here forever because there is no place to be and there is no forever. I am always there. There is nowhere to go and there is no place I came from. But what you’re seeing is this body, so to you it will not be here. As long as you are in the present state of consciousness you will see the body die, and be burnt or buried or whatever. You can throw it in the garbage can. But that’s what you will see. But that’s not happening. For there’s no body who will ever die. What doesn't exist cannot be burnt or buried. So you should ask yourself, "Who sees the body die? What body dies?" Ask yourself and find out. (pause) So let's go into the silence now and practice any procedure that suits you. When we do it together there is a higher vibration. (tape ends)

Robert: Most of you have come here to hear me talk, and I say to you that sitting in the silence is more potent than any words you can ever hear. If you came just to hear me talk you're going to be disappointed, for I am not a public speaker, I am not a lecturer and I really have nothing to say. But yet most of you function by listening to people talk. Think back in retrospect. How many teachers have you heard during your life? Literally hundreds. How many books have you read, and where are you? Here! If the talks and the books did you any good you wouldn't be here at all. You're here because you're still seeking, you're still searching, you're trying to find something external to yourself and you cannot do that. What you're looking for, you already are. There is nowhere to go and there's nothing to do. Everything already is. There is no one that can change it for you. When you sit in the silence you have to deal with your own thoughts. Most people do not like to do this, so they want to hear me talk. When they're finished here they go home and watch the TV, they hear someone else talk. Then they talk to their families, they go to a movie and there's nothing but talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. It gets you nowhere. Many of you do not like to sit in the silence for your mind attacks you. It brings up all sorts of things about the past and worries about the future. So you want to be entertained. You want to hear good words, profound knowledge. There is no profound knowledge. There are no good words. Everything you've been taught is a lie. The only truth that exists is your Self, but who is the Self? The Self is you, just the way you are. The mistake most people make is they want to change themselves. How can you change yourself? You think you've got problems, or you think you've got a bad mind, or you think something is wrong and you want to change that. Those things don't exist. There is nothing to change. That's what I mean when I say, "Be your Self, just the way you are." Your Self, just the way you are is spontaneous, lives in the now, has no time to worry or think. When you are your Self you are God, you are consciousness, you are absolute reality. You are always yourself. You never were anyone else. You never were anything else. Your nature is divine. You are not what you appear to be. The only thing you have to remove is the appearance, or the belief in the appearance, for the appearance is false. Most of you still believe you are the body-mind phenomena. No matter how many times I tell you you are not the body-mind, you still keep identifying with the body and mind, that's false, that doesn't exist. But what is this body all about? If you look at your body with an electric microscope, an electronic microscope you will see trillions, and trillions and trillions of atoms. What is an atom? Science tells us that an atom has a proton, which is the center, and electrons swirling all around the protons. Your body appears to be made of trillions, and trillions and trillions of atoms, which means it’s always in a state of flux. You are not as solid as you believe. Nothing in the world is solid. Now the amazing thing about all this is you are the microcosm in the macrocosm. Which means you are a small universe in a large universe. If you look at the universe, it's composed of galaxies and solar systems. In each galaxy there are trillions and trillions of solar systems. What is a solar system? It's a sun with planets revolving around it. Isn't that just like the atom? That's why in scripture it tells you, "We live in the body of God," for the whole universe appears to be some pulsating being. It pulsates. It breathes. Can you imagine that? The universe actually breathes just like you breathe. You are a replica of the universe. If you found yourself the size of an atom in your body, you would be in a universe. You would look up and you would see suns, stars, planets, but they're all taking place in your body. It’s mind boggling. So you are not what you appear to be. Therefore when I say you are not the body it is not only spiritual, it's scientific. There are spaces between the atoms just as there are spaces between the atoms that you see up in the sky, the planets. The space between the molecules, and the atoms and the electrons is what we call space. That's what we see with our eyes, space, but is it really space? Sages tell us it's actually consciousness. What is consciousness? Something that is conscious. What this means is there is a life force which is the substratum of all existence. What is that life force? What is the cause of creation? What is at the bottom of all of this? The answer, my dear friends, is you. You are the cause of all creation, and you don't exist as you. Therefore creation as it appears to be also does not exist. In other words, creation only exists because you exist. When you go to sleep at night what happens to creation? It no longer exists for you. I know you can say, "Well I know it's there anyway." No you don't. Who knows? You're in a state of deep sleep. As far as you're concerned you're dead. That's how it is when it comes time to leave your body. You become consciousness itself. The difference between sleeping and being realized is that when you're asleep you're realized, but you're not conscious of it. When you are realized, you are conscious of the whole game. So you see, when you really see what you're made of, atoms, trillions and trillions of atoms, you are not who you think you are. You've been fooled. Awaken! Why should you awaken? When you look at the world today, and you see what's happening, you become completely confused. You have no idea why there's war, man's inhumanity to man. There's going to be a civil war in Russia. They're fighting in South America. In Africa there's upheavals. There appears to be no peace anywhere. Yet reality is love. Reality is peace. Reality is infinite happiness. It doesn't make any sense. How can reality be happiness, love and peace when you behold the effect of reality which appears to be chaos and confusion and man's inhumanity to man? You have been hypnotized. Have you ever watched a hypnotist? A good hypnotist can hypnotize you and make you believe almost anything. The universal hypnosis is called maya. It makes me believe I'm Robert and have a life to live. It makes you believe you're Joan, or Fred, or Henry or Mary and you have a life to live. You worry about your life. You have no patience. You always want to change things, make things better, improve this and improve that. It's all a joke. You cannot improve anything. The only thing you can do is to wake up. When you wake up you see the world as a reflection, as a reflection of a mirror. The mirror is always the same. It never changes. The reflections has changed. The question is of course, then why are there reflections? Where do they come from? And as you know my answer is that they do not exist. It's an analogy I give you to let you understand where everything is coming from. Only reality exists and you are that. Only consciousness exists and you are that. Only love exists and you are that. If you only realized who you were you would be the happiest person that ever lived, and I mean happy, totally happy, unchanging happiness. Is there such a thing? Yes there is. Unchanging peace. Unchanging love. But you have chosen to identify with the maya, with the unreality, and so you think you suffer. You believe your life is not what it should be. You compare yourself to someone else. You want to make changes. As you know by now, when you make those changes they only last a short time, then you're back where you were before. The wise person, therefore, does really not look to change anything. They become quiet. They have patience. They work on themselves. They watch their thoughts, watch their actions and observe themselves getting angry, observe themselves getting depressed, observe themselves getting jealous and envious and the rest of it. Little by little they realize, "That's not me. That's hypnosis, that's a lie." They do not react to their condition. To the extent that they do not react to their condition, to that extent do they become free. They no longer care what anybody else is doing. They compare themselves with no one. They compete with no one. They simply watch themselves. They observe themselves. They see the mental confusion. They don't run around shouting, "I am absolute reality. I am God. I am consciousness." Rather, they see where they're coming from and they leave everyone else alone. Such a being unfolds at a fast rate. It makes no difference what predicament such a being is in. It doesn't matter, for such a being is already free. When the mind rests in the heart, that means when the mind does not go out any longer and identify with the world, when the mind rests in the heart there is peace, there is harmony, there is pure being. When you allow your mind to go out of your Self it begins to compare, it begins to judge, it begins to feel offended, and there is no peace. There's no rest. How do you begin? Well, first you realize the place that you're in right now, whether you think it’s good or bad, whether you think you're happy or sad, whether you think you're rich, or poor, or sick, or healthy, the place where you're in right now is your right place. That's the beginning. You stop trying to be someone else. You stop trying to change your life. You're in your right place, right now, just the way you are. If you can become happy and peaceful in the place where you are right now, all of a sudden you will find circumstances will change in your favor, and then again you will be in your right place. Whatever change comes along as far as your body-mind is concerned, you are in your right place. The more you can see that, the more you can look at what I just said intellectually, intelligently, the more peaceful you become, the more the karmic patterns begin to break away and you begin to awaken. It may be gradual at first. You notice that things that used to annoy you, no longer annoy you. You notice that people that you live with, the conflicts you've had, they stop because you've stopped. There's no more trying to get even. There's no more trying to win your point. There's no more trying to find the right book, or the right teacher, or the right anything. You remain centered. You remain free. When something comes along, whether it's good or bad, you simply sit where you are and you ask, "To whom has this come?" and you laugh, for you have separated yourself from your body-mind and you begin to realize that your body-mind is going through the experience but not you. So there is nothing to worry about. There's nothing to fear. There's nothing that can upset you. There's nothing that can harm you. You realize whatever someone does to your body, physically, or with words, or otherwise, can never, never hurt you because you are not your body. No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you see with your eyes can never affect you, for you are not your mind. You have actually separated your Self from your body and your mind. That's only the beginning. As you go further your body and your mind drop off. I don't mean that you die. I mean that they become less and less important to you, and you no longer identify with them at all. You actually know, and you feel, and you experience, that your body and mind do not exist, yet you exist. You do not exist as your body or your mind. You exist as absolute reality, as consciousness, and you no longer believe that your body and your mind are a modification of consciousness. You just know that there is no body and there is no mind. You are egoless. There is no reason for your body, mind or the world to exist. You may first feel this slightly, but you will notice the greater the feeling, the greater the happiness. You are beginning to merge in consciousness. You are beginning to feel reality. The world goes on, people do what they always do, yet you see it quite differently. You no longer see the same world you used to see. It's like reading a magazine. The images in a magazine are in front of you but you are not the magazine and you are not the images. Who you are may still be a mystery. Remember, as long as you can express it, it's not that. Therefore you do not walk around telling everybody, "I am pure reality," or "I am consciousness." You remain silent. By their fruits ye shall know them. You become a light in the world of darkness. Automatically people come around you and they just feel good by being around you. You have found peace. It has always been you. You have really not found anything. You have just become your Self. Now let's talk about you. Think about your experiences for a while, what you’re going through personally in your life, the things that worry you, the things that upset you, the things that make you cry. How can you allow things to have control over you? That's what's called blasphemy. Being the God that you are, you believe that someone or something can make you cry, can upset you, can make you feel bad, can make you want to make changes. As an example, there are so many people who come to me every day or call me on the phone and ask me, "Robert, when are we going to have a place of our own? We should go into the woods somewhere and be peaceful or have an ashram somewhere far away in the woods or the jungle." And my answer is always the same. If you're not peaceful now, you're not going to find peace no matter where you go, because wherever you go, you've got to bring yourself with you. What makes you think you will find peace? If you're a trouble-maker, if you're a gossip spreader, do you think the change is going to change you? It will in the beginning, but soon you'll be doing the same things you always do. You'll be restless, you'll find fault, you'll look for reasons to curse people, be upset with others. So I say to you, stay just where you are. Once you have found your Self and you've found the semblance of peace and harmony, then see where you want to go, but do not go anywhere until you've found yourself. You and I both know people who come to Los Angeles for a while, then they foul everything up and they go somewhere else, San Francisco, then they foul everything up and they go to Oregon, they foul everything up and go to New York. It never ends. They've never seen themselves for who they are. They simply run and make changes. This is why last week I asked you for one week I want you to ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" Whenever something happens in your life, instead of trying to change it or take some action against it, simply ask yourself, "Who am I?" Whenever your mind starts thinking ask yourself, "Who am I?" Whenever you hear bad news on the TV, when you feel upset, ask yourself, "Who am I?" That's all you had to do. Not to go any further than that. Now, what I'd like to do is hear the results of that experiment. Who would like to tell me or tell us what happened during the week? By posing the question to yourself, "Who am I?" Who would like to say something about that? (pause) Don't all answer at once. (tape unclear student answers then Robert continues) R: That's a good answer. The more she asked herself the question the more she realized she didn't know. And what happened when you said, "I don't know?" (SU: More and more I felt peace.) More and more you found a little peace? (SU: Makes you feel you want to do more practice. It seems the more I practice brings a feeling of ignorance…) R: And you say, "I don't know?" Your humanhood can never know who she really is. As long as you’re trying to find the answer through human methods, it will never work. How do you feel now about that? (SU: I don't know?) Okay, that's good. She doesn't know. That's the beginning of wisdom. When you plead divine ignorance. When you don't know what anything at all is. That is the beginning. Who else would like to share? SV: When I ask the question, it's mind boggling. Nothing comes up except my ego keeps talking to myself. All my limitations come up the more I think of myself. R: That's great. You are beginning to see what you really are. As far as your physical form is concerned. You are beginning to see all your limitations and everything that has been going on within you. That's a start. Anyone else? ST: Only that I am, nothing more than that and then I would lose that, you know the world would pull me back to the same old rut so-to-speak So I would go back and forth, back and forth. (R: That's normal.) That's normal? I've did this more intensively than I've ever done it. R: Great. All this stuff that has been waiting to sprout like dormant seeds it’s all coming up. That’s what is supposed to happen. You should actually feel worse then you ever did before for all this stuff is beginning coming up. And as you keep watching yourself, as you keep looking at all of your stuff. All of your stuff begins to dissipate. Your mind and your thoughts become weaker and weaker and weaker. And your I becomes stronger and stronger. Until you begin to focus and hold on to the I and it's revealed to you that all of your stuff is attached to the I. I have been the cause of my own misery. I have been responsible for everything that has happened to me. No matter how it looks I am responsible. Therefore if I goes the responsibility goes. And everything else goes with the I. That all should come to you. Anyone else like to share with us. SS: The reality was more intense afterwards more than before. (R: Yes.) More of a dream existence. R: That is very good you are having a good experience. (SS: Thank you.) It should become more intense for up to now you just allow all of your stuff to come forth to make you angry or upset or whatever. But now you are taking a good look at it. And you’re realizing what is really going on within your mind. And as you continue to practice you will soon realize, "But wait a minute I am not my mind because after all I am looking at my mind. So how can I be my mind if I am observing my thoughts. I is observing the thoughts. Therefore I cannot be these things. I cannot be my depression or my hang ups, or anything else because I am observing them." Then, "Who am I?" and you keep silent. "Who am I?" It's similar to the atom I was talking about. In between the atom, the proton, the electron there is space, which is consciousness. In the same manner, in between, "Who am I?" there is the real Self. Every time you say, "Who am I?" and you wait, something is happening to you. Your old self is being depleted and your real Self will begin to take place in the space between "who am I?" You will come to that conclusion yourself as you keep practicing. Anyone else like to share? SH: It seems to me the question you stated in the first place doesn't know who and there is also no I, there is just am-ness period. (R: You can also say there is no "am.") Then there's nothing at all. (R: And there is no consciousness and no reality.) Okay now you've got it. (R: And there is no searching and there is no seeking.) (tape damage) SC: Can I think there is something else then ask a question that answers it. R: As you keep inquiring with your mind. It's like a policeman becoming a thief to catch a thief. As you keep asking and inquiring the mind turns on itself. It becomes weaker and weaker until it dissipates completely. SN: Robert, if and when one gets rid of the ego. One doesn't get rid of the samskaras and their tendencies from their personality. So their actions can seem the same but it's the attachment it's how they view that. Is that true? (R: To an extent. The actions may appear the same to others. But to the one who is realized there are no actions.) What I am saying is if one has a temperament to be an intellectual or philosophical or emotional or whatever their samskaras or personality or character is. If in the process one gets rid of their ego one doesn't stop being what they are? R: It depends. It's like the example of the electric fan. When you turn off the fan there is no more power but the fan still spins around until it stops by itself. So when some people transcend they still have some of their samskaras left over. But they are burning themselves out until there is nothing. Everyone is different. SN: Some may think that well you become holy when all of a sudden you become an ocean of compassion all of these things. Do you see what I'm saying? Or are you just as you are? R: You are as you are. But you’re consciousness. You’re pure being. How others see you is up to them. But you’ve become absolute reality. I know what you’re talking about because it appears that some Jnanis have all kind of traits. That's why I give you the example of the electric fan. Their ego has been cut and they are totally free but the fan is still spinning. Their body is still going through certain acts and doing certain things until it stops completely. That’s why there appears to be a certain Masters, Jnanis that seem to have some negative traits. But that’s for others to pledge. The person who has experienced freedom, liberation is totally free. ST: (student asks question not clear) (R: Semantics yes. It's the same thing. It depends where a teacher is coming from and what they mean by it.) Would God-realization be if you are totally pervasive and aware of all in maya and so I can say that you are not aware of all in maya, and self-realization you are not aware of maya, you're just aware of your beingness. R: It depends what school you're coming from. In my explanation, in my experience, God realization and self-realization is the same. There is no one to realize. As long as there is someone left over to realize it is not self-realization. You cannot say, "I am selfrealized, I no longer exist." There is no one to be realized. Otherwise it’s duality, there is not two. There’s not I who has become self-realized there is just realization. There is really nothing at all. Words spoil it. Therefore there are people who have to go after Godrealization and there are people who give their own meaning to self-realization. This is why words keep us back. The more we talk about these things. The more confused we become and the less we really know. It all has to do with silence. In silence there is strength. When we try to explain it we spoil it. (Question cannot be heard. We pick up Robert midway of answer.) R: …Just by being here there is something about you that’s different. It wants to awaken. And if you simply ask yourself, "Who am I?" without answering, then the answer will come eventually. (tape damage) SF: (Picked up at end of students question)…the other one is that I didn't know the answer and I really couldn't get the answer in any kind of mental frame, that's just mental talking, and that's about it. R: That's exactly what's supposed to happen. Again when you first begin, "Who am I?" procedure, all the stuff is going to come up. (SF: With a vengeance.) Everything will come up and attack you from all sides and you are supposed to observe and watch and see all the stuff and to realize, "Hey wait a minute that's not me! I am not that. If I am not that then who am I?" (tape damage) (Robert continues to answer a question about prayer) R: Prayer has to do with all those things. Pray for them. Prayer makes you peaceful. Makes you believe that somebody is listening to you. It's like telling a psychiatrist your troubles. After all to whom do you pray? You say, "I pray to God." Where does God live? Who is God? And soon you discover you're praying to yourself. And it helps. This leads you to identify with your Self. The one that you pray to. And become that one. For there is only one, there are not two. There is not one who prays and one who listens. The prayer and the listener are the same person. There is no differentiation. ST: In the Arabic tradition they pray to Allah and I'm sure now the bombs are falling on them, they all are praying to Allah. And they seem to sacrifice their life to that, because of their belief system. But it doesn't change the fact that the allied forces keep bombing them until they don't exist. So there is no way out of this dilemma in their prayer. They may be peaceful but still they are annihilated with the bombs. (R: What has that got to do with anything?) Well in the reality in maya, I'm saying is prayer affecting maya or is it an illusion that we pray. I have prayed for many people in my life but has never was effective. R: If a person is really sincere and they really feel that what they are doing is correct, this will help. Because your mind is very powerful and the prayer is done through your mind. So in the maya you can create conditions when you pray. But first you must really believe mentally what you are praying for. S: (Question picked up toward the end) …how do you still worship God if you still…? R: That's possible. It has to do with your karma, and your samskaras and the rest of it that doesn’t exist. Do not judge anyone else, worry about yourself… (tape ends abruptly)

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Robert: What's the name of our group? Who knows? What is the answer to it? SL: The nobody's? Robert: If somebody asked what group do you attend what do you say? SN: The Jnana Marga Society. Robert: That's right. That is what we call ourselves and if they ask you, “what does it teach? Nothing.” It's a hard job answering an ordinary person because what do we teach? Nothing. You know there are two different schools of Advaita Vedantists. And I think I'll talk about that today. One school teaches that consciousness becomes modified as the world. This has not been my experience. SN: Can you explain that? R: Yes. (laughs) People ask me also, (I'll get back to you). They ask me does all this come to you when you talk? Did it take a few years to get to the place where you are at? Where does all this information come from? Through spirits? How did you acquire this? I had to think about that myself also. But really the best I can do is say that everything happened all at once. There were no periods of time. When I was 14 years old and I got absorbed into reality everything came then and there and that's it. No thing has ever been added on. Isn't that interesting? There is no new knowledge to learn. So back to the question. Does consciousness modify itself into the world? That has not been my experience. But there are Advaita Vedantists that believe that. That you have to have consciousness to have the world. But it’s my experience that there is no world to begin with. We start from there. There never was a world or a universe. There will never be a universe or a world. There is only consciousness. That has been my experience. Consciousness does not modify itself into anything. Of course those people who believe that the world is sort of real can say that they have to be consciousness first and then you have the universe. But I will insist on saying that the universe is non-existent. It’s like an optical illusion. It appears to be real but there is no substance to it. It has no causation, no ego. This of course means that everything connected with the universe does not exist. God, planets, reincarnation, karma, people, places and things are non-existent. And when I use the term consciousness we cannot even understand that. For if we can explain it, it doesn't exist. How do we know there is something? It seems to me that when we learn to sit in the silence and the mind becomes quiescent, calm, something happens. Something that is indescribable, ineffable. Something wonderful happens. We become ultimate oneness. We seem to sort of melt into something. The something has no name. So we give it a name. We call it consciousness or God or nirvana or emptiness, pure intelligence, absolute reality, infinite wisdom. We make up these names and yet if we’ve never experienced that how can we possibly know what those names mean. Isn't it better if we shut up and say nothing. Yet we can't do that for we live in a world of talkers. People have to talk so-it-seems and some people really talk. And the more you talk the less you have to say. What's the answer? There is no answer. There never was an answer, therefore stop looking for an answer. There is no solution, stop looking for a solution. There is nowhere to go, stop thinking you have to go some place. There is nothing to do, stop thinking you have to do something. You simply have to be your Self. How do you arrive at the Self? Well here is another interesting way of getting to that. And if you get up in the morning if you feel a little depressed or out of sorts, if you do this you will start to laugh at yourself and you will feel better. It will make you happy all day. And here's what you do. As soon as you get up say to yourself, "I am not my arms, I am not my legs, I am not my torso, I am not my head, I am not my bones, I am not my blood, I am not my organs of reproduction, I am not my respiration, I am none of these things. For most of these things are functioning without my knowledge. My heart beats, I didn't tell it to beat. I have to go to the bathroom, I didn't give my body permission to go to the bathroom. The body wants to eat it gets hungry. I never told my body to be hungry. It appears as if I have nothing to do with my body at all." You go further. You say to yourself, "How about the world? I am not the world. The world didn't exist a few moments ago when I was asleep. Now that I am awake I think about the body, the world, God, work, food, bathroom. All these things happen when I wake up. Well if I'm not those things, who am I"? Who is the I that is experiencing all this? I don't know." Be honest with yourself. Don't say, "Oh the I is consciousness." That's the worst thing you can ever do. Is to memorize certain words or phraseologies and use them at your own time. When you ask the question, "Then who is experiencing the body? Who is experiencing the world?" Be honest with yourself and say, "I don't know? It's a mystery. Well then to whom is it a mystery too. To me. It therefore seems that if everything is a mystery to me. Me, me, me. If I got rid of the me, there would be no mystery. Now how do I get rid of the me. Who is the me? The me is another word for I. I believe that everything is a mystery. I have nothing to do with my body or the world." So you get back to I. "Who is this I? I don't know it's a mystery. There is the mystery again." So I'll ask again, "For whom is the mystery for? For me. Who am I? I don't know it's a mystery. For whom is the mystery for?" As you keep talking to yourself this way something wonderful is going to happen. Your question will begin to slow down and you will feel yourself becoming happy. You may even start laughing at yourself. And your mind will become quieter and quieter and quieter. You will begin to feel enormous joy. Just by doing that technique, without coming to any conclusions. As you keep asking yourself, "For whom is the mystery?" pretty soon you will stop saying I for me. For there will be a larger space between the question and the answer. When you say, "The mystery is for me, I think it's a mystery," there will be a large pause. And as you keep reiterating the question the pause becomes larger and larger. Now the good news is, that pause is consciousness. That pause is your reality, because you will find if you keep doing the process that in that pause there are no thoughts. There is a calmness, emptiness and you feel wonderful. I will explain the procedure again because I think it's important. You get up in the morning and you haven't been able o catch yourself between just awakening and sleeping. Where there is pure consciousness. Some of you think it’s hard to catch yourself. So instead of doing that you simply look at yourself and you start saying, "I am not my arms, I am not my legs, I am not my head, I am not my torso, I am not my bones or my organs or my reproduction organs or my respiration or anything else. I am not the blood, I am not the body. For whom is the body? I don't know? Then am I the world or the universe? When I was asleep a few moments ago I did not experience the universe or the world or the body? But I do now when I'm awake. What about the rest of the things I experience or think about? God, planets, the sun, other dimensions, the world and all its manifestations, where do they come from? Well obviously I'm thinking of them so they must come from my mind. Yet who thinks? To whom do these thoughts come? They come to me. I'm thinking about my body and I'm thinking about the world. It appears that everything is attached to I. I, I, I. If somehow I can remove this I, I'll be free. How do I remove the I? I don't know. Who doesn't know? I don't know. What is it I don't know? How to remove the I. Well where did the I come from? It's a mystery." When you ask, "Where did the I come from? What you mean actually is what is the source of the I. Never, never answer that question. When you begin to attain a peace and inner joy, bliss and your mind becomes quiet that is the answer. The answer has no words. Then I go back to I. What is the source of I? I don't know. It's a mystery. For whom is the mystery? For me. I am experiencing this mystery. It is I. I have all these questions. Who is body conscious. I am conscious of praying to God or thinking about my past lives or believing in my body. I am doing this. Then where does the I come from? I don't know it's a mystery. Again you notice I've slowed down then you will do the same thing. Every-time you say, "It's a mystery," you will keep quiet for a longer span of time. Remember you do not have to come to any conclusion. After you say it about four or five times you should be able to sit in the silence for at least five minutes, without any thoughts. This procedure will allow you to sit in the silence without thoughts for about five minutes. And that’s quite an accomplishment. For in those five minutes you will experience a joy and a peace and a profound happiness that you never really knew existed. You no longer have to carry on the conversation. You simply leave it alone. You get up and get dressed and do your business. Go to work whatever you do yet what you have done that morning will carry you along for the day. You will notice interesting things happening during the day. You will notice that you are happier during the day than you have been in a long time. That somehow your work is getting done without you thinking about it. People that you have quarreled with, you will feel a compassion and a loving kindness towards them. You will no longer have any enemies, if you had any before. You will feel a peace with the whole world. Even with the Iraq situation. Something within you will make you understand. You will not be able to explain it to anyone. That’s why when someone asked me before, "If I think that there is going to be a war?" I didn't answer. You will realize that the answer is not sufficient for most people. But you will know and you will be hilariously happy, content, at peace with the world. When you come home from work or toward the evening before you go to sleep you can do something like this. You can say, "Now I'm going to sleep but who is it that is going to sleep? Why it’s the same I that awoke this morning. Now the I is going to sleep." See what you’re doing you are getting more accustomed to the I and less accustomed to the body. Now you are saying, "I am going to sleep," and you are not identifying too much with your body when you say, "I am going to sleep." You are referring to a separate entity now. As if there were no body. You say, "Now I am going to sleep." And your body will lie down and start snoring or start dreaming. But I can assure you that you will sleep more comfortably than you have in years. You will awaken being happy. If you continue this over a period of time. Every-time you wake up you are going to say, "I slept and I dreamt and now I'm awake. But I have absolutely nothing to do with the situation. I am not my body. I am not the one who dreamt and I am not the one who slept. Then who am I? It's a mystery. A great mystery I don't know. Who doesn't know? I don't know. Who is this I? What is the source of the I?" Again it's a mystery. And remember the pause. Every time you keep repeating, "It's a mystery," the pause becomes greater and greater and greater. And in that pause there are no thoughts. You’re beginning to get good at this now. There are no thoughts, there are no feelings, there are no emotions. There is emptiness, joy, bliss. This is what is called parabrahman. And you will stay like that for a while then your body will get up and go about it's business. But you remember all the time during the day that the bodies business has nothing to do with you. You have absolutely nothing to do with what your body's experiencing. Therefore during the day when someone brings you bad news, I does not react. You just watch, you witness, you observe but you no longer feel a reaction. When I say you do not react I don't mean you are putting it on. Don't say to yourself, "I'm not supposed to react, I'm not supposed to react," while you feel all torn apart inside. That's the worst thing you can do. Yet if you have been practicing the procedure you will really find that no matter what is brought to your attention during the day there’s no reaction, there is only a witness. And you feel good all the time. So someone can bring you information about a death. You will have compassion, loving kindness you will feel good. If someone brings you information that you just won the lottery and you are 10 million dollars richer you will not react. You will witness, you will observe and you will feel good. No matter what happens in front of you there will no longer be a reaction. Just an observation by witnessing. And as you continue the procedure even the witnessing will stop. It will turn into something else. You will just know without words that all this is the Self and I am that. So there put that in your pocket and smoke it. SL: All this is the Self and I am that? (R: Yes.) Any questions? (pause) Nothing? SF: Robert when you say that the world doesn't exist you are talking about the materiality of the world, right? R: I'm talking about any world that you can conceive.) (SF: Do you consider the world to be as a thought form and that is all we perceive?) True. (SF: And only consciousness exists.) Yes. But what is consciousness? (SF: Which could appear as thought?) No. (SF: What I mean to say thoughts can appear to be but they are not only consciousness is?) See only consciousness exists but the trouble we have is we use that word too loosely. What we should do is to say to ourselves, "What is consciousness?" We've all read in the books that only consciousness exists but now we want our own personal experience. So instead of voicing that only consciousness exists we should ask ourselves the question, "What is consciousness?" And again you tell yourself, "It's a mystery. I don't know." You have to be honest. Do you see why it takes so many people to become self-realized? Because they memorize all these cliches. All these phraseologies. I am absolute reality. I am this I am that and they know the word consciousness. You'd be better off if you knew nothing of those things. But the way to handle it is to ask yourself, "Well what is consciousness? What am I talking about?" And of course you don't know. Of course nobody knows what consciousness is. So you ask yourself or you tell yourself, “it's a mystery I don't know?” But you continue, you say, "Who doesn't know? I don't know?" You are always going back to I. “Who is this I that doesn't know? It's a mystery. For whom is the mystery? For me. Who am I? I don't know.” Same procedure, same space. So the space is actually consciousness. But you will feel it. You will feel something that is beyond human understanding. But you will feel something. SR: Robert sometimes it feels like the mind almost throws up false signals or tries to block the seeing of this. (R: That's called the ego.) And so the procedure in doing that would be more or less the same as what you are talking about. (R: The same procedure for everything.) It seems that the more I feel the deep space that I am the more there is going to be a message that tries to say no that's something to be afraid of and you should go back to a solid world etc., etc. R: Then ask, "For whom is this message? Who is receiving this message? I am? Who am I? It's a mystery, space." If you did this often enough things will happen, definitely. But I’ll bet that 90 percent of us are not practicing. We are just waiting for something to happen. Maybe something will happen I don't know? It's a mystery. (laughs) You’ve got to do something with your life while you are waiting. So you might as well do the procedure. SG: Isn't it predetermined whether we're going to do something or not? (R: It’s better than pulling weeds.) SH: Who is determining what they're going to do? R: Noone. There is no determiner. There is a terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (students laugh) But there is noone to determine anything. See don't think of those things. You should always think, "Where does the I come from who thinks about these things?" That’s the important question. And when you say to yourself, it's a mystery, there will automatically be a space. And again you will start to feel that space as bliss, as joy, as happiness, as peace, as the Self. And you will know. And you will know that you know. SF: Don't fight it. (laughs) Sometimes George is just walking the street and just gets so high for no reason whatsoever and the only way I can explain it to myself is tell him I'm not on drugs, it just is. (R: You must be doing something right.) Sometimes I just sit in bed it's just a lot of fun and I put on a deadly serious, pedantic face and a deadly serious one is asking, "What is this fun?" and the answer comes, "Enjoyment" and I put on a demonstrators face and I ask, "What's enjoyment and again it said, "Just being my Self." R: You hear that Jay? He is in bed all day like you. (laughter) (SL: What was that?) No, Jay has trouble getting out of bed. (SL: Oh.) (laughter) There is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with anything. All is well. SG: There is always that cliche of following your conscience. When I hear that I feel like I'm doing something wrong, like I hear this voice coming and I ask, "And where did that voice come from?" And it's still from that I, the conscience. There really is no conscience. Follow your conscience. (R: It’s like there is no devil.) Right. (R: Conscience is something you make up.) SK: The man in the head. (R: What?) The man in the head. (R: Oh yes.) SG: The good thoughts and the bad thoughts come from the same place. R: From no place. So that's the way it is. SL: Robert, is it all love? (R: You can say that, sure.) Could you say that? Yes, I'm kidding. (laughs) (R: It depends what you mean by love? What kind of love?) SG: What does that mean, when you use that word, God is love. I never quiet got to understanding it. R: Well that's something you learn from the Bible. But nobody really has an understanding of what it means. God, love, reality, consciousness, absoluteness they are all synonymous. But you have to ask yourself, "What do these terms mean to me? Who hears these terms? I do." And go right back to I and you go through the same procedure. SL: Today it came up while I was practicing, that phrase, "It's all love," and I really felt that it was so, how far can that be taken? Like a rose, a '57 chevrolet and the atom bomb, it's all love? R: So you don't really feel that because you still have confusion about the atom bomb and the chevrolet. (SL: I am embarrassed to say so, but it's alright. Is it alright?) Everything is alright. (SL: Everything is alright. So the atom bomb is alright?) I'm not asking you to accept that. I'm asking you to find out for yourself. Yes it's alright. But don't accept it blindly. (SL: I don't.) Find out for yourself. Don't believe me why should you? Find out for yourself. SF: So Robert all what's left to do is just accept your ignorance, living in mystery and practice self-inquiry? (R: Yes.) That's it, I mean that is, all the rest is just a waste of time? R: You can say that, sure, yes. (laughter) You're right. Think of all the things we did today that was a waste of time. We got angry, we got upset, we didn't get our way and we got mad at someone, or when we were thinking of something that made us angry. Or we reacted to somebody. Think of today, just today. All the wasted time. You watch soap operas all day. Think how you wasted your time. SL: It’s possible while, if you say a person is wasting his time it’s possible to practice the technique while we're even wasting our time. Wondering who is walking down the street, who is opening the door, who is washing the lettuce? R: It's very possible but it is harder. Especially for beginners because you are going to think more abut the lettuce than you are going to think about self-realization. You will get involved in your task. (SL: To the contrary, when you first said the body will take care of itself I felt well away from that, but today, the body was really opening the refrigerator and crushing the garlic.) Your body was crushing the garlic? (SL: Uh-uh.) You mean you crush garlic with your body? (laughter) (S: A very picturesque idea Robert.) (laughs) I can just see you… (SL: Like stomping on grapes or just throwing myself against the garlic. (laughs) But that's it though isn't it. The body is really taking care of itself?) Always does. (SL: And we can watch?) Yes. (SL: And watching is fine?) If you can do it, that's good. (tape break) SF: If you are watching a sunset it just kind of pulls you in without you even thinking about it. What would that be? R: That would be getting pulled into the sunset without thinking about it. (laughter) It would be an interesting state. (SF: Oh, okay.) But it comes out of your mind.) SL: What is speaking in tongues? Is there any connection with your condition with that? R: How many tongues do have to speak? (laughter) (SL: No, I've heard people say, this is what Christians say, that this is a gift from God and a connection with God and all this.) Well let them enjoy themselves. Allow them to speak in tongues. Leave them alone. (SL: I wondered if it had anything to do with this bliss.) No. (SL: Sort of a verbal bliss.) No. Why if you have bliss would you want to speak in tongues. You would want to shut up and keep still. (laughter) That's really funny. You can see a Jnani walking down the street blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. (students laugh) Leave the world alone. Let people do what they have to do. There are all kinds of people in the world doing all kinds of things. Let them be. Just love them and let them alone and you do what you have to do. SL: Well I'm still up for roller coaster rides and things like that and if it were sort of a firmer roller coaster ride I’d be interested to know what it was like. R: Well whatever you feel you have to do you have to do. (student laughs) See this isn't the type of satsang where I give you rules and regulations and I say, "You can do this but you cannot do this. You can do that but you are not supposed to do that." You do what you feel you have to do until the time comes when you no longer need to do it. If you practice this procedure you will slow down. In other words the more you practice the more blissful you become. The world cannot give you that bliss. So why would you want to get involved in the world. You become bliss yourself. SL: A lot of things are hang overs from when we were kids and we feel that exhilaration and if we don’t really understand true peace… R: Well of course. While you are human you will experience all those things. There is nothing wrong with that but I'm speaking as you follow this kind of procedure and as you begin to unfold higher and higher you will let go of the world more and more. Because you will realize that the world cannot give you real happiness. No matter what you acquire. It's all temporary. (SL: So acquisitions are burdens?) So if I wanted to give you a million dollars you wouldn't take it because it's a burden? (SL: Well speaking of things.) (laughter) That’s a thing. (SL: I know that’s a hypothetical question.) SR: Things are great so I'll go along with that. (R: Things are great?) I enjoy things. SL: Yes but… (R: There is nothing new.) …I enjoyed things a lot when I was younger and I have a lot of things and now I go through them and realize that it takes a lot of time away from what I really want to do, sort of, sorting them out, dusting them. R: So you're acquiring the feeling and that's the way to do it. I'm not saying to give up a thing. Enjoy what you're enjoying. But like you just said as you grow spiritually those things cease to amuse you. They no longer give you enjoyment. But don't put it on. Do not say, "I have to put on a blank face," and not enjoy life. Enjoy what you are enjoying. Do what you are doing until the time comes that you no longer have to do it. SR: Robert, you know I had this feeling if I put it in the right terms, like moving across this bridge toward this state and I have a terrible feeling that when I reach the end, I'm going to reach this void. An empty void that’s almost like dust. There is nothing there. And I'm afraid that at this moment looking at it at the way you’re describing it, it doesn't seem like a wonderful place to end up because I haven't experienced it. Whereas all of the things in the world as I have experienced it, I know what they are like and I can touch them and discard them and go through them. And I can discard and… R: Yet things happen to you that you don't like. You go through all kinds of experiences. There must be something else that is permanent and there is. (SR: I see that clearer and clearer, I really do.) Then all you got to do is practice the procedure and look what happens and watch. Or come to satsang like you do and watch what happens as the weeks pass. See what happens to you. Things will happen automatically. SR: I guess I'm wanting the reassurance that you understand where a person like me is, which I think a lot of people experience. To that common ground where we see a material world with things and the other is there but it’s sort of like a mystery. And really arriving at it and being sure that there is that solid ground, (you can't call it solid ground), but there's this attitude of… (R: And you can't even be sure.) (laughter) …I just want to be sure that you understand that there are a lot of entities out here who don't have sure footing about what to expect when you push through this. R: Of course, see this is why for most people to get into things like this the rug sometimes has to pulled from under them. They have to have a sort of a negative experience in life and then they get up and ask themselves, "What is life really all about?" and they get involved in teachings like this. But most people are having a relatively a happy life in the world which of course is due to karma, think that they are going to continue this happiness. But I can assure you it will not continue. It has to stop somewhere and you have to start experiencing the opposite. As for every up there is a down, for every forward there is a backward. For every amount of pressure pushed forward the same amount of pressure is pushed backward as in the flight of jet planes. That is all duality. And everybody experiences duality now and again. The world is impermanent and if you stick to the world you will always be disappointed. And let's say you even have joyous times all your life because of karma. The time will come when you're old 90, 95 years old and you become invalid and senile and crippled, like President Reagan, then what are you going to do? You will become disillusioned you will say, I was so happy all of my life. Now I can't get out of my bed. People have to bathe me and feed me and take care of me, what happened? You will be completely disillusioned. So why not search for it now and become free? Why not make this your main objective to become free and liberated? Ask yourself, "Why not?" SK: Why do things get so slow? (students laugh) Uninterested in the outside world and they lose their enthusiasm to do spiritual practice. (R: Well that can be apathy.) Um-hm. (R: It can be apathy because…) What if it's coming from a state of meditation which becomes no different then everything else one is doing? R: You’re apparently on the wrong track then. Maybe you have too many practices. So what you should ask yourself, "To whom do these feelings come? Why do I have these feelings? Where did they come from?" Inquire within yourself. (SK: Feelings of?) The feelings of apathy. (SK: I don't know if it is apathy, I'm wondering.) Well whatever it is. You don't have to know what they are just ask yourself, "To whom do they come and why?" And something will happen. SK: I think what I'm also asking is, you give practical advice to someone and if so related to discipline, is discipline something important? R: Do I give practical advice? (SK: Yeah.) No, I'm very unpractical. I can't give practical advice. (SK: You once gave me very practical advice one time.) It appears to be practical. (laughter) The practical advice is always in the end to find out who you are. That's the most practical advice I can give. And sometimes I will talk to you besides that and tell you what you call practical. But I will always end up by telling you, "Find out your true nature, discover your Self." SK: In other words if I'm blowing my nose too hard and as a result blood continually pours out of my nose and someone gives practical advice by observation and said, "You are blowing your nose too hard." (R: Oh I remember that, yes.) That's why blood is coming out of your nose and don't do that. So in the same way practical advice for someone who maybe is having some changes or whatever and decides to dissolve whatever discipline they have or what not, whether, practically speaking, discipline in one's life is important. )R: For some people. If you think it's important continue with it.) I mean just discipline one's life. R: In a way you are right. See it's very paradoxical. You are right in a way but for some people it is not important. Everybody is different. But it always goes back to selfinquiry. If you ask yourself, "Who needs discipline? And why?" You will realize that your real Self never really needed any discipline because you're already awake. (SK: Then what, is an experience of this enthusiasm for life by any chance?) The experience of this maybe enthusiasm for life but you're going back to your body. (SK: Yeah.) If your body has to have enthusiasm for life it will, and it will do whatever it has to do. But you will always be aware that you’re not that. It has nothing to with you. (SK: It brings it right to that point. If one is experiencing equanimity to the extent that nothing appears to be any more important than anything else?) You will experience that as the I, as consciousness. But your body will still go and do it's work. (SK: Unless the body has nothing to do then it won't do anything?) Yes. (SK: And if that continues to happen then in a material way then changes occur. As changes occur and one needs to make some money perhaps or something then one is forced into a situation where one has to respond in a different way.) Again no, there is no different way. If you inquire “For whom do these things happen,” the right thing will take place. Right action will take place in your life. (SK: Ah, but one should not wait for it.) Well it depends what you are supposed to do. You have got nothing to do with it. (SK: Okay. I wonder if there is a pitfall with that process of sitting back and waiting for something? To occur outside of…) You are not supposed to do that, no, who told you to do that? (S: Well…) (tape break Robert then continues) R: …you are doing, then inquire, "Who is the doer?" and see if you sit back and wait. And if you are supposed to sit back and wait you will not even have any questions because you will be so in bliss and so happy and so joyous that you couldn't care what your body does. (tape break) R: …good things. Your body will take care of itself. (S: When all concern for it is gone?) But you have nothing to do with it. See don't even think about "without concern," your mind is telling you all these things. Your mind is hanging on to whatever I say. There is no such thing as "without concern." The I will take care of you. The I is your life. It is your substance. It is God. It is consciousness. It is I-am. It will always take care of you have no fear. You’ve got to trust it. Surrender yourself to I and let I take care of everything. It’s like carrying your luggage in the train. Would you carry your luggage on your head and have that heavy burden? When you can put it into a compartment and let the train take you to its destiny. While the luggage is in the compartment. So what you’re doing now Jay, you’re carrying your luggage on your head. (SK: In the train, while it's moving.) In the train. The train is God. So give God your luggage. Give God your burdens. (SK: I'm not having burdens right now.) And you will get to your… (SK: The only burden I get…) (tape break) R: If you focus on the I on the source. Always on the source and not to think too much. The source, the source will take care of you. God. The source will always take care of you if you think of it. You've got to think of God and God will think of you, so-to-speak. SF: Robert, what about hope in the context of… (R: Hope?) Yeah in the context of the practice of self-inquiry. (R: Hope, hope for what.) (laughter) Most of the people who have been practicing self-inquiry is thinking something, in the beyond. When you yourself explain about what may happen and what may happen may be something wonderful. That’s breeding hope. R: No I was saying what may happen. (SF: Yes.) I didn't say to hope it happens. (SF: When people listen to that they may understand…) Oh I see what you mean. (SF: …That there is something to hope for.) Oh I understand. (SF: That’s my question.) Yes. Well if you've got to think of something, think about good things. Think about that something wonderful is going to happen to you sooner or later. That's good. There is nothing wrong with that. (SF: Right.) It is better than thinking something bad is going to happen. So think while you are practicing that one day I will be free. One day I will be realized like right now and hold onto that. SR: Robert, also I was thinking how important that keeping good company, if you want to call it good company. Some of the people I associate with, I have one friend who is in the entertainment field and he has his own show and every-time I am around him he presents a whole reality that is something I'm trying to fight against. Shouldn't be fighting it, but it sort of brings me down and it seems so important to stick with people who have the same set of values that are heading toward wanting to find realization. R: So why are you around this person? (SR: Well for one thing he is the most amusing and enjoyable people from a humor point of view that I have found, which is just a little earthly pleasure. Earthly pleasure is of some sort.) As long as you believe you're having entertainment and fun with this person, continue. (SR: Just take it for that?) And work on the process. (SR: Yeah, I understand.) And it will all work out. That's what I meant before when I said, "Do not just give things up." Continue where you are at and work on yourself. And then what you have to drop will drop by itself. SK: Doesn't the karma make it really impossible to give something up that you can't because you're still karmically going to do? (R: Yes.) R: Yes. Everything will always work itself out. You’ve nothing to do with it. (SG: Just playing the part.) No you don't even play the part. The part will play you. When you say, "Play my part," it’s like you have got a part to play. SH: Yeah like, "Who are you?" (R: Yeah.) (laughs) SG: I just read something in an Ad. It sort of frees me at the same time and it kind of scares me. What it was: If I have nothing to with being born and I have nothing to do with dying and what makes me think I have anything to do with what is going on in between. (R: That's good.) It brings freedom but at the same time it’s like giving up, giving up, me doing anything at all. R: Well if you are doing it physically it's wrong. But if it just comes to you and you feel great about it then it's right. (SG: Well what I feel attracted on an earthly plane, but in my mind is all this criticism and comparing and judging and…) So go and inquire within yourself. Ask yourself the questions, "To whom does this come? Who feels this?" (SG: But it seems such compelling.) But ask yourself, "Why do I do this? Who needs to do this? To whom does it come?" You will be surprised at what happens. Excuse me I've to go to the bathroom. Of what I'm talking about now. I have to go to the bathroom. I don't ask myself, "Who has to go to the bathroom?" I don't deny myself I just do it spontaneously. (laughter) I don't even think about it because that is the body taking care of itself, I've got nothing to do with it… (break in tape) …The appearance of the body does those things of course. From all appearances I'm just an average guy but I know I've got nothing to do with that. SR: It’s like the mind that says if you stop controlling and all that then something will go wrong and that’s the only thing to do is to eliminate all that and everything will be okay. R: Yes, that's what I meant, "We've got to trust God. We've got to surrender all this to God." Who is none other than your Self. SG: Is this the process of surrendering. Is what you were saying before, that process? R: That process is surrendering too, yes. Because you stop thinking you say, "It's a mystery," you give it all up. You surrender, you’re quiet and still. When your mind becomes quiet and still then you’ve surrendered to God. SF: The same as "it's a mystery" is the same thing as "I don't know." (R: Yes.) Then you open yourself then. (R: Yes.) SR: Robert I asked you once before but does anyone ever understand the mystery? Even no matter what stage you reach or would you say that when you reach a certain state it doesn't matter, that just disappears? R: The mystery disappears, everything disappears. (SR: So that's the answer to the mystery then of…?) There is no answer because everything is emptiness, consciousness. Everything is pure delight. (SR: I'm scared that one can't know it or living it through.) Don't. Well to whom does the fear come? To whom does the fear come? Ask yourself. Who has that fear? And it will disappear. Always ask yourself. Because your real Self, there is no such word as fear. Fear is for the body and the ego. SG: I can't seem to be able to get beyond that. R: So far. Tomorrow is another day. But I always tell you not to put yourself down. Do not think you are a dunce or there is something wrong with you, or you can't get far. Just take it as it comes and keep up the procedure. It’s like becoming a surgeon. You work on dead bodies until you get it right. (students laugh) (tape break) SR: …the unknown. I'm just having to have faith that it's all going to be okay. R: You want me to give you a certificate? (SR: That's helpful at least to me. It's just believing that it's all going to be good.) Find out for yourself, don't believe me. What if I were just a trickster and none of these things were real, I just made it all up? (SR: That's good.) Find out for yourself. SF: I have one question to myself. I wanted to know what was the greatest fear? And I came to a conclusion that the only way to… the greatest fear was totally ceasing to be. Is there a greater fear than that? (R: Nope.) I was once driving to Santa Monica and for the time I was driving in the car I didn't care if this body ceased to be, at that moment, it didn't bother me at all. At that moment. (tape damage) R: …The last three or four years of his life he was in terrible pain. He had rheumatism and cancer. So if you saw him then and you do not understand this teaching you would say, "Who wants to follow this path?" If you saw him when he was sick and you do not understand the teaching you would say to yourself, "Who wants to follow something like that? Who is wasting away? Why should I believe him at all?" Because you want somebody to be robust and strong and happy and healthy. That's an appearance and appearances change. That's a hard one to explain. When you see someone in pain you should immediately help. Until you get to the stage where you understand and then you'll help even more. Here is a good example: Today I was taking a walk to the bank and a dog got hit by a car. And the dog was lying there in the middle of the road. The dog was not dead but was in pain it was howling. Some people got there and I walked over and I observed and I watched and I felt for the dog. I had a great love, a great compassion for the dog. But just like a miracle a car pulled over and it was a vet and he felt the dog and he said the dog had a broken rib. And bandaged the dog and took him to the hospital. What’s the point of this story? I forgot. That the dog is consciousness and all is well. SY: So if the vet hadn't come along you would have taken the dog to the hospital? R: There were other people there to take care of that. If I had the opportunity I would. (SY: Do you warn?) That's not my business I don't think that way. Just there to help the best I can. (Tape break. Tape continues with question from student.) SL: …well could it be that he had collected karmas of others? R: Could be, possibly. (SL: What is that?) I don't think he was ill. He never died. (SL: Robert at another level would the explanation of the cancer be that?) That's possible. But I don't see it like that. With these things there is no cancer, there is no death, and there is no suffering. (SL: Then there is no Ramana Maharshi.) Not as a person. SK: So everyone in this room helped just as much as you did in helping that dog? R: You can say that sure because there is only one. (Tape break. Tape returns but not in same place as it left.) R: …No that's duality. Somebody has to be healed, there is nobody there to be healed. No one exists to be healed and he never went anywhere. He was the same with a body or without it. (SL: So then if no one existed to get ill but he did?) For whom? To you. (SK: And not even to you. Just someone who told you he was. He may or may not have seen something on the appearance level.) All is well. SR: Does it all boil down to how real do we want this waking state to be. R: Well you can't really say that because it has nothing to do with you. Your body and your mind will take care of that for you. Therefore the only salvation is to get rid of the body and the mind. (SH: Which you never had in the first place.) That's right. (SR: I mean where the freedom is, is not in the waking state that I think I'm in?) I don't see you as any waking state at all. I don't see you as awake or unawake or sleeping. I just see you as you see me, as one consciousness, one unit, there’s no difference. SG: Is all my perceptions, there is nobody doing anything to me. There is nobody here? R: That's right. (SG: Whatever is going on is my own little creation?) Exactly. (SG: Nothing happens?) That’s true. (SG: Outside?) Right. Everything is an emanation of your own mind. (SG: That’s frightening.) No it's beautiful. (SG: It's beautiful in a sense, but at the same time it scares me.) (laughs) Who is scared? Ask yourself, "Who is frightened?" SR: For Bob to participate with us he might gain knowledge. This little body sitting around in this room here that you seem to acknowledge and answer questions to, that there is some sort of agreed upon reality to them. R: I do? I do not have to acknowledge anything. I just acknowledge that you are reality. That you are ultimate oneness. Pure awareness. I'll acknowledge that. Everything else is your business. (SH: Hallelujah.) (laughs) Let's become still for a few moments. (long silence then tape restarts abruptly as Robert continues) R: …a telephone answering machine. I want to thank you for it. About two weeks ago, (I'm getting a large amount of phone calls.) So I told my Self, "Self you need a telephone answering machine." Today UPS comes and delivers one for me. Some cheap place down in Chicago. I called them up and told them I didn't order one. So they said “it’s all paid for.” So now I just have to connect it. (tape ends)

Robert: Hello. (Hello.) Welcome to the…what do we call ourselves? The being nobody group. (students laugh) Because when you leave here you will be no-body. If you want to be somebody you came to the wrong place. We are a bunch of nobodies. How many of you are here for the first time? Please do not be dismayed by what you hear. I am not a lecturer. I am not a philosopher. I am not a sermonizer. Is there such a word as a sermonizer? SH: Um-hm. (agrees) R: I've heard of womanizer. (SB: Are you a womanizer?) I'm not a sermonizer. SA: One up from a womanizer. (laughs) (SF: That's it Arnold, keep quiet!) SL: Very good Fred. Robert continues: We're one big happy family here. Some families aren't too happy. (laughter) So we're one big family, so we're one big, we're one… I want to thank most of you for sharing your Christmas and Chanukah gifts with me. It's very unusual being in Los Angeles. In the past I never used to take anything that was given to me. But since I got to Los Angeles things have changed. (laughter) Anyway, thanks. I received a phone call this morning from somebody who isn't here now. They asked me to elaborate on the question that Glen asked last week. (Glen's in the corner.) His question was, "Does a realized person, a Sage, a Jnani become angry?" and I briefly touched on that. I was most succinct, didn't say too much about it. Somebody wanted me to elaborate on that for some reason. It's an interesting question. Humans get angry. Therefore when you've reached self-realization, do you still have feelings of anger, of rage, or outrage? A question like this is usually asked by a seeker or a disciple. A devotee couldn't care less. When you ask a question like this you're asking from the viewpoint of the ajnani, and there are different answers. It's very paradoxical. It reminds me of the time I was initiated by Paramahansa Yogananda in selfrealization when I was 17, prior to going to India to see Ramana Maharshi. And during the initiation I was on my knees and he put his hand on my head and he said, "Robert, do you promise to love me no matter what I do, or no matter what you think you see me do?" I hesitated. I said to myself, "What is he going to do? Is he going to kill somebody, and wants me to love him no matter what he does?" But then I also realized that I didn't have all the answers. So I said, "Yes." It's only by being around two or three months that I realized what he meant. He reacted differently to different people, to different personalities. It was Christmas and he was living with the monks in Encinitas at that time. So I recall one monk came over to him and said, "Master," they called him Master, "may I go visit my family at Christmas time? I'll be gone two weeks." He became very sweet and he said, "Of course you can. You should see your family. They miss you. Go and have a good time and come back in two weeks." Then somebody else came and kneeled before him and he said, "Master, may I go see my family during Christmas?" He became outraged and started screaming at the monk and said, "How dare you ask me a question like this. Why do you want to see your family? They don't want to see you. Of course you can't go. Don't ask stupid questions. Go back to your quarters," This was the dilemma, same questions different answers. I consequently realized that he was able to read into the person. He knew exactly what was going on with each person. He couldn't possibly give the same answer to two different people. He realized the first person had a loving family, and the first person had high self-esteem, so it wouldn't matter where the person goes. Their heart is always on truth, on reality, on God. But the second person had a low self-esteem, and if he left he would be dragged by the powers of maya back into reality, of materiality that is, the reality of materiality and he probably wouldn't even come back again. That's why he gave that answer. And so it is with the answer to the question that Glen asked. Sometimes a Sage puts on an act, fakes it for the benefit of the devotees or the disciples or the seekers. It's necessary. If you recall the incident with Jesus and the money changers, Jesus supposedly got very angry when he went to the temple and saw all of the merchants selling their wares on the steps of the temple. He overturned the table and said, "How dare you do this in my Fathers house?" and chased them all away. It appears he also got angry. But did he? When you speak of a Sage, of a Jnani, supposedly they are transcendent. They've transcended. They have no ego, no personality left. So what gets angry? It is the ego that gets angry, the mind. If there is no ego-mind left how can you possibly become angry? Therefore a true Sage, a Jnani, can never really become angry for he doesn't have the mechanism to become angry again. It's been transcended. It's like the story of the Zen monk who came to the Master and said, "Master, I'm always getting angry. I can't help it. What should I do?" So the Master took out his sword and cut off his head and said, "Let's see you get angry now." And as the story goes, he became enlightened. His head flew back on and he was realized. There is noone to become angry. Think about yourself. You have emotions, you become angry, you have all kinds of psychological symptoms. Where did they come from? Why are they there? You have to ask yourself, "Why do I become angry? Why do I have these emotions? Why do I allow my mind to think past my nose? I'm responsible for my own life." That's how you should talk to yourself. "If I have all these negative emotions, how can I possibly function in the world? I blame others. I see the faults of others. I'm always judging. I'm always criticizing. Am I right? Even though if I appear to be right, I'm wrong. I'm wrong simply because I do not understand the universe. I usually get angry because things are not going my way. The world is not turning the way I want it to, so I criticize, I judge, for I believe things should be this way instead of that way. I believe people should do this instead of that. I believe this person should be this way instead of that way. Why do I believe this?" This is the way you should talk to yourself. "What is it that's in me that makes me this way? Is it a power? Is it a force? Is it some kind of entity? Am I possessed? Actually who am I? Who am I with this great temper, with this anger?" And as you keep inquiring, "Who am I?" you will begin to focus on the I. "Who am I? What is this I? I am always referring to I. I am angry. I am disillusioned. I have a bad temper. Why if this I weren't here there would be no one to experience these verities I just mentioned." So what is the source of I? The problem really isn't the temper or the anxiety or the depression. The problem is the I. It is the I who has this problem, not me. Subsequently the secret is to dissolve the I, to annihilate the I. For I reason out that if the I is destroyed there will be no one left to get this problem. So how do I dissolve the I? Simply by inquiring, "Where did the I come from?" I wake up, I say, "I slept." I had a dream, I wake up, I say, "I dreamt." I am awake, I say, "Now I am awake." I feel depressed, I say, "I am depressed," There is always I. Reasoning will tell you that all of your troubles are attached to I. The troubles have no validity by themselves. The disappointments or the disillusionments, the anger, the temper, they have no validity. It is the I that appears to have validity. So where did the I come from? Who gave it birth? Who feels it? Again, I do. It's always I. Who am I? What is the source of the I? By holding on to the I and following it to the source it will dissolve. It will disappear of its own accord. So you inquire. Whenever you have a problem you must ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" It makes no difference how many problems you may have. It makes no difference what is disturbing you, how serious your particular problem may loom in your mind. The method is always the same: "To whom does it come? Why it comes to me." Me is the same as I. You hold on to the me or you hold on to the I. You do not concentrate on the I. You concentrate on the source of the I. But you hold on to the I like you're holding on to a rope. You're climbing down to the end of the rope. And every time you say to yourself, "Who am I?" or "What is this I?" you're going deeper and deeper within yourself, deeper and deeper, into oblivion, into emptiness, into the void. As you repeat, "Who am I?" the space between the thoughts, "Who am I" becomes greater and greater, and you begin to identify with the space between the thoughts of, "Who am I." All of a sudden you find a profound peace overtaking you, a peace which passeth all understanding. This is not a peace that you've known before. It's different. It's a peace that overtakes you completely, and you lose your body awareness. It has nothing to do with the things of the world. It's a blissful peace. You remain in that state. Included in the peace is a feeling of immortality. Without using words you just know, "I was never born and I can never die." It’s as if you just studied a course at the university for five years, you're so sure of these things. You just know that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There is nothing wrong anywhere. You feel wonderful. You have become your Self. You have not changed into anybody. You have become your natural Self. That is your true Self. This feeling never leaves you. It is always with you. Whether you work, or you sleep, or you do nothing, this profound peace, this love, this feeling of immortality never leaves you. The question arises, "Who is born, who dies?" and the answer comes, "No one." There is no cause for existence. Existence is not real. You just know this. Whereas before you were identifying with the material world, the material world was real to you. But now you just know you have just become infinity itself. You become aware of the fact that this universe does not exist. And something tells you further that the universe exists as if in a dream, that's all. When you're dreaming, you find yourself in the universe. You're flying in a plane, you're cooking, you're eating, you're killing, you're making love, you're doing all kinds of things. It's all happening in your dream. It seems so real. If anyone comes and tells you you're dreaming, you refuse to believe them, because the dream appears very, very real. Then you wake up and you're back to the waking state, which is just another dream. In any event, you are aware of all these things instantaneously, and no one can ever tell you again that the world is real. You are unable to explain it, for there are no words to describe reality. You just know. You also realize that there is nothing in all this dream world that can possibly harm you or cause you unhappiness, and you look at the world as an optical illusion. It appears to be here but it's not. You consequently stop reacting to person, place or thing, for if you react you are identifying with the dream world. You don't actually stop reacting. There's something inside of you that no longer allows you to react. You have separated yourself from the relative universe. The question is, "Why do you want to become like this?" For it sounds to the average person like you become a babbling idiot. You're no longer part of this world. You have to ask yourself therefore, "What is this world all about? This world is a world of constant change. Look at my body. I am not the same person I was ten years ago or twenty years ago. I've changed completely. And I'm getting older and the body will die sooner or later. What am I working for? Why do I do all these things I do every day? Why am I so concerned with this life and that life, and this person and that person, and the world situation? I do not understand anything." And that's the beginning of divine ignorance. You realize that you do not know what anything is. As an example, you look at a tree. You do not know what a tree is. You were born into a situation where a tree was evident for you. It's just there. And people call it, tree. They could have called it dog or cat, but they call it a tree. Where did it come from? What came first, the seed or the tree? It's a mystery. You don't know. You look at a spider, a dog, a cat. What are they doing here? Where do they come from? What is their purpose? You have no idea what anything is and you have no idea what you are. Therefore you no longer condemn, you no longer hate, you no longer judge, you no longer find fault, you no longer try to change anybody. You leave the world alone. You leave people alone. You leave everything alone. You keep working on yourself. What are you doing with your life? How did you go through your life today? What kind of thoughts went through your mind? What kind of feelings, emotions did you have? You have to begin somewhere. Instead of identifying with your emotions, your problems, begin gradually to change by asking yourself the question, "Who am I? Who has these problems?" It makes no difference how long it takes. Time and space do not exist. They appear to exist. We have learned that whatever you say, whatever you do to someone else, however you act, returns to you. Why? Because there's only one I. There is one Self. There are not two or three selves. There is only one Self. Therefore what I give to you, what I take from you, what I do to you, I am doing to myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. The trouble is we do not see the results immediately so we think were getting away with something. You cannot get away with anything. Everything always comes back to you. As an example: say you're a pickpocket and you pick a persons pocket, and you find a wallet with $50,000, and you say, "Great. Look what I got," You justify it. You say, "That person is rich, they don't need it. I do," You move to Canada and you buy a house, you get a job. Ten years pass. This is the falsity of time and space. There appears to be time, but there's not. It's really happening instantaneously, but time appears to be real. So ten years passed, you have a new home, new job. One day you come home. You find your house on fire. All of your personal belongings that you loved so much, have all burnt up. When you take an inventory you see that there was $50,000 worth of damage. It came back to you, but in a different way. When we understand these things we stop playing games and we get down to spiritual work. We forget about all these human traits, and we begin to realize, "My true nature is consciousness. I am absolute reality. I am pure awareness, ultimate oneness. This is my real nature. And even if I do not feel it right now, I am going to work on myself continuously even if it takes me ten million lifetimes, I will work on myself diligently and do what has to be done, until I become free." The rest is up to you. Now let's chant together Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram. (After the Chanting Robert continues) After that talk I will ask you the question, "Does a Sage get angry? What do you say?" (different students answer) SB: It appears that way. (more students guess) R: You're on the right track. It depends on who is doing the seeing. It depends on what you see, where you are coming from. It has nothing to do with the Sage. It has to do with where you’re coming from. It's like the old Buddhist question, "If you see a flag blowing in the breeze, is the breeze moving the flag or is the flag moving the breeze?" What's the answer? (SE: It's your mind moving.) That's it, exactly. So it is with everything else. If you see a Sage becoming angry it is your mind inventing all this. The whole universe is a projection of your mind, so is everything that you see. SC: How about a bus is coming down the street, I'm just quoting what I've heard, you stand in front of that bus… (R: Where did you hear it from?) I heard it some place I don't know? I'm sure it's classic, I'm sure everyone has heard it. Is the bus real? You know what is going to happen if you stand in front of a bus or a car. (R: So what will happen?) Well reality will wipe you out. Physically the bus will destroy you. R: So you say reality will wipe you out? Well let me ask you. Say you are having a dream and in that dream a bus hits you and kills you, are you wiped out? (SC: I'm not talking about the dream.) But say you're having the dream. (SC: In the dream, yes, in the dream you'll be wiped out but you will wake up the next day, remembering the dream.) So how about when you wake up from this. (SC: Wake up what?) From this world? (SC: I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about physical actual reality.) That is what I am talking about too. (laughter) If I came into your world, if I came into your dream Nate. Say you are dreaming a bus is about to hit you and I come into your dream and I say, "Nathan, it's a dream, the bus isn't really going to kill you!" So you will talk to me just like you are doing now, you will say, "Robert your crazy, look there is the bus it's about to hit me I've got to get out of the way before I get killed." And then you wake up. (SC: However you know what I'm speaking about, I don't want to start…) SU: Listen, who told you to walk in front of the bus? SC: I'm just saying if you are walking across the street and you don't see the bus or you just see it too late and it hits you, that is what I'm saying. R: But if you are dreaming the same situation is taking place. And you are talking just like you are now. But then you wake up. (SC: I'm not talking about a dream. I know what you’re saying there is an actual dream and an actual…) SH: Are you sure your body is real just as you are dreaming? (SB: Are you your body?) SC: If someone were to hit me… (thud) …I felt that. R: So will you in the dream. (laughter) If I hit you in the dream you will also feel it. And you will be talking to me exactly like you are now but then you will wake up. So the reason for my talk today is allow you wake up and to see that this is a dream. (SC: Okay I'll go along with that, I'm not denying that.) So why the question? SH: The question is a denial. (SC: What?) The question is a denial. SK: He's waking up that's why the question arose. SC: No, I'm not waking up, not yet! (students laugh) Look I feel like I'm making a fool out of myself. (SF: No you’re not! Not to me.) Well pursue it further then. (SF: It's very simple. You have the same feeling as what you call being awake and what you call being a dream. You are making a distinction between them.) In the dream you wake up the next morning. But if a bus hits you if you wake up you will be in hospital, if you wake up! (SF: No, you will wake up. You haven't woken up yet, but you will wake up.) SU: So what happens to the Sage if he gets hit by a bus? (laughter) SH: The body gets crushed. Nothing happens to the Sage. R: What happens is what you believe happens. What ever you see that's what happens. To the Sage it's nothing but you see something. Therefore whatever you see that is what you get. (SH: But the body will get crushed but the Sage is not the body, obviously.) Well in reality there is no body to get crushed. (SH: Well there will be that appearance that gets crushed.) There appears to be a body, to the ajnani. (SH: To the Jnani there is no appearance.) There is no appearance at all. (SH: Then he's dissolved the world.) So it depends where we are coming from, what we see. This is why when some of these Sages have been dying from some of these horrible diseases and all their disciples are screaming and crying, "Look at you you are wasting away." And they just laugh, there's no one to waste away there is nobody’s there. SL: Could they not have more compassion for their students not to just waste away that way not wanting to disturb them? (R: They’re not interested.) You mean to say that Sages have no compassion for their students. Their hearts would be breaking seeing them being ill. R: The Sages realize that is how they learn, by shock. SK: To some that might be more compassionate to die that way? R: See, the realization again is there are no mistakes. It appears a mistake to you. But in reality there are no mistakes. There is no thing wrong. SL: Then it's not a mistake for the pickpocket to have stolen the $50,000? R: If you look at it in relative terms it's karma for both of them. (SL: Oh right of course. There is a murderer and a murderee.) They're both related. (SL: Yes.) So they both have to go through that experience. (SL: So the person who is stolen from is just as much a part of the act) Exactly. But when you wake up you realize that there is nobody acting. There is nothing going on. It's all an appearance like you’re watching a movie. The movie has a beginning a middle and an end. And then you go home. (SL: Then you go home.) (laughs) So your life has a beginning, a middle and an end and then you go home. But if you awaken before the end you will be awake while in the body, so-to-speak. SB: And you are always at home? (R: You are always home.) (tape break as Robert continues) R: The psychiatrist can't save you. All the psychiatrist can do is make you normal. (laughter) Like everybody else. This is why no psychiatrist or psychologist has ever really helped anybody. They seem to help them for a while but they have got worse problems than they have had before. The problems never stop. Why? Who can tell me? SB: As long as there is an ego there is a problem. R: True, you are dealing from the viewpoint of the problem. And you cannot solve a problem that way at all. You have to deal from the viewpoint that you are consciousness. And follow the I and realize that I-am-that-I-am and all problems will dissolve. SF: You can't solve the problem because you think the problem is real. R: Of course, so never try to solve a problem with a problem. By with a problem I mean you’re trying to use your mind to solve the problem and your mind is the problem all along. When the mind becomes quiet, quiescent, still, peaceful, calm there is no problem. It's only when the mind is active that the problems appear to come and go. Well what do you think? SF: I'm thinking what I said to myself before. Perhaps there are different judgements to the two different dreams, dream number one equals dream and dream number two equals awake and the same happens to each of them and the first one there is buses coming, he knows it's a real bus, absolutely sure about it. The same feeling that this dream here. The same thing happening but there is perhaps different bodies to it. R: This dream appears a little longer. (SH: It's repetitive.) It seems to repeat itself. SB: If Nate gets hit by the bus he’ll say… (R: You like to talk about buses, huh.) (laughter) …if Nate gets hit by the bus he’ll say, "I'm in pain I got hit by the bus." But who is it that is aware of the pain? Consciousness is aware of the pain. Consciousness is not the body then? R: Well if Nathan gets hit by a bus he has no time to think about all these things. He is screaming in pain. So it appears to be very, very real. That’s why you have to become realized before you get hit by a bus. (students laugh) SB: But there is something that’s aware of the incredible pain? The body is in incredible pain but there is a consciousness that is aware of that. So am I the body who is in incredible pain, or am I the consciousness who is aware of that pain? R: Consciousness is never aware of pain. Consciousness is aware of itself as absolute reality, as sat-chit-ananda. The pain is aware of its own pain because the pain is the ego. (SB: So the pain is the body-mind then.) Of course. (SB: So consciousness doesn't even feel it?) What does consciousness have to do with the world. (SB: But it's aware of the body-mind condition.) No it's not. It couldn't be. Otherwise it would think like we do. Consciousness is free of everything. (SB: So it's always transcendental?) Always. (SB: And the whole body-mind phenomenon is only mind-body phenomenon.) The body-mind phenomenon doesn't exist at all it appears to exist. And you give it reality because you identify with it. Change your identification and it will disappear. SN: It's not that consciousness is transcendental it's all there is. R: That's all there is, right. SU: Why therefore would the Sage avoid a bus? R: A Sage acts spontaneously. (SU: True, but why avoid the bus?) A Sage doesn't avoid or does avoid, doesn't make any difference it just happens. A Sage doesn't think about it. If he steps out of the way he steps out of the way. If he gets flattened he gets flattened. Makes no difference. (laughter) (SU: Does it matter to get hit by the bus?) It doesn't matter to the Sage. (SU: It doesn't matter ultimately, but what about in the moment?) In the moment it doesn't matter. (SU: What?) If you are a Sage there is no moment in which to be different from what you really are. (SU: A real Sage and no bus?) To the Sage nothing is happening. (SU: A Sage might not find themselves in a position of danger or they might have to avoid that danger?) A Sage doesn't think like that. To a Sage nothing is happening. (SU: There is no danger?) Only in your mind you see danger. But a Sage has no mind. (SU: A Sage doesn't walk on the road?) Why not? Could be yes or no. Makes no difference. See you're thinking a Sage has certain thoughts, but a Sage does not think at all. Whatever happens is fine. If it rains it rains, if it pours it pours, if it snows it snows. SU: I don't know about this but why does a Sage be the kind of person who just thought the right amount not too much not too little? (laughter) R: Because you are creating a Sage in your own image. (SU: A Sage has no room for thought?) A Sage appears to do everything a human being does. But to the Sage they're doing nothing, nothing is being done. It appears as if the Sage is acting but there is no action taking place. SD: So "appears" is a key word. (R: "Appears," can be a key word, yes.) SK: Or body identification can be a keyword? (R: Or body identification, yes.) SC: Robert if the Sage knows that the bus will destroy people and he sees it coming he knows that the bus probably won’t get out of the way he will still deliberately walk? (R: No! A Sage doesn't know anything you said.) No I said that he knows a bus destroys a person, he can't be that unaware? (R: A Sage is completely empty.) Wow, that's, that's different. R: Well let's look at this this way. Let's change the name of the Sage to God. Call a Sage God. Does God get killed by a bus? (SC: You are twisting my words around I'm sorry. I'm serious.) No, lets intermingle and change the terms, Sage and God they are both synonymous. Can God get killed? Can God go in front of the bus? So a Sage has become a God. Therefore to a human being the bus appears to have flattened the Sage. And the Sage has become a pancake but to the Sage none of this is happening. (SC: Yes if you saw a bus coming would you with your instinct move you out of the way of the bus? Where you’re coming from?) I have got nothing to do with that. I would just do what has to be done. (SC: That's what I am saying your instinct if you started walking, you see an abyss, you wouldn't walk into the abyss?) Well of course not but it isn't instinct, it's just common sense. (SC: That's what I'm saying. That's what I said originally that the bus was coming, I wasn't speaking about a Sage at the time I was speaking about anyone.) Oh well you're calling a Sage anyone, we were referring to Sages. (SC: Trying to say it's just common sense or instinct not to walk in front of a bus.) Well a human being of course, a human being has a choice to do whatever they like. (SC: A Sage is a human being in that sense.) To you! (SC: Physically he is a human being?) That's how you see it. I'll go back again to the sky is blue. When the sky is blue you say it looks beautiful. But in reality there is no sky and there is no blue. It's an optical illusion. But when you look from here you say, “here is a beautiful blue sky.” Or when you are in the desert and you want a drink of water you see a mirage. You see an oasis. It doesn't exist but you think it's real. In the same way that's how the Sage sees the world as an optical illusion. But he knows it's an optical illusion, you don't. SG: It's sort of like being in disneyland. Like this is one event we are in right now and if you know it's disneyland you should enjoy it and you get hit by a bus, that's just another ride. (laughter) But you don't get too concerned, if it happens, it happens. It's just another traction. R: Well you can say that if you like. But to the Sage there is no coming and no going and nothing is ever happening. SC: I'm pursuing it. If someone told the Sage it could destroy his physical body and he saw this bus coming would he still persist? (R: Why would he persist?) He wouldn't then because someone has told him that the bus could destroy his physical body. (R: Well why would he want to kill his physical body?) You said he's an illusion, I said someone told him that the bus was an illusion but if I told him that the bus could actually destroy him then he wouldn't, from what the knowledge he has he wouldn't walk in front of the bus. You’re saying he would. R: No I'm not saying he would. I'm saying it would make no difference. It doesn't make any difference. (SC: Even if he knew what would happen? Still would make no difference?) It would make no difference. SK: Maybe explaining the meaning of Sage would be helpful at this time? Define what Sage means both of you can have one understanding and get clarity by it. R: That's the answer. A Sage is silence. Do you see what a Sage is now? Space, emptiness, no thing. If you define what a Sage is, it's not that. SL: You said on Thursday that there was no cause and effect and we understand through the looking glass so-to-speak that we're still very much aware of pictures and in question of human health which does concern us. Whether we think it's real or what our understanding of it is — well it's our value. Well most of the people have a value that it's better to be healthy than to be sick. And watching people that we know become ill and die. I suppose we try to find out why this happens to people who appear good and strong. And in my own desire to find out what happened to people who are close to me. It seemed to appear to me that down deep inside from real consciousness they had either a mindset of rage or hopelessness or feeing that life was not worthwhile. Is this cause and effect? Is there any reason to think about that? R: You are speaking in relative terms and that is part of the relative world. So if you are identifying with the relative world you have got to do everything you have to do to take care of your body, your health and everything else. But that is in the relative world. (SL: But is that not wise for us then Robert?) Of course. As long as think you are the body and the mind you have to do everything you can to take care of yourself. So you eat right, you exercise, you take care of yourself. But once you understand who you are everything changes. (SL: But is it not so that people could one even say make themselves sick?) Well of course. In the relative world you can do anything. You can make yourself sick, you can make yourself well, you can kill yourself, you can make yourself the healthiest person on earth. Whatever you like to do you do. (SL: You don't need the worlds greatest health insurance to realize that.) It's all part of the game. It's all cause and effect. But you have nothing to do with that. Your real Self is beyond that. Your real Self is beyond time and space. (SL: But even the understanding of that will affect us on the - what do we call that…?) The relative world. (SL: …the relative plane.) Well first understand that and then ask me if it's so. (SL: I'm sorry I lost you?) That you are not real. (SL: I believe that.) That's not good enough. (SL: Is there another step?) When you understand your true reality there will be no question like that. The question is only for the ajnani or the person who does not understand. (SL: There are two words that I don't understand here they are jnani and ajnani.) There are two Jnanis. (laughter) No. Ajnani is the opposite of Jnani. Jnani means wisdom, infinite wisdom. So ajnani is ignorance. (SL: I see now.) (general talk between students) R: Let's listen to some more music. (music played) Feel free to continue asking questions. Whatever is on your mind. SX: Robert can we have someone read a poetry I just saw in todays newspaper, just a short poetry? R: Of course sir. Mary can read it. Would you like to read it Mary? (SX: Thank you.) In todays newspaper? (SX: Yes, today's newspaper.) What could we possibly find in todays newspaper? Mary: This is called ‘Petition for a Nuclear Freeze,’ by Mary Tyler Mountain. In the brief interface of the moments light dangling time like the poise of the dancers heel before the final pirouette across the galaxies. We search the impervious planets a familiar signal. We probe the stars with silver shafts for some new land bridge but stars are veiled and silent. Unseen watchers who perceive the devils dance of nations. The great lethal video game may know it comes tomorrow that last astounding flash in the dust. We will not have time to go with the path of Athahula- pula, Emperor of the Inca. He shall leave no students like his. To mark our fleeting presence. Only the feathers of our fiery selves summons to ashes blown on impeccable winds. From the light on the tent wall, American Indian study centre. R: Thank you, we have enough trouble with sat-chit-ananda now we have to know how to hoopa-hulla. (students laugh aloud) That was nice Frederick. SX: Bob, the reason I brought the poetry, I was reading a book, an astronomy book about the high temperatures of the stars. Something we can't even imagine to measure and such amount of power really shake me thinking about the powers of the universe, whom we really are. (R: Yes.) And that potential to understand anything around us. It sounds like we didn't really have any chance to do that one. R: Of course when you understand that the whole universe is an emanation of your own mind then you will realize that you are the power. There is no power outside of you. You are that and your whole perspective changes. This is why it's so important to find our own reality because we are always giving something outside of ourselves credit. As being a mighty power, a mighty force something having control over ourselves. But this is not true. The Self is consciousness and you are that and there is no other power besides you. Mary: Can I read something? (R: Of course.) This is just something I just want you to read first: This is called “Illusion.” God and I in space alone and nobody else in view, and where are the people oh Lord I said the earth below, and the sky overhead, and the dead whom I once knew That was a dream God smiled and said, a dream that seemed to be true There were no people living or dead, There was no earth or sky overhead. There was only myself and you Why do I feel no fear I asked, meeting you here in this way For I have sinned I know full well, and there is heaven and there is hell And is this the Judgement Day? Nay, those were dreams the great God said, Dreams that have ceased to be, There are no such things as fear or sin, There is no you, you have never been. There is nothing at all but you. (loud appreciation from students) Mary: I was just giving it to Robert to see if he would like to have it. It's called Illusion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Isn't that beautiful? I had it sent to me. Mary: I know I just love it. (SH: Sounds just like Robert.) Oh I know it does and can I read one other thing? (R: Sure.) Now these ahead are self-themed. These are beautiful too. This is called the rules for being human. (R: Did you make enough for everybody?) Yes I made 25 copies of those, I didn't make the other ones because I didn't know whether Robert wanted that too but I made 25 copies; The first is: You will receive a body you may like it or hate it but it will be yours the entire period this time around. Number two: You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have an opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid. And Three: There are no mistakes only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error of experimentation. The failed experiments are as much as part of the process as the experiments that ultimately works. And Four: A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. And when you have learned it you can then go on to the next lesson. And Five: Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned. And Six: There is no better than here. When your there has become a here you will simply attain another there that again will look better than here. And Seven: Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you, something you love or hate about yourself. Eight: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Nine: Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust. And number Ten: You will forget all this. (appreciation from students) R: That's good. SB: So has the Jnani learned all the lessons and he has no lessons? (SF: No there never was any lessons.) (R: That's it, what he just said.) SF: Robert as these directed to the ego? (R: To the ego? Yes, they’re for the ego.) They are for the ego then. R: If you have no ego what do you need this for? People like to play with the ego. We like to play hide and seek. We hide the ego and then we find it. And we go on like this again and again until the ego disappears. So what have you to say? Comments, questions? (pause) Is there anything else you would like to say? Or a question, comment, whatever you like. SC: I'll say a comment, I've got two comments. One I noticed that some of us have something to say and the majority of the people apparently here — which is okay — don't say anything. The other thing after this talking about the bus incident it seems that the Jnani is in a different world than anyone else. And that it’s like a woman, you are either pregnant or you're not, you are there, you're not and there is nothing that anyone, you or the ego can do. There is nothing you can do if it happens which makes me feel a little sad I guess because I was under the illusion that maybe someday things will be different. R: Well let me say this. Anyone who has achieved any kind of spiritual knowledge whether they were born with it or just came upon them has worked for it in a previous life. Therefore don't feel there is no hope. Keep working on yourself do not look for results. Just like you have to go to the bathroom everyday. You have to eat everyday. Do spiritual practice everyday and don't think about it. You will be surprised at what happens. SR: Robert, isn't what Nate is saying just another name for humility anyway? (R: You can say that too, of course.) And that’s the best quality we can have? R: Yes. But do not think that it’s impossible to obtain freedom and liberation because it is not. I think you are under the illusion that it is impossible to obtain freedom and liberation. It's difficult for you. You can never tell. Do not think about it do the practice and see what happens. Everybody is the same, there is no difference. SX: (Student who brought poem from the newspaper questions what people can do to stop these negative situations happening in the world, not very clear on tape.) (tape break. Robert continues.) R: …Because when you become self-realized you become omnipresent. Your Self is the Self of the universe. There are not two selves or three selves. There is one Self and when you realize your true Self, you realize the whole universe as your true Self. Your true Self is harmony and bliss. Your true Self is absolute reality. When you can see that in your Self you will see that in everyone else and you will see a different world. One of love and peace. So find your Self and your feelings will change accordingly. Do you follow that? (S: Yeah.) You are responsible for what you see. If you’re seeing something you don't like the way to change it is not by changing the condition. As an example: Let's say we stop the war in Iraq and there is a peaceful settlement. Three years from now there will be another conflict somewhere else. And we'll have the same condition. And if we stop that a couple of years later it will be something else. It never stops. You cannot change a condition, change yourself and the condition will change. SL: Is it good to love the condition. Someone said hate of Hitler, is hate… (R: I understand what you’re saying.) In other words if we can really love Hitler easily there's understanding? R: If you can't find yourself and understand the truth about your Self then you have to love and hate. That’s natural. You can't tell a person to stop hating Hitler and to love Hitler. They can't do it, it's impossible. Don't try! (SL: But what if a person actually can love?) No you can't. You’re just putting it on. The only thing you can do is to change yourself. (SL: It is going to be difficult without that?) Well tell me that when you change yourself. When you lift yourself higher you see a whole new universe. Everything becomes brand new and everything is different. So you have to work on yourself and accordingly make the changes within yourself. It's like the question Pedro asked. Do not try to love or hate anyone. Work on yourself. Transcend the world and then see what you feel. SD: So you’re saying that by working on myself my perspective will change? (R: Yes.) It's a matter of perspective. (R: Yes.) SX: When you say the world, you also mean the universe and everything, the stars and…? R: Yes, because everything is a projection of your mind. So by changing your mind you are changing the universe. I know it sounds strange but it’s true. SL: Then with our mind we could actually disarm it. R: (laughs) We don't look at it that way. You work on yourself and Hitler becomes a part of yourself. And you see a whole new perspective. What you cannot see now. Now you have to change people. SL: This is going to sound wildly ego denying. The reason I feel I can really love Hitler, really is because I know in my earlier condition I felt such rage I actually thought of killing my mother. I mean I didn't actually do it or anything but there were times when she would be dead… (R: Why?) Well I understand my condition then because I was fearful that she would hurt me. But now I love her, I adore her, I wish I could see her again. I completely understand her condition was what made her act that way. So I believe my feelings of fear and rage must be the same kind of feelings that Hitler had I've come through that, I would wish the same for you. (R: But he is dead.) Well I mean for that kind of person. R: That's very commendable but if that person raped you or hurt you, you wouldn't think the same thing would you? (SL: My mother hurt me and I did that.) Now you do. (SL: Yes.) But before you didn't. (SL: But now I have the same perspective of the understanding so I can say that for everything.) Is your mother dead? (SL: Yes.) That's why you love her. But if she were alive, would you love her if she was alive? If she were alive you probably wouldn't love her. It's easier to love somebody when they are dead. (SL: Yeah.) (laughs) But forget about all that. See yourself in reality. Go deep within yourself and expand your consciousness and become free. (SL: Is this not like on the card you gave us about compassion. Is that not like working on yourself to realize that?) Working on yourself is commendable. But that’s the hard way to try to change your emotions. Rather see who has the emotions. Find out who has them and get rid of the I that has the emotions and then you will be free. (pause) R: Okay so let's practice. We call this meditation and we are going to do something with ourselves to see what happens. Make yourself comfortable. You can close your eyes to remove obstructions. Focus your attention on your breath. Become the witness to your breath. When your mind starts thinking gently go back to your breath and focus all of your energy on your breath, on your respiration. You are witnessing your breath. Ask yourself the question, "Who is the witness? Who is witnessing the breath?" The answer comes, "I am." With your respiration when you inhale say, "I," to yourself when you exhale say, "am.” “I am." If your mind wanders gently bring it back. I am is the first name of God, it is you. I am that I am, it is consciousness, it is yourself. By repeating this with your respiration you become it. Gently go back to I-am. Gradually the space between "I" and "Am" will widen. Any further comments, questions, criticisms, answers? (tape ends)

Robert: I had quite an interesting day today. I received approximately fifteen phone calls from people all over the place. My door bell rang about ten times. The dog was barking and biting everyone who comes in. My daughter was playing the stereo at full blast. And yet my body responded the way it's supposed to. But I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It didn't affect me, the Self, one iota. Yet my body did what it had to do, took care of the calls and answered the door, quieted the dog, turned down the stereo, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I'm bringing this point up to show you that you can be in the most horrendous situations and be at peace. It doesn't matter what you're going through, even death. It makes no difference. The real you has absolutely nothing to do with it. You are free from the whole thing. There may be wars all around you, people fighting and stabbing each other, people quiet and peaceful. Look at both those situations the same way, with even mindedness. Do not react to anything. Do not allow your mind to go out and respond. Do not think past your nose. Your body is going to do whatever it has to do, but you are not your body. Anything that you respond to is a product of your mind. It is your mind that becomes angry. It is your mind that becomes stubborn. It is your mind that wants to get even. It is your mind that is hurt. But if you subdue your mind, tell me, where is the anger? Where is the depression? Where is the response to conditions? There isn't any. When the mind is subdued there is only eternal peace and that peace is the Self, consciousness. Consciousness is always peaceful, always happy. It has nothing to do with conditions. All conditioning comes from the mind. Therefore I say to you, do not try to change conditions. Do not try to change situations. Simply learn how to control the mind by making it passive and quiet, and then you will find that things turn out better for you than you can possibly ever hope for. There are no problems. There is nothing wrong. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything happens in its own time. Space and time are illusions. They really do not exist. They're stationary. Causation does not exist either. No thing has a cause therefore no thing has an effect. Cause and effect are again products of your own mind. When the mind is quiet, karma ceases, samskaras are non-existent. There never was a cause for anything. But if you feel that in a previous life you did something wrong and now you are paying the price, or if you think that you did something wrong in this life and you're paying the price, then you'll pay the price, because that's what you think. There is virtually no price to pay, because nothing ever happened. If it appears to have happened to you then you have to go through the consequences of having the effect returned, or karma will come back to you, because that's what you feel, that's what you believe. It's all in your feelings and your belief system. But if you feel as if you're born at every moment, every moment becomes brand new. Where is the effect? There is no time for any effect. There is no space in which to have the effect. Space and time and causation become one, the present moment. And if you feel like that then you can look into the future, which doesn't exist, and see what's happening. It all has to do with your mind. As long as you feel situations you know it's your mind that's doing it. There's a story about Buddha and the courtesan. One day Buddha and his devotees were going through a forest and they came to a town. The words spread through the town that Buddha was coming. And there was a beautiful home where there lived this courtesan, this high class prostitute. She heard about the wonder of Buddha, how beautiful he was, and she said to herself, "I must have this man." So she sent her handmaidens out to the edge of the forest where Buddha was camping, and they beseeched him to come see their mistress. Buddha's devotees tried to chase them away, but Buddha said, "No, I will go." And the devotees told him he was crazy. How come he's going with them? He said, "I shall return, wait here." He went into this mansion of a home, and he saw this beautiful lady. And she looked at him and she said, "I wasn't wrong." And she told the Buddha, "Stay with me, I will give you riches that you never dreamed of. I will give you love that you've never known." And the Buddha smiled and he said, "Not now." And she beseeched him and said, "I will give you my body and you will have love that you never experienced. I will give you my home. Stay with me and I will make you the happiest man that ever lived." And Buddha said, "No, not now." And this went on for a couple of hours. Finally she got worn out, and Buddha said, "Thank you," and left. He went back to his devotees, didn't say anything, they traveled through the forest and left the town. Thirty years passed. The Buddha was going through the town again with his devotees. All of a sudden he remembered something and he told his devotees, "Stay here and wait for me. I have to go see my beloved." So he went back to where the house used to be. It was now nothing but a shambles. And he looked for the lady. He saw people laughing in the street. And there she was, a beggar with leprosy. People shunning her and spitting on her. And he came over to her and he said, "My beloved, I have returned for you. Now I want you as much as you wanted me." And he kissed her on the forehead and she was healed. She became his disciple and spent the rest of her life with the Buddha. The moral of that story, of course, is things are not the way they seem. We judge situations by the way they appear. We look at someone and we think that's the way they are. We respond to conditioning. We’ve been brainwashed since we were children to believe that things are supposed to be a certain way. But things are not supposed to be any way. Things just are. They have no substance, they have no reality. As you respond to conditions you are simply wasting your energy, when you can be using that energy to uncover your Self, to discover your own reality. What are you doing with your life? How do you spend your days? The appearance is that your body is getting older and older, and if you're still judging by appearances you try to look younger and younger by putting creams on your face, by exercising day and night, by buying the finest clothes. It's like beating a dead horse. The so-called body is not meant to last. As soon as you were born you began to die. Therefore find out. Who was born? Who dies? Who has experiences? Who is going through this entire mess? Who needs it? Who wants it? Wake up! The question is always asked in this respect, if it's necessary to do sadhana in order to awaken? Is it necessary to spend years in yoga techniques and pranayama, breathing exercises, to sit in meditation, to think of certain things, to pray? Is all this necessary? What do you think? Who can tell me? SK: It's not necessary, but it sure is helpful. Robert: That's actually a good answer. My question is, therefore, to whom is it helpful? Who is getting satisfaction from sadhana? Only your ego. It is true to an extent you're subduing your ego, but you and I know many people who've been doing sadhana for a hundred years and nothing happened. As a matter of fact some of you even become worse. It's paradoxical. For some people it causes them to move ahead. But it's still all in relative terms, and as we all know by now, relative terms do not exist. So for whom is sadhana? Again it's for the mind and the ego. If you think it's helping, by all means continue. But remember I said, "If you think it's helping." If you stop thinking you do not have to do any sadhana. I suppose sadhana is necessary as long as you believe you are the mind and the body. Again, after all, who is doing the spiritual disciplines? Does the Self need to do that? Does consciousness need to do discipline? Does absolute reality need discipline? What needs discipline? The mind and the body. Therefore the more you are attached to the mind and body the more you have to do sadhana. Does that make sense? (S: Sadly, yes.) So I won't say to you, "Stop doing it," due to the fact that many of you have a strong connection with your body and your mind. As long as you do I suppose sadhana makes you sort of quiet for a while and gives you it's own experience of a sort of peace that doesn't last too long. It causes samadhi for some people, nirvikalpa samadhi. But if you're an aspiring Jnani, what's the purpose of sadhana? You simply ask yourself, "Who needs to do this? I do. What is this I? This personal I, where did it come from? How did it get here? Who gave it birth?" As you ask yourself these questions, that is your sadhana. That's all you need to do. But you continue doing this 24 hours a day. That's what it means by ‘praying without ceasing.’ As you meet the challenges of the day you keep asking yourself, "To whom does this come? Who is feeling this condition? Who is going through this situation? Who feels emotional?" As you keep doing this all day long, you will find that you become more peaceful, you become happy and your life becomes better. That's really the only sadhana you need. But of course if you cannot do that then you have to do whatever you have to do. Whatever helps you, that's what you have to do. I suppose that's why it says that Jnana Marga, atma-vichara, is for the mature soul, one who can do this regularly, without reverting back to Hatha Yoga or Raja Yoga, any of the Yogas. They all have their place, but self-inquiry is the royal way. It's the short cut. But it's up to you. It's your choice. And of course self-inquiry is merely to quiet the mind. It's a fast method to quiet the mind. For when you ask, "To whom does this come? It comes to me," and you hold on to that me by inquiring, "Who am I? What is I?" and saying "I - I" to yourself, "I - I," the mind becomes quieter and quieter. The deeper you go within yourself the quieter you become. And that's your sadhana. That's all you have to do. Any questions? SL: You said that you had an interesting day, but it seems that you were alluding to the phone calls and the door bells as being annoying to you, except that you were aware that it didn't bother you, because it wasn't an interruption. R: No, I wasn't really aware of anything. (SL: Was it just something that was just happening?) Something was happening and I was responding accordingly. (SL:Yeah.) But there was no feeling or emotion or anything. (SL: I see. The card you gave us on Sunday said, "Be an irrepressible fountain of happiness." If a person feels that way, then is that also just the ego entertaining itself?) It depends why you feel like that. Do you feel that way? (SL: For no specific reason.) Well that's good. That's all you need to do. If you feel like that because of a reason or because of a condition… see, that card is really for the ego. When you're working out of the ego you have to force yourself to be happy, to try to be good to people, to develop loving kindness, and develop all these emotions. (SL: What if it just happens to you without any purpose?) Then you're advanced. That's a good sign. (SL: If the door bell ringing becomes a wonderful opportunity and the telephone ringing, when it rings, feeling like something wonderful is happening, is that practically the ego again?) Well, when the door bell rings and the phone rings, it's not supposed to feel that something wonderful is happening. You're supposed to be wonderful within to begin with and then that's just a happening that's going on. (SL: What if everything seems to be a good lesson?) Well that's good for your growth then. (SL: Even going bowling could be good way of working on oneself.) It could be. There's no question about that, but for whom? (SL: Right.) We get back to the ego again. (SL: (laughs) The ego goes bowling.) The ego does everything. (laughter) Everything you do is the ego. When the time comes, when you know with certainty beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not the ego and you're not the body or the mind, then everything happens spontaneously. The door bell rings, you answer the door. (SL: I suppose most of us would be acutely aware of that when we're not attached to our body.) Of course. When you are not identified with the body there's nobody left to be aware. It's just a spontaneous happening. There are no words to really describe it. SL: I'm hogging all the questions here, but another thing, when you were talking about the Buddha kissing the courtesan and healing her. The healing was a good thing then, it was good for her, it was something he gave to her. It was, in other words, the appearance of her being a leper was not as good as the appearance of her being a healthy woman. So he choose to heal her. R: For her it was necessary for this to happen. This was her experience. (SL: It isn't necessary for everyone to be healed?) No, it's not. It's neither good nor bad. Because after all, what is healed? The body which doesn't even exist. So why should you waste your time healing a body that doesn't exist? SL: If there are more lessons to be learned in this life, then a person who is well is more able to advance - and I don't understand reincarnation - but is more able to, well to get further and, as you said the other night, come back with more advantages of understanding. R: That's how it appears. But in reality there's no causation for existence. So none of that is relevant. It's only relevant when your mind's on that level. (SL: There really is no cause and no effect?) In reality, it doesn't exist. SK: Absolute reality? (R: Absolute reality, yes.) SL: But on this plane as we know it, as we're making our way towards understanding. R: But who knows this plane? The ego. (SL: I see.) Therefore if you work on destroying the ego there are no planes to contend with. And there's no relative world to contend with. It all goes back to the ego. The ego has to work things out. The ego has to make progress. The ego tells you you're healthy or sick. The ego gets you in trouble. So don't try to change the condition. SH: Can it get you out of trouble too? (R: When you destroy it.) (laughter) SN: It is trouble. (R: It’s trouble to begin with, right.) SH: The only trouble. (R: Sure, and it doesn't even exist.) SL: If one is, as we are all apparently stuck in this ego… (R: Speak for yourself.) (laughter) …I mean the people on this side of the room. (R: How do you know what's going on, on this side of the room?) Umm, as we are, as we appear to be, in this ego life here, if we find it easy, or not even easy, but natural or whatever, to live as an irrepressible source of happiness does that point of view seem to make everything work on that level, on a good level, as we see, as we appear, to want things to be smooth, like the plumbing doesn't break all the time. R: Well, as far as the relative world is concerned, what you're saying is true. But there is a happiness that is beyond plumbing, there's a happiness beyond everything. (SL: Well that's why we’re here.) The idea is to find your real happiness, to find out what is real happiness. It's unconditioned. It has nothing to do with person, place or thing. Happiness is your real nature. You are happiness. Happiness is another word for you. But it’s unconditioned. It’s not replacing good for bad or bad for good. It has nothing to do with good and bad. Those are relative terms. Happiness is another word for absolute reality or consciousness, for ultimate oneness, for pure awareness. That's synonymous with happiness. (SL: I understand.) And it's omnipresent. So when you have the real happiness you see it in the world because the world becomes your Self. And there is none other than your Self that exists. (SL: But there's something beyond that, just being as we are, seeing beauty, happiness, joy, peace, everywhere?) Who sees that? (SL: Even though that it's the ego seeing that, it's still all good.) That's the opposite of bad. (SL: Pardon me?) It's the opposite of bad. (SL: Yes?) Seeing all these good things. (SL: Yes?) So when you see a beautiful flower, and then it fades the next day and dies, you become disillusioned. You have to go and pick another flower. (SL: But it never does die, because the seed in the flower is making another seed.) But as far as you're concerned there's birth and death. Just like with bodies. Old flowers die and new ones are born, just like people. So you look at that condition and you say, "What does this mean?" I think you say that. "What's the purpose to all this? Is that what life is all about?" (SL: Creation.) For whom is creation? Creation is a bad dream. (SL: Creation is a bad dream?) Yes. SK: Or a good dream, right? R: No, all creation is a bad dream. Because all of creation is birth and death. (SK: As a dream?) Yes. (SK: That's why they don't worship Brahman anymore, they just worship Shiva and Vishnu.) Correct. SL: Creation is a bad dream? R: Mmm. Because everything you see happening in the world is happening in creation. The United States is about to go to war with Iraq, that's creation. And then you fall in love and you think it's going to last forever, that's creation. But people grow old and grow tired, they die, that's all part of creation. Now what is the cause of creation? The mind. When the mind slows down creation ceases and you just become your Self. So do you want to be your Self or be creation? SG: Is that mind synonymous with God? (R: Mind?) That mind. R: Yes, synonymous with God, because God is a result of mind. Everything comes out of your mind. Everything that you behold: the universe, God, people, places, things, reincarnation, karma. SK: It wouldn’t be God if it's a word pointing to some kind of absolute. it would be God as Ishvara. (R: Ishvara, personal God, that's right.) It's not God used in as a word to point to that absolute. (R: No I didn't. We talked about God. Whenever I refer to God, I'm talking about absolute reality or consciousness.) So then God wouldn't be the mind. (R: No, not in that case. But usually when people refer to God, they refer to a personal God, which is okay as long as you believe you're the mind and body.) SG: Can you say that the ego does everything, and Bhagavad Gita says God is the doer, that's coming from the point of the body-mind. R: God is the doer, yes. It comes from body-mind, that's right. (SL: So God, as we think of as God, as the creator, is still the ego's idea, the mind thinking?) Exactly, yes. (SG: It's pure ego?) It's pure ego. But I don't like to call it pure ego, because it sounds important. (laughter) (SK: So who's the doer?) There is no doer. (SK: There is no doer?) No doer exists. Never has existed. (SK: So does the Bhagavad Gita say God is the doer?) There is a point yes, it says the personal God is the doer. Because that God is. (SK: Is what?) Is the doer, because God tells you do this and do that. You say, "God made me do it." That kind of a God is a doer. SH: What is the relationship between absolute consciousness and functioning of mind, if there is any? (R: Functioning of mind?) Yes, the mind, that is an offspring of consciousness in some way? (R: I don't think so.) Where does it arise from? (R: It doesn't.) Where does the appearance come from? R: The appearance comes from your imagination. (SH: I imagine there is a mind?) It's called false imagination, that you imagine there's a mind and then there's an appearance. It's like the optical illusion I always talk about, the sky is blue or the mirage in the desert. You're looking at the desert and you see tanks coming, and they're coming and you think it's false, and they blow you apart, and your troubles are over. SG: Shankaracharya said that all is illusion, there is only Brahman, and the universe and Brahman are one. But you don't have to come to a place of first seeing everything as an illusion. Then there is a place where everything is simply the Self to that extent? R: No, you don't. Because when you come to that place when you see everything as an illusion, it's the ego who sees all that. But if the ego is destroyed then where is the place, where is the illusion? Everything is gone with it. The ego-mind invents all these things. SF: Robert, the illusion is that there seems to be an illusion. R: That's the illusion, right. SL: But you said you see the illusion, you see like pictures on the screen. (R: Sure I do. I see everybody sitting in this room. But I see everyone as consciousness.) SG: Also, do you also see your body of Robert in this room too? (R: Well sure I do.) Do you see that as consciousness? (R: I see my body as consciousness.) SR: We make the mistake of thinking that the bodies are seeing the bodies, and that's why we tend to see them as bodies. Whereas the truth is consciousness is not seeing it from a place, so it’s only seeing itself. R: It's just a different viewpoint. That's right. In the movie you see the screen and you see the images. But most of us forget there's a screen, and we're only concerned with the images. But the screen exists whether there are images or not. The screen always exists. In the same way consciousness exists whether you are aware of it or not. You can identify with your body and that's where all the trouble starts, or you can identify with consciousness and become free, and realize all of life is only superimposed on the screen, on consciousness. (SH: And only the screen exists, period.) That's it. SR: Since there is no time, in a certain sense, we're always free to really make that choice. It's not like were stuck for a long time and then maybe some day well get that choice. But it’s really as long as we drop that idea that we’re bound in time. (R: That's right. It's an idea. It's a belief.) That question, "How long does it take?' is really making the first assumption that you’re stuck in that to begin with. (R: How long does it take? When you say how long does it take, it holds you back.) Right? (R: It keeps you back from realizing.) This lady said the ego sees the flower, and in a sense that's really not true. Consciousness knows, in a sense, everything. It's only the reaction that seems to be ego. (R: There is no ego and there is no flower.) Right. (R: There's only consciousness.) And when there's reaction there seems to be an appearance of ego. (R: When the mind is active everything takes place, flowers, death, birth, imagination.) SH: Can the mind be active if there's no ego? (No. The mind and ego are synonymous. We use all these words but they mean the same thing.) SL: It seems like a person would become a vegetable. (R: To whom does it feel like that?) Oh, sure I know. (R: You see that's your ego you're fighting. Your ego doesn't want you to do anything. It wants you to stay the way you are. So it will tell you all these things about vegetables and everything else.) (laughter) SF: Robert, when you say about the only feeling is not to react, I think this surely is, it's impossible for the ajnani not to react. Because even not reacting is reacting. I think maybe for the Jnani… (tape break question unfinished as Robert continues as tape starts abruptly) R: …So why not start at the top, and just awaken and become free of it all. SR: When we ask these questions it's like the awakening stage has to appear first to someone. When we say other people, they are in the waking state of the ego that's asking the question. So right there you've got the fact that the waking state is appearing and you're taking it to be real. So it seems like there's the time for inquiry. R: Of course. You should spend your hours all day long asking yourself, "To whom does this come?" Every time you react to any condition ask the question, "To whom does it come?" Even if it's a good reaction. (SR: Even if it's just seeing that the world is in front of your eyes, ask.) "To whom does it come?" And you should start as soon as you get out of bed. SG: I find it just as disruptive having something I wanted to come to me and that giddiness and the happiness, that supposed happiness for having it, I use self-inquiry on that as well as something is just as… R: Of course. Remember happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. Do not allow happiness to fool you, human happiness, because you know how long that lasts. Therefore work on yourself. Catch yourself. Catch yourself being humanly happy. Enjoy the happiness, but ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" and you'll realize that it's your ego being happy, with itself, for a while, and then it will turn into something else. Remember the only thing apparent in this life is change. Everything must change. Therefore do not become disillusioned, because you won the lottery or you met someone you love very dearly or you inherited a new home or a car. Do not allow that to cause you not to work with your sadhana of self-inquiry. SL: From your point of view is it impossible to love one person more than another? (R: No.) To have to be able to see their development as different. (R: Who sees?) Who sees? (laughs) Well, from your point of view. (R: From my point of view, all is well.) All is well. SN: Robert, does the Jnani get angry? (R: Nope, except sometimes to teach a lesson.) So he fakes it? (R: Sometimes.) (SH: He has the appearance of anger.) (R: Sometimes.) SG: Does he fake happiness. Does he fake the appearance of happiness. R: Sometimes. (SN: But I'm not asking whether he faked it or not. What I'm asking is does anger come to a Jnani?) Not really. Unless he fakes it. (SN: I've been reading "I Am That," and Nisargadatta was known getting angry a lot.) I know. He used to get very angry at Balsekar. (laughter) But that was the appearance. (SN: So you're saying it was an act?) Yes. SN: Because someone asked him a question on that and he said, "When I identify with the gunas, then anger arises. When I stop identifying with it, then anger disappears." So he was saying, at that moment, because I was identifying with it, the anger arose. But when I recognized the anger and discontinued identifying with it, it disappeared. R: He didn't mean that. If he spoke like that he wouldn't be a Jnani.) (SN: Well that's what he said in the book.) I know. There's no emotion in a Jnani. There is no anger or happiness, human, unless they are putting on an act. Because the mind has been completely transcended. (SN: So he was acting?) Apparently. (SN: He acted a lot?) He sure did. SN: That couldn't be understood just as his samskaras? I remember reading in Tripura Rahasya, they were talking about three types of Jnanis. One type completely destroys any kind of samskaras. Another type, that hasn't occurred, and that he draws from that from time to time, to appear to be human, I suppose. R: Yes, I recall that. But that's only for an interpretation of a book. But you have to understand, in reality there's only one Jnani, not two or three or four. SN: But I suppose the question really is then was Nisargadatta coming from the level of the mind or was he a Jnani. (R: He was a Jnani.) So regardless of all the things we hear about him, I mean I heard at one point he was really angry at this one woman because she was going to see another teacher and he was trying to throw the table at her and yelling at her, "Get out, get out, go and see him, don't come back," you know. (SF: Did he miss with the table?) (laughter) R: He did all of those things. But it was all in fun. (SN: Many things in "I Am That" can be misleading.) Yes they can. (SN: If you don't read it the right way.) That's why I've told you many times, those books are dangerous to some people. SL: Somebody said, an old teacher of mine, that Jesus never laughed. Is that true? R: He never laughed? I wasn't there. I don't know. (SL: But if you're a Jnani, and Jesus was the same, would the consciousness be the same? I've seen you laugh.) No, see what you do, as you develop yourself, you have some of your personality left in your body. (SL: You have what?) Some of your personality, that's sort of human. That's still part of the illusion, that appears to be there. So when you see a Jnani reacting in a different way it has to do with their personality, which doesn't even exist. But it appears to exist for your sake. And none of these quirks exist, but they appear to, for your sake. SN: So from the onlooker actually the Jnani looks like anyone else? R: Yes, and they see in the Jnani what's in them.) (SN: But don't we see in each other also what is in us, not just the Jnani?) Yes we do. The onlooker sees, wherever he looks, he sees himself. (SN: From the point of the view of the onlooker that the Jnani is not any different than anyone else. How is one to distinguish?) That's why it is said that you must turn within yourself and the answer will come out of yourself and you will know. (SN: But Ramana would say that you can tell because when you're in the presence of a Jnani you feel a great peace. In other words their peace becomes your peace.) That's true to an extent. But if the Jnani is walking in the market place and you bump into him you will not be able to tell, usually. But if you're in a class with a Jnani then there's a peace, yes. Then you feel peace. (SN: But what I'm saying is when people were with Nisargadatta he was getting angry and carrying on obviously he looked like anyone else.) But people felt a great peace with him, except those he chased away. (laughter) SR: A lot of people didn't feel anything around Ramana. (R: That's right.) SN: Yeah, I guess that's a point. R: It all depends on yourself. If you work on yourself, if you go within, then you will be led to the right teacher at the right time and all will go well with you. But if you're only doing things externally you'll make a lot of mistakes and go to the wrong places. SG: If that is also part of where you need to be at that time though, too? R: Yes. Everything is preordained. (SG: right.) So why worry about these things? Turn within, find yourself, and be free. Most people go around saying who's a Jnani, who's not, who's enlightened, who's not. It's a waste of energy. Forget about all this. It doesn't matter. Find yourself. And then see if those questions come to you. SN: Robert, in the process of finding yourself the question of practice comes up. And is not vichara itself a practice? R: You can call it a practice, but it's a technique for destroying the ego. And if you're practicing enough, and you call it a practice, you will see amazing results. But we're using words it's semantics. We say this is a practice, this is a technique. It doesn't matter what you call it. We should all do it. (SN: Well it's not to say as if vichara is the only the only path?) Oh, there are many paths of course. It depends on the temperament of the devotee. (SN: But it is a practice itself. So in the end if everything is predetermined, the question arises why do a practice at all, nevertheless…) Because you act as if it is not predetermined. You are to act as if nothing is predetermined, even though it is. You will do what you are supposed to do. That's why we are told to stop reacting completely and to dive deep within the Self and become liberated. (SN: But Jnana Marga is a pathless path.) Sure you can say that. Of course it is. But what good are those terms if they don't mean anything. SN: Well, it almost seems as though you were saying that, well we need to do vichara and we talked about surrender, that was another path, and witnessing. What I'm getting at is, whether we should think in terms of cause and effect. If we do this, that will be the cause, and the effect will be self-realization. What I'm saying is that self-realization ultimately is something that just happens of itself. In the meantime you just pretend, well if I do this, this will happen. R: What you should do is to stop thinking. (laughter) And you should do everything you can to stop your mind from thinking these things. Because all the things that you say seem important, but they have no validity to atma-vichara. The less we think the better off we are. Even about the practice. SF: That's a question I have, Robert, what is the point, if there is a point of encounter between an inquisitive quite egoic mind, who wants to know everything, all the details, on one side. And the other side is, you yourself have said before, don't take for granted all that I tell you. Come up with your own conclusions. The Buddha said, "Be a lamp unto yourself." (R: Yes.) So you have to find a medium term or position between those two extremes. R: Not really. (SF: No?) Because when you say you have to find, who has to find? You go right back to the ego. (SF: Right.) All we have to do is still the mind. (SF: Right, and any of these activities?) Whatever helps us. All of the things that help us still the mind are good. (SF: Right.) As long as they are helping us to still the mind. But if they make us too active, then we're on the wrong track. SF: Trying to clarify any point to the utmost extreme, or trying to read too much. All that is feeding the ego or the mind, extremely. (R: Yes. Simplicity. Keep everything simple, quiet.) Who doesn't want to accept atma-vichara. I mean if I don't want to accept atma-vichara as a practice, if I don't want to accept that practice, also I'm sort of resistant. And who is resisting? It's the ego I guess. R: Of course. And then you look for other paths and you try this and you try that for a couple of months and you try something else. But you never sit down and try to quiet the mind. You keep searching. The mind searches. The mind never wants to rest. So you've got to observe your mind, you've got to become the witness to your mind, and keep inquiring, "For whom is the mind?" And then you come home free. SR: We're really looking for our questions to be extinguished, and not answered. R: True, of course. SH: When we refer to the mind we're just referring to thoughts that occur. There isn't anything such as a mind. R: Exactly. A mind doesn't exist. (SH: No.) The mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts. So do not think of your mind is an entity. It's the thoughts that you have to subdue because you think too much. It doesn't really matter what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad. All thinking has to stop, and then reality comes of itself. SG: When Ramana said that the mind is nothing more than a bundle of thoughts. (R: True.) There is no location for that bundle of thoughts. (R: There's no what?) There’s no location. (R: No location.) I mean there isn't a bundle, it's a finite bundle that finally gets the last stick, the last thought, and it's gone. R: That's right. Thoughts do not even exist, but they appear to exist and that's called the personal I. So that's why were told to follow the I. And when the I disappears, so will everything else. (SK: Follow the I inward to the source, not outward.) Inward, yes. If you follow it outwards you have all kinds of problems. You follow inwardly and it becomes the I am, pure reality. SR: It's funny how we take words to be so real, like the word bundle. (R: Like what?) Like the idea of "bundle." Funny how you give reality to these things that are just meant to be tentative descriptions. Like we miss the intention then. R: And the mind images all these things how they look, and makes a case out of them. (SR: Yes, it will.) And then we have to destroy everything. (SR: That's because we don't really focus on the silence. We focus on what comes out of it.) Exactly. Be still and know that I am God. (pause) See? Most of you are thinking. Why do you allow yourself to think? Catch yourself before you make up stories. (laughter) Always catch yourself before the thoughts go past your nose. And you can catch yourself by simply observing and being aware that you're thinking, becoming the witness to your thinking, or keep asking yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" But do it as often as you have to. That's why satsang is so important, because it's easier here. So if you come to enough satsangs you carry it through during the working day and you keep remembering not to think. And the remembering becomes stronger, and stronger, and stronger, until you actually stop your thoughts. And then you're free. There's really nothing profound about this teaching. It’s simple. Stop thinking. SL: So simple it eludes me. R: Who is eluded? You can never be eluded. Never put yourself down. Watch what you say about yourself. No matter how many mistakes you make, get up again, brush yourself off, and carry on. (SL: Now that is one problem I find about being old, that there were so many things in my memory that I find myself carrying. That phrase I heard somewhere and I thought it was funny, and I said, it wasn't my thought, "So simple it eludes me." I think W. C. Fields said it as a matter of fact.) Really? Where do all these thoughts stay? There is no cause. So they don't even exist. They appear to exist as I. That's why I tell you get rid of the I and all your thoughts will go also. (pause) There's nothing else to do but to be still. SF: Robert, in the phrase "I am consciousness," what I is that? R: The real I. I am consciousness is simultaneously both correct. SL: And when you say to us, "I love you," you were speaking from That? R: I'm speaking of the universal ‘I,’ ‘I’ as omnipresence. Love as omnipresence. You as omnipresence. So the I is the entire universe, the I is the Self, the I is pure consciousness. (SL: But when we, speaking from our ego point of view, say, "we love you," it seems like in most of life, it seems a manipulative word.) Well, change it. (SL: Well I don't think I mean it that way. I think it comes from a ego place.) Well why even think about that? (SL: Pardon me?) Why think about that at all? Why do you think about it at all? Stop thinking and just do it. (SL: Say I love you?) Speak from your heart. In other words do not think where it's coming from. You don't want to walk around all day saying, "This came from here and this came from there." Simply say what you mean and forget it. SF: It's afterwards there comes a doubt. (R: Yes.) You didn't mean it. (R: Of course.) And there's no doubt at the time. (R: Exactly.) SR: It's not the ego until that doubt comes in. R: That's right. It's always yourself. You are always yourself until your mind starts thinking. (SR: Right.) Then you lose it. (SR: But even when you're like thinking of your grocery bill, or you know, that's not a problem.) You're still yourself if everything is spontaneous. (SR: Right.) But as soon as you become attached, or you start worrying about it, or fearing it, or thinking something is wrong, then you can know the ego is at work. SH: It's the manipulation of whatever occurs. (R: The manipulation.) If it occurs and it's gone, there's no problem. (R: If it occurs and you let it go, there's no problem.) It's the analyzation. (R: Analyzation.) SF: What you’re saying Robert is that every thought is non-dual until someone is concerned themself with the I. R: Yes, exactly. All thoughts are pure. (SF: Non-dual.) Until you start thinking about them. (SF: Only when someone gets concerned with the thoughts identifying with them?) Then the trouble starts. (SF: identifying yourself?) That's true. (SF: Something to the thinker.) SN: So when you say don't think, you don't mean stop all your thoughts. You mean stop identifying with the thoughts that are occurring. (R: Yes.) Thoughts come before the thinker comes on the picture. (SD: That's very clear.) SN: So is there any point where they stop, where the thoughts do stop? R: The thoughts do stop, yes, and you just act spontaneously. But they appear like thoughts, but they are no longer thoughts. For instance if I think I'm getting up off this chair, the thought had to come to me spontaneously, but that's the end. So I'm not really thinking about getting off the chair. I just did it. SR: That's like the end, the duration, is no longer present. The thought arose, died, there was no concern. (R: That's right.) SH: There is no separation between the thought and the action. R: Exactly. It's all one. (SH: One.) SR: So really what happened is you lost all sense of division like there was separate thought entities. They come, they end, another one comes, it’s just like, right? R: There's no beginning and no end. SF: So actually non-duality is the real thing, even with thoughts, and what appears to appear is the I or the one concerned with the thoughts, and that's when duality surges up. R: It all has to do with time and space. (SF: Right.) Time and space are nonexistent. (SF: That's still the personality or ego.) The ego has to do with time and space. So when time and space stops everything is spontaneous and there's no ego, and all causation ceases. Causation has to do with time and space. SR: So memory ends too? (R: Memory ends also.) SF: This is so important Robert, because when you say that we should stop the thoughts, actually what you're implying is not to slow them, but actually let the thoughts be as they are in a non-dual way. The only thing is, don't let the I come up in between or the duality to appear in that sense. R: You can say that. Yes, if you just are spontaneous and you just act from your spontaneity, then you're safe. But if you have to think about it too much, then you're caught up in it again. (SF: Right.) SG: Like sitting here, there's no need for thoughts. (R: Right.) There's nothing here to do. So there shouldn't be any thoughts. So when the thoughts are just coming, then I catch it and they go down, I play along the thought line. (R: You keep catching your thoughts faster and faster. And then it all starts slowing down.) SH: When you're spontaneous there's no possibility of the ego occurring. (R: There's no ego at all.) Then it's vanished. (R: It's gone. The ego has to do with thinking.) SF: Excuse me, but when you try to catch the thoughts, there is an observer there which is the I, Robert, or the ego trying to observe or catch the thoughts. R: The I, the ego, the mind are simultaneously the same. It's the same thing. So when you think, it becomes the I. I think. Then I act. My mind thinks. But when you're spontaneous there's no I to think. SF: Right, but that's how it usually happens. Everything is spontaneous. The I surges almost in an atomic time, immediately… (R: I think, yes.) …and captures the actual thought or the thought which is occurring. R: That's right, yes. You identify with the I. So when you work on yourself and keep asking, "To whom does this come?" the personal I becomes weaker and weaker until it disappears. So let's practice this together. Let's become still. Now what we're going to do now is just close our eyes and watch our thoughts, and catch them. As soon as you see yourself thinking ask yourself, "To whom does it come? It comes to me." Hold on to the me and ask yourself, "Who am I? Who am I" over and over again. Or you can say, "I - I, I - I." Then the thoughts will start again. Do the whole procedure over again, "To whom do they come? To me. Who am I? Who is this I to whom they come? What is this I?" Then some more thoughts will creep in. And you do it again, and again, and again until they start slowing down. And as you say, "Who am I?" that will last longer and longer, until it stops. So let's try that. (long silence for practice) R: Let's discuss your experiences that you’ve had. But we have got some prashad. Let me hand it out for you. Take one and pass the bag around. (general talk during prashad) So remember to love yourself, to bow down to yourself, to worship yourself, because God dwells in you as you. I love you all. Peace, until we meet again. Have a good time. Enjoy life. Keep eating. (laughter) SM: Thank you for the refreshments Robert. (tape ends)

Robert: I want to thank Shankarananda for coming down and helping with the music. (Clasp all round) This is truly an auspicious day, what a way to bring in the New Year. I want to tell you that I love every one of you, just the way you are. When I was eighteen years old, I arrived at Tiruvannamalai. In those days they didn't have jet planes. It was a propeller plane. I purchased flowers and a bag of fruit to bring to Ramana. I took the rickshaw to the Ashram. It was about 8:30 a.m. I entered the hall and there was Ramana on his couch reading his mail. It was after breakfast. I brought the fruit and the flowers over and laid it at his feet. There was a guardrail in front of him to prevent fanatics from attacking him with love. And then I sat down in front of him. He looked at me and smiled and I smiled back. I have been to many teachers, many Saints, many Sages. I was with Nisargadatta, Ananda Mai Ma, Papa Ram Dass, Neem Karali Baba and many others, but never did I meet anyone who exuded such compassion, such love, such bliss, as Ramana Maharshi. There were about thirty people in the room. He looked at me and asked me if I had eaten breakfast. I said, 'No.' He spoke some Tamil to the attendant and the attendant came back with two giant leaves, one with fruit and one with some porridge with pepper. After I consumed the food, I just lied down on the floor. I was very tired. It was time for his usual walk. He had arthritis in the legs and could hardly walk at that time. His attendants helped him to get up and he walked out the door. When he was outside he said something to his attendants, and his attendants motioned for me to come. He guided me to a little shack that I was going to use while on my stay there. He came inside with me, and I bet you think we spoke about profound subjects. On the contrary, he was a natural man. He was the Self of the universe. He asked me how my trip was, and where I was from, what made me come here. Then he said I should rest, so I laid down on the cot and he left. I was awakened about 5 o'clock. It was Ramana again, he came by himself and he brought me food. Can you imagine that? We spoke briefly, I ate and I slept. The next morning I went into the hall. After the morning chanting there was breakfast. Then everybody sat around just watching Ramana, and he'd go through his routine. He would go through the mail and read it out loud, talk to some of his devotees, and I just observed everything. His composure never changed. Never did I see such compassion, such love. Then people started to come over to him asking him questions. His replies were very succinct. They weren't like you read in a book. Apparently, what you read in a book is his reply to three or four people. They condensed it all into one question and answer. But people usually asked a question or make a statement. If he agreed he would nod or say, "Yes. That's it." If he didn't, he would offer an explanation in maybe one or two sentences. There were foreigners at the ashram when I was there, Muslims, Catholic priests, people from all races and all nationalities. The devotees would sit around and say nothing, but the seekers and the disciples would ask questions. When I was there a week or so, two of his disciples were sort of jokingly arguing with him about something in Tamil. I asked the interpreter what they were talking about. He said Ramana's couch is covered with lice, and he refuses to let us kill them. They climb over his body and his legs and he doesn't care. He even feeds them. We want to exterminate the couch, but he won't let us. So the next day they tricked him. When he went outside for his morning walk, they sprayed his couch with DDT. When he came back he smelled the couch, and he smiled and he jokingly said, "Someone has tricked me." He never got angry, never got mad. I don't think he knew what the words meant. A couple of weeks later there was a German lady who had come to the ashram, and apparently she had made a donation of some kind, but she wasn't happy for some reason. She was complaining to Ramana, and he just kept silent. I again asked the interpreter, "What does she want?" The interpreter said, "She wants her donation back. (laughter) She wants to go home back to Germany." So she started to argue, everything was going on in front of Ramana. She started to argue with one of the managers of the ashram and Ramana just looked. Then Ramana said in English, "Give her back her donation and add fifty rupees to it," which they did, and she left. This was his nature. He never saw anything wrong. He never took anyone out of his love. No matter what they did, who they were, where their ego was, he understood and loved everyone just the same. We're also celebrating the birth of Jesus this month. He was never born this month, but we're celebrating it anyway. Ramana used to quote from the scriptures. Jesus and Ramana said basically the same things. Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you." Ramana said, "The Self is within you. Search for it and find it and awaken." Jesus said, "Son, I am with you always and all that I have is yours." Ramana said, "I can never leave you. I am always with you." His compassion never left him. Six months prior to his leaving his body, I went to Bangalore to see Papa Ram Dass. I was informed that he left his body. I went back to Tiruvannamalai. But the crowds had already started to come, thousands of people. So I climbed the hill and went into one of the caves. Stayed there for five days. When I came down the crowds were dispersed. He had already been interned. I inquired of his devotee who saw him last, "What were the last words he spoke?" The devotee said, "While he was leaving his body a peacock flew on top of the hall and started screeching, and Ramana remarked to his devotee, "Has anyone fed the peacock yet?" and those were the last words he spoke. Now, let's talk about you. Think of the problems you believe you have. Think of the nonsense that you go on with everyday. Think how furious you become, how you always want to stick up for your rights, as if you had any. The problem is, you think. If you would only stop thinking. You say, "How can I function if I stop thinking?" Very well, thank you! As a matter of fact you would function much better than you do now, for you will always be taken care of. The universe loves you. It will always supply you with your needs. Forget about other people, what they do and what they don't do. Do not listen to malicious gossip. Be your Self. Understand who you really are. You are the absolute reality, unconditioned consciousness. Work from that standpoint. Do not work from your problems. Do not get lost in meaningless gossip. Understand your true reality. Be your Self. What Ramana taught was not new. Ramana simply taught the Upanishads. "Who am I" has been around since time immemorial. If a teacher always tells you they have something new to teach you, be careful, because there's nothing new under the sun. Ramana simply revised the who-am-I philosophy and made it simple for people in the twentieth Century. But what did he teach? He simply taught that you are not the body-mind principle. He simply taught that if you have a problem, do not feel sorry for yourself, do not go to psychiatrists, do not condemn yourself, simply ask yourself, "To whom does this problem come?" And of course the answer will be, "The problem comes to me." Hold onto the me. Follow the me to the source, the substratum of all existence. How do you do that? How do you hold onto me? How do you hold onto I? By simply asking yourself, "Who am I? What am I?" The same thing, "What am I?" Asking yourself again and again, "Who am I?" Forget about time. Forget about space. Forget everything. Keep yourself from thinking. When the thoughts come, ask yourself, "To whom comes the thoughts?" Again, "They come to me." Hold onto the me. "I think these thoughts. Well then, who am I? Who thinks these thoughts? Who am I?" An easier way to do this I have found is to simply say to yourself, "I - I, I - I," and you will notice as you do this that the I - I goes deeper, deeper, deeper within you into your heart center, right to the source. For westerners I have found that saying "I - I" seems to be more helpful than "Who am I?" Again, do not look at time. Do not ask yourself, "When is something going to happen?" A devotee went to Ramana and said, I've been with you for twenty-five years, doing "Who am I? " and nothing has happened yet, so Ramana said, "Try it another twenty-five and see what happens." Forget about time, forget about when something is going to happen. Even if nothing happens in this life you’re ahead of the game. For if you've been sincere, and if you've really been working on yourself, you will come back to an environment that is conducive for your realization and at that time you may have realization when you're about twelve or thirteen years old, because you've earned it. But if you're like most people and go around minding everybody's business and saying, "I have no time to do this. I've tried it for two hours and it doesn't work," then you keep coming back again, and again, and again, going through all kinds of experiences, until one day, maybe ten-thousand years from now you may actually get it and start working on yourself diligently, what you should be doing now. What do you do with yourself all day long? Think. From the moment you get out of bed, how does your day go? Do you think of God at all? Do you practice or do you think about your affairs and your body? Be honest with yourself. If you're not making any headway in spiritual life, it's because you're not putting anything into it. You have to realize that whatever you see in the world is only a reflection of yourself. If people are mean to you, if they abuse you, it is because you're seeing yourself as those people. In other words, you've got those qualities. I recall, going back to the story of Ramana and the German lady, when he gave her back her donation plus some more rupees. The following afternoon a devotee asked him, "Ramana, why did you do that?" and Ramana explained, "When she gave us a donation, to whom do you think she gave it to? She gave it to herself, for there's only one Self. When she took it back, she took it away from herself. When she goes back to Germany I'm sure she'll have financial problems until she learns that anything you give is only giving to yourself, for there's not two, or three, or four selves, there's only one Self," and this includes everything you do in your life, the way you look at another person. You're simply seeing yourself. And this is why the only thing I can do for you is to love you, because I love myself and you are myself. When I say I love my Self, I am not referring to Robert. When I use the word Self, I'm referring to infinity, to omnipresence. It includes everything in this universe. So when I love myself, I am obviously loving everyone and everything that exists. I also realize that everything that exists is a projection of my own mind, so I do not identify with the images. I identify with the source, with consciousness, with absolute reality, with ultimate oneness, with nirvana, with emptiness. While I'm talking to you I realize I'm talking to my Self because again there is only one Self. If you can only remember that in your dealings with others, whichever way you deal with anyone else, you're doing it to your Self. Can you see now why a person like Ramana could never hate anyone or be angry, it wasn't in his nature. How do you react to life? When a person displeases you what do you do? Curse him or her, become angry, become violent? How do you handle it? How do you react? Be honest with yourself. It's the only way. Start from where you are. No human being is perfect. We all make mistakes. Do not feel sorry for yourself, but start from where you are. Where are you? You are consciousness. This is your true nature. Learn to love everything. Learn to see only the good. Realize there's a reason for everything. If a person displeases you, simply look the other way and forget it. Learn to stop your mind from thinking. And you do this by immediately catching yourself when you react to a condition, and inquiring within yourself, "Who is becoming angry? Who feels out of sorts? I do? I." Realize you're dealing with the personal I, and all the anger, all the frustration, all the karma, all the samskaras are all attached to that personal I. Consequently, when you get rid of the personal I, everything else will go with it. So don't try to solve your problems. Do not try to become a better person. Do not try to run away from your life. Simply see who it is who is running, who it is who needs to be a better person? Who has all these problems? I, I, always I. Hold onto that I with all of your might, but do not concentrate on the I. You concentrate on the source which is consciousness, God. And everybody asks me over and over again, and I keep telling you. They ask me, "How do I hold onto the I?" By asking, "Who am I?" or just saying, "I - I, I - I, I - I." Automatically you will notice the I going deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper within your heart and one day you will become free. But you're already free. Why not wake up right now? Why go through anything? Everybody is different. If this appears too difficult for you, if vichara appears hard, then your next best bet is to surrender completely to God. Surrender everything, your problems, your ego, your body, your mind, your work, your world. Say, "Here, God, take it, I want no more of this. I am yours, do with me as you will. Thy will be done." This means you no longer have anything to worry about. If you truly surrender, you will immediately become radiantly happy, for you have given your ego to God and what's left is God. You have no body. You have no mind. You have no work. You have no problems. It has been your ego all of the time fooling you, making you believe that something is wrong, and you've been playing hide and seek, trying to find God here, there and everywhere, (that was a nice song) when all the time God was within yourself as your Self. Begin to see the truth. Begin to stand up tall. Become fearless. Become strong. Leave the world alone. It will take care of itself. There is a mysterious power that guides the world to its right destiny. It doesn't need any help from you. If you're meant to do certain work in the world, it will be done, but you have nothing to do with that. It doesn't mean that you have to leave your job or go sit in a cave or give up your life. Wherever you are right now is where you're supposed to be. Just feel, "I am not the doer," and you're work will go on. Do not be attached to your work. Do not react to any situation or any condition. Be your Self. Focus your attention on consciousness and your body will go on doing whatever it came here to do. Everything is preordained. Even when I raise my finger like this it is preordained. Do not be egotistical to believe that you have any power over everybody or anybody or that you are the doer. It's a privilege to have been born on this earth and the reason you have been born is to find your real Self. Go for it, do it, and become free. I don't know why I talk so much, it doesn't do you any good. I always want to sit in the silence, but sometimes we have some new people and they do not understand the silence yet, so I keep on chatting. I wonder if I know what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter anyway. Any questions? Bob? SB: What is the relationship between effort and realization, since only the ego is doing this effort. How can the ego doing this effort…? R: What you call effort has been preordained. (SB: Self-inquiry is the ego doing effort?) Self-inquiry is the ego trying to find itself as the Self, so the effort is brought on through your karma so that you may become self-realized. It's a privilege to have been able to find in this life the method of self-inquiry. Therefore, it's been predestined that you should make the effort to find yourself. (SB: Since God or realization is something that really is like an effortless presence, how could it be…?) When you get on the path correctly, after a while it becomes effortless. In the beginning there seems to be a little effort you have to take, because you're breaking away from your old patterns, and as you continue it becomes effortless, easier and easier. It becomes a pleasure. It becomes a joy and you're always doing it effortlessly. So the effort is only the beginning stages. It's not really effort, but when you break into a new habit, the old wants to still stay there and take over. So you still have to push it out as you inquire, "To whom does it come? Who feels miserable?" And as you keep practicing and practicing it becomes effortless, and pretty soon you do not have to do anything. It just happens by itself. You become happier and happier, more peaceful, and your life becomes a joy to others and to yourself. Nate: I'm confusing the false I with the true I is that…? R: There’s only one I, but for the sake of conversation we say there is a personal I which is your ego. The only confusion is you are identifying with the personal I instead of the real I. The real I is absolute reality, pure intelligence, parabrahman, sat-chit-ananda. That is the real I and you have a choice: "With whom am I going to identify with?" Identify with your Self, with consciousness, and there will be no question of two I's. But again, when you begin, it is your ego as I that you're working with. "Who am I?" means the ego. Who is this ego? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth? Why does it exist? And then you will realize, "Why I gave it birth by believing in it. I created my ego myself. I did all this." And it begins to change. The personal I becomes weaker and consciousness becomes stronger until the personal I disappears altogether and you become free. So do not keep identifying with the personal I. Hold onto it, follow it by asking, "What is I? Who am I?" All levels and all teachings are an emanation of the mind, for there has to be someone to experience those levels. Vichara, or self-inquiry, goes right to the heart of the matter. It bypasses every system, negates every system, and awakens you immediately. The mind, as I, gives you the problem. When the mind, as I, goes, everything else goes with it, all of your past teachings, the world, the universe, God, reincarnation, karma. You become free of the whole mess and you awaken. So again, every system is a projection of the mind. You have to be present to do the work, whereas in this teaching we get rid of the you that does the work. So if the you is gone, there's no work to be done. In other words, who has to meditate? I do. There has to be somebody present for you to meditate. Instead of meditating, ask yourself, "Who meditates?" and the answer will be, "I do." Then, "Who am I?" and the light will come on and you'll be free. Once the I goes there is nobody left to do any spiritual work for you become consciousness. You become absolute reality, omnipresent, infinite. ST: So you're saying these are progressive systems? R: Those are progressive systems, and I suppose most people need those things. They're good. There's nothing wrong with these things, but the direct path is vichara. You bypass everything. SW: In the case of the man who spent twenty-five years with Ramana, who isn't understanding, is he not going through stages? R: On the contrary, he is just there. He's at peace with himself, and when the time is right for him, he'll awaken. There are no stages to go through as long as he's present. SW: That brings up this question then. If you were practicing and someone comes in here and they never heard this teaching before and they start practicing, the first thing they have to do is to recognize that they have a mind and to recognize God within. And when they recognize that, then they have a herd of horses within, a stampede. So for a while, for atma-vichara and who-am-I to work, they have to slow down that stampede by working through a system. So that's a progressive stage in a way, because there are emotions involved and feelings and sensations that come up. And all of this, for a person to cut through and to evolve, they must work on those levels. (R: How do you know?) Because I went through it. (R: So that means everybody goes through it?) Well, looking at the average human being, I would say absolutely. R: There are some people who just awaken. There are some people who go through stages. There are some people who do a lot of work. There are some people who practice meditation and mantras all day long. There are some people who do nothing and they awaken. (SW: Yes, but most people like that are very few like Ramana. Ramana was an exception.) Well, then learn how to do it and become like Ramana. Practice what Ramana practiced, and you too can be an exception. Why should you identify with the other? Identify with Ramana's practice. He said the same thing. Why go through the trouble to go through yoga practices? You'll come back life after life after life and keep practicing yoga. Find out who's practicing and become free. Doesn't that sound reasonable? All you have to do is to find out who's practicing. Who needs to do all these things? I do. Well, who am I? Where did I come from? I - I. Get rid of that I and you're home free. Nate: What about the identification with the body. I'm confusing the body with the thoughts. (R: What about it?) Identification, when there's pain you're just involved in the pain, can that be reality? R: The reality is not the pain. The body is in pain, but you are not the body. So if you stick to your true Self, you will hardly feel the pain. Let the body take care of itself. Do not concern yourself with the body. The body will still eat, it will still go to the bathroom, it will still take a shower, it will still take care of itself but you have absolutely nothing to do with it. You are not the body, so why identify with the pain. Identify with consciousness, with the Self, and then see what happens. This is why when people like Ramana and Ramakrishna were dying, especially Ramakrishna, he literally wasted away and they used to tell him the same way they did Ramana, "Master, heal yourself. We have seen you heal others. Heal yourself." And the answer would always be the same: "You foolish people, what do you see? Who sees a sick body? There is nobody to be sick. What are you looking at? Change your identification. See the truth." That's why Jesus was able to say, "I am with you always, even unto the end the world," for he realized he was consciousness, not the body, not what appears to be real. Everything that most of you are looking at right now is an appearance. It is not the truth. There is another world of reality where there is only perfection, love, bliss, joy. With whom are you identifying? The choice is yours. SB: The I seems to be such a deeply ingrained habit. It seems like the primary addiction. It seems like all other addictions come out of the addiction of I. (R: Yes.) The ego addiction is the primary addiction. (R: Indeed. Correct.) That's the problem is that it's so addictive. R: As you keep referring back to yourself and saying, "Who am I?" the I becomes weaker, and weaker, and weaker. Eventually it has to disappear, and then you're free. (SB: Sometimes I feel a little loosened up, abiding, and then other times it's all forgotten and it's back to the ego again.) That's how it appears to work, but as you continue practicing, and practicing, and practicing, the day will come when you're home free. That's why I said do not look at time, even if it takes more than a lifetime. You're still ahead of the person going bowling. SB: Even when you see the thoughts moving and you see how identified you are, it's almost like the ego enjoys this. It enjoys resisting the peace, silence and intelligence. It's so used to this that it seems to like its own suffering. R: Well are you talking from the standpoint of the ego or the Self? (SB: From the ego.) So ask yourself, "Who's going through all this? Who's suffering? To whom does it come?" Identify with the source, not with the ego. Do not go into all the details of what the ego does. Go into the details of what the Self is, pure intelligence, absolute awareness, satchit- ananda, parabrahman. Speak of those things, and let the ego take care of itself. (SB: It's funny the ego doesn't seem to want all that.) No, you don't want all that. (SB: Why?) Because you refuse to identify with those higher things. You keep talking about the ego over and over again as if it were a power. But it doesn't even exist. It's a non-entity. (SB: I guess I'm possessed.) (students laugh) You're possessed by God, you can never get away from God no matter how hard you try. (SB: I've been trying with all my might.) (laughter) Maybe that's the problem, just observe and watch, stop trying. Watch your mind in action. Observe your thoughts, become the witness, and then you'll say, "Ah, look what's happening to me. Am I that? Of course not." Then it will become easier for you. SB: It's really embarrassing to watch your mind, because you feel like you should be committed to a mental institution. It's total nonsense, total craziness. R: Again, to whom is it embarrassing? It's embarrassing to the ego. The ego watches, the ego's embarrassed, and the ego fights back but you do not react to it. Do not react. Watch, observe and ask the question, "To whom does it come?" That's all you've got to do, and everything else will take care of itself. SB: Watching it breaks the identification? (R: Observing.) It's funny, when you start to forget to observe it, you melt into the identification of it so easily. You melt into the identification of the ego. That's what is wonderful about inquiry, that it breaks it. R: Don't get caught up in too many details. Make it simple, very simple, the simpler the better. Nate: I think part of the problem is, speaking for myself of course, is that I don't believe it will happen. I feel it happens just to a favored few, like Jesus or Buddha or yourself. What's the sense of trying it if it's not going to happen? R: Well, if you don't feel it's not going to happen, what can you do? Go see a movie. (students laugh) You've got to realize you are greater than you think, and you've got the same power within you as everybody else does. It may appear to be asleep, but as you work on yourself, work on yourself, work on yourself, you will awaken it. And one day it will become stronger than you are and take you over completely and you'll be free. But you've got to keep on working on yourself and stop putting yourself down. That's the worst thing you can do is to put yourself down. That's blasphemy because you're putting God down. Think of yourself as a higher person, love yourself, worship yourself, bow to yourself. You are greater than you think. SL: Robert, at first when you were speaking to Bob, you said to make things simple and follow self-inquiry of who-am-I and at the same time you said, "Don't make it like a mantra." If you keep saying, "I - I" or "Who am I? I am me," well for me I got caught in a circular answer and question thing. You said not to make it like a mantra. R: Who-am-I is never a mantra. You simply observe yourself, ask yourself the question, "To whom do these things come? To me," then say, "who am I?" or "I - I, I - I." It's not a mantra. As you keep doing it to yourself, you will awaken. SL: Even if I do the question and answer, even though I come into a circle of three questions with three answers, and I kept going around and around, so it's not a mantra? R: No it's not. But you can ask yourself, "To whom do these things come? To whom do the three questions come?" There has to be a person to experience the three questions. Get rid of that person and you'll be free. (SL: Would I be breaking self-inquiry if I got rid of the me with, "To whom do these questions come? They come to me?") Self-inquiry is only for the ego. (SL: I'm like Bob then. I've got a big ego.) Keep practicing. Keep practicing and you'll break it down. SN: Robert has often said, when you ask yourself the question, you don't answer because when you answer, that's just comes from the mind. When you ask, "Who am I?" just rest in that feeling of I, don't answer it. SB: Is consciousness observing all the self-inquiry? R: Consciousness is self-contained. It has nothing to do with self-inquiry. Only the ego does. (SB: Then why do we have to do self-inquiry?) Because you have to use the ego to get rid of the ego. (SB: So consciousness is noticing all of the self-inquiry then?) It doesn't notice anything. As you practice self-inquiry, your mind will disappear and your true Self will come forth all by itself. (SB: And is my true Self here now?) Yes, you will awaken to it, but you don't believe it is, so you're practicing self-inquiry. SL: How do you trace it to the heart when you say that with self-inquiry you trace it to the heart? R: Another term for the heart is consciousness, so the heart is really consciousness. You simply inquire, "Who am I?" It takes care of itself. The I becomes weaker and weaker and disappears. SH: Your attention then should always be focused on the source. (R: On the source.) Yeah, when you hold onto the I, that's just a way of focusing attention on the source from whence the I arises? R: Yes, when I say hold onto the I, I mean you're witnessing the I. You're watching it, you’re watching where it goes. (SH: From whence it arises?) From whence it came from and where it goes back to. (SH: When you say that consciousness or God dwells in you "as you," that "as you" is not referring then to the ego?) No, it's referring to consciousness. (SH: It's redundant really.) Yes. Consciousness is your true existence and there is nothing else. Everything else we talk about, everything else we do, is to make you realize that your true nature is consciousness. Then everything becomes redundant. But we have to talk like this because you believe you're human. You believe you're the body. When will you stop believing that? (pause) Time to eat! SH: Time is preordained we have nothing to do with time. (R: To whom?)That was a joke. SL: Robert, if a person believes that they're happy in this alleged consciousness that we all possibly share, I mean your students, is that the same thing as being in love with nature as being in love with life. Is that about on the same level in your eyes as going bowling? R: All of these things that you're referring to is a projection of your mind. You create your universe, and you create your world, and you create the trees and the bowling and everything else. So get rid of your mind and everything else will go. (SL: There won't be any trees?) You'll be the tree. You'll be everything you like. (SL: So then it's really the ego that entertains all this beauty.) You can say that, yes. You bring fresh flowers into your room and then they die in a couple of days. So how can that be real? (SL: Even when they are so pretty.) Everything you fall in love with gets old and dies. So how can you say that's real? Contact reality and you will always be happy. Okay, let's eat. (students laugh) SK: Before we eat, Robert wants to hand out stuff to everybody. (R: I do?) Yeah.(laughter) SH: Thanks for letting Robert know. (R: Where is it?) What's he handing out? (Prashad continues as tape ends)

Robert: You people are funny. When I look at this side this side starts singing and when I turn my head away they stop and this side starts. (students laugh) You only sing when I look at you. Oh well, can't have everything. (laughter) I welcome you with all my heart and with all my being. It's good to see you all here, every one of you. In 1947 I went to Ramana Ashram. After spending around three days talking with Ramana, I settled down with the devotees, in the hall, and I used to sit at the right side of the hall against the wall, watching all the people come in. They had devotees, disciples, and seekers. The devotees were always the same. They never said much. They were immersed in the Self. The devotees and the seekers quarreled with each other. I recall a particular Indian who was very quarrelsome with a disciple, and he used to find fault with everybody. He would go to Ramana and say, "So and so was doing this, so and so was doing that." And Ramana would tell him, "Remember the reason of why you came here and keep silent." The reason of course was to find the Self and not to interfere with anybody else. But there were all kinds of incidents going on. Sikhs came, Hindus, Westerners, Buddhists, Zen Buddhists. People who were practicing Hatha Yoga. All these things were happening in front of Ramana. But it didn't faze Ramana one bit. I recall a Westerner, I'm trying to think of his name, Henry Wells, from Scotland. He apparently had read a lot of books about Ramana, and this was his first visit. He came into the hall, and I was watching this. Ran over to Ramana and prostrated himself on his stomach, and started going crazy. His feet were shaking, and he was chanting. The devotees wanted to pick him up, and Ramana said, "Let him stay." When he came out of it he told Ramana, "At last I have found you. You are my father, my mother, my son, my daughter, my friend." And Ramana just smiled at him. And I said to myself, I was only eighteen years old, I said to myself, "Someone who is this enthusiastic, let's see what happens, if it lasts." The days went by and he kept prostrating himself every day for about a month. Then he finally stopped and he sat down like everybody else. And after about two months he started looking around the room at everybody, and he started complaining, that this wasn't right, that wasn't right. After about four months of being there he donated fortythousand dollars to the ashram, and I'm just watching all these things going on. After about six months of being there, he started to find fault with the management. At that time Ramanas brother was managing the ashram. He started to whisper to the other disciples, of course the devotees had nothing to do with this, it was the disciples and the seekers. He started spreading rumors. He hardly ever talked to me. I guess I was too young. He was about forty-five years old. When about the seventh month he came over to me one day and he asked me outside the ashram, "Do you think Ramana is really enlightened?" So I just smiled at him, I didn't answer and walked away. He started getting devotees to fight against each other and rebel against the rules of the ashram. On about the eighth month he saw me again and he tells me, "Do you think it is right for Ramana to stand naked like this? Let's buy him some clothes and dress him up, so when Westerners come they won’t be frightened." So I told him what Ramana said: "Remember the reason for why you came." And this went on. A couple of days later I didn't see him in the hall. Second day passed and I didn't see him. The third day passed and I didn't see him. And the fourth day I inquired, "What happened to him?" And the house guest he was living with said, "Oh, Henry packed his suitcase and went back to Scotland," and nobody ever heard from him again. The point of the story is this: If you realize the reason why you came you will be interested in one thing, awakening. And that will dominate your life. Nothing else will. You will not be concerned with what somebody else is doing and you will be at peace with yourself and everybody else. Everything is preordained anyway. Everything is karmic. So what's going to happen will happen whether you like it or not. So why get insulted, why get your feelings hurt, be at peace. It's interesting, this morning I was looking through a magazine and I found an article by a devotee who lived at the ashram for quite a while talking about the same subject. Mary would you like to read it? Now listen carefully to this. Can you see? Mary: Yes I can see fine. It's called "Mind the Business for Which you have Come." All events in life are shaped according to the divine plan. What is bound to happen will happen. What is not to happen cannot be brought about by any human effort. On this point Ramana was quite categoric. When Deva Raja Mudaliar questioned him as to whether only important things in ones life, such as major occupation or profession alone are predetermined, or even trifling acts, Ramana replied, "Everything is predetermined.” One of the purposes of birth is to go through certain experiences which have been marked out in the karmic unfoldment of this life. The whole program is chalked out. This would apparently be a dampener to all effort, for one would be puzzled as to what the responsibility of man is. Is he an automation of karmic forces? Where do his free will and effort come in? Ramana points out that there is another deeper purpose to life. That is to search and find out the truth for oneself. He would say that the only useful purpose of life is to turn within and realize there's nothing else to do. Ramana would therefore constantly din into everyone the fact that the ultimate truth is sat-chit, immediately available here and now. When Natananananda asked Ramana, "Is it possible for everyone to know directly without doubt what exactly is ones true nature?" prompt came the reply, "Undoubtedly it is possible. The ultimate truth is so simple," Ramana would say. "It is nothing more than abiding in ones own state." This is the essential message of all religions and creeds. Leaving aside the automatic course of our lives regulated by the creator, according to his law, ones duty is to channel effort to be selfaware. Steadfastness of purpose is in treading the inner path through vigilant self-inquiry. On such inquiry as to the source of the individual, the inquirer merges in the conscious source. The inner odyssey is seldom smooth sailing. Full many a delusion would wean one away. For instance, people who go to Shri Ramana Ashram to breathe its rarified atmosphere, while there, instead of surrendering to his flowing grace, they would get involved in the happenings of the ashram management. Ramana used to jovially remark of some visitors, “On their first visit to Shri Ramana ashram, they seemed to be alight. On the second visit they discovered that the ashram is not properly run. On the third visit they start giving advice. On the fourth, they know best how to run the place. And on the fifth they discover that the management is not responsive. On the sixth, they suggest that the present staff should walk out leaving the ashram to them. They would thus get bogged down in things which are irrelevant for the search.” When such people complained, Ramana would say: "Mind the business for which you have come. This would apply, of course, not only to their visit to Shri Ramana ashram, but also to the purpose of human life itself. One has to constantly keep before the minds eye the liberating purpose, the only worth while one of freeing oneself from the karmic chain by discovering the hidden truth. Ramana would even seemingly chide if one failed to pursue ones own sadhana, but spent time thinking and talking of others. A devotee once told Ramana, "I have been here for many years. People got into Samadhi. I close my eyes for a minute and my mind travels around the world." Ramana replied, "Why do you think about others? Let them meditate, sleep or snore. Look to yourself. Whenever your mind goes astray bring it back to the quest." Once Bhagwan told a devotee to wake up, look at the mirror, it shows the growth to be got rid of. Instead of wasting time, start shaving. Similarly, heaven knows when the allotted time would end. Hence not to seek the truth by vigilant self-inquiry is truly suicidal. Many would like to blame their circumstances for their indolence and laziness and failure to pursue self-inquiry. Ramana would ask, "Why depend on that which is not in your hands. Go ahead with the business which is in your hands, under your control, leaving aside what you cannot do anything about. Proper utilization of God given freedom of turning the mind is what is needed all the time. As for adverse circumstances in life of which everyone has a belly full, while sympathizing, Ramana would at the same time say, "You are always free not to be affected by the pleasure and pain consequent on action. The peace has to be taken out of the event by an attitudinal change which neutralizes it.” Sometimes Ramana would advise leaving things to the sure hand of the sat guru, and to stick single-mindedly to the effort which would make one self-aware. Ramana would say, "Why don't you do what the first class railway passenger does? He tells the guard his destination, locks the door and goes to sleep. The rest is done by the guard. If you can trust your guru as much as you trust the railway guard, it will be good enough to make you reach the destination." Again when someone pestered him for the darshan of Shri Krishna, he said, 'Why don't you leave the shastrakara of Krishna to Krishna." We also have the pointed advice given by him to Ganapada Muni. "Remain all the time steadfast in the heart. God will determine the future for you to accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don't worry. Abide in the heart. Life becomes meaningful if we joyously tread the inward path, remembering that ours is to do the vichara and it is for the inner force to do the rest. Then bliss is not the end product to be found on reaching the goal, but is felt all along the homeward, heart-ward journey. Robert: There's another article prior, previous to that, before that. Mary: Before that? (R: Yeah.) The Purpose of Life? R: Yes, let Jay read that. Jay: The Purpose of Life, by Lucille Osborne. Wife of… R: Arthur Osbourne's wife. Those whose spiritual effort is in the right direction get progressively closer to their perfect Self, become more peaceful, happier and are increasingly liked and helped by those with whom they come into contact. Some of the negative category will attend rigorously only to externals, like clothing and pure food which will not help them much if it combines with egocentric selfish behavior and possessiveness. They will do anything to be able to possess a few more things of scarcely any importance. They do not realize the harm they do to themselves getting deeper into samsara with all its problems and suffering, away from realizing the glorious peaceful joy in their heart. This pertains also to those in positions of power who treat the people with whom they deal without goodwill, sincerity, or even truthfulness. They will usually be disliked, have a few friends, if any. Those who associate with them will either have some affinity or feel sorry for them, combined usually with reluctance to forgo some convenience or other, not a particularly spiritual motive. One might say that a misguided seeker forfeits the great opportunity of gaining the greatest fortune possible for a human being. The purpose of life is to return to the source. The source is mysterious, glorious, peaceful, joy, which is God in everybody's heart. This is realization. We do not gain it. It is always there in the heart. Only the obstructions, vasanas, have to be removed to reveal it. Robert: Thank you Jay. Any question about that before we go on? Everybody understand it perfectly? (SF: Just keep your eye on the ball.) Right. (laughs) Okay, let's play a song and we'll carry on. (After song played Robert continues) Hello again. It's good to be with you. I talk to many people during the week, both on the telephone and in person. I speak to Zen Buddhists, Hindus, Americans, all kinds of people, and 80% tell me they're enlightened. Most of them tell me they've experienced the void. Some say they've seen lights. Some say they hear certain sounds. And they say, "What do you think?" So I remark, "Somebody has to be present to experience these things. As long as somebody is present, and somebody is present or you'll not be able to tell me about it, then there's no enlightenment. Find out who is present and hold onto that you, because you were present to experience the void. You were present to experience the light or the sound. Who is that you? Find out. Hold onto that you. Hold on to I. I was present to experience the void. As long as I am present I cannot possibly be enlightened, because I still exist." It is like a movie theater. Well, let's take rather a stage theater, stage play, where the lights shine on the players and on the audience. And when the play is over the audience and the actors both leave, but the light still shines, even though it shines on nothing. So the empty theater is the void. The light is still shining on the void as well as on the people. A better example is we see a room filled of furniture, the eyes look and they see. Then somebody turns off the light. The eyes are still there but they don't see anything. That's how the void is compared to the seer. There has to be a seer to see the void. Who is that seer? And you find out by simply inquiring, "Who am I? Where did I come from? What is the source of I that sees all these things?" Remember, all this phenomena is a projection of your mind. The mind appears to be very powerful. It projects voids, light, sounds, images, as well as the entire universe and as well as your body and mind. It projects itself as mind. The idea is to stop the projection, and you stop the projection through self-inquiry. This is the fastest way. So whenever you have some experience, go beyond the experience, because there has to be somebody to have the experience. Just like the eyes see when it’s light, and the eyes are still there when it’s dark, so the I is present when you sleep, the I is present when you dream, the I is present when you are awake. Find out who the I is. Dive deep within, work on yourself. Just like the article we read just before, forget about the world, forget about others, forget about your body, and inquire of the Self. Find out who the Self is. Who are you? Are there two I’s or one I? There cannot possibly be two I’s because that's duality. There has to be one I only. Find the source of that I. Follow it diligently until you merge with the source. Then you will find that you're happier than you've ever been in your life. When you touch the source of I you have bliss, you have absolute reality, you have God. This is the most important quest you have. Nothing else is so important. Can you think of anything else that’s as important? Then why do you worry so much about others? Why do you get mixed up with all kinds of problems? Do your duty, inquire, find the source of I. It doesn't make any difference how long it takes, think of how many incarnations you had to go through in order to be in this class today. Make yourself happy. Forget about your troubles. They don't exist. Only God exists as your Self. But you must find it out for yourself. Do it! I don't want to keep on talking about different subjects. We’ve covered some very interesting topics this afternoon and I'm sure you have many questions concerning these things. So let's talk about what we’ve covered and see where we go. SR: Robert you know the emphasis is on effort because It is all happening and all predestined, but you talked about making that effort to locate the I? (R: Yes.) Is it possible that that would be an unfolding destiny anyway? But the only effort that is to look, or we do have to do something or is it illusion that we have to get involved? R: No, the only freedom we have is to turn within. The only freedom we have is to make the effort not to react to any condition. That's the freedom we've got, everything else is preordained. So when you are involved in any circumstance it makes no difference what it is, your freedom is not to react, by realizing that the circumstance is preordained. By not reacting you put a stop to your karma. You end it once and for all and then you turn within and you become totally free. So that is the only time that we get freedom, everything else is preordained. (SR: It's like we should just sit back, watch it and let it all go?) I know, if you're not supposed to do that you will not be able to. If you're supposed to unfold by sitting back you will do it. If you're not supposed to do it, if it’s not your karma no matter how you try you will not be able to do it. So don't worry about that question. SN: I look at it all positively, you’re just realizing it’s all predestined you can go through it and enjoy it like a film that you are watching really. R: But again remember it's not your business, it's Gods business, what you are going to go through. In other words you can't say, "I'm going to this and I'm going to do that." The only thing you can do is to turn within and seek reality. Everything will be taken care of for you. Everything else is ordained. (SN: Robert, even if you don't react is that also ordained?) In a way, but we really have a choice. That's the freedom we have got. To react or not to react. (SN: But if our own self-realization itself is preordained through the process of not reacting then not reacting is also preordained?) In a way you're right. But your job is to think about not reacting. When you think about it you are using your mind for the right purpose, by not reacting. (SN: Using the mind to turn off the mind?) Yes, and let the preordainer take care of the rest. (SN: So in a way it's preordained but in a way it's not, it’s real?) R: Correct, in other words we are not to think that turning within is also preordained. We’re to turn within and forget about everything else. That's the best way and not to say, "Well I don't have to turn within because if I'm supposed to I will." Do not think this way. Do not ask too many questions to yourself about this. But simply turn within and do the work that’s necessary and everything else will take care of itself. SB: Robert, there's some new people here today so what do you mean by turning within? If everybody on the yogic path is turning within and they are still all unrealized. Is the ego turning in on itself or…? R: By turning within I mean turning within on your I. You say to yourself, "Who am I?" or "What is the source of the I?" and you hold on to the answer, the source. You hold onto it and you follow it through to the end. As you turn within this way you will know what to do to take the very next step. You will be guided and lead. But don't get all worked up by this. Simply turn within and we can say that God will take care of the rest. And the only way you turn within is by inquiring, "Who am I? What is the source of the I?" and you follow the I thread to the source. If nothing happens, you keep repeating the question over and over again, "Who am I? Who am I?" something will finally happen. SB: Robert you have said that there is always an experiencer experiencing the light, sounds or void. But when realization occurs and there is sat-chit-ananda, bliss as consciousness, bliss… R: Sat-chit-ananda? New York accent. (laughter) (SH: Southern version.) SB: So who experiences omnipresence? Who experiencers that realization, that no bliss? R: The mind originally experiences it. Then the mind turns within itself and the mind is totally wiped out. So there is no one to experience anything. You just become it. SK: And that's the difference between temporary realization and permanent realization? R: Yes, you become sat-chit-ananda. You become absolute reality. (SH: Is that your present condition?) My present condition is nothing. I have no present condition, only what you see. What do you see? What you see is what you get. (laughter) (SH: A Jnani called Robert sitting in that chair.) Then that's what you got. (SH: That's good enough, I like him.) (laughs) Well enjoy it. Enjoy him while you can. (SH: He doesn't look like he will be around for much longer.) You can never tell. ST: That's a terrible thing to say. SH: You’re on your way out too sweetheart. (students laugh) Just a matter of time. R: Whatever you see? We have thirty or so people here today. Everyone looks at me and sees something else. And what you see is what you get. (SB: That's your appearance Robert that's not your essential reality?) Well who tells you to see my appearance. That's up to you. (SB: I see an unoccupied body.) Well then you are seeing your Self, that's your Self. There is only one Self, and wherever you look you see it, because you are the Self of all. When you look out the window you see mountains, a lake, a tree, you’re seeing your Self. That's all you can ever see, your Self. So if you turn within and stop looking out there, or stop looking at people you will find something else completely. You will find that you are spirit that you are ultimate intelligence, ultimate oneness, absolute reality, nirvana. And then when you look, you will see consciousness everywhere. When you become consciousness then you can see consciousness wherever you look. And you will know all is well. But if you still believe you are the body-mind phenomena, wherever you look you are going to see a body. You are going to see a healthy body or a sick body or all kinds of bodies, a fat body or skinny body, a tall body or small body, a female body or male body. And you will see nothing but bodies because you think that you are the body. Get rid of the notion that you are the body, experience consciousness and you will see bliss wherever you look. (SB: Robert, can we say that going within is the same as giving up the centre.) Giving up the centre? (SB: Giving up the me, centre.) Oh if you mean the me, of course. When you are going within you are inquiring, "Who is me?" not "Woe is me?" but "Who is me?" (students laugh) (SB: Most people take their centre as their ego?) Most people cry, "Woe is me," all day long. (laughter) But see let most people take their centre as their ego, what do you take? That's the question. Don't worry about most people. (SB: Because the reason I say that because when you say go within, people tend to cling and clutch to their ego as their centre because they are so identified with it.) But why are you worried what people do? Let them clutch and let them hang on and let them do whatever they want. (laughter) SB: Because the spiritual path I used to be on would say, "Go within, go within, " and you have three thousand people going within for a hundred years and they are just hung up with the ego. So I think giving up this centre is a more precise way of saying it. R: Then give up the centre, give it up. Make it happen. (SB: Yeah lay it down.) Do it! Let the three thousand people do what they do. SN: Robert when you say go within by means of self-inquiry asking, "Who am I?" The purpose is not really to find the I but the purpose is to quiet the mind. Which can also be done by devotion or negation. So if you get caught up in the process of trying to find out, "Who am I? Who am I? Like there is an I that I need to find and not trying to stop the mind and just let it manifest of itself I think I'm missing the point. R: The mind appears to be very strong in some people. So the mind is another word for the I, the personal I. And we find the easiest way is self-inquiry. Where you find out the source of the I or the mind. As you investigate the source of the I, the mind becomes quieter and quieter and quieter. Until it disappears all together. Because the I is really the mind, the personal I they are both the same. Self-inquiry is therefore the fastest way to quiet the mind. (Sound in background) The fireplace agrees with me. The fastest way to quiet the mind is to search for the I, because the I is the mind. And when you discover that the I is the Self there is no more mind. Then you have transcended the mind automatically. That’s the easiest way. SH: The I is the Self coming out and wrecking it for everybody? R: Yes, the I is really the Self. The I is consciousness but you've individualized it. So because you've individualized it you've got to observe it in action and follow it to the source, which is the Self. As soon as you experience the Self there is no longer any mind and there is no longer anything else, but the Self. (SH: It sure is simple. Why does it seem to be difficult?) (laughter) To whom is it difficult? (SH: Got me?) You make it difficult because you think it's difficult. (SH: To whom are you referring?) Whoever thinks it's difficult. (SH: I didn't say that?) Sure you did. (students laugh) (SH: You’re trying to confuse me?) Simply look at yourself, make it easy, discover who you are and be done with it. Awaken and become free. (SH: Then you see nothing but the Self wherever you look?) Everything becomes the Self. Everything is consciousness. (SH: Must feel pretty good?) Of course. Or why would you go after it? SK: It doesn't really become the Self you just recognize what is really there, and that's the Self? (R: What's really there is the Self, consciousness.) So it doesn't become the Self it’s just… R: No, that's true indeed. Nothing becomes anything. The Self has always been and always will be. Everything else is an illusion. SH: Just wake up to what you already and always are? (R: Wake up, do it!) I will, don't worry. (R: When?) Don't push me. (R: When will you do it?) What's your hurry? What's the rush? (R: I've been waiting for you to do it and get rid of yourself.) It's occurring, it's occurring, have patience. (R: Become the nobody you really are.) (laughter) Have patience. SR: Robert, I know you don't like this kind of question. (R: Sure I do. I don't care what you ask.) Say that you do finally reach that point of the void and all that understanding? Can't you carry into that a curiosity as to why creation manifested in the ways it did or which appeared? Even if it is an illusion. Do you sort of get behind understanding maybe with the scheme behind why it manifests into so many souls that are living in illusion, the way it did? R: Well let me ask you a question. If you become self-realized who is left to do that? There is nobody left to ask that kind of a question. Only the mind asks a question like that. The Self has no question. (SR: I'd like to come back and tell my mind what it was about.) You can't. (laughter) The mind has been annihilated. There is no mind to come back to. You will understand that you are the Self, you have always been the Self and that's it. (SR: I understand it but I do sort of have a curiosity before I pass into that state.) Who has the curiosity? (SR: My mind.) And that will be wiped out so you won't have the curiosity. (laughter) (SR: Before it ends I would like somebody to tell me even if it is just a kind of indulging this, why it manifested in the form that it did with all the creatures and different plant forms and - it's fascinating!) Who said it did? (SR: Well it's just my mind.) See as long as your mind is active the world becomes real to you. And everything manifests, people, places and things. But once the mind is gone so is everything else. And those questions become redundant. There will be no question. (SR: I understand that, I'm just curious.) There’ll be nobody left to ask that question. (SR: Then I'll never know the answer then?) No, on the contrary. (SR: There is no answer?) You only want to be answered because you are not enlightened. But once self-realization ensues you will not care a darn about these things. It will be different. (SR: So until that time?) Until that time work on yourself, go within and find out, then come and tell me. (SR: Put it in a temple and hide it somewhere.) (laughter) You will not be interested. (SR: I can imagine that in the truth of it.) SV: Robert, I'd like to talk about some unexpected things that have taken place lately for me. Ever since meeting you and practicing, I find myself actually more emotional. Like watching a movie I feel very emotionally involved in it, seeing someone suffering, have tears come to my eyes when I see someone. It's taken me by surprise because I feel I kept going in the direction of nonduality I shouldn't feel these things. R: On the contrary, those are high signs. What you’re really doing is you are bringing all your samskaras up to the front. See all of our samskaras, all of our karmas, prarabdhic karma and everything else is inside of our subconscious mind as dormant seeds and they sprout in many lifetimes. But if somebody is really sincere on the path everything comes up at one time. And you start to get all of these feelings because you are getting rid of everything at once. (SV: Actually it doesn't feel bad it just feels…) Yes, I know. It's all coming out, it's all draining out of you. So that's really a good sign. Just watch it, don't interfere with the process, watch. SV: It's interesting because in the teaching I was in before wouldn't allow any of that feeling because that's not right to have feelings, you know what I'm saying? R: Uh-huh. I don't know where you were before but the feelings are great, follow them, watch them, inquire, "To whom they come?" and see what happens. SF: Robert, to carry the same question a little further, with all these feelings that come up, would one become more greedy and more lustful? R: It's possible but that's only a temporary condition. Again we have all these samskaras, these latent tendencies from past lives inside of us. And as we get into a spiritual path like this, we are making them all come up. We have to imagine it's like a shooting gallery and you have got a gun, as one duck comes up you shoot it down. So as one thought comes up, one fear, one frustration you shoot it down by asking, "To whom does it come?" You get rid of that one another one will come up just as fast, you shoot that one down. It keeps going, going, going until they are all gone. So you keep inquiring, "To whom does it come? To whom does it come?" and your mind will become empty soon and you’ll be free. SG: Like in watching a movie, should one not get involved in the movie or just keep inquiring to the movie or just let yourself get involved… R: When you watch a movie you have no choice what’s going to happen. Depending on your spiritual state you will act anyway. If I watch a movie I see the screen which is consciousness and I realize that the movie is simply images superimposed on the screen. If I try to get up and grab the image or the movie I'll grab the screen. So I'm already aware of the screen. While other people are aware of the figures. So if you are aware of the figures you still have a long way to go. But if you are able to see through the figures, through the screen then you are identifying with consciousness. (The Room is heating up) I think you're trying to roast me Henry. (laughter) For Thanksgiving and Christmas. (SH: Sacrificial love.) That's what I thought. SM: Robert does that apply to frustration, to resentment to all the negatives things also? R: It applies to everything, everything, use the same method. SK: It goes back to predetermination in a sense like some things are predetermined whatever it may be? R: Yes, they are going to come up, it's up to you to get rid of them, by inquiring, "To whom do they come? To whom does it come?" and if that gets too difficult. Surrender it all to God. Give it all to God and be happy. In other words say, "Take all this from me God, serious. Take it off my hands." And feel free as if he did and you will be okay. SH: About inquiry, "To whom do they come?" Seems very similar to the injunction to being the witness. R: It is similar to that. It is similar but it's a faster method. (SH: Why is that?) Because when you inquire, "To whom do they come?" the mind explodes within itself and it becomes weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker, faster. (SG: It's more hectic right? Rather than passive?) Yes, so the mind disappears faster by asking the question. But witnessing is good also. SR: Robert, some of the Nanda people say, they talk about the feeling of difference with what the psychological people say that there is a subconscious mind and these things are actually stored somewhere and I guess we say there's samskaras, and that's the illusion in a sense that we have to penetrate, that there is a storehouse of these things and it could explode at any moment. R: (laughs) There is really no storehouse. But for the sake of those who have to do something, you explain that there is a storehouse of tendencies to get rid of. But there is really nothing to get rid of, because it doesn't exist and it never did. Only consciousness exists. But if you want to discuss it further we tell you there is a storehouse of tendencies to get rid of. Open the storehouse and it will all fly out. (laughter) But let's face it. You are free already and there is nothing binding you except your own belief system. Stop your mind from thinking and you will be safe. SR: Would that be a way in a certain sense seemingly speeding up the inquiry to get closer to the source of the idea, you know the idea that there is a latent storehouse of the subconscious mind rather than deal with one latent tendency as if at a time as it appears to arise. R: It depends on the seeker. It depends what your background has been. Why look at tendencies of storehouses? Why look at anything, just go within ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" Follow the I. Go to the source and be free. That's all you have to do. SH: That's more direct? (R: Yes.) Go straight to the point. R: Go straight to the point. Which is your Self. SK: Couldn't you skip the point of asking, "To whom does this or that come?" and just follow the I? R: If you can do that, that's fine, You don't even have to do that, why not just awaken? (laughter) Wake up right now! (laughter) It's up to you. It's up to each individual, what path you are going to take? SB: Like surrender, if you just give everything up, there is nothing there and you don't even have to inquiry right? (R: That's right.) When you see that there is nothing there. R: That's right. If you can do that, do it. Do what you have to do but by all means do something. (SB: And if you see that the doing is a non-doing then even don't do that?) That's right. You're doing whatever you have to do at the moment and everything changes accordingly. (SB: If you see the doing is the undoing then you don't even do.) If you can see it that's good, but can you see it? Then stay with it. I'll play another song. (music played) In the power of silence is the greatest teacher in the universe. There’s nothing greater than the power of silence. Things actually happen in the silence, that would never happen anywhere else and by any other method. So let's keep silent for a while and find out for ourselves. (silence) Om shanti, shanti, peace, peace. When I sit like this at home in a chair for hours, people ask me if I'm meditating? And the answer is no. For to meditate you have to have a subject and an object and that implies duality. But if there is nobody home there is no subject and there is no object. So you're not meditating. Some people ask whether I go into samadhi? Who is left to go into samadhi? There has to be somebody left over to go into samadhi. That also implies an object and a subject. Wipe out the object and the subject and you will become nobody. So what do you do you just stay in the silence and do nothing. There's nothing to do. People always believe they have got to do something. When there is nothing to do it sounds too easy. But when you are doing something, meditating, going into samadhi, there has to be a doer. You are not the doer. You are no-body and you are absolute reality, pure consciousness, ultimate oneness, sat-chit-ananda, I am that I am. And this is your true nature, awaken to it. Anyone have any other questions or forever hold your peace. Okay remember to love your Self, to bow to your Self, to worship your Self, to honor your Self because God dwells in you as you. Have a happy Christmas, I love you, be happy. Peace… And that's all she wrote. (tape ends)

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Robert: Okay welcome to the Thursday night icebox. It's good to see you again. What are we really here for? SH: Good question. (laughter as Robert continues) What are we really here for? Nobody knows, nobody cares. If you think about that, you will notice that you are here for a purpose. And as long as you think there is a purpose to your life you’ll get nowhere. As far as self-realization goes. Self-realization has no purpose whatsoever. Any purpose, any concept spoils it. Any preconceived idea, anything that is known spoils it. There is nothing to be gained in coming here. What I mean is this: As long as you are looking for gain of some kind the reverse will happen. When you realize that everything that you want you already have, then something begins to shine inside of you. But as long as you believe you need something or you have to gain something then there is always a battle going on between yourself. People have asked me they tell me that self-inquiry is too hard. I can't understand this because it’s the easiest thing I can think of. But yet for some people it’s too hard, so they say. It is written in all the books that self-inquiry is for the mature soul. Which means a person who has gone through all the teachings in past lives, pranayama, yoga all these other things, they have already experienced these things before. And now self-inquiry comes easy to them. But some people say, "I can’t really seem to get anything out of self-inquiry." So my question to them is, then why were you attracted to this path. If you are attracted to this path, it means that you are ready for this. But the question I'm still getting is, "Sometimes I'm not in the mood to practice. Sometimes I don't feel right when I practice. Is there anything I can do before to get me in the mood to practice?" And the answer is yes. If you like, before you practice self-inquiry, you can pray to your favorite God. Whoever he or she may be. Then when you become devotional you will want to practice self-inquiry also. So what is something you can do before self-inquiry? Well, let's see. You can take a statement such as: "There is one life. That life is consciousness and that life is all there is and that life is my life now." Think about that. There is one life. That life is consciousness. That life is all there is and that life is my life now. And you ask yourself, "What does this mean?" You see you don't have to practice self-inquiry by asking, "Who am I?" all the time. You do not have to start that way at all. You can take something like we just said and inquire to yourself of its meaning. You understand that there is one life and that life is consciousness. And you talk to yourself this way, you say, "Well this means there is nothing else that exists but consciousness. If only consciousness exists where does love come from or harmony or peace or joy or bliss?" You think about that. And then the answer comes, "Why these verities must be synonymous with consciousness. In other words, consciousness is another term for bliss or love or joy or peace. So if you have consciousness you have the rest. And if that is all there is that must be me now. Not tomorrow, or the next day or next week but right now! I must be that consciousness and consciousness must be omnipresence. Everywhere present at the same time. There is nothing else. This means that I’ve got no problems. There is nothing wrong anywhere. All is well. Because there is no other place for it to come from, can't you see? There is no place for troubles to come from. There is no place for disharmony. There is no place for evil. But then something inside of you says, "Well it exists. Look at man's inhumanity to man. Look at what is going on in the world, the homeless, the starving children of Ethiopia and so forth." Disharmony does exist. But if you are inquiring in the right way in your Self, something will ask you and come to you and say, "Yes, but to whom does it exist?" This means that it is not like you're trying to ignore these things but you are coming from a different space. You see the world differently. You begin to realize that you are the Self of all. The word Self with a capital 'S' does not mean you as yourself as an individual. When you experience the Self you are the Self of all. You are the universe. You become all things. In other words, everything is taking place within you. Once you realize that you are the cause of everything in this world, something within you stops reacting. You stop reacting. You see what’s going on but you stop reacting because you've become the Self of all. In other words, you take the screen and its objects that are shown on the screen. You begin to understand that you are like the screen and all of the things in the world, the good, the bad and the in between are the objects on the screen. The screen is never affected by the objects. No matter what the objects do that are shown, the screen is never affected. There may be pictures of man's inhumanity to man on the screen, murderers, rapists, lovers, hypochondriacs, all kinds of people are on the screen. (laughter) But the screen is never affected. You become somewhat like the screen. You have a great compassion, a great love but you are no longer affected by person, place or thing. This does not mean you do not care. If you see somebody starving, it's you that’s starving. Because it’s all taking place within you. If somebody is hurting, it's you that's hurting. Because it is taking place within yourself. You see everything as an outlet of your consciousness. But there is something within you that keeps you from reacting to things. So in that sense, when somebody else asks, "I can't wait to become self-realized because the world sucks. The world is terrible. I want to become realized so I do not have to put up with the world." Or there are people who say, "I wish I can die so I can become selfrealized and not have to deal with the world." And there are people who actually think that if you die or if you awaken you will be finished with the world. But my friends, it's just in reverse. You see, everything is happening now. What this means is: Whatever you think about the world now, you are going to think about the world after. It doesn't change. It is just like when you go to sleep. The last thing you think about when you go to sleep you usually think about when you wake up. So if you're thinking about things that are evil all over the world and then you happen to leave your body. You're simply going to take on another body and continue where you left off. Or if you believe if you awaken that will be the end of it. You can't awaken until you feel harmony first. The last step before awakening is when you no longer react to life and you begin to feel harmony, everywhere, under all conditions, under all circumstances. And then you awaken. But if you are feeling distraught and angry and upset and you are practicing to awaken you will never awaken. As long as you have those feelings. Those feelings have to go first. You have to harmonize yourself with the universe. You have to reconcile yourself to the whole universe, starting with the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom and the human kingdom. You have to develop a feelings of love and compassion towards everything. In other words, devotion leads to Jnana. So the person who is not a devotee to life, a person who has no compassion and no love can never awaken, it’s impossible. It’s a prerequisite to awakening. And you have to develop these traits by yourself. Nobody can bring them to you. It’s the same with satsang. People tell me they love to come to satsang because they get rid of the world for a while. They find peace at satsang and the world's terrible. But I say to you that wherever you go in the world that's satsang too. The feelings you have with people is satsang. Your reaction to person, place or thing is satsang. Everything you do is satsang. The whole universe is satsang. Do not believe that only when you come here you have satsang. Everything is satsang. So to awaken you have to let go of all your prejudices, all your preconceived ideas, all your concepts and become totally free. Now when that happens, people come to me and they say, "Well I've done all that already and now I'm experiencing the void. I'm experiencing emptiness, so I must be selfrealized?" On the contrary, as long as there is somebody to experience the void they can never become self-realized. The experiencer has to go. Nobody is left to tell about it. You have to go beyond the void. And what happens when you get beyond the void? You become your Self. You become your Self just the way you are, your natural Self. Words cannot explain. People also believe that when you become the Self you become indifferent. You have a, "I don't give a damn," attitude about anything. Of course that's erroneous. When you become yourself you become loving, kind, peaceful. You automatically become in love with everything. You no longer are disturbed by the world or anything else and you become radiantly happy. It seems strange how you can be happy when all of these dastardly things are going on in the world. But remember, they’re going on within yourself, not outside of yourself. And they are false images, just like the images on the screen. The images on the screen appear to be real, don't they? But if you try to grab them what happens? You grab the screen. They’re like an optical illusion. So, the world is like that. It is like an optical illusion. It is not an optical illusion to the person who is not realized. In other words, as long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena, the world is real to you. And you have to take whatever action you have to take to make the world a better place in which to live. But when you have semblance of realization the world becomes an optical illusion. Just like the mirage in the desert. You see water in the desert and you think it is there. But upon close investigation it is not there at all. So the world appears to be real and everything in it appears to be real. But upon a close investigation you see it doesn't exist at all. But remember what I said, it exists to the ajnani, to the non-enlightened person. The world is very very real. Therefore do not walk around saying the world is false. For as long as you believe you are real, your body that is, to that extent is the world also real. But once you can feel that you are not the body and that you are not the mind, then you're also not the world. Do not fool yourself. Do good works in the world. Help all you can. Then when you do get self-realized, then you’ll know what you have to do at that time. So again, do not walk around telling people the world is not real it is only a dream. Because unless you can feel that your body is also a dream and you know that you know this, to that extent will the world be a dream. And when you wake up, again will you find that the whole universe is superimposed upon your Self. Like an optical illusion. Any questions about that? (Tape break, returns to student asking a question.) SH: Why would I want to superimpose the world on myself? R: You don't, you have nothing to do with it. It's just the way it appears. (SH: Well, superimpose the appearance in the seeming self?) It's all an appearance, it appears that way. (SH: Yeah, why?) It’s just one of those things. (students laugh) (SH: I know it is one of those things, why bother? Yeah.) I can say that in reality, it doesn't exist. (SH: Yeah, you can say that.) I know but you want to understand what I'm talking about and you say, "But you just said it does exist?" (SH: I don't say that.) But in reality nothing exists. But for the sake of explaining things and talking, the universe is superimposed on consciousness. (SH: And you are that consciousness?) You are that consciousness. (SH: So it is superimposed on (quote) "You.") Yes, but in reality it's not. In real reality. (SH: …because there is nothing there in the first place.) Exactly, so in real reality we would keep silent. But since I have to sit here and talk like an idiot, (students laugh) we have to try to explain it somehow and that's how we explain it. But as far as I'm concerned nothing exists. ST: If it doesn't exist why do we need to help it? (R: Help it to what?) Why do we do good works? To correct what we see if we realize that it's not there? R: Because you do not realize it's not there. If you really realized it's not there you wouldn't ask the question. (ST: Is it so that suffering exists in the mind of the sufferer?) Suffering exists in the mind of the unenlightened person. So the one who is suffering believes they're suffering. The one who watches believes they’re suffering. But when that feeling is taken away, and illumination comes everything is different. (ST: If the observer appears or imagines that he is at peace about someone else's suffering, is it because he feels that the recovering person has made the choice to suffer.) No, as long as you imagine, you will always see suffering. And as long as you see suffering it’s your duty to help and to do good for people and help them get out of it, that's your duty. As long as you believe that you're a human being. But as soon as you realize that you are not a human being, that you are consciousness, the whole story changes completely. So it is completely different. (ST: Believing that one is consciousness or knowing one as consciousness?) Becoming, not believing, not knowing but becoming. When you become it’s something else completely. And when you use words to try to understand and try to explain you can't. Because the finite can never comprehend the infinite. So you have to become that yourself in order to know what's going on. But in the interim you have to help suffering humanity all you can until you rest apart from it. And to relieve the suffering of people. SD: So Robert are you saying then that the rules are different? (R: Of course they are.) When you are unenlightened versus when you're enlightened? R: Very much so, in reality nobody suffers. But when you are not seeing reality there is terrible suffering going on. SK: It's like the experience changes, no rules per se it's all experience. R: You can say that, yes. You just see it differently. Everything becomes different. ST: When Jesus said, "I believe" I don't know the bible verse when someone said something awful to him he said, "What is that to do with you?" R: Well that's a very high statement. (ST: Excuse me?) That's a very high statement he made, he's right. But that’s in the higher sense. If the person is realized then what has that got to do with you? But if the person is not realized then it is his duty to help and to alleviate him. There are two ways to look at this, of course. If Jesus was working on his disciple, who knows what he was teaching them? So maybe he didn't want that particular person to go out into the world and become worldly. He probably wanted him to stay close to Jesus. So he said, "Don't worry about the world, your job is with me." Get him on that path. There are different ways to look at these interpretations of Jesus. SR: Robert, in the earlier part of what you said, you mentioned what are our attitudes toward things etc, how we see the world as an example. In order to be free is it necessary to give up all your preferences? I can give some examples. I would much rather prefer to be in a different sort of environment where there are more trees and plants and things like that for several reasons… (R: Yes.) …is it necessary to give those feelings up, in a sense? R: You can change your environment but your reaction to them has to be given up. It doesn't matter where you go to live. But as long as you see something wrong or something is bad in one place as compared to another place, it's keeping you back from final realization. (SR: What about the example of say, of how pollution affects my body and things like that, that's the kind of things I have to deal with.) Well that means that you believe you still have a body. And as long as you believe that you have got a body then you have to take of it. Then you're right. But when you finally see that you don't have a body and you are not the body or the mind, then it doesn't matter where you live. SR: Would it be sort of like just giving up the feeling of providing for yourself in circumstances and just kind of letting go and letting God? R: Again what happens is this: When we are no longer the body, the body knows what to do all by itself. Even better than when you can take care of it. So your body will do the right thing. Irrespective of what you believe. If you stop interfering with it, it knows how to take care of itself. But if you think you have got to interfere with it, then you will pick places to live. You will go here and you will go there and you will buy a certain things to take care of yourself. You will do all kinds of things to take care of the body. But when you realize, I am not the body, I am the Self, then the body will do what it came here to do. Karmically your body knows what it has to do and you can't stop it no matter how you try. So the best thing to do is say, "Not my will but thine," and stop trying to make something happen. Everything will happen all by itself. (SR: Will that be the doership?) Yes, becoming a non-doer, as long as you believe I am the doer you've got a problem. Because you will always be the doer and you will always try to improve or correct your life, to no avail. But as soon as you know that I am not the doer everything starts to happen like it is supposed to and you’re happy. SR: Does that include or is it exclusive of a feeling of apathy. In my case I find myself more apathetic towards things like making money and different things that I used to care about. And sometimes I care that I don't care anymore. I have an apathy towards the world, in a certain sense like it seems more beautiful one way and then in the same sense things that were part of my life before like careers and jobs all that just seem to be - can't even find the handle of where they’re at? R: it depends on your karma of the body. I'm sure you have read the story of King Janaka, the old Indian saint who was self-realized. And yet he ruled the kingdom and did a lot of work. Your body will do what it came here to do. It has no apathy, no resentment and no love for itself. But if your body is supposed to become a herb doctor it will. If it is supposed to become a nurse it will. If it is supposed to do no work it will do no work. But it has nothing to do with you. But you will be happy. You will always be blissful and happy. And yet your body will do whatever it came here to do. So if your body is suffering a little it will not affect you. You will not be affected. For instance: Say you became enlightened and then you were arrested for a crime you didn't commit. You wind up in jail for ten years. That’s your body going through its karma. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. And you’ll be the happiest inmate that ever existed. (students laugh) Really. So it doesn't mean when you become enlightened your body doesn't go through anything. It just doesn't disturb you for you're not it. And that’s a hard one to comprehend. Because you say, "I'm looking at your body and I see it." But who sees? You are seeing a misinterpretation, because the body doesn't exist at all like you think it does. So we should stop worrying about it and get on with our life. (Robert sips tea then a student takes tea bag out of cup) R: See even that, it doesn't belong to him, it was all preordained. (laughter) As strange as it may seem, it was all preordained. (SD: By what, Robert?) By what? (SD: Yes or by whom?) By the Self. (SD: Is the Self occupying itself with the tea bag?) (laughter) All these things are meant to happen before. (SH: Each blade of grass.) Everything is preordained. SK: Robert that was an interesting question of the self asked if consciousness itself is the tea bag. I had a few friends that I invited to meet you over the last month or two and one of the questions that seemed to be disturbing for them was the idea — it was an interesting question like, "Is there one important thing that the body is here to do, for example." It was a real fascinating question for me to kind of throw around, that question reminded me of that. "Is there any big things or little things in the eyes of the Self?" R: No there is not and it has no purpose. But karmically these little things are all going on. In reality they do not exist. But karmically they appear to go on. Karmically everything is preordained. When realization comes the whole story changes. There is no coming there is no going. SH: It wipes out karma completely? (R: It wipes out everything.) SE: Well there is nothing there to have karma. (SH: Right.) R: So as long as we think we are the body-mind phenomena then preordination exists. And karma exists. And reincarnation exists. And God exists. And all the rest exists. SG: I was once listening to him one day, you were talking about how we pride ourselves in fact with freewill. When we think about it the body is going on, most of its functions are going on without our conscious control. And even the thought of moving my finger, where does that thought come from? Who made that decision to do that? (R: Umm.) We don't know we can't think it. R: Well it's karmic. (SG: Right.) Everything is karmic. But see the difficult part is to comprehend this, that in reality it doesn't exist. That's the hard part to comprehend. Because it may appear like I'm moving my finger but I know I'm not. SH: Nothing so whatever is occurring?) R: Nothing is occurring. There is only consciousness and that is all there is. SK: Some people say that is a cop out. (laughter) R: Of course they do, but who says that? SH: He's telling you, you're copping out. (laughter) SE: Is the phenomena, my hand, is that different from consciousness or are they the same? R: Everything is consciousness, but in appearance it's different. SF: The appearance then it's not consciousness. R: Yes, as long as you believe that you are the body-mind then it’s real. But it’s still consciousness. Going back to the screen again. You draw a picture of a hand on the screen. It’s meaningless to the screen but it’s important to the hand. SE: This spoon, does that exist or doesn't exist? (laughs) R: It exists as long as you believe you are the body. When you’re not the body that doesn't exist. SE: What is the nature of its existence when you don't believe it exists anymore, I mean it's an appearance. (R: It's consciousness.) No, that's just a word. (R: Explain the question.) This is different from this. (touches two objects) Whether you are enlightened or not enlightened. The tea cup that you're drinking out of is used to drink, this is for the tea bag and this is for – the functions of images have different… (For Christ sakes stop laughing I'm trying to make a fucking point!) I'm trying to get this - serious! Now how are they different or how are they the same. R: They appear to be different because… (tape break) …and if you try to grab these things on the screen you grab the screen. The same thing is happening to those who believes that they’re the body and the mind. But once they transcend that everything becomes different. But you can't see it right now because you are in control of the body and the mind. You’re involved with the body and the mind. So everything appears separate. (SE: The screen and the images on the screen in your analogy are not different?) They are the same, it's all the screen. The images don't really exist. So as long as we believe we are alive as a body everything becomes real to us, the whole world, the whole universe. And I admit it’s a difficult subject to comprehend. This is why we have to do the work and experience it for ourselves. Otherwise like I always say, "You should not believe me." Why should you accept what I say, you have to find out for yourself. SK: The person who experiences illumination, sometimes the experience is described as effulgence everywhere. They don't see form identified, there's no form anymore, it's all consciousness, and they perceive it that way and can only perceive form. But that isn't maintained all the time throughout their whole life, maybe this for some people, otherwise they couldn't see a human being in front of them or not. R: No, it doesn't work like that. Consciousness perceives the images. But it realizes they're not real, that's it. Whereas if you're not consciousness, you perceive the images and you believe they're real. SH: Does consciousness instigate the images? R: No. (SH: What brings them about?) They don't exist at all. (SH: Well, what brings the non-existing images about?) Nothing, they don't exist, they never existed and never will exist. They don't really appear. SK: Robert, are you a Jnani? Have you attained realization? R: Who knows what I am, there is nobody left to tell. (SK: Then you perceive this to be a form here?) I perceive that as being an object. But then a material object. I perceive that as being consciousness but I see it as an object. SK: What is the difference between a state that others perceive as human beings wherein they don't even observe forms, even. They observe consciousness as such a unity that they don't even see a table or a person?) R: If they didn't they wouldn't be in their body. As long as you have your body left you see things. (SK: Well you’re not in your body?) But you think I am. (SK: I know but same with them.) But how do you know what they see? (SK: I don't.) So why are you saying that? (SK: Because it seems that when people come down from such an experience that's what they relate to other people.) You're speaking of Nirvikalpa samadhi. (SK: Well I don't know what I want to call it, I realize you have a certain view on what Nirvikalpa samadhi means and I don't mean that.) When you close your eyes and you shut everything out then you see nothing. But as long as you are functioning in the world you have got to see images to function. Otherwise you wouldn't be in your body. (SK: There are instances of people that I've heard personally where part of their eyes were open in such an experience.) How would they survive? (SK: I don't know? But I know that when they come down supposedly, down from such an experience, that they perceive form.) No, realization doesn't come down and it doesn't go up. (SK: Then what is that?) I don't know what you are talking about? I don't know what you're saying? If a person saw nothing, he would never get out of bed. He would be dead. ST: Just for a temporary experience allegedly people have this experience? R: Oh yes, temporarily people can go into samadhi and see consciousness, sure. ST: And then come back? (R: Sure.) Without dying? SK: With eyes open? R: Yes that can happen, but it's not self-realization. (SK: What is it?) It's a high state of consciousness. (SK: What if their so-called come down from only seeing effulgence everywhere and they come down supposedly, enough to see form, was the same as your outlook?) It doesn't happen that way. (SK: Why wouldn't it happen that way?) When somebody goes into samadhi they lose the world, they lose consciousness. (SK: I'm talking about with their eyes open?) With their eyes open or closed. But once they get up they have to experience the world again. (SK: But what if they are standing up?) They'll fall down, (laughter) because they’re not seeing anything, they are not feeling anything. They have to sit down or lie down. (SK: I don't why that would occur?) Because they're not seeing the world like you say, they're just seeing consciousness. Because they can't function. They can't walk, they can't do anything. The body becomes totally immobile. But sahaja samadhi is total realization all the time and being aware all the time of consciousness. SK: So I guess the implication, I guess, is that some of these people may attain that samadhi, when they come down they’re in non-realization any more. R: But there is no such a thing as being in realization and coming down out of realization. (SK: The samadhi I'm talking about is coming out of some space of seeing, instead of only seeing effulgence as consciousness but coming down to a state of also seeing form as consciousness.) You're talking about a high state of realization, but not total realization. Total realization, you see forms as consciousness. (SK: So my question is, what if those people also saw that?) Then they would be self-realized. (SK: Right and yet at times before that occurring that all they saw was effulgence with forms, form even.) As long as you see effulgence and as long as you see form, somebody has to be the seer. And if somebody is left to be the seer you are not self-realized. (SK: So as long as I have ever heard a story from someone then they weren't totally realized.) Exactly, because they can tell the story, they can relate it. (SK: Yet you have been able to relate stories about yours.) Sure, because I'm talking to you. (SK: So couldn't that be their state as well?) But you're speaking of a state that they're experiencing, not what they're talking about, that's different. They can talk to you about things but they have got to be able to see forms to do so. Can they talk to you while they are seeing nothing? (SK: No.) Of course not. To be able to talk to a group of people you have got to see forms. (SK: The questions is, why is there a difference? How can they see just effulgence?) Because they have meditated for years. In your meditation you begin to see an effulgence all the time. While you're in meditation. But then you've got to come out of it and you become an ordinary person. (SK: And yet can still perceive everything as consciousness and be totally self-realized.) If you’re totally self-realized you do not have to meditate to see effulgence because you're in that state all the time. If you have to meditate you are not selfrealized. (SK: Yeah but I'm not talking about self-realization.) So the person that you're talking about is not self-realized. SH: What is being self-realized? What is it anyway? (R: Being awake.) That's just a synonym. (R: Exactly, it's being awake. Awake to reality. Awake to your Self.) SG: It sort of seems like we're all in this big 3D movie. And we all sort of believe it and you're sort of saying this is just a movie we're watching. (R: That's right.) But we're all part of the dream and you are saying we believe all these images that are floating around here. You can say we’re just caught up in that. R: Well put it this way. Take the analogy of the screen and the images. I'm aware of the screen twenty-four hours a day. While most people are aware of the images twentyfour hours a day. That’s the only difference. (SK: We're taking the images as being real.) Yes. SR: Is that what Ramana said when he said the fundamentals you already know, you should notice that because, you know the I was always there like he said, "The fundamentals you surely know." You could never lose that after the first experience. (R: Exactly that's right.) So you're always aware of the presence of the fundamental ‘I’ and no matter what appears in front of it… (R: Doesn't matter.) …doesn't obscure it or doesn't take the attention away from it? (R: Indeed.) You know when you were talking Jay too, you mentioned something that I could think of in terms of whenever the scene appears, there's a seer they come together. So if something is appearing it has to be appearing to someone. We sort of take it as two separate things but the reality of seeing is that if there is a seer then there is a seeing and vice versa. They appear as really the same thing. SK: I've noticed that someone tells a story that yes they have experiences like that. R: Well you can tell a story but they're talking about their own personal experience. SR: If someone sees something they exist as a seer and so they identify with that. R: Yes. (SK: Robert sees form.) As consciousness. SK: My question is very subtle. It's taken for granted that if someone is self-realized and as you say, you see form as consciousness. They also see form as consciousness but sometimes - Who knows how or why? — they don't even see form as consciousness because it turns into effulgence as consciousness. R: Well, effulgence, the void, visions, all are projections of the mind. Consciousness is beyond the effulgence. See you're speaking as if effulgence is the final state. (SK: Yeah right.) Effulgence is not the final state. (SK: So the final state is seeing these forms as consciousness?) R: Exactly. (SK: That's the final state?) Yes. The final state is being consciousness itself. And realize that all this is the Self and I am that. SH: Is that the state you are in? (R: Who knows?) Who knows, that's a cop out Bob. (R: What can I say?) Give me a straight answer. (R: I've got no idea.) SR: But you are aware that what you fundamentally are is always existing? (R: Yes.) SH: Are you unbrokenly aware of the screen only? (R: Twenty-four hours a day.) But also the images that appear? (R: I see the images, they are not reality but they are consciousness. I see you as the screen.) Oh great, you are seeing correctly, congratulations. (R: Thank you) I'm glad you are really seeing me. (laughter) SK: Robert if you saw all of us that way strong enough maybe all of us would gain enlightenment? (laughter) R: Well that's what satsang is all about. That’s what’s supposed to happen but you are so immersed in nonsense that you keep yourself out. See as long as you have feelings of anger, feelings of indifference, feelings of I don't care, feelings of being hurt, separation, it keeps you back. But if you come in here with an open heart then all these things will happen immediately. SM: Do you see individuals? (R: I see individuals but I see them all as one screen.) SF: So the illusion Robert is actually the perception? R: Yes, in the perception, that's correct. (SF: There is no such perception there is no illusion, it’s all consciousness?) It's all consciousness that's right. SH: But isn't the illusion also a product of consciousness? R: The illusion is a product of consciousness but is not consciousness itself. It appears as consciousness. (SH: Yeah.) It's an appearance. (SH: Yeah, but it too is consciousness.) Everything is consciousness. The illusion never existed, never will exist but appears to exist. Only consciousness is reality. (SH: Umm this is the way consciousness appears to bamboozle itself.) It appears that way. (SH: Maya.) Yes, that's what maya is. But consciousness is absolute reality. (SH: Yeah, well it likes to entertain itself.) No. (SH: What's it up to?) Nothing, you are up to something? (students laugh) (SH: Oh go on. You were seeing clearly just a moment ago now you're confused?) No. SD: Robert if someone is in the state that Jay is talking about, who slips in and out of samadhi. You said that was a high level of consciousness but not full realization. Is that a necessary step in the progress toward realization or does everyone go through that? (R: No.) So you can instantly awaken? (R: Yes.) Or you might go that path which you go in and out? (R: You don't have to go that path at all.) But you did call it a high state? R: It's a higher state than the normal state, of course. SH: Did you go that path? (R: No.) You went straight to the point. (R: Yes.) Good for you, I congratulate you. (laughs) (R: Thank you, I never asked for anything.) SE: Except when you wanted candy bar answers to questions on the test. (laughter) Look what trouble it got you into. (R: I know.) SH: That’s why you went to Ramana Maharshi? R: I went because I wanted to see what was going on, what he was up to.) (SH: What was he up to?) Nothing. (laughter) (SH: Was it worth going to find that out? You already knew it.) Of course, it was a pleasure to meet someone like him. (ST: And being up to nothing is good?) It's wonderful. As long as you believe you are something then you suffer accordingly, because you are part of the world. But when you know you are no-thing there is nobody there to suffer. (general talk) R: Everything is preordained. That's why you should never react. It’s your reaction that keeps you back. (SH: There are no exceptions to that, so it is. When you say everything is preordained?) No exceptions, everything, so stop complaining. ST: Is it preordained by our consciousness? R: It is preordained by your un-enlightenment. (ST: So it's not preordained for you? Yet there's no form.) For me there is nobody left to feel anything. (ST: But you notice it, the beginning of it.) Of course I do. I still notice it but what have I got to do with it? (laughter) SD: Robert, if everything is preordained then wouldn't reactions be preordained? (R: Yes, they would.) So how can you tell us not to react, when we're predestined to react? R: Remember the only freedom you’ve got? Can you remember what it is? (SD: To awaken?) What's the only freedom you've got? Not to react. (SD: Not to react.) Not to react. (SH: Or be the witness of the tendency to react that shows the reaction?) Yes. That's the only freedom you've got. Not to react to any situation and to go within and find the Self. SD: Well wouldn't your reaction or non-reaction be a matter of predestination? R: Yes, but you still have the choice. ST: I can see your point of not reacting to anything, but what if you feel like dancing? R: Then go ahead. (ST: Is that not reacting?) It's reacting to your body-mind yes, so you have to suffer the consequences. (ST: Of dancing?) You may meet somebody, get married, have children. (ST: And just feeling it's a wonderful life.) Good, enjoy it. (ST: But that's still reacting?) So don't react, it's up to you. You have the choice to do whatever you like, as far as it goes. React or don't react that’s your choice. SH: Who is the chooser? (R: You are.) In other words consciousness is the chooser? R: Everything is consciousness. See we're talking on different levels. We're mixing all the levels up. Everything is consciousness and nobody chooses, that's the ultimate. But when we talk about karma then it appears that you choose. (SH: Consciousness has identified with the body-mind and is appearing to choose?) No, consciousness does not identify with anything. (SH: There appears to be awareness.) Appears yes, appears to be aware. Consciousness is self-contained pure awareness. (SH: Well that's the ultimate.) Yes, so it does nothing. (SH: Can you speak of absolute consciousness and relative consciousness to clarify?) No we can't do that either because relative consciousness doesn't exist. (SH: Just a term, just a word to try to think what can't be thought.) (laughter) So why think at all? (SH: Well that's a good point.) That's the whole object, to quiet your mind. The quieter your mind becomes the more selfrealized you become. SG: That's the greatest stuff we can do. (R: Yes.) SM: Robert does a Jnani have karma for the body? R: Yes, that's like an electric fan. When you shut off the power to the fan the blades still keep turning until it wears out. So with Jnanis they may have a body to go through some experience until it stops and wears out and you drop it. SG: Is that all subtle bodies? Ramana and Robert are still existing as…? (R: Ramana appeared to have cancer.) He appeared to disappear and gone? R: But to whom did he appear to have cancer to? (SG: Right.) To the ajnani. So that example Mary is for the person who is not enlightened. Who sees? SH: Prarabdhic karma will have to run its course, enlightened or not enlightened. R: That's how it appears to the ajnani, you are right. (SH: But for the Jnani it's finished.) It's finished. Nothing exists. But for the sake of explanation, you use examples like the electric fan. You pull out the plug and it still goes around until it stops. SK: Robert if anything is appearing, then first I can make the assumption that the seer is also appearing, or the ego is appearing and I can inquire into, "Who is that?" Is that correct? (R: Yes.) As long as the world appears, the seer is also appearing to see that. R: Yes, but first you have to inquire, "Who sees the world?" (SK: Right. That was my question. If the world appears, someone is seeing it. Then I can ask, "Who sees it?") "To whom does this appearance come?" (SK: Right.) Sure. (SK: And to remember that is really the freedom, right, and to forget it is to fall back into being the character that’s hypnotized by the world.) Indeed. But I always want to remind you to make it all very simple. It is not really complicated. Just turn within and ask the question, "To whom does this come?" the world in other words. "To whom does it appear? It appears to me." Hold on to the me. The me is an appearance. And follow the me to its culmination, to the source, to its substratum. And then you will realize that the me never existed. There is no me. No pun intended. SH: The me is sort of slipping, it's not easy to hold onto. You can hold onto it briefly but hold on all the way to its disappearance, isn't so easy. R: Yes. You hold onto it mentally, to the me. You watch it in other words. You watch the me and watch it going deeper and deeper within yourself, deeper and deeper in yourself. Until the day comes when you get to the bottom of it and you get to the source of me and the source of me means that there never was a me. (SH: It gets burnt up in consciousness.) And you become I-am. I-am is consciousness. SK: So you can start anywhere really. As soon as there is an appearance? (R: Exactly.) SH: Those can all be reminders then? Everything can be a reminder? R: Yes, so you don't have to start and ask, "Who am I?" Whenever you feel pain of any kind, mental anguish, anger, catch yourself immediately and ask, "To whom does it come? Who feels this? I do. Who am I? Where does the I come from who feels this pain?" And don't answer just wait. Hold onto the I but focus on the answer, focus on the source. Then one day the I will disappear and the I-am will takes its place and you’ll be free. (SH: That's the whole bowl of wax.) That's it. There is nothing else. Now just being in the silence makes things happen. Being in the silence is not meditation. We’re not meditating on anything. We just watch, we observe. We're alert. Watch what is going on in your mind when you're quiet. (short silence) Meditation is when you have something to meditate on, like Krishna or Rama or God or Buddha. But self-inquiry is when you watch, when you observe. When you’re alert and you watch what your mind is doing. Whatever it brings up you find it and you grab a hold of it and you say, "To whom does this come?" and follow it all the way through. (short silence) Om shanti, shanti shanti, om, peace. Remember what you perceive in each other is determined by your samskaras, by your past tendencies or your past make up. In other words what I mean, when you all look at me everyone has a different opinion, a different perception. Now the perception is not good or not bad. It is all determined by where you are coming from, it is all mental in other words. It's really not real, it's a projection of your own mind. And this is always true whether you see something wrong or something right. They are just mental impressions. That’s why you should not react to anything because it is all coming out of you. In other words, whatever you see is your Self. So if you become angry or if you don't like somebody or something is wrong someplace in your life. You’re simply seeing a projection of your Self because there is only the Self. It behooves you therefore to develop a consciousness of love and peace and then you’ll have the right projection then good things can happen. Then you will be able to say anything, anything at all… (tape ends)

Robert: (tape starts abruptly) …and who is responsible for this? So she says, "It's my boss." So the mother says, "I'll fix him." She calls the number and she says, "My daughter just told me she's pregnant and you're the father, what are you going to do about it?" So he says, "Well, if it's a boy I'll give him half the business. If it's a girl I'll give her two hundred thousand dollars." So the mother thinks about this and she says, "If it's a miscarriage will you give it another chance?" (students laugh) SH: That was a good deal. R: Jay laughs at anything. SK: He already laughed before you told the joke so it doesn't mean that much. (laughter) R: Okay. Okay children. SK: Now he gets down to humor. (laughs) SH: Give us the word. R: There is one thing I can tell you for sure. That all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. I can tell you truly, nothing is wrong anywhere. Everything is happening just the way it is supposed to. If you think you’ve got a problem, that's the mistake — thinking you've got a problem. If only you'd stop thinking. As soon as you stop thinking, everything will go right. (laughter) SH: Is it going right while you're thinking? R: Yes, but you don't know it. Some of us don't think it is because some of us think, "I've got a problem," or, "I'm involved in something I can't handle," or "Something is bigger than I am," or, "something hurts me," or "I feel angry," or "I feel fear," or "I feel something is wrong." But I can assure you there is nothing wrong. Nothing has ever been wrong. Nothing is wrong now and nothing will ever be wrong. SH: Hallelujah! (laughs) Robert: All that you've to do, all you've got to do is watch yourself. As soon as your mind starts thinking past your nose, grab it — not your nose — but grab your thoughts. You can grab your nose too if you like. But grab your thoughts with your mind and put a stop to them any way you can, either by observing your thoughts, by practicing self-inquiry and asking, "To whom do they come?" Whatever you have to do, do not allow yourself to think. If your mind does not think you will be exceedingly happy. You will have unalloyed happiness. I can assure you. Total happiness if you stop yourself from thinking. I receive many phone calls. One of the calls that is most common is, "When will I experience self-realization?" (repeats) This is determined by the consciousness of the person. And I have a different answer for everybody because I take you where you’re at. This is why I may sound contradictory sometimes. If you ask me a personal question I try to answer you from where you’re coming from. Again, some people tell me, "Robert, why don't you just speak the highest truth all the time?" And some people tell me, "Robert speak so that I can understand what you are talking about." So that's the dilemma. So I do whatever I have to do. I plan nothing. Everything is extemporaneous. I have no rehearsals. I don't write anything down. I just say what comes out of me. So, when we have a phone call, "When am I going to become self-realized," somebody tells me, "I have been practicing all week now, and nothing has happened." (students laugh) Some man called me yesterday telling me he had been practicing for two weeks, he took a seminar and paid seven hundred dollars and he still is not self-realized. I get calls like this all the time. So it depends what you say this determines the answer I give you. But there is a standard answer. Think of the question. "When will I, I, I, become self-realized, selfrealized, self-realized, self-realized?" (student laugh) I usually say this, "Before I answer your question may I ask you a question? Please tell me what do you mean by I?" and "What do you mean by self-realization?" They usually keep silent. So I continue and I say, "Who do you think the I is, who wants to become self-realized?" You’re speaking about the personal I, and the personal I can never be self-realized. The personal I is finite. The finite can never know the infinite. That's why the personal I can never become self-realized. And as long as you think you are the personal I, who needs to be self-realized, there never will be a time when you become self-realized. And then the word "self-realized," what does that mean? It simply means your natural state. It is not something you become. It is something you are. You wish to experience your natural state. What you want to do therefore is to awaken to your natural state, what you are now, but you've covered it up with the personal I. As long as you keep talking about, "I am this," and, "I am that," and, "I need to be self-realized," or, "I need to awaken," or, "I need to do anything," it will never happen. This is also true of your problems. When you think, "I have to solve a problem, I have to take responsibility," you are referring to your personal I, and you will come up with relative ideas that will pull you further into problems. They will never be solved that way. Look back at your experience and you will see what I’m saying is true. When you try to use your personal I to solve a problem you may appear to solve it for a while. Then another one will pop up now and again, and you go through your life trying to solve problem, after problem, after problem. You have to understand and realize and see that intelligently. You have to look at that, intelligently and realize every time you speak about yourself, or any situation in the world, you are referring to your personal I. Now if you can bypass the personal I then you wouldn't have the question. For if you realize you are not the personal I then who is left to become self-realized? No one. When the I is gotten out of the way you become omnipresence. You become I-am, not I am this or I am that, just I-am. Now your I-am is the I-am of the universe, consciousness, absolute awareness, I-am, is your real nature. You have to awaken to that. Do not talk about it. Do not try to convince somebody else, but to simply awaken yourself to the fact that you are I-am and you’ve always been I-am. If you can just reason that way, you wouldn't have anything to say after that. Just say to yourself right now, "I-am." As soon as you say, "I-am," all of your problems, so-called are resolved, your life is resolved, everything is resolved, and you're happy just by saying, "I-am." Feel it. "I am." Doesn't it feel beautiful? There is nothing that comes after, "I-am." "I-am" is it, there’s nothing else. And even if you have difficulty with this. Some people say, "I feel great as long as I am at satsang, but as soon as I get home the world grabs a hold of me and I get involved in problems. I get involved in worldly things." Again you’re talking about your personal I. That's what you've got to look at intelligently. When you tell me, "I get involved in the world," who is the I? You will never say, "I am gets involved in the world," because as soon as you say, "I-am" you feel good, don't you? But when you say, "I get involved in the world," you’re thinking of your body, your mind and your affairs. When you say, "I-am," it all goes away and you become free. When you come to satsang, something happens. You're not creating anything new, because there's nothing to create. An awakening process takes place, just like when you're dreaming and the dream is so interesting and nice and you awaken and you find yourself in this world. So it is when you begin to awaken in this world. You awaken to the fourth state of consciousness and you appear to be in this world to others, but you're no longer of this world. The body may appear to be real to others, but you realize and you understand that you have no body. I can assure you, I can swear to you, I can promise you that I have no body. And yet you look at me and you say, "I see the body. I see you as a body." So I ask you, "Who sees? Who sees the body?" "I do." “Who am I? Who am I that sees the body?" Then there is silence. It is difficult for some of us to understand this, that I have no body. Now what appears to happen is when you're in my company at satsang your body consciousness begins to dissolve, simply because I understand that I am not the body. When I use the words "in my company" or "me" or "I," try to remember always that I am not referring to Robert. Robert is a horses ass. So when I say that you're in my company, I am not referring to me, because I am nothing as Robert. But whenever I use the terms "I," or "me," or "my," I always refer to consciousness, to omnipresence. So what I mean by this that you're in my company, you are in the company of consciousness. There is no differentiation between my consciousness and your consciousness. I see you as consciousness, all I see is consciousness. And again, it is a little difficult to understand. How do I see consciousness? And people ask me, "Don't you see the body?" Yes, I see the body, but I see it as consciousness. And I guess the only way to explain this, is if you take a gigantic screen and on this screen there are pictures shown on it, of bodies, of places, of mountains, of hills. The screen is aware of itself as the screen and knows that the objects are superimposed on itself. So it is constantly aware of it being the screen, and yet it knows there are pictures and objects superimposed on the screen. So it is, I realize myself as consciousness, but I also know that the whole world, the whole universe is also consciousness or the Self. Everything is the Self and I am that. That's what it means. Therefore, from now on whenever you hear me declare my confession, that I am absolute consciousness, and I am pure reality, I am sat-chit-ananda, I am ultimate oneness, I am that I am, nirvana, emptiness, this is what I am referring to. All this is the Self, and I am That. And the Self is like a gigantic screen, where there are images superimposed on the screen. But I am aware of the consciousness and the images. I realize the images are false, but I see them. But my feelings, my thoughts, if there are any thoughts, my awareness is always on consciousness. Now what does this mean? It means I can be watching a movie, I can be watching TV, I can go to the opera, I can be involved in all kinds of things, but I am not involved in anything. I am free of it. Yet to others it appears as if I am involved. This is why I am no fun to be around. People can't understand how I can stay home by myself. They want to take me some place, or be with me or feel sorry for me, they say, "Robert's always by himself. He should get out more often." Where would I go? (laughter) It really makes no difference where I am. Every once in a while Dana used to come and pick me up and take me to a movie. And I would make out I'm enjoying myself. And after the movie she likes to discuss it. And I don't know what happened. I have no idea what's going on. (laughter) I have no idea what's going on. People tell me about their videos and about this person and about that and about actors and actresses and about Iraq and everything else. But what have I got to do with that? I realize it’s probably going on somewhere. But it's very dim, it's like a dream. I am totally aware of consciousness. Everything else is like a little dream, far away someplace. So I can be any place. As an example, I was picked up by three people when I came. Three people arrived at the house to take me to satsang. And while they were there, they saw people working on my carpet. My hot water heater leaked and the carpet was flooded. But all day I was watching the goings on sitting on a chair and I was totally happy. The happiness does not leave. People can be living or dying or working or whatever they are doing. How can I be unhappy? Nobody dies. Nothing is wrong. All is well. So how can I possibly be unhappy? It's impossible. So, when we're at satsang something happens to you to cause you to begin to feel this way also. Now people have asked me, "Why should I want to be this way? Because you do nothing, you're good for nothing. You are no fun at a party and you are no fun to be around because there is nothing for me to do." (laughter) So why should you want to be this way? The main reason is this: Don't you want to be God? Don't you want to be totally happy and blissful and be universal so-to-speak. Where you just feel and realize, "I am is the universe, I am is everything that exists." I am that and I am at peace. I am totally happy, total joy. Everybody is running around with their problems trying to resolve them and solve them. And I just look, I just watch and I wonder how can you believe you've got a problem? Why do you think someone is trying to hurt you? Why do you believe someone is trying to take advantage of you? Why are you hurtable? And you don't know why. The answer is simple. Because you are identifying with the personal I. That’s the only reason. Remember you cannot solve any problem by solving the problem itself. You've tried it and it doesn't work. As I've said before, "When one problem is solved another one pops up somewhere else." It never ends. But, when you annihilate the I, when the mind becomes quiescent and it rests in the heart, your natural state which is called the fourth state, after waking, dreaming and sleeping, ensues by itself. It comes by itself. Just like the sun that has been covered over by clouds. Only a fool would say, "The sun doesn't exist because they can't see it." The clouds dissipate and the sun shines once again in all its glory and splendor. So it is with us. We're covered with clouds of ignorance that make us believe, I'm hurtable, I've been raped, someone is trying to do something to me. I don't mean raped literally, I mean in your mind. Someone is taking advantage of me, someone is trying to do this or do that to me. Those are all lies. You’re doing it to yourself because you're thinking past your nose. You are allowing your thoughts to run rampant with you. Your thoughts are taking you over continuously and leading you astray. You are not putting a stop to this you are allowing it to happen. Is it any wonder that you feel anger, frustration, out of sort? Because you will not put a stop to these thoughts when they begin. This is also true with thoughts of dying, or sickness, or whatever. There is no such thing. Nothing exists but Iam. And you should practice that form of meditation. When you inhale you say, "I." You exhale you say, "am." If you have to meditate, meditate on that with your breathing. The day will come when you awaken, and you will not have to do anything. But in the meanwhile, you do the best you can. But as you are doing the best you can, realize that consciousness is what you are, and consciousness loves you for you are its own. It will never leave you nor forsake you. If you can't do anything else surrender to consciousness. What I mean about surrender, surrender your ego, your problems, your emotions, your fears, your frustrations, your hurts, your anger. Give it all up. Say, "Take it consciousness." If that's too abstract to you, give it all to me. I will take it and chew it up for you and spit it out. So when you wake up in the morning and feel out of sorts, you feel angry or frustrated say, "Okay Robert, take this from me. I'm giving it to you." And I'm happy to take it off your shoulders so that you can carry a lighter load. If that is what you have to do, do that. But by all means do not get carried away with your emotions. Stop in the middle and watch. Watch your emotions ruling you. Watch your fears controlling you. And watch your anger popping up. Do not try to stop it, just watch, observe, look intelligently and realize who it is that is getting angry or frustrated, It’s not you. It is not even your ego, because there is no ego. It’s not your body, because there is no body. It’s not your mind, because there is no mind. Therefore, what is making you angry? Nothing. It is like the story I tell of the Zen monk who is in his quarters and he’d get angry every now and again. He would start arguments with his fellow monks, always looking for something wrong, always complaining, whining, always telling people his troubles and he’d get real angry. So this fellow monk said, "Why don't you go see the Roshi, the head of the monks and tell him to help you." So he said, "Okay," and the Roshi lived about two miles down the road. So he went down there and he explained his position with the Roshi. So the Roshi said, "Okay, so here’s what I’ll do, “Take my staff and hold onto it. Now whenever you get angry my staff will remind you to come to me and I will get rid of your anger for you." So he went back to his quarters and that night he really got angry at some other monks. So he looked at the staff, and remembered the Roshi, so he started to run to the Roshi. And he finally got there, he was jogging all the way. So the Roshi said, "What’s wrong?" And he said, "I got angry." The roshi said, "Show me your anger." Well in the jogging the anger went away. He had nothing to show him, and he said, "I am not angry right now." The Roshi said, "Go back to your quarters, and when you get angry again come and tell me about it." The next day he got angry again. He ran to the Roshi and the same thing happened, in his running to the Roshi his anger disappeared. And the Roshi said, "Where is your anger?" And he said, "It's gone now." This went on about twenty-five times. Finally the last time, the Roshi said, "Okay, I'll tell you what you do now. When you get back to your quarters take my staff I gave you and when you get angry beat the living hell out of your anger with my staff." And this was so funny to the monk that he became realized, he became enlightened. Because he realized he would take the staff and beat himself, and his real Self could never get angry. But it was his body that appeared to be angry. And just that running back and forth twenty-five times and the answer the Roshi gave him made him open his eyes and become enlightened. So it is with us. Do not look at your problem as a problem. Look at it as a no-thing. It doesn’t exist. Again, if your ego does not exist, if your body does not exist, if your mind does not exist, how can you be angry? Where would it come from? Who gave it birth? And this is true of every other problem you believe you’ve got. Just by watching it like I just pointed out, it will disappear and you will awaken to your true Self. Now we'll go into questions, feel free to ask anything you like. Do not be embarrassed. Ask a question about what we discussed or about what is going on in your life, for we're all one big happy family, so do not feel embarrassed to ask anything. Who's first? (long silence) R: Well, I'll talk about something else. I was talking about all the phone calls I get in the beginning. People are still asking me, "What do you think about this swami? What do you think about this person? What's your opinion about this person and that person? Why shouldn't I go to see other teachers as well?" And I really do not know what to say. You have to do what your heart tells you to do. But I can tell you, the more people you see, the more confused you'll become. Now I don't care if you never come back here again, because I am not looking for anything. But if you do find a teacher that you seem to have an affinity with, you should stick around that teacher for a while. Because if you run from teacher to teacher, from meeting to meeting you are going to become totally confused. Every teacher has their place. And you will be attracted to the person you have to be with for the time being. It all depends where your consciousness is. Again I will discuss something that a couple of people have asked me to discuss. I've done this before. But it is good to bring it up again and again every once in a while. There are three types of people who go on a spiritual path. One type is called the seeker, another is called a disciple, and the third is called a devotee. The seekers are the worst ones because they never stop seeking. While they are in class they are thinking about who they are going to see tomorrow. They never stop. They run around from pillar to post, they go to India to seek a teacher, they go to Hawaii to see another teacher, they go to St. Louis when they hear about another teacher. And they are seekers, now this is good to an extent, because they are better off than the people who do nothing and think they’re human. But you can be a seeker for a thousand lifetimes and it will never end. If you are a seeker, that is really sincere and in your heart you truly wish to awaken, the time will come when you stop being a seeker and become a disciple. Now a disciple finds a teacher and tries to learn all they can from that teacher. But yet they still are not sure, they still have doubts. They still are interested in me, me, me, "What am I getting out of this? What’s in it for me?" And once in a while they will go to other teachers also. But they are still staying around one particular teacher and they become a disciple of that teacher but they are not that close. For if they hear about another teacher coming to town, they go see that teacher also. And of course there is confusion in their consciousness. But they are getting closer. If a disciple is really sincere in their heart, and they really have love and compassion and goodness and kind feelings towards all, they will eventually become a devotee. Now a devotee becomes the consciousness of the teacher. A devotee forgets all about him or herself. They can be in class, everyone is going wild, throwing spitballs at each other, but the devotee sees nothing but the teacher. The devotee is oblivious unto everything that is going on in the class. But only has love and good feelings to all. And is interested in the teachers welfare and ultimately becomes enlightened. So it is devotees who awaken faster than anybody else. Think to yourself, in what category are you? To be quite truthful with you, I would rather have five devotees around me, than ten thousand people who are seekers. But now we'll go back to questions. Feel free to make comments. If you think I'm a dirty dog, just say so. (Long silence) SN: Robert, it sounded like you were describing devotees as the bhaktas? Where does that leave the Jnanis? R: Bhaktas and devotees and Jnanis are the same. A real Jnani is a devotee of the Self, and the Self is everywhere. So they are really a bhakta and they are a Jnani. They are both the same. There is no differentiation really. (SN: So you're saying actually the Jnani has a lot of love.) Yes, they are supposed to, or they wouldn't be a Jnani. (SN: Well I mean an aspiring?) They should be full of love and kindness and joy and peace towards everything. (SN: So really it is not too useful making that distinction?) Who makes the distinction? The ajnani. The person who is not a bhakta and is not a Jnani, makes the distinction. But if a devotee even knows about these things, then they are aspiring for Jnana, they are aspiring for bhakti, and they ultimately reach their goal because they learn to keep quiet. Not to talk too much. Not to think too much. Not to judge at all. But just to be quiet and watch. And they have got their eyes fixed on the teacher, like a lion has its eyes fixed on a rabbit. It sees nothing but the rabbit. Everything may be going on all around the lion, but it only sees the rabbit, until it catches its prey. So a real devotee identifies totally with the teacher and finally becomes like the teacher. SG: Robert, can all of these phases be passed through in one lifetime? R: Yes, definitely. They can all be passed through instantaneously. Like right now, this moment. You just have to wake up. There is no time. Time is an illusion. SK: Robert, there are distinctions often made between a gradual path and instantaneous enlightenment, I find that throughout spiritual teachers, spiritual literature. And alot of this stuff about passing through these stages. I can only talk about myself I can't relate to it. I don't feel bad about it or good or anything but it just doesn't make any sense to me. (R: What can't you relate to?) Well just the idea that you pass through one stage to the next stage to the next stage. R: This is for the ajnani. (SK: Right.) This is for the person who is striving. And of course in truth there is nothing to pass through. But it appears that people need to understand these things so they can search in themselves and be able to see where they’re coming from. And this will help them tremendously. Perhaps you don't need it. But others do. SK: I think about the time when Ramana Maharshi went down to Padi Mooni and said something to Ramana about… I think Ramana said to them, "You are the Self, wake up!" or something and he said, "Don't they have to go through all these stages?" And Ramana said, "Well maybe but I don't know anything else." (R: That's right.) Yeah. You know, and I remember there were like two schools of thought at the ashram, you know. People who believed there were gradual changes you had to go through and then there were people who believed in instantaneous enlightenment. (tape break as the same student continues.) …it's not really the same as what you were talking about in your state, which is really, I wouldn't call happiness in a sense because it seems so far above the happiness that is the opposite to sadness. (R: You're right.) Sadness could even come into that state you are in and it would only be some other thing that was passing through, in a sense wouldn't it? (R: You're right.) No identification. R: As an example, I can cry at a funeral, but I realize who's crying. I can have all kinds of sadness if I want to, but I am not really sad. You hit it right when you said that. It appears to be like that. (SK: Like the state of non-abiding mind, that's really the closest thing to it, isn't it?) You are right, that's true. I am looking for words to describe this. But there is always total happiness. But it’s not human happiness. There are no things involved. For most people to be happy there has to be a person, place or thing involved in their happiness. But in true happiness there are no things involved to make you happy. It's the natural state. And you abide in that state forever. SK: From the standpoint of practice, I’ve noticed that no matter what state comes up, am I willing to ask myself, "Can I let this go?" You know what I mean. Do I feel stuck in it or is it that important to me that I stay in a sort of emotional state? And the real answer to that is that there is nothing you can do anyway. As it comes then it goes and it is noticed to be that. R: And yet act as if there is something you can do, even though there is nothing you can do. Act as if there is something you can do. As an example, If you were passing a starving man on the road, don't say there is nothing you can do and leave him alone. Give him a piece of bread. Act as if there is something you can do. (SK: But say in regard to the mind arising, emotions arising, perceptions arising there is nothing you can do.) Except watch, just watch, just observe and watch. (SK: And even that, if you turn it into something you think you're doing, it is not what you are talking about.) Yes. (SK: In like Vipassana retreats for example you try to cultivate the mind that watches, but that couldn't be it. No it's not, it's beyond that. But you’re doing that in the beginning as a procedure, a process, because that's where you're at, at the time, that's what you need to do, so you can't say that's wrong or right. It's just where you're at, now. Another thing to consider is this: if I were here as a visitor and having one class with you, and you never see me again. I would expound the highest truth and take off. And you would say how great that is. But when I see you twice a week or more, I begin to know you quite well and everything I say is to help you grow because that is what needs to be said to you at that time, since I'm going to be with you. The people who were with Ramana as devotees, he didn't expound absolute truth to them all the time. He would talk to them like a normal person. He would inquire about their welfare, about their health, about their problems, and would give them practical advice. He wouldn't say, "Nothing matters because nothing exists." (laughter) They know that already but they can't help it they have got the problems. So he would talk to them in a practical manner. SG: Last night, Robert, my partner, who is pregnant… (R: Your partner is pregnant? Who is responsible?) (laughter) I don't know. (laughter) The child's coming in July, at least that's what we think. Last night, being with a pregnant woman is a great practice of not taking anything personal. Her mood changes within five minutes, and last night though, she got really anxious about taking care of the child's insurance, and where's the money going to come from. Working at the Bodhi tree doesn't exactly bring in much money, and I remember getting caught up in the emotions. While I was doing that I was asking, "Who's getting caught up in the emotions?" but yet this body and emotions are getting caught up and it seems there is a part that just kind of watches it and there's a part that's kind - I don't know if it's a way of retreating or not wanting to look at what she's dragging me into. R: Since you're living with her, help her to the best of your ability. But be impersonal. Do not become attached to it. Practice non-attachment. Yet help her all you can. Be kind, gentle and do the best you can. (SG: It seemed like the most loving thing to do at the time would be to get insurance to help her fears.) Well, if that's what you feel like doing, but just by being kind to her will help. Being gentle and peaceful and realize what she's going through. That alone will take care of it. But as far as you're concerned, realize where all this is coming from. She is involved in the personal I, and she's worried about her body and her affairs. Maybe you can help her in that way by telling her not to worry because God loves her and will take care of her and will watch her. And everything will turn out all right. That kind of advice will be helpful. (SG: A lot of the time she doesn't take that too well.) Then just keep silent, and say it to yourself. But If you can become calm and peaceful something within you will tell you what to do. You will be advised by the powers that be. The more calm you can make yourself, the more peaceful you can make yourself, the more you can control your mind, the greater the answer will be. And you will know what to do and you'll do it for the good of all concerned. SA: Robert, I have something to say. I don't know whether it's a question though. (R: Okay.) I don't know if it's a statement either, but it seems to me sometimes that this is all very intellectual in spite of what you say. There's a lot of talking about the process, the asking about the I and all that kind of thing, and of course I've done a lot of reading like everybody else, and although I'm very critical of Gurdjieff, I was very interested in the idea of the dancing, of the work that was done. I mean physical work. As we know, there's dancing in other systems. And sometimes I feel that it's almost more important to give attention to the body as it moves through life and as it moves through the day in certain ways, and that this is this unconscious knowledge that we're looking for, the approach to what we're looking for. That the body itself undergoes experiences that enlighten us, and this is in a different realm than our intellectual speculations. I know for example that when I dance, there's a place in Santa Monica called Dance Home, where sometimes at night you have fifty people dancing alone by themselves in a dark room with colored lights. For me this is a spiritual experience because there seems to be almost an integration of body-mind-spirit. R: Of course, the average person cannot sit home alone and think because they go crazy. So when you dance and when you become active, it keeps you from going crazy, from thinking. So what you're saying is true as far as that's concerned. But that's on a relative plane and you have to remember, what body are you talking about? The body is transient, and you're not the same body you were twenty-five years ago. You're not the same body you were when you were five years old. You're a completely different body, so what body are you referring to? And pretty soon your body will become old and crippled and whatever. So will you be referring to that body? That cannot dance any longer, that has no energy, that has no power, that has to sit in bed all day, when you get to be ninety years old and so forth? So what body are you referring to? Why keep your mind on your body when you can keep your mind on the Self that never changes. That is imperishable. That was never born and can never die. That is permanent and that’s your real nature. If you identify with that you will find eternal happiness and eternal peace. But, if you identify with the body like you're doing, it will grow old and what will you do then? It will be time to die and you will be disappointed. (SA: I don't see that this is identification with the body. If anything it’s a removal from the body.) You're working with the body, so you have to think about your dance steps and you have to think about your dancing and having fun. It's all body work. SK: Isn't it also that one shouldn't mistaken the release of endorphins in the brain to be a spiritual experience? R: That's true of course not. Endorphins, the brain have nothing to do with the Self. The Self is the Self. It’s self-contained, it’s happy, it’s peaceful and it’s knowledge. Everything else is transitory, it comes and goes. The free choice we have is, with whom shall we identify? With the body or the Self? And that's your choice. If you choose the body then you come back, life after life, after life, with other bodies, because if you identify with the body, there is not only one body, there are many bodies. It never ends. You are creating your own body, lifetime after lifetime until the time comes when you become disgusted with the body and then true spirituality begins. Another example: Say you love to go dancing, and you're coming home one day from the dance and you cross the street and a truck hits you and they have to amputate your legs. What do you think of that body? No legs and you can't dance. Now you have to stay in bed and you’re only thinking of when you used to dance. You've wasted your time. SA: Yes, but couldn't everything you've said about the body be applied to the mind also, because the mind, as you have said yourself, is just a tool to move beyond the mind. (R: Yes.) So, if that can be said of the mind and if these attitudes can be had towards the mind they can also be had towards the body-mind because they’re both illusory. R: Of course. But you're using the body to realize that you're not the body. You're not using it to get further involved in relative things. You use the mind and your body to get rid of the mind and the body, not to get more involved. That’s why you watch yourself, and you see yourself, and you ask yourself, "Who loves to dance? Who loves to do all these things? I do. Who is this I?" And we're talking about your personal I again. Everything is attached to the personal I. When you remove that idea that there's a personal I, true happiness automatically ensues and then there’s no question about it. Just like with me. I do not have to consider if dancing is more fun than being the Self. There is no comparison. I don't know what to say? Dancing is for a time only. Just like you're an artist and a writer. That's great, but it's for a time only. The time will come when you won't be able to do this anymore. You will be too old. Then what? You'll look back and you'll say, "Ah, I used to be an artist, I used to be a great artist and I used to be a great writer, I used to be a great dancer, but look at me now, I'm nothing." And you'll commit suicide perhaps, because you cannot do any more what you used to do. For you’ve been totally involved in the body consciousness. That's why I say find release now, find freedom now, so you don't have to go through this again and again and again. SA: Robert, how does all of this stack up with your ideas about pursuing the life that is wonderful as it is, and being involved in all activities with detachment? R: You have no choice. The activities that you’re involved in you were meant to be involved in them. And your mind will do what it has to do to make you further involved. The freedom you have got is simply to question, "Who am I? What is the source of I?" And as you question, your involvement in life, so-to-speak, will become less and less, and you will become happier and happier. But if you do not question, then you will get deeper involved and deeper involved and deeper involved, and pretty soon you’ll think that's your life. But again as I said you will grow older and older and older and then you will just drop dead one day. And you will pick up another body and repeat the whole thing over again. There is no end to it. Until you give up that concept. SG: Robert, I have a question about two things that were already asked. One is, as you said in the beginning, was when we come to satsang we tend to pick up the feeling that's present, and at the same time when we're in the company of someone that's having intense emotions we become that. Also there was the question of gradual awakening or sudden awakening. My question is this, if we are subject to these types of emotions, is it necessary for us to work on ourselves and gradually not identify with this, or is it something that just happens suddenly, in other words do we not be upset at ourselves for identifying with emotions and realize it happens all of a sudden or should we work on ourselves? R: Okay, to work on yourself is simply to know I am not the body or these emotions. And as you identify with your source everything will take care of itself. You do not work on the emotions because they will pop up somewhere else as I've said before. But if you work on the source of your emotions, and realize that in reality there are no emotions to begin with because there is only the Self. And the more you awaken to that fact, that the Self alone exists and everything else is false, then you will begin to mellow out. (S: So it is gradual?) It depends, no. As you keep working on yourself, you can awaken instantaneously and be free of it, or it can be gradual. It is up to you. It depends what you put into it. Everybody is different. SF: Isn't there always a preliminary growth before the Jnani takes care of all these things? R: For some people. Some people just wake up. When you have a dream is there a preliminary before you wake up? Or do you just wake up? Everybody just wakes up. So it is with this. As you keep abiding in the Self one day you will just awaken and be done with it and you will be free. So don't think of preliminaries. Focus on the Self and everything will take care of itself. SN: If we don't see progress within ourselves, but we continually see ourselves get upset with the situations around us, we shouldn't let that bother us? R: Keep observing, keep watching, and keep focusing on the Self, and there will be nobody to ask who is bothered or who is not bothered by it. You only ask a question like that when your attention is more on the bothering than it is on the Self. But if you change your attention and you put all your energy on the Self, then you will see what happens. (S: The question is, is that gradual?) For some people. It depends how much time you give to it. SN: We can't just turn our emotions off. Because I can relate to experiences I'm having at work, and sometimes I go to the office there is such an intensity there and people are snapping at each other, I get caught up in it. Of course I become aware, usually after the fact and then I say to myself, "Well is there something that I'm aware of?" and gradually by abiding in myself gradually not identifying with it or is it something that someday I’ll suddenly awaken? R: That's why I say, in the morning, when you first open your eyes, that's the time to work on yourself. And ask yourself, "Who am I? How did I get here?" And reconcile yourself with your Self. If you do that first thing upon waking up, then the whole day will be good, and you won't have those problems. Just don't get up and run out to work. Get up an hour early if you have to. And see yourself for what you are and realize the truth. Focus on the Self. Ask yourself, "Who am I?" and wait. Think of your source, concentrate on the source of I-am, or just say to yourself, "I-am, I-am," and then go to work. And you’ll see changes, miraculous changes. SN: Well what I'm saying is when I'm in the company of other people, not when I'm alone. When I'm in the company of other people, I tend not to be in control except I get caught up in whatever they're caught up in. R: Well that's later, but if you are in the company of your Self and you do the work on yourself. You will build up a power… (SN: Right.) …that you will carry with yourself all day long. And that won't happen. (SN: The whole thing of losing your centre losing that sense of - you get lost.) That's why before you go to sleep and when you wake up, that is the time to work on yourself. If you do it correctly, it will take over your life. And all will go well with you. SF: Robert, I'm still confused about this abiding in the Self and you wake up. Abidance in the Self, I don't think it implies knowing or being already the Self and then arriving there. (R: Umm.) Rather than a gesture for the Self, such as deep self-inquiry, could mean that maybe? Or it may lead to that, arriving in the Self. That's natural arriving in the Self. R: Abiding in the Self is knowing I-am, is being I-am. So when you say, "I-am," you are abiding in the Self. (SF: Thank you.) SN: Now, to follow it to its source, take for instance if you find the I by self-inquiry, abide in that, seems to me to be in that state is kind of stateless. Like non-existence. So to follow it what do you mean by follow it? Because it already seems like no-existence? R: Don't worry about being non-existent. Simply observe the I and watch it going into the heart. (SN: So it is not so much a following, it is just that it happens of itself?) It happens of itself. SF: So Robert when I contemplate, "I am," it means right then I am abiding in the Self? R: Yes it does, that's the same thing. (SF: When I say, "I-am," is this empirical person right I'm using my mind and I'm still in duality? But in this contemplation of I-am does duality exist or it doesn’t?) Yes, You're using your mind. When you're saying, "I am, I am," you are transcending the personal I and you are opening yourself up to your own reality. (SF: So abidance in Self is taking place then?) Yes, it is taking place right then and there. (SF: Thank you.) SK: Robert, it's because we have the concept we are not the Self that we miss the fact that we are abiding in the Self all the time, and that's what's left out in this discussion. As Ramana said, we only have the doubt we are not the Self, but the truth is we have always been that. (R: Exactly.) So we only have to lose something we don't even really have. R: That's why we go through all these troubles and play all these games, until we realize, "I am the Self." Then that's it. (SK: And that's all you’ve ever been. The other is just a false mind.) But if we can't see that we have to play all these games I guess, its fun! SG: Robert, if we don't know the Self and we are saying, "I-am," what is to keep that from becoming a parrot-like repetition? R: It doesn't become a parrot-like repetition if you do it with your breath. If you inhale, say. "I." When you exhale, say, "am." "I am." A subtle change of energy takes place within yourself, and you’ll find you will become more peaceful, more calm, and pretty soon you will lose all identification with your body-mind and you will remain as I am. It helps. Try it. SG: As you were saying earlier, you were also talking about identifying with the Self as identifying with the source. In my state of ignorance doing something as simple as just saying, "I am," and coordinating with the breath, is the best I can do to identify with the way you're talking about? R: Well that's one way to do it, do that. But then you should also ask yourself, "Who thinks they are ignorant? Who believes they're not the Self? I do. Who Am I?" And you go right back to it again. Use the method that helps you the most. For some people, just saying, "I am" does the trick. Other people have to work with, "Who am I?" continuously. Self-inquiry is the fastest way to wake up. SF: When contemplating "I-am" it's self-inquiry itself, Robert? R: Yes it is. Of course it is, definitely. SF: And it is just a question of remembrance what Richard was saying actually? (R: Yes.) Ramana would say “we are the Self but we don't remember, so we need to work on it.” And when we use self-inquiry which of course takes several forms, which you have explained thoroughly and particularly, I love this much, "I am" because I can see some movement. I do not know how to explain it. A movement of energy that's valid when I contemplate I-am, so I thank you for it, thank you very very much. R: Umm. I'm glad it's working for you, but be careful about these things. Don't be like the Santa Cruz lady who called me. She’s a doctor and she was operating in the emergency room. And she stopped everything and called me and said, "Should I concentrate on I-am while I'm operating or should I just forget about I-am for now?" I wonder what happened to the patient? (students laugh) SN: Robert, when we do self-inquiry, actually that is the beginning step to find the I. When we develop a sense of abiding in the I, there's not too much need of self-inquiry because we go straight to the abiding. R: Self-inquiry has no beginning. If you do "Who Am I?" it's very powerful. It sounds simple but it’s very very powerful. All you've got to say is, "Who Am I?" take a pause, say it again, "Who Am I?" Never answer. But keep saying, "Who Am I? Who Am I?" Eventually, something will happen. SN: I'm saying if you develop a sense of self-abidance you can almost watch yourself go in and out of those states, you can almost watch yourself, "Now I'm identifying with the ego" and what I'm saying is, self-inquiry is to get you to that state but once you have a feel for that, you go directly to that. R: If you’re abiding in the Self, there is no ego to watch, because there is only the Self. You watch the ego with the mind, not with the Self. So if you abide with the Self there is nothing else. You are finished. You're cooked. Everything else is of the mind. So when I say “abide in the Self” I mean forget everything and be your Self. There is nothing else to know at that point. Just be your Self. SF: Robert, I was unable to understand the use of the breath in connection with I-am. (R: You are unable to understand?) Yes, how do you use it? R: You inhale, you say, "I," you exhale, you say, "am," with your breath, when you inhale, exhale. And you will notice after a while your breathing begins to slow down and the periods between I-am is becoming longer and longer. And pretty soon you lose body consciousness and you get lost in I-am itself. And you will become consciousness, I-am. SG: Robert, you say about the breath slowing down, depends on meditation, it happens frequently now that I seem to be aware of the body and the heart seems to stop, and I am aware of not breathing. Then I get shoved right back into the body. R: That's all of the mind, it all comes out of the mind. Go beyond all that stuff. Do not pay attention to that. Inquire, "To whom does that come?" and go beyond it. And abide in the Self. See we shouldn't get lost too much in procedures and methods. Remember, in reality procedures and methods do not exist. Only the Self exists. So use the methods and procedures with a grain of salt. Try to stay at the source of I and be free. I notice the more we talk about it, the more we talk about procedures, you can get lost in procedures. Be still and know that I am is God. So by keeping the mind still you become God faster. So don't contemplate procedures. Do the procedures if you have to, but go beyond it fast. Leave it behind and abide in the I-am. SK: Robert I think it was Nisargadatta who said that the Sage gives a description of reality, not a prescription. He doesn't give you something to do. You go to a doctor for that. He tells you where it's at or how it is and it's for your own recognition when you see it. Because reality is always the same and when you see it, it's when you see it. R: It is interesting to note, what you are saying is true, but it’s interesting to note that all these words of Nisargadatta and Ramana were given to new students every time they came. And then they go away. And then new ones would come and they would ask the same questions and he would give the same answers. And that is how all the books were written. But what did he do with his direct disciples and the devotees? He was human to them. Do you know what I'm saying? (SK: Yeah. Well I can only take your word in a way and there was no way of knowing, but it makes total sense.) Sure, this is why as I said before if I were a guest here for one time I would fill you with the absolute, totally and completely. Because you’re not going to see me for another couple of years. But when I have to see you all of the time you’re telling me about your practice and what's going on, and we have to have a dialogue, which is normal. Nothing wrong with that. SG: We could still have a guest appearance. (students laugh) We could have a truth hour. R: I do that every time I see you. What kind of truth are you looking for? Just by being here you've got it. SF: Robert, from what I've been reading about Ramana, well actually there was not much of self-inquiry but much of devotion. (R: Exactly.) Mainly devotion to the body or to the presence of the Master. (R: Yes, that's true.) And they were getting more out of it then what he would be teaching? R: You’re right. This is why I tell you every once in a while the story about the devotee who used to pull his (Ramana's) fan. He used to stand by Ramana and pull his fan for forty years. Then one day he dropped dead. And Ramana looked at him and told the devotees, "He's all cooked. He is not coming back again." (SF: Also the provision of descriptions they give about Ramana what was his effect on them. It seems that they were all contemplating him tremendously.) Yes, you're right. (SF: I think that's a quality of the way to a Jnani?) R: You’re right. That's why it's a combination of bhakta and Jnana.) (SF: The contemplation of the Master in his physical form, standing near him, being close to him.) That's very true. (SF: I think that’s all part of the scene of the Jnani and his disciples or devotees.) You're right. SV: God, Guru, Self. (R: What's that?) God, guru, Self? R: God, guru, Self is right. This is why I said before, I don't know if you were here, Horat. I said, I would rather have five devotees with me than five thousand lookers and seekers and searchers and disciples because the five devotees would become realized in this life. The rest are only searching, looking. So you’re right, absolutely. It's hard for a Westerner to understand that, because a Westerner's ego is very very big no matter what you say. (long silence) Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, om, shanti. Silence is the greatest teacher. Remember to love yourself, to bow to yourself, to pray to yourself, to worship yourself because God dwells in you as you. I love you. Peace. (tape ends)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart, with all my being and with all my soul. I love each and every one of you. This is satsang. We have two types of people that come here. One is bhakta's devotional people and one is Jnanas, Jnanis, aspiring Jnanis, knowledge. And if we both respect each others feelings, we'll get along fine. They both lead to the same goal. They both lead to self-realization. There's no difference. The difference is in the eyes of the beholder. What is satsang? Satsang is a very powerful tool. Sat means being. Sang means at the feet, of being. Your real nature is being, Self. Self is omnipresence. So you're sitting at the feet of the Self, which is none other than your Self. This is not a metaphysical meeting. It is not a lecture. It is not a philosophy. It is a presence itself. And if you come to it often enough, that's all you have to do. The words that I speak do not mean too much. It is the silence that is eloquent. And the silence is the same with all of us. Silence is the Self. If you rest in silence you become the Self. Some people still come here, who believe they're going to some kind of a meeting, a get together. So Sunday they come to this, because they have nothing better to do. Monday they go hear Swami Misugananda Yogi. (laughter) Tuesday they go see Swami Nunu, Thursday they go see Professor so and so and they come for entertainment. How many years have you been doing that and to what avail? My suggestion is that you pick something that appeals to you and really get into it for at least six months and see what happens. But if you read too many books, go to various teachings, go to different meetings, you'll become totally confused and before you know it, thirty years will pass, fifty years will pass and you're no better off than you were before. Now I'll give you an example: I got a call today from a fellow in Santa Cruz. Well, I'll tell you his name, Jim Vanderbelt. And he was a heavy pot user. (laughter) Now it's interesting what he told me, he said, since he's come here about four or five times, he woke up this morning and he tried to smoke pot like he always does and he couldn't stand it. (laughter) He couldn't stand it. He had to throw it away. He doesn't know why. And he feels an inner happiness that he never felt before. I'm relating this to you to show you that just from being in satsang, everything becomes resolved in your life, everything. Your reaction to things begin to mellow out. You start minding your own business as it were. You become calm, peaceful, relaxed. But you have to intensify your desire for Satsang. You have to love it and treat it as an entity, as a thing itself, as a teaching. Just being here, will do all that for you. Chanting is a very important process. It makes the mind one-pointed. When the mind becomes one-pointed, you can focus on the Self. And by focussing on the Self, the mind becomes annihilated, and you become free. Do not take the things we do here for granted. Everything is important, everything. If you get involved in it, you will see the results in a short time. But if you just come here for amusement because you have nothing better to do, as I said before, 50 years will pass and you'll still be running to teachers, running to India, going to different states looking for certain ways or methods of finding yourself. But in truth, there is no way and there's no method. The Self is the Self, just like the sun always shines. You just have to remove the clouds and the sun will shine once again like it always did. And so it is, that all you've got to do is remove the ignorance, the world and all its ramifications from your mind and you will be free. Everyone is looking for happiness, peace and love and freedom from all their problems. Who doesn't want this? This is what everybody really wants, happiness, peace, love and freedom from their problems. But they make one mistake and that is they're looking to solve something. As long as you’re looking to solve something or to attain anything you will never do it. For it involves the ego and the mind. It is the ego-mind that needs, that wants, that wants to become, that wants to acquire. If you understand a little bit of your real nature, that you are Spirit, that you are absolute intelligence, infinite wisdom. If you dwell in that, that alone will become your reality. And everything else undesirable will vanish. I'm not saying that the world will change. You will just acquire a different perception of this world in which you live. Everything will become quite neutral and you will stop fighting, you will stop trying to make things happen. Yet the average person may say, "If I did not make things happen, I will get nowhere. Nothing will happen." On the contrary, it has been known by spiritual Masters throughout the ages, when you become quiet, when you stop thinking too much, when you become quiescent, thoughtless, you will be lead and guided to what you have to do and everything will work out for you. Your body came to this earth for a specific reason. It will follow through, no matter what you think. In other words, if you're supposed to work, you will find work no matter what happens. Even if thousands of people do not find work, you will find work. If you're not supposed to work, no matter how hard you try you will not be able to work, you will not find work. Even though there are millions of jobs available. This is all karmic, you have nothing to do with it. Your job and your mission is simply not to react to anything. I know it sounds strange especially those of you who are involved in work. You still think and feel, if I do not research my work, if I do not plan, if I do not think about it, it will not get done. On the contrary, something will lead you and guide you. A mysterious power will take care of everything for you. This only happens when you understand, I am not the doer. As long as you believe you are the doer, you have to struggle, you have to fight, you have to compete and you have to straighten things out. But as soon as you realize, I am not the doer. I didn't ask to be born, I didn't have to go through this position, to have the parents I had, to grow up where I grew up, this is all karmic. The same power that took care of this will take care of you now. Will put you in you right place. Will take care of your finances, your health and everything else. Your job is to focus your attention on the Self. What is the Self? The Self is your real nature, that's what you are. The Self is consciousness. What is consciousness? Consciousness is the power that is conscious of itself. It is self-contained, it is omnipresent. When you speak of love, of peace, of God, of joy, of happiness, of bliss, you're speaking of consciousness. These words are just other words for consciousness. Consciousness is you. The Self, consciousness, they're all synonymous. They all pertain to you. Now what have you been seeing? What have you been reacting to? The mind goes out and causes problems and you try to resolve them. You cannot. For when you resolve one problem another one pops up somewhere else and there's no end to it. It's like trying to figure out, what came first the seed or the tree? You never get anywhere, there's no solution. People have been trying to resolve problems, since the beginning of time and the world is getting worse. There's no adequate solution in trying to resolve anything in the outside. The great secret of course is to; Leave the world alone, go within your Self and there you will find happiness, joy and peace. But how do you go within yourself? How do you dive deep within yourself?By asking the question, "Who am I?" I have found this to be the fastest method there is, to awakening. There are other methods, but personally I found this the fastest. All you have to do is question, "Who am I?" You do not have to answer, you do not have to analyze anything, you do not have to come up with any solution. You simply ask the question, "From whence did I come? Where did the I come from? What is the source of I?" Many people have been practicing Jnana Marga have made the mistake of concentrating on the I and this is why you do not get anywhere. You concentrate on the source, not on the I. The I is only an illusion. It is only is something that appears to be like your body. It has no momentum, it has no substance. But yet you have to watch the I. You have to abide in the I. For it leads you to the source of existence. The source of everything. You do this by again questioning, "Where does the I come from?" You do not answer. And you ask again, "Who am I?" You never answer. If you answer, it is your mind playing games with you. Your ego is very powerful, it does not wish to be destroyed. It will play games with you. You simply pose the question yet you never answer. The answer will come in due time. It will reveal itself to you as you. You need patience, take your time. Do not think it is going to happen overnight. It may, it may not. Yet do not think of those things. If you're really busy working on your I, you will not have time to find fault in the world. For the I will take all of your attention. What do you give your attention to now? What hurts you? What bothers you? This continues simply because you are placing all of your attention, all of your focus on the thing that you think is wrong with your life or something that's disturbing you. Let me remind you, you will never resolve anything that way. It may appear that you resolve it that way, but something else will pop up. As an example: A lady is having problems with her co-workers. She can't get along with them. She says, "They're doing this to me, they're doing that to me, it's not my fault," so she quits her job and she moves to San Francisco. Gets a new job. Everything is okay for the first couple of months. But then she finds the same problem with her new co-workers. Because she has taken herself with her. Yet she does not realize this. She thinks it's the people. She thinks it's the environment. She thinks it's the economy. But she never goes to search herself, to ask herself, "Why do I have this problem? Why do I perceive these things? Who is the perceiver? I am. Who am I? Who is the I that perceives these problems? Where did that I come from? What is its source?" You abide in the I, yet you do not concentrate on the I. You abide in the I, you follow the I to the source. One day you will awaken and you will become free. But again, do not look for a timetable. Do not try to make it happen this year, or tomorrow or yesterday. It may, leave it alone. Do the work that is necessary and everything will work out. Time passes very fast. Before you know it, it's time to leave your body. What have you accomplished? Have you become free? If not, you have to go through the illusion of reincarnation and karma, again and again and again, so-it-appears. Until you learn to let go, until you learn not to react to anything. Not to find fault. Not to try to make the world spin your way but to surrender completely to your Self. Surrendering is very important. To whom do you surrender? To the source, the Self. You may say something like this: "Okay Self, take my problems. Take my negativity, take everything, Thy will be done. I no longer have any concern about these things." And you stop reacting towards person, place or thing. You mellow out. You become calm, in the face of all adversity. It makes no difference what is facing you. You become happy, peaceful and calm. This again cannot happen by itself. It needs your help. You cannot say, "I'm going to do this," and it will happen. Just like Jim, we never said he was stop smoking pot. But all of a sudden he has no liking for it again. It happened by itself. The same thing will happen in your affairs. If you do the work and work on self-inquiry, surrender, "To whom does this come? Who feels upset? Who feels depressed? Who feels that others are taking advantage of me? Where do these thoughts come from? They come from me. From my past, from previous lives. I think these thoughts. Everything is my fault. Everything comes out of me. So who is me? Where did me come from? How did it get born? Does it really exist?" And you go deeper and deeper, inquiring where the me came from. Who gave it birth? As you follow the me, one day something will happen. There may seem to be an explosion of light and everything will be burnt out. All your karma. All the samskaras. Everything that has ever disturbed you will be gone and you will be free. And you will realize that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. And there are no problems. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There was once a Prime Minister of a large Kingdom. And he went to his Guru who simply used to say, "All is well and everything is unfolding as it should." And the Prime Minister used to wonder why he says this. And the Guru would say, "Just come here and listen to those words and repeat them to yourself." He did this often enough, enlightenment came. And he did realize, all is well and everything is happening as it should. So he went back to the kingdom and sat in his chair and gave advice to the people as he usually did. Now the head of the security force had a problem. That day he was due to get promoted to chief and he was bypassed and somebody else got promoted, so he was disturbed. He went to see the Prime Minister and told him his troubles. And the Prime Minister smiled at him and said, "Don't worry, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should." And the guard got mad, he went away mumbling, "How can he tell me something like this, this is ridiculous." Now the head chef had a problem because his wife ran away with one of the cooks. And he was very disturbed. He came to the Prime Minister and said, "Mr Prime Minister what should I do? My wife ran away. I feel very bad." The Prime Minister said, "Don't worry, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should." And the chef got very upset and he left. He was walking down the hall and he bumped into the guard and they related their stories. And they said, "Lets fix this guy. He can't tell us things like this, we have serious problems." And they were thinking of a way to get even. They were walking down the corridor and they saw the royal barber shop. And there was the king getting his royal shave. The barber inadvertently slipped and cut the kings throat and it was deep gash. Royal blood was spilling all over the floor. (laughter) And they both looked and they said, "I know what we'll do," they conceived a plan. When the king was feeling better with a bandage around his neck. They went and said, "Your majesty, we went and told the Prime Minister that you cut your royal neck and you know what he said? He said, All is well and everything is unfolding as it should." So the king said, "What! Bring him to me." So they brought the prime minister and the king said, "Look at my neck, I'm in total pain. Do you see the cut and the bandage? What do you think of that?" And the prime minister looked and he said, "Don't worry your majesty, all is well and everything is unfolding as it should," and the king said, "What! How dare you tell me something like this when I'm in pain, throw him in the dungeon!" So they threw the prime minister in the dungeon. Now, it was Wednesday afternoon. And every Wednesday afternoon the king went hunting in the jungle with the prime minister. But since the prime minister was in the dungeon he went hunting by himself. Now in the jungle there lived a tribe of Kali worshippers. And these Kali worshippers always sacrificed somebody to Kali. And this was the day of the sacrifice. So the chief of the Kali worshippers told the worshippers, "Go out and find me somebody virtuous so we can sacrifice this person to Kali." They got on their horses and rode out. And sure enough they found the king. And they didn't care whether he was a king or what he was. They grabbed him and took him to the chief. And the chief said, "Good you found somebody, undress him and bath him and let's sacrifice him." They proceeded to undress him and they saw the cut on his neck. And they showed the chief and the chief said, "What! This guys no good, he's not pure. Throw him back where he came from." And they took him back and let him go. On the way back to the kingdom the king started to think and he said, "Now wait a minute, if didn't get this cut I would be dead meat. The prime minister was right," and he rode back to the kingdom, to the palace and he said, "Release the prime minister." Which he did and he related the story to the prime minister and he said,"you were right all the time." So the prime minister said, "Not only that your majesty, but if I rode with you today and you didn't throw me into the dungeon, they would have caught me also and I didn't have a cut and they would have sacrificed me to Kali. So by being in the dungeon my life was spared." This story shows you that when something happens to you and you try to solve it by blaming others or believing there's something wrong you are making a dreadful mistake. For if you are able to see the whole picture, whatever happens to you is for your ultimate good. Never curse the darkness if you don't understand what's going on. This is why when things are troubling you and you have no idea, why, and you think you have got bad luck, or people are against you, or life is very hard. If you would merely go within yourself, dive deep within yourself and ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" or "who am I?" and follow the I to the source, everything will be revealed to you. EVERYTHING will be revealed to you. And you will find unalloyed happiness, total joy and total peace. But you have to do the work. You cannot just ride through life and take things as they come. Simply begin the work of self-inquiry and everything else will take care of itself. And remember do not ask about time, when it’s going to happen. It will take care of itself. Remember that joke about the Zen Buddhist monk that I told you. He wanted to become a monk. So he flew to Japan and he had an interview with the head Roshi. And the Roshi gave him instructions and accepted him and he said, "By the way, there is one thing I forgot to tell you. We have a vow of silence here. You can only speak three words every ten years." So he said, "Okay" and he went to his quarters. Ten years passed. And he had an interview with the Roshi. And the Roshi said, "Do you have anything to say?" And he said, "The food sucks!" And he went back to his quarters. Ten more years passed. He had an interview with the Roshi. The Roshi said, "Do you have anything to say?" And he said, "The beds hard!" And he went back to his quarters. Ten more years passed. He had an interview with the Roshi and the Roshi said, "Have you got anything to say?" He said, "Yes I quit!" And the Roshi said, "I can't blame you, you've been bitching ever since you got here. (students laugh) That's how it is with us. We keep bitching and bitching about everything in our lives and we want to be enlightened next weekend. (laughter) What I say to you is forget about enlightenment. Forget about self-realization. Merely practice self-inquiry and come to satsang. Everything will take care of itself. Satsang is really when we sit in silence and then have question and answers. But most of you still like me to give a little talk. So I do that to please you. So we'll now open up for questions. Feel free to ask about anything you like about spiritual life or about your life if you like. And we'll see where we go. This is what this is all about. Everyone is coming from a different place. And you may have something you want answered, that I haven't spoken about. Feel free to ask at this time. SG: Robert, what's the difference between abiding in the I or following it and concentrating on it. R: Abiding in the I, following the I is merely observing the I, watching the I, seeing the I. Concentrating is where you put all of your energy into it and become one with it. You do that with the source. For instance, when you follow the I, one day you will feel something at the source of the I. And you will watch and observe how the I becomes abolished in its source. And you will become the source. Your feelings, your emotions, will be swallowed up by the source and you will know it. You will feel a peace that you never felt before. You will feel a joy that is overwhelming. You will find unalloyed happiness in the source. But you abide in the I and you follow the I by witnessing, by watching, by observing. The I will eventually turn into the source where you will become free. SE: When Muktananda was in town, 1980. I remember him one time, a monk was giving a talk, one of the Swamis. And there was this woman in the audience that said, "I've been practicing Siddhi yoga for some time now and everyday I feel depressed and each day I feel more and more depressed. I can barely wake up in the morning. I can't stay awake during the day. I feel miserable. My body hurts. My head hurts. And I can barely survive from day to day and it's getting worse. I think of suicide. And she says I've been practicing and practicing for eight years." (break in tape as Robert continues) R: …true, that everything is no thing but all the same. You have to do something with your mind to get rid of your mind. So those people who seem to attain this effortlessly. There was a time when they did practice in a previous existence. Then again let me explain. Words are hard to explain. When you have the experience, "Who am I? What is the source of the I?" It it’s part of the vast experience that comes instantaneously. And as I said before, when it happens it appears as if I practiced for years and years and years. But yet I never practiced in this life. So that experience made me realize that I had practiced before. Somewhere, somehow I had done it all before. But it happened now. So, sometimes you may think you’re not getting anywhere. But how much time have you given it, eight years, ten years, twenty years? Even the last time. Remember what you call a lifetime is but a split second in eternity. Your so-called life is here today and gone tomorrow. It doesn't mean anything in universal time. So keep on practicing. No matter how long it takes. Don't look at time. Just do the work. But remember not to use effort. Not to try to do anything. But simply observe. You pose the question, "Who am I?" and you watch. You observe. You look. You see. Then you say, "Who am I?" again, you say it again and again and again. All the time you’re observing, you’re looking, you’re watching. You are not looking for any results. You are not trying to practice anything. You are not trying to put any energy in motion. You are not trying to raise the kundalini or work with the chakras. You are simply observing, you’re watching and you’re waiting patiently. If you can do this I can assure you that results will come. Does that make any sense? It's effortless. There is no trying, there is no effort involved. Just look, just watch, just observe. That's all you've got to do. But again forget about time. It makes no difference how many years you have been practicing. You’re still better off than a person who never practiced. And the day will come when you get it. And everything will unfold as it should, which is right now! SM: Robert, you said something about a blast of light or something like that isn't that consciousness? (R: Yes.) Does sound go with that? R: It happens differently to different people. There is usually no sound and the flash of light is not the ultimate experience. The ultimate experience is beyond light, beyond sound. But it begins like that. There's a flash of light. Everything happens at one time. And then the light subsides and there is nothing. There is a void. And the void becomes everything. It becomes the Self. And then you are just aware, you know. And you know that you know. And all is well. Some people realize the Self with a flash of light, as the initial experience. And some people just went into the void and became ultimate reality. It happens slightly differently to different people. SE: From the viewpoint of the absolute we can say just as easily and either, that practice leads to enlightenment or enlightenment causes the practice to precede it? R: Well enlightenment doesn't cause any practice. For enlightenment is just enlightenment why do you need practice? Once enlightenment comes there's nothing to do, just be. So that’s the way it goes. Enlightenment does not lead to a practice. Because what you are saying is this: When you become God, does God have to practice as God? God is God and that's omnipresence. Therefore when you find the solution and you awaken you become omnipresent and there is nothing to do, until then practice. SN: But when you say practice you mean effortless effort? (R: Effortless effort.) Because I don't know what siddha yoga is, but I've been involved in other types of meditation and it seems as though the central idea is, in other forms of meditation is the idea of duality and I feel that there is something to attain. In Advaita, non duality there is nothing new to attain you are already that. Getting rid of the idea that you are not that you’re already that. And so there was an analogy in Ramana's books how he said the other practices are like trying to lead an ox with a whip. We are trying to concentrate, trying to accomplish something, trying to be something, yet we are already that. And in Advaita we are trying to lead an ox with grass. The one trying to force it, the other it follows of itself. This idea of practice when there are practices in duality or whether it's non-duality. In duality you need to gain something but in non-duality you are already that? R: What you are saying is very true. Remember all of your past practices has brought you here. So they were all necessary. You can never say, "What I did before was not necessary." You wouldn't be here if weren't so, everything is necessary. That's what I mean when I say, "All is well and everything is unfolding as it should." Everything is in it's right place. You never made a mistake. Everything you did has been necessary. Regret nothing. Look for nothing. Find peace within yourself. Abide in the Self and leave the world alone. Everything will come in due time. Do not look for a time, again. It makes no difference how long you’ve practiced. I'll reiterate, you can practice ten years, one year, one week, twenty years, twenty lifetimes, it makes no difference. Don't even think of that. Simply thinking of time does not allow you to go forward. Time keeps you back. Forget about time. Do what is necessary. Everything will take care of itself. SV: Robert, just a comment on what this other fellow said before. Even I can tell if you are doing self-inquiry and you find yourself becoming more and more depressed and not happy I would say that would be a sign of you doing it wrong. (laughter) (R: So what's the point?) Well I asked you to comment on that. R: Oh just to comment, okay. Look at it this way. It may be wrong but at least they’re doing something and everything has been ordained. So you were meant to do the practice wrong for a time. (laughter) Therefore you shouldn't fight it. You shouldn't say to yourself, "All of these years have been wasted. I've gone astray. My teacher was a false teacher. He gave me the wrong practice. And I took twenty-five years of time when I could have been doing the right things." On the contrary, everything is right. No matter how it looks. And if you didn't do the practice wrong, you wouldn't be here. So that's a blessing in disguise. It's actually a blessing in disguise. That you are able to do the practice wrong so you can come here. (students laugh) There is always a reason for everything. And there are no mistakes. If you think you made a mistake, what you’re saying indirectly is, "God doesn't know what he is doing." Because if God is all there is, how can there be a mistake? We just perceive it wrongly. But everything we’ve been through has been very necessary for our own unfoldment. Be thankful. That's another quality you should develop. Be grateful and be thankful for every experience that you go through. This will push you forward. Regret nothing. SK: Through conflict there is resolution. (R: Sure.) As far as people are talking about time and effortlessness there are some paths that use time. They concentrate on doing so much practice within each and everyday with effort. (R: That's the path of karma yoga.) Well whatever yoga it is but they do practices, spiritual practices, meditation or whatever and the attainment as far as I can see from my experience and from observing others, etc, is just as great because they are concentrating so hard that they are merging their mind. They are dissolving their mind through the intensity of the time they put in to their practice, their quality practice. I don't know why people are cursing putting effort in unless of course the ego is the doer. That's the only drawback I can see. SG: It's all attitude. SK: Yeah, if you realize that you don't have to, you can disengage it in some way. R: If the attainment has been obtained then why do need anything else. (SK: Excuse me?) If you have attained what you want then that's all you need, that's good. I will never put down another path. All paths lead to the same goal. The only thing that happens with the path you're talking about is it takes longer. When you use effort it takes a longer time to achieve nothingness. Because the ultimate result of all your effort is nothing. We are trying to achieve nothingness. (SK: Robert if it sits with the dynamic that's pretty good.) If it works for you, use it. SR: Isn't it sort of a question of whether you want to see yourself as a practicer or one who is realized in a sense then too. It is like if you want to really be doing a practice that's always there or if you want to make up that's there too. R: Again, the ordainer, remember Ishvara? (students laugh) The ordainer has ordained what you should do in this life. And you’re going to do whatever you have to do whether you like it or not. (laughter) But, you have the freedom of not reacting and of going within and finding yourself. So if you’re involved in a practice that you think you have to do and nothing is going to stop you, by all means continue the practice. Until the time comes when you automatically give it up, if you have to give it up. But everything will take care of itself and you have nothing to say about it. See, we talk as if we have something to say. We talk as if we are in control. We talk as if we are going to use this practice and follow this teacher and go to this country. We have nothing to do with that. We are not the doer. Something will motivate you to practice whatever you have to practice or not to practice, whatever the case maybe. Your job is just to watch, to observe, to look and not to react. If you can do that you'll be safe. SF: With, not to react Robert, you mean surrendering, right? R: When you surrender you do not react, that's right. (SF: Who is the real doer, Ishvara? Really, actually?) The real doer is the Self. Ishvara is just an intermediary. (laughter) (SF: I don't think the Self is the one who is doing things?) The Self does nothing because there is nothing to do. (SF: Then Ishvara is the doer?) Ishvara helps. He's the helper. He makes all your karma come true. (SF: Right.) Because you believe in them. SH: He takes the wrap as the doer because the Self does nothing? (laughter) R: That’s right, exactly. So as long you're involved in practices, in doership, realize who the doer really is, Ishvara. (laughter) SR: Robert, I'm looking forward to enlightenment, after that, then what do we do? R: What is there to do? Your body remember is going to do whatever it came here to do, but it has nothing to do with you. You will not be passive, if that's what you mean? If you were meant to be passive, nothing can make you non-passive. Do not concern yourself about this. Become self-realized then you'll see. Yes most people think still, if they become self-realized the only thing they will be good for is go to a cave and meditate. On the contrary, you can be a garbage-man or woman. You can be the president of a bank. You can be the president of the United States. You will be anything you like. It will not change things as far as your body is concerned. The only difference is in your perception. You will perceive things differently. Life will no longer have the power to disturb you in any way. It's like you’re Master of the universe. The universe can no longer scare you. Can no longer frighten you no matter what happens. And you will have a feeling of immortality. You will feel and know that you were never born, that you do not exist and that you do not disappear. You will just know this and act accordingly. SR: Robert, when we reach that state it seems like it really cut's the career choices. SK: You can start a new kind of employment agency. R: A Jnani employment agency. SE: It happens at the age of sixty-two or sixty-five. Realized being employment agency. SK: We just watch. (students laugh again) R: See remember who is asking the question? The Jnani or the ajnani? So from your viewpoint it appears as there is nothing to do. But you will do plenty, don't worry about that. Everything will take care of itself. SK: Robert, when you ask like what should I do or what's my purpose it's still because you identify as being a body or mind. That question normally depends what you thought you were. (R:Yes.) If you saw you were beyond that or not that… that could not be possible. R: There would be no question. That's true. But yet your body will still do something. If you were meant to get married you will get married. If you are meant to get divorced you will get divorced. If you are meant to travel to Italy you will go to Italy. But your body will still be active. Your mind will be inactive. It will be still, quiet, quiescent. And you'll live spontaneously. All will go well with you, because the world will no longer have the power to scare you or to frighten you in any way. SG: Robert, when we’re through with this world I assume that we don't reincarnate any more then we are just out there as a friend of Ishvara and…? R: No. When you reach the state of enlightenment. There is no Ishvara. There is no world and there is no out there. You just see yourself as consciousness, bliss. (SR: But manifesting as anything?) No. (SG: It looks sort of a void?) No. Bliss, sat-chit-ananda, absolute reality and that cannot be comprehended by the finite mind. You have to experience that state. There are no words to describe it. (SG: That means that there are no vibratory colors, sounds or do they exist in a different…?) Why do you need color and sound. Who needs the color and sound? (SG: I've just grown used to them.) So what you want is enlightenment according to your rules and regulations. (SG: No not really, I guess there is a light-hearted way of trying to imagine what a world without anything in operation.) You can't. You can't imagine it. That's virtually impossible to imagine. There is bliss, there is harmony, there is love, there is compassion and those things just happen. You have no idea that they are happening to you or from you. You become the embodiment of love, of joy, of bliss. SK: Then can't these qualities that we’re talking about even unimaginable by the mind as to what they really are? R: Exactly. The mind cannot comprehend the infinite. The mind is only a bunch of thoughts, a conglomeration of thoughts of the past and the future. But the mind is only for your body. It is because you have a body that you have a mind. And because you have a mind you have a body. They both go together and they are both false. SR: Robert, these questions about what it's like later, kind of bring up a sort of a Buddhist feeling that I have into reading people like Wang Fo and Lee Hi and that in a sense what we are really trying to do is put away that ‘what if,’ and ‘what will happen later’ and live in the present moment. It seems like our problems are always geared toward, if I have a purpose it's in the future if I'm going to meet somebody? You know the mind is geared toward what if… (R: Yes of course.) …and it seems like with this awakening, that process will come to an end and we finally for the first time what we really see right now. It seems like our problems in a sense are always, we are not seeing what's in front of us, we are always jumping ahead with our greed and our feelings. The Buddhist say get rid of greed, anger and delusion. It's like we don't ever see what we are really seeing because we are not ever in the present we are always jumping into what does this mean to me and what will happen later and when will I be fulfilled. (R: Or in the past.) Yeah. R: We worry about the past and worry about the future. That's why we have to annihilate the mind. Get rid of it completely. (SR: We've really never seen the world in a certain sense because we are always doing that with our minds, going from the past to the future.) The mind is only given to us for our physical existence. If you go beyond your physical existence who needs a mind? You become mind-less and you stay happy. (tape break) Remember to love your Self to worship your Self, to bow to your Self, to pray to your Self because God dwells in you as you. Peace… (tape ends)

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)

Robert: It's good to be with you again. I'm really happy that we've got a small group. Not too many people here but more seem to be coming. When Henry first invited me to his house to have this satsang, he told me, "Robert we'll fill up the room for you. We'll have hundreds of people." And I said, "Henry we don't want hundreds of people. We want substance. We want quality not quantity. We want a few good devotees who want to awaken in this incarnation and become free and liberated." So Henry said, "Well what would happen if too many people come?" So I replied, "I'll know exactly what to say, so they won't come back again." And that's what's been happening. Most people are seekers. They go from one movement to the next, one teacher to the next. One lecture to the next and they never practice anything. How do they expect to get anywhere? We want to do something positive here and make something happen so that you don't have to come back again and again. And play the game of life over and over again. What is it everyone really wants out of life? What is everyone looking for? What do people really want more than anything else? And the answer is happiness. Everything you do is for happiness. You get married to be happy. You get divorced to be happy. You have a job and you go to work, so you can make money to bring you happiness. But as we learn it is never lasting. What we really want is eternal happiness. Happiness that lasts forever. Happiness that does not change. We want eternal happiness. Think about that, unalloyed happiness. Happiness that never goes away. Now the question is: Is there such a thing? And if there is, how do I get it? Well, the answer to the first question is yes, there is such a thing and you get it by not allowing your mind to go out into the world. By keeping your mind in your heart. When your mind goes out into the world it spoils it. It's like the sun. The sun is always shining. Sometimes the clouds cover the sun. But do we say there's no sun? Only the ignorant men will say there's no sun. We realize the clouds have covered the sun. And after a while the clouds will dissipate and we'll have happiness once again. For the sun will shine once again. It's exactly the same thing with happiness. We have allowed our mind to make us believe that external conditions can bring us happiness. We have to learn the hard way, that's not true. External conditions can only bring us misery. The first thing we have to understand is this: That everything in this universe, galaxies, stars, planets, suns, moons, people, places, cockroaches, animals, minerals are all a manifestation of your mind, even God, are all a projection of your own mind. You have invented your own Gods with your mind. And it's that God that brings you misery, because you look at this God as a Santa Claus. When your wishes are not fulfilled you become upset. And you blame God. Little do you know that you have created your own God in your own image. Everything, everything, is a projection of your mind. So how do you attain happiness? By allowing your mind to go back within yourself and resting in your heart. Happiness is your divine nature. Happiness is what you are. Yet you can only know this when your mind is quiet and peaceful and still. At that time it makes no difference what's going on in the world. You will be happy, blissful, peaceful. As an example: A person buys a lottery ticket, he wants to win lottery. Keeps buying lottery tickets every week. The mind has gone out, it has gone into the world and has told you that you may win the lottery. So you buy lottery tickets for years. And you're anxious, you're stressful, you're distraught, you're unhappy, because you're buying lottery tickets. Your goal is to win the lottery. After ten years of buying lottery tickets you finally achieve your goal, you win forty-million dollars. After the excitement wears off, something strange happens to you. You feel quiet, you feel blissful, you feel happy and you have no idea what happened. You believe it's winning the money that has caused you to feel happy like this. But it's not. What has happened is simply this: Once you've achieved your goal, you become quiet. There's no goal to strive for. Therefore your heart has excepted your mind. Your mind has gone back into your heart. You're automatically happy. It has nothing to do with the money or the winnings. Now how long does this last before your ego starts playing games with you again? So start thinking to yourself, my relatives and my friends are only coming to see me because they want my money. I haven't paid the IRS. They'll probably take half of it and I'll only have twenty-million left. People may try to kidnap me and hold me for ransom, what am I going to do? So you hire body guards. You build a fence around your home and your happiness is gone. But when you build a fence around your home and you hire bodyguards you feel happy again because you've reached another goal. The reason you feel happy again is because your mind has gone back into your Self. And your Self is naturally happy, but you believe it's because you secured yourself that's brought you happiness and so it goes. On and off like a yo-yo. You're happy when you achieve a goal and you're miserable when you're searching for something. The external world can bring you nothing but misery. We have to learn that lesson the hard way unfortunately. Here's another example: A person wants to get married, they want a mate. They go searching and they're unhappy until they find the right mate. They go from one person to the other, one person to the other. Then they finally go to the right bar and pick up the right person and say, "This is the girl I want or this is the guy I want." And you think you're happy. Once you give up thinking and acquiring and searching, again the mind goes back into the heart. When the mind is back into the heart you automatically stay happy. But you think it's because you found the right mate. Now how long does this happiness last? Your ego takes over again and you start thinking. I wonder if my mate has a new friend, a new boyfriend, a new girl friend. I'm getting tired of him or her, I'll go searching for somebody else. It's getting boring living with this person and you become miserable again, until you go get somebody else. When you get somebody else, you feel happy for the moment, or for the day, or for the week or for the month, or for the year. Your mind has gone back into the heart. That is the only thing that makes you happy, because happiness cannot be found in the world. For the world is not what you think it is. The world is not real by itself, but Brahman is real. Brahman is the world. The world is only real when you realize the world is Brahman. Brahman is consciousness. What is this like? It's like a chalkboard. Imagine the chalkboard as consciousness. You draw pictures on the chalkboard. Pictures of galaxies, of pyramids, of stars, of worms, of people. Are the drawings real? The drawings are only as real as the chalkboard, because without the chalkboard you couldn't have the drawing. So the drawings represent the universe. The chalkboard represents consciousness. Then you erase all the drawings and you draw a baby. You erase the baby, you draw the baby growing up as a young person. You erase the young person and you draw a young person growing up in their fifties and sixties. Then you erase that and you draw another person dying, same person. But what has happened to the chalkboard all this time? Nothing, the chalkboard remains the same. The universe changes, people change. You're born, you grow older, you die, but consciousness is always the same. The problem is wrong identification. We are identifying with the images, with the world, with creation. We are not identifying with consciousness. When you identify with consciousness, creation becomes like a moving picture. It comes and goes but you do not react. You do not react to good things and you do not react to bad things. They're both two sides of the same coin and they're both impostors, illusions. It's like a dream. You may say to me, "Robert this sounds ridiculous, how can the world be like a dream?" Well, think of it this way. When you do dream. When you are dreaming, do you not project the entire universe in that dream? In that dream you have a star, you have a galaxy, you have a moon, you have a sun, you have houses, you have people, you have oceans, you have everything in the dream. Where does it come from? It's amazing how your mind unconsciously when you're dreaming can manifest all those things. And also you're in the dream yourself. You see yourself in the dream as a baby. You grow older, you join the army, you get into a war, you get wounded, you come home in a wheel chair and then you get married, you have children. All this is happening in the dream. Then one day there's an earthquake. Buildings are falling, the ground is opening swallowing up people and you're screaming and then you see me. And I'm very calm and I say, "Don't worry my friend, this is only a dream." But you look at me like I'm crazy. You say, "What are you talking about, can't you see what's happening? The earth has opened up and it's swallowing people and you're telling me this is a dream? You must be out of your mind!" So I say, "My friend be calm, it’s only a dream," but you don't believe me. Then the earth opens up where you are and it swallows you up and then a funny thing happens. You wake up! What happened to all my problems? What happened to my crippled body? What happened to the earthquake? You have awakened. It's no longer a dream. Now I am sitting here telling you that your life is like a dream and not to worry, not to fear. But to be still and know that I am God. To understand that you are consciousness. That you are pure awareness. That you are absolute reality, that you are parabrahman, that you are sat-chit-ananda, but you don't believe me. You think you're mortal. You identify with your body consciousness. You identify with events in this world. And your mind is always plotting, always planning, always wanting to be bigger than you are. Thinking of something wrong and you're going to correct it. You have arrogance and belligerency. For you don't believe your true nature and this is because your mind again, has gone out into the world instead of you letting your mind rest in your heart. Here's another example: Imagine if you will a man going into the sun. And the sun is 140 degrees. Now the sun and the heat represents your mind going out into the world. You start to burn, you see a shade tree. You run underneath the shade tree and you feel comfortable, relaxed and peaceful and happy. But after a while you forget about that and you want some more sun. So you go back out into the sun. And you're burning and sweating again. This is equivalent to you setting out your mind into the world and getting caught up in the worlds events. Getting caught up in your personal problems, believing your life is important as it is. But then you see the shade tree again and you remember how good that felt and so you go back into the shade tree and you sit beneath it and you feel cool again, refreshed and calm and happy. But only a fool and ass-hole would go back into the sun and burn and then go back into the shade and be calm. And then go out into the sun and burn. Only a fool would do that. The wise person would stand under the tree and be calm and cool. Now let's take a look at your life. How many problems do you think you have? Do you believe anything is wrong with your life because you want more of something that you're not getting? The only reason you think you have a problem is because the world is not turning the way that you want. It's wrong identification. You have to begin to identify with consciousness, with absolute reality and not with your everyday affairs. So how do you attain happiness? How do you keep your mind from going out? Simple. You do not react to anything. You do not think further than your nose. You do not allow your thoughts to grab hold of you and tell you anything. Even if it appears right. When you see a situation, good or bad, you do not react. If you win the lottery and you win forty-million dollars, you do not react. For you realize it will bring its own effects. We live in a world of duality. For every good there's a bad. For every bad there's a good. For every up there's a down. This is the way of the world. If you come into extreme what you call good, you will have to experience the equivalent which is bad, what you call bad. In reality there is no good and there is no bad. But your mind makes it so. So the first step is you do not react, you become the witness of the world unfolding. You realize that everything is the Self and I am that. You witness everything in the world, but you do not get involved. When I say you do not get involved I don't mean you just stay home and sit in the bath tub and do nothing. I mean your body came to this earth to do something. And your body is under its own laws of karma. But for whom does karma exist for you or for your body? Only for your body. Therefore if you identify with your body you suffer. If you identify with your Self, which is consciousness, you are always happy. Now if that gets difficult for you, you practice atma-vichara, self-inquiry. When your mind starts thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking about good and bad, you simply ask the question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" You do not answer you simply pose the question to yourself. Everything happens within yourself. "To whom do these thoughts come?" The answer will eventually come to you. "These thoughts come to me. I think them. I think them? I do? Who is this I. Well what is the source of the I?" You hold on to the I, but you do not concentrate on the I, you concentrate on the source. "Well what is the source of the I." For it seems that all of my problems are attached to I. For I say, "I feel bad. I feel upset. I feel angry. I feel cheated. I feel emotional," or even "I feel good. I feel happy," that's human happiness. You feel happy because somebody gave you something you like or somebody did something for you. That's just as bad as feeling depressed. I feel this and I feel that, I feel that I am a Jnani, I feel that I am not a Jnani, I feel all kinds of things. But there's always I, I, I. If you investigate you will find that everything is attached to the I. And if you get rid of the I, all of your problems, the whole world, the whole universe, God and everything related to it, will disappear. And the source will be your true Self which is pure consciousness, ultimate oneness, nirvana, emptiness. This is your true Self. And you will look at the world as your Self. You will still see the world but you will see it differently. Nothing will ever upset you again. For you will realize that the world is your Self. How can you be upset at your Self? You have become an embodiment of divine love, bliss, pure intelligence, ultimate awareness, sat-chit-ananda, parabrahman, that is omnipresence. So how can you be angry or upset over anything if you are pure consciousness, you just cannot. Do you see what I'm saying? If you learn to identify yourself with consciousness, you will always be happy. If you keep identifying with world conditions or with your body or your mind, you will be miserable and you'll have short spurts of happiness, when things go your way. But then you will not trust people. You will be suspicious of everybody's motives and you will feel that there's something wrong. If you want to know whether you're a Jnani or not, ask yourself, "When was the last time I saw something wrong? When was the last time something wasn't right when I had a bad thought when I believed somebody was doing something to me, or when I became angry," and that will give you a good inclination where you're coming from. What you see in yourself, you see in everyone else. If you're self-realized, then you know your Self as omnipresence and you can only see love, peace, harmony and happiness in everybody. The choice is yours. The only freedom you've got on this planet, in this universe, is to make the choice to go within and not to react to any condition. Everything else about you is preordained. Everything else about you is prarabdhic karma. Even when I lift my hand like this, it's karmic. But what have I got to do with my hand? I am not my hand, I am not my body, I am not my mind, I-am that I-am. Absolute awareness, pure intelligence, absolute reality, parabrahman, nirvana. I am spaceless, I am birthless, I am deathless. Water cannot drown me and fire cannot burn me. That is my true nature. Find your true nature my friends and you'll always be happy. Om shanti. Now let's do a little chanting and then we'll eat and our friend Rahul will play for us. Rahul is a great musician. I am honored he's come today to play with us, in this game called life, before we eat. (pause for music and eating — then Robert continues) R: …about what I was talking about or anything else you'd like to talk about. SB: So if consciousness is all there is and that's our real nature, so this ego is the refusal of that, a non-acceptance. And the whole structure seems to be a refusal, a defending against this nothingness or this everything-ness that consciousness is? R: Yes, but let me ask you, "For whom is the refusal? Who refuses?" (SB: The ego.) Get rid of the ego and the refusal will stop. Ask yourself, "To whom does the ego come?" and you will realize that you never had an ego, that it does not exist. SB: So ever since we were born, we're getting education that there is an ego, education is always to the ego. (R: Speak for yourself.) I mean, the whole educational system in the whole of the Western world is presuming that there is this ego that needs to be educated. R: Well, never mind about the Western world, what do you think? Leave the world alone. (SB: I think I've been ruined by society. (laughter) Maybe I wanted to know.) Forget about that, leave the world alone. There's a greater power than you that knows how to take care of the world. Concentrate on your Self. If you understand who you are, you will understand what the world is too. And you will love the world as Brahman, as the Self. SK: Is it more helpful to take responsibility in that way? By acknowledging that we duped ourselves and to go on from there? R: Do not dwell too much on the negative. Concentrate on the source, which is absolute reality, pure consciousness. SK: Sort of like going either way, whether we duped ourselves or the world duped us it doesn't matter just let go… R: Forget about that, realize all that is attached to your personal I. And follow the I to the source. Where you will become your true Self. At that time everything will take care of itself and there will be no question about that at all. SB: Robert, if consciousness is all there is and we are that and that has to be the case every moment, so in every moment the ego lives this separative consciousness, a separative ego is always created and imposing itself upon pure consciousness? R: Why do you worry about how the ego is being created? You have no ego. Realize that you are egoless. That you are absolute intelligence. And your true nature is shining forth from you right now. Focus on that part. Remove the negatives by not thinking of them. As soon as they begin to come to you, do not react to them, do not fight them, ignore them or witness them. As they become too much for you, ask, "To whom do they come?" and you'll get right back to the I and you follow the I to the source until it demolishes itself and disappears and annihilates itself. And only absolute reality will be left. Only consciousness will be left. So do not focus too long on the other. You leave the negatives alone, just follow the I. Because all the problems, all the negatives are attached to the I. Get rid of the I and everything else will go with it, then you'll be free. SB: Most people when they sit quietly, then they feel this emptiness a great fear arises in them, then they refuse that, then they run away from that. (R: Well let them run away and let them do what they want, but what are you going to do?) Well I realize that that's what I've been doing. R: Ask, "To whom does the fear come? Fear of what?" Ask yourself, “Why do I have this fear? Who has this fear? I do, Who am I? Where does this I come from who has this fear?" Hold onto the I with all your might, like you're holding onto a rope. And follow it down to the source and then let go. And become the source, merge with the source of your existence. Then you will realize that you've never existed and you will never exist. You are just pure being, absolute reality, the Self. Don't worry about the others that'll take care of itself. SB: When you say, "Hold on to the I," and when I try to hold on to the I, I only find memory. I only find the feeling of memory even if there's no thoughts there's still this feeling of me. This feeling is a presumption of this familiarity of memory. R: Then you have to ask yourself again, "To whom does this memory come? Who feels this way?" And you go back to I again. Everything is around the I. Everything is attached to the I. Memory, fears, frustrations, anger, past lives, everything has to do with the I. As soon as you dissolve the I, there's no karma, there are no past lives, there is no judgement, there's no God, there's no retribution, there's no Self, there's no realization, there's only consciousness. SI: It seems to me that you have to in the beginning, since because I don't have any idea what consciousness is and I can't identify with emptiness, that I have to believe this to begin with. I mean, I don't know, do I? So what I have to do is believe that this is so. R: You should believe nothing that I say. I maybe telling you a lie, why should you believe me at all. But what you should do is to experiment with yourself. The factory of experimentation is within you. Work on yourself, find out for yourself and see what happens. Practice on yourself. Do not believe anything, but practice on yourself and find out what happens, see what happens. Then you will know, the guru, God, consciousness are all within you. You are that. Check it out, find out for yourself. SH: What are you looking at? (R: Who?) You, your eyes are very set, they're looking outward.) R: I'm not looking at anything. (SH: No?) There's nothing to look at. (SH: That sounds peaceful.) There's just space, empty space. (SH: You're looking into nothingness.) I'm looking into my Self and I see you. (SH: Yeah? That's your illusion.) (laughter) But I see you as the Self. I see you as me. (SH: Oh that's okay.) Do you like that? (SH: Yeah, I admire that.) R: Okay lets eat. (laughter as tape ends)

Robert: (tape starts abruptly) …to do anything they want. No real Sage has ever eaten meat. Not because they are particular about it but because they follow a satvic diet. It appears to me that the higher you go in consciousness the less food you eat. And the food that you do eat is pretty pure. Not for any particular reason, but that's the way it is. But still when you think of all the turkeys… (laughter) …that were slaughtered, millions of turkeys, seems strange. Anyway, I welcome you with all my heart. Notice what I said. “‘I,’ welcome you.” I did not say my body welcomes you. (laughter) I said, "I welcome you." Whenever I use the pronoun ‘I,’ I always refer to consciousness. So my I is the same as your I. There's only one I. There's only one person. There's only absolute awareness. That I is consciousness. That I is you and me. So when I say, "I welcome you," I'm referring to all of us, as ‘I.’ Yet the body has nothing to do with it. As long as we're stuck in the body-mind phenomena, we mean "I" as a person welcomes you. But "I" as a person has nothing to do with you whatsoever. Only ‘I’ is consciousness. It is none other than your Self. That's called ultimate oneness. I received some phone calls from some of you last week about a lesson we had on Sunday. They still can't understand, how to solve your problems. And that's usually what my phone calls are all about from people. Everybody appears to have a problem. Whether it's depression or loneliness, or lack, or limitation, or a sickness. There is always a problem. And they want to know how to resolve the problem. There's only one way to resolve the problem, so that it never comes back and that's not at the level of the problem. That's to go higher than the problem, to ignore the problem and to realize, who it is who has the problem. Think of your problem, if you have any. You say, "I have a problem." The mistake that you're making is you're identifying I with your body and your mind. Then that's the only problem you've got. You still believe that you are the problem or the body or the doer or the mind. That is the only problem you've got, no other problem. So, if the problem of I is resolved, every other problem is resolved also. And people cannot grasp this. But think about it if you will. Whenever you have a problem of any kind, whatever it may be, who do you say has the problem? You say, "I have a problem." You're referring to your body, aren't you. You're referring to your mind. But if you can catch yourself and say, "Who is this I, that thinks it has a problem?" You will realize that I never had a problem. The body appears to have a problem. Only you are not your body. You have absolutely nothing to do with your body. Try to remember this all of the time. Your body is under the law of karma. There is no karma, there is no body. But as long as you believe you've got a problem, is because you believe you are the body. You therefore have to work from that point. And realize, my body is under its own laws and rules of karma, it has absolutely nothing to do with me, I am absolutely free. When you look at it this way you become the witness to your body. You become the witness to your thoughts. It happens by itself. You do not say, "I am the witness." You say, "The witness is observing my body. It has to be an "I" to observe, where did that I come from? What is the source of that I?" Find out. But if you use the other method, say for instance, somebody's suing you in court. So you say, "I've got a problem because somebody's suing me." If you respond physically and you worry and you fear and you believe something is wrong, then you may win the court case or lose the court case. But whatever you do, you've not risen higher than the problem. Which means you're going to have to repeat it again and again until you get to the point where you do not react to the condition. Now what do I mean by not react. Do you ignore the summons to go to court? No, you don't. (students laugh) You do what has to be done. When you go to court, but you realize, "Who's going to court? My body is. My body's going to court, but who is my body? There is no body. There is no court. It's all an illusion. It is, really" (students laugh) And then, really, if you look at it that way, something good is going to happen. (more laughter) Strange as it may seem you will overcome and transcend that predicament. But if you don't if you react like everybody else does with fear, and say, "I'm not guilty. I didn't do it." Then you've got a problem. You're going to have to repeat that condition over and over again, as I mentioned before until you're able to realize that nothing has ever happened to I. I is free. I has always been free. Now put yourself in the other position. Say somebody steals something from you and you sue them in court. And this time you're the plaintiff. Again if you lower yourself to that position you may win the case and get a judgement. But that does not end the condition for you karmically. It means karmically your body's going to go through it again and again and again. If you check the court records you're going to find something very interesting. You're going to find that the people who sue and get sued, come to court again and again. They're always in some kind of trouble, they're always suing and they're always being sued. It's the same people.(laughs) It's the same people that go round and round and round. They're on a treadmill and they never get off. The same with a doctor or dentist. If you look through the doctors records and the dentists records, it's the same people coming back all the time. Once in a while you get a new patient. But once you get hung up with doctors and dentists you keep going back again and again and again. They make sure you do. Have you ever gone to a dentist when they haven't found anything wrong with you. There's always a filling you need. And if you don't have one they'll make one. (students laugh) Because that's how they make their money. What I'm trying to say is don't get stuck on that level. Raise yourself in consciousness. By asking yourself, "Who's going through this? I am. Who is I? Am I my body? Am I my mind?" Find out. Who you are really. When the realization comes and that you are not your body everything will be resolved in an amicable way for all concerned. Why? Due to the fact, that consciousness is harmony and bliss. If you become consciousness, you can only experience harmony and bliss. And that includes your body also, due to the fact that you have no body. So what appears as a body becomes harmonious and blissful to you. To other people you may look like you're dying. But as far as you're concerned there's nobody there to die. There's nobody there to have a problem. This is something practical you can work with. The realization again is that everything is attached to the I. Everything, the courthouse, the plaintiff, the defendant, the summons, the doctors and dentists. It's all part of the I. Therefore don't try to change the things with the effects. Go to the cause and ask yourself, "Why am I going through all this?" And the answer will be, "Because you're a jerk." (students laugh) "You won't accept the I." (more laughter) So you have to go through this again and again and again until you do. And that's what happens. You have one experience after the other and you're identifying your I with the condition, aren't you? And you're saying, aren't you, "I'm going through this condition. I'm experiencing this." But that's not true, that's false identification. I, am apart from the body phenomena. My body doesn't listen to the I. Remember your body is under its own laws. Your body does what it likes. Does it ask your permission to do anything? Of course not. When you have to go to the bathroom does the body ask the "I," can it go to the bathroom? It makes you feel that you have to go to the bathroom. When you catch a cold, does the body ask the permission of "I" to catch a cold? Of course not. It catches a cold. But the mistake has been that you've identified the "I" with the body. Now you know that "I" is not the body, I is consciousness, I is parabrahman, I is ultimate oneness, I is sat-chit-ananda and that is your real nature. Any questions about that? SR: I have a few questions, getting back to the problem, you know we started this with talking abut the problem. Buddha's first noble truth, you know, "That life is suffering?" It seems like there's always a problem, but like Ramana said the real trick is to find out who the problem is, so the appearance of these things like the summons or the traffic ticket or whatever, you know, it's a problem in one sense and in another sense it's really grace. It seems like. (R: It's grace if you realize the "I.") Yeah, I mean it only turns you in eventually because sooner or later because you know you can get tired of dealing with it on another level I think. R: Unfortunately what happens Richard is most people never get tired. (laughter) They go through life after life after life after life until they will awaken one day which is true. (SR: Maybe it will happen but we just want to be around for others?) (laughs) But ultimately it will happen. But if they would get their "I" together then they wouldn't have to go through all that. So think about your problems. Do you have any problems, think. And don't you say, "I have the problem?" Now can you see your mistake? I has no problem whatsoever. I is completely free. Abide in the I. Grab hold of the I. And the work you do again is you ask, "To whom does this come? To me." Me is the same as I. You hold on to the sense of me. Remember it's only a sense of me. Me doesn't exist. And you follow it to its source. How do you follow it to its source? Through silence. When you ask, "What is the source of me?" You keep silent. And the answer will come by itself. Remember you never answer the question because it's your ego answering. Whatever answer you come to in your mind, it comes from your ego. In this process we're trying to annihilate the mind and the ego together. And the only way to annihilate the mind and ego is through silence. When there are no thoughts, there's no mind. When you try to evaluate your problem and resolve it, your mind is making a lot of noise. Therefore you can never resolve your problem really. You may stop it for a time but it will continue again and again, and come back in different ways to haunt you. As an example: A person has a tumor in the neck. Instead of finding the cause of the tumor they go to a surgeon. And the surgeon grabs a sharp little knife and says, "I want to cut this out" and of course you let the surgeon cut it out. Because after all he or she is a surgeon, they know and they've got sharp knives. But what happens later. A month later the tumor grows back on the other side of the neck. So you go back to the surgeon and you say you need a head transplant. (laughter) And he cuts off that tumor, so now you've got two big scars. A month later it grows back on your arm and you go on and on like that. Due to the fact the surgeon didn't try to find the cause he merely tried to get rid of the effect. And that's the same thing you do when you try to resolve your problems. You're working with effect, not with the cause. The cause is consciousness. And when you identify with the cause, the problem disappears of its own accord due to the fact that it never really existed and you become free. So, if you're having trouble sitting in the silence, when you follow the I. When you ask, "From whence does this I come," and you abide in the I and you abide into silence, but you have trouble sitting in the silence, then you should begin practicing the mantra, "I - I," and say that to yourself over and over again, "I - I, I - I, I - I." This will keep your mind from thinking. It will help to make your mind empty. So you can sit in the silence without thinking. You have to do something. Again do not get down to the level of the problem. That's no way to solve a problem by getting down to its level. Merely rest in the I. The I will lead you to silence and in the silence there's consciousness. There's pure intelligence and absolute awareness, there's emptiness, there's nirvana. You will experience all these phrases of consciousness. If you follow the I to its source. Any questions about that? SD: I've got a question but I can't think how to phrase it. You've taught us that by selfinquiry if you follow the I-thought you will find that ultimately there is an no I. And assuming that that's so, you've also given us a mantra to still the mind that says, as you breath in, "Who am I?" and then as you pause, "I am pure consciousness" and exhale, "I am not the body." Well, who is the ‘I’ who is pure consciousness if there is no I? (R: Your Self. You are.) So the problem seems to be a matter of semantics with our language because it seems to me like you're talking about two different "I's?” R: There's the ‘I’ which is the personal-I and there's the "I" which is consciousness. (SD: So the ‘I’ that is the personal I is the one that disappears.) Yes, and then the ‘I’ remains as I-am. (SD: But I thought that you said that the ‘I’ disappeared all together?) The personal "I" disappears all together. (SD: But not the real "I"?) There is a real "I" as far as it goes. But who needs a real "I"? (laughter) (SD: Well in the phrase I-am pure consciousness, who is that "I"? God. (SD: But we're still using the pronoun, I?) Because you can't do any better than that. (laughter) (SD: So that's what I mean it’s semantics more or less.) You can call it semantics. You follow the personal I, it turns into I-am. I-am is consciousness and then there's silence. What you want to achieve is the silence. In other words you don't want to go around saying, "I'm the real I, I'm the real I." Otherwise it's like a tree saying, "I'm a tree, I'm a tree." (SD: Right.) But for your own good and for your own practice it turns into the real I-am and the real I-am is silence, quietness. There are no thoughts. SH: So beyond the phrase, "I-am pure consciousness" is silence? R: I am pure consciousness is synonymous with silence, it’s the same thing. But when you want to express the silence you express it as pure consciousness. Feel how happy you are when you're not thinking at all, when your thoughts are very few. The fewer the thoughts the happier you become. The trouble begins when you think a lot. That's why I always say, "Do not think past your nose." As soon as you see the thoughts coming out, immediately stop them, by asking yourself, "To whom do they come? To me," abide in the me, hold on to the me. Follow it to its source. Which is I-am or silence or quietness. Then there's total happiness, unbroken happiness, unalloyed happiness. Total peace and bliss and joy, which never goes away. What do you think of that? SH: Sounds okay. (Robert laughs) SV: The sense of "I” you're talking about holding onto the sense of "I?" (R: Yes.) Is that the most I could possibly do humanly? (R: No, of course not.) As far as practice goes? R: There are a lot of things you can do humanly. You can take a cold shower. (SV: No I mean practice wise.) Yeah, you can take a cold shower, it helps you. Because a cold shower changes your metabolism and makes you more aware. Try it. (SV: I don't like cold showers.) That's the object. (SV: Sorry?) That's just it. If you take one, say you're feeling out of sorts and you're feeling depressed, if you take a cold shower the depression will go away. (SV: Well you forget about it.) Well you forget about it? (SD: Well you forget about the depression because you're so cold. (laughs) That's it sure, many changes come. But then it gives you time to practice. Whereas before you couldn't practice because you were too depressed. But now the depression lessens because you took a cold shower and you're able to practice. You're able to go within. Whereas before it was virtually impossible to do. You were too caught up in the problem. Or you can become the witness and just observe your depression. Observe you actions, just watch, look, intelligently, systematically. Watch your thoughts. Become aware of your thoughts. Aware of your feelings and do nothing. That also quiets your mind. Everything you do, all of your sadhana is to quiet the mind. To make the mind still. That's what you really want. Therefore use whatever method you have to in order to still the mind. There's nothing really profound about it, it's simple, you want to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet. Your real nature ensues all by itself. Everything happens by itself. But when your mind is noisy, then it appears that you have to work, diligently, to do something to change your consciousness. Whereas in truth, there very little you have to do. Simply practice self-inquiry or bhakta. Become a bhakta, where you surrender completely to God. When you say, "Not my will but thine" and you totally surrender. In other words, you give God your life and your affairs and your problems. But you remember not to give an outside God that. There's no outside God. You're giving it to God within yourself and then you become that God yourself. They both lead to freedom, to liberation. You've got all kinds of choices to make and believe me, that's the only choice you've got. The choice not to react to anything and to turn within whatever you choose. That's the only freedom you've got. Everything else is karmic. Good. SG: Robert, who has the choice? R: The Self. The Self is self-contained. It gives you a choice, as a body, to find out you're not the body. You're doing it all by yourself. I'm talking about the ego-self. (SG: The ego self doesn't exist?) Of course not, but you believe it does because you've got the problem. (SG: That's true.) As long as you're experiencing problems. Do not walk around saying the ego doesn't exist. If the ego does not exist, there would be no need to solve the problem. But as long as you feel you have a problem to solve then you may know the ego still exists for you. If we all knew there was no ego, then this whole conversation will be redundant. The reason we're talking is because some of us believe we've got an ego. Even though we say we don't. That's why it's not wise to walk around saying, "I am Brahman, I am consciousness, I am pure awareness" while you're hurting and you believe there's something wrong with your life or something is not going right with your life. As long as you can feel and see that there is something wrong with your life, no matter what it is, no matter how righteous you think you are, then you must know you've got an ego and a body. Then you've got to work with the laws of karma to get rid of it. And that's where you practice loving kindness, joy, purity, eating a satvic diet and doing all the things that they teach you in yoga. But when the time comes, when you become realized it doesn't give you license to make an idiot out of yourself and that's something else we should discuss. There are many people walking around today, who believe they're realized and they're doing all kinds of foul things. And they say it doesn't matter. They justify by believing, "I can do anything I like because nothing exists." But even if you had that thought it shows you're not enlightened. Because if you were, there would be no one to think like that. Do you see? Thoughts like that don't even enter your mind. That I can do anything I want. (laughs) You're contradicting yourself, you're saying “I.” The “I” still exists for you. For you're saying I can do anything I like because I don't exist. If you didn't exist you wouldn't pose that question. SV: Because it relates to the body? R: Of course. So that's how we fool ourselves. But there are many people I used to know in other States and other countries, that really used to believe that they're enlightened. And one wound up in jail, one committed suicide, because they think this gave them license to do whatever they like. And believe me, when realization comes, you become very compassionate. You become the embodiment of humility. You become a joy for others, without thinking those things. It happens by itself. And there's no question about being enlightened or by not being enlightened. You don't think you're enlightened. Those words disappear. Those thoughts disappear. There's no such thing as being enlightened. That's just for the ajnani to consider, being enlightened or not being enlightened. But the point is: You do not go around committing foul deeds. I know somebody in the class. He's not here today. But he goes to porno movies all the time, and that's neither good nor bad. But he claims it doesn't matter because who's seeing the movie? (laughter) That's how he justifies it. So if somebody tells me that, I don't even bother to answer. We've got to be real careful. We have to be careful because this path, of Jnana Marga does not give you restrictions or rules and regulations. It only tells you to find the I. That's it. And everything will take care by itself. But be real careful. If you have all kinds of bodily feelings and urges and you think you're enlightened forget it. It's true that some of the people have read the book, "The divine mad man." I don't know if you've read it or not but I used to lend it to people. And that's a mistake because people take it literally. They think if you're enlightened you can go around doing all kinds of things to people, for the sake of their enlightenment. Don't even think of that. Because that person we read about in that book is so far advanced, we can't possibly imagine how he thinks. But many people try to emulate him. Be careful. Any questions about that? Yes? SR: Speaking of bodily urges. (laughter) You're saying that's a sign of those, is a sign that you’re not enlightened? R: People ask me usually, "Well how do you feel when you become self-realized?" And I always make the statement, "You become more human." Which means you expand, you become sort of omnipresent with love. Your feeling of love multiplies. Your feeling of humility increases a thousand fold. And you feel as if you are the body of the whole human race. You are the body of the universe. So the urges you get, are loving urges. Urges of humility, compassion, loving kindness. All the other urges are bodily urges. If you're realized they go away. (S: (Students asks about bodily urges.)) It changes, it modifies them. There's a lot of controversy about that. But you still can use your body and still have sex if you want to, but the feelings completely different. It's beyond humanity and you cannot describe it, it's ineffable. SD: Is that why Maharshi I believe said that you can be married or unmarried, rich or poor and still be realized? (R: Exactly, it has nothing to do with that.) So if you were married presumably you would still have bodily, human like… (R: Some would and some wouldn't. It depends.) But you said that it would be different or more transcendental? (R: It would be totally different.) SR: Robert, along these lines, in particular this day for me, in that area due to meeting someone I've known for a while and it was real interesting what happened. It was a very good feeling of being confined in a small space, you know what I mean? Kind of a different energy and then all of a sudden it just changed a couple of hours ago to this feeling of just being totally at home and secure in the universe. And I was listening to this beautiful music and it kept saying, "Passing through life like a child never knowing the reason, I've never strayed far from home," something like that. It seems like that was the answer to everything was, "Where is home?" Because those feelings had to take you out and away from where you really are. And when that sort of happened it was most peaceful and quiet that my mind's ever been I think. (R: That's good.) A lot of release that's why I'm laughing a lot. (R: That sounds good.) But it was like - I had been talking to Jim about it earlier because it was kind of an intense experience for me, and there's a real desire to sort of be human in a certain way. R: Well you shouldn't really deprive yourself. SR: Yeah, but even more so, kind of more like a certain sense of wanting to be indulgent but in a different way than ever before, you know. Like totally being one with the experience that one has, you might say, and even if they only happen in my mind, you know? (R: Umm.) And that's what seems to facilitate, it's like all of a sudden it's like an explosion, feeling really good was that I quit judging it or trying to just stay back. (R: That's it, yes.) Yeah you know, it's like whatever was happening, even if it was a fantasy that was reality too. R: That's it. What I was trying to say before, is you do not think about it. (SR: Yeah.) There are no thoughts saying should I or shouldn't I. There's just the experience. It's beyond words or thoughts. This is why I say all the time, when you get to that stage it's ineffable. There are no words to describe it. So we keep silent and we do not say anything and that describes it better. So when I say we become more human, I mean you expand. You take in the entire universe and you realize that everything is the Self and I am that. But that becomes meaningful to you. You do not use the words like I just mentioned. You just know it. You perceive that that's the way it is. But there are no words going through your mind. There are no longer words like should I or shouldn't I, am I right or am I wrong, is this good or is this bad. Just by being you, you are an asset to the human race, to the universe, to everything. But there are no words to describe it. There are no laws that you have to follow and no rules that you have to follow. But yet it's virtually impossible for you in that state to hurt anybody. You're beyond being hurt and you're beyond hurting anybody. It's a state of total humility, total compassion and total loving kindness. (SR: It didn't sound like motivation or any sense of intention too, it seems like.) Yes, that's true, because there is nobody there to be motivated. (SR: Right. And for anybody to be hurt or affected by it.) That's the ego of course. Only the ego can be affected or hurt or motivated. But when there's no ego there's nothing to think. And the doer is gone. So whatever you do is automatic, spontaneous. And it's an asset to the human race as I said, and hurts nobody. So again, if you still have to think is it right or wrong or if you still have to think am I hurting somebody, am I making the right decision, then you may know your ego is alive and well. SK: But at the same time isn't it good to go through those processes until ones ego is gone? R: To watch yourself, to observe yourself, to be the witness to that which is happening. And that again leads to silence. (SV: Otherwise you're caught up in the game again.) Of course, do not react to it. SR: Robert in my case there was a lot of fear of hurting somebody that was causing like a real compact - you know like memories were still really involved. And it seemed like what I was trying to do about it was to find somewhere where I could be safe and then as soon as I realized that was hopeless, then the whole thing seemed to revert to a completely different - it's like the world shifted entirely. It's like the fear of being hurt or would I hurt somebody was a memory that - it was almost like living a past way. R: Well that experience lets you know that you're half baked.) (laughter) (SR: What's that?) You're half baked. (Tape break. Tape continues with student questioning Robert's experience.) SH: …how old were you Robert? (R: Fourteen.) SD: But you had other spiritual experiences even before that? R: Yes I did. And then after that I spent the rest of my life confirming, what I felt. I didn't know any names like I do now. (SH: You have been bereft from the ego since you were fourteen?) You can call it that if you like, because in order for me to sit here and talk to you, I had to learn the names of these things, like ego, consciousness, abidance in the Self. I was just that before, but there was no name to it. Now I've given it names. SD: That was like Maharshi had no formal education in religion, but he could respond and talk about the scriptures. R: That’s right, yes, well what he did afterwards, is people gave him all the scriptures when he was in the cave. They used to bring him all kinds of books and he glanced through them and read them and go through it. And it confirmed his feelings. (SD: I mean because he'd already understood them being realized.) Yes. So he was able to talk to them. SG: But is there a need to confirm or is it just a part of the body-mind? R: There was no need but I used to think I was insane. I used to think there was something wrong with me because I just didn't respond. SK: You didn't then do a deliberate sadhana to get to that place because you didn't even know it existed? (R: Exactly.) It happened and you didn't even know what happened? R: I had no idea whatsoever. (SV: When you say that you thought you might be insane, of course you weren't suffering with that, you just…?) No, except I saw people in a different light. And they all responded to different things than I was. So I was sort of left out. Therefore I wanted to investigate what's going on. SN: But Robert is that why some people have to do sadhana and some people don't? R: It depends on your karma that doesn't exist, everybody's different. But selfrealization comes to everyone the same way basically. But if you have to do sadhana, you have to do sadhana. As long as you believe you're the ego or the body or the mind, then you have to do sadhana. And that helps you to become quiet and still. And when you're quiet and still, realization comes of its own accord. (SN: People that don't have to do sadhana are reaping the fruition of their karma?) You can say that. SH: In your case you didn't have to do any sadhana. You're like a patriarch in the Zen tradition. (Robert laughs) You heard of the daya sutra being recited on the street corners of China and that was it. (R: That's about the size of it.) Yeah (Students discuss the fifth patriarch of the zen tradition.) SN: If a person has no ego, do they know that? R: No, because there's no one left to know. There has to be a knower, to know whether you've got an ego or not. But when there's no knower there's no ego. You're just empty. There's just plain emptiness. (SN: So as long as you think that you don't have an ego…?) Then you've got an ego. (students laugh) SR: So it's a state of not knowing yourself really? Not knowing you're even there. (R: That's it.) Like that song, "A child passing through never knowing the reason." (R: True.) SV: So there's awareness, but there is no ego in that particular body-mind? R: There isn't even awareness, because who is left to be aware. There's nothing. (SV: And yet you're expressing the fact that there's no ego there?) Yes. (SV: My mind boggles.) Once again we go back to the sky is blue. (laughter) There's no sky and there's no blue, if you investigate. So if you investigate yourself, you will ultimately find that you never existed. (SV: Until that's discovered…) Then you do the sadhana. (SV: You acts as if you're doing different sadhanas?) Exactly that's why you have all these techniques. SN: While you're doing the sadhana, you're not affirming, in other words you're not trying to logically find it. You're actually trying to let go. R: You do it in reverse. You negate the world and the universe. And what's left over is your reality. (SN: So it's not a matter of understanding at all.) No. (SN: Once you try to understand it that's the problem.) There has to be somebody to understand. But if you get rid of that somebody then understanding is not necessary. SH: How can there be understanding without the one who understands? R: Well there's nothing to understand.) (SH: Like the witnessing without the witnesser?) That's true. (SH: Understanding without being receptive to understanding.) But again, there's nothing to understand and there's nothing to witness. There's just nothing. But nothing is everything. (SH: Here we are throwing semantics all around here and catching it.) Yes, that's what it amounts to. That's why the silence is the best teacher. When you get to that stage, silence. When you're questioning yourself and you get to the stage we just discussed, don't argue with yourself. Just keep still, keep quiet and you'll be amazed at what happens. SG: I keep getting to the point where I can't grasp it, where it doesn't make sense. R: Then just keep still, be still. Be still and know that I am God. When you're still the I-am knows itself as God. SD: Being still seems to be hard Robert. (Robert laughs) Stilling your mind, you know. Your mind is so busy. R: It appears to be. But if you use the processes I share with you, you'll get there. You can't lose with the stuff I use. (students laugh) SR: Today it seems like I had a problem and I could approach this in sort of a casual way. I was down at Santa Monica as the sunset was coming and I was walking around and I noticed the mind was agitated. Then I sat down and started basically quietening down and the beauty of it was unbelievable. The mind started gradually getting more quiet and quiet and quiet, but then it started again when I got up. So I came here and I drove in the traffic and instead of using that technique of starting with the outer and gradually working to the inner. I quickly noticed I went into a dream world, as soon as I started thinking that everything was a dream world. And that silenced the mind and it was like a total silence and it stayed for about the last hour and it was totally effortless way. And I've never seen that sort of approach before, but it was a kind of recognition that my reaction is to always go away from the silence. And as soon as I acknowledged that the silence was there. Because the other way was kind of like almost, you know stop the vibrations of things and gradually bring them to a quieter place. R: Everyone is unique. If that process works for you, use it, that's good. I'll never tell you to change anything, if it's working for you. If it quiets your mind it's good. Anything that quiets your mind is good, any technique. But the fastest way is through selfinquiry. SN: When you do self-inquiry, it's not really a matter of cause and effect though is it? R: No, it goes beyond that.) (SN: Is it karmic?) Self-inquiry?) (SN: No as I said, when you do self-inquiry it's not whether you get a result it's not a matter of cause and effect?) You're not looking for a result. (SN: But what if something transpires?) Nothing really transpires. (SN: Nothing transpires?) (laughter) You're simply asking yourself, "Who believes all this? Who needs anything to transpire?" It all goes back to your ego. SN: But I'm saying whether it's not a matter of cause and effect, It's not a matter of, "Well I do self-inquiry therefore I get this," it's more a matter of, "If self-inquiry works I get lost as the Self." R: It's a matter of becoming quiet. It's a matter of emptying your mind. But through self-inquiry it's the fastest way, when you ask yourself, "Who has to empty the mind?" And you realize that you have no mind to empty. There never was any mind and you become free. Do not make it complicated. Keep it as simple as possible. Just follow the I to the source and say, "I - I," if you have to, "I - I, I - I." If you use that method you'll notice that the space between "I - I," becomes greater and greater and it's in that space that you have to merge with. Between the I, I. It's like when you get up in the morning, before you become awake, that's realization. It's unconscious realization. But try to catch yourself tomorrow morning. As soon as you open your eyes before you have a chance to think, in that split second you're realized, that's realization. But try to be conscious of it. And hold onto it during the day. The same thing happens before you fall asleep. The moment before you fall asleep, you're realized. If you can catch yourself and hold onto it, then you're in your Self. That's it. And you're at peace. (SN: When you say, "Try to be conscious of it," who's conscious?) You are conscious. (SN: The ego?) The ego, yes, you have to work with the ego-mind. (SN: So the ego's conscious of its non existence?) The ego's conscious of its place before you wake up or before you go to sleep, you become conscious of it. And then the ego disappears and only consciousness prevails. SD: And that moment will be perfect stillness, is that right? R: Yes. The mind is quiescent and no thoughts have come yet. SH: Becoming conscious of the ego, stills it? R: Becoming conscious, the ego becomes conscious of the quietness and the ego disappears. You do not become conscious of the ego. (SH: No that would just feed it, strengthen it?) Yes. SU: I'd like to become more conscious of and to just stay as the I-am in the midst of everyday activities. R: If you practice the mantra "I - I," at night and in the morning, you will find that during the day, you're more calm and more peaceful. It'll happen by itself. SU: So often after I've been involved in activities, I've completely forgotten to bring everything back, I realize that I have been asleep. That I have not been able to bring it back and I can feel how different everything can be if it happens. If I'm quiet it's not so hard to feel this. R: Yes of course. But never be angry at yourself. Never condemn yourself. Never think you made a mistake. Rather observe yourself and realize what you've done in your mind, without condemnation and ask yourself, "Who wants me to experience this? I do. Who am I?" And again hold onto the I. If you want to you can imagine you're holding on to a rope. The I is the rope. And you're climbing down the rope to its end and that is the source of I. Then you let go of the rope and keep quiet and soon you will see what happens. You'll find that you stop falling and your body just disappears and you're in a space of bliss. SD: Letting go must be very frightening to the ego. R: Ah, in a way. But the ego is the rope. So you're letting go of the ego. (SD: What about in the rare moments, when I do reach absolute stillness. It seems what often interferes even more than thought is the sensory perception like a sound, yeah sounds is the most frequent I get.) You have to go beyond that. You have to inquire, "To whom is this sound coming to?" And again you go back to I. It comes to me. Hold on to the me. (SD: So you say, "Who hears this? Who's distracted?") Whatever comes go beyond it. By inquirying, "To whom it comes?" SN: If the "I" were to get a glimpse of the Self, if the ego were to get a glimpse of the Self and feel that peace wouldn't it become inflated and think, "I'm at peace, I'm at peace?" R: No, because if the ego gets a glimpse of the Self it will disappear. (SN: I'm saying like without nirvikalpa samadhi but not a sahaja samadhi.) In nirvikalpa samadhi you feel peaceful and joyous while you're in samadhi, but when you come out of it you become your old self again. (SN: Yeah but when you come out of it, into your old self wouldn't the ego tend to think, like I experienced it therefore I am at peace.) If you're inclined that way it would. But for some people it's just a passing point. They realize that they're experiencing nirvikalpa samadhi and I want to go further. (SN: Like a Trapur Maharsha?) Yes, everybody's a little different, that's why you should never compare yourself to anybody else. Never mind what gains anybody else is making, see yourself for what you are. Abide in the Self, love your Self, know your Self. Never put yourself down, never condemn yourself. No matter how many mistakes you make, do not condemn yourself. That's what blasphemy is, when you condemn yourself. Because your Self is really God. Therefore you realize, that the ego's been making mistakes, not God. And you inquire, "To whom do these mistakes come?" Then you go through the process again. "I've made the mistake again, I have." Well, again the "I" has, not you. The I is the body, the I is the mind. But I am not that I, I-am I-am. SV: Could you say that sense of I that you cling to that sense of I that you're saying to cling to? (R: Yes, what about it?) Is that feel kind of like love? What is it? I can't really feel it out? R: Not really. What you cling to is your ego, in the beginning. You cling to the sense of your ego and you're following it. The reason you're clinging to it, is because you want to follow it to its source. It's only when you get to the source… (SV: Like right now, I don't know what it is, I can't seem to find it?) (laughter) Then you don't have it. (SV: I have this sense of love. What I'm saying is why not cling to that?) You can cling to that if it's really love, then by all means still cling to it. Cling to love, hold on to it. (SV: It feels like love, for my Self even.) Hold onto it and see what happens. (SV: …and it feels like it's very peaceful.) Hold onto it and see what happens. SK: But the "I" is the non-self? (R: Because you're holding on to the self. You're holding on to…) Other than being the self? SV: It's not even like holding onto it, it's more like it's right there? I'm really not holding onto it, it's just allowing it to be there. (R: Do you know it's there?) Do I know it's there? There doesn't seem to be an I to know it's there, it's just there. R: Then it's there, that's good. That's a good sign. SH: If it's there why do you have to hold on to it? (R: That's right.) SV: There's no holding on to it. R: If the Self is there, there is never anything to hold onto. But if it's the ego that thinks it's the Self and is fooling it by imagining it's love, then you have to hold on to it. SR: So your holding on is like just saying, don't hallucinate that it's not there anymore ina- sense, don't put something in its place? R: Yes, as long as somebody feels, then you have to hold on. So you have to hold on until the feeling goes away, and you get to the source. (laughs) SK: So you're holding on with the intention of who is experiencing it. (R: Yes.) You're holding on to it with the objective of doing that process so it dissolves the ego too. R: Yes. All the holding on, all the ropes and all the things you're holding on to, the ego, is all from the mind. It's all a projection of your mind. When you really feel love, it's indescribable. There's no mind, there's no projection. There's nothing going out and there's nothing coming in. And there's nobody left to feel anything. SK: Are you really telling us what we're experiencing all the time? (R: Yes.) SG: So you're doing self-inquiry and you're holding to the sense of I and the sense of I is associated very strongly with the body and anything that concerns the body are you holding to that too? (R: You're holding on to the I because you want to go to its source.) If you really want to you can have that sense of the body and everything associated to it. R: Yes, that's the I. You're holding onto it, you're not concentrating on it, you're holding onto it. But you're following it to the end, to the source. (SG: What's the difference between holding onto and following it?) You simply observe it, you watch the I. You watch the I going down, down, down in the heart. (SK: The intention is to trace it to its source?) Trace it to its source. And it's the source that you concentrate on, not the I. The concentration is done on the source, which means nothing, quietness, silence and everything disappears. SH: Well that's different from holding onto the I? R: You're holding onto the I that's the ego. (SH: Why not let go?) Because if you let go you won't be anywhere. (SH: That's okay.) No it's not okay, because if you let go of the I something else will come to take its place. (SH: Like what?) Another thought. (laughter) SK: You'll think you are body in the world again. R: The idea is to hold onto it, follow it to the end, to the source. And then it disappears of its own accord. But do not delude yourself into thinking, I'm letting go of the I, because you just made the statement, "I'm letting go of the I." There has to be somebody to let go. As long as there's somebody, your still the I. SR: When you're not doing this the forms will start to reappear with a sense of reality all their own and that's how you know your in your mind. (R: Exactly.) And as soon as you get back to it, forms have no reality of their own, they become appearances. (R: Exactly.) Things are just moving on their own there's no doing in the moment. (R: True, you're doing all these things to get to the source, to the substratum of existence.) SF: Robert what's the difference between the I that's attached to something and the I that's not attached to anything? R: The I that's not attached to anything is really consciousness, it's the I-am. The I that's attached to anything is the ego. (SK: The little I is, "Life's a bitch and then you die.") (students laugh) (SF: Thank you.) True. SK: The ego is really when it's I-am this or that, but when it's just I it's not the ego. (R: Right.) Ramana always said, "I" cannot stand alone that's the ego, I am big, I am small, whatever, there's always something with the I that you have the ego sense. R: Yes, When the I is by itself, it's consciousness. (SK: Right.) But the way you get rid of your problems, again is to realize that they're all attached to the I. And when you transcend the I, your problems will go too. Try that, tomorrow when you've got a problem, instead of relating to the problem, relate to the I. Follow the I and you'll have no problem. SG: So you use the I as a sort of mantra? R: No, when you’re using the mantra you're saying, "I - I." But you do that after you follow the I to its source. And if other thoughts come after that, you use the mantra, "I - I, I - I" It will slow down your mind, it will keep you from thinking. SG: Following the I to its source, (R: To its source.) At the same time? (R: Yes.) SU: It's been said that the I is really that the ego is a lie and is nothing but a bundle of thoughts, and when we see that way we're trying to watch it, of course I can't find the little I, so I think okay, so I'll just watch the thoughts or sensations that's there's really no entity that you can call an I. And that If you're going to watch something all you have to watch are the thoughts or bodily sensations. But it seems there's still a gap, there's something still watching. R: Because you didn't ask yourself, "To whom comes the thoughts?" Ask yourself that question. "To whom do these thoughts come to?" SH: How does the little I arise in the first place? R: It doesn't. (SH: It appears to?) It appears to. That's why you call it the sense of I. (SH: How does that appearance occur?) It never occurs. (SH: You always wash it out.) Because it appears, It's an optical illusion. It's like saying, "How does the body occur?" We're talking about getting rid of the body. But we're talking about a body that doesn't even exist. SF: The illusion of an identification that really cannot exist? R: Exactly. There is no body but it appears real. In the same instance, the small I also appears real. But there is no small I. (SN: So there's like an identity crisis?) (laughter) That's true. Always think of the optical illusion that you see, and compare it with that. Like the water in the desert that doesn't exist. If you look down the rail tracks they both seem to turn into one. Ever seen that? It's an optical illusion. In the same way, the appearance of the world, of the body, God, the universe, is an optical illusion. It doesn't exist. It's like a dream. Remember when you're having a dream, you will sit there arguing that it's real, just like we are now. In the dream we're having a class and we're going through the same thing as we're going through now. Only you wake up and it's all gone. So when you wake up out of this, it'll be gone too. And you'll be free. (laughter) SH: Who's dreaming the dream? (R: Nobody.) SK: The optical illusion of the railroads is probably the only true optical illusion that I can think of. Because there's two, but you see them as one. And everything is one in reality. So the optical illusion is true. (R: You can say that if you like.) SH: There's nobody dreaming the dream, but the dream is being witnessed. R: The dream is being witnessed as an illusion. (SH: There is witnessing of the dream, no "witnesser" but there is witnessing of the dream.) There's witnessing of the dream as long as you believe in the witness because that concept comes out of your mind. (SH: There is no witness there's just witnessing.) Who's witnessing? (SH: No one.) Exactly, that's the answer. SK: Now are you happy? (SH: I was happy before.) (laughter) R: See we like to talk about witnessing and dreams and all that stuff, that's just for the sake of making conversation. SG: So you watch the thoughts and you don't let them get beyond the end of your nose? And then you go to the self-inquiry, the "Who's this I and who's watching themselves." R: Yes, follow the I. (SG: Stay with the I and use it.) Like follow the leader. (SG: When you need to, but follow the I mostly.) Follow the I mostly, and realize the whole universe is attached to the I. Therefore when the I disappears everything else will go also. SH: This is just a game, it's a way of just bamboozling itself, pretending it is what it isn't. R: You're right, that's exactly what it is. Because nothing I said is true. (SH: I recognize that. (laughter) Why do we bother to listen to him?) Why am I here myself? (laughter) Who knows? (laughter) (SH: No, who cares?) (laughter) I never try to figure it out. SR: You know Robert, today it was funny because whenever I asked myself, "Who am I?" I always feel, I don't care. And I felt that you just answered that, you know the feeling of that is incredibly deep. I don't really care. R: But be careful about that, because in your everyday pursuits, you may not care about anything at all like somebody dying or you won't try to help. (SR: So don't make that personal you're saying?) Don't make it personal, right. But in reality there's nobody to care. Who cares. (laughter) WHO CARES! SD: Why would consciousness need to occupy itself with a game? R: It doesn't, that's the illusion. (SK: If it doesn't then it's not.) Right, there's nothing happening. (SK: Dana didn't even ask that question either, did she?) True? Dana doesn't exist. She appears to exist. What are you reading Nerada? (student looks up) What are you reading? (SN: Remember what I was reading to you that time when you were lying down in bed?) Oh yeah. Would you like to read it? SN: I was deciding. Well what I was reading was: It is certain that the nature of the mind is empty. Without any foundation whatsoever. Your own mind is insubstantial, like the empty sky. You should look at your own mind and see whether it is like that or not. Being without any view that decisively decides that it is empty, it is certain that self originated primal awareness has been clear and luminous from the very beginning. Like the heart of the sun, which is itself, self originated. You should look at your own mind and see whether it is like that or not. It is certain that this primal awareness, which is ones intrinsic awareness is unceasing. Like the main channel of a river that flows unceasingly. You should look at your own mind and see whether it is like that or not. It is certain that the diversity of movements arising in the mind are not apprehensible by memories. They are insubstantial breezes that move through the atmosphere. You should look at your own mind and see whether it is like that or not. It is certain that whatever appearances occur, all of them are self manifested. Like the images in a mirror, being self manifestations that simply appear. You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. It is certain that all of the diverse characteristics of things are liberated in their own condition. Like clouds in the atmosphere that has self-originated and self-liberated. You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. R: Thank you. S: Can you tell us who can see it and who can't see it. SN: Self liberation to seeing with naked awareness. Translated by Reynolds. John Reynolds. I'll read a little more: There exists no phenomena, other than that which arises from the mind. Other than the meditation that occurs, where is the one who is meditating. There exists no phenomena, other than that what arises from the mind. Other than the behavior that occurs, where is the one who is behaving. There exists no phenomena, other than that what arises from the mind. Other than the fruition that occurs, where is the one who is realizing the fruit. You should look at your own mind, observe it again and again. When you look upward into space of the sky outside yourself, if there are no thoughts occurring that are emanations being projected and when you look inward at your own mind inside yourself, if there exists no projectionist who projects thoughts by thinking them then your own subtle mind will become lucidly clear without anything being projected. Since the clear light of your own intrinsic awareness is empty, it is the dharma-kaya and this is like the sun rising in a cloudless illuminated sky. Even though this light cannot be said to possess a particular shape or form, nevertheless it can be fully known. The meaning of this or whether or not it can be understood is especially significant. (finishes reading) Nerada: I'll read something from the Ashtravakra. By nature my mind is empty. Even in sleep I am awake. I think of things without thinking. All my impressions of the world have dissolved. My desires have melted away. So what do I care for money or the feeding senses, for friends or knowledge, or Holy books, liberation, bondage, what are they to me. What do I care for freedom? For I have known God the intimate Self. The witness of all things. Without a fool, within free of thought. I do as I please and only those like me understand my ways. SC: How can he think without thinking? R: There has to be somebody to think, for you to think, but when you're above in an enlightened state, a realized state the thinking is spontaneous. You only think of whatever is present in the moment. That's why I say you never think further than your nose. You think in the moment and that's it. Then the thoughts just dissolve. SV: Robert is that a clear translation? (R: I don't know?) It did seem like someone there saying that. The text before it sounded very transparent. R: It comes from a different source. But it's pretty clear. He's trying to explain it as an ego. Whenever somebody tries to explain something, there's always the ego at work. How else can you explain it? There has to be an ego to explain it. That's why the biggest benefit we get here at satsang is not what I say, but just by being here. (pause) If you truly wish to repent, just sit in silent meditation and see the perfect reality within. For all manners of error merely arise in erroneous thought. And like the morning dew before the rising sun can perfectly be eliminated through the benevolent light and wisdom. So let's just stay quiet for a few minutes. (long silence then Robert resumes) …Peace. How is everybody feeling? Try to stay as peaceful as you are now, during your normal activities during the day. Do not take anything too seriously. Just observe the world going by and yet do not react to it. Watch everything, be alert, but leave it alone. Do not try to own anything and do not try to give up anything. Just be yourself. Have no feeling that I am the doer. Let your body go about its business, but you stay with the I and all will go well with you. Anybody like to say anything else? So the next time we'll meet will be Sunday at 2 o'clock, right? SK: Is there ever a consideration from 9 in the morning till 12 noon? R: Nope, never considered that. (students laugh as tape ends)

Robert: Good afternoon. The first thing I would like you to do is to ask yourself, "Why did I come here tonight?" think about that. What is your purpose? What do you want? Did you come to compare the speaker to some other speaker? Did you come to listen to some profound message? Did you come to hear the speaker because you heard something about him? All those reasons are wrong. When you look at me what do you see? If I asked each one of you, I would get forty different answers. I am like a mirror and when you look at me you see yourself. So if you see a dirty old bum, you're looking at yourself. Everybody sees something else. But you're seeing your personal ego-consciousness, is what you're really seeing. The time has to come when you look at everybody and everything and you have no reaction. It's neither good nor bad, where you see consciousness everywhere. Where you see beings, places, things as images on a gigantic screen. Your true Self is the screen. The images are superimposed on the screen. Therefore when you look at yourself you have no reaction, there's silence. In the silence is infinity. Infinity is space, bliss, parabrahman, absolute awareness, ultimate oneness. Whenever you think you stop the reality from flowing, by your thoughts. Whenever your mind is quiescent, calm, still like a motionless lake, then you reflect your own divinity. And you become pure and happy and all your problems melt away. You become no thing. There's really nothing to become. What you really do is you get back to your original state. And again how does this happen? By not reacting to person, place or thing. Becoming the observer, the witness to the world. The witness to your own thoughts. Whenever thoughts come to you, you try to halt the thoughts by witnessing your mind in action, by observing your thoughts. As you do this the mind begins to slow up. Peace ultimately ensues. You become happy, blissful for that is your true nature. But when you speak too many words, it hinders the process. When you talk to me I listen to the space in between the words. To you the words are real, to me the space is real. The space is consciousness. The words are just a mark on consciousness which has to be erased. No one ever became awakened by using words. Be still and know that I am God. Your real nature is I-am. And the way you experience this I-am, is by recognizing what I am not! I-am not my experiences. I-am not my problems. I-am not the world. I-am not the universe. I-am not myself as I appear to be. When everything is gotten out of the way and the true Self will shine forth in all its glory and splendor. There's really nothing to do, but be still. There are no courses to take. There's no school to go to. There's no profound knowledge to learn. There are no prayers you have to make. There are no obligations whatsoever. Simply quiet your mind. Do not allow your mind to control you at all. Do not think past your nose. When you see the thoughts starting, catch yourself. Ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?"They come to me.” Hold on to the me with all your might and follow the me to its source. Where did me come from? How did me get here? What is the source of me? As you get to the source of me, you will realize, "I am That! I-am not my body or my mind or the experience. I-am That I-am. I have always been that I-am, nothing more nothing less." Know your Self. Search for your Self. What's the use of going through life gathering things, worrying about things, learning new trades, when you're going to leave everything at about ninety years old and die? What has been your purpose then? The wise person considers this when they're quite young. Starts to search for reality. But the search is not outside themselves. The search goes on within yourself. Am I the body? Am I the doer? Am I the mind? The realization goes on that the body, the mind and the doer do not listen to you, to the I. They do what they want, don't they? For instance: Does your body ask I, when it catches a cold? It does its own thing. Does it ask I when it becomes sleepy? Does it ask I for permission when it wants to go to the bathroom? The body is under its own laws of karma, but I has nothing to do with that. Find out what I is. When you speak of I, stop identifying yourself with the body, with the mind. When you do your work, do not believe that you are the doer. Realize you are I. When you sleep, I watches. When you dream, I watches. When you awake, I watches. I is always there. Who is this I? This elusive I that's always watching, that never sleeps, never dreams, that isn't even awake in this world, but who is the silent witness of all your thoughts. Where did this I come from? Find out. Find out by diving within yourself. Find out by going to the source. Find out by keeping still, by becoming the witness, by not participating in the worlds activities too much. By living the quiet life. By wanting to be alone and contemplate the I. One day you will follow the I deep enough, like holding on to a rope. Climbing down the rope. You will come to the end of the rope. Which is the source of I. Then you will let go and you will find yourself in the void, in emptiness. The world has been transcended and you will become I-am. Not I am this or I am that, really, just I-am. I-am is selfcontained. I-am is your real nature. I-am is absolute awareness, absolute reality, nirvana, emptiness. You get glimpses of this once in a while, when you're day dreaming and the world leaves you, the activities of the world leaves you. All of a sudden you feel good for no reason. Wouldn't you like to feel like this all the time? Then what are you doing with your life? You have to go over your beliefs, your needs, your wants, your fears, examine everything. Investigate, go deeper within yourself. Spend more time alone, forget about the world. I'm not speaking of giving up your employment, or leaving your family or moving some place in the desert. I'm speaking of continuing what you do, but give up your mental attachment to whatever you do. You can be a doctor and know the Self by not being attached to your profession. Your body will continue doing what it does and will even do it better, then you can ever do it if you identified with the doer. Stay where you are, give up nothing, just do not be attached to anything. Do not react to person, place or thing. Let come what may. See all things the same. Have no preferences. Have love in your heart, peace in your soul. And the day will come when you give up your heart and you give up your soul to sat-chit-ananda. And you will be free. At that time you will be omnipresent. You will be aware of yourself as the universe. You will no longer be aware of yourself as an entity. But you will be aware of yourself as the universe. And your body will not exist any longer. People will see you as they did before. Only you will see it differently. You will see all existence as one. Duality will cease. There will only be oneness. Now, what good is all this? Why should you strive for this? Is everybody happy? Let's be sincere. We think if we accumulate a lot of money we will be happy. If we marry the right person we'll be happy. If we get the right job, if we have the right car, if we move to the right state, we'll be abundantly happy. What a disappointment, in this world nothing is ever the same, you have to understand this first. We live in a world of duality, so it seems. Everything has two sides. If you want to experience wealth you have to experience poverty. If you want to experience health, you have to experience sickness. You cannot experience one without the other. You may say, "Well Robert I know people who are abundantly wealthy and they've never been poor." You're speaking only of one life. You no doubt have many existences, many lifetimes and they're all carry overs. So the first thing you do is stop judging others. You learn to leave others alone. You do not react to anything or anybody. You begin to work on yourself. And you begin to understand, "I am not what appears to be. What appears to be maybe a fact, but it is not the truth." I appear to be male or female. I have this job, I'm married to this person. I make so much money a year. That's a fact but it is not the truth. The truth is that I am nobody. You have no body. Everything is no body. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness is like a chalkboard. It always stays the same. But you draw different figures on the chalkboard. You may draw the moon on the chalkboard, the stars, the planets, people, bugs, animals and you see pictures of what you drew. But if you try to grab them, what do you grab? the chalkboard. Consciousness is like the chalkboard. People places and things are like the drawings on the chalkboard. They can be erased and new drawings put in their place. Yet the chalkboard always remains the same. The reason people suffer is because they identify with the images and not with the chalkboard. Or they identify with the world but not with consciousness. You therefore have to change your identification and start identifying with the invisible something that you can't hear, taste, touch or feel. That invisible something is your true nature. It is your real Self. Now, how do we get there? What do we do? Thursday I gave you three essential questions that brings you to awakening. We'll go over them again. The first question you ask in the morning, the second question you ask in the afternoon and the third question you ask before you go to sleep. This is really important if you want to awaken. It's a short cut. You have to do the first question as soon as you open your eyes. Do not allow your mind to think. As soon as you open your eyes catch yourself immediately and ask yourself the first question which is: "Where did I come from? Where did I come from?" As I speak this question most of you identify I with your body and you think I'm saying, "Where did I as a body come from?" I am not saying that at all. The question is, "Where did "I" come from?" Not: "Where did my body come from?" The question is, "Where did "I" come from? My body slept, my body dreamt, my body is now awake. But I has been the witness to all three states of consciousness. For I know that I exist while sleeping. I exist while dreaming and I am awake. I exist now. Where did I come from?" And you keep still. After you realize that I is the witness of the dreaming, sleeping and waking states, you keep still. "Where did I come from? I am now awake," you say. "I am going to go about my business. I am going to eat breakfast. I am going to go to work." Notice how I always say, "I," you ask yourself, "there's always I, I, I. I eat breakfast, but I've been making one mistake. I've been identifying the I with the body that eats breakfast. I is not the body!" you tell yourself. "I is not eating the breakfast. The body is eating the breakfast. After all did the body get permission from the I to eat breakfast? The body does what it wants. The body is under the law of karma. But what about I? Where did I come from? Who witnesses these things. Who am I? What is the source of the I?" That's how you talk to yourself and you keep still. Then a realization will come to you. The realization will be this. It seems everything I talk about, I always use the first pronoun I. This must mean that everything, everything is attached to I. The world, my body, my thoughts, my mind, the stars, the moon, the sun, people, places and things are all attached to I. For don't I say, "I see my friend? I'm doing my work? I feel sick? I feel happy? I feel depressed? I feel miserable? I feel good?" There's always I, I, I, I. It appears that everything, everything is attached to I. Therefore if I try to get rid of everything first, it's like the old problem: "What came first? The tree or the seed?" I will get nowhere. For when I get rid of one thing, another thing pops up to take its place. For instance: If I don't like my job and I complain and I change jobs. I will like my new job for a while, then I'll have the same old problem. So I don't do that anymore. Instead I'm going to realize the source of the I. If I transcend the I, if I get to the source of the I, everything else will go with it. And there will be emptiness and I will be free. Do you follow that? Everything is attached to your I. Do not try to work on the things, those are effects. Work on the cause which is the I and the effects will disappear of their own accord. So you follow the I by diving deep within yourself. You're looking for the source of the I. You hold on to the I until you find its source. You do this in the morning when you wake up. So how do you do this? When you get to the source of the I, which is you go down the rope. You imagine the I is a rope and you're climbing down the rope and you come to the end and you just let go and you fall freely. Then you start saying to yourself, "I - I, I - I," say that to yourself for a while, "I - I, I - I." As you do this you're becoming calmer and calmer. As you practice this, the space between the I's will become greater and greater. The space is consciousness. The I will eventually disappear and your identity will merge into consciousness, as I-am. That's what you do in the morning, until noon time. You can practice this in whatever work you do. You can keep saying, "I - I," knowing the background of what we just discussed. Which is that everything is attached to I. Then at about 12 - 1 o'clock, you go to question number two. Question number two is: "Where did the universe come from?" You're asking yourself, don't ask your friends. Don't ask your co-workers. They'll put you in those little white jackets and you'll wind up in the funny farm. (laughter) Ask yourself, "Where did the universe come from? Where did the universe come from? Where did the universe come from?" As you ask this question, new revelations will come to you, from your morning question. You will begin to see, during my sleep last night I was dreaming and in my dream, I seemed to have existed just like I do now. I went to work. I had a family. I took an airplane ride. I went on vacation. I got drafted in the war and I got killed, then I woke up. It was all a dream. But where did that dream come from? All that dream was going on in my mind. The dream came out of my mind. Therefore my waking state must also be a dream because I think of it. My mind is thinking of all of my affairs, my body, my work, my children, my house, my car. Just like in a dream. So the universe comes out of my mind. I have created the universe. After all when I am in deep sleep, there is no universe for me. But I still exist because when I wake up I can say, "I slept." We go back to I again. This means that the whole universe, everything. People, places, things, animals, flowers, trees, stars, suns, galaxies all come out of my mind. I have given birth to these things. "Who am I? Where did I come from?" And you go back again following I to the source. Then again you repeat the same thing, "I - I, I - I," for as long as you can. Before you got to sleep. Before you got to sleep, before you fall asleep, you ask yourself the third question, which is: "Where did God come from?" Ask yourself three times. "Where did God come from? Where did this God come from? That I have believed in all of my life?” And you start to think about your childhood. "When I was young I was brought up in a religion, whether it's Catholic, or Protestant or Jewish, or Islam, or Hindu. I was told to believe in God, but what do I know about God? Have I had an experience of God? Therefore God must be a belief, a concept, a preconceived idea. Where did this God come from?" Now if you've been highly religious in one of the major religions, this is going to be so hard for you to do for you'll think it's blasphemous, I therefore ask you to investigate. To intelligently look within yourself. Asking yourself, "Where did this God that I've believed in all my life, come from? And if you investigate deep enough, you will soon see, "I believe in God. I?" When I say, "I," I've been referring to my body. So that means all of these years, my body has believed in God. And I has been the silent witness observing all of this. I has no belief. I is neutral. It's my body and my mind, that believe in some anthropomorphic type of deity. Now I realize I is not the body, I is not the mind and I is not God. Like the universe, like my body, it's all a concept, a belief. God must be attached to I, just like everything else. And when I am able to transcend I, I will transcend the mistaken belief of God and become free. So, Again you go back to "I - I, I - I." You fall asleep doing this and you will wake up doing this. If you practice this my friends you will be free before you know it. You'll be totally free and liberated. I get many phone calls. One of the things I'm frequently asked is how do you tell a real teacher from a phony teacher? I don't know why people are interested in things like that. The answer is always the same. If you go within yourself honestly, sincerely and you become devoted to your Self, you begin to love yourself, not the ego self, but yourself Self, and you really want to awaken, you will be attracted to the right teacher, or the right book, or the right tree, or the right rock. But if you have many faults and you're not sincere yourself, you will be attracted to that kind of a teacher that's as sincere as you are and you'll both look at each other. So I hung up the phone Thursday night. Horat gave me…is Horat here? No. He gave me a book to read. It's by a woman named Lucy Marr. I knew her at Ramana Ashram. She's lived there for many years and I turned to a page and there it was the answer I was talking about. She really explains it in a wonderful way. Therefore if Mary would like to read this, I would be most appreciative. Mary: Pleasure to be doing this. (laughs) Granted. Fine. Okay Robert. R: You should record this it's real interesting. Mary: This is titled, Gurus, Siddhas and Sinyasis. It is the mind that creates questions and goes in search of answers. It takes some time until it realizes this fact and gives up, but meanwhile it interferes continuously in the natural expansion of the seekers spiritual dimension. Until then, question after question emerges and Ramana Maharshi stood patiently day by day against the flood. A collection of his replies to stray questions is given in the last chapter, however the three themes mentioned in the heading above may ask for a treatment in some detail. There is a wide spread hunting for the guru and a lot of so called gurus make quite a good business out of the distorted ideas about the guru and his function, that are prevalent everywhere. Who then is a guru? The satvas say that one must serve a guru for twelve years for getting to selfrealization. What does a guru do? Does he hand it over to the disciple? Is it not the Self always realized? What does the common belief mean then? The man is always the Self and yet he does not know it. He confounds it with the non-self that is the body etc. Such confusion is due to ignorance. If ignorance be wiped out, the confusion will cease to exist and the true knowledge will be unfolded. By remaining in contact with realized Sages, the man will gradually lose the ignorance, until its removal is complete. The eternal Self is thus revealed. The disciple surrenders himself to the Master. That means there is no vestige of individuality retained by the disciple. If the surrender is complete all sense of individuality is lost and there is thus no cause for misery. The eternal being is only happiness, that is revealed. Without understanding it aright, people think that the guru teaches the disciple something like tat-tvam-asi and that the disciple realizes, "I am Brahman." In their ignorance they conceive of Brahman as something more huge and powerful than anything else. With a limited I the man is so stuck up and wild. What will be the case if the same I grows up enormous. He will be enormously ignorant and foolish. This false I must perish. Its annihilation is the fruit of guru Ishvara, the service to the guru. Realization is eternal and it is not newly brought about by the guru. He helps in the removal of ignorance, that is all. The real guru is one who has realized the Self. But how can we recognize him? He does not talk about himself. He behaves exactly as everybody else, and if he does not there is reason to be cautious. There is only one quality by which he is reading in his silence, as well as in his talk. If you're ready for him, he will meet you without any searching for him on your part, and only then can you be assured that he is the guru for you. Meanwhile you are not without guidance from without. The inner guidance sends signals, as it were, ceaselessly. A certain sentence in a book, a smile on an infant, the beauty of a flower or a sunset. All of them can become the means for a sudden understanding, one of the minor enlightenments which adorn the path of the sincere seeker after truth. All of them could become his or her guru. The famous ancient saint said of himself that he had twenty-four gurus including inanimate objects. Even the first quest after the meaning of life is already prompted by the inner, the real guru. There is a beautiful experience of Moses preserved in the tradition of Islam. When he complained, "Oh Lord, where shall I seek to find thee?" He heard the answer, "Thou wouldest not seek me if thou wouldest not already have found me." Who is it, that is in search for the guru? The longing is certainly prompted by the Self as is indicated, also the answer to Moses' prayer. But it is the personal I that goes out hunting for an outer guru. You will get exactly the kind of guru that corresponds to the stage of your development. That usually means a rather low type because a guru of a higher standard is of no use to a disciple of limited understanding. The receiver has to be tuned to the wavelength of the transmitter for receiving and diversity. Thus even if there is a meeting with a realized soul, the guru need not refuse the disciple, because the disciple will not even perceive the presence of greatness, since his inner senses are still clouded. He will be like a man who went in search for chinasamani, a celestial gem that fulfills every desire. Who found it, and threw it away when he saw a colorful pebble. Of the worst kind among the many gurus nowadays are those who are deliberately exploiting those hunting for a guru. Their method of catching the trustful ignorant is often a mystifying show of ceremony, incantations, dark hints and even threats of black magic powers with reference to traditions. Sri Ramana Maharshi said about these: The books say that there are so many kinds of initiations. They also say that the guru makes some rite for him with fire, water, Japa, mantra, nesessa and call such fantastic performances, diksha, initiations. As if the disciple becomes ripe only after such practices have gone through by the guru. The most potent form of work is silence, however vast and ecstatic the sastras may be, they fail in their effect. The guru is quiet, and peace prevails in all. This silence is more vast and more emphatic than all the sastras put together. But when the faith guru is clever enough, he may even feign this attitude also. Another type of self styled guru may not only deceive the would be disciple but also himself. He might have some intellectual knowledge of the truth and will be able to teach the same as far as this limited knowledge goes. The sincere seeker after truth will one fade or another by the silent grace of his inner guidance. Recognize the limitation of the would be guru and leave him perhaps for another one. Or perhaps he has ripened enough in the meantime so that he will now recognize the voice of the inner guru, of the Self and accept it, unreservedly. Or he might follow the way of Dhata Raya and learn to see the guru in all as everything which amounts to practically the same thing. Now there's a strange fact that Ramana Maharshi himself refused to be the guru of his devotees, or to be exact, he never initiated any of them in the traditional way. Some of them are known to have left him, though they loved and worshipped him because they thought themselves unable to proceed spiritually without an outer guru. How is this strange attitude of his to be understood? Is it strange to shun the responsibility which the guru is expected to take over in respect to his devotee? According to tradition, a guru who accepts a disciple also takes over his karma, bad as it maybe. No, Sri Ramana Maharshi was only being consistent. He lived what he taught, "The realization of the one without a second." When there is only one Brahman where is the place for guru and disciple? A guru presupposes a disciple, a disciple a guru, they are invariably two. Can there be two Selves? The one guiding the other? A true guidance is possible only when the Self of the guru and that of the disciple is one and the same Self. The real function of the guru, the higher and more efficient than his teaching, is his power of contact. Removing the ignorance of the disciple by direct transmission. This of course is possible only when the guru has himself realized the truth. This power is so real that Ramana Maharshi always gave the greatest importance to satsang. The contact of highly advanced souls. Because their purity, wisdom and compassion are contagious, like health and peace. This is the actual danger of surrender to a wrong guru. That his cunning, vanity and selfishness are just as contagious. Even the experience of everyday life, shows the danger of people coming to him. Though he usually is taken as an evil example only. But even in that case the bad influence goes deeper. It is immediately contagious, like a disease, may the inner guru protect. This mysterious land lost in the sea, granting the gift of the supreme truth to those who find the path into its hidden depths also still keeps many of the secrets of magic techniques and powers called siddhas. The number of seekers after these secrets will probably out number those who search after truth. So it is widely known that Ramana Maharshi did not appreciate such tendencies, usually connected with yoga sadhana. Now and again he was asked about submission of siddhas within the frame of the search of the Self. "One!" he declared, "The Self is the most intimate and eternal being, whereas the siddhas are born." The one requires effort to acquire, the other does not. The powers of thought by the mind which must be kept alert, whereas the Self is realized when the mind is destroyed. The power is manifest only when there is the ego. The Self is beyond the ego and is realized after the ego is eliminated. Where is the use of occult powers for the self-realized being? Self-realization may be accompanied by occult powers or it may not be. If a person has sought such a power before realization, he may get them after realization. There are others who have not sort such powers and have attempted only self-realization. They do not manifest. Among the visitors at this stage was Mr Evan Wendt, the well known Tibetologist. He too asked for an explanation on the value of occult powers. Ramana Maharshi replied, "The occult powers are only in the mind. They are not natural in the Self. That which is not natural but acquired cannot be permanent, is not worth striving for. They denote extended powers. A man is possessed of limited powers and is miserable. He wants to expand his powers so that he may be happy. But consider if it will be so, that with limited perception one is miserable, with extended perception the misery must increase proportionately. Occult powers will not bring happiness to anyone, but will make him all the more miserable." Moreover what are these powers for? The would be occultist desires to display the siddhas, so that others may appreciate them. He seeks the appreciation and if it is not forthcoming he will not be happy. He may even find another possessor of higher powers. That will cause jealousy, infuriating his unhappiness. So which is the real power? Is it to increase prosperity? Or bring about peace? That which results in peace is the highest perfection of siddhi’s. The root idea in Sri Ramana's attitude, to the phenomena of ESP or extra sensory perception or siddhas, nowadays as scientifically labelled, is easily discovered. ESP experience belongs to the personal I. The teachings of the Sage of Arunachala revolves around hunting the I until it submits. To seek and attain siddhas is to strengthen it. That settles the matter once and for all. Sinyasis was in ancient India, the fourth and last of the Ashrama, the stations of life. The first of them was represented by the boy, who was sent to live as the gomasharya, with the guru to serve him and be trained in the scriptures. The second stage was his life as a householder after incurring marriage in which he carried out his duties to those around him and made his contribution to the collective. When his sons were settled and his daughters married he was free to retire. However he was not the idea of retirement to a comfortable life, of enjoying the well earned fruits of a life of work and trial. The third stage of the Ashrama was a quiet life of renunciation in the woods, in meditation and prayer, in longing for enlightenment. These first three periods conform to custom and convention but the last one, sinyasi, the total renunciation of what is expected to assert itself at its own time and under its own conditions. This fact was behind Ramana Maharshi's somewhat enigmatic reply to a questioner, to whether the questioner should embrace sinyasa. If you should, you would not have asked. The traditional idea about sinyasa is explained in a rather certain yudusta in the bhagavatam book. It is that satvanyasis whole endeavor to be directed toward the discovery of the true Self at the point of contact between deep sleep and the waking state. He should look upon both bondage and freedom, birth and death as unreal. He should not read profane books or live by any profession, nor indulge in politics, nor take sides in a partisan sphere, nor accept disciples nor do much reading, which would divert his mind from his spiritual practice, nor make speeches, nor undertake any responsible work. After attaining enlightenment he may continue to behave as before or alter his ways that would suit his demeanor. To give no sign by which others to recognize his attainment. He retains his usual mode of life or pursuit. Sri Ramana Maharshi never encouraged people who thought of assuming the formal sinyasi. Though he hereby seemingly contradicted himself. When pointed out that he himself had cut all connection with his family life and home, he simply replied that it was a matter of karma. Discussing the subject, he saw the motivation in most cases, it is escapism through disappointment with a weary and unsuccessful life. Almost as often it is a matter of self importance. Being in modest or even poor circumstances, you are nobody. As a Sinyasi you are somebody, at least in the eyes of some people. There might be a third motive for a minority, impatience. They are not satisfied with the slow rate of their spiritual progress. All three kinds of motivation and all others as well respond to the prompting of the ego I. Therefore Ramana Maharshi gave a typical reply, "Why do you think you are a householder? If you go out as a sinyasi, these similar thoughts if you are a sinyasi will haunt you? Whether you continue in a household or renounce, or go to the forest, your mind haunts you. The ego is the source that bothers you. If you renounce the world, it will only substitute the thoughts you renounced as a householder and the environment that is enforced are those of the householder. But the mental obstacles are always there. They increase in new surroundings. There is no help in the change of environments. The obstacle in the mind is in the mind. It must be gotten over, whether at home or in the forest. If you can do it in the forest why not in the home? Therefore why change the environment? Your efforts is to be made in the now, in whatever environment you may be. Environment never abandons you according to your desire. Look at me, I left home. Look at yourselves. You have come here leaving the home environment. What do you find here? Is this different from what you left?" As an answer to another question he replied, "Sinyasa is to renounce ones individuality. This is not the same as ?? and ochre robes. A man maybe a householder, yet if he does not think he is a householder, he is a sinyasi. On the contrary a man may wear ochre robes and wander about. Yet if he thinks he is a sinyasi, he's not that. To think of sinyasa, he thinks it's his own ??? Sinyasa is meant for one who is fit. It consists of renunciation, not of material objects but of attachment to them. Sinyasa can be practiced by anyone. Even at home. Only one must be supervised closely." It is the silent wisdom of this mysterious land, lost in the sea of the twentieth century. Just as it was millenniums ago when it was expressed in Manu's law of sinyasi. He should not wish to die nor hope to live, but await the time appointed, as the servant awaits his wages. Will not show anger to one who is angry. He must bless the man who curses him. He must not utter falsehood. Rejoicing in the things of this earth, calm, caring for nothing, abstaining from sensual pleasures. Himself the only helper, he may live on in the world in the hope of eternal bliss. Thus sinyasa is neither showy, nor brilliant, nor a very attractive path, but just the one on which truth is likely to meet the wanderer, provided that he is a true sinyasi." Robert: Thank you Mary. We'll have some announcements and then we'll have some question and answers. Now if you have any questions about anything, spiritual path? Be free to ask, talk, make comments, argue whatever you like. SR: Robert is inquiry and devotion or surrender to God, infallible? R: They're both the same. Surrender to God leads to freedom. It leads to inquiry. Bhakta and atma-vichara are both the same, there's no difference. A person who truly loves God and surrenders to God totally in his heart will come to the same goal as the person practicing atma-vichara. They're both the same, they’re not different. But true surrender means that you have to really surrender everything. You have no thoughts of your own. You have no mind of your own. You have no ideas of your own. "Thy will be done, not mine." It's hard to do for most people. But if you give up all of your thoughts it is the same as self-inquiry. Therefore total surrender means, giving up your personal sense of I. All of your thoughts have to be given up, they're both the same. SD: You mentioned previously that God is something that we've been taught, usually as children in our culture and ultimately there is no God but simply the Self, then whom are you surrendering to? (R: To yourself, to reality. You’re surrendering your ego.) It seems that when you talk about surrendering to God even I consider that in my heart like very desirable. I have a conflict in how to envision this God or until it becomes personified and when you know that ultimately there is no God then… R: When we speak of God here, it's the same as the Self, or absolute reality, or pure awareness. So to surrender to God, to know God, to visualize God means to empty your mind. When your mind is empty, God as your Self shines through. (SD: So when you say, "Not my will but thine be done," who's will are you referring to?) The Self, the empty mind. The Self is always "Thy will." Your pure Self. (SD: Surrender then is not simply (unclear) which is letting go of the ego, right?) It's giving up your thoughts. Giving up your reactions, total peace, harmony. SK: How can we not react, I find that almost impossible to imagine? R: Simply by beginning to observe yourself. When you first react to people and you have a bad temper and you're always sticking up for your rights, you begin to observe yourself doing that. And you ask yourself, "Who has this problem?" You pose the question to yourself, "To whom does this problem come?" SD: But there are reactions that do not seem to even be problems but appreciation of a sunset or the reaction of love. Are you including that? R: What you're referring to is called minor realization. When you have total human love. A human love for the sun or the tree, that's a minor realization. But complete realization is to know that all of these things come out of your mind. It came out of your imagination. You're the creator of all of life, of the whole universe and when you give it up, bliss comes. Total harmony, total love which is different than human love. SG: But you give it up, the creation? Give up the creation? R: Yes. Nobody is realized I suppose here, what it's like to experience the other, after you give up the creation. But there's that beyond the creation, which is ultimate oneness, total peace, pure awareness, sat-chit-ananda, nirvana and when you experience that, you will not have anything to say. It's difficult for a materialistic person to know anything beyond their materialism, but what if they surrender and give up everything? Something more beautiful than you can ever imagine takes over and you live in total bliss from there on in. Total happiness, that's the fourth state, total bliss happiness, total oneness, omnipresent. SR: It seems like we're indulging in illusion if we encourage other people to seek this out. R: We're not encouraging anybody to do anything. (SR: I meant as an individual.) You're indulging the self, you mean? (SR: If I go out and try and encourage other people to seek the Self?) Who told you to do that? (SR: Oh this person I met down at the … no, no it came from me (laughter) Sort of like a sense of duty which came from my body ego.) Exactly. When you search for the Self within yourself and get a glimpse of what I'm talking about, you become like a light and people automatically gather around you without you doing anything. But when you go searching or preaching or trying to change somebody's path, it's your ego as you just said. (laughs) It's your ego that does that, but you're not told to do anything except work on yourself. Know yourself and become free. Don't worry about others. Everything will take care of itself. SD: It's one thing to proselytize, but I understand that there's no need to do that, but if people are practicing and they ask about the path you're on. R: Then you can share it with them. But you don't go out of your way, if they come to you it's something else, but you never go out of your way to proselytize or to convert anybody. Always remember when you want to do that it's the ego. The Self rests in peace. It does not have to do anything. (SD: So the Self will respond in only like understanding.) Yes. As an example: I didn't ask to sit here and you sit there, it just happened. I didn't ask to teach. I never wanted to found a movement, or start a religion or do anything. It just happened of its own accord. So I don't care if anybody comes or doesn't come. I can always talk to my Self. (laughter) SM: Robert, are there any changes that the physical body goes through in this process? R: Everybody's different, it's determined by your karma. Some people go through conditions called chemicalization and that means things become relatively worse. Because what they're doing is bringing up all of their old karma from previous lives. And things become relatively worse for them. But if they only hold on for a while and they do not react, everything will die down and they will become peaceful and calm. And they will become the Self. SD: So it's sort of a purifying time? R: Any person who is on the path seriously and is practicing self-inquiry, you're calling up everything that you've ever had in this life and past lives, it's all coming to the surface. So to yourself, the ego, things may appear to become relatively worse. That's all in the relative plane, but again if you hold on and you persevere, this too shall pass and you'll be at peace. Once you're on a path like this, do not be concerned let whatever happens. For you're learning not to respond. You’re not to respond. Let come what may, do not respond and you come out a winner. But if you respond and you win, then you'll have to go through the same thing again, and again, and again for you're accruing more karma. Therefore do not respond and you transcend that situation. Non-resistance transcends, resistance accrues karma. It makes no difference what the condition may be. SN: Robert, you spoke of self-inquiry and surrender, but what about the vedic practice, I-am Brahman? R: Who says, "I-am Brahman?" the ego. If you're Brahman why say, "I-am Brahman?" You just be, you just are. Actually what that text means, in the Upanishads, it means: "I-am is Brahman!" Do you see the difference? It doesn't mean I the ego am Brahman. It means "I-am" or "Consciousness," is consciousness. (SN: Is that another practice?) No, the same thing. (SN: As self-inquiry?) Yes. (SN: But one is a statement and one is a question?) But you're not to make a statement. You say, "Who is I am?" you ask yourself the question, "Who am I?" and I will always turn into I-am. I-am and Brahman are the same. There's no difference. So when you become Brahman, there's no one left to say, "I-am Brahman." What's the use of saying that. It is only the ego that says, "I-am Brahman." But once you've arrived, there's no one left to say anything. You keep still, rather than make affirmations. SK: That's two of us again, that's two in that respect. R: Where did you come from? How was Ho Chin? How was HoChin? Didn't you go there?) (SK: But people use it as a mantra.) Ho Chin? (laughter) What are you talking about? (SK: I-am Brahman.) I-am Brahman? Some people use it as a mantra and twenty years pass and they're still using it as a mantra. (laughter) The best thing to do is keep silent. You've been to India, haven't you seen people repeating mantras year after year after year until they grow old and drop dead. (laughter) (SK: But then again, the other side, the opposite I've also seen?) Well mantras do quieten the mind. The purpose of a mantra is to make the mind quiet and one-pointed. If you do it correctly it can calm the mind and make it still. But why go through that path, that's the hard way. It's better to ask the question, "To whom comes the noisy mind?" then ask your stupid question, "To whom does this come?" and you will find that I ask the questions and I have the problem. Find the source of I and become free, that's the easy way. SV: Robert, I want to ask about going into that question of "Who am I?" and sometimes when I ask the question, it's like I've heard you say, "Who am I? I, I am I." Sometimes I don't - the words don't come, nothing comes? It's like… R: That's good, just rest in the nothingness. Just become still. SV: Okay so I've also tried after saying, "Who am I?" Oh I, I am I, but it's kind of a forced question, I, and looking at it. But actually it doesn't lead to some other feeling, it's like I've seen there's an I that I can't catch. It's like an I… Why call, why call me? Like it seems solid just for a second and then it's gone. It’s like a fleeting ghost or something, it's like it's there then it's not there. It's like a sensation. And that's what I call I, it's not really - and sometimes it's related to this, but really it’s like a (flicks fingers) flashing image in the mind. (R: So what's the question?) How to look at that? What is that and how to look at that? R: You can ask yourself the question, "To whom comes this experience?" or you can be still and observe it and do nothing and become the witness to the whole process. (SV: Okay.) And just watch. When you ask the question, whatever the question may be, do not come up with your own answer. (SV: Right, okay so I can see what I was doing, I was saying, "That's the I and now I see it," that's what I was doing there.) Who sees it? (SV: Yeah.) When there's no one to see, your individuality dissolves into emptiness. (SV: Okay, I caught it. What I was doing I was saying, "Oh that's me, now I see me.") Yeah, but if it were really you and was really the I there would be nobody left over to see. As long as you see it, it's not the real I. (SV: Well that's what I was saying, you know I was saying, "Oh no it can't be me because it's fleeting.") But you were saying that. (laughs) (SV: Yes exactly.) If it were true you wouldn't be saying that, do you follow? (SV: I missed that part.) If it were the real I there would be nobody left to say that. (SV: If I saw what it really was, you mean?) There would be nobody left to see. (SV: If it was seen for what it really was?) The seer would have been dissolved. There would be no seer, nothing to be seen. As long as there is a seer and something to be seen, it is not reality. The seer and the seen both have to go. Then only reality ensues. As long as you believe you're having the experience, it's coming from your mind. Because when the true experience comes, there's nothing left to have any experience. (SV: There's no one left?) No one is left. It's all emptiness. SD: Is it emptiness or fullness I would think? R: No, it's emptiness, the emptiness means bliss, absolute reality. (SD: I can think more of that as fullness when we talk about inter-connectedness for all things for example that's different to me than emptiness.) Well you're referring to emptiness as being nothing? (SD: Right.) But that's not true. Emptiness is another word for consciousness. The space between words is emptiness and that's consciousness. So therefore when you're silent consciousness comes of its own accord and sets you free. (SD: So also there is no answer to, "Who is I?") No, if there's an answer it's your ego answering. Silence is the good teacher. SR: I was just thinking about the idea of bliss, that could be an emotional or physiological thing, is it really bliss, or, there isn't a bliss in the sense? R: No, bliss is beyond all expectations. It's beyond all knowingness. (SR: What is it that's enjoying this bliss then?) Itself, it is self-contained. (SR: It is not an emotion?) No it's not. It is nothing we know in the relative world. (SR: We're using the word bliss as the status quo, but that isn't really what it is?) That's right! It's ineffable. It's something you have to experience. Of course there's nothing left to experience. (laughter) Then you've got it. (SR: When you've got it and there's no name for it.) There's no name for it. It's nothing. So when somebody tells you, "You're nothing!" say thank you. (laughter) SV: Is an experience of living in emptiness that "I," whatever that is, enjoys, or loves or… R: Then it comes out of your mind because whatever I enjoy, whatever I love is a mental concept. (SV: Isn't it that the I enjoys part of it? Comes out of the mind and the other part is the actual experience?) They're both out of the mind. For as long as you're having an experience and you think you're having the experience, they're both erroneous. (SV: I see.) Having an experience is no experience. There is no one left to have any experience. Both the experiencer and the experience have both been transcended. And again you go back to silence. SR: What does the Self do for entertainment when it reaches that stage? R: The Self does nothing, but the body appears to go on just like it always did. SV: Is that experience always happening? R: Of course it is, to everybody. (SV: Is it like we come out of it and then…?) Well it's like an illusion. When you're in the desert and you see water and you go after the water, and it turns into sand. So we have identified wrongly with the relative world (SV: Okay.) And we think the relative world is real. This is the only problem we've got. So we're not trying to achieve anything. We're trying to remove the idea of relativity and then everything takes care of itself. As an example: You look at me and what do you see, a body. But I can assure you I am not a body. But the ajnani sees the body and it sees the body going through normal things. But I can assure you that's not so. That's not true, even though the appearance is like that. There's no body home. SD: Then why does the appearance continue? R: Why is the sky blue? We imagine the sky is blue. We look up at the sky and you say, "Look at the blue sky." As you investigate, there's no sky and there's no blue. In the same way there's no body, there's no world, there's no universe, there's no enlightenment, there's no God. (SD: Then how did the illusion begin?) It never did. You believe it did. SV: Why this intense desire to know that which we don't know? R: Because that's our real nature. Your real nature is always dying for you to come back to it and wants you to be the Self. So every human being will ultimately become the Self, sooner or later. That's why I always like to say, "We're all hell bound for heaven whether we like it or not." (laughter) SH: Why does the Self appear to separate itself from itself? R: It doesn't. You think it does. It appears like that to you. That's how you see it but it never was separated, there never was separation. It's like asking, "Why do I have a dream and in that dream everything appears real?" And it’s like I'm with you in the dream, and I'm trying to tell you, "You're dreaming Henry" you'll say, "No I'm not Robert this is real, look I'll pinch and I'll show you." and you pinch me and I'll say, "Oow," and you say, "See, it's real." and then you wake up. (laughter) It's the same thing. The world appears to be real, but to whom does it appear? Ask yourself. SF: So that the illusion is, that there seems to be an illusion? R: Yes. For whom? Ask yourself. SX: Seems like it's always the mind that sees the illusion. (R: Exactly.) I don't know if you can know who you are it's just that… I'm just listening to what you're saying and it seems like you say - what were those three questions you said, "Who is the I?" or "Where is the I coming from?" The three questions all come from the mind? R: Yes, of course they do, where else would they come from? SX: They can't come from anything else… (tape ends)

Robert: Last Thursday, no what's today, Thursday? Last Sunday. Someone asked the question about holding on to the I. And I said imagine the I is like a rope and you're holding on to the I and you're going down the rope, to the source of the rope. You're finding the source of the I. And when you get to the end, you let go. And someone mentioned, "Oh I experienced that. I entered the void and I feel wonderful, is that right?" And I said, "No that's wrong." I didn't elaborate, and a few people called me and asked me, "Why did I say that's wrong? Don't we want to attain the void, or emptiness, or nirvana, or absolute reality?" We really don't want to attain anything. We just want to let go of the other things that tell us that there's something to attain. And as long as you say, "I have experienced the void." That's laughable because when you experience the void, the I has merged and there's nothing to experience. Do you follow? SH: Yeah. Robert: As long as you say, "I experienced this or I am experiencing bliss, or I feel so happy," then you're not. Because I is left. (laughs) SH: Yeah. Robert: I has to go. Who can experience bliss? There is nobody left to experience bliss. There's no one left to experience anything. It becomes ineffable, beyond explanation. And then they asked me another question ??? So they said, "Well what happens then?" And I said you become more human. Now what do I mean by that? I mean your quality about you, your radiant quality, your radiance expands. You become omnipresent. You become the universe. You realize the universe is an emanation of your Self, is a projection of your Self. That's what I mean by becoming more human. You become lovable, joyous, compassionate. You develop all the Advaita qualities, by themselves. So your humanhood becomes selfless. You no longer think about I and me and mine. As a matter of fact you hardly think. You just become and of course there's nothing to become. You just remain your Self. The Self that you truly are. You are that Self and there's nothing else. Now, people always want tools to work with and we always go back to the relative plane because of that. When I give you tools to work with, we have to go down to the relative plane, because reality has no tools. Reality has no process. In reality you do not have to meditate. You do not have to pray. You do not have to do mantras, reality is reality. Can you imagine God praying, to whom shall he pray? To himself? Can you imagine what you call God meditating? To whom shall he meditate? Therefore when you do all these rituals, it's your so-called humanhood, which really doesn't exist, that is doing the rituals. And you're doing the ritual to discover that you don't exist. Now, I have given the class three maya mantras, four principles and three vehicles. If you're practicing that, that's all you need because that's enough to take of you for twenty lifetimes. I want to share something else with you tonight. But first, do you remember the four principles? Who remembers them? I'm looking at you people, you're all new people. (laughter) Except for Sam and Horat. (Sam: I'm not here? (laughter)) SF: The first one is everything is a projection of the mind. The second is… SK: There’s no existence of the I, no prevailing, not born? SF: Oh, I was never born, I don't exist and I'll never die. I mean that's the principle that says that. (laughter) R: If you don't exist then what are you doing here? (laughter) SF: The third one is there is no self in anything or anybody. R: There's no ego, no cause. (SF: And the fourth one is…) Let's stick to the third one a little more. (laughs) It means that nothing has a cause. No thing has a cause in this world. No thing ever came into existence. No thing appears the way it appears, it's an optical illusion. No thing has an ego, there's no ego. There's no basis for existence. What's the fourth one? SF: The fourth one, in order to know the noble truth you'll have to discard the untruth. R: Yes. Instead of looking for self-realization, deny that what isn't self-realization. In other words you look at the body and you say, "Not this." You look at the Iraq war, you say, "Not this." You look at President Bush and you say, "Not this." And you go on like that. You look at your own body, your own experiences, "Not this." And when you've denied everything whatever is left is your Self. So we go in reverse. We're not trying to become self-realized, we're trying to remove the clouds that tell us we're not and then we'll shine through again. That's good. Now about the three vehicles that you cross the ocean of samsarra. Jay. SK: The first one is a log. (R: The what?) A log. (R: A log? What do you mean log?) (laughter) What's the first one? To be alone. The desire to be alone, for practice. (R: Where did the log come from?) (laughter) A log is lonely. (R: Oh I see.) I just said that, I wanted a sanscrit term that you never gave me for it. (R: What do you want a sanscrit term for?) Well, at first I wanted to understand it better and I thought that was the best way but really. (R: You speak english?) (laughter) SH: More impressive when said. (laughter) SG: Has a better ring to it. (laughter) SK: No, it's much more than that. How do you describe sadhu-sangha or satsang? (R: How do you describe it? By silence.) Yeah, but how do you describe it to those who want to have something to grasp onto? (R: In simple English language.) So, satsang? (R: Sure.) What is satsang? (R: Being in sat, being in reality.) I guess we're able to explain differently. R: No actually, if we don't have to talk sanscrit we shouldn't. We should speak languages that we know. Like Russian. (laughter) Okay so the first vehicle is an intense desire to be alone most of the time. Not because you want to be lonely, but because you can connect. When you're by yourself, you can work on yourself more. You should be happy when you're alone. You can see into yourself. You have more of an opportunity to connect with the infinite when you're by yourself rather than when you're with people. Therefore a person on a spiritual path like this especially hungers for time when they can be alone and really dive deep within themselves. And what's the second one? SK: Well you know, the first one I just thought of something. For the person who's alone a lot. Who does practice and is alone a lot. Another way maybe to look at it is, that on a relative level you're alone in the world. I'm talking relative, when you're with people, you're alone on a relative level. So you're not going to be picking up or be concerned with their attitudes towards you etc, or affected by this and that and of course on an absolute level we're not different. That is we're all one, but on a relative level aloneness is also with people on a relative level. R: Well that's okay, but actually when it comes to practice most people are disturbed by other people and when they are by themselves they can get more out of it. (SK: So that first vehicle is a conditional thing?) Not really, but it's true of most people. (SK: So the second vehicle would be satsang?) Yes. The second vehicle is an intense desire to be at satsang, to come to meetings like this. A deep feeling to want this rather than to go to the movies, or bowling, or go drive your car off a cliff or whatever else you want to do. You have a strong desire to come to a class like this. That shows that something is opening in your heart. For actually think, think, what is it you like to do best. Watch TV, read comic books, go to movies, spend time with your friends, your worthless friends. (laughter) What do you really like to do? Be honest with yourself. If you'd rather come to satsang like this, then your heart is opening up, and that's great. But don't force yourself and don't fool yourself. Rather when you're alone work on yourself and the feelings will come by themselves. And what's the third one? SF: Accompany of your peers or satsang. R: To want to be in the company of a Sage or your co-spiritual people. In other words if you have friends, you want them to be on some kind of spiritual path also. So they can help you and you can help them. There's no sense in associating with a person that takes you to porno movies.(laughter) Unless that helps you get enlightened, I don’t know? (laughter) But usually you want to be with people that are like yourself. (laughter) Someones actually told me that. Someone really told me one time, they go and see porno movies because they get enlightened again. Their heart opens up.(laughter) SK: I like to talk about those things. (laughter) R: So what's the fourth? SK: The fourth one, should probably be an amendment to the third is, what if you are too strongly attached? (R: I got you, there's no fourth one.) (laughter) SK: So then the question arises… (R: What's that question?) What if one gets too attached to a sadhu? To have sadhu-sangha, or particular sadhus or teacher one has? R: That's up to the teacher to take care of. (SK: Really?) Sure. To make you become unattached. See how the dog is attached. He never comes to the owner. SH: He goes to everyone else. (R: Do you feed him?) Yes sure. Feed him, pat him, take him for a walk. (SK: Do you love that dog as much as you love the other dogs?) More. (SK: More? Wow.) He's number one dog. R: So we're now going to share, the three essential questions with you. And again this is also something you can work with, very important I think. The first question you pose when you first open your eyes in the morning and when you first get out of bed, as soon as you get up. The second question you pose at about noon time and the third question you pose before you go to sleep. If you work on these things you're going to see fast results. The first question you pose to yourself is: "Where did I come from?" And remember when you do this, you do this as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. Before you can think of anything else and even if your mind starts thinking. Ask the question three times, to yourself. "Where did I come from? Where did I come from? Where did I come from?" Then you ask yourself, "What do I mean by that? Where did I come from? Am I referring to my body?" I just said, "Am I referring." So I must mean, "Where did the I come from?Where did the I come from? Not my body, but the I that appears to be my body? Where did the I come from?" Then you ponder and you wait. Then you repeat it again, "Where did the I come from? I know I just slept, I dreamt and now I'm awake and notice that I say, "I," all the time. I slept, I awake, I dreamt. Now, where did this I come from? Where did the I come from?" I is the first pronoun and everything I say seems to be, I. "I feel happy, I feel sad, I feel sick, I feel well, it's always I. What does this mean? Well, I notice that everything is attached to I, in other words, I can't see anything unless I put I first. I want to become realized. I am not realized. I need a teacher, I don't need a teacher and so forth. You start to feel that the whole universe is attached to I, everything. So you say to yourself something like this, "This means that if I find the source of I, all my problems, my faults, my karma, my samskaras, everything will disappear because they're all attached to I. Then you can say, "I - I, I - I," like a mantra, "I-I." And you're realizing all the time that you're going deeper and deeper in the I. Again it's like holding onto a rope and you're going down the rope to the source, "I - I," never mentally come to the end of the rope. The end should come by itself, or the source. In other words, don't say I've come to the source, for as I explained before you wouldn't be able to say, "I came to the source," if you came to the source, because the I will be gone. Everything is attached to the I and you simply go deeper and deeper and deeper, saying to yourself, "I - I, I - I, I - I." Keep this up until you feel that you don't want to keep it up any longer. Then get dressed and go about your business and forget about it. But do not come to any conclusion, that's the worst thing you can do. The conclusion comes by itself. You just do the practice. Any questions about that so far? Okay, now at about 12 noon. It doesn't have to be exactly 12 noon.(laughter) Don't synchronize your watch. But around that time, when you're sort of involved in the world. You can be working, you can be washing dishes or pots and pans. You can be watching a movie, you can be doing anything you like. But remember to do this. You ask yourself, "Where did the universe come from? Where did the universe come from?" And you begin to ponder that. The planets, the galaxies, the stars, the earth, worms, animals, birds, grass, trees, where did it all come from? Who sees it? I see it. We're back to I again. When I sleep what happens to the universe? It seems to have disappeared and yet I still existed. But when I woke up, there was the world again. So it seems that I am experiencing the world. I am experiencing the universe. We're back to I. What this means to me, is the universe is a projection, a manifestation of my mind. For when I close my eyes it disappears. I must be projecting the universe. Therefore again, if I get rid of the I, the universe will go too. For the universe only exists because I exist. Do you follow that? Again you begin to ponder I. You say to yourself, "I - I, I - I." The reason you're saying that is due to the fact that when you keep repeating I - I, you begin to condense the whole universe, including your body which begins to disappear, until only I is left. It's like when you're making a fire. You throw all the twigs in the fire, the leaves in the fire, wood in the fire, everything goes in the fire. But you have a stick with which to stir the fire. But in the end the stick's got to go in the fire also. The stick represents the I. So everything is a projection of your mind, attached to your I. You say, "My mind." I has a mind. I is attached to the mind. If I get rid of the mind the I goes with it and you will be no mind. Nothing with which to think and drive you crazy. So again you begin to practice, "I - I, I - I." for as long as you can. Do not come to any conclusion. The conclusion will come of its own accord. Now you come to the evening, just before you go to sleep. Again you do not have to sit in meditation postures for this. You can lie down, you can sit anywhere, you can walk, you can stand, you can do whatever you like. You ask yourself the question, "Where did God come from?" We're all hung up on God and some of us here, think it's blasphemous to talk about God this way. Yet you have to inquire, "Where did God come from?" Then you begin to realize, when I was little I was indoctrinated in God in a religion, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam whatever, but have I ever had an experience of God myself? How do I know that it's true, where did this God come from? So God must be a preconceived idea. God must be a concept of mind. You say to yourself, "Even now while I discuss this with myself, I have a fear that comes inside because of blasphemy. I have been told that God is real and therefore it becomes blasphemous when I speak of God this way. But I want to know, where did God come from?" Then you begin to ponder again. God comes from my mind. God is an idea, a concept of which I don't understand. And then you say, "I believe in God, I'm thinking of God, it is my concept." So again, you get back to that again, to 'I' and you realize that God is also attached to I. Can you imagine that? God is attached to I. Think about this. If you weren't aware of your sense of I, you wouldn't believe in anything. For you have to say, "I believe in God. I believe in Allah. I believe in Jehovah. I, it's always I, I, I. If there's no I, who's there to believe?" So we get back to I again. And you have to again follow the I-thread to its culmination. The idea now is to realize and know that God is attached to I. You don't try to get rid of God, you transcend the I and God goes with it. So you say, "I - I, I - I," the same thing, "I - I." And God will begin to disappear because I will disappear. And when all these things disappear what will be left? Absolute reality. Pure intelligence. Total awareness. Ultimate oneness and you will be free. So those are your three essential questions. If you practice these things you will see fast results. Any questions? SK: Regarding number two. Let's say Ramana was sleeping and someone put his foot in a hornets nest, do you think he would wake up physically? R: No. If you're speaking of Ramana, he had these experiences when he was a boy. When he went to sleep he couldn't wake up and his friends used to pick him up and take him out of his bed and put him on the hill and beat him up. And he didn't feel a thing and when he woke up they would laugh. So he had a problem of waking up. (students laugh) SF: Is it a problem to wake up for the Jnani? R: Well it's not a problem, what it is, is there's no difference between waking and sleeping and death and birth. It's all the same. A Jnani is awake during sleep. The material world is asleep, so the Jnani both functions in the world as a dream, but he's always awake, at the same time. So he wouldn't have any problem with that. SK: What determines whether a Jnani would be, according to someone else's viewpoint would be awake or sleeping. Is it just the karma that would…? R: Well from somebody else's viewpoint is according to their own karma. You see, the average person sees what your karma let's you see. That's how you come to conclusions. You say this is right and this is wrong. This is good and this is bad. This is such and this is such. It all has to do with karma. When there's no karma there's only one judger and that's the Self, omnipresence. Everything becomes the Self. Everything becomes the Jnani. The Jnani is omnipresence himself. SH: What do you mean by omnipresent? R: I mean everywhere present at the same time. (SH: Under all circumstances, universally?) Under all circumstances, universally, the Jnani is consciousness itself. And consciousness is everywhere. It's undivided, it's self-contained. So the Jnani is aware that he is consciousness, self-contained. And everything is the Self, and I am that! I am is another name for consciousness. (SH: Then all forms of these entities have dissolved?) It's all consciousness. (SH: There are no separate forms then?) There are no separate forms, but then again it's like the Jnani is a mirror. And the images on the mirror of all the people in the world are images. Only the Jnani is aware he's the mirror and everything that shines through him are images. So he's in the images and also in the mirror. But if you try to grab the images, you grab the mirror because there are no images, the images don't really exist. The Jnani is therefore aware of this all of the time, whether asleep, or awake, or whatever. (SH: They're just phantom appearances?) Phantom appearances? In a way, they're just images, they come out of the Jnani himself or out of consciousness. SR: They're like nothingness, they're not located anywhere. R: Nothing is located anywhere, that's true. Nothing exists, even the images do not exist. Only pure consciousness exists. (SR: Can you say a Jnani that they're really like talking about pure consciousness in a way, on any point but that would be ineffable.) Exactly. But for the sake of explanation we talk about images. As an example, all of you are looking at me. And if I ask each one, "What do you see?" I get twelve different answers or whatever. Because you're telling me about yourself. (laughs) You can only see yourself wherever you look. That's all you see. SH: And there's no reference to time and space at all. R: Time and space does not exist. They appear to exist. There's only one, it's all condensed. But in the dream there appears to be multiples. The one appears to have split into many. But that's the dream, so why talk about it. SF: Even if I don't know about it. Whatever I see is only seeing myself. R: Yes. Seeing yourself. Yes. SR: You’d have to have a preconceived idea that the seeing is different than what you're saying, to see it any other way though? R: That's from Prarabdha karma, you've accumulated all these samskaras. So the ajnani sees all that on the marks of the world. SR: That gives you the sense that the seer is different from what's seen. (R: Yes.) Because you're carrying all that around with you. (R: Exactly.) Is that the second principle you were talking about that night, that you really are the world as it manifests. (R: You mean the third principle.) The first or the second, I can't really remember, what principle, you have stress today because you've taken on the stressful world that appears before you? R: 'I' have taken on the world. Therefore don't try to change the world, change the 'I'. Transcend the 'I' and the world will go, because the world is attached to the 'I'. SF: So the seer is different from the seen at just one level. But at another level, there is no seeing, so it's not different than the seer? R: And there's no seer. There is only consciousness. SL: That would apply to the I trying to watch the I or if I find I'm watching the I, it doesn't become impersonal and there's still an I doing the watching and it hasn't come together. R: You have to ask yourself, "Who is watching?" (SG: The hall of mirrors?) Yes. SG: It's when the object and the I has gone. SF: You explained one day Robert that there are actually not two I's, it's just one I, which is the real I. (R: Yes.) The supreme principle, which doesn't identify with the body, sort of believes… R: The I is attached to your belief system. (SF: Right, but the I is only one, there is not two I's?) There's only one, but in the last analysis that has to go too. (SF: Right because still conceptual.) (laughter) Yes. SK: In the lowest analysis there are two I's. (R: Yes. See there was one dog, he was I and then he turned into multiples.) And as soon as someone gets a gun there will be no dogs. R: Who would like to get me a glass of water? (SH: I would.) R: So how does all this grab you Sam? Sam: Could one say that the quickest way to this be silence after a period of time. (R: Oh yes.) If one could just sit in silence. (R: That's the best way.) Because the concepts go, the ideas go. (R: But can you sit in silence? That's the question.) Yeah, but what I'm saying if somebody did? (R: That's it, everything turns into silence.) Everything just is, not even silence exists? (Robert receives water, student continues) Sam: Could one say theoretically, that even if ones mind wanders a lot and one has many thoughts, I think it is difficult for them to sit in silence. Even if they do that, even if they still sit in silence after a time will that not take care of itself? R: Everything helps. Only it may take a thousand years. (laughter) But when you're saying, "I - I" you're coming toward silence, that's the whole idea. You say, "I - I. Where did I come from? I - I, I - I" And you will notice the space between I - I becomes bigger and bigger and greater and greater, until automatically you stop saying "I - I." And then you're in the real silence, what you're talking about. But that's how you get there. But it's a little naive to think that the average person can just sit down and be silent, they can't, because their thoughts are so powerful, it won't let them sit still. That's why I give you the practices. So you'll have a tool to work with and you can do something. SK: Isn't there also trouble that people think they're in a thoughtless state when they're really not and they need something to go beyond that state. To get to the real silence. R: Of course, that's right. SY: What about just continuing this no matter what you're doing all day long, trying to do this rather than separate times of the day? R: If you can manage, it’s great. But in the beginning you shouldn't be a fanatic. You should sort of balance everything. It will bring you to the same goal. Because from experience working with people I found, if you take the average person out of the world and you start doing this all of a sudden, 24 hours a day, they can go crazy. (laughter) SH: Have you had them go crazy? (R: And that's good some times.) SK: Or they just give it up and go back into the world (R: Yes.) And not try spiritual life again. (R: You have to balance everything.) SY: I've been trying to do it for years and years and years but I find that I haven't been able to. It's just whenever I can think of it. I keep thinking that I should be able to do it, 24 hours a day for I know it would work. R: Well don't think of that at all. Just be gentle with yourself. Love your Self a little more and focus on your Self, when you can. But be gentle and make it simple. Do not have the feeling, "I have to do this." It'll all happen by itself. Everything will happen by itself if you allow it to. (SY: Part of my mind knows that, the other part can't stop.) Then you have to ask yourself the question, "Who feels like this? To whom do these feelings come?" And follow it down. You can go right back to I. You're working with the I. Follow the I-thread to the heart and you'll become free, gently, slowly. Do you know what kind of chair I need Henry? I need a softer chair that I can sink into, with the arms further apart. (laughter) (SH: How about cushions?) (general talk and laughter) R: If you practice these principles, all the things I gave you, shared with you, you will actually see fast results. It works. But you've got to do it, you've got to make it happen. I cannot do it for you. I can lead you to the gold mine but you've got to dig yourself. SH: Well they're all three essentially the same, following the I to its source. R: They're essentially the same, yes, God, the universe. (SF: What?) Anyone else? SK: The Self, God, yeah. (SF: The body, God and the…) R: They're all the same. The whole trick is to realize that the whole universe, God and everything else is attached to your I. And when you allow the I to go into the heart, the I will disappear and pure reality will shine forth. SH: The heart is the source of the light. (R: The heart is the source?) Where is it located? Where the I disappears? R: On the right side of the chest. We're not speaking of the physical heart. We're speaking of the spiritual heart. And we're not speaking of chakras. We're speaking of the heart on the right side of the chest, which is only a point of reference. SG: When I meditate, I try to find — locate the heart on the right side. I'm always looking for the heart on the right side. Is that correct? R: Yes, you don't try to find it, you just become it. You are the heart, that's you. The heart is the Self. It's only called the heart for a point of reference. Due to the fact, that as a point of reference, spirituality awakens quicker, when you focus your attention that way. SG: So you should focus your attention on it? (R: Yes.) Yes? (R: Yes, on the right side.) SH: Are you sure it's on the right side? It seems to me to be in the centre. (laughter) R: Well if you like the centre Henry, enjoy it! But through all spiritual teachings, the spiritual heart is only on the right side. SG: Whether you're right handed or left handed. R: That's right, that is a good point as a matter of fact. When you say something like this, "Who me?" Where do you point? On the right side. (S: Even if you're left?) Even if you're left you point to the right side of your chest. Whenever you talk about yourself, you always point to the right side of your chest. You're pointing to your spiritual heart, to your Self, that's your real Self. SG: I want to talk about satvic food on the spiritual path. R: Well, satvic food automatically comes to you, when you're thinking of the I. When you're practicing Jnana Marga, automatically you will know what to eat. But satvic food is always the best food, which consists of fruits and vegetables and grains and a little milk, that's always the best. But this is why on this path we do not discuss too much yoga. How to sleep, what to eat. Nothing is really necessary. Except getting rid of the I. On the path of getting rid of the I, everything else will come automatically. You will be drawn to the right foods, to the right people to the right employment, to right action. Everything will take care of itself when you're focusing on I. Look how happy that dog is. Does the dog think of I? The dog has nothing to think about. The dog just exists, he doesn't know he's a dog, we do. SK: He's not thinking of I right now? (laughter) (R: Not quite, he just exists.) You don't want anything? (addresses dog.) R: But we get so caught up in our thinking, in our thoughts and in our emotions, we have no time to become free. The secret therefore is to slow the mind down. To keep the mind from thinking. In other words when your mind starts to think, catch yourself. Every time your mind starts to think, catch yourself. And you can ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" Or you can be the witness to your thoughts, or you can exchange thoughts for the mantra and say, "Who am I?" or what we discussed tonight. But by all means do something to keep yourself from thinking. SH: Does that include work thinking? The thinking that's necessary to accomplish a task? R: Yes, due to the fact that your body will accomplish the task much better when you don't think. You will know what to do. Your mind will become one pointed on the task and you will accomplish the task much better. We're not thinking about the task. But yet something inside of you will know exactly what to do. But when a person thinks about a task, he thinks something like this, "What if it didn't work? What if I make a mistake? What if this happens or that happens?" whereas if you don't think something will take over and the task will become more beautiful for you. When you find yourself in the moment, centered in the moment. Where five minutes ago doesn't exist and five minutes from now does not exist. You become centered in the now, then you can do the task correctly. SF: Is the witness of thoughts another thought? R: Yes, it's another thought you have to get rid of in the end. It's like the stick I was talking about. You make the fire and you throw everything in the fire to burn up. But the stick is the witness and when everything else burns up you throw in the stick too. SK: The stick you use to stir up the fire? R: To stir up the fire, yes. Everything has to go. (SH: The witness included?) The witness included. Because after all, who is the witness? Where did the witness come from? (SH: Just consciousness functioning on its own.) If it were consciousness there would be no thoughts about a witness. (SH: Either the witness isn't a thought…) Well somebody's got to think about being a witness. (SH: Then that isn't witnessing.) Then who knows that you're witnessing? (SH: No one.) Then you can't be witnessing. (SH: There is no one to know?) There's no more witnessing. (SH: There's just witnessing per se?) The witnessing has to go. Because when there's just witnessing, when you come out of it you say, "I witnessed." (SH: No I, just witnessing?) Then that's good, then the witnessing is really the Self. If you get to that point, you can call it by any name you like. You can call it witnessing, you can call it consciousness, you can call it absolute reality, it's all the same. As long as there's no I. SV: (Student asks about the imagination technique for the art that they practice and whether the growing silence they feel now will have an effect on this) R: Well look at it this way. Your body came to this earth to do a certain work and nothing can deviate from why it came here. So your body is going to do the work it came here to do. It has nothing to do with you. Therefore if you're meant to be a good artist or a great actor, you're going to accomplish this. But you will be silent about it. Silence is your real nature, your true nature. Yet you will perform better than you ever performed before. Everything will be better for you, but you are not the doer. You just got to get rid of the notion, I am the doer. That has to go, it has nothing to do with you. You are not the doer you are the Self. But yet your body is going to do whatever it came here to do. But your body is not you. So don't worry about it, the right thing will happen. SF: It will manifest as more responsibility in creation? R: Yes, if that's what it's supposed to be. In other words whatever your body's supposed to do on this earth, it's going to accomplish without your help. SF: Robert I have a problem with this thing about thoughts, ultimately thoughts are the manifestation of the Self. I don't know if I'm wrong but, if that's the case the thoughts are non-dual per se. Duality comes only when there is somebody who believes they're the thinker. So thoughts per se like in the case of the Jnani, he has thoughts but there is nobody to think about? I mean that's the way I see it. R: The Self is self-contained and the Self really does not manifest thoughts to begin with. Thoughts are an illusion and like you say, the Jnani does have thoughts. But the thoughts of the Jnani can only goes this far and they stop. But they do not bring on any more karma, they do not disturb the Jnani at all. They have no value whatsoever to the Jnani. The thoughts come very lightly, very slowly, they come and they go, they come and they go. There is no permanent thought. But the thoughts do not come from the Self. The Self is the Self. They appear to come from the Self. Just like the world appears, the body appears, the thoughts appear. Therefore when you follow the I like we said in the beginning and we realize the thoughts and the body is attached to the I, when the I goes everything else goes. Thoughts go and everything goes. So don't try to really stop your thoughts, get rid of the I that thinks the thoughts. See the difference? Whenever I tell you stop thinking, I mean catch the I that thinks. Find the source of the I that thinks. And the thoughts will stop by themselves. SF: And the difference is between those thoughts which have a claim in it and those thoughts which do not. R: Have a claim? (SF: Yeah, those claims that I'm doing something.) You have to realize, "I am not the doer." And when those thoughts come, ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" And they'll disappear. Is that what you mean? (SF: No, because you were talking about the thoughts of a Jnani that they had different thoughts and I would take it that those thoughts don't have any claim of doing?) Oh I see what you mean, right. That's right. (SF: And other thoughts have a claim of doing.) Yes. (SF: So there's a difference between those which have a claim and those which don't.) A Jnani has no attachment to his thoughts whatsoever. They mean nothing, they're valueless. SV: The other question I have is, also prior to having any knowledge of this, I'm not thinking about myself but imagine a person who would like to pick up a pencil and sketches still life and the moment that he's getting into relationships between a few objects in still life and fully concentrates on that in that silence and putting them together. In a certain way I always felt that person is there for a small extended period of time in his life and when he puts the pencil down, he falls back into regular consciousness. And the question was, is what you're talking about is sort of like doing the still life except that there's no pencil. And all the objects and everything you're relating to, is as if you're relating to still life, say? R: That's a good way to see it, yes that's a good analogy. There's only consciousness and whatever appears in consciousness is an image. (SV: It starts getting more and more like a still life.) Like still life and when you realize who you are, you realize that you are the consciousness and not the still life. And the still life becomes an illusion. But it's still there. But you're aware that it's not reality. You realize that everything is non reality. But it exists as an image in the Self. Like the images in the mirror. They appear to exist. But you can't do anything with them, because if you try to grab them you grab the mirror not the image. Consciousness is the same way. When you try to grab anything, you find it's illusory. It doesn't exist. Only consciousness exists. So you ask, what about everything in the room, it appears to be real. That's part of the dream, it's part of the illusion. When you have a dream, you dream that everything exists, the world exists, the universe exists, people exist and you're going through all kinds of periods, problems and delusions, but then you wake up and it's gone. So when you wake up you laugh, for you realize it has all been a dream and only the Self exists, and you are that. SF: But when you say that consciousness exists that's looking at it from a relative point of view. In itself consciousness doesn't have a feeling of I exist. R: Of course, you're right. But to explain it you have to use some words. (SF: Yeah.) There is no consciousness, there is no existence, there's no Self. So let's keep still then. Jorge? SG: Last week we were talking about karma and you said let the body do what it has to do. The body came here to do something so let it do what it has to do which is karma. But you say karma is absolute. For instance if you have a deep insight into your self in the moment and you see it, something completely about your self has changed. That changes your karma, that changes your illusion. Also… R: As long as the I exists, karma exists. The only time karma does not exist and there’s no longer any change, is when you get rid of the notion of I. (SG: I understand, but also if you have deep insight, whatever you see is erased, you’re gone, that changes the direction which you're going.) But somebody has to be there to see. Who sees? (SG: Nobody, how will that something see, nobody sees.) There has to be an object and a subject. Somebody has to see. They both have to be, there's no such thing as a red snake. For as long as you see it there has to be a subject and an object, when they both merge then that's consciousness, (SG: Right.) When there's no more seeing, there's just being. (SG: That's what happens after seeing, something to see, the insight.) There's only being. But your body has nothing to do with that. The appearance of your body is going on doing what it's supposed to do. (SG: It’ll still rather change the direction in which you're going and becoming blissful.) R: That's possible. (SG: Also what about grace. Grace itself. Grace itself can also change the course of this?) Grace you already have. When you're aware of your grace, things can never be karmic. Grace transcends karma. (SG: People who are not aware of the grace they're experiencing, that changes the direction of their mind also.) Your life is always changing anyway. But you have nothing to do with it, it's due to karma. When you get rid of the notion of I, all change stops. You're no longer aware of change. When you believe I exist, then you're aware of change. So don't worry about change. If you see yourself and you can remove your I-sense then everything will take care of itself. (SG: Get rid of what, the Isense?) Get rid of the I-sense, the sense of I. And everything will take care of itself. It makes life easier. Because you don't have to make any changes yourself. (SG: I understand. (students talks about other people)) But don't worry about people. Do what you have to do and everything will take care of itself. (SG: I understand.) We worry too much about people. SG: Well I'm not worried about people, I'm just making a point. Many people try to understand themselves but they're too confused. (R: Who knows that?) So enjoying their life it never happens to them. They have to go through whatever comes. And you were talking about the absoluteness of karma. R: Umm, but who's aware of those things? I am. Where do I come from? Get rid of the I and all that stuff will stop. Work on the I. (SG: I don't disagree with that, but I'm just talking about the absoluteness of karma, disputing it.) On the relative plane, the absoluteness of karma is true. (laughter) (SG: On the relative plane. But let's say, someone meets a great saint and the saint bestows a great blessing on you and your life is changed.) That's because you've prepared yourself to meet the saint. (SG: I understand, but yet whatever happens, that's not karma. There's a very great saying that Rama Krishna would say, a touch of grace may change your course of life.) That's true when it happens. But you have prepared yourself for that. SK: Some schools of thought believe that’s in your karma to get that grace. R: What you're saying is true. But you have prepared yourself for that in one life or another. And now that’s your karma to get that grace. (SK: And now that would bring about another point, that there is no real free grace. It's earned somewhere.) No, grace is free, the rest is an illusion. Karma is an illusion. Grace is self-realization. So stay yourself in the I and everything will take care of itself. So that's an important point. Why do we want to get mixed up into so many different teachings? Just follow your own I and find its source and everything will come, all by itself. We've got to stop thinking so much. We think and we think and we think and we think. How does this work, how does this work, why does this work? Become simple. Do not be too intellectual. The stupider you look the better. SR: A month ago I transpired to read Ramana, some poems about the same subject and the idea of the archer and the arrow, I'm trying to understand this. (R: The archer and the arrow? Well what happens is this - Weren't you talking about karma?) Well, I get a sense that every moment where the archer enters the goal, is that moment, he's more sterile? Three short stanzas like: I am the arrow speeding along, unconcerned, certain. I am the archer by being true, certain. I am the target awaiting the return, certain. R: If it helps you it’s good. That's a good poem, if it helps you personally, it’s good. (SR: He talks about every moment is creation?) Yes. That's a good analogy. As long as it helps you, that's good. But don't complicate yourself. See the body is going to do whatever it has to do. But you are not your body so you have nothing to do with it. Therefore take no concern of anything and go back to the I and ask yourself, "Who experiences it? To whom does it come?" As an example: When I came back from India in 1985. I was going to retire in a log cabin in Maryville and spend the rest of my life by myself and grow my own food. But instead I started having a nerve problems. Now why did that happen? What have I got to do with it, I've got nothing to do with it. So the body is now in Los Angeles instead, having meetings. I have no desire to do anything like that, it just happened, but I've got nothing to do with it. My Self is always radiantly happy. Bliss, joyous, absolute reality and that's really me and anything else that you see is your problem. (laughter) SF: Well I see my world. (silence) Robert: So here's a meditation that you can practice on yourself. See these are all tools, use them, if you have to. They work and will cause changes. Make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes to remove obstructions and take ten deep breaths from your diaphragm. Inhale through your nose, expand your abdominals. Exhale through your nose and mouth and contract your abdominals, in slow motion, ten deep breaths, slowly and gently. This is to relax you. Now just breath normally. Now you begin to practice, vipassana meditation for a little bit, where you become aware of your breath, feel the sensations in your body. Just breath normally. Become aware of your breath and the sensations in your body. Ignore your thoughts. Whatever thoughts come to you, be the observer, the witness, ignore them… (tape ends abruptly)

Robert: Any people here for the first time? Welcome. I hope what I say doesn't shock you, because I say strange things. (laughs) I had an interesting vision this morning. In that vision I saw myself in a beautiful emerald room, and into the room walked President Bush(students laugh) and Saddam Hussein(more laughter) and Shamir of Israel and a couple of other people I didn't recognize. Gorbachov was there too. And they all sat around a round table and they just stared at each other. So I went to the stereo and started to play some African music. At first they just smiled, then they started to tap their fingers on the desk and pretty soon they were shaking to the rhythm. And then they got up and started dancing. And they all hugged each other and talked about peace. And they realized how foolish it was to hate each other like they do. They decided to take away all the boundary lines and make the world, one united world. And then I opened my eyes. Whatever that means, it was interesting. Somebody asked me to talk about, "The law of cause and effect." We never really talk about these things because it's on a relative scale. We talk about absolute reality. Ultimate oneness. But yet, if we're aware that we're body conscious and mind conscious, we fall under the laws of karma, or cause and effect. Therefore I'll shortly talk about these things because it helps. Cause and effect exist because of time and space. If there were no time and space, there would not be cause and effect. In reality there is no time and space and there's no cause and effect. But in the relative world there is. Cause and effect is another name for the law of retribution. For as you sow, so shall you reap or the law of karma. And as long as you are under that law, you have to deal with the God of that law. That God is called Ishvara in Hindu, Jehovah in the Hebrew religion, Allah in Mohammed religion, and it goes by many other names. Those Gods exist as long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena. And so does cause and effect. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. That's the law of physics. It's the same as the law of cause and effect. Everything you do ends up in a result, there's no escape from it. Unless you turn within and you no longer react to anything. Then you transcend the law and become free. But as long as we are still body conscious, we are under that law. This is how it works. If you want to grow oranges and you do not know anything about seeds. You would grab a lemon seed, plant it in the ground and expect an orange( meant lemon tree) tree to grow. The cause is the planting of the lemon seed. The effect, the lemon tree. The seed is planted in the earth. The earth is your mind and the seeds are your thoughts. And the effect is the result you get from planting seeds. So you plant a lemon seed and a lemon tree grows. But then you start crying and screaming about it, "I wanted oranges," you say, "I demand oranges." And you have a tantrum, you have a fit. Nobody cares. You planted the seeds and this is what you're getting as a result. Lemons. Of course you can always make lemonade, but you wanted oranges. So why did you plant a lemon seed? You don't know. Maybe you planted a lemon seed in a previous life. You set up the cause at that time. For the effect can back to you many lifetimes from now, as an orange tree, as a lemon tree rather. And you'll still scream, "Why did I plant a lemon seed, I wanted oranges instead." So it is when we see things we do not understand. For instance, when Mahatma Ghandi died, he got shot, why would an honorable man like that get shot? The last word he said to his attacker was, "I forgive you and thank you my son." For he realized that in some other life he had set the cause in motion. And this is the effect he gets back. This is called "Delayed Karma." Now there's instant karma. Like when you step on the edge of a rake. You step on a rake, what happens? It hits you in the head. That's called instant karma. Who takes care of this karma? The God of karma is, Ishvara, Allah, Jehovah. It is he who hands out what karma you're going to experience in each life. Let's take another example. Henry invites me to his house. I come into Henry's house and I go to the refrigerator. I say, "What’s to eat?" I eat him out of house and home. Then I say Henry can I borrow your car? And Henry's a good guy and he says, "sure." So I borrow his car and I wreck his car. Break his headlights, his windshield and come back and park it like nothing happened. And Henry being the good guy that he is, doesn't say anything. Then I say, "Henry can you lend me five hundred dollars?" So Henry being a good guy says, "sure." And I never expect to pay him back, I just take his money. Now what happens? By not reacting, Henry becomes neutral. When you're neutral, you do not accrue karma again. You're finished with that part of your life. When you react you accrue karma. What happens to me? I've got to experience the effect sometime, somehow, of what I've done to Henry. It's got to come back to me somehow. Maybe not even in this lifetime, but it will come back, there's no escape. This is why when we see certain things in life and we do not understand, we should never judge because everything is working out like it's supposed to. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should. Another example. People go searching for a Satguru a teacher. They go to everybody they can find. And what do they do? They try to learn everything they can. They suck the Satguru dry. They try to take all his knowledge. But do they give him their hearts? Do they surrender to him? Do they take care of him? Do they do anything for him? Most Westerners do not. They just come to take, but not to give of themselves or anything else. And when they've heard enough they go to somebody else and do the same things. So twenty years pass, then they wonder why they have not made any progress. Life is a reciprocal thing. Both parties have to give and then they merge into one. But if one party gives and the other party takes they come under the law of cause and effect. And they get exactly what they put out. Heres another example. I decided tomorrow that I'm going to rob Security Pacific Bank. So tomorrow comes and I write out a note and on the note it said, "I've got 25 hand grenades, a bazooka and a sub machine gun in my pocket, give me five hundred thousand dollars immediately or I'll blow up the bank." So the teller of course is frightened. And she gives me five hundred thousand dollars. And I get away clean, nobody catches me. I go to Canada. Ten years pass. I go into business and I'm successful, but then something happens and the tax people come after me. It winds up a levy on all my dealings of my business and I owe them five hundred thousand dollars. Which they get back from me. It makes me bankrupt and I'm back where I started. Do you see how everything works out? There are no mistakes. The laws exact. The only way to get away from that law is by not reacting to anything that comes to you. Because everything that happens to you is karmic in nature. If you react to it, you are setting yourself up for more karma and you are accruing more karma. If you realize that you are not the body mind phenomena, you become totally free and absolved and emancipated. And there's no more coming or going for you. You become absolutely free. Basically that's how it works. Any questions about that? SD: I have a question, maybe some tips on how not to react, since that it seems so difficult. R: It's simple, whenever you're faced with a challenge or a problem, you act but you don't react. What's the difference? When you act you're spontaneous. You do what has to be done, it's over. When you act you plan deliberately what you're going to do. The thoughts have to come to you when you react. And the thoughts have fear, anger, jealousy, rage, frustration, getting even, whatever and then you react. But when you act there's no thought. You just do it and it's finished and you go on with your life. That’s basically the difference. (SD: Then what about emotions. I mean we react to emotions?) Same thing. Your mind does not know the difference between a thought and an action. You do. So when you're planning to kill somebody, your mind believes you've already acted and you've done it. Even if you never carry it through. And that accrues more karma for you. Thoughts are things. For instance, the mind does not know the difference between a cancer and a cold. But you believe a cancer is deadly and a cold you can get over fast. So if you catch a cold, your system will make you get over it fast. But if you get cancer, your system believes that's like death. So fear comes in, worry comes in and ultimately you die. But you have set the cause in motion by your belief, that's how it works. So thoughts and actions are the same. There's no difference. The idea is to free your mind from thoughts. Not to think further than your nose. Catch yourself every time you think. And ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come? Who thinks these thoughts? To whom do they come?" And you'll realize they come to me. I think these thoughts. Everything is connected to the I. All your thoughts are connected to I. Get rid of the I and all your problems go with it. Follow the I to it's culmination. Concentrate on the source of the I. And you will find that I does not exist, and you'll become free. (SD: Did you say that you will find the I does not exist?) I does not exist. (SD: Does not exist?) Right. I leads to nothingness, to freedom, to liberation. As long as you have a sense of I, you have problems. Because you always say, "I am sick, I am poor, I am happy, I am unhappy," and so forth. And you're living in the world of duality. So when you follow I, all the concepts disappear with the I and there's nobody left to think. You ultimately become free. You should also ask yourself, "For whom is karma? Who has to experience karma? Who has to experience cause and effect?" You will soon realize, that that is only for your ego, not for you. You are free and have nothing to do with it. When you transcend the ego, karma goes. And you become totally free. (SD: Who are you addressing as you?) Yourself. Your Self. (SD: And that's not the same as I?) Same thing, yes. Me, I it's all the same. If you ask yourself, "To whom does the karma come?" And then you say, "To me." Hold onto the me, like holding onto a rope, and going down to the end of the rope. When you come to the end of the rope, there's nothing. So when you come to the end of me, reality exists. And reality ensures of it's own accord. So we're not to look for reality, we're not to seek reality, we're are not to find reality, we're are simply trying to let go of the other things. To the extent that you let go of the other things. To that extent will reality come of it's own accord. And you will be free. Now last week, I think it was Thursday I saw Nate was here. He made the statement that he had been meditating for twenty years and nothing is happening. He's seen thirtyfive teachers or more. And still nothing is happening. I told him to hold on and keep going, he didn't like that. So when I went home I opened one of Ramana Maharshi's books and I just happened to come to that page that we're talking about. Mary would you like to read it? Mary: Sure. R: Start over here, go to here. Skip this, read this and go to here. Skip this part. Now listen to this very carefully. Mary: A visitor asked Bhagvan what one should do for the betterment of Atma. Bhagvan said, "What do you mean by atma and by betterment?" Visitor: We don't know all that, that is why we come here. Bhagvan: The Self or Atma is always as it is. There's no such thing as attaining it. All that is necessary is to give up regarding the not self as Self and the unreal as real. When we give up identifying ourselves with the body, the Self alone remains. Visitor: But how is one to give up this identification? Will coming here and getting our doubts removed help in the process. Bhagvan: Questions are always about things that you don't know and will be endless unless you find out who the questioner is. Though the things about which the questions are asked are unknown, there can be no doubt that a questioner exists to ask the questions. And if you ask, "Who he is?" All doubts will be set at rest. Visitor: All that I want to know is whether satsang is necessary? And whether my coming here will help me or not? Bhagvan: First you must decide what is satsang? It means association with sat or reality. And one who knows or has realized sat, is also regarded as sat. Such association with sat or with one who knows sat is absolutely necessary for all. Shankara has said, (Bhagvan here quoted the sanskrit verse) "That in all the three worlds, there is no boat like satsang to carry one safely across the ocean of births and deaths." This morning questions were put by a visitor by name, S P Tahal. Mr. Tahal: I have been making sadhana for nearly twenty years and I can see no progress. What should I do? Bhagvan said, I maybe able to say something if I know what the sadhana is." Mr. Tahal: From about 5 o clock every morning, I concentrate on the thought that the Self alone is real and all else, unreal. Although I have been doing this for about twenty years, I cannot concentrate for more than two or three minutes without my thoughts wandering. Bhagvan: There is no other way to succeed than to draw the mind back, every time it turns outward, and fix it in the Self. There is no need for meditation or mantras or japa or dhiyana or anything of the sort because these are our real nature. All that is needed is to give up thinking of objects other than the self. Meditation is not so much thinking of the Self as giving up thinking of the not-self. When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your mind for getting or going outward and turn it inward and fix it in the Self. The Self alone will remain. Mr. Tahal: But what should I do to overcome the pull of these thoughts and desires? How should I regulate my life, so as to attain control over my thoughts? Bhagvan: The more you get fixed in the Self the more other thoughts will drop off of themselves. The mind is nothing but a bundle of thoughts and the I-thought is the root of all of them. When you see this I is and whence it proceeds, all thoughts get merged in the Self. Regulation of life, such as getting up at a fixed hour, bathing, doing mantra, japa etc., observing rituals, all this is for people who do not feel drawn to self-inquiry or are not capable of it. But for those who can practice this method, all rules and disciplines are unnecessary. Robert: Thank you Mary. This is why I always say, I do not give lectures, I do not make speeches, I would rather sit in silence then have to talk. For talking gets you nowhere. You know yourself, you listen to me tonight, by the time you go home you forget everything. And then you will look at one of the magazines and you will see a new teacher on the block and you'll say, "Let's go hear him." And this'll go on forever. You've got to get down to the business at hand. You've got to make up your mind that you don't have, that you are tired of playing mind games, jumping from teaching to teaching, from book to book and living your same old life to reversing the whole procedure. You stop reading, you stop running from teacher to teacher and you settle down doing the work of selfinquiry. Then you become free fast. Otherwise you will go lifetime after lifetime after lifetime of searching, searching, searching and never getting anywhere. But if you start practicing self-inquiry soon you will start arriving at certain feelings that the world, people, places and things, the universe, God is a concept of your own mind. You have created God in your own image. And he exists for you as long as you believe that you are the bodymind phenomena. So get to work and do something good for yourself. Any questions? Don't look so serious. (Students laugh) SG: If this karma and stuff carries over to the next life who's it carry over to if there is no individual. R: As long as you believe you are the body, you pick up new bodies every time. You drop the old one and pick up a new one. (SG: Is that a completely different one or does it carry over from one to the other.) It's a carry over. You don't look the same, but all the attitudes, samskaras, opinions they all come back to you, until you transcend them completely. So, you do not transcend these samskaras by trying to get rid of these each one at a time you can never do it. For when you get rid of anger fear pops up and so forth. Rather find out “to whom these samskaras come? Who experiences these things?” and find the source of the I. Then it will all go and never come back and you won't have any problems. SD: So are you saying Robert that from lifetime to lifetime, assuming that one learns something in any given lifetime that there is a certain progress. R: Definitely, you carry it over. For instance, with most of you that come here. If for some reason you don't make it in this life, what would happen to you most probably, is you will be born in a spiritual family of Jnanis. You will be that far ahead of the game. And you will carry on where you left off. But if you're selling drugs out in the street, you will be born to a family of drug addicts and you will carry on from there. Everything is up to you. (SD: So that sort of ties in with the idea that it's all evolving even though that's not exactly what we're seeing?) As long as you believe that you're the body the soul evolves. But in reality there's no soul and there's no body. As soon as you can grasp that you wake up and you become free. ST: Is it possible to understand that completely if you're sitting where I'm sitting, you know? (laughs) (R: You don't have to understand with your human mind.) Okay. (R: You just have to be and open your heart and everything will happen by itself.) SF: What do you mean by open your heart, right now? R: It means let love shine through, compassion, love, goodness. Have no opinions, have no concepts. No preconceived ideas. Just be open in your heart, with love and everything will come. That's what satsang is all about. Don't be like the fellow who heard a story like this and decided to become a Zen Buddhist Monk. So he quit his job and went to Japan and had an audience with a Roshi, a head monk. And he said I wan to become a zen buddhist monk. And the Roshi said, "Okay," and gave him all the rules and regulations. And he said, "by the way I forgot to tell you, we take a vow of silence here, we only speak only three words every ten years." so he said, "okay." Ten years passed and he an audience with the Roshi and the monk said, "the food sucks!"(laughter) And he went back to his quarters. Another ten years passed. He had an audience with the Roshi and he said, "The beds hard" and went back to his quarters. Another ten years passed and he went to the Roshi and he said, "Hey, I quit," and the Roshi said, "I don't blame you, you've been bitching ever since you got here." (laughter) Don't be like that. Let's sing some more songs if you feel like chanting, by all means do it. (tape break and continues after music and chanting is done.) You now have an opportunity to ask any spiritual question you like about anything and we'll see where we go. SL: About reincarnation, I take it the soul is dependent on the ego? R: The soul is dependent on the ego and the mind as long as you believe you are the body. But when you give up the body belief, everything becomes redundant. It does not exist for you any longer. So all these things exist, for as long as you identify with your body. (SL: So as long as there's an ego there's reincarnation?) Yes. There's a God and there's karma and everything else. (SL: After liberation there's no more soul?) There's no soul, there's no God, there's no world, there's no universe, there's no liberation, there's no duality, there's no non-duality. (SL: What is the difference between the soul and the ego then?) The soul is the part of you that carries on. The ego is the force behind the soul. The ego is the doer. That makes you believe that I am the doer. (SL: So it's then just the identification that exists after the death of the body that carries over to the next so-called life?) Yes. SD: Isn't the same ego carry forward also? I mean aren't the soul and the ego sort of interchangeable in that way? R: The ego's always the same. The ego, soul, concept and principle are always the same. They go from body to body and body to body they carry over. The thing to do is not to concentrate on that but to ask yourself, "For whom is reincarnation? For whom is there a soul? Who's going through all this? I Am. Well who am I? What is the source of I?" SR: Robert, we talk about these things as if they were solid entities, or objects, you know ego, soul etc. And somehow I get confused in that because I seem to remember Bhagvan's teaching like there is no ego, see what's really there and that's simply the teaching and not that they are there to get rid of. (R: Exactly.) And sometimes I feel a sense of confusion of, is there an object to be destroyed? (R: There is no object to be destroyed. It never existed.) Right. R: But as long as you are having difficulty with your life, they appear to exist. And if they appear to exist, we have to question why? "Where do they come from? To whom do they come?" and they will disappear. We work with what we've got. (SR: So we're questioning appearances essentially?) Yes. (SR: What seems to be?) We're questioning the world. Where did the world come from? Where did I come from? SG: It's like when you ask the question, "Who am I?" there's a kind of a blank spot, a blank space before anything comes up is that what you say consciousness is? R: Space is consciousness, correct. The space in between "Who am I?" is the real Self. Abide in that. If you continue the practice, after a while, the space will grow longer and longer and longer. You will say, "Who am I?" and pause and you will sooner get lost in consciousness. Then you start thinking again, and you go back to "Who am I?" and there'll be another long space, until "who am I?" stops completely and you become your Self. So as you continue the practice, the space in-between becomes longer and longer. SF: Robert. Is the Self clear space or a blank or the perceiver of the space or the blank? R: The space is not a blank. It is not a perceiver. It is nothing that you can qualify. Nothing that you can discuss. Nothing that is known. For space to be known, there has to be a knower. And as long as there's a knower, that's not it. So you have to go beyond that. To silence. Consciousness is silence. Silence is consciousness. They're both the same. SR: Robert, in a sense the space is not an it, but I and that is a problem in a sense, that we see it as it and not I? R: You exist. You exist where there is space and you exist where there is I. So who exists as space? Who exists as I? ask the question. Who exists? confer. Follow the existence. Follow the I. And you will come to nothing. You will come to consciousness by itself. But do not believe that the void is it. Many people experience the void and they think the void is it. But don't you exist in the void? (tape break as Robert continues) R: …there is nothing that can be explained. As long as you can explain it, it's not it. So what is left? Silence, quietness. SY: Why does the music or song help to realize the consciousness or unexplainable? R: The music quiets the mind. It makes the mind quieter and quieter. It makes the mind one-pointed. So you can get rid of it and become still, quiet. SU: So we can use music to quieten our mind? R: Yes. If you come home after a hectic days work, if you listen to chanting music like this, you'll become quieter and quieter. You'll become more and more relaxed and you'll be able to go deep within yourself. Deeper and deeper than you've ever gone before. That's how the music helps. SM: That's not connected to the emotions of transcending is it, Robert? (R: What's that?) Emotional transcending from listening to music? (R: Oh it quiets the emotions.) Oh I see. R: It transcends emotions. It transcends anger and fear. It's good for you. It's good for the soul, that doesn't exist. (laughter) All of you still look pretty serious, I don't know why? It's not that bad you know. This is fun. (laughs) Put the right finger in here and left finger in here and pull. (Robert puts fingers in corners of mouth and pulls. (laughter) Smile. Do not take life serious. SF: I've just had a feeling, I'm glad to be here. R: I'm glad you're here. The material life is a series of changes. The only thing permanent in life is change. So when you chase life for possessions, for things, for people. You will always become disappointed. Find your Self first and everything else will work out. Go ahead. SG: If there's no free will is there only predetermination, that's all? R: Everything is predetermined. The only freewill we've got is not to react to conditions and to turn within. That the only freewill we've got. Everything else is destiny, karma. Even when I lift my hand like this, it's been predestined. SD: By whom or by what? (R: By the lord of karma, by Ishvara.) Which you said doesn't exist? R: Of course not. But as long as you don't know that, because you believe that you're the body, then you've got to be careful. (students laugh) Otherwise I'm giving you license. You may really go and hold up a bank tomorrow, it doesn't matter because you think there's nothing. On the contrary. SE: It's taking a thorn to remove a thorn. (R: Yes.) SD: So would a Jnani reincarnate? (R: No.) Because he'd be off the karmic wheel, right? (R: Exactly.) So attaining - or being a Jnani is the last time you'll be on the earth plane right? R: A Jnani has nothing to do with the world or the universe. (SD: But I mean the body of the Jnani that appears to continue existing? Is the last physical existence.) The body of a Jnani appears to the ajnani. That's how the ajnani sees the Jnani. But in truth the Jnani has no body. There no coming, there's no going for the Jnani. There's no birth, there's no death for the body. But the ajnani sees the body. SD: But for example if you were born an ajnani and you achieved enlightenment in a given lifetime are you saying that the body would disappear or just from your perspective it would never have existed. (R: To the Jnani it never exists.) But those around you would still see a body? R: Yes. Do you want to read something? Ed: You know I was all those years in the Zen monastery. Every morning we recited the Prashna-Parameeta for Daya Sutra and for twelve or fourteen years I never understood and I tried to stop to understand after a while. I would like you to comment on it after I read it. (R: Okay.) It's very short. Ed reads: Abuk-logi-tashwara was practicing deeply the Prashna-Parameeta and he perceived clearly that all five stundas are empty and pass beyond all suffering and distress. Oshariya-putra form is not different from emptiness. Emptiness is not different from form. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. And so also with sensation, thinking, impulse and consciousness which are also like this. All these things have a definite character of emptiness. Neither born nor dying, neither defiled nor furore, neither increased nor lessened. So in emptiness there is either form or sensation, thinking, impulse nor consciousness. No eye, no nose, no ear, no tongue, no body, no mind, no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind. No element of I nor any of the other elements, including that of mind consciousness. No ignorance and no extinction of ignorance nor any of the rest including age and death and extinction of age and death. No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no wisdom and no attainment. The Bhodhisatva since he is not gaining anything by the Prashna-Parameeta has his heart set free from all of the hindrances. And with no hindrances of the heart there is no fear. Far from all perverted dream thoughts he has reached the ultimate nirvada, Nirvana. By the Prashna-Parameeta all the Buddhas of the three worlds have the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. Know then that the Prashna-Parameeta is the great spiritual mantra, the great radiant mantra, the supreme mantra. The purist mantra that removes all suffering, the true the unfailing. The mantra of the Prashna-Parameeta is taught and it is taught thus: Gatei, gatei, para-gatei, parasam-gatei, bodhi-swaha. Gone, gone, gone beyond, all together beyond, awakening fulfilled. R: That's very good. If you're inclined toward Buddhism, you would follow the path that he just described. Depends where your feelings go. What your karma is, what you're inclined towards. We say exactly the same things with different words. So I can go with everything, it's very true. We're all inclined differently. Some of us are inclined towards Buddhism, some of us are inclined toward Jnana, some of us are inclined toward new cars. Everybody's different, but it's all good. Make it simple. Buddhism has a tendency to make things a little hard. Because you've got to remember all kinds of things. The only thing that you have to know is that you exist. You exist while you sleep, you exist while you dream and you exist right now. Ask yourself, "Who exists? What is that which exists?" Ask yourself. And when you find out you'll be free. We try to make it very clear and very simple. The simpler the better. (short pause) We always teach also, the best time is to start in the morning. When you first wake up. You simply ask yourself, "Who woke up?" I did. "Who dreamt?" I did. "Who slept?" I did. I was present in all three states of consciousness. "Then who is this I?" follow the I. Grab hold of the I. Concentrate on the source of I and you will become free. And you will carry it through the day and your days will become happier and happier. Just by doing that. SL: What if you follow the I and it just stops, when you're just saying, "Who am I?" (R: That's good.) And you just keep repeating "Who am I?" for a while?" R: No, focus on the stop. Where it stopped. Put all of your attention into the place where it stopped. (SL: And repeat "Who am I?") You only repeat "Who am I?" when thoughts come. (SL: So just try to have a blank in “Who am I?”) Your mind becomes blank but you still exist. So you really go beyond the blank mind. (SL: How like, I don't quite understand?) You simply ask yourself, "Who has a blank mind? To whom does it come?" That has to go. Everything has to go. As long as you believe, “I have a blank mind,” you're still caught in the trap because I is still there. So it's not having a blank mind. It's going beyond the blank mind into total annihilation of the mind. Where there is total freedom and bliss. Don't be afraid of going back there, so far. A lot of people are afraid because they think that they'll disappear. You don't disappear. You become blissful, happy under all conditions. SG: Robert, it seems when I do this with my eyes closed, the space gets more elongated. Is this done like a formal meditation practice? R: Not really. When your space gets longer, it's a result of thinking. It is the mind that causes this. You have to go beyond that. Dive deeper. Dive deeper and deeper by asking yourself, "To whom does this experience come? Who is feeling this? Who is going through this experience?" No matter what experience you have, ask the question. Until all experiences cease and there's a deep silence. In that deep silence is reality. It comes by itself. SD: I get the impression when Gayle asked the question that she was talking about that deep silence, were you? SL: That's when I had my blank mind. (R: Well the term blank mind is not too good.) Blank mind is what? (R: It's not too good of a term.) SD: Not a good term but the experience is what you were talking about Robert? (R: You want to lose all sense of I and merge in consciousness in the silence, quietness.) But then I think Goram Pramesh was saying that, what comes after deep silence or is that it? (R: That's it. But as long as you can explain it, it's not that.) SL: Do you just taste the pull of it. R: That's right. It's not just having a quiet mind. Can you tell me why? Because you believe you've got a quiet mind. (SL: Uh.) You've got to go beyond the belief of mind. There's nothing. There's no one left to say that. There's no one left to make any statement of truth. Everything has been transcended. There is no light and there is no darkness. There's no happiness and there's no unhappiness as we know it. There's a total bliss consciousness which cannot be comprehended or explained. Remember, the finite can never know the infinite. So you can't explain it. SF: It's only afterwards that you can realize that there was nothing? (R: Afterwards there's no one left to realize.) I mean when it's not permanent. R: When there's nobody left, when it's not permanent, then I will realize everything. If it isn't permanent, thoughts will come and you'll just be like you were before. It's only temporary. But if it's permanent there are no thoughts. There's no I. There's no explanation. There's nobody left. (SD: So there's nobody to come back.) There's nobody to go anywhere or to come back. There's nobody home. SX: So who's minding the store.(laughter) (R: Nobody.) Dennis nobody. (laughter) R: Who's on first? (laughter) SD: No wonder I think the ego is afraid because it's facing the mask of existence. (R: Of course. That's the last thing it wants.) Is that because we feel earth bound or we feel like if our ego didn't exist that - then we don't exist? R: It's part of the karmic pull, to believe that you are existence, as a body, as a mind, as an ego. And when it starts disappearing. It'll make you afraid. For as you just said, you think you're going into nothingness and you're afraid to do that. But you have to push forward, until everything is gone. Then you'll really be home and it's a different ball game. (SD: So things that might come up would be fear of annihilation and things like that, right?) Yes and alot of things from past lives will come up. You have to get rid of everything before you become realized. But when you get rid of the I, all the dormant seeds of past experiences are attached to the I. When the I goes everything else goes. That's why that's the fastest way. SH: What sort of a ball game is it then? (R: It's beyond explanation. There's no one to say. There's no one left to explain. You become your Self.) SL: So the senses, is that like everything that makes you a separate individual or a separate person is erased? (R: Yes. You become omnipresence. You become radiant bliss and you can say, "All this is the Self and I am that!") SK: And I was never anything else? (R: Yes.) SD: I'm sorry what was his question? R: He didn't ask a question. He said, "I was never anything else. Let's sing some more songs.(laughter) (tape break as Robert continues) R: …he means he's not attached to things. There's nothing wrong with relationships or owning something. But do not be attached in your mind to it. That's how you become free. By being non-attached mentally. (SU: How do you do that?) Simply by knowing the truth about yourself. (SU: Because before earlier you were saying, "To feel from the heart?") You feel from your heart in the beginning and then that leads to a higher consciousness. Where you see everybody as your Self. All fear disappears. And when all fears disappears, you can be totally honest with people, you can own things, you can get married or not get married, you can live in a house or a tent, it doesn't make any difference and if someone takes something from you, it doesn't matter. As an example: In the story of Ramana Maharshi, when he lived in Iskanda Ashram, up in the hill in Arunachala. One night about three in the morning, he was attacked by thieves. He had about six devotees with him. And the thieves screamed from the window, "Give us everything you've got or we'll kill you!" So the devotees wanted to fight the thieves. And he said, "No, give them what they want. Carry it out for them." And he invited the thieves in the house to take whatever they liked. He explained to his devotees, "It is their dharma to be thieves, it is our dharma not to resist, because we are sadhus. So give them what they want." The next day they were captured by the police and Ramana got all his things back. But it's the attitude that counts. When you realize that you are the universe. Then the whole universe becomes you and you own the whole universe. So you don't have any greed anymore like you have to possess something. Another story about Ramana, when he was walking around the hill. He inadvertently stepped in a hornets nest. And instead of pulling his foot out and running away, he started to speak to the hornets and he said, "Sting me all you can, it's my fault I stepped on your nest. Go ahead sting me I deserve it” and he kept his leg there about ten minutes. Of course when he took it out it was full of bites. The average person would’ve gone to the hospital. But he just walked back to the ashram and everything disappeared in a couple of days. So that's non-attachment. SF: Robert, if a girl is facing rape she has to fight, she can't…? R: I guess she does, she has to fight. But I know something about this. When I had some meetings in Hawaii, I used to have a girl that told me she was raped seven times. And each time she allowed the rapist to do what he wants with her. And she didn't care, and she was happy as a lark. That's her attitude, so who knows? But if you don't resist, you'll get out of situations more quickly then if you do resist. There's something real about that. You know yourself if you're a woman and somebody's trying to rape you, the thrill is in resisting for the guy, when you resist his advances. But if you come on to him and you say, "Okay, I love you what you're doing. I'd love you to do it." He'll become frightened and probably leave you and go away because he didn't expect that. If you cooperate, a rapist doesn't like that. They like when you resist, because they've got power over you. That's something to think about. Non-resistance always works. But as long as you believe that you are the body, you can never practice non-resistance. Your ego will always interfere and make you stick up or your rights. It's only in the period when you're practicing your sadhana, "Who am I?" self-inquiry that you become stronger and stronger, and you're able to practice non-resistance. Therefore do not try to acquire something positive, rather get rid of the I and everything will come by itself. In other words, do not try to acquire positive traits because it'll take you years and years. Find out to whom they come. Find out who has the problem, and find the source then everything will take care of itself. Consider this your spiritual family. Ask personal questions. Things that have been bothering you for a very long time. Don't be afraid, let it all hang out. SD: Well assuming that our goal is to be realized within this life time, if you were facing eminent death or something and you were not realized, it would be to your advantage to resist so you can stick around and keep practicing, wouldn't it? R: It depends. It depends on your karma. It depends on many factors. But if you're killed while you're practicing. There's no doubt you'll come back to a spiritual family and you'll be able to practice again, when you're young. But it depends on alot of things. SD: But you know as so many people have spoken of to Maharshi in the past, they talk about trying for twenty years and not succeeding. It seems the necessity for this as Nisargadatta said, "The only reason to be in the body is self-realization." So one wants on a certain level to hang on. (R: To become self-realized.) To achieve that right. R: Yes exactly. But if it doesn't happen don't worry about it. You effort never goes in vain. Everything you do, every practice that you take. (SD: So you'll be reborn in the next grade, sort of?) Sort of. Maybe even on a nicer planet. (laughter) SF: Robert, what about the recourse of sadhana there are these periods when one that's doing sadhana may feel dry a little bit dejective, a little bit disappointed like he's going nowhere. What would you have to say to him? There are periods like that in the course of sadhana. What would you have to say to that to give him support? R: Then you observe. You become a witness to those feelings. And you watch those feelings. And then after you ask yourself, "To whom do they come? Who has these feelings? To whom do they come?" "To me. I feel this." "Who am I? Who is the I that feels dejected?" and keep still, but hang on to the I. Hold on to the I with all your might. Like holding on to a rope and then let go and when you let go there's silence. Then you will feel that those feelings disappear and they don't come back any more. But you have to keep going back again and again until it happens. It's like studying to be a doctor. You have to go to class, after class, after class. Study, study, study. Sometimes you think you're going to fail so you try again, you study harder until you finally make it. This is the same thing. But no practice is in vain, everything is accounted for. And if you die in your attempt, you carry it with you and you have another chance. You'd be ahead of the game. Do not worry about anything, be happy, be free. Love your Self, not your ego but your Self. SG: Robert. You said there's no free will but there's a choice to turn within or not, isn't that a function of duality also, why that exception? R: It's the only freedom we've really got. Not to react to a condition, but to turn within. That's a choice. We don't have to do that and allow karma to carry us along, or we can do that and become free. The choice is ours. That's the only choice we've got. Everything else is predetermined. SG: Isn't that just the illusion of choice that they have an understanding that the brain is not capable of creating a thought or initiating anything and cannot have an original thought. It's only a receiver and receives impulses from pure consciousness outside of itself. (R: This is true.) Always reacts to that, is that not so? R: That is so, but the brain has nothing to do with the mind. It's the mind that causes the brain to do that. Therefore we do not work on healing the brain. We work on annihilating the mind. When the mind is gone the brain will take care of itself and rest in the heart and do the right things. So don't concern yourself with the brain. Concern yourself with getting rid of the mind and everything will take care of itself. SE: Who is to concern themselves with getting rid of the mind? R: The ego. That doesn't exist. SG: So everything else is already determined. Is destiny determined in each moment, or is it predetermined that everything that ever will be is already known now? (R: It's all predetermined.) It's all predetermined, so everything that will pre-exist or has been already is so? R: And it's all an illusion, so ask yourself, "To whom is this destiny?" And you'll find out destiny never existed. (SD: So on the highest level, neither would pre-destiny, would that be right?) Exactly. On the highest level there's no realization. There's nothing to realize. SG: The mind accepts the concept of what you're saying, but we're getting beyond that. R: Then you have to ask yourself, "To whom does the mind come? For whom is the mind? Who has to go through all these concepts? Who has to worry about these things?" (SG: Robert, this ego wants to know.) The ego wants to know? (SG: Yes.) So, "For whom is there an ego?" (S: Just for this illusory ego, this false identification. If there's destiny, then I have no choice whether there is awakening in this case or not?) The choice you have is to turn within and not be concerned about this. SD: So are you saying in a way that by turning within you can cancel out your predestiny? (R: Exactly.) SH: Who turns within, not the ego? (R: The mind.) That's the last thing the ego wants. R: You have to use the mind to get rid of the mind. SG: Mind is the ego, is it not? (R: Yes.) SD: So turning it on itself, that's what we're trying to do. R: Turning it on itself, exactly. As you turn it on itself, it becomes weaker and weaker and weaker until it's completely annihilated. SE: And the process appears to be free choice until the self ends and then there was no choice or no mind turned inward in the first place. (R: Exactly.) On the relative level there's an apparent choice. (R: Yes.) But in effect there's no choice whatsoever? (R: Because you're already free.) SD: Are you predestined to awaken in a particular lifetime or are you predestined to become realized. R: At that level you're right, you are. But that does not exist, so you're not. See as long as we're playing with concepts, we're going to get stuck longer and longer. Forget about predestination.(laughter) Focus on the I and stop the game. SK: I have a question on that topic, being on a relative level. You see this friend and they smashed up your car and now they want to do whatever the next thing is. (R: Sue you. (laughter)) The persons who's car that was smashed up, at some point wouldn't they develop some concern toward their friend and somehow say something to make them aware that although it may not be hurting them themselves but karmically that they'd be hurting them to be doing these things and therefore not keep giving that person things to create bad karma with. R: Perhaps that person is not ready to listen yet? SK: Well either way, shouldn't that person make some kind of choice out of this compassion and concern for their friend to do something, say something? (R: Say that again.) Well someone ate all my food and then they borrowed my car and smashed it up. And now they want to borrow a thousand dollars. Anyhow all these things looking at me at a point. I would be concerned about this person and maybe compassion will be expressed and I will tell that person that frankly these things, you know, I'm not incurring bad karma by you doing these things in fact it's could be the opposite, but you yourself… (R: Oh I see what you mean.) …could very well be incurring bad karma and say something so that they could take a look at that and make some kind of choice. R: This depends in what state of consciousness they're in. (SK: Either party?) Yeah. You can either do nothing and just watch what happens, of course if you're not attached and you're realized. what do you really own, nothing. (SK: Yeah but you're seeing someone on a relative level who is involved, if you just see it that way?) But you're not seeing that way. The realized person does not see that. (SK: Alright, an unrealized person would see that.) So now you've got to work with it. (SK: Yeah.) So you have to do what you have to do. (SK: Yeah, boy if I become realized I want to remember the view of an unrealized being. And that seems like that's hopeful of someone else.) But you don't really, because you're seeing the unrealized being as realized. (SK: So it's all a dream anyway.) See, when you're realized you're seeing the whole universe as your self. You can't see anything else. There's no longer duality for you. So how can you see the things you're talking about. That's for the ajnani. (SK: So that's a good sign to tell where one is at?) Yes. If it bothers you. SV: Could you not say that you won't think of it one way or another, you'll just act spontaneously. You won't think whether you should help or you won't help. You'll just do the right thing. (SK: As a human?) As a human. R: It depends what state of consciousness you're in. As a Jnani you'll do nothing. (SV: But nothing could be anything.) It could but you'll probably do nothing at all. You'll just watch because it doesn't matter. SK: In that case, it seems I'd rather have a ajnani as a friend than a Jnani. (students laugh) SH: Well spoken. (laughter) SE: There's a very famous Zen Koan called dropping ashes on the Buddha. Which addresses this point exactly. A man supposedly attains emptiness and there's nothing matters to him and so he comes in and he flicks cigarette ashes on the Buddha and the question is, “how do you teach him, that there are time and places for everything and this is the wrong time and place.” And the other part of the story, “and this man is very big and he listens to no one. So how do you teach him?” That's the koan, I never answered it. R: The answer to it is. There's no one to teach and no one dropped ashes. SK: Because the Buddha never existed?(laughter) I always thought that that related to, that if the Buddha is outside of yourself, never deal with anything there. SE: So can you expand on that again please? R: See, who sees the ashes. Who sees the situation. The non realized beings. So they've got the problem. But in reality, the Buddha was never disturbed and no ashes were dropped and there's no reaction. Or you can ask the question, "For whom is there a reaction?" For the non-realized person. They've got to deal with it. Let's make it more personal. If you want to come over and stab me fifty times and cut off my fingers and my feet. Enjoy yourself, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Because it's the body that you're doing, that you think is real, that you're hurting. But I have no body. So what's the difference? Why should I protect something that doesn't exist? That's the answer. SH: Why do you feed it? R: I feed it because that's the action my body takes. It's karmic, what's left of the karma. (SH: Yeah but no one feeds it?) You see it like that. That's your point of view that I feed it and everything else. (SH: No, no one feeds it, it just feeds.) It feeds.(laughter) (SH: No one feeds your body.) No, exactly, exactly. You've got it. (SH: Boy he caned that out of my mind.) (laughter as tape ends)

Robert: It's good to be with you again, the days go by so fast. The years fly by. Your life flies by. Before you know it you'll be out of your body and where will you be? Where will you be? This is determined by what you know. If you know who you are, you will be nowhere. If you think you know who you are, you will be somewhere. Where we go is dependent on our thoughts. The mind is the same even after death, so called. Your thoughts determine where you go. As an example: If you believe in heaven and hell. If you believe in hell more than heaven, you will find yourself, after you leave your body in a hellish situation. But you have created that situation. Nobody sends you there. There's no one to send you anywhere. You create the place you go by what you know. If you believe you deserve to go to heaven you'll find yourself in a heavenly place. But that's only for a short time. Then the law of karma takes over and brings you where you are supposed to be. You may incarnate in this planet again. You may go to a different planet. So, the smart person, doesn't want to go anywhere. The smart person never dies. Because the smart person was never born. There's nowhere to go and there's nothing to do. You just merge into consciousness. You become consciousness. You become omnipresence and you're always happy. So, for a Jnani there's no birth and there's no death. There's no coming and there's no going. There's absolutely nothing. But the nothing I'm referring to is called bliss consciousness. The nothing I'm referring to is, you don't lose your individuality, your individuality expands and you become as omnipresence. Now you may ask the question, "How can everybody's individuality expand the same way? Then there'll be trillions of individualities?" No! There's only one individuality and that one is the Self. And that one is you. You are the ultimate reality. But right now with your finite mind it's difficult to comprehend that. This is why you have to understand that you are not your body-mind phenomena. As soon as you get rid of the bodymind concept, you become free. Therefore you work on yourself. The spiritual sadhana that you do, is simply to awaken. To awaken to your Self, to the one reality. In the one reality you can have a body or not have a body, it makes no difference. But even if you have a body, you really don't have a body. The body only appears to the non-Jnani. It appears as if the Jnani has a body. It appears as if the Jnani is doing something. But the Jnani does nothing. The Jnani is immersed in consciousness and has become the Self, the total reality, the pure intelligence, the absolute awareness, the sat-chit-ananda. Many people ask me this question, so what I'll do is ask you the question and the question is this: "If it's true that everything is predetermined, in other words, when I lift my arm like this, that has been predetermined. If that is the truth what does it matter what I do? What if I kill someone or cheat someone or rob someone? What difference does it make if I eat meat or I don't? If everything is predetermined I'm going to do anyway. So why should I behave myself? Who can tell me? From the teachings, who can tell me that? What's the answer, guess? SA: Can you say it delays awakening because it creates more negative karma that has to be lived through? R: True, your on the right track. Any more answers? SK: By what you do now, you're creating a future of predestined karma, so-to-speak? R: But if everything is predestined what difference does it make? SK: I don't know, I don't necessarily accept what you're saying literally, on that level. R: Get out! (laughter) Good I'm glad you don't. SE: Your punishment is also destined, that too. If you kill then the consequences are also there, society kills you. Doesn't really matter one way or the other. R: Okay. Any other bright answers? SR: It can only make no difference if you know that it makes no difference but if you don't know that it makes no difference, if you are under the bounds or the illusion that there is karma it's going to make a difference. R: That's the answer, you're right, exactly. If you have the consciousness of a Jnani that question never comes up. It's only for the ajnani, that that question comes up. Because the ajnani is bound by the laws of karma, Ishvara. It's Ishvara who metes out your karma. As long as you believe you are the body-mind consciousness, you're under the laws of karma. And anything I do to him, comes back to me. I have to pay for everything. Whatever I do to somebody else always comes back. So the average ajnani, the non-Jnani or the average person, is always accruing karma, just by reacting. This is why the only freedom you've got is to understand that you are not the body and keep silent or not react to any condition. But that's not only physically, it's mentally. There are many people who sit in a meditation posture for days but their mind is going, going, going, going. The mind never stops. The mind doesn't know the difference between the body taking action or the body not taking action. The mind moves by the very thoughts you have. It is only when the thoughts stop, when they cease, that the mind stops moving. And when the mind stops moving, all karma ceases. When there's no karma you're out of the jurisdiction of the Lord of karma, Ishvara. Ishvara no longer has any power over you. You have become Ishvara and you're under no law. So there's no thing for you to do and you're free. There is no longer birth or death for you. There's no longer any coming or going. You actions become valueless, because the action is only seen by the ajnani. In reality the Jnani takes no action. In other words everything we see is an optical illusion. This is why the world is a joke, a cosmic joke. Because the only thing permanent in the world is change. Everything changes continuously in this world, especially your thoughts. You know yourself, one minute you're thinking one thing the next minute you're thinking something else. And somehow, if you want to find freedom and liberation in this life, you have to slow down your mind and stop your thoughts. It is your thoughts that keep you in bondage. The only thing your thoughts think about, is the past and the future. But somehow you've got to get yourself to become centered in the moment and become totally spontaneous. I know it sounds sort of crazy when you think about it. Because you say to yourself, "Well don't I have to plan for my future? Don't I have to learn lessons from my past? Don't I have to work toward my goal, to achieve something in this world?" Those are all human tendencies. It sounds very logical when you think about it. But notice what I said, "When you think about it!" Now what do you think would happen if you had no thoughts? I can assure you your life would become better than it's ever been in the world. You'd have a better life than you ever had in your life. Take that tree outside. That tree can't think and yet it's been here for hundreds of years, perhaps. All of the leaves fall off and new leaves grow. Let's take a seed, a rose seed. If a rose seed were able to think like us, it would probably say something like this, "Do you mean to tell me that I'm going to turn into a beautiful rose? That sounds impossible. I'm just a little old seed. How can a seed become a rose? It doesn't sound logical?" By those very thoughts, the seed would destroy itself. It would never become a rose. Because it cannot think it turns into a rose by the laws of nature. In the same instance, when you think, what do you think about? You think about your bodily comforts. You think about food, lodging, work and money, health and whatever. It's those very thoughts that keep you away from your highest good. If you were able to stop your mind from thinking, a mysterious power would take over and you would find that you're in a better position than you've ever been in your life, by not thinking. But every time you think you worry, don't you? You worry about the future. You worry about man's inhumanity to man. You worry if your relationship is going to last. If you're going to get fired from your job. If this is going to happen, if that's going to happen. Those very thoughts cause those things to happen. Therefore it behooves you to turn the mind within itself. When the mind is turned within itself. It automatically rests in the heart centre and the heart centre is nothing but consciousness. Consciousness is your true nature. Consciousness is omnipresence. Then you become like a gigantic screen. A gigantic universal movie screen. And all the images of the world and the universe are superimposed upon you. You awaken to the fact that you are the screen or the screen is consciousness or pure awareness. And you realize that everything is a projection of your mind. That everything is the Self. And you can truthfully say, "Everything that I behold is the Self and I am that." So what do you think about that? SN: (Student moves places) I can't hear too good can I squeeze in here? That's good, thank you. (R: After I finish talking now he moves over.) (laughter) I think I've seen you before. (R: Yes you have.) In the valley there was a lady who had kidney trouble? SD: Oh that's you, I thought I recognized you. (SN: It's been a long time.) Probably a year. (SN: Yeah.) R: How have you been? SN: Something happened a few weeks ago that what you're saying about, is integrating. I can't put it in words, but something did happen. I can't put it in words. I just can't say anything. R: See this is the reason why I don't give lectures and I don't preach. Many people come and want to hear a lecture. They want to see a philosopher. I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a teacher, I'm not a lecturer. I'm no thing. And when I'm talking like this I'm talking to my Self. If you want to be part of my Self you're welcome. This is why this is called satsang. It is not the average meeting. I really don't know what it is. But as long as it helps you to awaken that's all I'm concerned with. Why I am sitting here and you're sitting there, I don't know. But there's no difference between me and you. I'm nobody special. You've asked me to sit here and talk so that's what I do. But I don't talk too much. Because if I talk too much, you forget everything I say anyway. So why talk? Isn't that true? Most of you have read so many books, have been to so many teachers, that you don't know what to believe. But I'm telling you not to believe anything. Stop believing a thing! Dive deep within yourself and your Self will guide you where you're supposed to be. And your Self will tell you what to do in every situation. Because your Self is omnipresence. Therefore your being here with me is no accident. Because your Self is my Self, there's one Self. And you're here because you're supposed to be here. If you weren't supposed to be here you would be some where else. (laughs) But you're here so what can I do? I never really invite anybody to these meetings, Henry does. Because it makes no difference to me if there's one person here or there's nobody here. There was a time when I used to talk to my Self. I still do, but silently. SD: To what end? What was the reason for talking to yourself, making a confession? R: I was just confessing the truth to myself, yes. Usually I don't do anything. But sometimes I like to say something to myself, because myself gets lonely. It's lonely in there. (laughter) Not really. SD: Robert what did you mean when you said earlier that we become Ishvara because on the highest level there is no Ishvara, is there? R: No, that's why you become Ishvara. (SD: I don't really fully understand.) Ishvara or God has always been you. When you awaken everything merges into oneness. So Ishvara has become you. (SD: And always was?) Always was, yes. But you have given it separation. As long as you give it separation, you're under the law of karma. SN: You can't help but give it separation? (R: Why?) Because it's the way we are. R: On the contrary, if we couldn't help it nobody would ever become enlightened. SN: I understand that, I agree with you on that, but I'm saying, programming, for me is so strong that even what has happened to me - I repeat over and over what happens but sometimes something will happen that comes to me that I have no control over, it just happens. R: Do you practice sadhana of any kind? (SN: Who?) Sadhana, spiritual practices? (SN: Do I practice any spiritual?) Yeah. (SN: No.) That's why. (SN: That's why?) That's why things are like they are. SN: I'm reading Wayne Dwyer, I think he's such an incredible person, the psychologist, psychiatrist, Dr Wayne Dwyer. (R: I've seen his book.) Really? He wrote this latest one, "When you believe it you'll see it." That's the title, and most people say, "When I see it I'll believe it," you know. Ed probably knows about this stuff. But it doesn't make any difference, it can be through a psychologist or meditation or through you, what'll happen will happen there's no one to say how it's going to happen? R: This is true to an extent, but most people should practice some type of meditation or do something to themselves to help. Otherwise you can say, "I want to play the piano but I'm not going to take any lessons." (SN: That's not a good analogy.) If it'll happen it'll happen. Why? SN: That's not a good analogy. How many years you meditate Ed? (Ed: A long time.) A long time, years and years and years. I've meditated too and all I did was get a blank and a wall and I said I'm not going to do this and I haven't. I know I'm speaking from myself. (R: Of course, I understand.) I'm not adverse or opposing you. R: I know, it's okay if you were. You have to look within yourself. That's where all the answers are. You have to ask yourself the question, "Who has these feelings?" (SN: Who what?) "Who has these feelings? To whom do they come?" Then you have to find your 'I' and discover who 'I' is. See you've got to do something. There are very few people who do not have to do anything. Maybe you're one of them, I don't know. But like you say if the years pass and nothing happens from doing no thing, then get involved in some spiritual practice and give yourself over to it. Like Bhakti for instance, devotion. Surrender your life to God and let God take care of all your problems, give it all away to God. Are you willing to do that? Give everything to God. Let God carry the load and become free. Any more comments about that. SE: I've known Nate for many many many years. I don't think there's a practice he hasn't practiced or a teacher he hasn't followed to a large degree. He's struggled, I've watched him struggle for year after year after year and he still feels a kind of frustration with the progress. I know him very well, he has really tried almost everything. R: Then don't give up. (SN: (Feeling sorry for himself) I don't know what to say.) SK: Robert when you say, by all means do something, really what you're saying is do nothing? (R: In the ultimate you do nothing.) So that's the whole process it seems. R: But you have to realize that you are nothing first and if you're confounded with all kinds of material things you can't see that yet. SK: It seems so logical for me because I've done much meditation and coming across this path, the idea of self-inquiry as you say all things are attached to the self, the 'I'. Until we find out about this 'I,' What is the use of practices or reading books, who's practicing, who's reading books, to what end? (R: That's the practice, to follow the I.) But really it's not so much practicing, it's not practicing in a sense. (R: True.) So I'm trying to make a point that as long as…well, just can't make the point. (R: I know what you mean.) You meditate to learn that you don't have to meditate in other words. (R: Yes.) You are That. R: Yes. (Turns to Nate.) But Nate the whole problem is yourself. You've got to get yourself out of the way and let the divine circuits take over. SN: I am aware of all these things in fact I don't want to talk because sometimes people laugh and… (R: Nobody laughs.) Some of these people are afraid to ask questions and things like that. I'm aware of getting yourself out of the way, then the question, "How do you get yourself out of the way?" And there's no how, it's like going in a circle. R: Then you should take one of the answers. (SN: One of the what?) Answers that you get and follow it through. Like when you get up in the morning. The first thing to realize is, I exist and then you realize I slept, I dreamt and now I'm awake and I exist. So who was the I that was present during the waking, sleeping and dreaming? I. SN: I would like to say that in this book - I only read about half of it - Dwyer he has made some connections, no doubt about it, he explains how he does it. But he explains how the waking dream and the sleeping dream are the same. He does such a beautiful job that you think when you're reading it that the waking dream and the sleeping dream are the same, it's really succinctly put. R: Well that's great, does he tell you what to do to get there. SN: You know I'll tell you what happened since you asked me. (laughs) I read about half the book, but I must be on some mailing list but I received - he's in Chicago - and I received a set from Dr Wayne Dwyer. "I'll send you six tapes and keep them for thirty days. If you feel they are a value to you, send me forty dollars," the price. "If you don't send the tapes back." Well, I've never heard anybody give a presentation like that. So I called up the eight hundred number in Chicago, and I expect the tapes any day. I'm curious what they're like, I think he might have something. R: That's good, perhaps they can help. (SN: Perhaps.) But in the last analysis Nate, nothing can help you but your Self. (SN: That's the self that's the problem, since I'm expounding.) Then for whom is the problem? (SN: My ego, my searching, my wanting.) Follow it through, rather say, "The problem is for me. I have the problem. Then what is the source of the I?" (SN: I've created the problem with wants or desires.) No, follow the I. All the things that you are saying, they're all attached to the I. If you solve the mystery of the I, everything else will go away with it. Because everything, the world, the body, the mind are all attached to I. So when you ask the question, "Who am I?" or "From whence do I come?" or "What is the source of I?" and you keep silent everything else will be diminished, all your problems. It will all go away with the I. SN: What was that Guerdjeff, expounding the different I's? Remember Guerdjeff? R: Yes. Perhaps he was, but no matter who's expounding it, practice it, do it, make it happen, that's the whole thing. There are so many teachers but you've got to be your own teacher, and you've got to work on yourself or do something, until something gives way. No matter how long it takes, never give up. SD: Did you get the tapes? SN: No they haven't come yet. I will share with - he said you play them over and over. And each time you play them, you'll hear something different. (students laugh) SK: Subliminal. (SN: No not subliminal.) SG: You got the tapes playing over and over and you don't know what he's saying. Why don’t you just burn up the tapes. (laughter) (SN: That's true.) R: Well again your being here is no accident. So let's see what happens to you. You've got my blessing. All is well. What difference does it make what happens to us if we do not react? The secret is just not to react, come what may. And the only reason we get upset is because the world is not turning our way. (SG: That's right, it's true.) He agrees. (SG: I Absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it.) At least I've got somebody who agrees with me. (students laugh) See what Shakespeare has said, "Nothing is either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so." (SG: That's right.) Therefore when something happens to us of a negative nature, it's not because something bad has happened. That's just the way we see it. It's our perspective, our concept. We have preconceived ideas, what's good and what's bad. So we expect the good things and we want to avoid the bad things. But the so-called bad things are just the other side of the coin of the good things. As long as you believe you are the body or the mind, you have to experience both, good and bad, everybody does. You cannot avoid it. It's only when you stop reacting that you transcend your karma and you become totally free. What do you think of that? And as I mentioned before, the fastest way to become awakened is to stop the mind from thinking. There's no faster way. And the way you do that is by investigating your mind. Investigate what your mind is. You will soon discover it is nothing but a bundle of thoughts, about the past and the future. And if you stop and watch those thoughts, observe those thoughts, become the witness to those thoughts, then you become silent and the thoughts diminish. You ultimately become free. And that's the way you do it. Any questions? SH: Can you witness? If there's a you witnessing, then it's not witnessing. R: In the beginning you have to use your mind to destroy your mind. So you use your mind to witness and then the witness goes from the mind to the Self and observes everything and does not react. (SH: Doesn't react?) But in the beginning you're using your mind. Like Ramana used to say, "It's like a policeman becoming the thief to catch the thief." So you use the mind in the beginning to subdue it. (SH: The mind as the ego-mind?) The ego-mind. The ego and the mind are simultaneously alike. They're the same thing. You simply observe your thoughts. You observe yourself thinking, you watch, you observe everything around you. You react to nothing, you just observe. As you keep doing this day after day, day after day, day after day. The mind energy begins to slow down. As the weeks and months go by the mind slows down, until the mind is conquered. Then you will realize there never was a mind to begin with and you've been fighting nothing all these years. The mind is an optical illusion, it appears real. Just like a dream appears real. So the mind appears real. And as long as the mind appears real, it projects and manifests the whole universe. Therefore the whole universe, especially all of your affairs, are nothing more than a minds projection. When you turn yourself inwardly and ask, "To whom do these things come?" You will soon discover that there's no me and you will be free. How does that grab you? SH: Seems like a lot of nonsense. R: That's what it is. No sense. (laughter) No sense. (SH: Yeah no sense to you.) Thank you. (SH: There was never a you or a separate you or me in the first place, so all this has gone through just to arrive at that obvious fact.) Why not just awaken right now? (SH: Why not?) And forget the whole thing. (SH: Great idea, but it's an idea.) Do it! Make it happen, become centered. There is no past or future for you. You are ultimate oneness, you're free right now. Accept it, take it, it's yours. Enjoy it. SA: Robert I have a question. (R: Sure.) It seems to me that if we accept the teaching and the practice. You said again and again, you can pursue your ordinary life except that you pursue all of your activities with non attachment. With detachment, indifferent to what happens. You've said this many times. But it seems to me that if you do this, if you go along with the teaching and the practice that eventually it becomes very difficult to live in the world. And that your physical world will change greatly and that it's almost impossible to pursue this life unless you have some type of organization, some type of support which allows you to persist in it. R: That's how it appears to you right now. But that's not true. As I mentioned before, your body's going to go through the motions and do whatever it came to this earth to do, but it has nothing to do with you, that's your body. When you awaken, you observe your body just like you observe everything else in the world. But you understand it's not you. And your body will go through the motions. So if you're going to be an artist, you'll become a great artist. If you're going to become a musician, you're going to become a great musician. But you will realize this has nothing to do with you. (tape break) R: If you see a lot of evil in the world, you realize that you're seeing yourself. And you must ask yourself, "To whom does this come? Who sees all this?" and again the answer will be, "Well this all comes to me." Hold on to the me. Follow the me to the source. There is no source, there is silence. And in that silence you become free and liberated. So the highest teaching, is silence. Now remember, when I speak of silence. I'm not referring to you just sitting still like a statue. Because when you're sitting still like a statue, your mind is still chattering away. I'm talking about silence in your mind, in your thoughts. Quietening the mind, making the mind quiescent, calm, still, by not reacting to person place or thing. Then you'll always be happy. If you don't react, you'll always be blissful. What do you think of that? SH: All reaction is the activity of the notion of a separate self? R: All reaction is the activity of the mind. (SH: Same thing.) Umm. (Robert agrees) (SH: There's no mind in separate self, how do you get rid of it?) So ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" That's how you get rid of it. "Who reacts? I do. Well, who am I. What is the source of the I?" And follow it to its culmination. Then you will realize that you've always been free. That there are no problems. There never were any problems. There will never be any problems. Simple, why make it difficult? SD: I cannot quite understand how non-reacting really relates to bliss. I would think it would relate more to nothing. R: Nothing is bliss. The nothing that you're referring to is the ultimate reality, absolute oneness, bliss, that's nothing. (SD: And everything?) When there's something that's duality. Something is always duality. (SD: How is nothing different from the void?) The void is the same as nothing. What Buddhism means by the void, they mean Buddha-hood, absolute bliss, nirvana, emptiness. They're all synonymous with bliss. (SD: I guess that's a nuance, so in our culture we don't usually relate.) Of course not. That's why I always tell you, when someone says to you, "You're good for nothing," say, "thank you." (laughs) SG: I have a question relating to the Self. You mentioned happiness. Is happiness really important for one to have in their life? R: We're not talking about human happiness. We're talking about unalloyed happiness. Happiness that comes from the Self. A happiness that is everything so it needs nothing. A happiness that is omnipresence, God, parabrahman, complete total happiness. That is foreign to us because we associate happiness with things. And this is beyond things. There's some things we can't understand finitely. We have to close our eyes and go deep within to find that happiness. SD: So it really requires an active faith to continue self-inquiry for years and years since we can't conceive of it with the mind and we're using the mind to try to conceive of it. It's really faith we're talking about isn't it? R: No not really, it's atma-vichara, self-inquiry. We're not asked to believe anything, we're asked to ask ourselves, "Who has this body come to? Who's mind is this? To whom does it come? Who's going through karma? Who's experiencing cause and effect? To whom does it come?" That's what we're asked to do. Not to have faith in anything. (SD: Well in a way - maybe it's just semantics - but it seems like you have to have faith that that would work?) It's more scientific. You just practice something and want to see the result. (SD: Even many of the books that Maharshi wrote many have complained for having tried for years?) Yes. (SD: So that's the point we're talking about, so it's obviously them feeling phenomena.) And he told them to continue. (SD: Um-hm. That's the kind of faith I'm talking about here.) No what you have to really do, is analyze your life and look at your past and say, "Do I want to keep going through this again?" (SD: No. (laughs)) "Or do I want to go somewhere else?" So you keep on practicing. (laughs) SE: It also depends on whether you're practicing self-inquiry as part of a goal to reach some state or for its own sake, because you don't trust anything else. If you're practicing selfinquiry just for the sake of self-inquiry because you don't like the way things are, it's an entirely different thing than practicing in order to gain enlightenment which sort of spoils the whole process. (R: Yes.) Because it's colored by the goal of attaining something. R: Very true, there are no goals. Due to the fact that you can't attain anything that you already are. There's no thing to attain. It takes a waking up process, to just wake up, that's all. SE: When I first read Nisargadatta for the first time I had utter faith in a teachers teachings in Advaita Vedanta. And when I first met Robert he shook me out of that faith and I've started self-inquiry again and they're complementary but they're different. (R: Umm) (agrees) SA: How are they different? SE: One from Nisargadatta's point of view, it's like you accept that you're the absolute, and you don't do anything. From Robert's point of view you recognize you're still a limited human being and have the power to investigate that I-ness and that there is something you can do - at least that's how I conceptualized what's happened to me - And I like the latter better because it feels more real. It's more of an acceptance of your limitations and your humanity as you are. Self-inquiry's more gentle than the kind of coldness that I felt with Nisargadatta, you just accept that you're the absolute and pretend you're God, or you pretend you're Krishna and then wait for enlightenment to come to you. There was a coldness that I had with that that I don't feel now. SL: I think you get that with Nisargadatta's teachings, like you know when people who go to see Nisargadatta and who say things like, "Oh, I'm God, I'm… SE: Yes, I know. It's true. Now when I read Nisargadatta I reason very differently, a very different understanding now. It was Ramesh's Nisargadatta that… (SL: That was the mind's Nisargadatta.) Yes, exactly. R: It's interesting how we can look at a book and then come back to it and get a different meaning to it completely. (SE: Yes.) SL: That's an example of his projection of the mind. (R: Yes.) They're just projecting their own mind, it's meaningless. R: This is why I say we should destroy all of our books and have no crutch whatsoever. And lean on your Self. See what you are, and where you are, and take it from there. When most people don't feel too hot and they feel out of sorts, they take out a book from the library shelf and they read something and they say, "Ah now I feel good." But the book becomes a crutch. Whether it's the bible or whatever you read. You've got to become the living essence of the Bible. You've got to become the living essence of the book that you read and you do that by contemplating your Self. Whenever you feel out of sorts, do not go to somebody external, by taking a book or anything like that. But simply ask yourself, "Who feels out of sorts? Who has these feelings? To whom do they come?" And follow it through. And the feelings will disappear of their own accord. (silence) SL: It's interesting too, you know. It depends on what ears this falls on. For some ears people get really sour when they hear this. (laughter) (R: Sure. (laughs)) Some they smile. SE: In most, it falls only once. SG: That's the truth like a hammer which keeps hitting over and over again until it gets through. Could you say about what Ramana was like, could you say something, a little bit about it. R: What can you say, it's like looking in a mirror. When I saw Ramana, I saw my Self. (SD: But you also have said that you asked immediately, what you could do for him, was that love of Self or love of what he represented?) I saw he had physical difficulties so I asked what I can do for him and he just told me to be my Self. Ramana was just like a rubber ball, his attendees used to just push him up the hills, carrying him along, push him on the bed and he'd just go along with everything. (SD: Well that Ananda Maya Mar she was sort of the same way, she was…) Oh yes. (SD: …always serene and out of the clutter and cluster around him. And you seem that way. You're always the same.) Umm. So what else is new? (turns to student) Do you have something to read? Nerada always brings good things to read. (SK: He doesn't follow your advice at all. (laughter)) No, he takes up our time and gives us something to do. So when you go home you can say, I was at a long meeting. Nerada: This is from the latest issue of the mountain path from Ramana Ashram. Magic quest: Know Thyself! Popularly attributed to Socrates has gripped the attention of the greatest seers, Sages and thinkers of all ages. It is the essential experience welling up from the heart of yearning souls belonging to every country of the world and giving expression to it, the terminologies, the words and the language may differ but the essence in its contents is the same. The command of Vedanta is: Atma-Naam-Vidi: Know The Self. In fact, this experiential dictum is at the back of all Eastern religions. Though it is true that the basis of this dictum is too fundamental to be classified under any philosophy or thinker or age. That is, knowing the knower is the aim of all spiritual strivings, in all ages and of all religions. Not to know the knower and yet to know all else is termed total ignorance, hence very great importance is given to knowing oneself. Know Thyself is the same as know who you are, or asking, "Who am I?" or seeking, "Whence am I" This ancient quest is the ground and fundamental teaching of Bhagvan Sri Ramana Maharshi. "Simple being is the Self," said Maharshi. This being is consciousness. The very living principle of each one of us, is this consciousness. Any form of awareness is embedded only in this vast expanse of consciousness. The triple principle dominating man's activities is called "Triputi" comprising the knower, the object known, and the act of knowing, occurs only in consciousness. Experiences are classified into At, Avata, Turiya and the waking, the dreaming and the deep sleep states. Which also take place only in consciousness. Likewise the pair of opposites like right and wrong, good and bad, day and night or concepts like being and non-being get exposed only in the back drop of consciousness. Thus consciousness is the ground or secret on which they play. While one is aware constantly and gets involved deeply in this drama, the basis substratum on which the play takes place is totally forgotten, by whom? To turn ones attention from the details or activities to the source of activity is called introspection. This turning inward is the beginning of spiritual effort called sadhana. Taking a right turn about, turn from total consciousness is the positive key to open the gates to know oneself. Becoming conscious or aware of something else brings in the triple, triputi, abhakta, turiya. But pure consciousness is pure awareness per se. It is the basis for all motion, while remaining motionless, unaffected by any movement. Perhaps an analogy will help us understand consciousness as our basis. Electricity flows through a wire. It is invisible and intangible. When the electric bulb is connected to the wire, the lamp gets lit up. The color of the glass of the bulb determines the color of the light. When flowing through a fan the current makes the fan rotate. Connected to a pump it lifts water. The current flowing in all these cases is one and the same, but its effects are different. Similarly when the pure light of consciousness passes through different physical, emotional, mental and ego vestitures, it looks as though it is limiting itself by taking the color and texture of that particular vestiture. Since the bulb, fan and pump are visible to the eye and not the electricity, the utility aspects engages ones intention, the root or the cause, the electricity being ignored. Likewise man's activities ensnare him and make him forget his very nature as consciousness. When consciousness is confined to an individual or the body, it gets clouded by the manifestation. This descent results in the ego, the non-self mistaking itself, for the Self. Conversely ego fluctuating through the physical, emotional and mental fields, has the power to cloud or veil pure consciousness. Ego has no existence apart from the Self. Like the gold ornament has no existence apart from the gold. But the Self exists always. Ego is only a shadow of the Self. It catches hold of the body and through it projects itself as the Self thus ego thrives in the world as conscious perceiver and enjoyer of the world. It hops from one form to another, since no form is permanent. Such impermanent movement is called the cycle of birth and death. This limitation is technically termed samsarra. Freedom from such bondage is called Moksha, release back into total consciousness. Absolute release into pure consciousness is the ultimate goal of human life, the release from the ego. How to affect it; Through introspection, deep inquiry, atma-vichara, self-inquiry, release from the bonds of ego is gained. This is the process of, "Who Am I?" inquiry. The technique to know oneself. The bondage is the ego. The bondage is for the ego. Consciousness, conditioning or identifying itself into a body is this ego. The ego exists say the scriptures due to non-inquiry, Avi-Chara. This Avi-Chara is sustained and strengthened by ignorance. Consciousness is pure attention alone. When the attention is held unmoved there is no place for ego or non-attention. To hold the attention on itself, to dissolve or transform non-attention into total attention, total consciousness, the quest, "Who Am I?" is the vital process. To turn ones attention on oneself is the essence of true knowledge. Such self attention is the key to open the mystery gates of the immeasurable treasure, knowing the knower. The knower known there is none else, nothing else to be known. To remain as pure consciousness is the secret in meaning of "Know Thyself." Bhagvan Ramana put it all in a sutra aferism. He summarized the whole process into four pregnant words. Dihum, Nahum, Kohum, Sohum. Dihum - Body symbolizing all objective and subjective perceptions. Nahum - I am not. Kohum - Who am I? Sohum - I am consciousness. Rid of all vestiges, vehicles, maps, abeyance's and camouflages, pure consciousness alone will shine, if the inquiry, "Who Am I?" is relentlessly pursued within. Such atma-vichara releases one from the bondage. Release from bondage and drawing of wisdom are simultaneous, as the coming of light and ending of darkness are simultaneous. In this grand journey within, the gurus grace is absolutely essential. For one who is ready to plunge within, the gurus grace is totally assured. This grace is felt by one dedicating himself to the pursuit of self-inquiry to a deepening peace, welling up in him, independent of life's circumstances. R: Thank you. These articles are written for the ajnani. They're very wordy, they're good but they're wordy. For instance when it says, "Consciousness takes up all form and becomes all forms." The question you should ask is, "Why? Where do the forms come from, that consciousness becomes all forms?" Well, the highest truth is, there are no forms, there's no body, there's no mind, there's no world, there's no universe, there's no God, there's no coming and going, there's no ignorance and there's no enlightenment. So why do we see it all? That's a mystery. It's an optical illusion, it does not exist. Go back to the dream state. When you dream it becomes externalized and in your small mind a universe is created with people, places and things. "Why?" it doesn't really exist. When you wake up it does not exist. The same as this world, it appears real. We appear as bodies, there's a sun, there's a moon, there's an earth, there are trees, there are birds, there are ants yet they do not exist, no thing exists, only the Self! and you are that. This is the highest truth. The reason I share with you the various methods of meditations, Jnana meditations, is because those of you who are really involved in the world and your mind is always thinking, thinking, thinking, if you practice the meditation, your mind will begin to slow up. Let me ask those of you who have been practicing, what has happened to you? Would you like to say? Anybody? Nobody’s been practicing? SY: I had a personal experience that I had… R: Well you haven't been here before. We're speaking… (SY: What meditations exactly?) The Jnana meditations, yes. That's okay. SE: Well my depression went away and I have twice as much, three times as much energy as before. (R: Oh that's good.) And life seems more real, in a sense, rather than empty. R: That's a good sign, there's hope for you yet. (laughs) SH: Can it be hopeless? (R: Yes.) No hope. (laughs) SD: How do you mean life seems more real? SE: I feel my body more and feelings more and reality seems much more clear and bright. It's like my old days when I used to practice meditation a lot. The trees are beautiful and shining, and the sky is very blue. (SD: Some things are heightened?) Yes and I don't read anymore. R: Anybody else? Remember on the path of Jnana yoga, Jnana yoga and Jnana Marga, there's really no meditation involved, but there are some people that have to use it and as I said before, to clear your mind out, it causes your thoughts to decrease. There are three types of meditations we use, we'll share one right now. So make yourself comfortable and close your eyes to remove obstructions. Forget about the world for a little bit. To relax you more, take twelve deep breaths from your diaphragm… (break in tape. Tape restarts after meditation) …peace, peace. If you practice this form of meditation, preferably in the morning or the evening, it will help. Any questions about that? Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to pray to yourself because God dwells in you as you. God bless and peace. And that's it. (tape ends)

Robert: Ask yourself, "What am I doing here at this satsang?" Why did you come? Ask yourself. Did you come to observe the speaker, to compare him with other speakers, or are you tired of playing games and you want to get on with it? What is the real reason you came tonight? You had nowhere else to go? You saw all the movies, all the TV programs? Looking for a new face? Ask yourself. Your life is very short. What are you doing with it? Unless you awaken in this life, you will come back again and again, and keep playing this game over and over again, until the day comes when you awaken. The only freedom you've got is to turn within and not react to conditions. I usually do not talk about myself, but I received an interesting phone call today from a lady in Santa Cruz. She said, "Robert, if you don't say something about yourself, nobody will know where you're coming from. They will think you got this information from a book or from another teacher. They will not know it comes directly from the Self." So I thought about this, and for a few minutes I will discuss my life up to the age of fourteen years old. That should bore you enough. I was born January the 21st in Manhattan, New York. From the very beginning, as far back as I can remember, when I was in my crib, a little man with a gray beard and white hair used to appear before me at the other end of the crib, about two feet long — two feet tall, and speak gibberish to me. I thought this was normal and everybody had that experience. Of course, being a child I didn't understand anything he said. It's only in the later years when I started to read books that I realized this person was Sri Bhagvan Ramana Maharshi. But nevertheless he appeared before me until I was about seven years old, then it stopped. Then something very interesting happened to me. Whenever I wanted something, a candy bar, a toy, I would say God's name three or four times and it would appear from someplace. For instance, if I wanted a candy bar I would say, "God, God, God." Somebody would bring it to me or it would come from someplace. When I went to school I never used to study. When we had a test I would say, "God, God, God," and the answers would come. Once I wanted to play the violin and my mother told me that it would be too hard for me to play, so she wouldn't buy me one. So I said, "God, God, God," and a few hours later my uncle appeared, who I hadn't seen in about five years, and he brought me a violin. He thought I needed a violin. And this went on and on while I was going to school. When I was fourteen years old, a strange phenomenon happened. I was in my junior high school class. There were about thirty-five children. The teachers name was Mrs. Riley. She weighed about three-hundred pounds, and when she got angry she used to jump up and down, so of course we used to make her angry. What I would do was I would borrow a bobby pin from a girl and there was a hinge in the back of the seat. I would stick the bobby pin in the hinge and twang it and she would go crazy. She didn't know where the noise was coming from and she'd jump up and down, a very interesting phenomenon. Anyway, it was the end of the term, and we were taking our finals test. This was a math test. I never studied for it, so I didn't know anything. So I said, "God, God, God." Instead of the answers coming, the room became filled with light, a brilliant bright light, a thousand times more brilliant than the sun. It was like an atomic bomb, the light from the bomb, but it was not a burning light. It was a beautiful, bright, shining, warm glow. Just thinking of it now makes me stop and wonder. The whole room was immersed in light, everybody, everything. All of the children seemed to be myriads of light particles, and then I found myself melting, sort of, into radiant being, into consciousness. I merged into consciousness. It was not an out of body experience. An out of body experience is when your soul leaves your body. This was completely different. I realized that I was not my body. What appeared to be my body was not real. And I went beyond the light into pure radiant consciousness. I became omnipresent. My individuality had merged into pure absolute bliss. I expanded, I became the universe. The feeling is indescribable. It was total bliss, total joy. The next thing I remember is the teacher shaking me. All the students had gone. I was the only one left in the class. The teacher was shaking me, and I returned to consciousness, human consciousness. That feeling has never left me. Now what does this have to do with you? Everything, for when I say, "You are absolute reality, absolute bliss," when I say, "all this is the Self and I am that," I-am encompasses everybody, everything. "I am that" encompasses the whole universe. I am that, pure intelligence, ultimate reality, sat-chit-ananda, parabrahman. I am speaking from my experience. Death becomes a joke, there is no such thing. Your real nature is immortality. Your real nature is unalloyed happiness, ultimate oneness. This is what you really are. Awaken to it and be free. How do you awaken? Well, in reality, you are already awake, but you are dreaming and you don't know it. It's like when you go to sleep and in that dream there's an earthquake. Everyone is dying all around you, and I come to you and I say, "This is not real. You're having a dream, don't you know?" And you tell me, "You're crazy, Robert. This is not a dream, this is real. Can't you see the earthquake. Can't you see people dying all around you?" But I say, "No, it's a dream!" You refuse to believe me. Then, all of a sudden you wake up, you find yourself in this world. The only difference between this world and the dream world is that this world is a little longer, but it's a dream. The world is not real by itself. Ultimate reality, pure intelligence, emptiness, space — that is reality. It is like a gigantic screen that takes up the entire universe. That screen is consciousness, and all the worlds, the planets, the suns, people, are all images on the screen. If the screen weren't there, there could be no images. Therefore, you cannot say that the images are real. They're only real as long as the screen persists. But if the screen is taken away there's no place to show the images. In the same way, your true nature is consciousness, pure consciousness. Your body is superimposed on consciousness. You have made the mistake of identifying yourself with the body and mind. Therefore, the body and mind seems to control your life. But as soon as you switch identities, as soon as you begin to identify with consciousness, everything changes for you. You become happy, peaceful, joyous, blissful. It happens by itself. All you've got to do is to switch identities, identify with reality. How do you do that? Every image that comes into your mind, you negate it. You realize that's not the truth, and you ask the question, "To whom does this come? To me." You hold onto the me. You find the source of me. The source of me is none other than your Self. Once you make the identity and you awaken to your Self, all your problems are over. Think of the problems you're thinking about right now. Think! Who has a problem? Your real Self cannot have a problem, because that's bliss consciousness. The problem comes to the ego. Only the ego has a problem, nothing else. Everything else is free, happy, no problems. Find out who you are, discover your Self. Jump within yourself. Be your Self. Become free. Nothing exists as it appears, nothing. Everything is consciousness, and everything is an image superimposed in consciousness. All of your thoughts, whatever is going through your mind, it has no basis, no cause, no ego. Everything you see is a projection of your own mind. You can put a stop to it by finding the source of your thoughts. Where do your thoughts come from? Find out. Go within. Ask yourself. You start in the morning when you first get out of bed. You watch your thoughts. Observe what you're thinking. Observe what you're doing. Whatever comes into your mind, ask yourself the question, "To whom does it come? I think this." Follow the I thought to the source. Hold onto the I and wait. Do nothing. Do absolutely nothing. Keep still. When another thought comes, use the same procedure. "To whom does this come? To me? Who am I?" Follow the I thought to the source. Do nothing. Remain in the silence. Do not try to analyze anything. Do not try to come to any conclusion. If your mind becomes argumentative, ask yourself, "Who is argumentative? I am." Everything belongs to the I. The whole universe is attached to I. When you find the source of I, everything else disappears. Find the source of the I and become free. Life is really simple. Why make it complicated? Why allow all your thoughts to control you, to control you, to control you? Why do you give in to your thoughts? If you want to become free, you have to stop thinking, completely, totally. When your thoughts come to you, no matter what they tell you, you have to ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come? Who gave them birth? I did?" Well, who am I?" Do not allow your thoughts to be your Master. What you call realization is only empty mind. When your mind is empty everything happens by itself. Reality shines forth. When your mind is full of garbage, you become belligerent, arrogant, wild, and you have no peace. So observe yourself, watch your thoughts. See where they lead you. Take control of them, and become free. I am not a lecturer, I do not give speeches, I do not give sermons. I'm only here and I'm available to you. So, if there are any questions, I’ll be happy to answer if I can. Feel free to discuss anything you like about spiritual life. SM: Robert, if this is all a creation of the mind, what about the grand dissolution of everything? Is there any point to that? R: The grand dissolution is also of your mind. Everything that happens, everything, is a projection and manifestation of your mind. When you realize that you are not the body-mind phenomenon, everything stops. The whole game stops and you become free. For that person there is no such thing as birth or death. Everything remains still and quiet. Everything stops. There is no dissolution. There is no desecration. There is only peace. But you have to stop your mind from thinking, and the best and fastest way to do that is through atma-vichara, self-inquiry. That's the fastest way as far as I know. You simply ask yourself the question, "For whom is desolation? Who experiences these things?" Find out, and you'll find that you are ultimately free. You have always been free. You have always been the Self, free, blissful and happy. That is your real nature. Even as I talk to you, look at the thoughts going through your mind. Look at all these thoughts that are going through your mind. Why do you allow them to control you? Why? It only hurts you, nobody else. Only the thinker suffers. Of course, it's difficult to stop thinking, but by asking the question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" your mind begins to slow down and finally merges in your heart, and then you are no longer controlled by the mind. You are no longer controlled by anything. Your individuality will merge into the infinite, and you will become free. SB: Robert, how is it that these little subtle thoughts have the power to obstruct? R: They don't, because your thoughts do not exist. How can they have power? Only what is real has power, and what is real is consciousness, absolute reality, total awareness. Thoughts have no power. They appear to have power. You have given them the power. You yourself have given your thoughts power by believing in them, by worshiping them, by doing what they command. Your thoughts tell you to go kill, you go kill. They say, "Go scream," you go scream, "go be belligerent," you go and become belligerent. You are controlled by your thoughts. But the wise person will stop, and think, and look within and ask, "To whom do these thoughts come? Where do they come from?" Find out and you will realize they never existed to begin with. It's all an optical illusion. Just like the rope and the snake you've all heard about. You think a rope is a snake because it’s dark and you can't see, but once you find out the truth, that it's only a rope, you will never be fooled again. You will never be afraid again. So the thoughts are like the rope and the snake. They have no power, but you fear your thoughts, therefore you give them power. Once you realize they are non-entities, they are nothing, then you become yourself, and you're free. (silence) SG: Our problems are only existent for the ego. Isn't it the ego that takes us to the spiritual path or practices? R: The ego appears to practice and take on a spiritual path, but there is something deeper than the ego. The Self is pushing you from itself. The ego tries to resist. The ego is for one reason only, to destroy itself. Only when you destroy your ego, do you use your ego to do that. That's the only purpose it serves. Otherwise it controls you totally and completely. The ego and the mind are synonymous. The mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future, that's all the mind is. The ego enhances the mind. They’re both the same. The ego is like the light for the mind, but by selfinquiry the light is extinguished so the mind vanishes of its own accord and you become free. Do not give your ego power by believing in it. Look at it like you do outside in the sky. When you say the sky is blue, everybody will agree with me that the sky is blue. But when you investigate you find that there is no sky and there's no blue. It's just space. In the same instance, everyone believes there is an ego, but upon investigation you will find out that it never existed. It does not exist. Only the Self exists, and you are that. So investigate, find out for yourself. Don't believe a word I say. Check it out, experiment. Find out and see. (tape breaks here) SL: What can I do when I see the misery and torture in the world? What good is it just to concentrate on my mind. Must I not forgo this indulgence in the self, by looking at myself, and help people in the world? R: You are omnipresent reality, and you are compassion. It is only when you know your Self that you can be an asset to others. When you become the embodiment of love which is also consciousness, everyone around you feels it and that's how you make this a better world in which to live. However, in the beginning you don't confuse yourself with that. If you want to help the world and help others, first find out the truth about yourself. If you don't, it's the blind leading the blind and everybody falls into the ditch. Now, again, when you find out the truth about yourself, yourself is not an individual. It is omnipresence, so you become the universe. Therefore, you can say all this is the Self and I am that. Take a look at your dreams. Where does a dream come from? It comes from your mind. You're sleeping and you're dreaming. It all emanates out of your mind, and in that dream you're riding in a jet plane, you go from country to country, you take up golf, you get married, you have children, you grow old and you die. All that is in the dream. Where did the dream really come from? Your mind, and so it is in real life. "Who is dreaming about wars, who feels this, who sees this, who's afraid?" Ask yourself, find out, investigate, and you will amazed what you find. (tape starts here again) R: When you speak of love and compassion, do normal people really have love and compassion? They only have love when somebody gives them something. If a person loves you, you say you love them. When they leave you for somebody else, you hate them. So the love and hate come. They're two sides of the same coin but real love is beyond human love. Real love is the infinite. It cannot be described. It's consciousness. It's absolute reality. Real love is your real nature, and you can never really know how to love until you know who you are. SL: I feel that when I practice, I go beyond my mind, and you feel peaceful. How do you go beyond that? R: If you really looked at your mind, and your mind really disappeared, there would be no need of the question because you would feel ultimate peace. But what really happens to some of us is that we think we're going beyond the mind, we believe we're looking at the mind, but something is wrong because we don't. Once we really observe the mind and realize it's no thing, we are already beyond it, we're free and happy. But sometimes, as I said, we think we're doing that but we're not. And you can tell. Once you catch a glimpse of self-realization, you'll never go back again. There's no turning back. You've either got it or you haven't. There are no steps to it. It's like when you're in the room of darkness and you find the light switch. The darkness just dissipates. There are no gradual steps. It doesn't become lighter, and lighter and lighter. The light just goes on the darkness dissipates. When your mind is really empty, realization comes of its own accord. SL: When you say to look at the mind, what you're looking at is a thought? (R: The thought, your mind is thoughts.) If you see the thoughts, then they disappear. R: As you observe the thoughts they disappear, but more come, more come, and even when you're finished with them from this life, they'll come to you from a previous life. It never stops. So you have to keep asking the question, "To whom do they come? To whom do they come?" And keep observing and following the I thought, and doing nothing, and one day it will all be gone, and you'll be free. But you have to have patience and persistence. Remember, it took us so many years to be the way we are, screwy, crazy, insane. So now it's going to take a little time, perhaps, to get over it. But don't worry about it, because we're all hell bound for heaven whether we like it or not. Everybody gets there, sooner or later. Our job is to be relaxed and calm, peaceful, to observe ourselves, not to react to conditions. Remember, every condition that comes upon you is karmic in nature. It's no accident. When you react to a condition, all you're doing is accruing more karma for yourself and it will never end. The secret is to just watch, to observe the situation, and not react. As an example, if you're driving home tonight and you have an accident, and you hit somebody's car because they passed a red light, and even if it's their fault physically, in reality it's nobody's fault. If you react to it by becoming angry, belligerent, all you're doing is accruing more karma and you'll just have to go over that situation again, and again, and again, and confront situations similar like that until you give it up and stop reacting. Then you win the battle, and you do not have to have a situation like that again in your life. SL: You said you'll never have that situation again in your life? R: Never, if you confront it and you do not react to it, then you're finished with it. Whatever you do not react to is gone, it's finished. It's like when you have a friend, and your friend is talking to you. If you do not react to your friend, you do not answer or say anything, what happens? Your friend leaves you. True? It's the same thing with a condition. If you do not react to a condition, the condition leaves you. It goes away. It never comes back. SL: Do you have to gradually eliminate the reactions to get to complete freedom? R: You simply observe yourself. You watch the way you react to conditions. You do nothing but watch. In the process of watching your mind will slow down. It will become weaker and weaker until it's gone completely, then you'll be free. SL: So you don't have to ask the I-thought, you just have to watch the mind? R: You automatically ask it when you're watching. As you are watching you will ask the question, "To whom does this come?" Then you will find out that it does not come to you at all. It comes to your ego. So again, you watch the ego, and you ask the question, "To whom does the ego come?" The answer will come, "To me." Hold onto that me. Find the source of me. It has no source. There is just emptiness, quietness, and you become free. But for one who knows that he is not the body or the mind, there is no prarabdha-karma for that one. But for the onlooker, it appears to be so. For the ajnani there appears to be prarabdha-karma, not for the Jnani. In other words, the ajnani may see problems, and that's the karma coming to its conclusion, but for the Jnani there are no problems. Do you follow? What do you think? Why do we worry so much? We're always concerned about something, aren't we? Why? The world was going on without you for many years before you came, millions of years. And it will go on after you leave. So while your so-called existence in your body, is here, why do you worry, why do you fear? What are you afraid of? Be peaceful, be still. Learn to love one another, have compassion, practice loving kindness, be your Self. Always remember your real nature is absolute intelligence, as ultimate oneness, divine harmony, bliss consciousness, sat-chit-ananda, parabrahman. That's who you really are. Identify with that and be free. So what do you think of that? SH: The ego position is just consciousness temporarily playing at being that particular ego? (R: Not really.) Where else can it come from? R: Consciousness is self-contained, therefore the ego is not really part of consciousness. It is an optical illusion, it doesn't exist. It appears to exist. (SH: Yeah.) And it didn't come from anyplace. It comes from your imaginings, but consciousness never gave it birth. (SH: The identification of consciousness with the body-mind produces the ego?) It appears that way, but it's not true. Consciousness does not really identify with anything because it is self-contained. Consciousness only knows consciousness. Everything else is an optical illusion that just doesn't exist. Even if the appearance is strong, it does not exist. And you can always think about these examples. When you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, you see a mirage that's water, water, and you crawl to the water and what have you got? Sand. But the water appeared so real to you, didn't it? In the same instance, all the things of this world appear real, but they're like the optical illusion, they're like the mirage, like the sky is blue, like the sand that appears as water. It's false imagination, misidentification. Turn back, go within, dive deep within to your Self, identify with the Self and become free forever. I think what some of us do is we read too many books and we make it too technical, and we think we have to do things. We have to do this and we have to do that, and we give everything names, and we say consciousness is the light that shines in mind that becomes the ego. We don't have to know about these things. All we have to know is, that I am not the body-mind phenomenon. I am absolute reality, that's all you've got to know, and follow the absolute reality, become it, do whatever you have to do to become it. Practice observation, mindfulness, watch your thoughts, Vipassana meditation, self-inquiry. Whatever you have to do, do it, to quiet the mind, and then you will see something brand new. You will realize that you were never born, that you do not persist right now and you can never die. You are free. SF: Robert, there is no stuff out of consciousness? R: No. (SF: Nothing is out of consciousness?) Consciousness again is self-contained. (SF: Right, but nothing exists beyond consciousness?) Nothing exists beyond consciousness. We give it names like pure awareness. (SF: Thoughts are mind in that respect. How to…) How to stop them? (SF: No I mean, if nothing exists beyond consciousness, thoughts as well as mind have to be within consciousness, part of it?) Not really because thoughts and mind do not exist. If they existed as an entity, they would be part of consciousness. (SF: Illusion per se.) It's illusion. (SF: Illusion, by definition, is non-existent?) Exactly. So they never really existed, therefore they cannot be part of consciousness. If they were part of consciousness, it would mean that they existed, and consciousness gave them birth and now we have to try to get rid of them. But, there's nothing to get rid of because it didn't exist. You're fighting nothings. (SF: So illusion, by definition, would be something without consciousness?) It will be nothing, no thing. It never existed and never will exist. It's part of your false imagination. Where did it come from? It came from nowhere because it just doesn't exist. SU: Then the awareness of this mirage also doesn't exist. R: That's true, you're right. Consciousness doesn't exist either. It's all a concept. The finite can never know the infinite. There are no words to describe it. You have to dive within yourself and experience it for oneself to realize it. There are no definitions. Everything we say is a preconceived idea, concept. Go beyond that, and you go beyond that by stopping your thoughts, stop thinking. That's how you go beyond it, and you stop thinking through self-inquiry and through observation and through awareness, watching, becoming the witness. ST: Robert, isn't it a possibility that a lot of us, or at least all of us, from the early times that we can remember as a kid, always had a part of us set aside that was watching, and from time to time we have a feeling that our lives are unreal, maybe from desire to co-create or whatever and we feel a prisoner because of all this, and yet we live our lives and have these definite strong feelings that that's not all there is, the body is not all there is? I never got to the mind myself if that was a valid thing but… (R: Okay, so what's the point?) The point is if a lot of us that feel that way, and still if we have a duality of living our lives, especially when we're young we have strong desires, then as they fade we still are imprisoned by us perceiving a body. R: This is why you have to ask yourself, "Who is imprisoned? Who has these thoughts and feelings? To whom do they come?" Go beyond everything you just said. Go beyond it. Forget about what you just said and simply go beyond it. Ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come about imprisonment, about being young, about being old, about thoughts?" None of that exists. Go beyond everything by asking the question, "To whom do these thoughts come? To me? Who am I? What is the source of the I?" Follow the source and become free. Follow the source into the heart and do nothing but observe and watch and you will find there is no source, it never happened. You've always been free. You've always been bright and shining. Everything else is nonsense. (ST: You mean it's just a memory?) Of course, it's memory, it's concepts, it's preconceived ideas. It's all those things, but don't think about those things. Forget about how you got there, how they came. Realize who you are now. "I am not this body. I am not this mind. I am not these thoughts. I am not this condition or situation." "Then who am I?" Then stop and ask again, "Then who am I?" And as you keep asking like this you will notice that the space between the "who am I’s" has become larger and larger, and in that space you will find your freedom. (silence) R: There's nothing new under the sun. Do we have any announcements? SN: Some people were suggesting that we move the Thursday night meetings up a little bit for they don't get out of work by 4 o'clock. So that's kind of open for discussion. (General talk and discussion) SL: When you were traveling where were you staying? (R: Ramana ashram.) You were staying there? (R: Yeah, as a base.) What were you doing there? If you were free why were you staying there? (R: Just for the peace, just for nothing, no reason.) It was very nice being, it was beautiful. (R: Umm.) SG: How did you do on the test, Robert, the math test? R: Zero, I didn't take the test. I didn't take it. SB: That's a good trade off, you fail a maths test and realize God instead. SG: Who's Sri Ganeshwar? (R: He's the editor of the mountain path magazine.) So are you still associated with that ashram? (R: I'm not associated with any ashram.) SN: He was there when Ramana was there. SK: Does everyone experience reality in the same way, with light? R: There is no particular way it happens. It’s different with everybody. The reality comes after all that stuff, after the light, after the experience. Reality is void, nothingness. SB: Robert all these people on the path for twenty, thirty, forty years, read all the books, you know. Most of them seekers, they've been to India a few times, they've had five, six gurus, they've done all the meditations, how come they don't realize their self, you know? R: Because they're still seekers. They have to stop being seekers and get down to business. (laughter) SK: But who are these people that you are describing that have not realized the Self. I have not met anyone who hasn't realized something. (SB: Really?) (Two students respond with: “I’m one.”) (SB: Well everybody has had little experiences but something that has lasted and not just little inner experiences.) SX: (Student explains an experience he had but finds that he has a problem with believing that the physical universe is illusory as Robert explains) R: That’s good. Okay, let's imagine you're having a dream. And we're talking just like this in your dream and you point to the chair, you’re sitting in the chair and you say, "I can't imagine that this is illusory." And you’re telling me the same thing that you're telling me right now, and then you wake up. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's the same thing. (SX: The same student gives his understanding of what he feels a dream is.) Okay, so what's the question? (SX: The question is I can't see how this duality can be resolved. There seems to be duality everywhere. Here we are. We're sitting in a room and it's apparently very solid. It is to me.) It cannot be resolved until you understand that you are not the body or the mind. (SX: That I'm not what?) The body or the mind? (SX: I'm aware of that, totally aware of that.) If you were totally aware there wouldn't be any problem. Then you wouldn't ask the question. (SX: Well, it's not a problem. It's not something that troubles me. It's just…) See, just by asking the question it shows that you're not aware of it. If you were aware of what you're saying there would be no question, do you see? (SX: Okay, that's your reality, not mine.) (Robert laughs) In other words, the dream and the waking state are both projections of your mind. We can be talking right now and you can have an awakening and wake up, and all this would be all gone. You'd see a completely different universe. When you actually dream, your mind projects the dream and you have all kinds of experiences, they're both the same, there's no difference, except this is a little longer, that's all. SK: When you dream you think it’s real, in the dream? (R: Of course.) SX: So the existence of something doesn't really depend on my recognition of it. (R: Of course it does.) The existence of something for me depends on my recognition of it, but the existence of it, itself, through right inference, doesn't appear to me to be dependent upon whether I recognize it, see it, or am aware of it at all. And as a matter of fact the gentleman just said a while ago, don't worry about the world, the world has been around for a long time. Long before you got here. Now that denotes to me that even in his reality that it has an existence. Has some kind of an existence. R: The only existence it has is the words that are spoken to try to explain it. (SX: Uh-huh.) That's as far as the existence goes. We could be having a dream and discussing the same subject and talking about Troy and talking about what you just said before. It can all be in your dream, same thing. There's no difference. (SX: Okay.) The thing to do is to forget about that, and ask yourself, "Who's dreaming?" (SX: Who what?) Ask yourself, "Who is dreaming? Who's having this dream?" Inquire within and find out. Find out what's a dream and what's not. Ask yourself. The answers are within you. I cannot give you the answer, it's within yourself. I don't want you to believe anything I say. (SX: Well, I'm obviously not doing that. I'm not disbelieving it.) Good, find out for yourself. (SX: But, I have to give some credence to the way I think, whether the thinking is an illusion or not, you know.) Who does? Who has to do all this? (SX: Well, I don't have to do all of it, but it's a… you know.) Ask yourself, "Who has to do this?" and you'll find that there's nobody to do anything. (SX: Okay, then I'll try that, I'll work on it.) Really? SG: Actually, when you ask yourself that question, "Who's unhappy or anything?" it disappears. (R: It does, you're right, exactly.) So when it disappears, what's that? (R: What's that?) There's nothing. (R: Only the Self remains.) Well that's it then. (R: The Self is emptiness, the void.) That's right, it's true. (laughs)) (R: And it's total joy and peace, but you have to discover it by yourself.) (pause) Now, what I usually do at the end of a meeting is that we have a meditation to help you, and as you practice this meditation it will actually help. So make yourself comfortable. Take ten deep breaths from your diaphragm in order to relax. Breathe deeply, slowly and gently. With every exhalation feel your body relaxing deeper and deeper. Now begin to breathe normally. Do not emphasize your breathing. Become the witness of your breathing. Observe your breath. Do not emphasize your breath. Watch your breath, and observe your bodily sensations. Observe the sensations of your body. If your mind wanders, simply bring it back again. You are observing your thoughts, your mind, your sensations. Simply watch your thoughts. Do not try to change them, just watch. Whatever your mind is telling you, do not react to it. Just watch your thoughts and watch your bodily sensations. Now ask yourself the question, "Who is the observer? Who is watching? Who is observing?" And the answer comes, "I am. I am observing. I am." This is the meditation. With your breathing when you inhale you say, "I," and when you exhale you say, "am." "I am," with your breath. Do not try to analyze anything. You simply inhale and say, "I," and you exhale and say, "am." "I am." (pause) Feel how peaceful you are becoming just by doing that. (Silence) Om, shanti, shanti, shanti. (tape ends)

Robert: Let me ask you a question. Where do you think you were, or what were you, prior to consciousness? What do you think you were? Who can tell me? In other words before you came into this body, before you became conscious, what were you? SH: You mean prior to individual consciousness? (R: Yes.) Not prior to consciousness per se? (R: Both.) Is there any prior to consciousness? (R: Yes, there is.) SS: What, the witness? The witnessing that I perceive in the dream sometimes? R: Not really. SH: Prior to consciousness, would that be consciousness at rest? Would that be no content? (R: Exactly. What were you prior?) Does consciousness relax? (R: What were you prior to that?) There is no prior. (R: There's no prior? Are you sure?) Yeah. (R: Any more answers, any more bright answers?) (students laugh) There can't be! It’s absurd! ST: Why can't it be, though, why would you just dismiss it entirely? SH: Because consciousness is fundamental. Consciousness is all. It's all there is. How can there be prior to totality, to all that is? R: Tell me, Glen? (SG: Potential?) Umm, any more bright answers? SE: Anything that would be said would only be a concept and would be in phenomenality. It would miss the point entirely. R: That's the answer, you got it. As long as you can describe it, it's not that. It's a mystery. It's beyond description. The finite can never comprehend the infinite. So as long as you can describe it, and you can talk about it, it's not that. And this is something you should always remember. So the answer is Silence. That's the correct answer. You are space, and now you appear to be the image superimposed on space. Now you identify with the image, but prior to consciousness you were not the space, really, nor the image? The reason I say you were not the space is because we can talk about it, so you have a concept of space, and again, as long as you have a concept of space, it's not that. The only way you can find out is by not saying anything, by catching yourself between thoughts. When you have a thought, and you're trying to figure out what it is, and when the thought stops, before your next thought enters, that's it. The space between thoughts is what we are talking about. So the thing to remember again is as long as you can talk about it, as long as you can describe it, as long as you can argue about it, as long as you stick up for your rights and say it's this or it's that, you're wrong. You're not really wrong, you're just on the wrong track, because if you were wrong, then something is right, and nothing is right, so there's nothing wrong. It goes beyond duality concepts. That's why I tell you to spend so much time alone, when you don't watch television, and you don't listen to the phone ring, where you can cut yourself off from the radio. Just sit and be your Self. Then you will experience pure being. For as long as you search, you'll never find it. After all, ask what you are searching for. You are searching for something that you already are. That's why you can never find it. If you were not that, then you would search, but you're already that, so searching becomes fruitless. And what is that? That is the space between your atoms. Every sentient and insentient thing is composed of trillions of atoms, but the space in between is consciousness. Again, we use the word consciousness for want of a better word. (tape break as Robert continues) But again, we have to function in the world, so we don't walk around trying to be smart. Instead what we do is function in the world as ourselves. Be your Self. If you are your Self, then you're safe. In other words, you're not trying to be anything. Just be your Self. What does it mean to be your Self? To live spontaneously. Most of us live from the past, as you know, and then we worry what we're going to do in the future. If you learn to forget about the past and the future, you're safe. When you live spontaneously you have no time to think, and that's when you become the witness. For thoughts are simply about the past and the future. True? When you learn to act in the moment, when you're acting in the moment you can't think because you're acting. Therefore, your thoughts are only on what you're doing and when that stops there are no thoughts, and you go on to the next thing. But you do not try to analyze the thing at all, whether everything will work out, whether it’s good or bad, whether you're making something out of it or not, whether it's in your favor or against you, all that's got to go. I received a call from a lady in Santa Cruse the other day and she started to tell me about her marital problems, so I stopped her. I told her I didn't want to hear anything about any marital problems. Does she know who she is? That's all I care about. If she knows who she is, then she goes beyond marital problems. She goes beyond concepts, longings, wants, desires. She'll be safe. For once you lift yourself up nothing can touch you again. The world no longer has any power over you. The world only has power over you when you identify yourself as a body. If you identify yourself as a body, then the world becomes real, objects become real, situations become real, the universe becomes real, God becomes real, everything becomes real and you live in duality. So one day you're suffering, the next day you're happy. Happiness leads to suffering, suffering leads to happiness. Of course, that's human happiness I'm talking about, human suffering. But as soon as you learn to go beyond that, and again that happens by living spontaneously, all suffering ceases. After all, for who is the suffering? For the one who identifies with the thoughts. As an example, somebody gets fired from their job. They start to worry about that and this leads to worrying about the future, because when you worry about the past, getting fired, you're going to start worrying and thinking, "How will I pay my rent next month? How will I buy food?" And the mind loves that. It starts feeding you more. Pretty soon you imagine yourself evicted from your house and you see yourself in the welfare lines, and you see yourself become a homeless person, and sure enough you do, because that's what you believe. That's where your mind is leading you. As long as you feel you have a mind, it becomes very, very powerful. Then you can say that, "Thoughts are things," for your thoughts will materialize in this world of effects, that which you believe is real. Subsequently, if you start worrying about your job, being terminated, and you start worrying about food, and you start worrying about evictions and all that stuff, you're really saying to yourself mentally, "That's what I want to happen," and you always get what you want. You've got to watch yourself. The secret is not to change your thoughts, but to get rid of your thoughts completely. We're not trying to change negative thoughts to positive thoughts, for all positive thoughts lead to negative thoughts, negative thoughts lead to positive thoughts, that's duality. We're trying to transcend the whole bowl of wax, to go beyond, and that's what happens when you live spontaneously, it happens by itself. Living spontaneously is a meditation. Do not concern yourself with the fruits of your efforts. Everything will take care of yourself, of itself. In other words, what I mean by that is, if you're in a job for twenty-four years, do not concern yourself if you get terminated or you don't, that's not the point. The point is who do you think you are? Do you believe that you're that frail human being that has been terminated, or that frail person who has lots of marital problems, or that frail person who doesn't know if he's going to die or live? Forget about all these things, go beyond it. Identify with the absolute awareness. Identify with the total reality which you really are. You do not identify with those things by affirming them. You identify with those things by what? By silence. You see the difference? There are many schools that tell you, change the negative into a positive, but that's based on the world of relativity. You'll have to experience both, and there will be no end to it. But when there's silence in the mind, that means you get rid of all concepts, of all desires, of all needs, of all wants, of all hurts. You become oblivious to everything. Then the real Self begins to take over, which is you, and you'll automatically do, or gravitate to, the place where you have to be. It will all happen by itself, but don't think of that. Think of nothing. Learn how to quiet your mind. Learn how to make your mind quiescent like a motionless lake. A motionless lake can attract, or image, reflect, the sun, the stars, the moon, trees, grass. A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything. So, when you learn to quiet your mind you reflect your Self, and your Self is always harmony, always bliss, always satchit- ananda, always the absolute reality, always absolute oneness. That's your real Self. That's who you really are. It's all up to you. What do you do with your life everyday? How do you live your life? This doesn't mean that you have to sit home and meditate all day long. It means you can go about your business. You can work. You cannot work. You can go to a movie. You can watch TV. You can do whatever you like, but never identify with the object! Never identify with what the body is doing. Let the body do whatever it came here to do, but you keep the mind and yourself on your heart, on the light, on consciousness. Quiet your mind any way you want, whatever method you use. Become the witness to your thoughts. Use atma-vichara, self-inquiry, whatever method you have to use, do it, but do it all day long, that's the secret. Not just when you come here, not just an hour a day, but all during the day. So how would you handle it if you go to your work and they terminate you? Instead of worrying, you would ask the question to yourself, "To whom is this happening? Who's going through this experience? I am." Hold onto the I with all your might. Follow the I to the source. Look at the I as a thread that seems to be connected from the source to what you're thinking about. And all of your thoughts are attached to the that thread, to the I thread. All of your fears, all of your frustrations, all of your desires, everything is attached to the I thread, and as you hold on to it tight; you follow it, follow it into the heart center. Then it will just seem to disappear. The reason I say it will seem to disappear is because it never existed to begin with,(laughs) so it appears to disappear. But once that happens you're free and you will not be disturbed by any mortal condition, and you will be happy. But when I say you'll be happy I am not referring to human happiness. I am referring to happy-happy, happy hour, really happy, for no reason. Again because your true nature is happiness, your true nature is bliss. When you get rid of the other stuff your true nature shines forth effortlessly. That's why we call this the pathless path, because there's really no path. There's only a quietness of the mind, following the I to the source. Then all of a sudden you become omnipresence, you become omniscience, you become omnipotence. Then you can say, "I am That I am," but there will be nobody left to say anything really. You will just bask in the sunshine of your love, of your happiness, of your bliss. Somebody else called and asked me to explain, and I've done this before but I'll go into it again, “What is the difference between a seeker, a disciple and a devotee.” We talked about it a couple of times, but some of you are calling and asking me about it, so I'll just touch on it again. A “seeker” is a blessed person, because of previous experiences in different lives, has been fortunate enough to begin searching for truth. A seeker spends many years, perhaps many incarnations, seeking truth. But the mistake they make is they go from teacher to teacher, from Hatha Yoga to Karma Yoga, Bhakta Yoga to Kundalini Yoga. They go from Christianity to Hinduism, from Hinduism to Buddhism, from Buddhism to Zen, from Zen to the Tao. And the searcher keeps going from one to the other, from one to the other, from one to the other. The searcher has not yet practiced anything. They just listen at different meetings. They read book after book on all kinds of subjects. They become very intellectual as far as truth teachings are concerned, and they are able to discourse everything under the sun. They can talk about everything. They have all kinds of rhetoric. They know about all kinds of spiritual subjects, yet they have never had a spiritual experience. And this can be dangerous if they do not find an efficient teacher who will explain to them what they're doing, for they can go on like that all of their lives, and go from one life to the next, one life to the next, one life to the next. They will remain a seeker, because the path becomes interesting. You know what it's like? It's like a king has invited you to the kingdom to share the kingdom with him. And he lives on two hundred acres of land. The land is beautiful. So you drive in the front gate and you're on the way to the king's house, but you see beautiful flowers and you become fascinated. You forget about the king and get into agriculture and start planting new flowers and get involved in planting flowers. But then you remember the king and you start driving. But this time you see beautiful caves and rock formations. You become fascinated so you stop again and get involved in rock formations and caves. You forget about the king. Years pass, you remember the king again. So you go forward and this time you see dancing girls dancing in the weeds, in the flowers, in the brush. You get fascinated with that and you spend years on that subject, and so forth and so on. You never get to the king. If you get to the king, he would have shared the kingdom. That's what a seeker does. A seeker becomes fascinated by different teachings, and buys every book about that particular teaching, becomes well read, but never has a spiritual experience. Now we come to the disciple. The disciple is a seeker who has been touched by a teaching. The disciple discovers Zen and just loves it. But instead of staying with a teacher the disciple goes from Zen teacher to Zen teacher, to Zen teacher. Not like the seeker who goes from one teaching to the other. At least the disciple has settled down and he stays with the teacher a while, then he goes to another Zen teacher, and then to another Zen teacher. And they go on like this from incarnation to incarnation. Now a devotee is completely different. A devotee has found the path they are looking for and the teacher that they want. So they become the path. They become the teaching and they become the teacher. They take care of the that particular path they are on. It becomes reciprocal thing. A devotee realizes that the teacher of their Zen path has given up everything to teach the path, so they take care of the teacher's needs, they make sure the path is right for everybody, and they devote themselves completely to that particular path. So what happens to that kind of devotee? Pretty soon they merge with the teacher's consciousness and they become one and they become realized and that's the basic difference between a seeker, a disciple and a devotee. Any questions about anything? SG: Is there even a choice for a seeker to be a disciple and a disciple to be a devotee? Or is choice an illusion? (R: No, not really. You're right.) It's just their tendency for it? R: Yes. You're going to do whatever you came here to do. But the only choice you have in life is not to identify with the body. So when you don’t identify with the body, you will actually gravitate to where you are supposed to be, and everything will happen. But you're right, we have no choice. (SG: There is no me?) Exactly. This is why I say those of us who have come here, it is not by choice, it is no accident. You're here because that's where you're supposed to be, that's the way it is, and I'm here because it's where I'm supposed to be. I never chose to be a teacher. I never chose to be anything. But I'm here and you're here. So what are we going to do about it? Why complain? SH: If there is no choice, then you can’t choose whether or not to identify with the body? R: That's the only freedom you've got. (SH: Do you have that freedom?) You have that freedom. (SH: But that's plain out and out choice.) That’s the only choice you have. (SH: I was under the impression that there was no choice whatsoever, period!) There is no choice whatsoever, period, except not to react to conditions and not to identify with the body. If it weren't for that we would be automatons, but we're not automatons. But the awareness in us, the reality, makes us have that choice, not to identify with the body and not to react to any condition. Everything else is predetermined. SK: To the extent I don't believe that, then I have a me? R: No you don't. (SK: Or I think I have a me?) As long as you believe you have a me, you have a choice. In reality you don't have a me. But if you were speaking from reality, the question would be redundant. There would be no need for the question. (SK: I don't quite understand that.) As long as you believe that you have a me, then you have a choice. (SK: A choice whether I am going to be a seeker, a disciple or a devotee?) No. The choice is again whether to identify with the body or not. (SK: I understand that. That clearly I understand.) That’s the only choice you've got. (SK: But I don't believe that though.) You've the choice because you are a me. You believe you are a me. And when you don't believe you are a me, and you are not a me, then nothing, that's it. (SK: Yeah.) Nobody to talk about a choice. SK: So the question is, according to how much I think I am a me, and I don't believe that things are pre-determined - In other words, I seem to think or feel that I have a choice as to whether I want to be a disciple or a devotee, or I'm going to go somewhere or not go somewhere. R: It appears that way, but again, you're speaking from an ego viewpoint. (SK: Right, and that’s the me that is blocking from understanding, whether that's actually true or not, what you're saying?) If you were not a me, there would be no one to ask that question. That question wouldn’t even come up. But as long as you are the me, then you're thinking whether you have a choice or not. Just the thinking about it shows that you are a me. (SK: Umm.) You follow? (SK: Yeah.) So this is addressed to me’s. (laughs) SE: I think what is arising with you, and possibly with you, and bothered me for a while, is that Ramesh teaches that all you need to do is to believe you aren’t a me. And the teachings itself will perform their work even though they obviously are still feeling like a me. In other words, he obviates practice and says that practice is not necessary. But I think it becomes a kind of conceptual Advaita that way, because he says practice is not necessary, just listening to the teachings, and there's no practice, and I don't think there's much enlightenment from that point of view. In other words, he says believe you’re Krishna and deny that you’re Arjuna, even though that you really are Arjuna in the every day life. R: He's got a point, to an extent. It's like the razors edge. The reason I don't like to say that is because for new people it gives them license to do what they like, to become arrogant and belligerent, and they say, "I am total awareness, it makes no difference what I do. I can kill animals, I can do anything, nothing matters." I have seen many people with those attitudes, who are beginners, so you've got to be careful. That's why Ramana Maharshi was so wise and he taught there are two ways, one of bhakta, of self-surrender, and one of atma-vichara. And they're both correct. SG: If you're kind of a tamasic tendencies, Ramesh says that if you have these tendencies to go out and be arrogant, it wouldn't matter if you listen to those teachings or not, you're going to go out and be arrogant. There isn't any choice. Those tendencies will take you that way anyway. R: This is true, so the secret is not to identify with the tendencies or the body, but to identify with the Self, and that will take care of everything. But to identify with the Self is sometimes not the easiest thing to do, so you have to practice certain disciplines, certain meditations, surrendering yourself to God, and things of that nature. And this will make you humble and it will give you humility. And that will automatically lead to atmavichara, self-inquiry. Then everything will happen of its own accord. We have to be very careful, especially we as Westerners, not to believe that I am consciousness, and I am God, and I am ultimate oneness. We realize that this is the ultimate truth about ourselves, but then watch yourself, watch your actions, see what you're really all about. Don't use truth to cover up your weaknesses. For example, if you were a drug user, it is true if you come to satsang, and if you understand the realities, eventually you will stop using drugs. But, in the meantime, you do the best you can, physically, mentally and otherwise to stop the habit. And it's all preordained anyway, but you do the best you can. And as you follow the teachings, everything will take care of itself. What do you think of that? SK: Could it lead to a neurosis? (Robert laughs) You're trying the best you can to do something and it's preordained for that to happen, so you keep trying and keep trying and it's… R: Well the only neurosis you have is that you believe that you are the body, that's a neurosis. When you take your mind off the body, then you will know what to do, to stop the drug habit. (SK: But what if it's not preordained that you're going to stop the drug habit?) Then you won't do it. But, if you realize your choice is not to identify with the drug habit, not to identify with the body, not to react to it, that feeling alone will cause something positive to happen. (SK: Like possibly not having drugs in your life?) Exactly. (SK: All right, okay, so that whole question I had is answered.) If you say so. (laughter) (SK: I mean this preordained matter is not like a set box.) I hate to use those words sometimes, because you may say to yourself, "Well if it's preordained, then maybe I should keep on taking heroin." (SK: Right.) And we go for the rest of our life taking heroin, we say, "Well, it's preordained, what am I going to do. I might as well enjoy it." (laughter) So you've got to be careful with that. It's preordained to the extent that you identify with the situation, that's preordained. So as soon as you start to identify with the Self, with total awareness, then things begin to change. Changes will come, they have to. (SK: Yeah that's totally understandable.) SH: And that will happen when it's ordained to happen. R: Yes it will. (SH: There is no you that can make it happen?) Exactly. Everything is preordained, predetermined. Is that clear enough? (SH: How can you get in the way then if it's all preordained? The separate me, the separate you appears as though it's getting in the way and slowing down the process and dragging its heels.) Of course. (SH: That's the appearance.) That's the appearance. (SH: But actually it isn't so, things are going exactly the way they're supposed to go.) Yes. (SH: Precisely.) But do not identify with that. Identify with the Self. (SH: Yeah.) And that will take care of itself. Then you will have no time to think how slow things are, or how fast they are. (SH: Oh I see.) As I mentioned earlier, if you work spontaneously, if you stay centered in the now, then there will be no time to feel sorry for yourself or think about your habits, and by not thinking about habits, pure meditation takes place. They stop of their own accord. (SH: Umm. Nobody stops them, they just do it automatically, spontaneously.) Because you never really had them. (SH: Well they appeared to be there.) And the appearance comes that you stopped it too. (SH: No, I didn't do anything.) Exactly. (SH: I'm just watching the show.) There is nothing to do. (SH: And no one to do it.) And there is no one to watch. (SH: Right, but there is watching?) Who watches? (SH: Noone. There is just watching only?) Watching doesn't even exist. (SH: Which is awareness?) That doesn't even exist. Awareness does not exist. As we spoke about it Sunday, remember? Those are just terms, concepts, for the ajnani to talk about, pure awareness. SH: Then it will be reduced to silence because any term we put up, you'll shoot it down. R: Yes. Now you've got it. (SH: Okay, fair enough, again, it comes to the mind shutting up, shutting down.) So ask yourself, "Who has to shut up?" nobody. There's nobody home. (SH: Hmmm, sounds good. (Robert laughs) Has the smell of freedom, perfect freedom.) SG: In practicing vichara, every thought that starts, as soon as it's recognized inquiry takes place, "From where does it come?" then you go, "It comes to me. then who am I?" Every thought with no judgements or not? (R: Umm.) And it's just constant, there is never that riding the thoughts to its duration? Conceptualizing? (R: No you're not riding any thoughts and there is no conceptualizing.) I guess there is no suppressing either? (R: No.) (tape break as Robert continues) R: …the Self you always were, shines forth. So we really don't want to get too technical because simplicity and realization are synonymous. We don't want to read voluminous works, and go into all kinds of concepts and meditations, and things we have to do. We just want to, in a calm way, to realize that there is nothing to realize, (students laugh) and be free of the whole thing. (laughter) SE: When I was in San Francisco I visited Alcatraz. (R: Did you.) And they had these eight by twelve cells. And some places had doors that would close because it's an isolation cell and you have this thing that you wear that tell us about how the prisoners spent twenty to twenty-two hours a day in their cell, the rest of the time exercising. I felt, "How marvelous." Not having to do anything, just be able to sit there and get the meals. And Kerema was appalled that I had that attitude. (laughter) R: Well you know you're right. Because look how many monks live in a cell, in a monastery, in a zhendo, in an ashram. They choose to live in the little cell for years and years and years. (SK: That's a recurring joke. When are we going to go to prison, but of course the other aspects are probably bad.) But you have to go to a hardcore prison. To get those special cells.) (laughter) (SK: It's not worth it, is it?) What are they using Alcatraz for now? SE: Tourist attraction, just bring tourist to look at the prison and they make money doing that. It has become a preserved park now. I think we aught to take it over.(laughter) The Indians took it over in the seventies. Time for the Jnanis to take it over. (laughter) Get a piece of the rock. (laughter) (SH: Take over the rock Robert and we'll all come and join you.) R: With machine guns. SE: I have noticed a difference. Two years ago, when I ran into Nisargadattas teachings, and I only encountered emptiness inside. Now, having been with you for a month or so, I feel very definitely the sense of I-ness located in this area, and it's sort of like painful, and blissful, and love, at the same time, but it's definitely there, the emptiness is no longer there. And I have a feeling that it has to do with the nature of the teachings, and the teaching style. You're more into practice, and into concentrating on the I. But Nisargadatta talks from the absolute point of view, and there's no I, there's just emptiness. I have a feeling a shift has taken place in the focus of my awareness because of being with you. R: Certain people attract certain teachers, that's all. SK: There seems to be a difference between the conceptual practice and practice also. It seems to me that a lot of people who I saw at Ramesh's teachings were also into conceptual stuff. And I think that same danger comes out as - maybe not as much license to do something, but they think they've attained something. They think they've attained something substantial, a substantial realization, when they just understand conceptually what it is they should be having an experience of. So they take a really sound conceptual understanding to be the experience itself, and maybe are deluded. R: Who knows? I don't compare teachers. I don't even know what I am doing. I don't have a teaching. I'm just here. Nothing is planned, what method I'm going to use. (laughs) (SH: No format?) No format. This is not even a teaching. It's nothingness, emptiness. You can call it whatever you like. (SH: Are you able to share that?) With who? (SH: With me.) But you don't exist. (SH: Well, theoretically speaking, us, those who come, quote, to sit at your feet.) It's up to you to pick it up. I'm just here. (SH: But that depends entirely on the rightness of the teacher.) That's right, because to me, there is no one with whom to share, because I see you as me. There's only one. (SH: We all appear exactly that way, all, everywhere.) Everything is the same. (SH: Not just here everyone you see?) Again, it's like a mirror and its reflection. I identify with the mirror, but I also see the reflection. But I realize the reflection is the mirror. (SH: The mirror bamboozling itself?) The mirror creating its images, reflections. (SH: The mirror creating its mistaken conceptions, mistaken mystery images?) But they don't really exist. (SH: If they're illusory they don't really exist.) They don't. (SH: That’s a strange thing for the mirror to do, doesn't it ever get tired of this nonsense?) Well the mirror is not really doing it. It appears to be doing it. (SH: Then what is doing it?) Nothing. (SH: Nothing is doing it?) There is no doing going on. (SH: It's just occurring?) Nothing is done. (SH: It's just plain not occurring?) It's not occurring. (SK: So that's why everything is peaceful when there is no mind.) That's why, when your mind is quiet, you find bliss. ST: I don't understand why Ed feels I in his chest, though you talk about nothingness. R:That happens. Of course, but before you come to nothingness you can feel it in your chest. That's happened to lots of people. We talk about nothingness but are you experiencing nothingness? Talking about it and experiencing it is two different things. SH: And there are different levels of that also? Ed was feeling that there was nothing there, he was nothing at some level, but evidently it wasn't the deepest level because now the sense of an I is recurring, causing him some pain. (R: To some people there appears to be levels.) That's another illusion, okay. The illusions certainly appear as if they were there. Momentarily, you know they are momentary, but while they last they look to be there. R: Well this is why I always bring up the sky is blue. Always think of that when you get confused, because in reality, there is no sky and there is no blue. (laughs) There's just space. But we think the sky is blue. And the snake is the rope and the rope is the snake. We think, in the dark, a rope is a snake, but upon investigation we find it's a rope, and once we find it's a rope, we'll never be tricked again. So once you find your reality, you can never be fooled again. But like the mirage in the desert, when you see water, upon investigation there's no water, there's only sand. So we see things, we see images. Our senses tell us there are images all over, but upon investigation you will find that there are no images at all. They don't exist. There is only space. And the images are superimposed on space. But the images do not exist of their own accord. If the Self did not exist, there would be no images. (SH: So the Self is producing the images?) Apparently. (SH: Apparently or actually?) Apparently. Because the Self really does not produce anything. But it appears to. (SH: It induces them indirectly?) The Self is contained in itself. The Self is self-contained. It does absolutely nothing. But as long as we are an image, or we believe we're the body, the Self appears to project images. But when you realize that you are not the body, that all stops. (SH: That's the maya of it?) That's the maya, the leela. (SH: Too much leela.) (laughter) Well many people enjoy the play, because they wish to continue. They keep identifying with their conditions, and their situations, and the problems with their health, with their bank accounts, with their wives, with their husbands. They keep identifying with those things, and as long as you are attached to anything you cannot find freedom. I'm not saying you shouldn't have anything. Possess all you want, but never be possessed by your possessions. (SK: Or anyone else's possessions.) SE: I was talking to one woman who saw you, that I recommended come here and she said, "Robert is too advanced for me. I like maya, I just want it more comfortable." (laughter) R: That's the state of most people, of course. (SE: But she was clear about it.) That's why the world is in the precarious condition it's in because everybody is involved in their own game, so-to-speak. (SK: That's why this is particularly a sharp razor blade, the path. It’s like a razor blade.) It can cut you. SH: It would be all right if nobody interfered with my game, then I could carry my game out totally and completely without any trouble, (R: That's right.) But it's in conflict with everybody else's game. (R: Exactly. That's the irony of it.) (laughter) SK: Are there some people who can have their cake and eat it too? (SH: We're all trying.) R: As long as you still call it cake, it's like there's something here for you. What's the cake? (SK: The cake is living and enjoying the world, and the icing is having realization.) When you realize the truth, it's virtually impossible to enjoy the world. (SK: Well yeah that's what I'm thinking.) Because the world keeps changing, changing, changing.) (SK: There's no really way to have the cake and eat the icing too, Right?) Again, the world is not cake. SK: I think there is only one person in this room who can do that. (R: Who's that?) Sam. SS: (Sam replies) What? (laughter) (R: He's been eating a lot of cake.) It wasn't cake. R: Ramana Maharshi said that the only problem you've really got is that you believe that you were born. (ST: That was your leading question today.) It was? (ST: "What were we before we were born?") Prior to consciousness. (ST: Which is really at the time of birth isn't it?) What is at the time of birth? (ST: Consciousness?) Yes, at the time of birth consciousness takes place. But prior to consciousness there was nothing - space. SK: There wasn't even potential for consciousness? (R: Absolute zero.) But there was something there which was a concept, before. R: As long as there is something, it's not that. There's no thing whatsoever. It’s beyond words and thoughts. (ST: But there is something.) What is it? What? (ST: If we were never born then that means there was something before we thought we were being born.) What was it? Who thought? (ST: Oh, I'm sorry. I used that word.) No, but what was it? Who was the something? It's a mystery. Nobody knows. (ST: We don't know what, but there was something.) There's nothing. But nothing is beyond the senses, so it sounds stupid. When your mind is quiet and peaceful, and you sit in the silence, then you become that you're referring to and that's none other than your Self. But don't try to explain the Self. Once you try to explain it, it's not it. That's what I mean when I always tell you, just be your Self, be your Self and you will be safe. Don't be this and don't be that, but be yourself. Don't be a woman, don't be a man, don't be anything. Just be your Self. (SH: The Self then is just a word pointing to something that is wordless, indescribable and cannot be possibly explained.) Yes (SH: But it indicates, it's like a finger pointing.) Like an arrow. A finger pointing to the moon. (silence) R: As we sat in the silence for a couple minutes just now, what thoughts came into your mind? Don't tell me, just think to yourself. Whatever thoughts there were, good or bad, they've got to go. Even if you were thinking what a wonderful satsang, that's got to go. All thoughts have got to go, for your wonderful satsang will not bring you realization, emptiness will, nirvana. Many times I tell newcomers in the meeting, "Please do not believe anything I say." Why should you? But experiment on yourself and see what happens. But just don't accept what I say blindly. Find out for yourself. Do not let a day go by when you do not practice something on yourself - by asking the question, by being the witness, by using the Who-am-I mantra. Who-am-I is not a mantra, remember, but a method we teach, if you want a mantra, with your breath. "Who am I?" with your inhalation, "I am Brahman," between breaths, and "I am not the body," with the exhalation. If you practice these things, it should keep you busy from thinking. That’s the only purpose. To make you one pointed, so you can stop thinking so much. For many people come and tell me, "The direct path is very hard for me because I can't stop thinking. I'm always thinking about something, thoughts just come to me. And even when I ask, “to whom do they come? I can't stop them." So I give them that mantra, and then they can substitute for a while. And as they substitute, they become stronger and the mind becomes weaker. They become stronger and the mind becomes weaker until the mind stops thinking. Of course, the other way is total surrender to God or to your Self. Even when I say total surrender to God, some people still believe they have to surrender to some kind of outside deity, but there is no outside deity. Total surrender to God means to surrender to yourself, to give up all your desires, all your needs, all your wants, all your questions, and just say, "Thy will be done." That's it, and let yourself or God take care of everything. Have no anxious thought about anything. And if you really totally surrender to God you’ll be okay. You'll be taken care of. Whatever method you use it will only lead you upward. SG: Sometimes I've found that with vichara the mind is quiet. Other times there's like a barrage of thoughts. It's like skeet shooting and it's like I need a machine gun sometimes for every thought that goes by. (R: Yes.) Then sometimes I find where I think I have it quiet, all of a sudden there's like a movement of thoughts that's not words, but it's, woops, there's one, like a big fish under the ocean. R: Yes. Well first, observe it and don't act, and then ask, "To whom does it come?" So do both, observe and ask the question. (SG: It's actually a fun game.) Yes, it is. (Prashad is served.) R: Okay, Here's to consciousness. (ST: That's just like saying, "Here goes nothing.") Nothing is what you are. You're good for nothing. Aren't you happy I told you that? (ST: Oh, I don't believe that.) You're good for nothing! Nothing is everything. (ST: Oh, okay, I'll accept that. (laughter) (SG: Are we all good for nothing?) Of course! (tape break then Robert winds up satsang) R: Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to pray to yourself, to find joy in yourself, because God dwells in you as you. Peace. Thank you for coming, and I love you all. Have a good life. (tape ends)

Robert: How many of you are satisfied with your life? (laughter) Are you really satisfied with your life? You can only be satisfied with you life, when you understand the reality. Otherwise, no matter what you do, there are always problems. Even right now, I can hear your thoughts, they're just chattering away, thinking, thinking, thinking and the thinking is always about the past and the future, never on the present. If you centre yourself on the present, there's no time for the past or the future and you cannot possibly have any problems. You only have a problem when you centre yourself on the past and the future. So, I get a lot of phone calls. And one of the questions I'm usually asked is this: “Why did God make the world the way it is? If the world is not real, why do I feel it so much? And no matter what I do, I can't get rid of the feeling that my body is reality.” And this person was truthful who asked me this question because that's how everybody usually feels. It's good to talk about absolute reality. It's good to talk about absolute oneness. It's good to talk about nirvana and emptiness. But that doesn't solve the problem. To solve the problem you really have to cry out for God. You have to give up the world in your mind. I mean really give up the world in your mind. I don't mean quit your job and become a hermit. I mean keep your job, stay married if you're married, stay divorced if you're divorced, stay however you are, but in your mind is where you give up. Surrender your mind to God. Now who is this God? Because we always say, "In reality there is no God, there are no others, there is no enlightenment, there's no duality and there's no non-duality. So who is this God?" Well, as long as you believe that you are the body God does exist. Do not fool your self. Do not believe I am not the body and God does not exist because you will suffer. God does exist as long as you believe you are the body-mind phenomena. So you don't walk around quoting scriptures and quoting truth. What you do rather is surrender. Total surrender in your mind. "Not my will but thine." That's the best thing you can do. To totally surrender everything, your entire life. You can say something like this: "God, I don't care what you do with me. I want nothing form you, I need nothing. Just make me your own and do with me as you will." When you surrender this way, something comes over you. A peace that you never felt before. And in that peace you realize, "Who's body is this? Who's mind is this? What am I really?" See these questions come automatically when you surrender, they come of their own accord. But when you're arrogant. When you're aggressive. When you have no humility. When you're belligerent and you walk around voicing truth statements, they go against you, not for you. Be careful. Watch what you say. Don't walk around saying, "There is only the absolute reality." While you're mad at your neighbor. Don't walk around and say, "There's only ultimate oneness." While you cheat your friends. Be truthful to yourself and you'll be truthful to everybody around you. And you've got to be careful about that. Do not analyze what I say. When you begin to analyze anything I say, your mind will contradict. The nature of the mind is to contradict. The nature of the mind is to upset you. To make you feel out of sorts. To make you believe something is wrong some place. That is the nature of the mind. The mind always leads you astray. You cannot have faith in your mind. You cannot believe in your mind. Remember what your mind is. It's a conglomeration of thoughts of the past and worries about the future. That's all your mind is. But to come into truth, you have to stand naked before God. By naked I mean you have to give up everything. All your wants and desires. I don't mean you have to be like Ramana Maharshi. When he came to the temple in the beginning when he was a boy. He took off all his clothes and stood naked in the street and it started to rain and he shaved his head. I'm not referring to that, you do not have to do this. But what you have to do is to empty your mind. You have to empty your mind of all thoughts. It's not that hard, really. How do you do this? You simply observe your thoughts. You watch your thoughts. You become mindful of every act you perform. From the moment you get out of bed in the morning, you become mindful of what you're doing. If you wake up angry, you immediately catch yourself. You do not carry the anger with you. You either ask yourself, you inquire, "To whom has the anger come?" Or you simply observe yourself angry and say nothing. You do whatever you have to do to transcend the anger. You watch yourself becoming angry. You realize this has been my nature up to now. I'm an angry person, why? Maybe it's from my childhood? Maybe it's from samskaras from a past life? Who cares? The whole idea is, I have nothing to be angry about. But then your mind will take over again and it'll say, "Well you've got to be angry about this. You got fired from your job last week. You were there for twelve years and now you're without money, without a job and you have no reason to be fired. That's why I'm angry." But then your wisdom should come in and tell you, "Nothing happens from nothing. Everything is preordained. And if everything is preordained, my getting fired from my job is correct. Therefore why should I be angry?" When you have that kind of an attitude, you immediately transcend that state of consciousness and you go a step higher and you'll never be angry again. You will actually never be angry again. When you understand the principle of anger. The principle of anger is simply that it's preordained. It was meant to be before you came into your body. Everything was determined. Even the anger. Even my getting fired from my job. Once you've realized this your mind becomes weak. You begin to kill the mind. This is how you annihilate the mind. You reason out every situation. You realize where it came from. Say you feel belligerent. You may ask yourself, "To whom does this belligerence come?" And of course the answer will be, “to me.” Then you hold on to the me. The me is only a thought. It is not reality. You hold on to the me as long as you can, and eventually the me will disappear into nothingness and so will your belligerency. Because your belligerency, your anger and everything else is part of the I-thought or the me-thought. It's only a thought. It is not real. If you can't do that. Again you simply become the witness to your belligerency. You watch. You watch yourself becoming belligerent and your mind will tell you why you feel like that. You say, "Well my partner cheated me out of ten million dollars, now I'm broke. I have a good reason to be belligerent." No, you don't. Something will tell you this was preordained. Or you may say, "I smashed my car into another car last week. I forgot to take out insurance. It was a new car and it was the other persons fault but I've got to pay ten thousand dollars for a new car now." Accident, no, we have got to understand that there are no accidents. Nothing happens by chance. Everything is preordained, everything is determined. That alone should make you feel good. For you realize, the person who hurt me or the person I hurt, that was also predetermined. And that will stop your anger. It will stop belligerency. And once you come to terms with it, what happens? Your mind becomes weaker again. Every time you do this you weaken your mind. Every time you do this you weaken your mind. And soon your mind becomes so weak, that you're able to practice self-inquiry and your mind will not interfere. But until that comes you have to confront every situation in yourself. You have to admit it. You have to admit, "I'm a no good S.O.B. I'm always screaming at people. I'm always scheming and planning. I always think something is wrong some place. I'm suspicious of peoples motives." Be honest about it, that's the first step. And then you realize, "Who is this way? Who's suspicious? Who's doubtful? To whom do these feelings come? Who has these feelings? I do. What I, am I talking about? What is the source of this I? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth? Does the I exist? If it does where does it exist?" As you think along these lines the I will go deeper and deeper into your heart. And with it will go everything else. Never forget everything in the world is attached to I, including your body, your mind, your belief that you are the doer and all your feelings. All your senses. They're all attached to I. Subsequently, you don't have to get rid of feelings by themselves. Get rid of I and all the feelings will go with the I. Then you can go to higher things. When the mind is weak and you seem to have a little control of your mind, you then can make the statement, "I am absolute reality." And when you make a statement like that at the time your mind is weak — but remember your mind has to be weak first — what absolute reality means will automatically come into your mind to take the place of your thoughts. So the picture will present itself to you, that you are like a screen in the movie and everything in the world are images superimposed on the screen. All this will come to you by itself. Can you see the difference? Do you know what I'm talking about? Most of us have been going around saying, "I am absolute awareness, I am emptiness, I am nothing, I am this and I am that." But when we get down to the nitty gritty, the first problem that confronts us, we become angry. So we're really not that at all and they're just dry words. But when you slow down the mind first, then a statement of truth will come to you automatically. And then you can make your confession, like I do every week. I am not the body. I am not the doer. I am not the mind. I am not any condition. I am unconditioned pure awareness. I am absolute reality. I am ultimate oneness. I am that I am. I am Sat-chit-ananda. And it's not you making this confession. You're not doing it, it is your Self, that's making the confession. You do nothing, you've gotten yourself out of the way. The point I'm trying to make is, don't allow your ego to make you think that you're something you're not. Your ego mind is very powerful. It'll fool you all of the time. Be careful, always watch it. So remember, you do not have to make statements of truth at all. Why? They will come by themselves. All you have to do is to concern yourselves with slowing down the mind. And how do you do this, either through self-inquiry, through observation, through mindfulness, through witnessing. Whatever way suits you. What happens when the mind slows down? Truth takes its place. When you hear the Buddhist term, empty mind, what that means is your mind is empty of all relative terms and relative livingness. But your mind is filled with the Buddha. Your mind is filled with reality. Your mind is filled with truth, all by itself. Now why does this happen? Because your reality is your real nature, that's what you really are. Therefore you do not have to do anything to make it happen. You just have to get your bloomin' nothingness out of the way. When you get yourself out of the way, reality shines forth and all the images come to you. You realize again you're like a gigantic screen. The screen is the entire universe and everything on the screen are superimposed images. They come and they go, they come and they go, they come and they go. But you understand that you are like the screen and you're also like the images. Only the images are not real. But the Self or the screen is real. Then you can say, "All this is the Self and I am that!" For you realize what the Self means. But just to make empty word statements like that is absurd. It gets you nowhere. First you've got to slow down the mind and then everything will pop in by itself because everything is already there. Now you may say, "Well that's hard to do." If you think it's hard to do then you have to start from the beginning and say, "To whom is it hard? Who finds it hard? I do. What is this I?" And go right back to that again. "Where does the I come from? Where does the images come from? The images that I am sick. I am poor. I've got problems. Something is wrong." And the question as far as the world is concerned, "Why does God allow evil in the world?" is answered by itself. And the answer is simply this, "It's mass hypnosis. The world that you're talking about, does not exist," and the examples will come to you of their own accord. Like the sky is blue. The sky appears blue, but in reality there's no sky and there's no blue. There's only space and space is consciousness. And all the planets and all the stars and all the worlds and all the people and all the insects and everything that you can think of, they're all super imposed on the space. And you can call space the screen of life and you are the space. You are not what appears to be. That's what it means when you say, "I am not the body." Because you are really space. How do you prove this? If you were the size of an atom, and you know how small an atom is, and you found yourself somewhere in your body. All of your cells would be equivalent to planets and you would see so much space between each cell. Equivalent to the space between all the planets and you would be in a completely different universe. You would have no body. That's why this universe is sometimes called "the body of God." It's all relative and the absolute is space, the body's relative. So you are the absolute. You are not the body you think you are. Just like the sky is not blue. Just like in the desert, when you see a mirage, you see water. But the closer you get, it turns into sand. It's a mirage. We look at each other and we see people here. But in truth I can tell you there are no others, there's only one and I-am that. Of course when I refer to I-am, I am not referring to Robert. I'm speaking of omnipresence. Every time I use the term I, I'm not referring to myself. I refer to omnipresence. Your true nature is omnipresence. Your body appears the way it appears because of relativity. But your body is formless space. Your body is emptiness. That's why you can truly say, "I am not the body." But from now on you're not going to make that statement are you? What are you going to do? You're going to quiet the mind. And what will happen? When the mind is quiet everything will happen by itself. The truth will come out of you. You will not have to think about it. You will be aware of reality and you will find unalloyed happiness, great joy, a great peace, a great love and you will have a great compassion. And you will be kind to everything to insects, to animals, to humans, to minerals, everything is alive and you will have reverence for all things. This feeling will come of its own accord. If you try to put it on it won't last. That's why some of you always tell me, "Robert I feel great when I'm here at satsang, but as soon as I walk out the door, I feel bad again, why?" That's why, because you haven't developed a consciousness of the truth. When you develop a consciousness of the truth it can never leave you never. You do not go on and off like a light switch. Once you have a consciousness of the truth, you have it forever. And you have a feeling of immortality. You just know, you don't voice it, you just know, I was never born, I can never die and I do not persist while I'm alive. I am egoless, everything just happens. It comes through by itself. This is why I tell you so many times, not to read too much, Jay, not to read too much because when you read too many books on Buddhism and Daoism, on Ramana's books, on Nisargadatta and everybody else in the world, total confusion sets in. Isn't it better just to sit still at home in the silence and stop the mind from thinking? That's the easiest way, it's the best way, it's the simplest way. If you don't believe me, try it. Try it for a week and see what happens. For one week I would like you to experiment. I don't want you to read any book. Think you can do it? Don't look at any spiritual literature. Just sit by yourself as much as you can. And watch your mind, watch your mind. Do whatever you have to do to slow down your mind and then you're going to be amazed. You will laugh at yourself. For when the mind becomes quiescent, reality will rush in. And you'll see it's so simple, it’s so simple. Why didn't I know this all the time? I used to believe by reading volume after volume I'll become enlightened. But it was so easy, I just had to quiet my mind. Those of us who met yesterday, if you remember, we're going to be silent every Monday. Do you remember? Do you think you can do it? Just for one day, one day, tomorrow, be silent. Do not say a word to anybody. Try to spend that day by yourself if you can. If you have to go to work for a living, anybody work for a living here? (laughter) - (For some reason all the people we attract don't work (students laugh) - But if you have to go to work, be silent in your mind. Now here's how you work this. If you have to talk to your employees or your employer, talk to them but shut it out of your mind. Do not entertain what you say. Get rid of it immediately after you finished. If you talk about a work problem, resolve the problem and then go back to silence. In other words do not carry it with you. Do not carry it with you at all. It reminds me of the story of the two Buddhist monks. They went shopping for some groceries in town. It was raining. And they saw a beautiful young lady trying to cross the street. There was a big puddle, so one of the monks took off his jacket said to his fellow monk, "Here hold this." And he ran over and picked up the girl and carried her across the flooded area and he put her down. And they went about their business. They shopped and went back to the Ashram, to the Zhendo. And that night when they were eating dinner, the other monk looked at him and said, "Do you realize what you did today? We took and oath never to look at a woman and you picked her up and actually carried her across the flooded area and put her down. How can you do that?" And the other monk said, "Well I put her down this morning, but apparently you're still carrying her." And isn't this true of us? We always carry with us, old hurts, the past. We never get rid of it. We carry our past mistakes, things that happened to us when we were kids. We have to let go of everything. And remember the way to let go. You either ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" and follow it through, or you observe your mind in action and do nothing about it. You just observe your mind in action and watch it burn itself out. But whatever you have to do, by all means do it. So I will repeat again. When you learn to slow down your mind, the reality will rush in of its own accord because your true nature is reality. Your true nature is emptiness. Your true nature is pure awareness, pure intelligence. That's what you really are. You don't have to try to find it, you've got it. Simply let go of the other. SF: As you were talking earlier about one of the ways of dealing or confronting stuff that comes up, is realizing that everything is preordained. How can we do that without it being a belief, on our part or on my part that this is actually so. R: Well then you practice self-inquiry. If you realize that you exist, you don't have to do that. And you'll come to that realization by yourself. You should have a little faith. I know I always tell you not to believe a word I say, but you've got to have a little faith in yourself. And if that helps you to stop the noisy mind, by all means use it. Because when you realize that everything was predetermined before you came into your body, you sigh with relief, you say, "Ah, why should I react?" And it makes you feel good. But if you cannot use this method, you have to practice self-inquiry. Then you have to realize that I is having the problem, and follow the I to its culmination, to the source and there will be no problem. You have to use whatever method you need at the time. Whatever you have to do, that’s what you have to do. But we share all these different methods so you can do something. (SF: As the mind becomes quieter, as we surrender then we would automatically use the best method?) Yes, to the extent your mind becomes quieter, to that extent does your reality become seen or felt and it's intuitive. It will tell you what to do. It will guide you and lead you in every direction. But the mind has to be quiet, that's the first requisite. And to quiet the mind use whatever method you have to. I know some people who really get angry with their mind, and it worked for them and they shout at it, they say, "Shut up mind, I don't want to hear a word you say, keep yourself still! I can't stand you anymore. Shut up! I don't believe you, you don't exist." And they had a talk with the mind for about a half hour and the mind quiets down. You have to use whatever method you have to use. But the whole idea is to quiet the mind and everything will happen of its own accord. Believe nothing, just practice and see what happens. SB: Robert, the mind can be quiet but isn't also the presence necessary? Because a lot of the Buddhist texts say, they speak of the person whose mind is quiet but they kind of like, their consciousness is hazy they're like in a daze, a daydream, they're not present, awareness. R: The presence is always there. What happens when you quiet the mind the presence becomes more dominant. SG: I read in that book that you showed me that said that there was a disciple of Ramana who sat in the hall for long hours and he was able to stop thinking but he wasn't in the correct state and Ramana made him go for walks and everything. (R: Oh yes.) What was that all about? If he was his mind was quiet and yet it wasn't a correct state? R: Well because fear was coming in. He began to be fearful. He picked up a lot of fear. The way he quieted his mind, whatever method he used caused fears to come in more powerful. SH: But how can you call it a quiet mind if there was fear present? R: It wasn't really quiet. It was never quiet. But there was fear, so he made him walk around. (SB: Oh, so it was a feeling of fear.) It was a feeling of fear, yes. (SB: So that's also a mental construct, fear and emotions.) Of course. That's why I say you don't have to use one particular method to quiet your mind. Do whatever you have to do to quiet your mind. And everything will take care of itself. Everybody's different, what's good for you may not be good for somebody else. So that's why I never say, "This is the only method." You have to do what’s right for yourself, practice, find out. If you read too much you can never find out. Be alone with yourself. Find out what makes you tick and everything will work out. SH: Well, reading is after all mental activity, isn't it? (R: Of course it is.) There's no way of getting away from that? R: Exactly. That's why, the more you read the more numb you become. (student laughs) Really! You actually become numb. You become a person with a feeling, "I know everything now. I've read everything, I know the whole thing I don't have to learn anything else." But you never have an experience. You're still unhappy, the problems bother you. You have fears, frustrations and haven't turned into a living Buddha. (SH: You have it all worked out conceptually and you're completely out of touch.) (laughs) Yes, exactly. And there are too many people like that, unfortunately. Do you know there are people who are like that who don't know their like that? They think they've got knowledge, but you can tell. When was the last time you got annoyed at somebody? When was the last time someone rubbed you the wrong way or you have doubts, suspicions, bad feelings? That shows something is wrong someplace. You've got to have humility and that again comes with total surrender to your Self or to God. I think humility is the first requisite that you have to develop. If you want to find your Self again. Humility is very important. So what if someone kicks sand in your face? What difference does it make? If you remember the stories about Ramana, when thieves broke into his house and his disciples wanted to fight them off and he said, "No don't do anything, give them what they want. It's their dharma to steal from us and it's our dharma not to resist. So give them what they want." Then again, when Ramana was walking around the mountain, Arunachala, he stepped in a hornets nest. Instead of pulling his foot out and cursing the hornets, he left his foot there and he spoke to the hornets, he said, "Sting me, it's your right to sting me because I broke into your home. So sting me all you want." And he came home that night all swollen. Does that sound stupid? If you think about it, it sounds stupid. But if you don't think about it (students laugh) then you'll understand. SB: Well Robert what is real humility? Real humility seems to only be a… (break in tape, Robert continues as tape restarts) R: …quiet your mind, you'll be stronger and you will not react, you're right. SB: Most of the Saints talk about being humble are just as big egotists you can find. (R: This is true.) Because they're trying to be humble. R: You can't, if you try. But when you quiet your mind again, humility comes of its own accord. But even if you think about humility, it'll make you quiet your mind. So you can develop the quality. One thing leads to the other, so you might as well act humble. Act like you have humility, it'll help. Everything helps. SM: If one has humility does one automatically have compassion, Robert? R: Yes, humility leads to compassion. (SM: Compassion for every living thing right?) Compassion for the mineral kingdom, for the animal kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, for the human kingdom and for everything else, everything is sacred. Have reverence for all of life. SK: If you forget to do that, if you don't have thoughts of doing that, I imagine in the thoughtless state that would happen automatically without having to think about it? R: When your mind becomes quiescent, still, quiet, all the realities come out by themselves. SH: Is your mind permanently quiet? R: Not all the time, I have thoughts that come and they disappear right away. They don't stick around. (SH: They don't stick around?) They know better than to stay. (SH: They're immediately witnessed and disappear. R: That's it, as soon as I confront them, they're gone. That's the reason I can sit in a chair at home for maybe four to six hours and it seems to me like five minutes passed. Because I draw a blank. But in the blank, in the void, there's power, fantastic power. It's not a blank, it's unexplainable. But there's a feeling of boundless love. It's as if my own individuality has melted into boundless eternity. (SH: Into what?) Boundless eternity, and I just rest that way. Another question somebody asked, they say, "Robert, if you are consciousness why don't you know what's happening all over the world? Why can't you know what's happening in Europe, in Iraq, what somebody else is thinking. If you're everything, how come you don't know?" Who can answer that? SG: There's no one else to know? R: You're on the right track. (SG: There's nothing else to know?) Consciousness is self-contained. Consciousness has nothing to do with the relative world. So if you are consciousness, you are beyond the relative world. The relative world does not exist for you. So how can you know anything relative. SH: How can you say it has nothing to do with it, when it all occurs within consciousness. R: That's the appearance. What occurs in consciousness is an appearance. It is not reality. (SH: But without consciousness nothing would occur, period.) Exactly, but consciousness knows itself as consciousness. It does not know itself as anything else. (SH: Oh I see.) You say that. But if it's consciousness, it's consciousness. And everything is superimposed on consciousness. But consciousness only knows itself. (SH: Otherwise it would be relative.) Of course it would be relative. (SH: Right.) SB: But some of the Saints are able to do that, they're able to know what's happening. R: Oh they've got all kinds of powers. (SB: …powers that they can know what's happening in other parts of the world and to other people.) People develop siddhas, but that's dangerous. (SL: What is it called?) (SN: It's actually siddhis.) Siddhis yes. (SH: Psychic powers.) SB: That's of the mind, isn't it? (R: Of course.) So they're limited? R: All the books tell you, avoid those things. SK: So then there's another group of Saints who they come spontaneously to them and they spontaneously arise for the help of other people. (R: To help other people?) Yeah. R: Well to an extent, but the highest way to be is to know yourself as omnipresence. Then you become other people. And that's how you help them. SK: Ramana knew the heart of everyone who came to him? R: Sure. He didn't know anything, that's why he knew the heart of everybody. He was empty, and everybody claims that he helped them. And he said, "Me, I didn't do anything." But they attributed all kinds of miracles to him. If you're empty how can you do anything? There's nothing to do. SL: Robert when you say sit in the chair for 45 hours… (R: 45 hours.) (laughs) …for 4 to 5 hours, but anyway that's a long period of time, in what position do you sit in. R: Just like this, I sit like this. I sit still. SB: Robert during that time do you sometimes feel a great ecstasy or is it always the same. R: It's always the same. There's nothing to feel anything, nobody's home. (SB: But it's very pleasant, right?) It's blissful, it's always, even right now it's blissful. It doesn't go away. (SB: More like self sufficient.) When I sit by myself it's not to gain anything, it's just to be. (SB: So that state or that place is self sufficient happiness unto itself.) It's unalloyed happiness, it never goes away. (SL: That's just to BE?) Just to be your Self. SH: Are you always in that state without exception? R: Nothing ever happens to take me out of it. (SH: Is that what they term as Sahaja Samadhi?) Sahaja Samadhi. You can cut my fingers off, you can put a needle through my head, I guess I'd feel it to an extent but you can't take away my bliss, so-to-speak. (SH: I wouldn't try. I want you to have your bliss.) How can you take it? (SH: Or do I want to?) It's yours too. (SH: Yes it has to be. If you've got it we've all got it.) We're all one. That's why I do not have to do anything to make myself happy. Some people always invite me out. Once in a while I go to a movie with Dana to make her happy. But I'm happy just the way I am, I don't have to do anything. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to do anything. SL: Then what is the purpose of us in our false reality of being here then? (R: What do you mean?) False reality meaning that if we're not enlightened then our body is just here to reach that state of enlightenment? R: Well you're saying that you're not enlightened. (SL: Yes.) But I see you differently. I see you as my Self. I don't see what you see. I see you as my Self, an extension of me. (SL: But I am not enlightened so I don't see myself as an extension of you.) Who says that? (SL: I do.) Who are you? (SL: I don't know.) Find out. SM: Robert you were born this way. We don't have a way to be born again to become enlightened do we? (R: Nope, everything can be done now.) SF: Just one thing about the letter that you shared with us last week is that… (R: Which one is that?) The letter, it's a very nice letter. (R: Oh the fellow from New York.) But one of the things that occurred to me is that it gives out that it's possible, perhaps it's possible for any of us. (R: Of course it is, there's no question about that.) Robert, is it inevitable for us? R: It's inevitable, it's unavoidable. It's your nature. (SH: That's good news.) (laughter) Of course. (SH: The best.) SB: But it might take many many lives, right? R: Why? (laughter) (SK: Thursdays and Sundays is what you need?) Why? Why not just awaken right now? (SK: Yeah.) Just wake up. Stop playing games, just wake up. All you've got to do is become tired of the world and just wake up. As long as you have desires, wants and needs you cannot wake up. So how many of you are ready to give up all your desires, wants and needs? Not too many, that's why you can't wake up. Because there's something in your mind that's very important to you. Get rid of that and you'll wake up. Even if you're thinking right now, I can't wait to go home and eat dinner, that's a strong desire. That prevents you from waking up. Or when I leave here I'm going to see this movie. That's a desire that prevents you from waking up. To wake up you've got to be desire-less, total desire-less. That's in your mind of course. It doesn't mean that you have to give up anything physically. You have to give it up mentally. As an example: If you're attached to your car. And you're always thinking about your car, how you love it. You hope nobody steals it. Those thoughts have got to go. Enjoy your car. Drive your car, but do not allow it to possess you. In your mind that is. So you really don't have to give up anything physically. Everything is given up mentally. SB: Robert is it because when a desire is in the mind consciousness cannot be pure? R: No, any desire is a thought form and a thought form takes the place of reality. So when the thought form is subdued, reality ensues. Therefore all thought forms have to go. And desire is a strong thought form. (SB: So a thought form is like a modification that's preventing, something whole and pure and emotionlessness.) You can say that, yes. SM: So Robert is it predetermined that we were all to come here to be with you? R: Definitely. Nothing happens for nothing. SL: I'm still puzzled about if we were not enlightened or if we did reach a state of enlightenment then we'll just be attached to our bodies? R: No. If you reach a state of enlightenment you become your natural Self. And as your natural Self, you go about your business like you always do, but you are not your business, you are not the doer. Your body does whatever it came to this earth to do, but it has nothing to do with you. You're separate. (SL: Thank you.) In other words, you do not have to go to a cave or a jungle retreat. You can be in the world and do whatever it is you have to do. But you're not attached. SB: So basically, you're identified with consciousness, or there's identification with consciousness instead of identification with me. R: Yes, you have the realization that you are the mirror and the reflection at the same time. You watch the reflection but you know that you're the mirror and not the reflection. The identification is with the mirror. (SB: It's a very mysterious kind of a state or a very mysterious kind of a place to be, it's like not knowing anything.) You know plenty. (SB: It's a total mystery.) That's how it appears to the ajnani, but it's beautiful. SL: When you're enlightened could you go back down to experience any level that you want to? R: No. You don't do that. You stay that way. You stay awake. (SL: So you wouldn't delve into the siddhis? Is that what it's called?) Siddhis are powers, powers. (SL: Okay then, so you would not go into that area?) You have no need to, no desire. (SL: Because you don't have any desire at that point?) You've got everything, what else do you need? You have become everything. You are the source of the siddhis, the source of the power.) (SL: So at that point you would not even want to necessarily know anything.) You don't even think about it. SK: Yet sometimes spontaneously something arises for them, maybe to tell the disciple that it's helpful for that disciple. But they're not delving into that, they haven't a desire to know. It just arises. (R: That's what we're talking about now.) Yeah. (R: That's why we have satsang.) SL: Yes I've noticed that at different satsangs sometimes different people have spoken about different things. Before you came here we talked and discussed and you brought in your discussion at different times and different people had different things that were spontaneously brought up in discussion per se. (R: That happens.) SG: Yes it does happen. You do talk about things that are very pertinent. To think, at least for me personally that have been on my mind. It happens almost every time. (R: As long as it helps.) SB: You started the Sunday satsang saying that we're always self involved and we're always focussed on ourselves and that there was no space in our consciousness for reality to shine. (R: Okay?) And then, that was the first part of it, and then you talked about divine ignorance. (R: Okay. What's the point?) The point is, it seems to me the fact that we're always self in ego, self involved, self meditative and living from the point of view from the me. That seems to be the obstacle to realization. R: For a person who is practicing self-inquiry, nothing else is necessary. Meditation is not necessary, reading is not necessary. Only satsang, self-inquiry is all you need. If you're not practicing self-inquiry everything else is necessary. SL: So self-inquiry is, "Who am I?" (R: Yes.) "I am not the body." R: Forget about "I am not the body." Ask yourself, "To whom do my thoughts come?" (SL: And try to answer your own questions?) No, the answer will come by itself, "They come to me." And when you can say, “it comes to me,” hold on to the me. Follow the me into the heart centre. Hold onto me. (SL: Meaning, asking who is me? Who is me?) No, when you hold onto me, ask nothing. Just hold onto it. But if another thought comes, to interfere. Then you ask, "To whom does this thought come?" By holding onto the me, I mean you follow the me-thread, to the heart. "How did me arise? Where did it come from?" and of course if you follow it to its culmination, you will realize it does not exist. Me just doesn't exist. There's no me. It's like the sky is blue. Me is only a thought. Again that's why I say, "When you stop your thoughts, me vanishes." I feel it's the best way, fastest way. You just say to yourself, "I - I." You can do it with your breath. Inhale, you say, "I" exhale and say, "I - I, I - I." I is the first name of God. That's very powerful. SH: That's the best mantra for that purpose? (R: Oh yes.) (student says different mantra) R: That's different. I don't want to get into Buddhist mantras. But "I - I" is the most powerful one there is. (SH: It is, huh?) Yes. If you have to use a mantra. SG: So even saying the "I-am?" (R: You can say, "I am" too if that suits you.) Same thing? (R: Same thing with your breath. Inhale you say, "I", "Am" exhale. But remember self-inquiry is not a mantra. "Who am I" is not a mantra! Only the things I tell you are mantras, you can use them as mantras.) Let's play some more music. (music played question start up again) ST: When you say the name God, you don't mean something outside of yourself? What's the use of God, the name God, is it something like, not a part of… R: As long as you believe that you are the body, then God Ishvara, the lord of karma, exists for you. When you realize you're not the body, that type of God disappears. But that God is very real as long as you believe that you are the body. (ST: But you use the words, God the belief in God, but that is part of our Self isn’t it?) God is none other than your Self, exactly, but it becomes egoic when you say, "I-am God." It's better to say, "God is my Self." (ST: And the term preordained, well that's not from without.) That's what? (ST: Well that's not separate from ourselves, preordained?) As long as you believe in the body, there's reincarnation, there's karma and everything is preordained. As soon as you find out who you really are, it all disappears. It becomes redundant. (ST: Then what is preordained?) Preordained means everything was planned before you came into your body because you believe that you're the body. Everything was planned before you came by Ishvara, the Lord of karma. Sounds a little confusing because it doesn't really exist. (ST: Yeah that's what I was wondering?) But as long as you believe you're the body, it does.) (ST: Everything is preordained as long as you believe that yourself is the body?) Yes. SH: Does it really exist, or does it appear to exist? R: It appears to exist. (SH: Yeah. Actually it has no reality.) But when I say that or you say that, it sounds like it's easy to get rid of. It's not. It's very powerful or it appears to be powerful. (laughter) (SH: It’s been preordained that way.) (laughter) Exactly.) (SH: Then who preordained it?) The preordainer. (SE: The preordainer who doesn't exist?) (laughter) R: Exactly. But you see, to some people especially new people, when you talk like that, that nothing exists, they take it for license to act the way they want to act. So you've got to be careful. (SH: Let the ego go hot wired.) Exactly. ST: But yet, we're all meant to be here. (R: All meant to be what?) All meant to be here, with you. (R: It's preordained.) But we don't believe in our body anymore. R: You don't believe in it? If I pinch you will you believe in it? (student laughs) See that's what I was talking to you previously. It's not what you believe, it's what you really are. If you take it a step further, none of us exist the way we think we do. None of us are bodies. But that sounds ridiculous to talk about because you feel you are the body. And it's only when you get into the transcendental state, that you realize that you're not the body. So the thing is to work on yourself. Then you won't ask the question. SN: So in a way the idea is to get rid of the question? R: Get rid of the body first, then there'll be no question. SB: But aren't we aware already, we're already rid of the body because we're the one looking out of it. R: You're rid of the body, but are you sure about that? Do you know definitely you are? When was the last time something disturbed you? (S: Six seconds ago.) (laughter) That answers the question. It's easy to make statements of truth. I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am this, I am that. But when you have to live your everyday life, that's when you catch yourself. SK: That's why it's kind of good to live in LA (laughs) (R: You can say that.) Maybe we should have a field trip and go down the rocks or somewhere to see how… (R: You can go first and tell us what happens.) I've worked at several places, really rough places in the city, while working at night. Saw a stabbing and stuff of things like that while working at night. (R: What kind of work did you do?) Tile work, setting tiles. (R: At night?) Yeah at the shoe stores when they close, downtown LA. (R: (laughs) He's a tile setter at night.) SH: You would get double the pay. Smart thing to do. (SK: Yeah double the education.) SL: Robert have you seen God? (R: No, God is my Self.) SG: Robert again, a question came to mind… (R: What mind?) (laughter) The mind that I believe that I have. (laughter) The question is, why if my real nature is self-contained unlimited why would I believe that I'm this thing with all these problems and all this stuff and everything, why would I get into such a… R: Who is the I that believes that? You're not the problems, don't you see? You don't exist the way you think you do. It's like the sky is blue. You're not like that at all. But you've been hypnotized to believe you are, but you're not. (SG: And the way you get unhypnotized is to still the mind?) Still the mind and know the truth and the truth will make you free. SB: So it's a case of mistaken identity.(R: You can say that.)Like Sherlock Holmes movies. SK: Do you ever watched someone who has been watching a movie and they start crying? And you're sitting there thinking, if the movies not real why are they crying? They feel like it, they want to get involved, through desire and the feeling they get from it. R: There's more to it than that. I remember watching the Ananda maya movie yesterday, tears came to my eyes. (SL: At what part?) Just observing her, just watching her in action. (SL: Why?) Why? Who knows? Does there have to be a reason? See many people have a misapprehension, that self-realized people are cold and nothing disturbs them, nothing bothers them, they just walk around like a stone, not so. You feel and you have compassion, you have joy, you have bliss. You have total understanding of your fellow man. I am you and you are me. There's no separation. So when you hurt I cry. That's what's wrong with this path, because a lot of people who follow Advaita, think you have to be cold and calculated, no feelings, no emotions, don't care. It's not so, on the contrary. SB: Robert if there's no one home, there's no ego, who is it that is feeling the crying? (R: Don't ask me?) (laughter) God himself? (R: Who knows? I have no idea?) SL: Watching a movie, is that similar to you — not you but — the one watching themselves as if he were looking at a movie? R: No I was just watching a movie, just like you watch a movie, nothing special about it.) (SL: Before you said that when we're just looking at ourselves, we need to look at ourselves as if we were watching a movie. How do we go back one step again?) When I see you, when I watch you, I see what you're doing, but it comes in and goes out and disappears. So if I see you hurting, I can cry because you're hurting, but I don't feel it emotionally. I feel it differently, I can't explain it. (SL: What about ourselves, how are we supposed to view ourselves, our body.) Quiet your mind and it'll take care of itself. (SL: And you said we should just kind of observe ourselves, what we're doing?) Become mindful, yes. Start it tomorrow morning when you get out of bed. Observe your feet going on the floor. See how you stand. Going to the bathroom, brushing your teeth, eating breakfast. Become mindful of all of your activities. Watch yourself, see how long you can keep it up. (SL: Being present in the here and now.) Yes, same thing. And that quiets the mind too. Don't worry about the future and forget about the past. Stay centered. But again, it's hard to do unless you quiet your mind. So selfinquiry and mind quietening comes first. Sammy? SG: Could we say on a certain level that this is all God's dream? R: Well there's no God to have a dream. So who's dreaming. Nobody's dreaming. It's an illusion. (SG: The Self?) The Self doesn't dream. It's like the sky is blue again, there's no sky and there's no blue. So nobody's dreaming about anything. SM: Robert, is this a big mystery that it's revealed to one when you become realized? R: What's revealed to one is that you are the Self of all. (SM: That’s it?) That's it. (laughter) What else do you want? You want your cake and eat it too. (SM: There must be a purpose for all this misery we go through?) When we think there's a purpose, because we have a body, so we think there's a purpose. But when you understand that you're not the body, there's no purpose. There's no purpose for existence. SB: Couldn't you also say it's for the joy of realizing there's no purpose? (R: No.) (laughter) Or for the joy of realizing that you are the existence? R: Who needs that joy? Does the Self need that joy? The Self is self-contained. It needs no joy that you're talking about. (SB: To realize it's unlimitedness.) That's relative joy. (SB: So the Self has realized its unlimitedness?) When you're not realized, then you realize it, then you have joy. But for the Self there's no joy because the joy's already there, it needs nothing to be joyous. You do. SH: Touche. (R: Touche.) (students laugh) SL: He quieted your mind. (laughter) (SH: That takes care of you bud.) (laughter) R: See again, let me explain to you, that I have no idea what I am. People call me names. (students laugh) You should hear some of the names they call me. But I don't go around saying, "I'm a Jnani, I'm a Jnani." Because that's a word that you give me. But I don't even know what it means. I'm just my Self. That's it. We have all these profound ideas about self-realization and that's what keeps you back, because of your profundity. Stop being so profound. Just be your Self and forget the whole thing. Right Arnold? (SA: Right.) It's so simple and we make it so complicated. What do we do with all these tapes? (laughter) (SB: It helps support my ego.) R: I don't know what you do with the tapes, but I get calls from New York, New Zealand, from every place in the world. And they talk about the tape. (students laugh) Where are you sending all these tapes? SB: We sell them on the black market. SM: Our tapes are the best way to stay centered. I listen to them before I go to bed. I listen first before I get up in the morning, sometimes I listen at night and I'll listen to them all night long and I'll wake up and they're still going. (laughs) R: But I'll have to say that's fine as far as it goes but the best way is to stand naked before God, nothing, no crutch. Take me the way I am, that's the best way. (ST: Before God?) Before your Self. Remember as long as you believe that you are the body, there's a God, so before God. Until you understand that I am that. (ST: You mean you're using that term for us?) Yes. (ST: But you don't use that term for yourself though?) No I don't. SL: Robert, is that true that as long as you believe you're the body, there's a God. Is that true for atheists? (students laugh) R: Well atheists don't believe in God at all. But whether they believe it or not, there's a power that moves them around like a puppet. (tape ends)

Robert: (tape starts abruptly) Okay, now. In conjunction with that, since we have a few people here today. Let's talk about the Satguru as compared to the Pseudo-guru. I receive a lot of phone calls from people and they ask me, is this person a real liberated person? Or is that person enlightened? Is this person self-realized? And I really do not know what to say, because I do not give opinions about other people. But there are signs, three basic signs, whereas you can tell a true Master from a false one. And we'll go into that a little bit. It helps to know these things. I only discuss things like this with my disciples and devotees. So I consider you that, so we'll discuss it. The first thing to know about this: How you tell if a person is real, is by his teaching. Does he have his own teaching or are his teaching from the scriptures? There are no new teachings. If a teacher tells you, "I've had a revelation, I was picked up by a flying saucer and taken to a far away galaxy and they initiated me and told me to go back and save the earth. And they gave me a mantra that I want to share with you, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, gibberish, you say that twenty-five times and you become enlightened." So if a teacher tells you something like that, be careful. If a teacher has his own teaching be careful. But if a teacher confirms what has always been known. In other words, if a teacher lets you know, that you are the unblemished Self. That you are not the body or what appears to be, but that you are supreme intelligence, absolute reality, ultimate oneness, then you know you're on the right track because this is not new knowledge. This knowledge can be found in the Upanishads and the Vedas and in the ancient spiritual works. Never let a teacher tell you I've discovered my own teaching. That's one sign. Another sign is: How a teacher lives personally. Investigate, find out. How does the teacher live apart from the teaching? When the teaching is over does the teacher meet certain friends outside and go to the nearest bar and get drunk? Does the teacher smoke ganja? Or go into all kinds of rituals? Find out how the teacher lives. Does the teacher practice the teaching 24 hours a day? Or only when he comes to class? What kind of life does a teacher live? Find out for yourself. And the third point is: Does the teacher charge money for a class? Does he have a weekend seminar where he charges three hundred dollars and tells you you'll become enlightened over the weekend? Be careful. A true teaching never costs anything, it's always free, always, and money is never discussed. It is also true, that a Sage gives up everything in order to give the teaching to others. So his disciples and devotees take care of him. And that stems from the heart. But he never asks for money personally. He may ask to help a friend or somebody else, but never for himself. Those are things you have to look into. To discover what is real and what is not. And there are two basic principles of selfrealization. One is atma-vichara, self-inquiry and the other one is Bhakta, devotion, or selfsurrender. By these two methods one may awaken. The first method, self-inquiry is the best but so is self surrender. In self-inquiry, you try to understand who you really are by asking yourself, "Who am I? Who is this? What is real?" By asking yourself those questions you go down to reality and discover truth, what you've always been. By following the I, by understanding the Self and abiding in the Self, you ultimately chase away the dark clouds and you shine once again as you always did. The second method is self-surrender, where you surrender completely to your Self which is God. By saying, "Not my will but thine," and realizing that your Self is God. Your Self is absolute reality. It is your Self that you've been looking for all of these years. Your Self is your teacher. Your Self is your guru. Your Self is the ultimate reality. There's nothing but the Self. And you begin to feel this. And you really want this more than anything else in life. Then you do everything you have to do to go deeper and deeper within yourself and discover your own reality. So let's do this right now. Let's close our eyes and if you truly wish to repent just sit in silent meditation and see that perfect reality within. For all manners of error merely arise in erroneous thought. And like the morning dew before the rising sun, can perfectly be eliminated through the benevolent light and wisdom. Who am I? I am none other than the Self. Who is the Self? I Am. Who is I Am? Absolute awareness. Who is absolute awareness? None other than the Self. How do I know the Self? Through silence. How do I achieve silence? By knowing the Self. Again, how do I know the Self? By denying everything else and abiding in reality. How do I abide in reality? By keeping still. as a body. And I never had a body as it were. This appearance of body is an optical illusion. I am beyond body, beyond appearance, beyond thoughts, beyond words. I am the imperishable Self, I am that I am. I am sat-chit-ananda - being, knowledge and bliss. Not now, but every moment of my life, even when I'm not aware of it. Even when my feelings are hurt. Even when I feel depressed. I am still sat-chitananda always, in every situation in every condition. Fire cannot burn the Self, water cannot drown the Self. The Self is permanent, unchanging, eternal, quiet, peaceful, happy. The Self is the witness to all my doings. Yet it doesn't seem to interfere. It is transcendent and also everything else. The Self is like a self-contained mirror. Images are on the mirror, but are not affected to the Self. The Self is not affected by images. But is always bright and shiny and free. For the Self is like the flow of electricity. Electricity flows through the wires and you can play your radio, your TV, your toaster, but you only see the TV and the toaster. But you only see the TV and the toaster and the radiator. You do not see the electricity. You also can't see the Self but the Self pervades all things and I am that. But as the Self I am a blessing to the universe. Just by my being, the sun shines, the flowers bloom, the foods grow, animals are born, everything functions. Action take place because of my being. I am grateful for this knowledge. But the world exists because of me. When I sleep the world does not exist, but I still do. Therefore I am greater than the world. I am the Self. I am that which has always been, always will be and never will cease to be. I am pure consciousness, absolute reality. I know that to the extent I still my mind, to that extent will I shine forth as absolute being, fathomless reality, pure intelligence. The mind be still, and know that I am God. For there are no longer thoughts for me. There's no longer a past or a future. There's only the eternal now, in which I live move and have my being. And in that now I am awake. Silence is eloquence. Talking is ignorance. (Silence) Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, shanti, peace. Somebody called me on the telephone this morning and asked me the question, “Is a psychic a Sage?” And I said, “Is day, night? Just like day isn't night, so a psychic is not a Sage. A psychic deals on the relative plain. If you put ten psychics in a room, and ask a question, you'll get ten different answers. If you put ten Sages in a room and ask a question you'll get the same answer. For there is one truth and a Sage is tuned into that truth. So they can only give you one answer. I once had a psychic, to one of my meetings and she wanted to give me a reading so I said, "Okay." So she said, "Robert I see nothing in you." So I said, "Thank you." And a couple of months later another psychic gave me a reading. And she said, "Robert you come from a far away planet and people brought you here from that planet centuries ago. Then they touched you on the head and made you forget everything. So now you're walking around saying, "Who am I?" Trying to find out where you came from? So I said, "Thank you and no thank you." Channelers, psychics are all in the same category. When there's no one to channel, where does the sixty-thousand year old man come from? Who created him? Do not get pulled into those things. Stay the way you are, centered. Realize the truth about your Self and become free. Any questions about that? SN: Robert, when you say, "Sit in the silence to find the Self,” naturally a river of thoughts flow, but it's okay to sit in those thoughts and just watch? R: When you observe your thoughts, you are sitting in the silence. (SN: So that's okay?) That's perfect. (SN: Even if you sit day after day and the thoughts may not even slow or anything. But that's okay because you're still sitting by yourself?) As long as you're not identified with the thoughts, let the thoughts come and let them go. As long as you can be the observer of the thoughts, then you're in the silence. (SN: What if you don't?) Then you're who you are. Then you're human, you're the body, you're the mind. (SN: So if you can't do that practice what do you do?) You ask, "To whom do these thoughts come?" And you punch them down one by one. You keep asking yourself when every thought comes, "To whom does it come? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth?" (SN: And even when you get tired of doing that?) Then observe again, go back to observation. (SN: But you don't have to feel?) Feel nothing. (SN: You know, like you're not getting any progress?) On the contrary. (SN: Because the thoughts haven't stopped flowing, that's not the idea?) No it's not. Progress is made when you're able to absorb your thoughts into the Self. And you absorb your thoughts into the Self by observing your thoughts. The more you're able to observe the less your mind thinks and your mind begins to slow down. So keep catching yourself over and over again. (SN: So it's not a matter of stopping your thoughts?) You can't stop your thoughts at once. But as you observe them, they become less and less. SG: Well will there then come a point where there are no thoughts to stop? R: Of course. That's the ultimate result, that's self-realization. When there are no thoughts, empty mind, nobody home. SK: Is realization when no thoughts is permanent or extended. R: If you are really no thoughts, it becomes permanent. If you're really not thinking, it's a permanent way. (SK: But is it true that one attains that state in the beginning at short intervals of time.) People are all different. Some people can do it all at once, some people it takes time. But if you want self-realization all thoughts have to cease. And all practices have to make the mind cease thinking. All the practices are to stop your mind from thinking, silence, quietness. When the mind becomes quiescent, still, calm, like a motionless lake, then it reflects the Self. The mind rests in the heart and you find peace, which is your very nature. SH: Who would be stopping the thoughts? R: Nobody. They stop by themselves when you stop thinking. (SH: When you stop thinking?) Then your thoughts stop of their own accord. (SH: How does one stop thinking?) Well then your thoughts keep on. (SN: Um?) Your thoughts keep on going. The stopping stops by itself. (SN: It stops by itself. There's no one to stop it?) There's no one to stop it. (SN: Then if there's someone who stops it, then…) Then you have to get rid of that someone. (SN: That's the someone that…) That causes it. (SN: The illusory someone?) That someone has to go. (SN: Oh, then they stop of their own accord.) Of their own accord. (SN: Obviously no one can stop them?) No, the harder you try the more thoughts come. So you just give up trying. You just rest in your Self. SH: Who is this you that you're always referring to as giving up the trying? (R: The self.) Is it the one and only Self that is doing the trying? R: No, the Self has nothing to try, because the Self just is. (SH: Who's doing the trying?) Nobody. (SH: Nonetheless the trying is there. People are trying to stop their thoughts.) They think it's like a mirage. They believe somebody exists who's making them think. Just like there's no body, there's no mind. (SH: It's like shadow boxing.) Exactly. There's no body, there's no mind, there's nobody thinking. It's all an illusion. But it appears real like hypnosis. Like the sky is blue. Like looking down the railroad tracks and they turn into one track. It's an optical illusion. Like the mirage in the desert. It's all the same. There's nobody thinking. (SH: (laughs) We certainly keep that illusion universally alive.) Because you refuse to give it up. (SH: Like an all day sucker, it's something that makes you use your mind.) The mind is afraid to let go because it will lose its identity. (SH: Why should there be fear left, that's your freedom.) Of course, but the mind is used to the everyday occurrences. (SH: What mind?) The mind that you don't have. (laughter) (SH: Well spoken.) But obviously most people believe they've go a mind. (SH: Yeah.) And they go to all the trouble trying to stop it. (SH: It doesn't work.) No. (SH: That just strengthens the stopping.) Exactly. (SH: The good old famous ego.) What ego, like you say, what ego? (SH: The illusion that we're all, most all are operating under.) That's why when you speak words they become limited. You have to say you, me, my, ego, mind. (SH: Language is structured that way.) Of course. (SH: Language is structured according to the illusion.) Exactly. (SH: Too bad.) We would be all better off if we were all deaf and dumb. (laughter) Really. SK: How about the functioning of the brain? R: The brain is part of the body. If you are no body you have no brain. SK: Yeah. Then I have to go to a relative level because absolute level no action takes place, but on a relative level someone asked me to copy a few tapes for them. So I get the tapes, I take them home, I copy them, I call the person up and I arrange to give the tapes. (R: Good, good, keep it up.) (laughter) Or another example is, someone who actually develops their brain, their mind so that they can be more useful in the world? (R: Useful for what?) Maybe that doesn't matter, let's say the intentions are spiritual. R: Remember your body is going to do whatever it came here to do whether you like it or not. (SK: And then goes along with the functioning of the brain?) Of course it does. You don't have to concern yourself with all of that. (SK: But, can one be thoughtless and still manifest and do?) Definitely, of course. (SK: If one is then one doesn't even contemplate, well today I'm going to do this?) Exactly. (SK: Then what happens?) Your body will do it anyway. SK: It just does it. It seems that there has to be a thought process like get your car keys and put them in your pocket and walk. R: To whom does it seem? To your ego. (SK: Yeah, so that can take place without any thought process?) And it will be done better than if you think. (SK: How about deliberating what book to get to help you in a certain way?) There is a mysterious power that takes care of everything. (SK: So it will be done thoughtlessly.) Everything will be done thoughtlessly. (SK: When you read are there thoughts?) Everything will be done better than you can ever do it yourself. That's what I mean by total surrender. Give up everything to your Self and forget about everything. That does not mean that action will stop. Action will continue but you will not be a part of it. (SK: The action of reading a book, seems like there would be a thought?) It seems like that to who? (SK: To me.) Who are you? (SK: I'm your servant. (laughs) It seems like that but I guess I don't know.) Then don't try to know, just try to be your Self and you be your Self by keeping quiet, not by thinking, thinking, thinking. SH: But in the enlightened state do thoughts also continue just as bodily actions continue? R: They continue momentarily and they go away. (SH: The mind doesn't freeze and never function again?) No. The mind continues spontaneously. (SH: Yes, to which includes all thoughts that may occur.) The thoughts come and go instantaneously. (SH: Yes and there's no one to elaborate on any of that.) Yes, Exactly. SK: And that would be called thoughtlessness? (R: Yes.) So it’s some indescribable, something or nothing. R: A Jnani is always centered in the present. There's no past or future for a Jnani. It's like Henry says, thoughts come for a second, they go instantaneously they come and go, come and go, come and go. (SK: And that would be called thoughtlessness?) There are no thoughts, nothing holds them. (SK: So that explains it.) SN: Robert when you were talking about the Sages in the beginning and you said, “See what they do with their life.” If they go out and smoke ganja (laughter) or what have you. Isn't it true that Rama Krishna smoked opium? R: No, it's just a rumor. (SN: It's not true?) No. You know who invented stories like that? Opium smokers. (laughter) (SN: I thought it was very odd when I first heard that, I said that doesn't sound right.) SH: The first time I'd ever heard it was when I was steeped in Rama Krishna when I lived in the Madona Society. R: Oh yeah. There's all kinds of strange stories about people. It's the pseudo-gurus that make up stories like that, to justify the smoking of dope. It is true in India you find thousand of Sadhus who smoke ganja, but they're nothing, they're nowhere. SN: In the beginning when you were talking about inquiry and devotion. In that handout we got from the last class that Bob picked up at San Diego. (R: Oh yeah.) It described in the article, he called it devotional inquiry. Which I thought was a really a nice way to put it. And one thing that struck me with that article was he said that, “You have to love the Self, in order to be the Self and that is true bhakti.” And I guess when we think of love the Self we don't think of just mere infatuation, like I love this radio. Meaning love in the true sense of the word. Love above all other things and I think if we love the Self, our Self, above all other things, then we would find that Self. R: He doesn't mean to love the self that appears to be. (SN: Of course.) To love the Self as you really are because that's what you are. So love brings it out. (SN: But isn't finding the Self in proportion to how much love we have for the Self?) Well you can't find the Self because you never lost it, but what happens when you begin to love you begin to open up. And all of your coatings, so-to-speak, your wrappings, melt, dissolve and you shine once again as you always did, that's all. SK: What if one does a bhakti practice quite intensely and gets to a pretty high state, then somewhere along the line, through association with other people maybe who are not doing spiritual practice or maybe a different type, somehow doubt seeps into that person and I know the answer to the question but… R: If you get to a really high state, that will never come in. (SK: Yeah, if it was high enough there would be nothing to bring one down.) Of course, exactly. (SK: If one got to such a state that one could still be brought down and gradually through time that happened, then it seems like because that state was attained as soon as one cleared whatever was going on in that respect, someone could quickly go back to that state that one was in?) Well you never really were in that state because if you're in the higher state as I said, it never goes away. (SK: Well I just mean a state that is somewhat higher than self. (personal self)) Well your practice must have been weak. (repeats) For if your practice is really strong, nothing can take it away. But if you fall back, keep going up again. Pick yourself up, brush yourself off and try all over again. That's all you can do. SH: Robert, the you, you were referring to there, would be the true Self. You're addressing the true Self, not the ego? R: Yes. The true Self. For there is only the true Self, why think about anything else. But this is why I always remind you of the difference between a searcher, a disciple and a devotee. A searcher is a person who hasn't found a path yet. They go from meeting to meeting, different kinds of teachers, different kinds of teachings. From Sufi to Buddhism, from Buddhism to Hinduism, from Hinduism to Advaita and so forth and they never get anywhere. Those are searchers. A disciple is somebody who has found one path, but is still running around to all kinds of different teachers on the same path. And each teacher explains it differently. So they still can't get anywhere. But a devotee is somebody who gets absorbed in the teacher and becomes the teacher himself, within. Because there's only one teacher and that's the Self. And he begins to realize, guru, the Self and the teacher are one. They're all one person and that's himself. And they become a devotee to themselves because there's only one Self. So try to figure out where you come in. Where you're at. What do you do with the teaching? Remember when you read too many books you get confused because every path is a little different. It's true they all lead to the same goal, but the methodology is different. And it becomes confusing. But when you stick to one path things happen faster, you have better experiences. What do you think of that? SG: Then can one say that the silence dissolves the need for methodology? (R: Of course.) For any methodology? (R: Of course, it is. That's the ultimate truth.) SK: So you will be really attaining that truth. (R: If you'd what?) You'd be really attaining that truth. (R: Yes, of course.) Pacify the mind do what not? (R: If you can really stay in the silence then that's all you need.) That's really true silence. R: But there are some teachers that go into all kinds of teachings, ancient civilizations, Kabbalah, Egyptian teachings and so forth. Those are all interesting, but they do not lead to enlightenment, they're just good history. And therefore it depends on what you're interested in. Are you interested in becoming free in this life or do you still want to play games? It's up to you. SN: Robert, do you get anything from books at all, in reality? R: In reality, no, but relatively, yes. Because relatively a book should motivate you to do something. (SN: To buy another book. (laughter)) Yeah, unfortunately that's true. (SH: Like an addiction.) That's true, you’re right. It's like drugs. SN: I mean I can look at myself and as you said, I've read every book in the world and I can compare myself to ten years ago and where am I compared to ten years ago. And I can continually say, “This is the greatest book, this is the newest, this is the greatest, this is the only book.” But now, only recently I realized that through books alone you can read until doomsday. And I guess unless you do as the book says, I realize that only by sitting in my own awareness does progress come about. Not by reading books at all. In fact by reading the books you're exciting the mind and that's just the opposite of what you want to do. (R: That's true.) I think the best thing that the book can say is shut the book and close the mind. Great book! And in fact even a teacher, do we get anything from teachers at all or is what we get from within our Self? R: The teacher is just to show you that you are the Self. To point the way to who you really are. (SH: But a teacher can be a powerful indicator?) Yes, to an extent. (SH: You are.) I don’t know? SK: But a teacher is obviously much more in a sense that they can give a student a taste of that or just by being in the presence, it animates from the teacher? (R: Everybody's different.) (tape break starts abruptly with question) SH: …supposed to live with this patriarch and Santa heard one of the Sutras being read and that was it. I don't know whether that's true but that's the story. SK: Did you hear about the story where the teacher grabbed the book and hit his disciple on the head? (R: Sure I heard that too yeah. (laughter) Those things are possible.) SN: Now we know what books are for. SH: Silence the mind. Hit your head hard enough and it silences the mind. (laughter) R: That's right. (laughs) SK: So the problem if a student sees that the teachers attained by sitting in the room with the teacher and is confused with all this energy that the slight problem that could arise is that it's being projected out there. In other words a student sees it outside of oneself even though maybe from that source it permeates everywhere. (R: All that helps.) Yeah it helps a lot but it's still a projection outside, isn't it? (R: It all helps, it depends on you.) If I'm projecting that the source is here and over there, and I perceive distance then that's not as desirable as I-am. R: You have to have a great humility, a great compassion. When you become humble and you surrender at the presence of a teacher then things begin to happen. So you have to have a great humility, a great love. And if you have great love for your teacher you have it for your Self. Well, of course it's the same thing. SK: So the idea is to saturate oneself so much in or settle into the realization of the Self such that one is always with a teacher everywhere one goes. In other words taking what's understood in satsang with one everywhere we go. R: Well in my own case, Ramana Maharshi is still alive, as me. Because his presence is embedded in my consciousness. There's only one consciousness. SN: Is the presence of Ramana Maharshi different from the presence of anyone else? R: It depends, you mean in my case? His presence is omnipresent. SK: To the ajnani it's different right? R: Yes, the presence is everywhere, but you have to able to pick it up. (SK: If one picks it up for whatever reason, does one want to be receptive to pick it up all the time or…?) You have nothing to do with it. It happens because of your devotion. (SK: Okay, in which case…) In which case you pick it up. (SK: And that's it.) That's all you need. (SK: And let it go and then if the situation stops, just let it go and just continue on in your practice.) You no longer think about it. You just become it. You become the practice. (SK: And the experience, let's say that someone experiences the presence of Ramana but there's no practice being done?) No practice has to be done. The practice is doing you. (SK: Right, oh I see, that's the sign of the practice doing one.) Yes. (SK: So one just continues the practice and that continues so let the practice do them and not worry or think about it.) Just make it happen and see what happens. Let it happen. (SK: Let it happen or make it happen?) R: Let it happen and see for yourself. It's like God's grace. God's grace is everywhere available. It's in the air, but there are certain people who pick it up. Those who are attune to it, like a radio station, you have to tune it in finely to the station to get the reception, otherwise you get static. So ajnani's get static, whereas Jnanis are finely tuned. That's all. SH: And the fine tuning just occurs on its own spontaneously? R: It occurs because of previous sadhanas in previous lives. Therefore it appears to come spontaneously. (SH: Umm.) But you've earned it sometime. (SH: But there's no one who can do anything about it?) No. (SH: That just gets in the way further?) Yes. (SH: Prolongs the agony.) (laughs) True. (SG: Can one say that it occurs spontaneously because there's really no previous lives?) In reality there are no previous lives, of course not. In reality you're not trying to achieve anything. (SG: Right.) But can you absorb that? If you can absorb that there's nothing to say. See that's what I mean when we read too many books. We memorize all kinds of passages and we can speak with eloquence about buddhism, about Jnana, about realization and yet we never experience it for ourselves. We can just talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. So we have to catch ourselves doing that and stop. And develop a total humility, a loving kindness, a total surrender. Then everything will happen of its own accord. (break in tape as Robert continues) R: I am not the body. With your breathing do this. Inhale, ask yourself "Who am I?" Before you exhale say, "I Am absolute reality." And exhale say, "I am not the body." (silence then Robert continues) Shanti om peace. How do you feel? Is the meditation too much for you or we got used to it? (SK: It's the same as sitting here whether there's a meditation period or not.) Sometimes I'll do it for six hours. Are you up to it, Henry? Are you up to sitting in the silence for six hours? (SH: I doubt it. (laughter) An hour or two that's okay, six hours that's beyond my — well probably could.) I'm sure you could. (SH: I just haven't managed it.) Just forget about your body and become absorbed. (tape damage then Robert continues) R: They think they have to leave and go. (SK: Someday I'll have to leave and go, I've got a cat to take care of.) The mind is so strong, as long as you believe you have to go somewhere you go. You create your own heaven and your own hell and that's where you go. (SK: And so we're going to go nowhere, huh? (laughter) Is it true we're going to go nowhere?) You can be in limbo. (SK: So is that where we're going?) Why should you go there? (SK: Maybe I'm going nowhere, so maybe that'll be limbo.) But nowhere is everywhere. Nowhere is bliss, consciousness. Somewhere is nowhere. The nowhere you're talking about is some place. But the real nowhere is bliss consciousness. Some people want to live in their bodies for thousands of years and some people want to leave their bodies right now. (SK: Some people want to be fat, some people want to be thin.) That’s right. (SK: Maybe we should just divide it all up equally.) So all these baptists and fundamentalists that believe in heaven and hell are right, because they created it. You go to what you believe. So watch your thoughts. SK: I've been going around looking at Ramana's books. The more I look at them the less I only look at them for the pictures. I looked at the color pictorial book. (R: Oh really?) And it's got so much. I look at it and I realize it's formatted and I look at the pictures of all the other people who went to see him and I realize that it's just another organization (R: Umm.) It's interesting. (R: It is.) This is my favorite photograph. (R: That's a good one.) This was in one of the mountain paths that was used. (R: Oh really?) (tape break, Robert continues further.) R: There is no change, what's to change? Only the relative world changes. (SK: And that doesn't affect you?) Consciousness has nothing to do with it. Consciousness is changeless. What could it change into? It's the origin of everything. (SK: What should one do if one gets excited inside?) Inside? (SK: Yeah.) Sing. Yes, sing out, rejoice. (SG: Let it happen. SK: The excitement?) Sure it's okay. (SK: It could go on inside?) Don't hold it in you'll blow up. You'll explode. There'll be a pieces of you all over the room. (SK: Sometimes there's a tendency to get excited from whatever one is doing spiritually because it's agitation of some kind, the excitement to fulfill it in worldly activity or what not.) Yes that's true, or you can breath deeply. (SK: Yeah.) Or you can take a cold shower. (SK: Then you get more excited.) No a cold shower slows everything down. (SK: Or else try to recycle it back into ourselves.) (students browsing photographs of Ramana) R: He looks like a westerner here doesn't he? (SG: Wearing three piece suit.) SK: My teachers teacher, I need to show you a certain picture of him where he's standing up… (tape break as student continues) …even if it doesn't turn into light, does it necessarily need to turn into light? R: It doesn't have to but sometimes it does. But you're making it happen because you're feeling it strongly enough. And when you feel the presence strongly enough, you see its true nature which is light. (SN: Really "light" is only a metaphor right?) Yes. (tape ends)

Robert: (tape starts abruptly) …who come to a meeting like this, one will return and become a disciple. Out of every five disciples that come, one will become a devotee. This type of meeting is not for everyone because it hits you hard in the ego. It makes you feel that your anger, your doubts, your suspicions, your frustrations, your jealousies, your pettiness do not exist. They've been haunting you for years and it's up to you to get rid of them. It makes you realize that your possessions, your thought of ownership, taking care of yourself, your idea of God, your idea of the world of the universe, of your job, of your loved ones are all nonsense. Most people do not like to hear this. People like to be told things that they're used to. You like to be told you'll go far in life. You’ll become a successful accountant or a nurse. You'll make a lot of money. You'll have a good family. But this is not that type of a world. We have a wrong conception of the world in which we live. You see, what difference does it make, what happens to you, if you do not realize who you are? And I'm not just speaking of dry knowledge. I know most of you here have read every book that's ever been written. But it's all dry knowledge. The whole idea is to make this a living embodiment of consciousness. And most people do not want to waste their effort to do this. They're used to buying something, they pay their cash and they get their goods, here in the West. This it not how it works. The first step in spiritual awakening is to realize you're divinely ignorant, and that's not an insult. I have had people walk out when I've said this. That's why I say, “divinely ignorant.” With all humility you must realize this first of all. That you are divinely ignorant. Which means that you don't really understand anything. All your conceptual ideas. All your preconceived ideas. Everything you've learnt as a boy or as a girl. All the ideas and feelings and emotions that you grew up with, are basically wrong. They're all erroneous and they must be transcended. The only way to begin to transcend this is to admit to yourself, "I am divinely ignorant and I really do no know what anything is. I really know nothing. I don't know what anything is." As an example: We don't know what a human being is. We have no idea what it is. It just appears at birth and we take it for granted. We don't know what a dog is. Where did it come from? How did it arrive? We know that it has four legs and it's a dog, so we give it a name, dog. Like someone gave you the name Mark, Ed or Mary. But what are these things for real? We don't know what a tree is. We gave it a name tree, but what is it really? It has leaves. Some trees produce oranges, some trees produce grapefruits. Why? What's its purpose? Where did it come from originally? And what came first, the tree or the seed? We don't know, we have no idea. We don't know what the sun is, or the moon, or the stars. Oh we can figure out is what they do, to keep us warm, the sun does. But we have no idea what it really is, why it exists? Why does anything exist? Why do we exist? We have no idea. But we're brought up in a world of effects and we begin to respond to the effects of the world at an early age. We develop traits of jealousy, anger, mistrust, envy, fear, all these feelings are developed at an early age. And we don't know why? We act accordingly, we cause problems for ourselves. We try to solve them and we spend all of our lives solving problems. Before you know it we turn around, we're eighty, ninety years old, it's time to go, where are we? We have no idea. And those of us who think we've accomplished something materialistically. We think we're doing good deeds. We've become successful in business, in world affairs and politics. Yet we have to leave it all behind, everything we worked so hard for. Nothing remains. When it's time to leave the body, everything goes, and we're alone. Therefore doesn't it make sense that we should search for the answers of life. What is life all about? Doesn't that make sense to go after that, for if we find that we will become free. But if we keep involving ourselves in our affairs, gain, loss, happy, sad, sick, healthy and so forth, we're wasting our precious time. It is true, as long as you believe that you are the body, you're going to be reborn again and again and again. And you will be reborn to parents that you left off. In other words, before you die, if there's such a thing, if you're filled with doubt and anger and animosity and greed and jealousy and whatever, you're going to be reborn to parents with those qualities. And you will have those qualities again. You will have to work them out. But the ultimate truth is, that nothing I'm talking about is real. It is only for those deluded people who believe that they are the body. Reincarnation does not exist. Rebirth does not exist. Death does not exist. All these negative qualities I told you about do not exist. But as long as you believe your body is for real these qualities will come to you, they come to everyone who believe they are the body. It behooves you therefore, to stop reading so many books. To stop running around to so many teachers and so many meetings. I'm not trying to tell you to come here all the time. What I'm trying to tell you is this; Find a teaching that is suitable for you at your stage of development. Whether it's one of the major religions or Buddhism or whatever it may be. If that's what you're into, practice, practice, practice and become a living embodiment of the teaching. But going around from teacher to teacher, going around from meeting to meeting and not practicing anything will get you nowhere. Think about this. My own personal experiences probably have come to me because in a last life or somewhere before I took on this body, which doesn't exist, I must have practiced intense sadhana. Otherwise why would I be born and see a figure of Ramana Maharshi when I was a baby? Why would I be drawn to India? And why would I have personal experiences, when my individuality was lost and I merged into infinite consciousness? I didn't ask for these experiences. I didn't ask to be sitting here today. Everything just happens. Whatever is happening in your experiences, do not fight them. You may say, "But Robert, my experience is terrible." It makes no difference, do not fight your experiences. Merely observe them, watch them, do not react to them. Do nothing. Oh, your body will do whatever it has to do. But do not react to your anger. Do not react to your doubt. Change your mind as fast as possible. When doubt comes to you, when anger comes to you, when fear comes to you, do not entertain it. But start doing a mantra. Sing a spiritual song. Do japa. Do whatever you have to do to get rid of the situation at the moment. And then go on with your deeper spiritual practices. But do not entertain fears, doubts, anger. The best way is of course is to ask yourself, "To whom does this come? Who is angry?" And something will come and something will say, "Me!" in anger. Hold onto that me. Don't let go of it. Find out its source. Where did it arise? Who gave it birth? If you truly follow it to its source, you will find that anger never existed. It's okay, it doesn't matter. No one can hurt you, unless you're hurtable. Makes no difference what everybody says or what they do or what you believe you see them doing, that's not the problem. The problem is your reaction. Feeling that something is wrong. What can be wrong? If you knew who you were, you would laugh. The whole world would become laughable. So all I can do for you is to confess my experiences. And when I use the pronoun I. I'm referring to consciousness, to omnipresence. Everything becomes the Self when I say, "I." That includes everybody here. So I confess to you, that I am not the body or mind. I am not any experience. I am not the world. I am not anything that you can see, touch, taste, smell or feel. I am absolute reality. I am consciousness. I am infinite intelligence. I am satchitananda. I am nirvana, emptiness. I am love, pure awareness, joy, bliss. I Am That I Am. That is the truth about I, about you, about me and there's nothing else. Become joyful, rejoice. Stay centered. Yesterday never existed. Tomorrow will never come. The only moment you have is this moment now. What you think about yourself now, determines what happens to you tomorrow. So why play games. As I said, stop reading books. Stop going to meetings so much. Spend time with yourself. When in satsang, find your Self. Know who you are and you will be the happiest person on earth. Everything is consciousness, everything. Everything is consciousness. The reason that some of us can't feel it, is because we're wrapped up in ourselves. I don't mean your real Self, I mean our ego selves. We're so wrapped up in our affairs, and we're so wrapped up in trying to become enlightened that we never will. It's not a question of trying to become enlightened. Do you know in reality there's no such word. What's enlightened? What's self-realization? They're concepts, they're words. There's no such word. So what we're trying to become is something that doesn't exist. How can we ever become it? What exists you are already. What doesn't exist you never can become. What do you think you are? You can tell by your thinking patterns. What do you think most of the day? As an example: What did you think about this morning as soon as you opened your eyes. Were you worried about breakfast? Were you concerned with getting too fat or too thin? Were you concerned over your hair or over another person? Were you thinking about your neighbors trying to hurt you? Or someone cheated you? Or somebody stole something from you ten years ago you can't get it out of your mind? What do you think about all day long? This is what keeps you back. You must learn to catch yourself. Whenever some conditions arises, catch yourself, by asking yourself, "To whom does it come?" Even if you have to do this a thousand times a day. It's okay. It's better than thinking the thoughts you do think a thousand times a day. Isn't it? Catch yourself, "To whom does it come?" To me? Hold on to the me, "What is me? Who is me?" Ask yourself. Follow the me to the source. Ask yourself how the me arose? Where did it come from to begin with? Then your mind will become still, maybe for only a few seconds and then another thought will come. Practice the same procedure, "To whom does this come?" And you can do other things. You can ask yourself, "What difference does it make, what happens to me? In reality I am eternal, immortal. In reality I was never born, can never die. So what difference does the appearance make at this time. I seem to be going through whatever I'm supposed to go through karmically. Why should I fight it?" When you stop fighting you have won the battle. For when you have stop fighting, your mind becomes calm once again. And when your mind becomes calm you automatically become your real Self. Then you forget trying to become self-realized, trying to become enlightened. You forget about those terms. You simply abide in your Self. That's all you've got to do. And your Self means a quiet mind, that's the definition of your Self. A quiet, still mind. When your mind is quiet you have bliss, you have love, you have compassion, you have Jnana, wisdom. When your mind is noisy you have doubts, suspicions, anger, greed, jealousy. It's up to you. It makes no difference how deep those samskaras are, those tendencies. Weed them out one by one, by asking yourself, "To whom they come?" and by following the Ithread to its culmination and you will be free. Yesterday I received an interesting gift in the mail from New York, these jogging shoes. And I didn't know who sent them, I didn't remember their name. But I also received a letter and I remember this guy. He used to come to the meetings before he came here, when we were at Jeff's. He came to about six meetings. He always used to sit in the back he’d hardly say anything. It's amazing what satsang does for a person. And he wrote me one of the profoundest letters I've ever written, I've ever seen or read and I've read many. And I want to share this with you because I think it's important. I don't know why he said to me to share this. His name is Andy Kincart, he's a friend of Richards. He's from Santa Cruz but he's living in Mahopac, New York. It starts here and continues here, Mary would you like to read it? Read it slowly. Try to really understand what he's saying. Mary reads; "Dear Robert, seeing this card brought you to mind, however when I bought it I had no idea it said anything about a birthday inside. Consider it a metaphorical paradox. Never being born, I am born in each moment. I haven't been in touch with you in a while. So just to let you know who is writing this, I spoke with you several times on the phone over the past six months or so, after attending a couple of meetings at Jeffery's apartment back in April. I'm not sure why I'm writing you now, I have nothing specific to say. I feel like a great reel of opening up has taken place recently and yet nothing has really changed at all. The main gist of it is, that the Self is being continually revealed as absolutely inescapable. This entire world of appearance is nothing, but an expression of the Self. Bondage or liberation, suffering or bliss there is no distinction in the light of the truth. I mean, whether this body-mind is identified or not, it is still consciousness and nothing else. Consciousness is all there is. The form that it takes on in this incredibly diverse world is irrelevant. Exactly, what does realization mean? When everything is already the Self. The Self realizes itself in all forms of existence. I really must say that I don't care if Andy kincart continues to be caught up in this conceptual world of appearance. I know even if I forget that I am one with God and that everything that happens is His will, it cannot be otherwise. God is everything. I guess the most concise way of expressing it in words is that it is a matter of seeing, that nothing exists independently. The real substance of anything is void. Even this sounds pathetically limiting. The freedom of understanding is the absence of all identification. I can't even say, "Netineti." Who says it? I don't know Robert it just feels like if there is an understanding that brings about enlightenment, it really doesn't change a thing. Except, maybe that there's just nothing to resist anymore. There is no one to gain or lose anything. Everything is one. Concepts are so boring. Ironically enough, despite the feeling lately that there is nothing to say or hear about the truth, I've been spontaneously writing down, what might be called observations. That keep popping up lately. I'll include some of this letter, for your entertainment. If you feel so inclined to look at them. Otherwise I just want to share a feeling of quiet gratefulness. Not for or to anything in particular, just peaceful thanks, Andy. PS: I'll be in New York until around November 1st. At which time I plan to leave for Taiwan, although that keeps getting delayed. I'll send you a postcard, you can write to this address, and it will be forwarded if I'm not here." And the address is in New York. Robert: Now what did you think of that? SM: It's very nice. R: The reason I'm sharing it with you is because I want you to realize that this comes from the heart. It does not come from book learning I can tell. I can pick up an article and tell you where it's from. Whether it's from a persons heart, from his consciousness or whether it's from a book. This comes straight from the heart. Any comments? SK: It's interesting, he started expressing and talking and after a while he seemed like drooling a little bit in words and then he came back into expression again. SM: You can tell it's straight from the heart. You can feel it, even reading it I could feel what he was saying. (SK: Not only from the heart it's surcharged with energy.) R: He has a PHD in English, and he teaches English overseas. SA: I don't know, I must cast a descending vote. (R: Okay.) Just to stir things up in my usual role. (R: Good.) First of all I find that there is a very strong tendency on the part of the disciple or adherence or students tend to mouth, to repeat the teachings of the teacher. (R: Yes.) There is a very strong tendency of that sort especially if you know the people and you get to hear these things that you heard from the teacher. And I kind of that about it and as I heard it, it seemed to me like such an intellectualization of the divine flow. You can say that what I'm about to say is that I'm sinking into materiality. But it seemed to me that these are also words, these are material words, these are ideas. What if he just said, "Oh the sun was intensely hot this morning. I felt tremendous hunger. I ate meat I loved the meat. I wanted to hike to the top of the mountain etc. etc." It seems to me that this would've expressed the sense of oneness, the sense of desire for the one, more than these intellectualizations. R: Well that's your opinion of course, and I appreciate it. But remember Arnold, he's speaking from his own experiences, I can tell. What you're speaking of is good also. It depends on the person, depends who they are and also depends on how you perceive it. But it's your perception and that's good. What else can I say. (SA: I can try to be more argumentative if that's what I could try.) I'm not going to give you an argument. (SA: No.) SM: Maybe it was the way I read it. But if he were here and he said it in his own words from his heart then it would be more emphatic, it would be more feeling, I'm only reading somebody else's words. SA: I don't think it's the way you read it. I don't think that, no, you read very well. R: Now I remember Kincart and he's a very sincere person. (SA: Well I'm not saying he wasn't. I think that he is sincere but it just seems to me that the mental element dominates rather than the spirit of the one.) Well this is his confession. This is the way he feels. To me it's just shear beauty. But it's an interesting comment. Any other comments. SR: I just want to say, off the topic, but I thought Mary did a very good job in presenting it in a very clean, understandable way. (R: Yes.) (SM: Thank you.) SB: What moved me was I liked when he said, the only thing that's different now is that there's no resistance and that seems to be the essence of the whole thing. Before he was being a me, having his own will, having his own trying to be enlightened or wanting, and now he doesn't know anything and there's no resistance to - he said absence of all identification, like lost in ignorance and no resistance to anything anymore. (R: That's a good observation also, true.) The ego is always a resistance to that divine ignorance. SR: I also thought it was unselfish, it wasn't asking you a question like leaving points so that you would return something. (R: Yes.) It was totally selfless, I thought. (R: Yes that's true too.) (SM: From the heart.) SA: What I'm talking about, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but… (R: Beat a dead horse!) Okay, somehow after I spoke, what came to my mind was memories of Japan and I'm thinking of the way of the teahouse. The way the tea is served, of course there's many examples. The tea ceremony thing, I remember the fences walking down the little alleys. (R: Umm.) The care that we know they give to everything without anything being said. You could spend a day in a Zen monastery or in a Sheng temple. Nothing need be said because it's all there. It's expressed in every gesture, every movement, just as with the tea ceremony and so it's ineffable. It's beyond words. (R: Yes.) And that's a very moving experience, if you approach it that way. R: Are you suggesting he should've sent me a blank card? (SA: He should've what?) Sent me a blank card.? (SA: It would've been more original I think. I would say yes.) It says happy birthday. (laughs) No that's your opinion again and I respect your opinion. But he's coming from a different place. It's his feelings, his emotions, his self expressing. SK: The letter seems to be like a mirror and everyones reflecting on themselves. (R: Of course, that's why I asked.) I realize that, I feel excited about the whole concept. R: You see whatever you tell me comes from your own experience from your own consciousness. So you're talking about yourself, whatever you say. I shouldn't say that or you won't say anything. (laughter) Okay now what would you like me to talk about. SB: Robert, if consciousness is all there is, right then consciousness would have to be prior to our awakened state, so it has to be even similar to even deep sleep state. R: Yes, the difference between consciousness and deep sleep, is in deep sleep you are not conscious. In consciousness you're aware of what's going on. But in deep sleep you're in the natural state but you're not conscious. (SB: But if consciousness is all there is, why are we losing consciousness in deep sleep, why is that?) You're not losing consciousness. You're just not conscious, because you're in deep sleep. It's another state of ignorance. (SB: So when enlightenment occurs even in deep sleep there won't be loss of consciousness?) When enlightenment occurs you will not be in deep sleep. (SB: So we're in deep sleep because we’re…) Because you're not aware. But that's the closest thing to realization. (SB: Is that because the mind is still kind of alive and functioning.) It's because you're dead to the world and you're dead to everything. And the mind is functioning as deep sleep. (SB: The mind is functioning as…) As deep sleep. (SB: And when everything is understood and the mind is transcended then…) Then there's pure awareness… (SB: Then there's no deep sleep.) No, there's just pure awareness. SK: There's no thoughts either, the brain is functioning but the thoughts aren't, in deep sleep. (R: That's true, yes.) SR: Robert I just wanted to share with you a feeling I had when I came to your first talk. I thought that what you said for me was the absolute truth. But when I went home and woke up the next morning I felt such anger and in fact I shared it with Ed. A frustration that, in fact I renewed my ambition to accomplish things because I felt - I guess the trouble I had was, that is true, but we do have a role to play, apparently there is a game to play and I accept the fact that when you play a game you have to play it. With all the rules that are there, you don't have to believe that it’s real but you have to play it. And I don't want to rot away and have a nihilistic attitude toward life, because I get a pleasure out of certain things. The acquisition of little things that I enjoy reading about and studying, it's just mind things, or writing, or producing. Accomplishing is actually is just as pleasurable, if not more, than sitting quietly and meditating and going to that silence. I do know what you say down deep, is correct, I know it's the truth. But as long as we're in this little game, this eighty year game that we play, seventy, eighty years, I feel that I'm not taking advantage of those senses, those things that are stuck in this body of mine that do give me little jolts of pleasure. And maybe I misread what you said. I miss the joy and the love and the embracing of nature, life, people, music, all that's there. R: That's a good question, let's go to your first point: You were angry. That's exactly what your mind wants you to be. When a person hears truth for the first time, or to hear the higher truth, the mind is going to begin to fight. It does not want to be annihilated. It will fight you at every turn. And things may get progressively worse in the beginning, mentally. Now when you understand what's going on, you simply observe that condition. And that's the ego fighting you, that's the first one I heard now here’s the second part. Nobody tells you that when you become realized you will stop doing everything or anything. If you're a painter, you will become a better painter. If you're a sculpture, you'll be a better sculpture. You will feel joy and bliss. But you have to bear in mind that you are not the doer. And whatever your body is supposed to do in this incarnation it's going to do. It has nothing to do with you. Therefore you will lose nothing. If you enjoy nature like you said. You will enjoy it a thousand times greater. Because you'll have a better understanding where it comes from, it comes from you. It's the Self and you'll feel greater bliss. So you lose nothing and you gain everything. It's not a question of giving up, it's a question of gaining. The body in itself is very limited. When you realize who you really are, you become omnipresent. And you enjoy things a million times more. Everything becomes more intense, more real. But you understand where it's coming from. You understand the reality. And you can say, "All of this is the Self and I am That!" And that becomes very clear to you. SR: But if it's true it's all an illusion anyway then that is sort of what's the point of it all? R: The point is you're playing a game like you said. You realize it's an illusion, but you're still playing your part. (SR: Okay.) That's like you take a step backward and you watch. As if you're watching a movie. But yet you're in the movie also. So you're apart from the movie and you're in the movie, you're both. So you can be totally free and unattached, but you're still doing the work. (SR: I guess the word I'm looking for is permission to play the game. Playing the game is okay to do, even if you know it's a game.) But remember, you have nothing to do with it. (SR: Well the Self is playing a game with me and I'm involved.) If you search for the Self, you'll transcend the personality. The personality becomes totally transcended and merges in the Self or in consciousness. And then you play the game in a different way, but you play the game. Nobody said you're going to go to a cave and meditate for the rest of your life. You'll be active and you'll keep playing the game but it'll be different. SK: It seems that the ego enjoys personally certain things and I think when you transcend the ego and the personal enjoyment, you can enjoy that same thing but on a universal level and the enjoyment is increased and it’s not so the ego is fighting for that personal enjoyment. It seems to me. (R: That's true too.) Another point, sometimes it seems that when you're going through this stuff, that you may find or some people find that they get detached or uninvolved in the things that they have been involved in for a temporary amount of time. And then when something happens, some change happens and they go back into whatever it was spontaneously there's much more enjoyment and much more enthusiasm and what not. R: Yes but the main point remember is this: In the beginning stages all your negativity might get worse. You might become more angry, more doubtful, more suspicious, more hateful and remember why. It's your ego fighting you at every turn, saying, "Don't go along with this teaching." (SK: Because you will to lose everything.) Yes. The ego does not wish to be annihilated. So in the beginning it will fight you at every turn. But don't fight back, by reacting. Simply observe and watch and ask yourself, "To whom is this happening?" and you'll find out. That's all you've got to do. SR: I've been angry before over things like this. (laughter) R: That's a good sign. There's a name for that, it's called chemicalization. There are changes taking place inside of you and everything is coming to the surface, to be totally transcended. So do not pay attention to those feelings. Ignore them by asking yourself, "To whom do they come?" and they'll go away. They will become weaker and weaker every time you ask the question. They will become weaker and weaker until they're gone. It happens to nearly everyone. (tape break as Robert continues) R: …appear to go to certain levels. (SM: Robert, do we go through those certain levels to reach that point to awaken?) Sometimes you appear to go through certain levels. But in reality you just awaken. There's a story about the Buddha, when he decided to go under the Bodhi tree and sit there for thirty days until he was enlightened, not for thirty days, he was just going to sit under the tree until something happened. He'd either die or awaken. So after about thirty days, his disciples were sitting around and they saw him opening his eyes and he was shining. And they said, "Master what happened to you? Have you seen God?" And he said, "No," "Have you become self-realized?" he said, "no" and they asked him all kinds of questions and he answered, "No". So finally in unison they said, "What happened?" and he smiled and he said, "I'm awake!" It's the same with us. We appear to go through stages and then one day we just (flicks fingers) wake up! As if we've been asleep for years. Think of the times when you have a long dream or a recurring dream over and over. And the dream appears so real, and in the dream you're trying to fight it and trying to go through all these experiences, but you can't wake up. So you try all these spiritual practices and then you wake up. Everything is gone. It was only a dream. In the same way, one day we'll wake up from this dream, same thing. See right now most of you believe, the things that you're dreaming are for real. For example: When I received this pair of shoes, I didn't feel the feeling of exhilaration or feeling of sadness, I just observed the shoes and said what nice shoes, and I wore them, that's it. When I'm emerged in my own bliss, things do not make me blissful or happier. Things are just there to enjoy, to look, to see, to observe. But your own bliss never leaves you. For your true nature is bliss, that's human nature. Everything else is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. So to you, the things that may appear bad may appear good to someone else. As an example: A man is allowed one wife and that's good. But if you go to Arabia, you're allowed three wives and that's good. So that maybe bad to some of us here, but over there it's good. Take another example: Let's say if you go to the North Pole and you visit your friend who's an Eskimo. The first thing that he'll tell you to do is to sleep with his wife. It's an honor. If you don't he'll be insulted. Now how many of you guys will let me sleep with your wife. You see what I mean. Nothing is either good or bad only thinking makes it so. So look at all the things that make you angry. It's all nonsense, forget it and be happy. SK: I have a question. (R: Sure.) If the shoes came to you like in a package and they were dirty, grimy, smelt really bad and looked really bad. Would you think they were nice shoes or would you think that they were interesting shoes? R: I wouldn't think they were good or bad, nice or not nice, I would just observe them. I'd look at them, if I felt like wearing them, I would, if I don't I don't. (SK: These you observed they were nice, I'm wondering if the other ones you would say, "These are interesting?") I didn't observe they were nice, I observed they were shoes. (SK: You said nice, so I thought…) What I meant, what I meant is I looked over them and examined them carefully, I never heard of the brand before and I just put them on. And everybody tells me what nice shoes. (SK: Mine are interesting. (laughter) My used ones.) Wait until you see the ones I used to wear before. They got a hole in the top, they were half worn out, the heels were gone. But everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes, remember that. All is well, everywhere. Just the way it is. And remember the only reason that you get excited or mad is because your world is not turning the way you want, that's all. But if you forget about your world and merge in consciousness, everything will be good. For instance you say, "My uncle died." And you think that's bad, but for him it's good, because he's free and he can continue his sojourn whatever he's doing. But for you it's bad. You inherit a million dollars, for you it's good, for your neighbor it's bad because she becomes jealous and she shoots you. (laughter) (SK: For the daughter it's really good because she inherits it.) (laughter) Whoever inherited it, it's good. (laughter) SB: But it just appears good. Maybe someone marries her for her money makes her miserable and shoots her. And it turns out to be bad. R: Of course, it goes on and on. It never stops. SL: It's good for her when she gets shot. She's released. (laughter) SB: But then she's born again as a crocodile. (students laugh) R: But do you see why we should not react? (Students: Yeah.) Because we don't know what's good or bad. (SB: Because we don't know what anything is.) Exactly. Nerada you're awfully quiet today. (pause) SB: So Robert you just spontaneously abide in your divine ignorance without any teaching, without ever reading anything about spiritual life. R: No. Yes and no. (SB: That's an exact answer, yes and no.) In the beginning I never read anything, later on I did. (SB: So before you read, you were abiding as divine ignorance?) Yes. I told a little story on Thursday what happened. SR: Robert, do you think when this human evolutionary cycle is over that maybe the end of it, I mean in the very very long scheme of things that whatever this experiment or whatever this is runs its course and this planet will go, and the human form will probably go with it, unless we're blown over to a new burden or planet or something? R: Then we'll come back again and everything will be repeated, until you wake up. (SR: I do hope there are other places.) In your mind, only in your mind. Your mind creates the other places. If you want to find out what going on in mars or venus or jupiter, go within yourself. Dive deep within yourself and you'll find out. What you'll actually find out is, these planets only exist because you do. What happens to them when you're sleeping? In deep sleep they disappear, the world disappears. Nothing exists. SK: I don't believe that. It's like, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really fall? I don't know if it fell, but it could've? R: Find out. Understand yourself and you'll know, because if you create it mentally, there's no noise. Except for the deluded people who hear noise. (SK: Excuse me?) Except for those deluded, who hear noises. Like most of the people, most of the population hear all kinds of noise, so for them it’s real. (SK: And if I don't hear it?) Then it's not real. But you're creating it all, it's coming out of your mind. When you're asleep everything stops. There's no world, there's nothing. But when you wake up as it were… (SK: Yeah but I can observe someone in deep sleep.) No you can't. (SK: I can't?) When you're in deep sleep? (SK: No, I can observe someone else in deep sleep?) That's the answer. (SK: What answer is that?) They're observing it through their mind. (SK: But concrete, relative world.) That's what you're seeing for a person in deep sleep. (SK: Yeah I have no way of knowing that, I really have no way of knowing.) Who wants to know though? (SK: I don't know, you make a statement that I'm realizing that there is no way for me to know whether it is true or not.) Because your ego is seeing that so I say, "Dive deep within yourself and you'll know." As long as you're speaking from external purposes, you can never know. (SK: Umm-hmm, that's interesting.) SM: Robert these dreams are mental creations too right? R: Dreams are creations of the mind, of course. It makes no difference what kind of dream it is. Think of a dream. It's externalized into a universe and it's all taking place within yourself, in your mind. Yet you see a moon, you see the stars, you see the sun, you see people, you have experiences and it's all taking place like it's real. It's happening in your mind. The world is the same way. It's happening in your mind but you refuse to accept that. You think these things are real and you suffer accordingly. Ed? SE: In response to Jay's question. One of the biggest changes for me was to change from believing that I was a body with consciousness inside of it to finding that I was consciousness that contains the body. (R: Yes.) And that when you see that point of view the body is no longer real, it's like anything else out there is part of it and that you're all of consciousness. When you have the first view the world is real. When you're consciousness the body's not real. (R: That's a good point.) It's just an object in consciousness. R: Everything is consciousness and everything that appears as forms are taking place in consciousness. All this is Brahman. SK: What about if I'm sitting here and my consciousness seems like it's not separate from other consciousness, yet still I somehow have a frame of reference, when here. R: Who has the frame of reference? (SK: I don't know who has it but…) The ego does. (SK: Okay.) You're talking about ego things. When you get rid of the ego there will be no frame of reference. (SK: So if you get rid of the ego totally, there's no frame of reference?) There's no frame of reference. (SK: So there's nothing to do with this body, I mean I'm not even aware it's here?) When? (SK: If there's no ego?) If there's no ego, you will be aware but in a different way. (SK: Will I be aware of all bodies?) In a different way, you'll realize, all bodies are the Self and you are that. SK: Yeah but still I'm coming from a different… (SX: Your perspective.) I can perceive that but I'm coming from here. R: But that's intellectually. (SK: Right.) But the other way is spiritually, it's different. It's coming from the point of the Self. I realize that I am the Self. But I am includes you. You are my Self. (SK: There's no here or there with you, none at all?) That's why when I see you, I see my Self as consciousness. I can only see you as I see my Self. (SK: But there still seems to be a here and there?) To who? (SK: To you?) No. (SK: There's no here or there.) No here, there is just one. (SK: Just one?) And that's you! (SK: That's me?) (laughter) R: Be still and know that I am God. SL: Robert for me it seems like there's something very scary about that whole prospect or feeling and thinking that I am God. R: No, I am is your ego you're referring to. Your personal individual I am, is not God. But I-Am is God. See the difference? (SL: Yeah.) You are not God the way you appear to be, but your real Self is God. So when you say, "I am God," you are not referring to yourself as a body. You're speaking to the real you, which you can't see as you. Do you see? SL: I also feel, that I find that when I stay with myself quietly for any length of time I become frightened, I get scared of that and I have to reach out or get back in touch with — or get out of myself. (R: Yes.) I don't know what I'm afraid of though? R: Well those are all samskaras. Past tendencies coming up on you. What you should do is observe them and ask, "From where do they come?" and "To whom do they come? What gave them birth? Who is their father and their mother?" They come from nothing and they return to nothing when you see it correctly. But if you agree with them, if you feel them, if you adhere in them then they become real for you. So as soon as you begin to feel fear, immediately catch yourself and ask the question, "To whom does the fear come?" and wait. And the answer will be, "It comes to me," as soon as the answer comes, "it comes to me," immediately abide in the me. Start feeling the me or you can start saying to yourself, "I - I, I - I." I is the first name of God. You're calling upon your real nature, which is greater than the fear. And the fear will dissipate, try it! SR: Robert if there's only one Self, then how is it that one person can be realized and another person can be in ignorance? R: Because nobody's really realized. That's just a word. There's only the understanding that all this is the Self. Everything that's going on anywhere is the Self in expression. I am that Self! Just like the dream, I am the dream. Am I not? Because I'm dreaming about everybody. I'm dreaming about the class, I'm dreaming about the world and about the universe. So I can say I am that dream. I see you in the same way. You are my Self and there's only me. But you see two or three or four or multiples. So you've got the problem not me. (laughs) Because you insist on seeing multiples. See your Self and you'll see me as your Self. There's only one Self, does that make sense? (SR: Yeah it makes sense.) SE: It sounds sort of like it depends on whether you take the position of Krishna or Arjuna. Whether you take the position of the absolute or whether you take the position of what Arjuna was, a Jiva Mukta, a Jiva, individual self. (R: Yes.) Now when you're only awareness, nothing is. But when you don't have awareness there is multiplicity. When you don't have the absolute then there is multiplicity. R: That's true, yes. We're talking about the absolute. The absolute is one, otherwise there's multiplicity. That's right. SK: When one is embodied and has obtained the Self or understands and becomes enlightened then one is consciousness, I guess we were pointing out these were different containers of consciousness. The body, right? (R: The body is a container of consciousness?) Well relatively speaking? (R: There's only one consciousness, not ten or twelve consciousnesses.) SK: So there's one consciousness. So the person who attains that ultimate state — what is the ego? There seems to be individual ego. Someone talks about something or whatever there seems to be different people talking? R: That's how it seems to you. (SK: Yeah, so…) Where are you coming from? The Jnani or ajnani? (SK: So I want to try to understand intellectually at least what a Jnani sees.) A Jnani sees the Self as one. As I said before. (SK: And so I'm talking, do you know what I'm going to say?) No I don't know what you're going to say. I only know that I am one with all there is. (SK: Okay, so otherwise you don't know per se what this ego is thinking in relative terms.) To me there's no ego, the ego doesn't exist. I see you as my Self and I don't think anything? I don't see me as you. I don't see myself as you. (SK: You don't?) I don't pick up your thoughts, because in my state there are no thoughts to pick up. Nothing exists, only emptiness. So how can I pick up what you're saying? There would have to be somebody home to pick up. (SK: Do you see this body here?) Sure, I see you as my Self. Just like the screen in the movie, as all the forms on the screen. So I'm like the screen and you're all the forms. So I'm a part of you and I'm independent of you. SK: Yeah so, it's I think maybe more clear to say, "Is the Self?" (R: No self.) Yeah, either one, because my self has a slight tendency for me, an ajnani, to relate that to ego or just an element very slightly, you know what I mean? (R: No.) You see my self, when you see me, you see myself being your self? (R: I see the Self.) You see the Self. (R: There's only one Self.) Yeah. Is it yours? R: It just exists. If it were mine, there would have to be somebody else. (SX: What?) I would have to be someone else. To be able to say, "It's my self." My doesn't exist. There's no me or mine. There's only omnipresent Self. Only the Self exists. It's not mine, it's not yours. (SK: So there's the body here that's just “the Self” actually.) There's no body anywhere. (SK: Well from there you can see that there's a body here?) I see you as the Self not as a body. (SK: Yeah, but for some… I don't know, there's like air in between, almost.) For whom? (SK: For me there is, obviously, but for you…) So ask yourself, "Who am I?" (SK: "Where am I?") "Who am I?" Find out. SR: Well there must be a reason for illusion though, because so many people partake in it, you know there's about five billion of them who have a hard time being scientific. It would be very hard to prove to them that they were one, even if it is true. R: You can't prove it, you have to have your own experience. There are also five billion people who dream. Do they say the dreams are real, of course not, they wake up. But they don't all wake up together. SR: It must serve a purpose is what I mean, this duality must serve some purpose otherwise what a stupid thing it is. R: There's no purpose and it doesn't exist. (SR: Well as I said there are several billion illusory people who perceive it for them as a reality.) Who sees all this? That's your view point. (SR: It's just my viewpoint, but it comes from observation though in the world, I didn't make it up.) Observation of whom? (SR: Of those individuals that I come into contact with daily. I've not met too many people who don't express an individual personality.) And who is the observer that's speaking? (SR: It's really, it's all with me.) So who are you? (SR: Well.) From what viewpoint do you speak? (SR: Just my own little perspective.) Then who are you that speaks? (SR: Well?) Are you speaking from the viewpoint of wisdom? (SR: No I'm speaking just from ego.) From ego, exactly, that's how the ego sees the world, falsely. That's called false imagination. That's how you perceive it. (SR: But that would be very difficult to tell all the people who experience this.) But who wants to tell them? (SR: I do. (laughter) My job is to make all the other illusions as unhappy as I am about my illusion.) Worry about yourself. (SR: And the others will take care of themselves?) Of course. (SR: They are already taking care of themselves, as long as I straighten it out they're all straightened out is that right?) If you believe that. (SR: Well, it must be true.) If you say so. (SR: I'm going to make them all disappear.) Do it, make yourself disappear first. (laughter) SA: Robert, I have a question. Would you've already said of course many times that karma is inevitable that it is unfolding. (R: If you believe that you are the body.) Until the full realization comes. But before that comes, would you say that samskaras, that this could be a difficult thing for one to voluntarily increase the samskaras, if that's the right way to put it. R: You will increase the samskaras by reacting to the world. In other words, if you're hit by grief, if you do not react to it, then you're rid of it forever. If you react to it you will likely be hit by grief again and again and again and again, you will increase samskaras. SA: Well about something like this, you know that I'm an artist and I'm creating worlds, like right now I'm doing a video of a book that I had done and I'm kind of fascinated as I have been many times before when you kind of feel that you are creating people, they have emotions, they have this and the whole world is kind of developing before your eyes. So, my feeling is, will I have to pay a price for creating this. Will it be to need, to create more and more illusion. R: Yes it will. Anything in the world that you're attached to creates greater karma. (SA: So what do you say if I create these worlds and not attach to them, then I can continue creating them.) Yes you can. Once you’re not attached you can do anything you like. (SA: Okay.) But it's hard to be non-attached for some people. Do not make the mistake and say, "Well it doesn't matter and you go rob a bank, and so what's the difference I'm not attached." You are attached, for if you weren't attached you wouldn't rob the bank to begin with. So it's not a license for you to do whatever you like. You have to be very careful. You have to practice loving kindness, compassion, peace, joy for yourself and everybody else. (SA: Well wouldn't non-action be a goal also?) No, because of what I mentioned previously. if you were meant to act in this life, you're going to act and you have no choice. No matter how much you may try not to act. You may join a monastery an ashram, become a monk, but you won't be able to hold onto it. SE: They’re going to make you work. (laughter) R: Yeah. You'll have to act. If you're meant to act, you'll act. SE: I became a monk to become a contemplative and they kept sending me out to work to support the ashram. (SK: You went to the wrong place.) Yeah went to the wrong ashram.(laughter) R: Why don't we have a little break and have some refreshments. (Robert plays music as tape ends)

Robert: Some of you look so serious. This is not a serious satsang, it's a lot of fun, feel happy. Happiness is your real nature. You might as well get used to it, it's going to overtake you whether you like it or not. I want you to ask yourself a question: Why am I here at satsang? Why did I come here? Did you come to observe the speaker? To compare him to other speakers? Most of you have gone to so many meetings, you're totally confused. Going to meetings for some of you, is like going to the movies. You ask, "What's playing this week?" The same way you ask, "Who's speaking this week?" But, some of you never do anything about it. You listen to the message and then you go home and then you say, "Well wasn't he or she an eloquent speaker, that was great! What are we going to do now? Lets go bowling. Let's go watch TV" And you forget all about the meeting until next time. Some of you have been going to meetings for thirty years or more. What have you accomplished? You have read every book that has been written. Where are you? Are you happy? Are you liberated? Are you free? Ask yourself. What we offer here, is absolutely nothing, no thing. It's all in the invisible. It all has to do with consciousness and consciousness is your real nature. It's really what you are. When you identify with consciousness, you become your real Self. When you don't, you're a part of humanity, struggling, trying to become free. In order to understand the body-mind phenomena, that you are not the bodymind, you first have to understand what the mind is. What is the mind? It is merely a conglomeration of energy, of thoughts, thoughts about the past and the future. That’s all the mind is. The mind is not your friend. But you can use the mind to accomplish many things. We’ve all been programmed, brainwashed. It started, when you were in your mothers womb. All of her feelings, all of her negation or positiveness, all of her energy was transferred into you. Not only that, but you have samskaras, past life tendencies, fears, prejudices that also go into your subconscious before you were born. When you come out into the world, you're put in your crib and you pick up the vibrations of your house. People fighting, parents hitting each other, loving each other, all that goes into your subconscious mind and makes up you. When you're at the age when you walk you go outside and play with some friends and your environment soaks into your subconscious mind. Then you go to school, you go to church, temple, synagogue and all those teachings go into your subconscious. Then you grow up you get a job, have a family and here you are. You're a product of preconceived ideas, of concepts. But is that really you? It's you as long as you believe it's you. When you get tired of playing games, something within you gives you a push. That's called the inner guru. It pushes you from within and something outside leads you to the right person, to the right book, to the right environment that you have to be, because you have given up playing games. In other words you’ve become tired of the world and you want liberation. Wanting liberation is very funny to me. It's like a person taking a shower saying, "I want to get wet." Liberation is your very nature, you have to wake up to it, to realize it's you. So you are a conglomeration of thoughts, of energy, that has programmed you since you were a baby. And here you are. So, now that you're here and you know how you've been programmed, what are you going to do about it? But let's talk a little bit about the mind a little more. If you know about the mind, you will know what you have to get rid of. The mind doesn't really exist. But you've been programmed to believe that the mind is an entity, that it does exist. Therefore you have to play this game, getting rid of the mind. Let's see again how the mind works. Let us compare the mind to the earth. A farmer has two seeds. One is of Nightshade, a deadly poison and the other is of corn. The seeds are thoughts. The farmer plants both seeds. And once the seeds are planted, the earth has no alternative but to grow in abundance, whatever has been planted. In the same way, when you accept certain thoughts, your mind grows those thoughts until they become your experience. And this is why you have the problems that you’ve got today. You have created them yourself. Take another example. Have you ever planted seeds? Sure you have, some of you have. Say a farmer plants a rose seed, a tulip seed, a carrot seed and let us imagine that these seeds are like us. They can think and talk like humans. And the rose seed says to itself, “look at that beautiful rose, they say that I will grow into a rose. I will become a rose. But that sounds impossible, how can I ever be a beautiful rose like that. It's virtually impossible for me to do that.” By that very thought the seeds would stagnate and not grow. The carrot seed says the same thing, “I'm just a nothing, a nobody, how can I ever grow into a beautiful carrot?” By that very thought the seed would stagnate. In the same way I say to you, "You are absolute reality. You are Brahman, infinite awareness, consciousness." But you say, "How can that be? That sounds impossible. I'm just a lowly person, I'm nobody important." And you keep identifying with your body and your mind. As long as you identify with your body and your mind, the lord of karma, Ishvara, becomes your Master. And you're under the jurisdiction of the Lord of Karma. Therefore you keep coming back again and again to this earth. And then you become sort of earth bound, until you become totally free. But you have to do this by yourself. You have to practice certain techniques. Somebody asked me just recently, "You say that consciousness, reality, is like a screen and the body, the world are all images on the screen." And the question is "Since I believe I'm an image, can I change my image to a better one?" In other words, as long as you believe that you're an image and you are not consciousness, can you improve your lot? Can you improve your lifestyle and change your image? Now, that is up to the lord of karma. As most of you know everything has been preordained, determined before you took up your body. But you have certain freedom, depending on your karma. And the question really is, "Can you make a sick body well? Can you make a poor person rich? Can you make a depressed person happy?" You're working at a mind level when you do this. You're not going to the ultimate truth, but you're working from your mind. And you can never find freedom and liberation by working from your mind. As an example: Let's say for instance, you manipulate you mind enough and you've got cancer. You've been working on yourself for fifteen years. You use imaging techniques, you use mind control. You imagine that the white blood corpuscles are attacking the cancer and you finally heal yourself of cancer. You get written up in the "National Inquirer." You appear on "Phil Donahue." And you feel great and proud of yourself, you've healed yourself of cancer. Next month you're crossing the street, a truck hits you and you're dead. That's what happens through mind manipulation. Let's take another case. You're working on yourself to become rich. You take the proper real estate courses. You learn business administration. You use mind control. And after twenty years you become a multimillionaire. You get married and have three children. Then your wife and children get killed in an automobile accident. Somebody kidnaps you and holds you for ransom. And you have to pay out ten million dollars. And you're back where you started from. What I'm trying to say is, working with the mind is not the answer. We bypass the mind. We realize the mind is not our friend. The idea is to annihilate the mind. To annihilate thought. How we do this? Through the method of Jnana Marga, through the method of vichara, self-inquiry, this is the fastest method to liberate you from confusion and ignorance. When you have a problem, when you have some sort of confusion. You simply ask yourself the question, "To whom does this come? Who has this problem? Or who has this karma?" And pretty soon the answer will come by itself, "I do." Then you further ask, "From where does this I come from? What is the source of I?" You abide in the I, you hold onto the I. You start to use a meditation called, "I-I," You simply abide in the I as long as you can. And you follow the I thread into your spiritual heart. You say to yourself, "I, I, I, I, I, I." You remember that everything in the world is attached to I. Isn't it? Think of all the times in your life you've said, "I. I feel sick. I feel depressed. I feel happy. I feel out of sorts." Who is this I that you're talking about? Is it your body? It can't be your body. Because when you sleep and you wake up you say, "I slept." When you dream, you wake up you say, "I dreamt." And when you're awake you say, "I'm awake." To whom are you referring when you say, "I?" Find out, go within, ask yourself, "Who am I? Where did I come from?" But never answer, just pose the question, "What is this source of I?" and one day you will realize that I does not exist. When you follow I to the source, one day there will be like a big explosion and you will see myriads of light particles all around you. You will then realize that the whole universe is nothing but a bunch of light particles. Yet this is not the answer. For where did the light particles come from? They come from no thing, from nothing. And nothing is consciousness. Consciousness is like space. It has no shape. Yet it takes the shape of every creation. It appears to take the shape of the world, of people. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness is like a chalkboard. And the objects of the world are like images on the chalkboard. You can draw any image that you like. You can draw an Indian. You can draw two people fighting. Two people making love. And then you erase it and draw something else. But the chalkboard never changes. The chalkboard is always the same. So it is with you. You go through all kinds of experiences. But the realization is that you are not the experiences you're going through. You are consciousness, that is your real nature. Think about that. My real nature to you. I am not a preacher, nor a philosopher. I am not a minister nor a lecturer. I can only share with you the way that I feel. When I use the word, "I-am," I-am referring to all of you. I-am is another word for God, the first name of God. Another word for consciousness, omnipresence is I-am. I feel that I-am not the body nor the mind. I am absolute awareness. I am ultimate oneness. I-am infinite intelligence, nirvana, emptiness, I-am that I-am. I am sat-chit-ananda. I am parabrahman. I was never born and I can never die. I Am That I Am. The world is a product of my imagination. I see the world as consciousness. I see the reality, perfection, peace, love, happiness. This is the real Self and nothing else exists. (silence) Welcome to satsang. Satsang is where we sit around and rejoice in each other. And if there are any questions you wish to ask feel free to do so. If you wish to make a statement or say anything you like, this is the time to do it. For you don't expect me to keep talking do you? Feel free to ask any question about the spiritual path, or about anything else. SL: Robert, I know that when we try to meditate or just clear our minds, you said that we could do it by asking the “I” question. Someone also mentioned before about clearing the mind by just trying to listen is that also another way? R: It makes no difference what method you use to clear your mind. The idea is to make your mind quiescent. To make your mind still and calm. When your mind is still and calm you solve the problem. All the methods, self-inquiry, breath control, yoga, everything is to quiet the mind. Use whatever method suits you. You can become the witness to your thoughts. You can watch your thoughts as they go by. When you become the witness and you do not interfere with the thought process, the thoughts automatically begin to weaken by themselves, until they dissipate entirely. You can ask yourself, "To whom comes these thoughts?" Whatever method you use is fine. But by all means do something to still the mind. And again when the mind is still and quiet, everything will take care of itself. The secret is to quiet the mind. Your real nature is self-realization. When the mind is stilled, you just return to your real nature, to what you always were. (SL: Earlier you said that, something was the fastest path to selfrealization? That versus what?) Versus anything. It has been proven that vichara is the fastest path to awaken. Vichara means self-inquiry. By inquiring within yourself and finding the source of your existence, your body-mind disappears. And you become your Self once again. But it's not for everyone. Most people seem to have some kind of difficulty. Then you've got to do what you've got to do, and do whatever helps you. Breath control, mantras, japa, repetition of Gods name, everything brings you to the top. But by all means do something. This is why I share these various methods of meditation with you. If you get tired of one you can use another one. If you practice something will give eventually. Something will happen to the one who practices. SN: Robert, ultimately, is there a need for meditation? R: No, we meditate just to find out that we don't have to. But if some of us do not meditate we go crazy. The world has a hold on us. Therefore meditation is good again to quiet the mind. But as I always say, "Does God have to meditate? On whom should God meditate on? Himself?" When you understand who you are, there will be no need for meditation. Until then do whatever you have to do. SN: Now when we say meditation, from the point of view from Jnana Marga, is what we're referring to just abiding in our own awareness? R: Exactly, abiding in the Self, in the I. When you abide in the I, you automatically go to the ultimate truth. And you discover that you are consciousness and you become liberated. By all means abide in the I, always. (SN: So when we say meditation, we don't mean something that will take us away from that?) Of course not. As I said before, "I - I" is meditation. When you repeat to yourself, "I - I" and do it with your breathing, you inhale and you say, "I" you exhale and you say, "I", "I, I." The reason it's so powerful is because I is the first name of God. You're therefore speaking of your Self. And as you continue with I-I ultimate reality will come to you. (SN: But not just plain repetition, on the level of the mind? But rather I as, I Am That I Am?) Plain repetition is better than nothing. It's better than thinking of the world. Plain repetition will eventually lead you to realization. It will lead to the real I-I. Most people think about their bodies, their affairs and the world. When you start using I - I, you forget about the world for a while. And you will notice how better you feel when you're finished. How more secure you feel, how happier you've become. And that proves to you it has some substance. The more you continue it, the greater will ensue the feeling of happiness within yourself. SK: Robert, what role does grace play in self-inquiry? R: Grace is always available, just like the sun is always available. But sometimes the clouds seem to block the sun and you no longer get its rays. But it's always there. When the clouds dissipate, the sun shines once more. In the same way, the clouds of doubt, suspicion, apprehension, laziness keep the sun from shining or keep the grace from coming. But the grace is always there, you just have to recognize it, realize it's there and take part in it. There's no one to give grace. Grace is consciousness, it’s the same thing it's always there, it never went away. SD: Then why is it said that the guru bestows grace in three different ways? This I read in the teachings of Maharshi. And it can be by look or thought or touch? Or what is this bestowing of grace and is that somehow different from the grace you're talking about? R: It's the same thing, this is for the benefit of ajnani. Of those who are in ignorance. It is said that the guru bestows grace by touch, by look, by feel and that does happen. For the person who is taking part in that kind of grace, actually feels it when it happens. But it's always available for the mature student. It's always there. You just have to awaken to it. But they're both the same, there's no difference. SL: How do you know when you're awakened to it? R: Oh you'll know. (laughter) You will feel a feeling of immortality, you will feel a peace, that you never dreamed existed. You will feel a bliss that's unworldly. It cannot be described. But you will feel it yourself. (SL: Then what is grace?) Grace is love. Grace is realization. Grace is awakening. Grace is consciousness. SK: That's all there is, isn't it? (R: Yes, nothing else exists.) SM: But is it really necessary for Grace Robert? R: For some people, yes, for some people, no. It depends on your karma. You have an inner guru and if you trust the inner guru, the inner guru will lead you where you have to go. It may lead you to an outer guru or to a tree or to a river or to a book or to your Self. But you have to surrender to your inner guru for this to happen. When there is total surrender you will find you're at the right place, doing the right thing. SL: What part does choice play in this? R: There is no choice. The only freedom you have is not reacting to conditions. The only freedom that exists is to turn within and transcend the whole bowl of wax. Transcend karma, the world and God and become totally free. So in a way you can say you have a choice. A choice whether you're going to turn within and not react to circumstances or you're going to react to circumstances and play the game all over again. That choice is yours. Everything else has been determined prior to your taking birth. Now that's a tough statement to make to a Westerner who has a big ego, but I can assure it's the truth. It is only when you're not realized as it appears, that you get involved in the karma trip. SM: Is there any indication when one is coming near to realization, Robert? R: Sometimes there is and sometimes there's not. Usually it's like turning on the light. You've been in a room full of darkness for years and you turn on the light, the only indication is… (tape break as student continues) SL: If everyone got into that state in this lifetime it would not be so bad to come back and see what kind of a world that people who are realized can make. R: Everyone will never get into that state. It's the way of this world. This planet is like a third grade planet, a planet of duality. The idea is to get off the planet and not come back. Let God take care of the world. Find your Self and become free and then see if you ask that question. We always get concerned about the world. But remember you are the world. The world comes from your mind, from your thoughts. You are the creator of the world by the very thoughts that you feel. When your thoughts go out, the world is created, when you pull your thoughts in, the world disappears. SD: So if theoretically we all became realized there would be no world to comeback to? R: Exactly, because the world never existed to begin with. The world is like an optical illusion, like a dream. It exists because you exist. But what happens to the world when you're in deep sleep? It no longer exists, but you exist. Find out who you are. SL: So there really is no question is there? R: No there's not. But as long as you feel that you are not the Self, then there will always be a question. For if you are the Self to whom will you ask a question? For your Self is omnipresence. (SL: It seems sad to leave this world like…) It seems sad to leave this world? (S: No, to leave this world in such an awful state without trying to make it a little better.) What have you got to do with the world. The world has always been here and will always be here. Set yourself free and then see if you're concerned with the world. Now what I mean by that is this: The world does not exist as it appears. As long as you believe in the world you're going to ask the question you just asked, because you think the world is an appearance of reality. But it does not exist. Let's say for instance as an example: You have a dream and in that dream the world is a terrible mess. People are killing each other, there are earthquakes, cataclysms, man's inhumanity to man, it's just terrible. Then you wake up, what happened to the world? You forget about it, don't you? You forget about your dream and you concentrate on this world. In the same way, when you wake up from reality, this world disappears in the same way the dream did. And only you exist as the Self or as consciousness. SK: And from there whatever happens, happens? R: There's nothing to happen, "To whom shall it happen?" (SK: Yeah, or from a ajnani's view, whatever happens, happens with that person. That's how they affect other people.) Well to a ajnani all kinds of things are always happening. But to a Jnani nothing is happening. SK: But it's interesting because I can view you and see how you're affecting hundreds of people, benefiting hundreds of people and yet to you this world doesn't exist per se. Yet from my viewpoint, as an ajnani, I can see what benefit you're making by attaining realization. R: Well instead of seeing what I'm doing, why don't you see what you're doing? (SK: I'm not doing.) Find out who you are, never mind me. SK: Right, my own motivation, but I'm sort of hoping to shed some light on your question. SL: Maybe what you see of course, we really want to be taught something larger than what we are experiencing. We wouldn't be here if we wanted to be more into the world and take a physical stand. But we've tried it and realized that it's impossible to change the world. R: People have been trying to bring peace to this world from time immemorial. Remember our civilization is not the first one on this planet. This planet is billions of years old and we've had civilizations more advanced than we are today and they've all been wiped out, consequently don't worry about the world. Find out who you are and let the world take care of itself. (SL: It seems like the world is like an obstacle path for the soul to be realized, if you don't pass then you come back again or something like that.) That's a nice way to put it. It seems like that but in reality there are no obstacle paths. "For whom is there an obstacle path?" Ask yourself. If you ask yourself that question and you follow the answer within yourself, you will realize there never was an obstacle path. That you've always been free. (SL: But in order for us to be free, it seems like we need to learn certain lessons. So we keep coming back to achieve that to be free.) It seems that way, but the only lesson you need to learn is that you are not the body-mind phenomena, that's all. Everything else will take care of itself. (SL: That's why we keep coming back, it's too simple.) That's right, we become attached to worldly things and the world pulls us back over and over again. It's part of the dream which is called maya. It appears very strong for most people. That's why most people can never get on a path like this because it's too much for them. SU: It seems the natural world, the world that was here before people, it seems to me that's a part of universal existence, just the trees, air and water. R: When you go to sleep, what happens to the trees and the air and the water? They no longer exist for you. They only exist when you wake up because they're created by your mind. So ask yourself, "To whom is the trees and the water and air for?" And you realize it exists because of your ego. When your ego is disintegrated, everything else goes with it and you become free. See everything that exists in the world so-to-speak, must perish. The trees last for so long. The mountains last for so long. People last for so long. Everything has to perish. Everything that is born, must die. So find out for yourself, "Who is it that was born and who has to die?" Ask yourself. Inquire within yourself and see what happens. "For whom is their birth and death?" find out. Now when most of you leave here, you're going to forget what I said in about ten minutes. And you're going to say, "Now what should I do now. I think we'll go to a restaurant and eat or I'll go to a movie or worry about my future or I'll get ready for work to- morrow?" It is only one in a thousand that thinks about these things all the time and does something about it. In the Bhagavad-Gita it says, "Out of a thousand, one searches for God, and out of a thousand that search, one finds him." Find out where you stand as far as that's concerned. Where do you fit in? Do you still have fears, frustrations, doubts, suspicions. Are you still worried about your job or worried about the world, or worried about your body or your life? This makes you earth bound. It keeps you from becoming liberated. To become liberated you've got to forget about your little self, about me, me, me, me all the time. And realize that you are the Self of the universe. Realize that everything, the whole universe is the Self and "I am that." All is well. SU: Within the universe is there contained other stars and planets, is that part of the universe? (R: Yes.) That we're part of? (R: Everything is part of the dream.) That's part of the dream? R: The planets, the stars, the universe, everything, even God. It's all part of your dream. When you wake up there's no separation between you and reality. You become allpervading, ultimate oneness, pure consciousness and there's no room for anything else because you are all there is as the Self. So the good news is, you can become a Jiva Mukta, liberated while in the body, in this life. But you've got to make it happen, it's up to you. What I mean is, you've got to realize that you're not the body or the mind. That's making it happen. It always begins in the morning, as soon as you wake up and open your eyes. What is the first thing you think about? Try to catch yourself. When your mind starts to wonder and you start to think about your work or your dishes or your breakfast or whatever. As soon as you open your eyes realize, I exist, I exist. Not as a body or a mind, but I exist as consciousness. And then ask yourself, "Then for whom is the body-mind?" And the answer will be for me, I feel it. Hold on to the me, follow the me to its origin, to its source. And you will find that me never existed. That's a beautiful way to start off the morning. But catch yourself. That's how it begins. When your mind starts thinking catch yourself. Keep your mind from thinking, go back to the Self. Go back to self-inquiry. It will become easier and easier as you do it. Every week we have a reading from one of the great spiritual traditional books. And Nerada picked out something today that confirms what we've been talking about. So feel free to do it, Nerada. If you want to make some announcements first, go ahead. Nerada: "The man who is pure at heart is bound to fulfill himself in whatever way he is taught. The worldly man seeks all his life but is still bewildered. Detached from the senses you are free. Attached you are bound. When this is understood, you may live as you please. When this is understood, the man who is bright and busy and full of fine words, falls silent. He does nothing, he is still. No wonder those who wish to enjoy the world, shun this understanding. You are not the body, your body is not you. You are not the doer, you are not the enjoyer. You are pure awareness, the witness of all things. You are without expectation, free wherever you go. Be happy. Desire in a aversion are of the mind. The mind is never yours. You are free of its turmoil. You are awareness itself, never changing. Wherever you go be happy. Foresee, the Self in all beings and all beings are in the Self. Know you are free, free of I, free of mind, be happy. In you the world arises like waves in the sea. It is true, you are awareness itself. So free yourself from the fever of the world. Have faith my child, have faith. Do not be bewildered for you are beyond all things. The heart of all knowing. You are the Self, you are God. The body is confined by its natural properties. It comes, it lingers a while, it goes. But the Self neither comes nor goes. So why grieve for the body. If the body lasts till the end of time or vanished today what would you win or lose? You are pure awareness. You are the endless sea in whom all the worlds like waves naturally rise and fall. You have nothing to win, nothing to lose. Child you are pure awareness, nothing less. You and the world are one. So who are you to think you can hold onto it or let it go? How could you? You are the clear space of awareness. Pure and still. In whom there is no birth, no activity. No I. You are the one and the same. You cannot change or die. You are in whatever you seek. You alone. Just as bracelets and bangles and dancing anklets are all of the same gold. I am not this, I am He. Give up such distinctions. Know that everything is the Self. Rid yourself of all purpose and be happy. The world only arises from ignorance. You alone are real. There is no one not even God, separate from yourself. You are pure awareness. The world is an illusion nothing more. When you understand this fully, desire falls away. You find peace. For indeed there is nothing. In the ocean of being there is only one. There was and there will be only one. You are already fulfilled. How can you be bound or free. Wherever you go, be happy. Never upset your mind with yes and no. Be quiet, you are awareness itself. Live in happiness of your own awareness, which is happiness itself. What is the use of thinking. Once and for all give up meditation, hold nothing in your mind. You are the Self and you are free." R: Go Henry. Henry: "When the virtuous people die, they move towards and live in heaven. The period of their sojourn in heaven may extend 80 to 240 years, it is popularly believed. They are, after the termination of their period of stay in heaven, again reborn on earth. After death, the virtuous people enjoy the pleasures in heaven as a reward for their merits, their virtuous deeds, their services and their sacrifices. When their merits are exhausted they return to earth. What Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, they having enjoyed the spacious heaven world, their holiness withered, come back to this world of death. Following the virtues enjoying by the scriptures, desiring desires, they attain the transitory. But when a virtuous person comes back from heaven to the physical world, he takes birth in noble and virtuous families. This is the advantage of virtuous deeds. There is a double retribution or reward for man's virtuous actions. He gets after his sojourn in heaven and return to earth, a good birth, with good surroundings, environments and opportunities, for his good actions and inner evolution.” SH: And so we have justified cast. (R: Yes, as far as that goes.) SK: Yeah but if cast is maintained, purely it's really karmic. But nowadays the cast are so mingled and all that and it doesn't hold true any more per se. R: That's true. I wrote this in 1962. Reality has nothing to do with this. But this is the appearance. That's how it looks. (SL: Oh but the caste system is still operating in India?) The caste system is all over India. (SL: If you're born a poor Indian there's nothing you can do about it.) If you're born a poor american you're homeless. SK: It doesn't work with karma anymore. If the caste system's intact like it was a long time back then it works with karma. R: Things have changed with the caste system. But karmically nothing ever changes. Go ahead. Henry: “Retrogression into animal births: Hindu scriptures say that a man may become a deva, or a beast, or a bird, or vegetable, or a stone. According to his merit or demerit. The Upanishads also corroborate this statement. The Karbala also agrees with this point. But Buddhism and some Western philosophies teach, there is no more retrogression for a man when once he takes human birth. There is no necessity for him to be born as an animal for the sake of demerit. He can be punished in a variety of ways in the human birth itself. When a man takes the form of the deva, all human samskaras, habits and tendencies will remain dormant. When a man takes the form of a dog, animal tendencies, habits and samskaras only will manifest. Human tendencies will remain suppressed. Some dogs get royal treatment in the palaces of kings and aristocratic people. They move in cars, eat good food and sleep in cushions. These are all degenerated human beings.” (laughter) R: Do you want to read Mary? (SM: Oh no, I just said I'd like to have a copy of this.) Have we got anymore copies? Anybody like to continue reading. (SM: I'll read if you like Robert.) Okay good. Henry: At the bottom of the first column, first page. Start at the top of the second column. Mary: "Philosophy of death." Occasionally in moments of calm contemplation, when we are thrown in the introspective mood. We sometimes wonder why God who is such a kind, compassionate and merciful Father could have included death in the scheme of life. The fact is, death comes as a necessity to egg us on in our evolution. Could you just imagine of a world where there would be no death? Over population even today poses as a difficult problem with all the deaths that are taking place in normal course. So imagine the extent of chaos and confusion that would result if there would be no death. Life would no longer be worth living. It would become a dull, drab, drudgery. Living in the same body we cannot grow beyond our bounds and ties of attachments. Complete separation is necessary to make us cautious of our attachments. During our brief sojourn in this world, we get so much attached to this terra firma, that when death knocks at our door, we feel too reluctant to be torn from our family surroundings and leave our material possessions, so painstakingly created. Therefore to completely snap the tie of attachment, death is the only solution. Death is not only a necessity for those who die. But it is also necessary for the evolution of those who are left behind. Death helps dissolve responsibilities on our unused shoulders. They accept the challenge of life and grow in experience. Father suddenly passes away, son takes up the new responsibility, bares it and enriches his treasure house of experience. When a child dies in his infancy, it may not be much of an assimilation of an experience for him except for certain karmic progation. But it means all the more for those who are left behind. We have to grow beyond attachment, ego and desire, to enjoy immunity from sufferings. Thus by helping us transcend our world attachments, death plays an indispensable role. In fact, individual soul could never grow without death. The evolutionary process is a long one. It requires various types of experiences of poverty and riches, of purity and pollution, of ignorance and education, of every country, clime, culture, race and religion. It requires experiences of both the sexes as well. In a single body all this is not possible to assimilate. Therefore by virtue of necessity we die and are born again under different circumstances for a different set of experiences. R: You're a good reader Mary, would you like to read more? Mary: I'm done for fifteen years, (laughs) thank you Robert. Mary continues: Assimilation of experiences also not possible without death. In the post mortem states, the consciousness widens. The deeds of the past lifetime have a reaction. And we learn many new lessons. We often notice monkeys devouring edibles rapidly and then masticating them at leisure. Similarly we masticate our experiences in a higher and wider light, which shines after death. During our stay in the astral plane, the scenes of our past life flip past our eyes one after another. We begin to relive our lives with the difference that now we are identified with all the actors in every situation. We feel as we did when we tortured someone as also like the one who was tortured by us, we experience the pain of the latter. This process exhausts our karma to a degree and provides us a useable lesson. Karmic progation occurs when both the oppressor and also the oppressed have been able to excuse each other. Retaliation only augments karmic bondage. Death comes as a necessary drop scene between two births. It is a drop scene in as much as the activities go on behind the curtain. Thus after the assimilation of one set of experiences of one life, the individual soul is provided again with a new set of mental, emotional and pranic body, eminently suitable for his next reincarnation. In this manner from life to life, he travels assimilating his diverse experiences. In normal course the period that intervenes between two births is about 4 to 5 hundred years in occult parlance. Our one year is equal to one day of tetris…” (tape ends)

Robert: Good evening. It's good to be with you again, and I know some of you can't wait until I start talking, but I tell you in truth, that it's in silence where you receive the best message. Silence is another name for God. Quietness is a name for consciousness, peace. Everything is found in the silence, not too much in the words, in quietness. You should try to be quiet for as long as you can, especially when you are at home. Try to sit in the silence and quietness for as long as you can. It's in the silence where you will receive the message. It's in silence where pure awareness reveals itself to you. Never be afraid to sit in the silence. It's your greatest asset. I get many phone calls. One of the most frequent requests I get is how to resolve personal problems. I had one this morning, a phone call. And this person had so many problems, yet she has been meditating for twenty-five years and she still has problems. There’s only one way in which to remove all problems. I don't care how great the problem may be. It makes no difference how serious you think it is. There is one way to eliminate everything. And that way is to realize, "I am not the doer." In other words, the problem has absolutely nothing to do with you, even though it appears to, it's only an appearance. What is a problem really? A problem is something that’s not going your way. The world is not spinning the way you want it to, that's a problem. Things are not going the way you'd like them to or things are happening that you have no control of, you believe therefore you have got a problem. But if you look at everybody on this earth, one persons problem is not another persons problem usually. Where do these problems come from? We’ve been told what’s good and what’s bad, so if we don't have the good that we think we should have, we've got a problem. But really, nothing is good and nothing is bad, but thinking makes it so. If you therefore get rid of your mind, you will not have any problems. The main aspect of our teaching is to annihilate the mind and the ego. When the mind and ego are transcended some mysterious power takes over and takes better care of you than you could ever do yourself. But first the mind and ego has to go. It's difficult for most Americans to do things like this because we've been taught to use your mind. Mind is everything and most of you believe if you don't use your mind you will vegetate. On the contrary, what is your mind? It is only a conglomeration of thoughts of the past and of the future. You usually worry about the past and dread the future. For your mind brings up all sorts of things not only from this life but from past life experiences, samskaras, tendencies that you have. If you begin to realize "I am not the doer" where is the problem? To begin with, the universe is your friend and can never hurt you. The substratum of all existence is love. Consequently, if you develop a consciousness of love there will be no problems, for love will take care of everything. Love is the same as absolute awareness, pure intelligence. Love is the same as parabrahman. Again, it is the substratum of all existence. So if you have enough love there is no problem. The problem only arises when you think that you are human and you think you're the doer, in other words, when you believe that unless I do this something terrible will happen. But again, something terrible is only a preconceived idea, it is not the truth. Something terrible is something you've been brainwashed to believe. You again believe you have to live a certain way and if you can't live this way, it's terrible. You have to have certain possessions, certain things in your life. If you do not do this it's terrible. When you start to understand what, "I am not the doer" means, you become free of all problems. What does it mean when you say, "I am not the doer?" (And this is what you should do whenever you think you've got a problem.) To begin with, you first realize that everything, and I mean everything, was determined before you came to this earth. Everything has been planned for you. Even the day you're going to give up the body. Everything is preordained. If you accept this and feel this, where is the problem? What's the worst thing that can ever happen to you? If you really analyze it, it's not that bad. It appears bad but it's not. And remember how the appearance works. It's like the snake and the rope. A man gets out of his bathtub in the dark and steps on a rope and he thinks it's a snake and he has a tremendous fear. When he finds out it’s only a rope the fear dissipates and he is never afraid again of that problem. So, in the same instance, when you believe, and believe, and think, and think that you have a problem, it's like the snake and the rope. It's not really a problem, it's just a preconceived idea of what's going to happen if you don't get what you want. Because you have been brought up again, to believe that your life has to be a certain way, where in truth and reality it does not have to be anyway. As an example, if I go home this evening and I find out somebody has robbed my house, and they have cleaned everything out of my house, is that a problem? It’s all been preordained. This was determined before I came to this earth in my body. I will not react negatively. I will not react at all. Because I feel that I am the universe and all is well. There are no mistakes. Therefore I will bless the thief, no problem whatsoever. If I'm walking across the street and a car passes a red light and hits me, it isn't the drivers fault. It has all been preordained. So why should I get angry? The point is that everything, everything that's happened to you, has been preordained. There is nothing wrong. Now how should you handle things? The first concept is to realize that, "I am not the doer." When you realize you are not the doer it means that your body is going through the experience but not you. The next thing you do is you ask yourself, "Who is having this experience? To whom does it come? It comes to me. I'm feeling the depression. I feel hurt. I feel out of sort. I feel that I've been robbed or hit by a car. I'm angry, I'm mad. Who is this I? How can the I be so many things, angry, mad, depressed, hurt, out of sort?" You therefore hold onto the feeling of I. You hold onto that feeling and you follow it through to its source. The source of I is always consciousness or absolute awareness, when you follow it to its source. But now, the only way you can follow it to its source is to forget about your problem, for you can't do both at once. So, you have to turn resolutely away from your problem, totally away from the problem, as if it doesn't exist, and hold on to the me. Hold onto the me who thinks it has a problem. As soon as you begin to hold onto me, or I, the problem will begin to dissipate all by itself, and you'll start to laugh, you will. For it is virtually impossible for your real Self to have a problem. For your real Self is omnipresent, absolute. Your real Self is emptiness, nirvana, pure intelligence. Your real Self is omnipresent, it's everywhere present at the same time. When you understand who you are, no-thing will ever disturb you again. Now people ask me, "If I develop a sense of I and I follow it to its culmination, does that mean I will never have a problem again?" And I have to laugh when people ask me that, for as long as you're identifying with I, it is the I that has the problem. So when you say, "Will I never have a problem again?" you're defeating your own purpose. For I is filled with problems, not only from this life but from previous existences. The trick is to follow the I to the source, and then the I will disappear, totally, completely, absolutely. And when the I disappears, so does your problem. In other words, the world doesn't change but you do. Your reaction changes. Just like the screen and its images. When the time comes when you have transcended I, you become like the screen and like the images shown on the screen. Which means the world does not change. Everything in the world will present itself to you like it always does, but it will be like water off a duck's back. It will not be attached to you anymore. You will now have identification with the screen, or with the Self. Am I clear in this? In other words, the screen and the images are the same, but the screen is aware of itself and also of its images, and it's not affected by the kind of images you show. You can show a bank robbery taking place on the screen, a murder being committed, people making love, houses burning down, wars ensuing. How does that affect the screen? It does not. The screen is never affected, yet the images change, one after the other. In the same way, your Self is like the screen. It is never affected by problems of any kind or any sort. The problems come upon the screen, they come and they go, but you remain the Self forever. You never change. How do you begin to become this way? Every time you think you have a problem you must ask yourself, "To whom does the problem come? After all, I am not the doer. I am not the body. I am not the mind. So to whom does the problem come?" And of course the answer will be, "To me. I feel this problem. The problem comes to me." You hold onto the me, you abide in the me and you go deeper, and deeper, and deeper within yourself, abiding in the I-consciousness. As you keep doing this everyday, every time a problem appears, the day will finally come soon when you transcend your sense of I. You totally transcend it. The sense of I disappears and you will become pure consciousness. That's it. Any questions? SN: Robert, on the path, compassion and humility are important. Is it something that develops of itself or is it something that we can work on? R: As you keep asking yourself, "To whom does the arrogance come? Who's belligerent? To whom do these feeling come?" They will begin to dissipate of their own accord. And in their place will come compassion and humility. Therefore you have to catch yourself. Whenever you feel arrogant, whenever you feel belligerent, whenever you feel out of sorts. Do not go into that feeling. Do not hold onto it, but immediately ask yourself, "To whom does this come? Who has this feeling? It comes to me, Who's me? Who am I?" And again you hold on to the I or hold on to the me. Again if you do this often enough, the day will come when you transcend me. And there will be truer love. SN: So it's not a matter of developing humility or compassion itself, but more recognizing its opposite? And what of Buddhist loving kindness meditation? R: Yes, pure awareness is your real nature. Loving kindness is your Self. These other things seem to be attached to you but they don't really exist. As you begin to inquire, "Then to whom do they come?" you will find out that they never existed to begin with. And you'll be free of them forever. But if you try to develop them any other way, it doesn't work quite as good. For you may develop kindness for a certain problem, but when it comes to another problem the kindness will not be there. Therefore you forget about the problem and you inquire, "To whom does it come?" and when you follow the I, remember everything is attached to the I, the whole thing will be transcended into nothingness and you'll be free. SN: That's assuming that we recognize when the ego rears its head. But very often we justify our own actions. (R: But now that you know, you won't.) (laughter) Thank you. R: That's only when you don't know what you're doing here, that you justify your actions. But since you're beginning to understand, you will be able to catch yourself more and more, whenever you start getting egotistical and you'll nip it at the bud, it will eventually disappear. SU: I know what you say is true, I mean… (R: How do you know?) (laughter) Okay most of what you say is true. (laughter) (R: Why?) Now wait a minute! I found it a long time ago, but then like I went other directions and got back to the problems. R: If you really found it a long time ago it would've never left. (SU: Well no it hasn't left it's just that I've been playing another role, like playing roles and doing other things.) But when you turn on the light the darkness disappears, forever. (SU: Right. (laughs)) So if you really had it, you'll have it now. It would never leave no matter what role you play. You can play any role you like. Like the screen, you can show any kind of picture you like, murderers, rapists, arsonists, lovers whatever you like. But the screen never changes, the image does. Therefore if you really had it once, you'd never change, no matter what you go through. How can you lose your Self? (SU: Well I don't know, sometimes I feel I do lose myself.) It's impossible. (SU: Really, well it feels like it, I feel I've lost myself a lot of times.) What is real is real, you're referring to your ego. (SU: Yeah, right.) Not your Self. (SU: Yeah it's the ego, right.) We call the ego, the Self sometimes. (SU: Yeah.) It's a case of mistaken identity. (SU: Uh-huh?) Remember the universe is your friend. It's on your side there's nothing against you. The only thing against you are your thoughts. If you learn to quiet your mind you'll have no problems. SU: Well like you say that if a problem isn't your problem, you don't have a problem? You think you have a problem but you really don't have a problem? (R: Umm, correct.) Then didn't the ego create this problem? R: The ego's responsible for all your faults. (SU: Yeah.) But the ego doesn't exist. So you have no problems. (SU: Okay.) (laughs) You think it exists and because you think it exists you have to get rid of it. If you just realized all of a sudden it doesn't exist, you'd be free. But as long as you believe it exists, you have to do all these techniques to get rid of it. Because you refuse to accept that you have no ego. SU: I don't know, I guess I have a problem with trying to be responsible. (R: Responsible for what?) Oh well responsible, but then again that's the ego, responsible for what happens. R: There's a greater power than you, that knows how to take of everything for you. All you've got to do is be still and quiet your mind and everything will work out harmoniously. We always think we have to get involved. There's nothing we really have to do. The world was here before you came. It'll be here after we leave. Your job it to find out who you are and what you're doing in this world by self-inquiry. SH: If everything is predetermined as you said, that would leave no room for spontaneity, something just happening on its own freely. (R: Exactly. Nothing happens on its own.) But everything happens? (R: Sure, but not on its own.) There's no such thing as spontaneous action, right? R: No. It appears that way but there's not. When I speak of being spontaneous, I'm referring to, just doing everything in the moment, living in the moment, rather than planning for the future. (SH: It feels like it's spontaneous.) Of course it does. The world also feels real. (SH: There's nobody making it happen? It's just happening?) That's how it appears. But nothing is really happening. (SH: It's all just appearances dancing, playing.) It's called false imagination. There is absolutely nothing going on. (SH: Well that's nice to know. (laughs) Are you sure of that?) I'm positive. (SH: Okay I'll take it on your word.) Take it on your own word! Find out for yourself. (laughs) (SH: Well I haven't quite done that, so I'll take it on yours to start out.) You shouldn't. (laughter) (SH: I have confidence in you.) Why I may be a big liar. (laughter) (SH: You could be, maybe you are but I don't feel that in your space, I have to go on what I feel.) Why should you believe me at all? Find out for yourself. (SH: Well because you look a little like he does (points to picture) I have confidence in him so some of it rubs off on you.) That's an optical illusion. (SH: It's a nice one.) (laughter) The truth is, we all have to go within ourselves and discover our own truth. Otherwise we become an automaton. SH: No, no, no I'm not counting on you, I'm not depending on you in any way or whatever. (R: Good, don't.) I won't, you can count on that. (laughter) (R: Good!) SK: Depend on who? (SH: Yeah who is there to depend on?) R: Anytime you depend on a person, you will be disappointed. (SH: Right.) SD: I think I make the error of thinking that, the things that are nice are not projections of my mind, you know. Like when something's bad I say, "Well that's just a projection of my mind," but when I look at my six month old kitten or something, I think, God if that's a projection it sure is a good one, you know? (R: That's the trick of maya.) A lot of maya is really pleasing. R: Of course. That's to keep you earth bound. The more you love something on this earth, the more earth bound you become. When I speak of having a consciousness of love, I'm not really speaking of human love. I'm speaking of pure consciousness, pure awareness, that's love. (SD: But I can't help being grateful for the pleasant projections of my mind. Is that an error?) Yes because when you're grateful for the pleasant projections, what happens when your kitten dies? (SD: (laughs) I'll think about that when the moment comes.) Then you'll be totally disappointed. (SD: It's worth the risk to me.) But if you came out of both. If you're able to transcend the good and the bad. You'd be in a completely different state of love, and when something is alive you love it, and when it's dead you understand it because you realize, nothing dies. (SD: I already conceived of that.) So you'd be happy all the time. SH: No life doesn't die, but the vehicles which it inhabits temporarily, they certainly die. R: But where do the vehicles come from? (SH: Where do the vehicles come from? Where do bodies come from?) Yes. (SH: You haven't been told about the birds and the bees? (laughter) No, not quite. It comes from the same place a dream comes from. (SH: Uh-huh, so it's a dream, living dream.) Mortal dream. You should actually forget about yourself, your body self. And focus on the I. It's hard to understand for most Westerners, that the body is only an appearance. It seems to be a fact but it's not the truth. Now why not? If the body were real it would stay the same always, wouldn't it? It would never change. You'd be the same way you were when you were a baby, but you change every year. We become older, we become different. So how can the body be real? As soon as it appears to be real old, and then it just drops away. What is real is immortal, can never change. You are reality. But your body is not. Therefore you are not your body. So what are you? Find out for yourself. Go within and discover who you are. SG: Can you say in a relative sense that each of us although it seems that we're separated, there's something inside each of us that is somewhat unique in a relative illusionary sense but that we all have our own self transmitter. If we connect with that within ourselves which seems to be slightly different, but if we really find that particular thing within our individual selves there's something that is guiding us. That we can submit to. R: That sort of becomes a little complicated. (SG: I mean it sort of becomes like an automatic pilot. There is something that is already there, but for everybody it's slightly different.) There is one Self. (SG: There is one Self.) And all this is the Self and I am that. (SG: Yeah.) So it's not really different for everybody. The same Self is true for all people. You mean the way to get there? (SG: The way to get there, it wouldn't be exactly the same per se, but there's a connection to that one Self which is unique in a sense to each individual. Through their own self experience, which is — can't be described.) You can say that, if you like to. SK: If you were good at it, it seems that you could describe it too. (laughter) R: (laughs) See we're going to complicate things. Just realize - “I am that,” and end it. If everyday you can say to yourself, "I - I" "I - I," and use that as a mantra. That will suffice. Because I is the first name of God. And when you say, "I - I" you are declaring the truth about yourself. So try that. There's no need to get technical, it's very simple. You are not the body, you are the Self. I-am that I-am, pure consciousness, that is your real nature, focus on that and forget about everything else. Again it's difficult for a Westerner to comprehend this because they say, "Well what about my work? What about my family? What about this? What about that?" Everything will be taken care of. You will never get to the point where you want to run away and live in a cave. You will go on just like you're going on. Only you will know yourself and you will be happy and peaceful all the time. You will have a feeling of immortality. A feeling of divinity, of joy, bliss, happiness and you will act out of that. So, if you want to bring peace to this world. Do not change anybody or anything. Discover who you are and that becomes omnipresent. Look at all the peace groups we've had since time immemorial, what has it done for us. Things appear to become relatively worse. And that's not the answer trying to make people peaceful. The answer again is to discover your true reality. Discover your Self and you'll have peace. I'm not referring to the fact that you should become a doormat, for people to step under or step on. You have to put on an act sometimes. Imagine yourself as being an actor or actress and that's how you act in the world. It reminds of the story, of a little village where there lived a gigantic reptile, snake. Who used to eat all the children. And all the parents were so worried, they never let the children go out to play. One day the word got out of a great yogi, great Master with all kinds of supernatural powers was coming to the village, he was going through. The fathers of the village approached him and they said, "Master, please help us, this snake is eating our children, what should we do?" The Master said, "I'll take care of it." And he went to the snakes lair, he spoke snake language and he said, "Snake, come out." And the snake did and he rebuffed the snake and he said, "I don't want to catch you eating these children again, leave them alone, do you hear?" and the snake could do nothing but obey him, he said, "Yes Master." The Master left. Six months passed and the Master was walking through that same town again. He saw all the children playing peacefully. But then he saw a crowd of children and he went over to see what was the matter. And there in the middle of the crowd was the snake, nearly dead. The kids threw stones at it and the snake didn't respond. The kids kicked it. The snake didn't do anything. It was half dead. So the Master chased the kids away and he said, "Snake what is the matter with you, why do you let these kids do this to you?" And then the snake said, "But Master you told me not to do anything." The Master said, "You stupid snake, I told you not to bite, did I tell you not to hiss." (laughter) And so it is with us. Sometimes you have to act accordingly. For instance when you're bringing up children. Sometimes you have to scream a little, do certain things, act a certain way, but you should never lose the fact of who you are. Always remember your real nature and always remember you're putting on an act. Therefore when I tell you to have a consciousness of loving kindness and humility, I do not mean for you to become a doormat for people. But to act accordingly, remembering it's only an act and it will pass. Any questions about that? SU: Well that's what I feel like I'm doing is acting, listening. R: As long as you're aware that you're acting you'll be at peace. (SU: And if I'm really aware of acting, I'm okay but not really putting on a show.) Do not get caught up in it. (SU: Yeah right. And if you say you do have to do that?) Sometimes you have to do that, but as long as you're aware of your Self, you will not really hurt anybody else. You will hiss. Feel free to talk about anything you feel like talking about. SK: How does one understand they're not being the doer? That they're somehow accomplishing the practice of not being the doer. R: Simply by inquiring, "Who am I?" (SK: "Who am I?" inquiry?) Yes, "To whom does the I come? From whence cometh the I?" When you follow the I, the doer-ship disappears. (SK: And then?) And your Self emerges. Through self-inquiry, you get rid of the idea that you are the doer. (SK: And until then?) Until then you do the best you can. (SK: By selfinquiry or…?) Practice self-inquiry but do the best you can otherwise. Make every point of your life self-inquiry, all during the day. (SK: Excuse me?) All during the day, as soon as you get hit by a question of some kind or some kind of feeling or mood, ask the question to yourself, "To whom does this come?" SN: Robert, we could practice self-inquiry or you can practice surrender, also? (R: Of course.) And does it matter if you go back and forth? R: It doesn't matter at all, as long as it helps you. Surrender is when you say to yourself, "Not my will but thine" and you totally give up living your own life. That’s not as easy as you think. (SN: Isn't saying, "I am not the doer" surrender?) In a way it is, yes. SD: Is it the same as the popular expression, "Let go, let God," is that surrender? R: Yes it is. But it's easier said than done. (SD: Oh for sure.) Because it means you really have to let go of everything. Everything! You no longer have a life of your own. Everything is given up to God. SN: I mean when you're confronted with certain circumstances in your life and you're trying to deal with that circumstance, one way to deal with it would be through self-inquiry, "To whom does this come?" And another method if you find that may not be effective is to say, "I am not the doer, not my will, but thine." In other words just surrender. (R: Or you can use just ordinary language. You can say, "Take it God, take it.") That's what I'm saying. (R: And feel a sense of release, a sense of peace, that's not your problem but Gods. SD: But the concept of everything being predestined more or less is the same thing isn't it? (R: Yes.) It's not even precisely God's will as if it were some futuristic thing but it's already determined. R: Yet if you can't grasp that, go back to God, and surrender to God. Whatever is easier for you. (SD: But one might just change it a little relatively in the mind and think that God's will has already been decided. There's a slight nuance but maybe it's not important.) Well you can also think that God's will is decided and you have to suffer and that's not right. Unless you've got to watch what you're doing. I recall in the old testament when I read it years ago, I forgot where in Chronicles or somewhere, it says something like this, "The battle is not yours but Gods. Set yourself, stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord." (SD: That's good.) It's the same thing we're talking about. Become still, become quiet. SK: Should one still do action? No? R: Whatever you're going to do, you're going to do. It'll happen by itself. You have nothing to with it. (SK: What if one finds no action happening?) Then that's what you're supposed to do at the moment. (SK: Then that continues for what seems to be longer and longer.) That's supposed to happen. (SK: If that's supposed to happen?) Yes. You have absolutely nothing to do with that. Take yourself away from that. (SK: Because it's a dream it really doesn't matter.) Your body's going to go through whatever it has to go through. But it has nothing to do with you. SD: I think sometimes there's confusion when you say, "You're not the doer" and people think that means that they can just sit and life will happen to them or something, but… R: They won't be able to. (SD: It's not quite that way?) Even if they try to sit, they will not be able to. (SD: Unless they're not supposed to.) That's right. Everything is planned you have nothing to worry about. Be happy. SV: Can you intercede with my boss to fire me? (laughter) R: If you're supposed to get fired you will. (laughter) SD: If someone tells you to do something say, "I am not the doer?" (laughter) (General talk between students and laughter) SN: Robert, if someone has mental anguish, say for instance, yet they may think, well this is predestined or I am not the doer and in a sense they may accept that, see what I'm saying? R: Sure the way to handle that is you do not fret over it or concern yourself. You simply ask yourself, "To whom do those feelings come? Who's feeling this way?" And it will go away, the feelings will leave you and you'll be happy. SN: One may think, say for instance, if you think “I am not the doer” and yet this comes to you, you may think well, I'm supposed to experience this. (R: Not if you're practicing selfinquiry.) Right, so that's why there's a difference between thinking you are not the doer, and thinking that everything is preordained, therefore I'm supposed to feel anguish or doing self-inquiry which kind of cuts through everything. R: See everything is preordained. In other words, so if you're supposed to get hit by a car and have your legs amputated, it's going to happen no matter how you try to stop it. But, if you're a Jnani and you were practicing self-inquiry it won't matter because that's not where your at. You're no longer body conscious. And you see it completely differently. You see a different world. You see wholeness, completeness and it won't bother you. (SN: What of the ajnani?) Then you suffer. That's why the solution for the world is, not to react to any condition. But to practice inquiry. And ask, "To whom does this come?" That's the freedom you've got to do. As a matter of fact that's the only freedom you've got. Not to react to any condition, but to turn within, that's the freedom you've got. SD: It's just that not reacting is so difficult on the earth plane at least. Is the next step to say, "Who is reacting?" R: You can say that too if you like, if it helps you. But if you practice before hand, then if there's a war, or the place is bombed, you will not be affected. In other words, don't wait until the last minute. SD: Well true but say something like catastrophic happens or it appears to happen to you and you just can't seem bodily not react, then the next solution I guess would be to say, "Who is reacting? To whom does this come?" R: You can say that or you can practice mindfulness and become the witness to the situation. (SD: Yeah that's right be the observer, mindfulness, being the witness. As Arnold put a check through the other day, all the world's a play and that's one way of looking at it too.) You do whatever you have to do. (SV: Or whatever you don't have to do?) Right. SA: Robert, I've been thinking about my own experience here and it seems to me that, since I've been coming to you my mind is more active and not less active. (laughter) (R: Is it good though?) I don't know but I have interpreted it to myself in a certain way. R: Well is it good for you, do you find that you're happier? SA: It's both good and bad, I would say. I can't say it's one or the other. This is the way I thought of it. Years ago I read a book, "Exodus in Kabbalah" a marvelous book and its author says that if you read - he reads the tale of Exodus as symbols, as a metaphor of spirit - when the Israelites tried to leave Egypt, as he sees it, they were held by the body who is Pharaoh and so my mind turned to that and thought, as I try to still the mind, the mind will use every cunning and every bit of power that it has. So that's why it's more of an intense experience since I've been coming here. R: Of course. Well that's one way to see it, but the reason why I was asking you if you were happier is because sometimes it's not the mind any longer. You think it's the mind. But it's your feeling of I that's doing that for you. It should make you happier. Give you a sense of peace. (SA: You mean the I would take delight in more mind activity?) Yes. (SA: The true I? Yes. (SA: The real Self?) Yes. You don't become passive. (SA: That's interesting.) That's a good point. Many people think when you become self-realized, you become passive and you just sit, like me. (laughter) On the contrary. You do things better. It all depends on your bodily karma. SG: So you don't worry about what you do and you don't do? (R: Exactly.) You do as much as you have to and you don't do as much as you have to, it’s all the same? R: What you're going to do will be done. It's all the same, it'll be done. (SG: So we don't need to be still or not be still?) It'll be done in any event. So why worry about it. SN: Arnold when you're talking about trying to still the mind, I know that I've had a lot of problems when I was practicing formal meditation. And the problem was that I was trying to still the mind and I think on this path is that you don't try to still the mind. You just be still, it's not something… (tape break) …it's what you are. And it's a hard thing to explain and it's a hard thing to understand. But the more you try, the further away you go from it and now, rather than do formal meditation I just try to pick up on the spirit of what this is about and I sit in that same chair and without really trying to meditate or really trying to do anything, I just sit and be. Whether I'm observing my thoughts, whether I'm doing self-inquiry or whether I'm surrendering. It's not the same all the time. So it's not like I have a formal meditation where I'm trying to still my mind. I'm in a different place every time and whatever occurs, occurs. But I do it very naturally, just sit in your own awareness as some would say. And I find I can do it for double, triple the period of time. Because I'm just sitting there I'm not really doing anything. Whereas when I'm meditating it's a strain and I almost can't wait till I get up and get it over with. So it's not a matter of trying, just a matter of being. (SD: That's a good point.) (SA: Very good.) SD: Robert has always explained to us that meditation is not realization, meditation simply helps to quiet the mind and so it's a means to an end, but it's not an end in itself. R: Does God have to meditate? Who is he going to meditate on? Himself? SH: It's the meditator who's in the way, who’s coming up to work. SN: Actually it kind of turns all the way around rather than being a burden or what have you. It becomes very pleasant. Because if you're sitting there and you're almost saying okay what will the mind bring me now? And each thought and each experience is like a different bubble. And it becomes kind of joyous, you almost anticipate it. And it's hard to explain it's a hard thing to get into I think. It's only by going within, experimenting within the laboratory of the body can get to that. And there's no doubt that the more you try the more difficult it becomes. No doubt about that. Experiment and see for yourself. It's not like trying to stop the thoughts, that's not it at all. Although the thoughts do need to be stopped. SD: Didn't you say Robert that it's the stillness or the space between the thoughts that we're seeking? R: Yes. Think of the space between words. That's your real Self. (SD: Like the space, there's total emptiness or something?) Um-hm. Space is your real nature. Consciousness is space. Therefore when there's space in your mind, there’s consciousness and that only happens when you become quiet and still. Therefore all methods, yoga, hatha yoga, rajah yoga, Ishtunga Yoga all these yogas are simply to quiet your mind. But they take the long way around. Here we have no intermediates. That's why this is called the direct path. There's no fooling around, you go directly to go, you don't stop. SU: Do you have a name for whatever you're talking about? Well, I don't mean it just like that, but I mean, is it Buddhism? R: No, it's called Jnana Marga. The path of wisdom. (SU: Path of wisdom, that's what I wanted to know.) SK: (spells word) G Y A N A? (J N A N A (Robert corrects)) SN: But it's not different from what Ramana actually taught, right? (R: The same thing.) Did he have a title? (R: Did he have a title?) (SH: Label? (laughs) You need a label for it.) SD: Can Jnana in addition to wisdom mean knowledge? Are they the same thing and Marga means path? (R: Yes.) (SK: Self-inquiry is another term that's used? R: Vichara, self-inquiry, but it makes no difference what you call it, do it. (SA: But Vedanta is the same too?) In a way, Advaita Vedanta is the same in a way, yes. It's all the same thing. SD: So the knowledge they're referring to, is the knowledge of the Self, right? R: Yes, if you discover yourself, you'll know everything else. That's the only knowledge you really need. When I was at Ramana Ashram for the last time, I met a judge, an Indian. And he said he never went to school. But since he was eight years old, he's been practicing Jnana Marga, self-inquiry. And when he was twenty-eight he took the bar exam in India and passed, without any training. And thus became a judge ten years later. So it shows you when you know yourself, you know everything else. For again, your body's going to do whatever it has to do. There's a reason why your body came to this earth. It's going to accomplish the mission. And you have absolutely nothing to do with it. SD: You've often quoted Christ who said, "Be still and know that I am is God." I think all the great Masters say the same thing. That's one of the most reassuring things that I've discovered. SV: Are you aware of your own mission? R: I don't have any mission. (SV: Your body's mission?) I don't have any body. (SV: What your body’s going to do tomorrow?) I have no idea. (SV: So for the body there's no such thing as a mission that was not accomplished in this world?) No. (SV: Always will be accomplished?) The mission is for the ajnani, they see a mission, but for the Jnani there's no mission. (SV: But your body whatever it's here to do, will do whatever it was here to do no matter what?) Yes. And that's how you see it. (SV: Right.) But in reality nobody's doing anything. (SV: Right.) Look at everything you do as an optical illusion. The appearance is there. I guess the example that I can give is that there have been some of these great Masters like Ramana Maharshi for instance who died of a horrible case of cancer, but he was laughing all the way. Because he did not see it like that. His disciples did and they were worried but he did not see that at all. For he realized there's nobody to die because nobody exists. No body exists! Therefore there's no body to die. SH: How did he perceive the pain of the cancer? (R: He didn't.) There was no pain to perceive? (R: Well he claimed that there was a slight, like a bee sting.) SK: But there was no one there to feel the pain? R: Exactly. They gave him operations without any anesthetic. Try not to think about your body too much. Just take proper care of it. Exercise it a little, eat the right foods, give it a good kick when it doesn't behave, treat it like you treat a dog, your pet, but don't think too much of it. Rama Krishna used to call his body, his donkey and when it didn't behave he'd slap it, (slaps leg) behave! So again to get rid of your problems and your faults and everything else, by searching for your Self. And in that searching, you get rid of everything. Because all these things are attached to the I. When the I goes, everything else goes with it and you become free. The point of todays lesson is this: Never try to heal a problem, at the level of the problem. It cannot be done. It appears as if it can be done. For instance, if somebody owes you money, and you sue them in court. You may win the case and get back your money, but that's the level of the problem. But then you'll find, somebody else gets money from you some other way. And it never stops. Until you find out to whom it comes. When you find out to whom the trouble occurs, who has this problem, everything disappears. And you're healed. SD: Would you say that applies to illnesses of the body for example? (R: Yes, to everything.) But you would ask, "To whom does this illness come?" (R: "To whom does it come?") And the answer would be to the body which is non existent? (R: Exactly. So you become free.) Right, free as opposed to cured? (R: Yes, but who's not cured?) Right. R: It's a completely new perspective. (tape ends)

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Robert: When people first come to see me, they expect a lecture. I do not give lectures. I am not a philosopher. I am not a preacher. All of the reasons you came to me are wrong. I can do absolutely nothing for you. What I usually do is make my confession to myself and since there's one Self everybody's included. I speak in the first person. When I use the terms I or I-am, I am not referring to Robert, I am referring to consciousness. Consciousness is omnipresent. This means that all of you are included when I use the words Iam. So, I confess that I am not the body or the mind principle. I confess that I am not the doer. But that I am the absolute reality. I am ultimate oneness, pure intelligence, emptiness, nirvana. I am unborn and I do not disappear. And in the term between life and death, I do not prevail. I am nothingness. Emptiness. Sat-chit-ananda. Parabrahman. I am that I am. That is my confession to you and that is your confession to me. There is one consciousness, one Brahman, one ultimate reality. As I make my confession to you, remember I am not speaking about Robert, I'm speaking of oneness, of the ultimate reality, of nothingness, emptiness. I am that I am. Sat-chit-ananda. Pure awareness. The ultimate oneness. I, which is consciousness was never born and consciousness can never die. This realization transcends all your karma. To be aware of this alone, emancipates you, makes you free, now. To be aware of this, is to be this. So again, I do not give talks, I do not give lectures, I am not a philosopher, I am not a preacher, I am nothing. If you came here to expect some teaching, you will go away disappointed because I have nothing to teach. Again I confess to you, that I-am is not the body-mind principle, nor the doer, nor the world, nor God. I-am is consciousness. Consciousness is the Self. The Self is self-contained, projecting and manifesting this world and this universe. (Someone arrives to satsang) Hello Artie. SN: The bed is fine for anyone to sit on the bed. Robert: If you'd like to sing, "Oh God beautiful". (After singing) SE: That's the first cant I ever learned, thirty something years ago. (R: Really?) And that and the, "In the temple of silence." (Robert: Umm.) Last Thursday we were talking about the Self as consciousness and after about an hour into it, I finally confessed that in the ultimate reality, there's no Self and there's no consciousness. And some people became perplexed because just as they were beginning to discover the Self, I come and tell them there's no Self. Now what does this mean, we'll follow through on it. The Self exists as long as you believe you're not self-realized. Does a self-realized person need a Self? Does a self-realized person talk about consciousness? Needs consciousness or Brahman, or parabrahman, or sat-chit-ananda? Those are words, those are concepts. As long as you are believing in concepts, words, preconceived ideas, this will halt your progress. Reality is beyond words. Reality is in the Silence. Really the only thing you have to do is quiet your mind. Make your mind quiescent and reality will shine forth all by itself. But if you go around repeating like a parrot, "I am the Self, I am consciousness, I am ultimate reality." It will actually keep you back. I tell you the truth, it's better to say nothing. The reason I express these words, is to make you understand that there is something else besides you bodily experiences. There's something besides your everyday occurrences. And that is called the Self. The Self is merely a self-contained Self, projecting and manifesting the universe and the world. You are that Self. And the reason the universe and the world exist is because you exist. It's being emanated through you. You are the projectionist. The entire universe is a projection of your mind. So, if there's no mind, everything becomes the Self. Then you can confess, everything is the Self and I am that. But until that happens the best thing you can do, is to speak very little. The best thing you can do, is to dive deep within yourself, and discover your true nature. This can be done at any time. When you get caught up in the world for instance. Simply ask yourself, "Who is it that's caught up in the world?" And be truthful, say, "I-am" and go further and ask yourself, "Where did the I come from? What is this I? How did it originate? What is its cause?" Follow the I, abide in the I and you will soon come to the conclusion, that I does not exist. You will soon come to the conclusion that you are infinite space. And instead of observing objects in the world. You will observe the space that the objects seem to be glued onto. It's like a little kids cut out book. A little kid gets a piece of paper. Cuts out a picture of the sun, pastes the sun on the paper. Cuts out a picture of a tree, pastes in on the paper. Cuts out a picture of a man, pastes it on the paper. And they become objects. And the little kid is interested in the objects. But where would the objects be without the paper? The paper is the reality of the objects. And when the kids stopped playing with those objects he simply unpeels the sun and puts the moon in its place. Takes away the clouds and pastes up stars in its place. Takes away the man and puts a woman in its place. Takes away the tree and puts grass and mountains. But did the paper change? The paper is still the same. And so it is with us. We appear to be mortals. Going through various experiences in the world. There appears to be a sky, planets, stars, others. But I say to you in truth that these are all false. Only the space is real. The space never changes and everything else does. Therefore how can anything that changes be real? Now some of you may ask, "What good is this teaching? Is it practical? What can it do for me?" And I say to you, "Are you really happy? Do you have unchanging happiness in your life? Do you have peace, real peace?" Most of us do not even understand what happiness and peace are. We think that happiness ensues when we get things to go our way. How long does that last? As you well know from experience, things change. The only thing that's permanent in this life is change. If your happiness depends on person, place or thing, when that changes there goes your happiness, out the window. Same with peace and joy. As long as things bring you happiness, joy and peace, you will be miserable most of the time. For these things must change sooner or later and there goes your happiness with it. Some people believe that this teaching will cure their ills. Give them financial rewards. Improve their relationships. It may, but that's not the point. We're not trying to improve our humanhood. If you wish to improve your humanhood, they have plenty of so-called science of mind classes, positive thinking courses. What we're trying to do here is annihilate our humanhood. Destroy it completely. It's our humanhood that causes the misunderstanding, the suffering. As long as we identify with the body, we have to suffer. This doesn't mean that by not identifying with the body, the world will become a bundle of joy and there will ensue happiness and peace in the world, on the contrary. What this means is you will acquire a new attitude. You will see things differently. When you begin to understand that you are the Self. And that you are an embodiment of love. And that your true nature is sat-chitananda. Parabrahman. If you really feel that, and you ultimately become that, what ever you see will become a reflection of your Self. That's why you will be able to confess, the whole universe is the Self, and I am that. But until it happens to you, do not try to improve your affairs. It's like beating a dead horse. When you improve your affairs they stay improved for a while and something negative pops up somewhere else. Then you improve that and then something negative pops up somewhere else. It's unceasing, it never ends. It's like you grow a tumor and you go to an elective doctor and he says, "Well I've got to cut it out. I'll give you a local anesthetic and cut it off right here." So he does just that, but a month later it grows back on the other side of your arm. Then he cuts that out. It grows back on your leg. He never got to the cause. You cannot destroy the effects and expect harmony. You've got to change the cause and there's only one cause and that is your erroneous belief that you are human. That you are the body and the mind. That is the only cause of your misery. Eliminate that and suffering will cease. So again, how will you eliminate that? By simply asking yourself, "To whom does this come? Who's going through these karma's?" and you will soon realize it's your ego, not you. Your ego has absolutely nothing to do with you. It is your ego that reincarnates. It is your ego that comes back again and again. But it has absolutely nothing to do with you. It's like people being born and people dying in this space. People come and go everyday very fast. Wait until the war in Iraq starts, then they'll really go. Then they'll come back again and go again. It never ends. Until you get tired of playing the game. And you say to yourself, "Wait a minute, I've been playing this game for eons. I die I come back and I die and I come back and I die and I come back. I'm getting tired of it. What to do?" When you finally ask that question, something will happen. You'll either grab the right book, meet the right teacher, hear the right words. But something will happen to you when you inquire, "Why do I have to keep playing these games?" and soon you will ask, "Who is it that plays the game? Who's going through these reincarnations? Me, I am? Who is I am? Where did I come from? What gave it birth? Did I have a father and a mother to give it birth? How did it appear?" And something will tell you it's like an optical illusion. Just as when I say to you, "The sky is blue." In reality there's no sky and there's no blue. There's only atmosphere. But if you look out the window you see a beautiful blue sky. Yet we know it does not exist. If you are in the desert dying of thirst, you see a mirage, you see an oasis and you run to drink the water but it's a mirage, doesn't exist. It's an optical illusion. The same is true of your I. Your I appears to exist. But it is non-existent. Your body appears to exist. But it's like moving pictures on the screen. Only the screen exists. The pictures that cover it are false. If you don't believe it, try to grab them and see what you grab, you grab the screen. So it is with your so-called life. It comes from false imagination. You are dreaming the mortal dream. You believe that you are a body. And you're going through many experiences. And you do as long as you have that belief. As soon as you drop that belief reality ensues all by itself. Everything stops. The first feeling that you achieve, is a feeling of immortality. You just know. You know that you were never born. And if you were never born, you can never die. You become aware of this. The second feeling is that you are omnipresent. You're not your little self located in any body. There is no body. No body is home. You are free forever. Omnipresent. Omniscient. Omnipotent. You are everyone, everything, all existence and yet you are nobody. You are like a mirror, self-contained and you project the universe. But you become aware that you are the mirror and not the projection. Find your Self. Become true to your Self. How many more years do you have left? What are you doing with your life? How do you spend each day? What is more important to you than anything else? It begins in the morning when you first open your eyes. What do you think about first thing? What you should ask yourself as soon as you get up, you say, "What the hell am I doing here?" (laughter) That's the smart thing to say. Instead of thinking, I want a cup of coffee, I want a danish, I have to go to work I have to make my weeks pay. Ask yourself, "What the hell am I doing? What am I going through? Why?" That is the first step. To be totally dissatisfied with your lot. (laughter) As long as you're satisfied, and you say, "Oh I look good, I'm handsome, I'm pretty," and you spend three hours putting on makeup, or bathing, putting on fresh clothes every minute. Then you're feeding a dead horse. But when you realize you're going through all kinds of nonsense and you've been going through nonsense all of your life and you ask yourself, "Where do I go from here?" The answers will come by themselves, really. You will not need any teacher. The only reason you come here is because you're not doing it. (laughter) If you were doing the right thing why do you need me for? And so you begin to inquire, as soon as you open your eyes. "What is this body? Who is it? Who am I? What am I all about?" And then you remember you say, "I dreamt, I had a beautiful dream and I also slept soundly and now I am awake." But here's something funny you say, "I was present during my sleeping state, during my dream state and during my waking state. I was present because I said, I slept, I dreamt and I am awake. What is this I?" And again you follow through, "Where did this I come from? That sleeps, that is present during sleep, that is present during dream state. And now I say, "I am awake." Who is this I that does all this? What is its nature? What is its source?" And you begin to be aware of your thoughts. You watch your mind, as it goes through the motions of thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, forever thinking. As if your thoughts are so important. You may say to me, "Well if I don't think about my life, who's going to take care of me? I've got to think about my life." Does the tree that grows beautiful mangoes, think about its life? And yet it grows luscious mangoes. Does the sun think, "Will I shine again tomorrow?" Does the grass think, "Am I going to grow next week?" There is a mysterious power that takes care of everything. Karmically your body came to this earth to do something. It knows what to do without your help, thank you. (laughter) It needs no help from you. By abiding on the I, your body will take care of itself. Even better than you can ever do when you're thinking. So try not to think too much. But rather follow the I-thought and when you follow it to its source, you will be surprised how easily you wake up and you become free and emancipated. Sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I don't. So for those of you who think I'm having some wonderful inner experiences and that's why I close my eyes, forget it. I just close my eyes because they get tired. (laughter) There are no experiences to get. You are the experience yourself. Now I've talked enough and we'll have questions and answers if you like? This is satsang and I shouldn't be talking too much. Otherwise I might become a philosopher. (laughter) SR: Robert I have a question. There's a feeling I have to do inquiry, I have to achieve a goal and I also notice all the thoughts and reactions have the feeling, “yes I've heard it before, yes I agree with it, yes it's familiar,” and there's always a sense of something I have to do. Even the whole liberation thing seems like something I want to do. R: Simply observe those thoughts. Do nothing about them. Since you've realized this is something you have to do, then do nothing. Just observe the thoughts, let them come, let them go and watch what happens. The whole idea is to quieten your mind. All of the sadhanas, all of the teachings on this earth is for one purpose, to quiet the mind. Once the mind is quiet, emancipation comes by itself. So simply observe your thoughts. Let them rage, let them do what they want. And they will quieten by themselves, if you do not interfere. If you try to change them, they'll become stronger. Simply observe them, watch them. And leave them alone. They will dissipate all by themselves. Or if you get tired of doing that, ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" Do whatever you have to do. And if that doesn't work that day, take a cold shower. (laughter) That'll do something. SD: I think for me the best method is to say, "To whom do these thoughts come?" because it will always leads back to, "Who am I?" It involves all these questions, go back to self-inquiry. At any time my thoughts stray, I'll say, "To whom do these thoughts come? Well they come to me. To whom? I. Who is the I?" It takes me to the I-thought. R: Well that's good but Richard has been doing that for years apparently and he gets tired of it. So do nothing. SR: I like, "What the hell am I doing here?" best. (R: Whatever you have to do.) SU: I have said, "What the hell am I doing here," probably because of language. I wake up very often and I say, "Am I still here?" R: That's good. I actually asked my mother this when I was about thirteen years old. One day I woke up and went to her and I said, "Mum what am I doing here?" And she took me to a doctor. (laughter) Do you want to say something Jay? (SJ: No.) SU: There was something that you said earlier, you were saying something — there is no Self for the self-realized person and then you said something along at the same time, there's no such thing as consciousness. Did you mean that or…? R: In the ultimate reality there's nothing. As we know it, as we conceive it. As long as you're able to voice it, it's false. As long as you able to think about it, it does not exist. Reality is silence, not words. (SU: That is consciousness, isn't it?) Consciousness is a word that we use. I keep on using it because it gives you something to work from. But in the ultimate reality it does not exist. SH: How was the notion of an I or a me arise in principle? How does it come into being? R: It's like an optical illusion, have you ever been hypnotized? (SH: No.) When you're hypnotized you can be made to imagine anything. It's the same thing, it's mass hypnosis, it's collective hypnosis. We all believe we are the I-body. (SH: Why does that occur?) It doesn't. (SH: It appears to?) It appears to. (SH: Yeah.) But it really doesn't. It does not occur. (SH: Isn't it that consciousness is identifying with this body-mind organism?) No. (SH: And therefore you get the notion that there is a separate me?) That's how it appears but it’s not true. Consciousness is undivided. Consciousness is self-contained. For it appears to manifest as the universe. (SH: Something identifies with the body-mind?) SE: It's the mind. R: There's no mind. (laughter) (SH: Boy you really wipe everything out.) (laughter) That's where it's at. (SH: I agree.) As long as there are words or concepts it's not that. SX: We're taught that Henry. (SH: Huh?) We're taught that. (SH: Taught what?) That as we grow up we're taught I, you know, where's your nose, where's your eyes, where's your teeth, you know? (SH: Yeah that's true.) (break in tape and restarts as students question is picked up) SK: …when the thought comes to your mind that the passion isn't there like it used to be, maybe there's no more need for it or maybe it's a false sense of… R: When you've arrived at that state see if you ask that question. Because it'll just be gone. It's like you were in a dark room all your life and you turn on the light. And now you're in light, the darkness has dissipated, it's gone, same thing. The ignorance has dissolved and you become your Self. It's no big thing. SK: What is the difference then in this kind of a realization and the kind of thing that people who practice Ashtanga yoga or mystical types of yoga and other things where they - whether they get realization or not - the ultimate realization, but they manifest and generate all kinds of spiritual energy. R: The true ashtanga yoga, the eight fold path is merely to bring you to the place where the mind becomes quiescent. But it takes years and years and years. This is the direct path. (SK: Umm-hmm, and that isn't?) No it's indirect. On a path like this, you can become emancipated right now, if you want to. Just wake up! That's all you have to do, just wake up. (SK: When that occurs does the individual, like individuals of other paths generate all kinds of spiritual energy.) Why? (laughter) (SK: It's interesting to me, whether that's actually a…) If you're generating spiritual energy, there has to be someone left to generate the energy. (SK: So it's actually…?) When there's no one left, there's no one to generate anything. ST: May I ask a question? After countless reincarnations and one needs a teacher and yet the ultimate event of realizing the truth has not happened, even if passion is lacking, will something of its own volition happen anyway? Is it just a matter of a process unfolding? R: I like to say, "We're all hell bound for heaven." (ST: Say it again please?) We're all hell bound for heaven. (laughter) (SH: Goody, goody.) (laughs) It's going to happen to all of us, whether we like it or not. (ST: In other words, we're doomed to self-realization?) Exactly. (ST: I had come to this conclusion but I think sometimes I've done myself a great disservice.) SR: The strange part of that seems to me I'm in a recurring dream and I keep coming into rooms like that and now I'm starting to see the same thing. (laughter) And everybody's still getting promised the direct path and nobody seems to be waking up. And there's a beauty in that in a sense too, that the dream goes on of its own accord in a way that is not real. You know what I'm saying? R: Yes. There are people that wake up, but you haven't met them. ST: It's usually the people who wake up who don't ask to be awakened, it just happens spontaneously. (R: Exactly.) They just arrive at some point even though there's nothing going on, even in the illusory sense there's something going on that propels it to happen. There's a causation that seems to be, even within the void or so, I don't know, it's hard to… R: It's just a question of letting go, let go of everything, ask yourself, "What am I holding onto?" As long as you're holding onto something, person, place or thing, you're earth bound. As soon as you let go totally you're free. (ST: Why is it so hard?) For whom is it hard? (ST: The one who's bound.) Who is that? See never put yourself down. Your real Self is not bound and you are your real Self. Identify with your real Self. Forget about the past, it's dead. Be centered, live in the now. And identify with reality that's all you have to do. ST: What sort of existence does one lead when that realization has taken place, it isn't existence as we ordinarily experience it and we acknowledge that another person exists that we may not know their inner state. Are they still experiencing karma? Do they still have obligations in the world? R: There's no karma for a Jnani. But the body will do what it has to do. But the Jnani will not be aware of it. (ST: There's no identification with whatever is going in that?) The Jnani sees a completely different world. (ST: So the Jnani is not aware of his body doing what he has to do?) Exactly. SD: Didn't you say at one point that you're only aware in the observational sense? R: You're like the screen. The movie is shown on the screen. The screen is just there. And people are getting killed in the movie. People are getting born, people grow old. All kinds of things are happening, wars, man's inhumanity to man, it's all happening on the screen. But the screen is never affected. (ST: So you’re like watching yourself on the screen then?) I realize I am the screen and these are projections. SD: But you see the projection of what we call Robert? (R: Yes.) You are aware as the screen of the image on the screen? (R: Yeah, I identify with the screen.) ST: Is that Sahaja Samadhi? (R: Yes.) Kind of like a working Nirvana. (R: Yes it is.) SR: I wondered this before and never got answered. Who thought this whole scheme up? (SH: You did.) R: Well you didn't. (SR: I don't think I did?) No, in reality there's no scheme and nobody thought it up. It doesn't exist. (SR: But it did happen though?) No it didn't. SD: So who is dreaming? (R: Nobody. There is no dream, it's an appearance.) So what we call the cosmic dream, itself is an appearance? SR: Who is the author of the appearance then? (R: There is no appearance and there's no author.) What am I doing? Who am I? (laughter) (R: Find out.) SK: There appears to be an appearance. R: Always use the example the sky is blue. When you go outside and look at the sky, it's a beautiful blue sky. But if you go up there, there's no sky. There's no blue. SR: To human beings there seems to be a consensus that it is - although it may not - it isn't really - but the way our perceptions are set up we all have an agreement about these illusions that it's blue although I know it's just what I said. (R: It's a collective dream.) Collective? (R: …dream.) Okay collective dream. (R: Wake up! Step out of the dream, wake up.) ST: Why has it been said that one who has awakened has an obligation to go back and awaken others? What difference does it make? R: It isn't true. You're speaking of Buddhism. The Boddhisatva (ST: Well even in yoga traditions they say, "Go back, go back for the sake of humanity.") Who tells you that? SK: Who can go back? R: Well you can go back if you want to, but who tells you that? ST: I understood that was a part of an initiation right for swami-hood? R: Well that's in swami-hood. Yes, that's true for swami-hood. If you want to be a swami, go ahead. (ST: I see. But the swami's goal is not self-realization, is it or…?) It is, but in a round about way. The whole idea is, if you want to save the world, become self-realized, for you become omnipresent and you become the world. So if you become realized, then your world is also realized. (ST: I understand it intellectually.) SD: On this path there is no desire to cause anything, right? SH: Do we all appear realized to you? (R: Of course.) You see perfectly clear that we are fully awake? (R: Everyone is.) Why are we pretending otherwise? (R: Who says you are?) I didn't. (students laugh) (R: Then you're not.) What? (R: Then you're not.) Yeah. (tape break, restarts with students question.) SR: Numerous near death experiences are starting to bubble up in the media and are kind of like a tear in the illusion or peak through the illusion? R: Not really it's a bigger illusion. Creates a vast illusion. It incorporates all kinds of things. (SR: But it does allow people to think more beyond the finite?) Well like it says in the Upanishads. Once you start playing around with the occult, you can be stuck for thousands of incarnations before you become free. SD: Robert has explained to us before that the astral planes are all relative and the causal etc. they are all part of the cosmic dream or maya or illusion. SK: Robert, you spoke about quieting the mind and I noticed that it seems that the mind has gotten quiet but the remnants of that seems to be that same as when the mind is very agitated, I distinctly feel that. R: Don't pay any attention to the agitation or the quietness. (SK: So what the state of mind is, don't pay any attention.) Don't pay any attention whatsoever. (SK: Is it better to focus just on the awareness of that?) Exactly. Let the mind take care of itself. If it gives you trouble, take no notice, it'll get you out of trouble, when you don't interfere. It's like when you have a friend, and if you don't interfere in your friends life and you leave him alone or she alone, what does your friend do? He leaves you, because you're not interfering in their life they'll have nothing to do with you. When you have nothing to do with your friend, he'll go away. So when you have nothing to do with your mind it'll dissipate. Act like you don't own it, it's not yours. ST: May I ask you something, you said you were asking your mother a question about, "What am I doing here," so obviously you were very precocious of it as a boy. I'm asking about something I've heard ask about twenty times, I hope I won't bore the people. But I'd love to know something about your own experiences, Robert. (R: Well not at this time, I've done it so often.) All right, I respect that. R: Because what good does that do you, really. (ST: It doesn't.) It's just an interesting story. And you've heard many stories. You get right to the meat of the product, go within yourself and become free. It really makes no difference what I've been through. SH: You were with Ramana Maharshi for three years is that correct? (R: The last three years of his life.) How wonderful. You really leapt out. (students laugh) (R: It wasn't my fault.) (laughter) It wasn't your fault? (R: It just happened.) SX: Robert, I'm not going to ask you anything personal, but I'm also curious about a little child asking her mother, "Well, what am I doing here?" And other questions and is it possible for young children of 3, 4, or 5 to be in a realized state? (R: Yes it is.) Can you lose it and regain it? R: If you gain it you can never lose it. If it's the real state. If it's the real thing you can never lose it. SK: Is it then advisable to promote or encourage children to inquire within themselves? R: It's advisable but it won't necessarily happen. It all has to do with your karma. The karma of the children. I know children who have been with spiritual parents for years and they become wild… (SK: They reject it, become the opposite.) Yes. (SE: Preachers son.) R: Exactly. It all has to do with your karma. Nothing on this path is predictable. SX: Also Robert, if you feel that you had it as a young child, maybe it's not within the acceptance of the culture. You could be your real Self and bury it. Periodically it emerges. In other words, you just don't feel all the time like you… R: Not really because if you have that feeling within, you manifest it in your doings. That's what happened to me. I was always weird. SL: I thought you said, aware or weird? Weirdly aware. (laughs) ST: Did you see manifesting everything that you did represents what that as normal people that were unrealized might stop you from your awareness? R: I was aware at a very early age, that this world is an act, a play. It isn't real. And I used to wonder why people couldn't see that. (SD: Did you talk to them about it?) I stopped when I got smart. SR: Did you see physical pain and psychological pain that way also, that it was not real and it was an act? R: In a way, yes. I thought everybody felt the same thing. But who was I to know? ST: But you actually, you were realized then? (R: Who knows?) SE: What happened to that sense of unreality? Did it deepen, because I feel that all the time, that this is totally unreal, the world is totally unreal, but I've never been realized. It just feels unreal, real unreal. R: What makes you think you're not realized? (SE: Yeah.) Never put yourself down. That's the true blasphemy. Blasphemy means when you put your Self down. Never do that. (SE: I have never had that experience that allowed me to have complete trust in myself.) You probably don't remember. We've all had experiences but we don't remember, we forget. It's like the clouds hiding the sun and ignorant people say, "There's no sun, there's no sun." But the sun is always shining. And when the clouds dissipate there's the sun. Our true Self is always aware, always there. But the clouds of ignorance appear to cover it up. All we have to do is look back at our true Self and the clouds will dissipate. SH: You make that real simple, beautiful. SN: I had a similar experience that Ed was saying about relying on the Self and believing in the Self. And I used to curse myself, at one time following a guru or another time trusting in myself and then not trusting in myself and not knowing what was real. Where was this thing within myself and I am telling myself that you can get initiated, this or that and finally I had to confront myself. Very dramatic for me and it was kind of an internal quest, I suppose it was a type of self-inquiry without realizing it and I basically had gone from not believing in myself, not trusting in myself to the conclusion that in the sense that the Self is all there is. And I found some comfort when I was reading a Buddhist Dharmapada where it says that, "The Self is lord of Self, the Self is the refuge of the Self. You can only come to the Self through the Self." And I meditated on that and I thought about teachers and this and that and I realized as Robert was saying that to put down the Self is blasphemy and according to this teaching it's not that you rely on a teacher, but you rely on your Self, you are your own teacher. Robert says, "He can take you to the mine but you better do your own digging." And besides that, that we are the Self and we can only find the Self through our Self and not being dependent on a teacher or a teaching, but your own consciousness, right here, right now. To identify with that. I think sometimes in satsang we get lost in so many different things, love or devotion or this or that and we never grasp the present moment, that present moment is the Self. That present moment, Robert says, "Find it and abide in it, and then follow it to its source." It's not something that we don't have. It's right here right now, just grasp that, find that. And I think in doing that you have to let the mind go, you have to let everything go. It's just a let go to grasp. SR: What does it mean find the present moment, how could you not find it? R: You're in it, you exist in it. You are the present moment. But to stay there and not go into the past or the present, or the future. Just to stay the way you are. You will always be safe if you can do that. As an example: in this second you have no thoughts about the past or the future. And as the seconds go, you start thinking. If you can keep your mind centered on the second where there are no thoughts, you'll be safe. In that space in between thoughts, from one thought to the next thought there's a break, stay in the break. Abide in the break. (SR: It seems like, as long as there's no effort I'm abiding in the break, as soon as I try I just run out of it.) You're not supposed to try. Just be. We have a meditation we use to help us and I simply share this with you because it helps. In reality you don't have to meditate but this will help you. And you should practice this wherever you go. When you're driving your car. First thing in getting up in the morning. Well don't do it while you're driving your car. (students laugh) You can use the last part when driving your car. So we'll practice it right now. Relax yourself and make yourself comfortable. If you want to you can close your eyes. Focus your attention on your breath. Emphasize your breathing. Breath from your diaphragm. Inhale deeply, slowly and gently, expand your abdominals. Exhale through your nose and mouth. Contract your abdominals in slow motion. Take ten deep breaths like that. This is to relax you. Breath naturally and just watch your breathing. Watch the sensations in your body. This is called Vipassana meditation what we're doing. Become aware of your sensations and your breath. Breath normally, if your mind wanders gently bring it back, to your feelings. Witness your thoughts, do not interfere, just watch. (pause) Question: "Who is the witness? Who is watching? Who is it that is watching my thoughts?" And the answer will be “I am.“ Now the meditation begins, you ask yourself, "Who am I?" as you inhale. Before you exhale you say, "I am He." And with your exhalation you say, "I am not the body." "Who am I" as you inhale, between exhalation and inhaling, "I am He." As you exhale, "I am not the body." (long silence) Thank you for coming, remember to love yourself, to pray to yourself, to bow to yourself, to worship yourself. Because God dwells in you as you, peace. And that's the end of that. (tape ends)

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Robert: (tape starts abruptly) …I am merely voicing what I feel. I am Absolute awareness. I am sat-chit-ananda. I am not referring to Robert. I'm referring to I-am and remember I-am includes everybody here. I-am ultimate oneness. I was never born and I can never die. I am total bliss, infinite happiness, divine awareness, pure intelligence. This is the I-am. It has come to my attention that the mantra that I gave you a while back is a little confusing to most people. When you say the mantra, "Who am I, I am he, I am not the body." There's a little confusion. I was speaking to one of you last week and I saw where the confusion lies. When you say, "I am not the body," to whom are you referring? This is an important point. "I am not the body," to most people means simply this: "I am not my body." But I am a part from my body especially those of us with a Christian Judaeo background. We say, "My body is the temple for the living God and God resides within myself." This may be true to an extent, but it is not the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is exactly what it says, "I am not my body." In other words, my body does not exist, but there are not two of us. There is not I-am and my body or there is not God and my body. There is not God residing in my body. There simply is no body. No body exists. Therefore I-am, is that I-am. You are consciousness just the way you are, but you are not the body. In other words what you think is the body, is consciousness. There is not the body and consciousness. There's the body as consciousness and the body does not exist the way it appears. As an example: Take a movie theatre, you have the moving picture on the screen. You do not see the screen because it's covered by images and you do not even think of the screen. You have no idea there is a screen because you do not think about it. You're thinking about the images. You become immersed in the movie, beginning, a middle and an end. But yet without the screen there would be no movie. So we can say the movie is not reality. The screen is the reality. And when the images cover the screen, the screen is still the reality. But the images give an appearance like reality. An example of this is when you try to get up and grab the images on the screen what will you get. You’ll be grabbing the screen, for the images do not exist. And so it is with us. Everything you see, everything that appears are images, or what is called false imagination and the only truth about these images is consciousness. These are all cosmic images on the screen of consciousness, and that's everything. You and I, the chairs, the couch, the sky, the moon, the universe are simply images, appearances, optical illusions. The truth is that you are consciousness, but you can't see yourself because of the maya, the grand illusion. So you believe that you are the body and you are the doer. Again it's like the movie and the screen. You get wrapped up in the movie and you start to feel the movie. You have forgotten there is a screen and the screen is the reality, but you're all wrapped up in the movie. And you can tell me everything about the movie. But you can't tell me anything about the screen. The only time you remember there's a screen is when the movie is over and even then you do not pay any attention to it because you get up and go home. But remember, if it weren't for the screen there would be no movie. So if it weren't for consciousness, there would be no images. Consciousness is real, the images are false. The images come and go, change continuously, constantly. But consciousness remains the same all the time. Consciousness is like emptiness, like empty space and you are that. I-am that I-am, that is the meaning of this. I am absolute awareness. So you say, "Well h ow come I feel all these other things? How can I feel disease? How can I feel hurt? How can I feel my problems?" The reason you feel these things is because of wrong identification. You're not identifying with the screen, you're identifying with the images. And as long as you believe that you're an image like the movie, you're going to suffer accordingly. The secret is therefore to let go, and quiet your mind. Identifying with consciousness and not with the image which is called false imagination. But you may say to me, "Will I see my fellow man suffering? There's a war to break out in Iraq. All kinds of man's inhumanity to man is happening all around me. Is that false?" As long as you believe in it, then it's real to you. Therefore I will not tell you it's false because you believe in it. Again it's like the person in the movie. I tell them the screen is the reality, but they say, "No, the images are real, I can see them, can't you see the person killing somebody else? And somebody dying of cancer? And a bomb falling on the city? How can you say that's not real?" So I come and take away the screen and there's nothing but a blur. This is what happens when you awaken. The human dream is over. It becomes nothing but a blur. And you become steeped in reality. Reality becomes bliss, happiness, eternal joy, satchit- ananda. The question therefore is: How do I identify myself with consciousness? There's only one way and that is to quiet you mind. Your mind has to become quiescent, still. When the mind is still reality shines forth by itself. But as long as you accept images, images are problems, things that you see with your eyes and your senses, and you think they're real. Things that you feel. This is called false imagination. And because you feel these things first you suffer accordingly. The secret is to transcend those feelings and again the only way to transcend those feelings is to quieten your mind. How do you quiet your mind? By taking time to be still. "Be still and know that I am God." And if you can't become still by yourself there are various methods, the highest one being self-inquiry. By simply asking yourself, "Who's mind is not still? Who feels all the images? Who suffers? Who becomes angry? Who identifies with the world?" Again don't make the mistake and believe that you are not the body as I mentioned in the beginning. So you think you're separate. There are two of you. You think there's the body, and this is what advanced people who believe this now. They think they are not the body, but the body goes off by itself and does what it wants. But they are something else. This couldn't be further from the truth. There's only one ultimate oneness. One! There are never two. There's never the body and your Self. There's only the body as your Self. And as you see this the body vanishes and disappears. It disappears because it never existed. That which exists must always exist. That which never existed must disappear. That's why the body gets old and dies, because it isn't real to begin with, it's an illusion. So, the real you is exactly what you are right now, the Self. You are the Self. You are not the body but you are the Self. It's one, not two. The body does not exist. If you're traveling in the desert and you see a body of water, compare the body of water to your body. You believe in it because you see it. Yet, when you get close to it it's not there it's an optical illusion. True? The same thing with your body you see it, you carry it, you think it's yours and you have identified with it. Why? Because of your mind. Your mind is the culprit. When the mind becomes still, everything disappears and you become the Self, which you really are anyway. You have to use any method you have to, to quiet the mind. You must ask yourself, "Who am I? What is the source of the I? Where did the I come from?" And then follow the I to its culmination. The I becomes like the mirage, doesn't exist. When you follow the I deep inside your heart, you will find that the I never existed. Remember also, that everything else is attached to the I. Every problem, the ego, the mind, everything is attached to this I. So when the I is transcended, so is everything else and you're free. But the important point tonight is this: When you say, "I am not the body." Realize that there are not two of you, there's only one. It means the appearance of a body does not exist in reality. You are consciousness, you are the Self and that is the only reality and nothing else exists. Any questions about that? SD: It seems once you've explained it, you can almost just say, "I-am, is not the body." And that seems more clear to me saying that. R: If you're saying, "I am is not the body," then what is the body? (SD: Illusion?) Exactly. As long as you remember that the body does not exist by itself, but it's like a projection on the screen, then you can say whatever you want. The whole secret is to know who you are and you are the immortal Self. You were never born, you can never die. You have always existed. You are sat-chit-ananda. That's who you really are just the way you are right now. Just the way you are. No changes have to be made. Just the way you are right now. You are God. You are consciousness. But do not mistake this with the body. I am not saying that the body is God. I'm saying that you are God. But I see you as consciousness. I see you as absolute reality, as pure awareness. That is God. If you identify your body with God you're making a big mistake. Therefore when I tell you, "You are God" I am referring to your Self. Not your ego, not your mind and not your body. And when I refer to the term God, or consciousness, or absolute reality, I am referring to omnipresence. So when I say, "I am consciousness" I am not referring to Robert. I am referring to I-am omnipresence, which includes the whole universe, do you follow that? Everything is consciousness, nothing is left out. This is why we have reverence for all things, for all of life. For the mineral kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, for the animal kingdom and for the human kingdom. For everything is God. Nothing is excluded. If you hate anything, you're hating an illusion. If you feel out of sorts, or you feel sick, or you feel bad, or you feel angry, or you feel you've got a bad temper, you're identifying with an illusion. This is false imagination. It's not you. The more you think about these things the freer you become. Any questions? SN: Robert, is there any difference between an animate and an inanimate object? Or between a sentient or insentient? R: Only in a material sense. In the absolute there's no difference. It is all pure consciousness, egoless, mindless. It's all emptiness, all pure awareness. (SN: So physical things are the same things as people?) Same thing. But at a certain point in relativity, you call things sentient and insentient but in reality there's no difference it's all the same. (SN: I was reading that, only a sentient being can become Self aware of its own consciousness, how about inanimate objects?) Well inanimate objects cannot be aware at a relative level, because they're inanimate in a relative level. But in reality there's no relative level. So everything is consciousness. You're probably speaking about Buddhism. The Boddhisatva says, "Only a sentient being can realize absoluteness." At the level he's speaking of, he's right. But he's speaking at a level. I am speaking of no level, of the absolute. The absolute is the absolute. It is non duality. SG: So can we say in the absolute sense that everything contains everything and nothing. R: Yes it's the same, the same thing. Everything is nothingness and nothingness is everything. The question also arises: How am I to live my life, if I don't exist? (laughs) How can I live? Again as I remind you all the time, you will be taken care of. As long as you believe that you are the body, there's a mysterious power, that will guide you and lead you to your highest good, if you let go and let God. So at all levels you're protected. In other words if you can't see the absolute and you can't understand it, that's okay too. This simply means you must surrender. Surrender to God totally and completely and you will be totally protected and taken care of. But that means absolute surrender, total surrender. So you can use any level you like it doesn't matter. Everything is in your favor. The whole universe is your friend. There is nothing against you and there is nothing that can or wants to harm you, nothing. It's all in your imagination. When you're suffering from anxiety or depression, when you think the world is against you or you think you have problems, try to realize that you think that from a human standpoint - And even if you can't believe that you're not human yet - Let go of your problems. Give them to God and God will take care of everything for you. Also you came here karmically to do something at that level. So you're going to do whatever you came here to do. What I'm trying to tell you, you've got no problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should. See as we sit in quietness, what's going on in your mind right now? What are you thinking about? Can't you see that's your whole problem? Your thinking. If there's no one left to think, you would be self-realized, but as long as you allow yourself to think, you're causing yourself one problem after another. It's like looking at a movie and you know who the killer is in the movie. So you start thinking about a solution. How the police are going to catch the killer and what the killer should do to get away from the police. That's what you do in your human self. You cause all these abstractions. You cause all the problems yourself and you don't know it. You believe that your problems are coming to you from the outside. But they are not. You are creating them out of your mind. And you're perpetuating them by thinking about them everyday, thinking, thinking, thinking. And the worst thing you can do, is to think how you can solve your problems. Because when you think how you can solve your problems, you are admitting you've got a problem that needs to be solved by some human way. And you may or you may not solve it that way. But if do solve the problem another one will pop up some where else and there's no end to it. The only way to get rid of your problems is to quiet your mind, go within, and realize the Self. To that extent will your problems dissipate. Mary why don't you tell the class about what you told me about your problems. Would you like to share that? SM: A lot of dissension at home. My husband doesn't want me to come to these meetings, very much against everything spiritual now, and it has become very very hard on me and I've followed pretty much the way Robert talks to us and all of a sudden, the problems are still there, but I'm very happy. I have changed, the problems haven't changed, but I've changed. And I can face it all now. And it doesn't bother me. Today when Robert and I got in the car and he said, "Gee you look happy Mary," and I said, "I am happy, I really am." So, really, you change, not the problem and I really learned it works that way. R: And that's the first step. The next step after that is everything else will change too. It has to. SL: So it's the attitude, on this plane it's the attitude that happens first? (R: Yes.) And then everything else will follow? R: Exactly, and patience is the key, because things may seem to get relatively worse, before they get better. That's called chemicalization. Thing's are beginning to happen. It seems that every-thing's going to blow up and get relatively worse sometimes, not all the time. That's when you have to hold on real tight. Then all of a sudden there'll be a peace and a calm and everything will change into goodness and happiness and harmony. SK: The way to have patience is to accept, have acceptance? R: No you don't really accept. I don't like to use that term. What you do you turn from it and you go within and see the truth. And the truth is that you are the immortal Self. You are not the situation. And you are not the body or the circumstance. (SK: You're accepting reality.) You're accepting reality, yes, that's a better term. (SK: The truth.) And when you accept reality. Reality starts from you and expands into the world, because you have formed a new creation. The world becomes your reality that you've accepted and everything becomes beautiful. SE: About three weeks ago, I had a sudden insight. I recognized that I was consciousness and not the body. Seems so obvious after thirty years not understanding what it meant. And that I create the world. Whatever the I is, creates the world. You, the body is just a small part of consciousness. But I haven't understood absolute consciousness. Consciousness to me still means all of the images, changing, changing, and interacting, but I don't know what's before the images, consciousness, absolute consciousness, how do I find that? R: This is called parabrahman, absolute reality, absolute consciousness. By denying the world within yourself, by watching and not reacting. And you go deeper and deeper and deeper, till the whole thing disappears. SD: Isn't that the fourth fundamental that you gave us, more or less apply in that case. (R: Explain that.) Well, the fourth fundamental is that self-realization can be discovered by eliminating what it is not. So, I feel that is what is meant. R: Yes. When you see these images and whatever you're still seeing you say, "Not this, not this." (SE: Neti-neti.) Exactly, and you go deeper and deeper and everything will dissolve into consciousness. But remember, you yourself, the way you are now, are absolute consciousness. So don't think you've got to drop your body. There is no body to drop. And that's the point and that's the hardest part for people to understand. No body exists that you have to get rid of. I've seen very advanced people, who've been practicing for years like you just said and they're still saying, "Boy when I get rid of this body then I'll be free." There is nobody to get rid of. Like the sky is blue again. You take me outside and you say, "Robert see the sky, it’s blue." I look and I say, "Yes," but in reality there's no sky and there's no blue. There's only atmosphere. It's like the rope and the snake. In the dark you see a rope coiled up and you think it's a snake. But upon investigation you realize it's only a rope. And you'll never be scared of the rope and the snake again. So when you see bodies, images, whatever, your own body in particular. You realize what appears to be my body is pure consciousness and my body does not exist as it appears. And the more you can meditate on that the greater the reality will come to you that this is so and you become free or you awaken to your freedom, just the way you are. This is why like I always tell you, "What are you doing with your life? What's more important than finding your Self?" Everything else is just a fleeting picture. It's here to day and gone tomorrow. You have to be true to your Self. And really know where you are and what you're really made out of. Like I say many times, there are so many students who profess to love this truth and they live for it and can't wait for it and that's all they can do. Yet, if they won the lottery and have thirty or fifty-million dollars we'd never see them again. For they'd be out celebrating and going crazy. So where are you really? The understanding of course is not a way out. The money will be spent. If you make investments you have to worry about the IRS or about people trying to steal your investments. There are always problems in the human world, always problems. Turn within and really find reality. As I mentioned last week to you, even the times I was in India and I met with all these Sinyasis and you know Sinyasis they're renunciates and they're sort of like Bhodhisatvas they're supposed to be real high. Yet in reality, these Sinyasis never had anything to give up, or to renunciate, because they never owned anything to begin with. And the first people that give them any money, they get rid of their swami outfits and they go to town. They put on new suits and they become a gentleman, so-to-speak. So you never know how you're going to turn out. You never know what you're made out of. But if you keep turning within enough and you cry for realization. You cry for God, you have passion for God like you have for a football game. Something will give and something will happen. But you have to have that passion and it has to come first in your life. And you start in the morning as soon as you open your eyes. You may ask yourself the question, "Who is it that's awake?" and the answer will come, "I am." "Who is it that slept? I did," or "Who is it that dreamt?" "I did" and you will notice that the I is always there. So you continue by asking yourself, "Where did this I come from? The I that is present in all these three states of consciousness? Where did it come from?" and you abide in the I. You abide in the I and you follow the I to its source, until the I totally disappears, like the sky, and the blue, like the mirage in the desert. The I is an illusion it does not exist. And when the I disappears, I-am will shine again in all its glory and splendor. And that's a beautiful way to get out of bed in the morning. It's a beautiful way to wake up. But you have to remember to do these things. And not get up thinking about a cup of coffee or thinking about your problems or what you're going to wear or whatever. And the worst thing you can do in the morning is turn on the TV because those things stay with you all day. It keeps you from going within. Forget about newspapers, forget about the TV for a while. The world will still go on, save yourself. If you find yourself in a burning building, you do not stop to admire the pictures on the wall. You get out of the building as fast as possible. So you find yourself engulfed in maya. That's like a burning building. While you still have time before you leave your body, find out who you are. Know the truth and the truth will make you free. Let's play some music. (music played) (tape break as Robert continues abruptly) R: …believes they're the body. As long as you believe you are the body, there's reincarnation, there are souls, there's God, there's the world, there's the universe. And there's getting enlightened. But as soon as you realize you're not the body all that ceases. SM: Robert what about the people who don't become enlightened at this particular time? R: There's no such thing. But if you still believe you are the body and you happen to throw your body off and you believe you are the body, then you come back more advanced. (SD: So you get credit for these courses huh? Even if we don't pass. Even if we don't graduate.) (laughter) That's right you do. There's a gigantic accounting system that takes care of everything. SD: But that's within worlds of karma and reincarnation right, which don't apply once you're realized. (R: Exactly.) But Mary the things that umm, realization gets you off the karmic wheel. The rules are different once you're realized and you realize all of that was always nonexistent. R: But again I must emphasize. I'll say it again, that this is sort of a dangerous teaching because when I say there are no rules, it gives some people license to do whatever they like. But they don't realize that as long as they're doing some evil some place, they believe that they're the body and they have to suffer accordingly. If you become realized you leave everybody alone. SN: Robert when you said you could do whatever you want with the body, you can throw it in the garbage can, at the same time everything becomes holy, right? R: In the last reality, in the last analysis, everything is holy. But by throwing it in the garbage can doesn't make it less holy. (SN: Throw it in a holy garbage can.) The garbage can is holy to begin with. (SK: But it doesn't make it any more holy?) No, doesn't matter. If you want to go through all these rituals of death, go ahead. Do whatever you like. (SD: They're almost necessary as long as we identify with the body, aren't they, because they're all a part of the dream, the same dream.) Yes, as long as you identify with the body everything is going to disturb you. You'll never find peace, no matter what you do. (SD: But I mean as you go through the rituals of death you might re-remind yourself that you are doing that in the body and the higher truth is that it's not real.) Yes, when you leave your body you take a rest and you're able to see all these things. Then you get pulled back again and you have another chance. SD: Didn't you say something about, for seven days after death and seven days after a babies birth that they know they are realized? R: You become aware, yes. For approximately seven days. (SK: After death?) After death. (SD: And immediately after physical birth as well. So little babies aren't so dumb as we thought?) No. SM: Have you ever seen a new baby? It never looks at the face or the eyes, always looks above the head I've always noticed that. (R: That's true.) And depending on what type of person they look at they sometimes scream to get away from them and others they're just so glad to be near them. R: A baby is real pure until the parents get a hold of them. Then it's spoilt. SG: Does the nature of the child say something about what the child's going to end up like? So if the baby is very quiet and sweet and good natured… (R: Not necessarily.) (SK: But probably in its young years, you get indications from them?) (R: You can and you can't.) SD: That would be karmic wouldn't it? (R: Everything is karmic, yes) SU: I think behavioral scientists try to stand on their heads to prove that the child grows up, like from seven and they're already fixed, but I don't believe that. I think people change continuously with the world. (R: Anything is possible.) Anything, absolutely. SM: What they say In the Catholic religion, get a child before they're seven years old and you'll have… (R: Lifetime Catholic.) Yeah, fixed (laughter) It's a guilt complex. R: That's what Khrushchev used to say. (SM: Pardon me?) Khrushchev, he says the same thing, "Give me a child at the age of five and I'll give you a lifetime communist." (SM: Yeah, I know. He must have got that from the same place as me.) SL: Admitting that he thought he was God. SU: Also the training of a young child during Nazism in Germany. And they try to instill in the child but I don't think that works either. R: Everything is karmic, if it works it's karmic if it doesn't it's karmic. There's no escape from that, as long as you believe you're the body. (SU: As long as what?) You believe you're the body. (SU: And yet we take care of our body, we feed it and we exercise it.) Sure. It's like going to the movies. You pay to get into watch the movie. You see all these pictures on the screen and you cheer, or you scream, or you holla, or you're afraid, then you go home. (laughter) SE: The process of dis-identification with the body or with the ego is basically a problem of the mind, it's a process in the mind? It's the mind that realizes. R: Yes, the mind is the culprit. Because of the mind you have a body and an ego. (SE: And because of the mind you lose your body too?) Yes. That's why it's so simple. Quiet the mind and everything disappears. SD: Including the mind, right? (R: Including the mind.) It annihilates itself? R: Because the mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts. So the more you quieten the more it dissipates. And when there's no mind, there's no world, there's no body, there's nobody. Your free. SN: The way to quieten the mind is through self-inquiry, right? (R: That's the best way.) Because they say that people that like to quiet the mind will renounce the world or go away to a cave. The mind is no different in the cave than it is in the world. SD: Probably worse, because that's all you'd do would be to think. (R: Yes, exactly.) SK: But maybe best to purify it, have a sub-confrontation with it. R: You'll go crazy. If you can't take it in the world or the market place, you'll be worse off in the cave. (SN: You can't force it, you have to let it happen of itself?) The mind appears to be very very powerful and it will overwhelm you. So if you go away by yourself and you're not developed, you'll scream and you'll holla and you'll run back home. You can't force it, no. You have to watch it. Become the witness to your thoughts and it'll dissipate. SK: What is the brain? R: The brain is nothing, it's a part of the body. It's the electrical system for the body. (SK: Takes care of the body.) Yeah. (SK: Does it have anything to do with thought?) No. (SD: So the brain and the mind are not the same.) No they're not. (SU: Those are just parts of functioning of the body to some extent.) The brain is for the body. SK: You know they've done experiments where they tap certain places of the brain and then the person thinks different… (R: Sure.) Is that how the mind, the thoughts are embedded in the body even they say that, people who do massage, they tap into a place where someone has stored anger, emotion, or thoughts, or all of them. R: That's all on the physical-mental level. (SK: Right so they can be interwoven so often.) Yes, but the brain has only to do with the body. The mind has to do with thoughts about the brain. (SK: So it's just as any other part of the body our thoughts could be stored with emotions.) Oh yes, and then you can unstore them. (SK: Yeah, but you don't have to do it, if you're not relating to the body?) Umm. (SK: You can just do it by dissolving the mind so-tospeak.) Oh yes, that's the best way, because if you do it the other way, they maybe healed for a while. (SK: And then you can restore it?) But something else comes up. And even if you heal the body from this life, you have other lives to deal with, it never ends. (SK: Yeah, it's just helpful on a relative level. It could free someone up enough to indulge in a spiritual discipline.) Yes it can, but that's still under the laws of karma. It was meant to be that way. Whenever you see a situation, before you react to it, ask yourself, "Who sees?" SD: Sometimes reactions seem instantaneous could you ask yourself, "Who's reacting?" R: Yes you can, whatever is easier for you. But I’m referring, before you react. Most people are confronted by the situation and react with anger or whatever. So before that happens remember to catch yourself and ask yourself, "Who sees?" Then the reaction will dissipate and you'll become quiet. (SU: You said to ask yourself, "Who sees?") Who sees the situation like this. For instance if you're watching the war in Iraq and you become angry over it. Catch yourself and ask yourself, "Who is affected by this?" or "Who sees?" same thing. (SD: Or who responds, right?) Whatever helps you. Who responds, who's affected, who sees. (SL: And if the answer’s I?) Go right into the teaching. "Who am I? Where did the I come from? What's the source of the I?" (SL: And don't react?) Don't react. (SD: Because it's the ego to whom it comes.) SK: But don't believe that, find out. (laughter) R: Jay brought some food. (break in tape) (conversations about reincarnation and transmigration) Robert: It's very rare but it happens to some people. SH: What would occasion it to happen? Would there be something that they've done…? R: If some-ones real vile, real mean, real bad and sort of like an animal, they'll come back as an animal. SE: I'd like to come back as a rock. (SD: You would?) It's a joke! (laughter) R: Anything is possible. SD: But all within the context of maya right? (R: Yes.) No one really comes back because there's no where to go. (R: Exactly.) So if we could just wake up, we would just get off that wheel you know. R: Well, wake up! (SD: That's a good reason to wake up as far as I'm concerned.) Who tells you you're asleep. What makes you think you're asleep? (SD: I know you tell us, we already are awake. Words are inadequate, if I could be aware of being awake. If I could realize it.) If you live in the moment, in the second, you're awake. But every time your mind thinks you're caught up in maya. (SD: If you live in the moment is that the same as being one-pointed?) No, no, no. One-pointed is to make your mind go after one thing. Go after the thing, quiet the mind. (SD: Oh so it's just an aid in the body?) Then you become one-pointed. But to awaken you just have to rest in that second without thinking. (SD: So one-pointedness could lead to quieting the mind, which could lead to awakening?) Yes, but just think of the second. Nothing is happening in the second and you're awake. SM: Robert, I thought it would come like a sound big blast. For one week? R: No, on the contrary, nothing happens. SD: I thought you said it was like a flash of light? Or were you just being symbolic. R: No, that's before awakening. When you're really awaken you just open your eyes and you're awake. (SD: One minute you're not and the next minute you are?) It's like being in a room full of darkness and you flash on the light. (SD: But I thought you said it was, like a flash of light?) That's before. That's when you have experiences. SD: Umm. I thought maybe you were talking symbolically cause it'd be like seeing the light. Like I always thought in the Bible the light that shone around, Saul or Paul was symbolic of his seeing the light or awakening? R: Symbolic, yes. That's true, yes. That's what I said, you're in darkness then you turn on the light, that's it! No big deal. (SD: Oh, but what a big deal. It is a big deal because it's what we all are seeking.) If you seek too much it won't happen. (laughter) Stop seeking. Just become. Be. Be your Self. SG: I think a good analogy is when she was talking about concepts and Being here and being there. If you're in a day dream state there are no concepts to have and there's no one to have them or the moment between thoughts. Then you're not aware of any different states and you're not even aware of the unified state. You're just aware. And there's no one else necessarily to be, and I used the analogy before of the I looking outward and everybody being a part of that I, looking outward. It might help with the conceptual day dream state. SD: I think the only reason I did speak in terms of levels was just for differentiating what we're supposed to see in finite terms. SE: About two weeks ago I met Jean Dunn who was one of Nisargadatta’s students. And I was talking to her in a motel room in Torrence and she was visiting her mother who was in hospital. And I was very impressed by her and I said, "I really get the impression that you understand." She got angry with me. She said, "You really didn't get it" she said, "People would tell this to Maharaj all the time and he would get upset and say, “You don't understand, you created me." And she waved her finger in my face, like this and she said, "You created this body, you created the teachings that you're understanding from me," it was a wonderful experience, I spent a week going around owning everything. The walls, the stars, it's all mine I created it. (R: She's right.) I created the teachings, Iraq, Saddam everything. (R: And you created God.) I created God (R: She's right.) SK: What do you think of Nisargadatta's, the guy that's taken up his works? (SE: Ramesh?) (SN: Balsekar?) SE: I like him a lot. I like Ramesh. He's very intellectual though. Theories, conceptualizations, tying together physics and philosophy and it's just too much thinking. Maharaj wasn't at all a thinker. Ramesh just confuses me sometimes with all of his conceptualizations. I like to your simplicity, very clear. I like my simplicity. (Laughter) R: It's the same with Ramanas teachings. The people who write the Mountain Path, they're going to be in San Diego next month. The great grand nephew of Ramana Maharshi. But they're all intellectual. I've seen them before in India. SK: Who's Nome, is that a person? (R: Nome, ask Sam.) (SG: I don't know him.) SD: He leads an Ashram in Santa Cruz. (SK: Santa Cruz. So there's a book with Ramana Maharshi that says, "From I to eternity") R: How did you get that book. (SK: I just got it at the Bodhi tree probably, years ago.) Did you know that book is supposed to be, it's a secret book. (SK: Well people get it and they go to the used book store and sell it when they want some money. (laughter) So I picked it up from there.) (Students discuss between themselves) SG: Is Nome in it with a picture of Ramana… R: No, that was the first one. There are now two versions. SK: "From I to eternity," it's a small little booklet. Essentially saying, come to our place and do meditation. (tape break as Robert continues) R: …He had a cave and he had other yogis upstairs in the other caves and they used to throw big boulders at him and try to kill him. They rolled boulders down. He would just look up and look at the boulder and it was like a fly bothering him. He'd just stand there, he couldn't care less and they'd push these big boulders down at him. And they'd always miss. And this went on for months because more people used to come and see him more than the other people. So you never know what people are going to do. SE: Was that when he first came to the mountain? R: When he was at Iskander Ashram. After he was there about fifteen years. See there's so many things going on in the world, so many movements, so many teachers. That's why the true teacher is within yourself. Contact your Self. Find your Self. And leave everything else alone. Try not to make your mind complicated. Because there's so many books, there’s so many teachers there are so many movements. You have to go where your heart takes you and never condemn anybody. Just leave them be. There's enough room in this world for all. And everybody goes to what they need in the moment. In other words if you have a rotten disposition, you'll go to a rotten teacher. (laughter) So you're always in your right place. SL: Is that what happened to me. (R: Who knows?) I'm kidding. (laughter) SN: Of course when you look at the world you see yourself. That's what Ed was saying. R: Everything is in its right place. SE: Also, a big recognition of mine was, is I have no choice in my spiritual path it's unfolding. The person feels as if he's making these kinds of acts of will and practices and so forth but it's just a bubble. (R: True.) It's deeper than that, it's deeper than the person. That I'm here, it's not my choice, it's foreordained a long time ago. (R: Exactly.) SD: That's what we talked about last Sunday, karma. How everything is preordained, even decisions that you seem to face and the choices that you seem to make is predestined. SK: Does your person still do spiritual practices everyday? (SE: I lay in bed all day long when I'm not working) That's what I do. (SE: Very advanced.) (laughter) I use to be concerned about that, now I don't know what to think of it. SE: I've been absolutely depressed for two years, I'm not interested in the world anymore. People say how depressed you are, you get out and do things and I say I'm happy lying in bed and just being inside of myself. I don't even sit in meditation anymore, it's too much effort. (laughter) SN: What did Nisargadatta teach about meditation. (SE: Same as Robert, I would say.) R: He taught for whom is there meditation? Who needs to meditate? But again don't let it throw you. Because many people need to meditate. (SK: What did you say then?) I said there are many people that should meditate. SN: I almost feel as if I meditate to learn that I didn't have to meditate. SK: What about sleeping, like we seem to be sharing some kind of the same experience, but I'm concerned about that. R: Well, if you're really on the right path your body will do the right things whatever it has to do. As long as you don't get in anybody's way and you're not cruel to anybody else you should do what you want. (SK: But my only problem is my own conceptions of what I think I should be doing or what I'm used to in the past.) Are you happy? (SK: I'm both, I'm not sad. There's no sadness.) Then there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. SD: When you talked of depression, could he not ask himself, "Who is depressed?" R: Of course. Yes. SE: It's not a painful depression, it's just a lack of interest. (SD: Whether it's painful or not, it's the ego who's depressed.) It feels like the mourning for the person. The person is dying and there's a part of me that's mourning the death of the person. (SD: The ego would resist the violation of the Self.) SK: Like a transition, also part of the transition. SL: I think isn't that what somebody else said before, someone's philosophy he said that, you mourn for the person, the body, the self that's dying and later on the next… (SK: Celebrate?) …yeah and the next step there's a little more enlightenment. R: That's possible too. All these things are possible. SN: Robert, can the ego resist annihilation? R: It appears to, but in reality if there's no ego who's to resist? But it appears to resist, it appears to fight you. But when you become the witness and you do not pay any attention to it, it will subside by itself. (SN: Well when you become the witness is that something that happens or can happen instantaneously?) Yes. SD: But it's something you can do by plan. You can consciously become the observer. SN: But say if you become the witness, doesn't the ego fight back? R: Not if you become the witness. Because if you become the witness to the fighting then there's nobody to react, it becomes weak. The ego becomes very weak and subsides by itself. It's like when you have a friend, And your friend is talking to you, talking to you, talking to you, but you don't answer your friend, you just look at him. What's going to happen? Your friend will walk away and leave you alone. (laughter) Same principle. When your ego sees that there's no resistance, there's nobody left to fight. It becomes weak, and weak, and weak and weak and weak until it dissipates entirely. SN: Robert I've noticed in self-observation, that there's a stream of thoughts and there's a time when I'll be observing those thoughts and then there's another time when I'll get involved in those thoughts and then I'll come back and try to observe them again. So is this an ego, this thing? R: Well you are consciousness, so just observe the whole procedure. Observe what is happening but don't react. Stay in your true nature as consciousness. SD: So when you say self-observation is being a witness, there's nothing magical about being the witness. (R: No.) Self observation is witnessing. (R: Same thing.) SK: And it’s magical. (R: Why do you call it magical?) Well because of the effects that it has on the ego. (R: It's actually normal.) Yeah. SE: You were with Ramana for two years. (R: Yes.) And how long was it after, before you really got what he was teaching you? R: Well I didn't go there to be taught, I actually went there just to see him. I had everything before that, whatever it is. I was there two years before he died. (SD: Did you stay there the whole two years?) No. I went back and forth because he was very sick, he could hardly walk. (SD: And you couldn't stand to see that?) No. I was able to have an audience with him twice. SD: How was it being in his presence. (R: Great!) I mean, did you feel elevated, did you feel like you'd known him all your life, did you identify with him or were you in awe of him? R: Well if you recall the story, I used to see him when I was a baby in my crib and then I saw his picture in a book and then I went to India. SD: So you'd known him all your life? (R: Just about.) SK: Does he ever come to you taking on that same visible form? In dreaming or… (R: Lots of times.) SG: How old were you when you went to India? (R: Eighteen.) A young age to be traveling in India. (R: I know.) (SL: Bet you were wild.) (laughter) SK: And that was a wild time about nineteen forty what? (R: 1947.) SU: You know the four rules and the three vehicles and all that - It's like, I'm not reading anything from all the different philosophies and everything so it's like whatever meditation or whatever I do it's just sort of like by feel and if I hear things that make sense to me I just do it. (R: Umm that's good.) So the four rules that you say to follow - the four principles - does that help people to attain a certain thing. It seems to, it's like all one and the same just broken down into different levels. R: It's all the same that's true. It helps you to quiet the mind. SU: I couldn't remember what you said the last time I couldn't remember all the steps, different steps that you said, three steps like "Who Am I?" and you said in between exhaling then you say something else and the last thing is something about the God within us… (R: Oh that's the mantra.) …yeah the mantra, I kind of like skip through the thing and just like - I couldn't remember it — it's like "Who Am I?", I am the God within, basically something like that. R: See I give all these things to stop your mind from thinking. (SU: But it's different ways for finding your own…) Different ways of getting there. As long as you can still your mind use whatever method you have to. (students discussion) SE: The teachings themselves are something to still the mind by satisfying it, isn't that true? (R: That's true, right.) It gives you something to nibble on and then you can rest with your food and you don't have to think anymore because you have faith. You believe and with that there's a settling within yourself. R: That's why I share these various methods. That's why I share all these methods, because when your mind starts to think, catch it right away, don't let it take you over. And use one of the methods to stop the thoughts. Change the thoughts. Use whatever method you have to. By asking yourself, "To whom comes the thoughts?" By doing the mantra, "Who am I, I am he, I am not the body." (SD: By breathing "I-am," you said.) By doing I-am. Whatever you have to do, do it! SU: Also I know that in metaphysics which is a level lower than whatever. In metaphysics the belief is when you meditate, you should be sitting up straight so that all your chakras could be reached when you breath in and out. Does that make any difference or…? R: That's a yoga technique, but for whom are there chakras? For the ego. (SU: So in other words if one is laying down to meditate because it's like the lowest level of energy whatever…) Not really. The only problem with lying down is you fall asleep, that's all, that's why I tell you not to lie down. SD: But it doesn't really matter does it, as long as you're quieting your mind. R: It doesn't matter but most people fall asleep, especially beginners. SU: I do it both ways, usually when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is go into that and before I go to sleep, you know I calm myself down and get into it. R: I know a Kriya meditator who does transcendental meditation, who has been meditating since the sixties, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening and they're just the same. Nothing has happened. (SU: If they lay down you say?) No they sit in meditation. SD: Their minds are doing mantras when they are not doing anything. (R: They're doing the mantras, yeah.) They seem to believe that the end result is a quieting of the mind, but quieting of the mind is only a step to realization. (R: Umm.) They see it as an end not a means. R: Some become a little more peaceful, but it's all good I guess. SU: So once you quiet the mind then what do you do? (R: You do nothing.) That was easy you know, I lay down, I quiet the mind and there's nothing. I wake up in the same space, exactly where I left off. SK: Ed don't even bother getting out of bed. (laughter) SE: Very advanced right? (laughter) School of lazy buddhists. (laughter) R: It's all good. Let's sing "Oh God beautiful." (tape ends)

Robert: There are two ways that I think bring you closer to self-realization. Of course we're already self-realized and we don't have to come closer, we just have to remove the cloud that tells us we're human. But there are two methods that I think through the years of understanding that brings you very close to self-realization. One is satsang which we're doing now and the other one, is practicing all the things we learn, at home. Now, satsang is a very sacred teaching. If you come to satsang you pick up the power that goes with it. With us it's a direct lineage to Ramana Maharshi. So what this means in satsang, we are all actually Ramana Maharshi, everyone of us. There's no difference and we're all each other. This means we all have the knowledge we need, and as we keep coming to satsang, it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer. In the beginning when you first hear this it sounds strange, but it's not so strange. If you're studying to become a doctor, you associate with doctors and it sort of rubs off and you feel the vibration. If you're studying to be a lawyer. You associate with lawyers and the vibrations sort of rub off and you always feel ego. So when you come to satsang there's a direct lineage with the founder, or the re-discoverer I should say, of Advaita Vedanta who is Ramana Maharshi. So in any event, we should all feel something, deep within our hearts and allow it to bloom by itself without forcing it. And this happens just by attending satsang. As you attend satsang you become a sweet person. By sweet I mean, you give up all of the anger, the tantrums, the doubts, suspicions. You stop worrying and you begin to unfold like a flower, with its calyx toward the sun. You just open up. You start feeling good for no reason. You notice that things stop bothering you. You're no longer concerned, I don't mean you don't care, you're very compassionate, I mean you understand the nature of the world, that it's maya, it's transitory. Nothing is ever the same in the world. So the world ceases to excite you, one way or the other. The world no longer makes you too happy, nor too sad. It becomes impersonal to an extent. But you still do your work. Your body does whatever it came here to do, yet you're always in heaven, mentally. Now, if you can't come to satsang or you don't feel that kind of devotion. Then you practice diligently, the lessons, the teachings of Advaita Vedanta. And then you will find the same things happening to you in a little different way, but you will also unfold. It's wonderful if you can do them both. But those are the two ways that'll bring you closer to realization. You subsequently have to ask yourself, "What am I doing with my life? In what direction am I going?" And look at your life, analyze it. From the moment you get out of bed until you go back to bed again at night. What are you doing with the hours that you're awake? Do you waste your time. What do you do? You have to remember you have only so many years to live in this world, and then you'll just vanish if you don't know who you are. You will repeat the lessons over and over again and you'll have many opportunities to understand and discover your true nature. But the wise person begins the discovery immediately. It's like digging for gold. You can talk about the gold. You can just make a couple of holes with a shovel and say, "I'll come back next month" or you can really get into it. And get a pick axe and start chopping away. Until you discover the gold and dig it up, the same day. The choice is always yours. There's a story about a beautiful tree, a large beautiful tree. And on the lower branch, there lived a little bird and the bird used to hop from branch to branch, tremendous tree. It would eat sweet berries and it would sing and whistle and was very happy. Then it would hop on another branch and there were sour berries and it would get upset, stop singing till it found sweet berries again. And this went on for years, sweet berries, sour berries. It was happy when it found the sweet berries, unhappy when it found the sour berries. Isn't this like us? When we think we found something we like, we become very happy. But then when it changes like all things must change, we become miserable. And so the bird started to think about this and it flew around the tree. It happened to gaze way up to the top of the large tree and it saw a majestic big bird sitting there, a translucent shining bird. It looked so happy and so radiant. Doing nothing just sitting at the top of that tree, in bliss. And the little bird said, "Oh how I wish I could be like that big bird. Look how happy it is. It doesn't have to hunt for sweet berries or look for anything. It just sits there by itself, so radiant. I think I will fly up to it and discover its secret." So it started to fly up toward the big bird, but a quarter up the tree it saw some beautiful red berries and it stopped and started to eat the berries and they were delicious. So it forgot all about the big bird. It started to sing again, it was happy. Isn't this like us? We find something we like and we forget about spiritual life. And we say, "This is what I want, a new Jaguar, a new house, a new companion, a new something, but then after a while we become disgusted, disillusioned. So after a while the sweet berries ran out and there were only sour berries left on the tree and the bird again became disillusioned. So it started to fly around the tree again and looked way up on the top and saw the translucent radiant bird sitting there once again, so majestic, so happy and blissful. And again it said to itself, "This time, I'm going right to the top." But on the way up it went half way up the tree again, it saw some beautiful purple berries. It had not seen purple berries in years. It loved purple berries. So it stopped and started to eat up the purple berries and became very happy again, started to sing, eating berries. And again it's like us. We find a new companion. We get a new toy. We move to a new state, whatever we do. We think that's it, now I'm going to be real happy. But soon the berries were gone and again it was left with sour berries. So it flew around the tree and saw the big bird again. And it said, "This time I'm going straight to it and nothing is going to stop me, nothing," it resolutely made up its mind. So it started to fly up, but again three quarters up the tree it saw some orange berries and it loved orange berries. So it stopped and started to partake of the orange berries and again forgot about the big bird. And went on for months and months eating the berries until they were gone and only the sour berries were left. And again that's like us. We say we're resolutely going to go after spiritual life and that's where we're going, that's where we're headed. But then something happens. We discover some good humanhood. Something we like and we say, "To heck with the spiritual life, and we’re going after this instead." So we do that until we become disillusioned and we get tired of it. Again the bird saw sour berries and it got sad and upset. It flew around the tree again and this time it said, "Nothing is going to stop me. I'm going right to that big bird and find out who he really is. Nothing will stop me" And he flew right toward the big bird. It skipped all the berries, saw all kinds of berries on the way, it didn't care anymore, but went right to the big bird. As it got closer and closer, the big bird shone brighter and brighter and brighter until the light was unbearable. And the little bird landed right where the big bird was and you know what it discovered? It was the big bird all the time. And that's like us isn't it? We talk about God as far away. But we have no time because we've got to do our work. We've got to do our material work, that is. And we talk about God being too far. But we're going towards God, until we resolutely make up our mind to be on the spiritual path. And then we discover something interesting. We discover that we've been God all the time. That we are the only God there is. That we are the absolute reality. That we are pure intelligence, infinite wisdom. We discover that there's only one life and that life is absolute reality, sat-chit-ananda, parabrahman and we're at peace. Therefore the choice is always yours. In what direction do you want to go and I know sometimes it's hard. Some people have been on the spiritual path for many many years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years and they believe they have not gotten anywhere. But that isn't true, it appears that way. But remember, if you don't make it in this life, you'll make it after. But if you have been on a spiritual path you're gaining credits, you're accruing good merit to yourself. You can't help it. The worst thing you could ever do is to judge yourself. Never judge yourself. Don't even look at yourself too much. Realize your divine nature and do not allow your problems to get to you. Understand that you are not your problems. You are not the body. You're not the thoughts or the mind. And begin by controlling your thoughts. Do not allow your thoughts to become greater than you. No matter what your thoughts tell you, don't listen. Remember your thoughts are not your friend. Your thoughts try to confound you, confuse you. And they will tell you all kinds of things. Do not listen to your thoughts, even your good thoughts. Transcend everything, go beyond your thoughts to your bliss, to your joy and to your happiness. Your thoughts will take you away from this. It'll make you think all sorts of things. But if you realize that your mind is a trickster, you will not allow your thoughts to convey any message to you at all. As soon as the thoughts start to come, you ask yourself the question, "To whom comes these thoughts?" and they'll stop. "They come to me, well who is this me? Who is me? I am me. Well, who am I?" And you begin to search for the source of the I. And as you search, everything in your life begins to improve. As you search diligently, things improve because you're no longer reacting the same way to situations. Your reaction has become different, the situations maybe the same. As an example, when you hear about the Iraq, United States confrontation, before you become disturbed, you're thinking of a war, and you're thinking of man's inhumanity to man and you're worried about inflation and recession in United States. And all these things used to worry you. But as you advance spiritually, you realize that this is the way of the world. The world has always been like this and you see it differently. You begin to see love, compassion. So the world hasn't really changed, you've changed. You see the situation completely differently. You realize that all this is the Self and I am that. In other words what you realize is the first principle: "Everything Is A Projection Of Your Mind." Whatever you see is a projection of your mind. Therefore if you see something that's not right with another person, you're seeing yourself, aren't you? If you're seeing another person who is troubled or another person who has problems or if you're seeing anything wrong, doubts, apprehensions, suspicions. You have to remember that you have to have those qualities in order to be able to see them in another person. So as you grow, you start seeing through those things. And whatever anybody else does no longer disturbs you. And if it no longer disturbs you then that negative vibration cannot come near you and you're at peace. Any questions about that? SD: When you say not to judge yourself is that because you would be judging the ego which isn't real? R: Certainly, exactly, because you're always judging your experience, your outer experience and you can't judge that because that doesn't even exist. SD: I think in the past you've said something like, "To judge yourself or condemn yourself is blasphemy." (R: Yes.) Because you're talking about, in that case the real Self, right? R: What you're doing is you're denying the real Self. It's like saying, "That God is no good." So you're saying there's something wrong with you and there is not. It's only temporary, it only appears that way. It's an appearance. (SD: So even though you're judging the little self, as it were, that's blasphemous too?) Yes because you are the real Self. It's all an illusion like the snake and the rope. You think in the dark you're stepping on the snake but it's only a rope. It's a mistake, it's error. Therefore you do not judge yourself, you do not judge anyone else. You leave the world alone, but you're happy and you're blissful and you help others because that's your nature to do so. SD: That reminds me of one of my favorite of Maharshi's stories because he talks about realization being - he says it's like watching a trick of what looks to be the snake but it's really a rope. And he says once you've seen the rope you can never see the snake again. It's like any magic trick once you've seen how it works, you can't see it again, you know. (R: That's right.) And I think at the time he was talking about once you're realized it's impossible to become unrealized, you know? R: You have to have patience with yourself. That's another thing to remember. It doesn't appear that most of us become perfect overnight. So don't concern yourself if you make a mistake. SL: So another thing that you were saying too is that if we judge others, we will bring their vibrations to us. In other words, we're judging others and we see ourselves in others and the weaknesses in others… (R: And you're becoming weak also.) By judging them for that? (R: You become like them.) So it goes two ways then. (R: Yes.) Okay, and then you've said it's not until you let go then you get rid of the vibration, so you don't draw that vibration to yourself? R: Exactly. Your mind becomes calm. Your countenance becomes peaceful. You no longer feel those so-called negative things around you. (SL: So it's just a matter of accepting?) No you don't accept, you become your real Self. And the real Self is perfect bliss. There's nothing to accept. To accept means that you're yourself, your lower self and you're accepting something higher. But you're not to accept anything. You're to be, become, I am that I am. (SL: So you just live and let live, sort of?) Yes, but again you have to qualify that. But live and let live, if you see somebody suffering on the road, you don't allow that person to suffer, you get down and help the person, but you don't have any thoughts about it. You just do it. It doesn't mean again you become calculating and cold. It means you become loving and kind and you do what has to be done. But you're not involved in it mentally or physically or spiritually. Your body just does the things it's supposed to do. And the more spiritualized you become, the more you become of service to all of humanity. You become the servant to life. It's egotistical to think that you're superior to somebody else or you're better or that you know and they don't. As you become realized, you have more and more humility. You become humble and things no longer affect you and you no longer feel hurt. So you can help anybody and everybody without qualification. SF: Robert please, so the first principle in reality means, everything is a projection of the Self or is the Self itself? R: No the first principle is that everything is a projection of your mind. That begins to make you understand that you are not the mind, you are the Self. SD: Everything, you mean everything… (R: …in the world.) …material? R: Everything relative is a projection of your own mind. We're not talking about the Self, we're talking about the human mind. SF: Alright the Jiva or the egoic mind. (R: Yes.) But ultimately, yeah the mind also comes from the Self, of course. (R: Yes.) But I guess the point in the first principle I want to touch is that, you don't get enthused with the mind creations. R: No you don't, because you realize that everything is a result of your own mind, so why get enthused in them? (SF: No power there?) No ego. (SF: For the projections of the mind?) There's no power, 'cause there's no mind. (SF: Right.) That's why you don't get excited when you see something happening in front of you because you realize you're that yourself. And you're projectioning yourself. It's like you're a projector and you're projecting a picture on the screen. So the mind is the projector and the screen is the effect, the picture is the effect. The screen is the Self. Nothing changes the screen, but the pictures change according to your mind. But the screen always remains the same. Therefore the screen is like your real Self. It never changes. The pictures are like the world and your mind is like the projector. The projector and the mind have to be destroyed. The pictures have to be destroyed and only the screen remains, that's the truth. Only reality remains. (SF: And then again everything is Brahman?) Everything is Brahman, yes. (SF: Including also the play of the mind.) Of course. (SF: Ultimately?) Ultimately there's only oneness. There's only the Self and there's no mind and there's no play. There's no projection. That's the truth. (SF: There is no projector, no screen.) No. SD: Because the mind is part of illusion or maya. So his question was correct that ultimately everything is also the Self that's what he was saying. R: Everything reverts back to the Self. Everything is the Self. SF: Everything ultimately goes back to the source. R: Yes, to the source, because what appears to be real does not really exist. (SF: Right.) Only I-am exists. Self exists that's it. The Self exists just the way you are now. You are that. What I'm trying to say is, do not separate yourself with yourself. It's really a mistake to say, "Well I am not the Self because the Self is in me." The Self is not in you, the Self is you! You are that Self. But for the sake of talking, you want to place the Self some place so you say, "It's in my heart." When you look for it, it's in your heart. In reality there's only the Self and you don't exist at all. But when you talk about it, you place it some place. SD: So you're just led into the second principle… (R: Yes.) …that you're unborn, and you don't exist or disappear. (R: Yes.) That one leads to the other, doesn't it? R: It does. That's why you should practice the principles. SF: I was thinking if everything's a projection of the mind and the mind comes out from the Self - I don't know if that's right but mind… (R: Comes out of the Self…) …comes out of the Self, and then again goes back to the Self, isn't that the reason why these bhaktas talk about that everything is Shiva or everything is the Self? (R: Shiva, the Self, God are one.) So they're in wonderment and devotion to almost everything. (R: Yes, exactly.) Even the thoughts are asking… R: Yes this is why I say often, "The ground upon you stand is sacred ground." We should have reverence for everything. Because everything is the Self. SD: So you're talking on two different levels, when you're saying everything is a projection of the mind, you mean everything in the material world. (R: Yes.) When you say everything is the Self you're talking on a higher level. R: Everything is the Self as it appears. So you should have reverence for everything. I know it sounds complicated. (SD: No it's not, it's really two different levels, you're addressing to me.) It's really one level but it appears like two levels. Everything is sacred, everything. SD: Well how do you, or do you react when you watch the situation in Kuwait and see it then, is it like a movie to you? (R: I just watch, but I realize that's the Self.) Or do you realize that it's illusion? (R: Same thing.) That’s what I meant about the two levels the real Self is not illusion. SK: As the absolute it's not, it's illusion right? From the absolute it's the Self, as the relative it's illusion. (R: Exactly.) SD: That's good. Say that again? (SK: As the absolute it's all the Self, on the absolute level, on the relative level it's illusion.) Well that's what I meant about the two levels. I know what you mean in there's really only one level. The ultimate truth is one level. R: So when I look at something, when I look at you, I look at a chair, I look at a book, I see the Self. (SD: Do you see a portion of the Self or all of the Self?) It's all the Self. Everything is all the Self. (SD: It's individual.) It's hard to explain in words, but take this chair for instance. When most people look at this chair, they see a chair, but I see the Self as the chair. Or to put it in simple language: This is God, this chair is God. (SD: No matter what you look at it's God?) Yes. So you have no quarrel with anything. SK: The looking, the actual looking is also God? SD: That's assuring. You have a good understanding of this. SN: And you keep thinking of two levels but it's like when we're saying, people say that well it's an illusion therefore it's not real. But the idea is that nirvana and samsarra are the same thing. So though you say there's two, nirvana and samsarra, yet they're the same thing, that's where the one is, so really it's one. So it's not like the unreal is different from the real or that the Self is different from the manifestation, I guess. Nirvana and samsarra are the same thing so that's why wherever you look at you see the Self. SL: So it seems like it's different levels of consciousness for want of a better word? R: When you have to talk about it, it appears there's multiple levels. But when you keep quiet then it all comes to you as one. You see the more we get into the conversation we get into all kinds of things and all kinds of levels. (SD: Because we're trying to discuss the infinite with finite words.) And you can't do it. (SM: It can't be intellectualized can it?) No it cannot. That's why the only way is to go within yourself and discover it for yourself. But as we keep talking about it we get involved in the world. SK: Is it true that it's more like it's the illusion that we're separate from all this, more than that this is an illusion. (R: Exactly. We're not this at all.) At the same time we're not separate from it. (R: We're not separate from it, it’s all one.) SF: Which comes also… If I say that I don't exist in the sense of an egoic entity, everything is just as it is. Is that more or less a feeling? (R: Say that again.) Like if I…again it is imagination but as a helper I would say that I don't exist, I don't exist, but when I say that I am denying the egoic or the Jiva part. Then there is still there is something which subsists or is there… (R: The Self. The Self is always there.) …and there is nobody to distinguish anything. Things are as they are. R: Exactly, in the last analysis, you are the Self just the way you are. SK: But not as you think you are. (laughter) R: As long as you think your relative, then you're not that. (Laughter) SL: Yeah you're not supposed to think? R: But you are the Self just the way you are naturally and all is well and there's nothing wrong. See you can look at it this way. The substratum of all existence is harmony and out of harmony comes harmony. So everything is really harmonious. Except we've sort of been hypnotized and we see a different picture. It's all in the mind. The mind has betrayed us to make us believe that this is black and this is white. When in reality there's no black and there's no white. There just "is". You can only come to that conclusion in your own consciousness, by deep self-analyzation, vichara, self-inquiry and you'll come to that conclusion yourself. And then you will become omnipresent, and you will realize that everything is the Self. (SL: Why are we here on earth, in this physical form.) You're not, you think you are. (SL: Okay I think I am, but why?) If you're not, then there's no answer to that. SD: But why does she think she is? Why the illusion? How could the Self be illusion? R: There is no Self and there's no illusion. (SD: But I mean like the higher Self.) There is no illusion at all. You believe that there is an illusion but there is no illusion. (SD: But why do we believe there's an illusion?) You don't! None of this exists. (SD: I understand her question which is, then why is there even the appearance of illusion?) To whom is there an appearance? SL: Me. Okay, is it the ego? So that goes to the original question, okay. R: Of course, the ego does not exist. Do not give the ego power. Some people get hung up on the ego. And they say yes everything I feel is the ego, so it's the ego. They're inflating the ego by saying that. And the ego becomes stronger and stronger. (SL: Because the philosophy that I'm trying to wrestle with though I know what the answer is, in that philosophy is that the souls are the things that exist that's the "not me," but the Self that exists, you said Self. So I interpret Self as being the soul?) No. (SL: No?) The soul is another part of the body. It seems that when you give up your body there's a soul. It's just like an alter ego. SD: Oh so the idea of the soul and existing between lifetimes is also part of maya, illusion? R: It's all maya. All the planes are maya, the causal planes, the mental planes, karma, none of that exist. SN: First principle: Everything is a projection of the mind, everything. R: And for somebody who doesn't know that or doesn't understand it, it appears that after they drop their body they go to a different plane, and they go through all kinds of experiences, but it's still an illusion. SL: It must take a lot of patience for someone who has been realized to have to answer questions from people like me. From me that doesn't exist. R: No, on the contrary, on the contrary. SN: Who has patience? There's no one there. SL: Yeah, but from the projection of my mind, my philosophies was that there was a soul which you know, according to these philosophies, the soul doesn't exist, just the Self. But from the earthly ignorant plane that I'm on - what the ultimate question is, it seems that some people are just denying everything of the Self, you can't really enjoy food, you don't enjoy anything else because the ultimate goal is just like the Catholics the ultimate goal is just to be with God. R: Well you can't put it like that because the Self enjoys itself. SL: That's why it seems like what little I know of certain philosophies, certain Buddhist philosophies, it's kind of like for being on earth, in this form. (R: That's right.) It's a crime for even being here in this form. We're being condemned for being here on this earthly plane in this form. So it's kind of like, well if you're here why not smell the flowers too? Why not let the me, the Self, use whatever vehicle it's in, whatever it's invited in, to just feel and help bring joy, at least for this physical body and once again my ignorance for not being enlightened. You know it's like why are you wrong for being what you are? (R: You're not!) Or projecting what you think you want. (R: You're not.) Because it's like denying food, denying enjoyment of this earthly plane. SK: Why is it terrifying? SL: No just talking to people about different philosophies of Buddhism and everything else. R: It becomes very confusing. That's why the best thing you can do for yourself is to quiet your mind. (SL: Yes.) And when your mind becomes quiet you become more beautiful. And you will enjoy everything. We do not deny ourselves at all. SD: Yeah just because you're not in the movie doesn't mean you don't enjoy the movie. SL: True. I believe in enjoying because that to me makes me happy. R: Yes, but you’ll enjoy it in a little different way. As an example: I love to take in fresh flowers at my breakfast table because they're beautiful, right? (tape break tape restarts as student continues.) SL: …acceptance is just basically just letting be? R: Just being your Self. That's all you have to do. SL: So it's the two ways also with the denial… (SK: It's beyond accepting and rejecting, beyond that.) Yeah. R: Just be your Self. (SL: Just that you used that word denial, so I'm taking your words of physical earthly interaction which is projected by the mind to try to understand what I was feeling.) So remember again that this is not a philosophy. A philosophy is usually dry words and this is not a wordy teaching at all. We are not a philosophy at all. It's more the realization. It's more of a quietness, an emptiness. It is not a denial of anything and it is not an acceptance of anything. It is a total emptiness, a quietness, a peace, a love, an ultimate oneness. That's what we are, sat-chit-ananda. That's our true nature. So when we look at something, we see joy and love and peace, we do not become ecstatic. We do not become overwhelmed. We do not become sad or angry. We just enjoy the Self at all times and it never changes. It's always the same. SD: So you're always in bliss, always? R: See I can't tell, because I don't know what the word is. (SD: But sat-chit-ananda includes bliss, so…) They're words but the person who's experiencing that does not know it. (SD: That's true.) Because there has to be somebody to enjoy it and if there is no one there who can enjoy it? (SD: I didn't say enjoying bliss, I said, always in bliss.) But it's a word. (SD: That’s true, I guess I get hung up on words.) Well we're discussing words so… SK: It implies two, there's something to be in something. R: We have to talk so we have to use words. SD: That’s right, implies separation. R: Yeah, as long as we're talking like this we have to use words. But the reality is, that is the ajnani's, that attribute these words to the Jnanis. Ramana Maharshi never said, "I am in bliss," or "I am happy," or "I am filled with joy," but his disciples said it about him. He didn't know what he was. SL: I guess it goes back to who's the I? (R: Who is the I? Yeah.) (students continue discussing point) SF: Robert, about this thing of ignorance actually we cannot fathom how the Jnani sees reality. We can just talk and talk about that. The Jnani tries to describe as much as he can to try to help us and to direct us, however what I was wondering is what about the ones in the relative level to feign ignorance and just be silent or advocate ignorance? R: A few months ago I was speaking of divine ignorance. It's okay to say, "I am divinely ignorant." Divinely ignorant means that we do not know what anything is. If you come to think of it, we know nothing. We don't know what a dog is, or a cat, or a tiger, or a human being, or a tree, we have no idea what it is. It just appeared on this earth the same time we did. That's called divine ignorance. When you admit to yourself I do not know what anything is. You see a rock, where did come from. Where did the first rock come from? What came first the seed or the tree, the chicken or the egg? We don't know, it's a mystery. So that the first thing we should know as spiritual beings, we should plead divine ignorance. It's your ego that tries to say, I know this and I know that and I know everything, but we really know nothing. We have no idea why we're here? Do we? We have no idea why anything exists. Just understanding that makes us relatively happy, because nothing is our fault, because we don't know why it is. We have no idea why anything exists. It's later on when you work on yourself that you discover, well nothing really exists, everything is emptiness. Only the Self exists. But until then, you give your ego a blow when you tell it, “I don't know why anything exists,” because the ego wants you to know. It tells you, "You want to be smart? You want to be intelligent? You don't want to be a dummy do you?" And has an answer for every question. But when you say, "No, I really do not know what anything is," then you're pleading divine ignorance and that's good. SD: So who asks these questions that we come up with, the ego, our egos? R: You use your mind to destroy your mind. (SD: Oh that's right, turning it on itself, by confusion or whatever.) Exactly. (SD: So it can't be put into words what part of us inquires.) It's your mind that inquires. It inquires about itself and the deeper it inquires the more it disappears. SF: She’s still. (SD: Yeah I'm trying I can't seem to quite do it.) (laughter) R: This is why I always tell you, try to keep your life simple. Do not make your life complicated. Don't have too many opinions about anything. Try to be still, quiet and realize you don't know anything, because you don't. Does anyone disagree with that. SD: Are you kidding, who would say yes at this point. (laughs) R: Well somebody can say, well I know why this chair is here. SN: He said we don't know anything and in an earlier satsang you were saying, well the only thing we know or if there is anything we know, that we think we know, first principle keeping in mind, is that I exist and as long as I exist you can work on yourself because you can find out who exists through self-inquiry. But when you inquire who exists you find out that… (SD: …no one.) SD: And yet I remember telling you one time I had read that Krishnamurti said, "The ego would never annihilate itself," and you said that that was true on the relative level. Do you remember what you meant by that? R: Well on the relative level it fights you very badly. It brings up all kinds of things from past lives, from this life to confound you. But if you do not react to it, if you do not fight it, but rather inquire, "To whom does it come?" it becomes weaker and weaker and weaker until it's annihilated. SN: Is there a difference between the ego and the mind because the ego would not want to destroy itself, yet it's the mind that is the tool. R: The mind comes first. The mind creates the ego and the body. (SN: So it's not the ego destroying itself, it's more the mind destroying the ego?) It's more than ego, it's not the mind destroying the ego. They're usually the same terms. We break them down so you understand what I mean. But there's only the mind and everything is a projection of the mind. The ego is a projection of the mind, the body is a projection of the mind, the world is a projection of the mind. So when you go back to the mind and you quiet the mind, there's no ego. SL: You mentioned an answer to Dana's question you mentioned, past lives? With the word past lives, isn't there karma and soul and all of that? R: Yes, but as long as you believe that, it exists, so you have to work with it. SN: That's why you say that everything is an illusion because as long as you believe it. Not that everything is illusion, that you see you're separate from everything is the illusion. R: See this is why when I make my personal confession to you, I say there's no mind, there's no Self, there's no enlightenment, there's noone trying to become enlightened, there's no God, there are no others, there are no principles, there's nothing. (SD: But you do say there is the Self and the Self is all that is.) That's a word. (SD: Are you now saying there's no Self?) Who is the Self? (SD: Everything.) Yes that's how it appears. But in the end the Self doesn't even exist it's also a word. Because if we start thinking about the Self, we start thinking of an entity. How else can we imagine the Self? When I say there's only the Self, what do you think the Self is? (SD: The oneness of all things.) And what is that? (SD: Everything.) So it has to be one. Who is the one? (SD: I never understood before that there was not one. I thought the Self was the one.) The appearance is the one. The first appearance is the one, I. That's the one. And out of I springs everything else. (SD: And I is in delusion, I can see what you're saying.) SM: It's just the all, Robert? It's just the all? R: Even the all is no good. (laughter) (SD: We're all wrong.) (laughs) SN: Because who thinks that there's an all who perceives that there's an all? Who perceives that there's a Self? When you're at that state there's no one to perceive it. There's nothing to perceive. Just be. R: As long as we're using words there's ultimate oneness. But when the words stop - see this is why the practices I give you, are to quiet the mind. The only thing you really have to do is to quiet your mind. What do think self-inquiry is? It's to quiet the mind, that's all. It's the fastest thing available to quiet the mind and when the I disappears the mind is quiet. Then you know. What do you know? Don't ask me. (laughter) I don't know. It just feels good. (laughter) SF: Yeah about feeling good Robert. When you are doing inquiry sometimes you have a absence of thought for a little bit. (R: Yes.) But then when I realize about this absence of thought I'm already thinking. (R: Yes.) And then there some other times in which there is no thought, I don't know about the absence of thought neither but there is a little bit of good, I mean feeling good. Feeling like a little bit blissful. (R: That's the true state.) Is that the true state? R: Where there are no thoughts in between thoughts. (SF: Right, however they are very fast and then you again go on thinking.) Yes, in the beginning they are very fast. SF: Yeah. One of the last satsangs you pointed that we should reject everything. And I was wondering about these questioning about these little periods of bliss. Should I go back ask, "Who do they come to?" R: If you can think about it reject it. (SF:When you are in that process of thinking it, it's time to…) Reject it. (SF: …reject it. You don't care about if it comes back or not?) Exactly. You do not look for experiences. You reject them. When it comes really, it comes by itself. (SF: So when it starts creating a body in your mind…) Reject it. (SF: So it's time to kill it?) Yeah. When it comes by itself, it comes as no-thought. That's incomprehensible for a human being to understand. But it's just no-thought. When there's no-thought you will know. SD: That's what he was saying but his mind says, "Oh I just had a moment of nothought," and that's what you reject. The thought about the no-thought. R: No you reject everything. See when you're really having that feeling. There will not be any body left over to reject. (SD: So can we taste Self bliss?) You can taste but it's still illusory. So you should reject it. (SD: Why is it illusory?) Because he can think about it. See when the real thing comes there's nobody left to think. The thought process has been annihilated. It's like you live in the moment. SL: So the body knows what it's supposed to do? R: The body will take care of itself. The body comes under a different program. (SL: Why is it some people just by the bodies program or the existence of that Self, some people might not be balanced, the spiritual and physical might not be balanced.) That's not true. In reality when you discover who you are. The body is very balanced and it does better work and does whatever it's supposed to do better than ever. And you're always happy and blissful and feeling good physically, no matter how it looks to anybody else. (SL: Otherwise it goes back to what you said, this entity if it were me the I or whatever, I would let my body react to take care of whatever I see needs to be done and then move on.) Yes. (SL: Completely spontaneous, okay.) Exactly! SF: When I am sleeping the Self is taking care of my body, nurturing it? R: Yes and you have nothing to do with it. That's how it takes care of your body when you awaken. Same way. SL: We just have to listen to it, our Self so it can take care of it. (R: Yes.) SD: Do you have to listen to something or it just happens? (R: It happens.) SN: Well Robert who breaths then, is it the Self? Is it the mind? R: The Self has nothing to do with the breath. The breath is part of your ego. (SN: So it's the mind?) The mind is breathing and it keeps on breathing until it stops. SD: I thought it was the body who was breathing. R: The body, the mind are the same thing. But we have to have patience. That's very important. SF: Robert do you know the fact or legend about Krishnamurti - He was a young 16 years old - I don't know, was he a reincarnation of Shiva? He sat just in silence and he had disciples or listeners to hear him, older than himself and he sat in silence. And I think that the legend says that the people who were around him got enlightened or something… R: That's true, he never spoke. (SF: Due to his presence, they don't mention for how long or so.) That's the story yes. (SF: What does that exactly refer. Does that refer to the concept of grace?) You can call it grace, that's what we were talking about in another satsang. What we’re doing here is we are abiding in the Self as Ramana Maharshi did. So we can say we have Ramana Maharshi's grace upon us. SD: Isn't that the meaning of Darshan, silent teaching? R: No not silent teaching. Darshan is a vision of light. There is a visual transmutation. (SD: Oh I thought Darshan was like what you got from being in the presence of a Master being in silence.) It's a grace in the form of light, a vision of light. SK: A foreseen reality said simply. (R: Yes.) SL: What is grace, what do you mean by grace? R: Grace is always available, you just have to wake up to it. (SD: But define grace.) Grace is goodness, mercy. SK: Helps you on the relative level. SD: What he was talking about a story that grace was bestowed in silence and Maharshi has said that the guru can bestow grace by thought, by look and by touch and all of those are silent. (SF: Excuse me I was referring to transmission.) Transmission of grace? R: There is such a thing too, yes. (SD: Could you further explain that though?) Well an enlightened person is something like a current in a voltage, of a high voltage and when you're with that person you pick up on that voltage. So there are some physical teachers like Ramana Maharshi who can give you a look, or a touch, or by silence and if you're receptive you pick up a lot of grace and knowledge. (SD: I think you're that way?) Who knows. But all those things are possible. What you have to do is make yourself a good receiver and you make yourself a good receiver when you stop worrying and you stop getting involved too much in the world and you start loving yourself. SD: Quieting the mind would make you a good receiver, right? R: Yes, same thing, when you do those things your mind quiets. (SD: We're talking about like a radio receiver in a way, wouldn't we?) Yes. When you love your Self, you become quiet you stop condemning, you stop condoning, you stop making decisions too much. You become quiet. But that doesn't mean that you sit home and do nothing. It means your body will do what it's supposed to do. But your mind will be quiet. (SD: So even what we refer to as decisions will be spontaneous reactions, right?) Yes. Like a tree, the tree does not have to think about growing fruit, by it's very nature fruit grows. The sun shines, the grass grows. The same power that takes care of that takes care of the body all by itself. (SD: The lilies of the field that Christ taught us.) Yes. Let's play a little music. (music played) SM: Robert, I saw on the top on one of the sheets you had I think it said Jnana-Marga. Could you elaborate a little bit on that. R: Jnana-Marga means the path of Jnana. That's the name of our group. (SD: And Jnana means knowledge.) (SM: That I know but I was wondering about the Marga.) It means, the path. (SD: So there would be lots of margas right. I mean there's…) Lots of margas, too many. (SD: What are some of the others? Like Jnana-Marga, Bhakti-Marga, would there be bhakti- Marga?) Anything you want to say with Marga you just put it in. (SM: Oh I see.) SD: Path of knowledge. Marga means path, Jnana means knowledge. SL: What about healing? I know that it's within the Self. R: We talked about that a couple of weeks ago actually. You have to ask yourself, who needs healing. Who actually needs healing. Find out who has to be healed. Healing is a funny thing. It has a lot to do with karma and the body. I find from experience if you leave your body alone it has the power to heal itself. The more you fool with it, the worse it gets. (laughs) There's a self healing mechanism in the body. Isn't that right, Horat? (SF: I believe so.) There's a self healing in the body that knows how to take care of itself. SF: Every seven years they said the body and all its organs and tissues tend to renew itself. R: Of course you can help it by eating the proper foods, I guess. SD: But what about healers and what they call spiritual healers? R: I think that's all karmic. (SD: If you're supposed to be healed you will, if you're not you won't?) Yeah, before you came into your body you knew exactly what was going to transpire and you know when you're going to leave the body and when you're going to die and when you're going to be sick and whatever. Everything has already been planned. So if you're supposed to be healed, that's already been planned also. (SD: Might have been planned that you would meet a healer and…) Yes, sure. (SD: …it would be karmic or not? If it didn't work that would be karmic.) Yes. SK: Either way you don't know. (R: That's right.) There is no way to know. SD: True. Well Jesus' healings always seemed to relate to a lesson, they always seem to make a point. (SK: I think a healing without a lesson being given is useless, it doesn't help the person they've got to learn their lesson. I don't even know if it could be done actually.) I just know that the woman who touched his robe and he said your faith has made you whole - he did not deny anything for lack of a better word - denying that he'd done anything, but her faith had done it and that was the lesson. But the lesson was that her faith had made her whole, you know? R: People want to live forever and we can't. SD: Can I read what Nisargadatta says, just the cover of his book. Rather interesting, right if I brought my glasses? "The real does not die, the unreal never lived. Imagine a big building collapsing, some rooms are in ruins and some are intact. But can you speak of the space as ruined or intact? It is only the structure that suffered and the people who happened to live in it. Nothing happened to the space itself. Similarly nothing happens to life when forms break down and names are wiped out. The goldsmith melts down old jewelry to make new. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment. The real you is timeless and beyond birth and death. The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long." R: That's good. SD: I just love that, you know. I keep bringing it for Arnold hoping that he'd be here because he asked me to borrow it. I hope he's not still ill, but he must be. I better call him and see. R: But that's very true. Most people especially Westerners will try to preserve our bodies for as long as possible, why? There's nothing wrong with dying. It's not bad, just another experience. (SD: I think because they fear annihilation, they think that they've lost something it's the fear of non-existing.) Yes of course while you're alive it's good to be in radiant health. So you don't have to suffer while you are living. (SD: That's what Yogananda said, he said, "You can reach enlightenment in an ill body, but it's much less distracting if you're well.") Umm, yes. SM: You can reach enlightenment in an ill body? R: Oh yes. (SM: Is that preordained also Robert?) Everything is preordained. (SM: I mean your enlightenment?) Yes. SK: But it's not limited, it's not fixed? (R: It's not fixed but it's preordained.) SD: Preordained in what way? Preordained as in which lifetime you will wake up? R: No you know the lifetime before, if you had a lifetime before that you're going to be enlightened in that lifetime. (SD: Do you know at what point between lifetimes?) Between lifetimes. (SD: And then do you remember it?) No you don't remember it, but you find it. You do whatever you have to do. (SD: And didn't you say that someone who reaches enlightenment usually has been approaching it for several lifetimes?) They have been practicing sadhanas before. (SD: So we do get credit?) Oh yes. (SD: Not like the slate is wiped clean.) (laughter) SL: That's like the journey of the soul that goes from life to life, though Robert says there's no soul. (SD: I know what you're talking about, that entity or whatever. It's all on a certain level he doesn't deny it.) R: See, this is why we should get rid of all conceptions and just go and find ourselves and get rid of everything and be free once and for all. (SD: I sure don't want to come back. I know people who act resistant to self-realization because they say they're looking forward to their other reincarnations.) Well they don't understand. (SD: They can't relate to that.) SM: That's sick, really sick. (laughter) SD: I guess they think that realization is the end of adventure or something. And they look on different reincarnations as adventure but… (SK: Either they're sick or they're realized.) Well if you were realized you wouldn't look forward to future reincarnations. You wouldn't look forward to anything. (SK: Unless you had the motivation to help others.) Right. That puts you into a different category. SN: The Buddhist say that, “I will not be liberated until the whole world awakens.” SD: Now that's depressing, that. (laughter) SK: More accurately is, “I will not take the final liberation,” until everyone has brought back to whatever levels of enlightenment they can reach. R: That's a certain sect of Buddhism. (SK: Yeah.) There are other Bhodhisatvas that don't do that. (SK: Huh?) There another sect of Bhodhisatvas that don't do that. (SK: What do they do?) What we're doing. SD: But actually there is a certain truth to that because you are the whole world. R: Yes but they want to stay in the relative world. SK: They make a vow actually. But then they attain the state where they consciously know when they are going to be reborn into the next life and they write a letter or note and go and tell someone or not? So that's an area of control that's… R: But to get back to health again. It really makes no difference whether you're sick or healthy in the long run. It has nothing to do with it. To remember that you are the Self is more important than whether you're sick or healthy. SD: Because you're only sick or healthy in the dream anyway? R: Of course. Like we were discussing the other time. We have no idea of the people who Jesus healed, how many stayed healed. They could have reverted back to sickness the next day. And I was talking about Lazarus remember? Being brought back from the dead. Well Lazarus was about fifty years old to begin with and at that time the life span was about fifty. (laughs) So even if he was being brought back from the dead, how long did he live after that? (SD: Yeah makes you wonder? But again, I don't remember what the point was but all those miracles had a point.) To give people more faith. (SD: Yeah, it was less to raise him from the dead than to prove to the people that Christ was who he said he was, right?) Yes. SK: You know at the time of Christ there were a lot of people claiming to be Christ. R: But here we are. What are we going to do with our lives? That's the question. SD: It's okay to look for healers because if you look for healers that's what you're predestined to do. (R: Yes.) And whether they help you or not is also predestination? (R: Of course.) So it's neither good nor bad. (R: It’s okay.) SL: What about healing others? And that's also predestined too? To be able to heal others. R: That's okay. Well look at it as a profession. If you're a professional healer that's what you do. It's like being an accountant. (SD: (laughs) Only a lot more rare.) It's a human profession. (SD: Horats a healer in a way. He’s a physician.) We do whatever we have to do. SL: There are other ways to healing aren't there? R: Through food, through fasting, through prayer, through meditation, finding a healer, all kinds of ways. (SL: The unconventional ways such as some people who seem to be able to heal just with their hands.) Yes, all things are possible. SD: But wouldn't the thing to remember be again that that is happening within the grand illusion. Even if it’s on the astral plane or whatever all those levels are a part of maya. R: Oh yes. (SN: What do you do once you're healed? Then what?) Then you get sick again.) (SD: …Or not. It depends on your karma I guess.) SF: In the ultimate sense, it doesn't matter what we do or don't do. (R: That's right.) We can do whatever we want to. Our reservations we may have about certain actions, I guess is also in the script. Our enthusiasm we have is also in the script, that Robert told us. R: True, I know certain people with some diseases, who go spend their life traveling the world trying to heal themselves. What they're doing is wasting their time and using that time properly by trying to find themselves. SL: What about things like astral projection? What is that? Is that what you experience? R: That's part of the psychic realms. SD: Which are also part of maya, just another level. Slightly different from the earth plane. R: In the Upanishads it states, that if you get caught up in the psychic levels you can be caught for thousands of incarnations, going around and around in psychic realms. SD: Isn't that perhaps due to the fact that some people think that's the end goal. (R: Alot of people do, yes.) Being psychically gifted or being able to astrally project something. They see that as an end, rather than just another level of illusion. SK: It's like another body traveling the physical body, traveling the astral plane, it's a subtler plane and it's just as material in a sense, it's hard to… SF: And probably without knowing we have shared a great deal of these other levels of experience. (R: Could be, yes.) We are just not aware now. R: True. As you advance spiritually alot of psychic levels open up for you, but you're supposed to go beyond it and not get caught up there. (tape ends)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. What can I tell you that you do not already know? I can only give my own confession. When I use the pronoun "I," I refer to omnipresence. So when I make my confession I do not speak of myself. It involves all of us. I am is consciousness. Consciousness is omnipresence. When I say, "I am that I am" it means in reality we are nothing but pure consciousness. It's like a chalkboard. You may draw pictures on the chalkboard of Indians and they're fighting the cowboys, but what happens to the chalkboard? Nothing. You can erase that picture and draw another picture. This time you're drawing the beach and the sun and the sand and it's a beautiful balmy day about seventy-five degrees. What happens to the chalkboard? Nothing. Now you erase that and you draw a storm or hurricane. People are getting blown away - winds ninety miles an hour - what happens to the chalkboard? Nothing. This is true of our lives. Whatever you experience you're going through, whatever the experience maybe. I can assure you that it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Whether you're going through a horrendous experience, a beautiful experience, you are like the chalkboard. It is only a picture, a play on consciousness. You are free. You are bright and shiny all the time. Like the sun. Sometimes the clouds cover the sun, do you say, "There's no sun?" When the clouds dissipate, the sun shines once again in all its glory and splendor. So, when you appear to have problems, whatever they may be. Do not go about trying to solve your problems like everybody else. But rather remove the clouds of darkness. Allow the clouds to dissipate. How do you do that? By quieting the mind. When the mind is quiet. The sun of your heart will shine once again and you will be free of problems. [Break in tape as Robert begins self confession for everyone] I-am that. I-am that absolute reality. That was never born and will never cease to exist. I-am pure intelligence. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow. I-am empty space. Nirvana. I-am sat-chit-ananda — being, existence, bliss. I-am bliss consciousness. Water cannot drown me. Fire cannot burn me. I have always been and will always be. This is the truth it is unchanging. Like the chalkboard. No matter what pictures appear it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I abide in the Self. The Self is my protection. The Self is my Self. I may appear to have a body, a mind, but this is an untruth. This is hypnosis, mesmerism, illusion, maya. In reality I am not the body or mind. I am not the doer. I am pure consciousness, absolute reality, parabrahman. That is the truth. Ah, somebody called me this morning, she isn't here today. She wanted me to say something about spiritual healing. Think about that spirit, spiritual healing? Who has to be healed spiritually, Who can tell me? Student: Nobody Robert: That's the answer, that's right. There is no one who needs spiritual healing. But in our delusion we see a different picture. People tell me, "Well, Christ healed people, how come?" How come? I don't know. Because he felt like, I guess. That was his dharma. But, did you ever wonder what happened to those people after they were healed? (laughs) Take for instance Lazarus, that he brought back from the dead. To begin with Lazarus was about 50 years old and in those days to live to 50 years old was like 90 years old today. He was considered old. So when he brought him back from the dead, how long did he live, after that? Did he live forever? A year, a month, a day? Nobody knows. The people he healed from blindness, leprosy or whatever, how long did they stay healed? He said, "Go and sin no more!" meaning, do not keep thinking the way you're thinking. Because it is your mind that caused your so-called problem. Of course, they didn't understand what he was talking about and you can't change your mind so fast. So apparently they reverted back to their sickness. So it would seem. If you abide in the Self, there's no one that has to be healed. There's another story about Ramana Maharshi. One of his female disciples, who had been with him for about forty years or so. She was a devotee, was lying and living in the house of a disciple. Remember the difference between a disciple and a devotee. A disciple is someone who occasionally comes to the meetings and who reads all kinds of materials and gets confused and goes to a hundred different meetings a week and never practices anything, that's a disciple. A devotee is someone who stays with the meeting or with the person and lives for that meeting and for that teaching. So anyway, his devotee was in bed dying of cancer and a disciple was taking care of her. And she said to her, "Look what's happening to you" and she started crying. "Is this what Bhagvan has done to you? If this is Bhagvan then I don't want any part of him." This is the disciple talking. "Look at you, you're emaciated, you're skin and bones, you're dying, how could this happen to you, you were such a devotee to Bhagvan for forty years?" Hearing this, the devotee shot up in bed, she shot up fast and she said, "You fool is this what Bhagvan means to you? It is your mind that sees this picture. I am not dying, how can I die? It is you who see this picture. That's why you cry. You think that I am a body and you feel sorry for the body so you become upset with Bhagvan, me and yourself. Can't you see that I am not the body. There's no one to be sick, there's no one to die." And she had a beautiful look and smile on her face and with that she lied back down and she left her body. And she had the most gracious look. A beatific look on her smile. When Bhagwan heard this story he said, "She's not coming back, she's emancipated." What do we see? When we look at the world do we see lack, limitation, man's inhumanity to man. Do we sickness poverty, wars or do we see love, harmony, peace, joy? What we really see is ourselves. If you become hurried and worried and you're always believing something negative is going to come your way and you're always making plans ahead of time, to save yourself, you're really killing yourself. You do not understand that your mind has created that picture for you and the way to handle it is to not try to improve the condition but to slow down your mind. To make the mind quiescent, quiet, still, peaceful, placid. When the mind becomes placid and quiet and still, divine harmony automatically ensues. Every negative condition you see in the world is a lie. Every positive condition you see in the world is a lie. Reality is beyond positive and negative. Why do you see these things? Why do you worry and fret about your life or about the life of someone else? What can possibly happen to you? Where can you go? Who suffers? Only the body-ego-mind suffers. To the extent that you can realize that you are not the body-ego mind, to that extent do you become totally, absolutely free. I think I told you this story about when I was with Nimkarali Baba. And one of his devotees came to him and said, "Master, my husband is dying, only you can save him." And he was a funny old guy, he looked around and he said, "Me? I can save him?" he looked to all his devotees and he said, "What should I do?" and his devotees said, "Go save him." So he said, "Okay." So we all trudged a mile down the road, to a little shack and there was her husband in bed with candles all around him, lying there. Nimkarali Baba looked at him and as he was looking the candles started flickering and they went out. So Nimkarali Baba started to run back to his Ashram and everybody ran with him. When he got back there they asked him, "Master why did you run away? What happened?" And he turned around and he said, "Ah God wants him to die." And that was the end of that. In other words, what a persons dharma is, is going to happen, but you have absolutely nothing to do with it. That includes yourself. Whatever your body is going through has been preordained before you took on this so-called body. And your body’s going to go through whatever it has to go through. You have to realize that you are not the body and you have absolutely nothing to do with it. To that extent that you realize this truth to that extent will you become happy and peaceful and you will stop worrying and fretting and stop trying to change things. You will be peaceful by yourself, at home, wherever you are. You will be in the world but not of the world. So spiritual healing is a lie, because it presumes somebody is sick or somebody is out of sorts or somebody is suffering from something. Whether it's depression or lack of companionship, whatever it may be. This is all a lie and you have to start knowing the truth. Look into yourself. This doesn't mean that you should sit down and do nothing. It means whatever your body's meant to do, it's going to do. Even though it doesn't exist. Your body is really your Atman. It is pure consciousness. It is absolute reality. This is what your body is. This is the reason why you should never put yourself down and call yourself names and think you're bad or you’re weak or there's something wrong with you. You are not what appears. When you make statements like that, negative statements about yourself, what you're really doing is getting pulled back into maya, deeper and deeper and deeper into illusion, into body-mind consciousness, into the dream and the dream becomes more real for you and you get caught up in it completely. It's like you're watching a movie and instead of watching, you jump into the screen and want to play a part of the movie and you forget that you're not part of the movie. But you start acting out the movie until you get so caught up in it that you actually think that you're in the movie. That's how it is now. Think about yourselves and the socalled experiences that you're going through. How deep are you caught up in them? Think, you can tell about the way you feel. If you fear, if you have doubts, apprehension, suspicion, then you know you're really caught up in your slime. I'm thinking of the green slime I drink every morning. (laughter) So you say, "What about you? You drink green slime, how come?" Well what I do every morning is I just get up. Spontaneously I throw everything in the blender, I don't think about it. Whether it's making me sick or well or whatever it's doing. And I mix it all together and then I pour it on the granola and then I eat it. I happen to enjoy the taste or I wouldn't eat it. I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it. But when I'm finished that's the end of it. I don't think about it. I don't condemn it or justify it, I just do it. So I go about everything that way, spontaneous. Now you think, if you think about that you are not the body, your body will not function properly. Or you will get into trouble. You will only get into trouble when you're putting on an act. In other words when you're pretending to be spiritual. But when you're a real devotee of truth, of the Self, automatically, your body so-called is well taken care of. You have intuition. It comes by itself you don't even know it's intuition. You do the right things for all concerned. And it happens by itself and it can be real funny like this story I'm going to tell you. There was once a real cheap skate. Real cheap, had millions of dollars. But always cried poor mouth. Couldn't afford a bus fare so he walked. Couldn't afford to buy a glass of lemonade so he was thirsty, real cheap. I’m sure you know people like that. Well he got old and was about to die and he had guilt feelings because he never helped anybody else with his money. He just hoarded it, he had millions of dollars saved in the banks. But he believed in heaven and hell. So he kept worrying about this. "So what shall I do?" He consequently sent for a priest, a minister and a rabbi. And he thought about this and he said, "Listen, here's what I'm going to do. I am going to give you each three million dollars if you pray for me to go to heaven." So they all talked about it and looked at each other and they said, "Well three million dollars, not bad. (laughter) They said, “Okay, we'll do it." So he made out his will and they all signed it. Six months later the Priest, the Rabbi and the Minister received a notice that the guy was dying and was going to die. They went to his side and he looked at them and he said, "Oh okay I'm going to give you the money," but he started to think about this. And a thought came to him, and the thought said, "What if they discover something to bring me back from the dead years from now? And I’ll be cured and healed and I won't be dead anymore. So if I give them my money now, I won't have anything when I come back." But then he wasn't sure and so he said, "Okay, here's what I'll do, I'll give you each five million dollars instead of three with this condition. When I die and you file pass my coffin, you each have to drop a million dollars in the coffin. So if I come back and they discover something to cure me and bring me back from the dead, I'll have a nice amount of money." So they all looked at him like he was crazy and they talked it over and they said, "Well what the heck four million is better than nothing," and they agreed. He finally died. And he had a funeral and his casket was laid open and everybody filed passed and they looked. The minister filed passed the coffin and looked down at him and he said, "Well you son of a bitch, I don't know what I'm doing and what you're going to do with the money, but a promise is a promise," and he threw a million dollars in the coffin. Next the priest came by and he said, "Well, this is all crazy, but this is what you want okay" and he threw a million dollars in the coffin. Now the Rabbi watched all this and he said, "There must be some solution to this." And he was going to Jnana-Marga meetings, the Rabbi. And he was working from his intuition. So he filed by and looked at the money in the casket. He took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for three million dollars and picked up the two million in cash and he said, "When they find a cure for you you can cash your cheque. (students laugh) And isn't this like us. We always imagine somebody's going to heal us. We go and see all these healers, psychics, channelers, everybody in town. We want advice from psychic readings. We want to know what's going to happen to us. What can possibly happen to you, if you were never born to begin with? You have no history. You are pure consciousness. Forget about healings. Forget about psychics. Forget about readers and channelers. Look to your Self for the answers. Everything is within you. Learn to be still. Find out who's worried, who fears, who's unhappy, who's depressed, who's sick and you will say, "I am, but who am I?" and follow the I to its source. And the "I" will disappear of its own accord. The realization will come, that you are absolute reality and that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. (tape break as Robert continues) Govinda and Gopala are different names for Krishna. Gopala is baby Krishna. There's only one reason why people suffer, and that is because they identify with the body-mind phenomena. That is the only reason there's no other reason. I know you can give me a lot of reasons but they are not real. If you take your mind off your body and then you get rid of your mind completely who's left to suffer? And you must ask yourself, "Who sees the suffering? I do. Well, who's the "I" that sees that suffering?" Find out. Follow the I and see who suffers. Any questions about that? Any questions about anything? Remember I am not a lecturer. SL: What does it mean to follow the I? R: It means to abide in your Self. The I is your Self. It starts out as the ego but as you follow the I, it becomes your Self. And your Self has no existence. Therefore, it becomes no-thing, emptiness, space. Like the blackboard, the chalkboard. Everything happens around it, on it, but it itself is not affected. That's what it means to follow the I. The I becomes your Self and you abide in your Self. SD: Robert, maybe if you explain self-inquiry and that will maybe explain following the Ithought. (R: Well they know self-inquiry.) Pardon? R: They know about self-inquiry, don't you? SD: (Asks another student) Do you understand how suffering follows the I-thought? SL: I can understand it subtly. SM: Egolessness in all things. R: Exactly, there is no cause for existence. If there is no cause for existence, there is no cause for suffering or for anything else. It simply has no cause. It didn't come from anywhere. History is like a dream. It never existed. When you back into egolessness, everything that's been troubling you becomes transcended and you're at peace with yourself and the world. For the realization becomes that you are the world. You are the universe. The whole universe emanates out of your mind. And when your mind stops, the universe stops and there's only the Self. The Self appears as bliss consciousness as I-am, and that's your real nature. SN: Robert until we come to that realization, then we don't know the Self, is that true? R: No it's not true. You always know the Self, except you won't admit it, you want to admit something else. You are confessing that you don't know the Self. But it's not true. Just let go of all your doubts and the Self will shine once again. Do not believe that you don't know the Self. Don't question it too much. Realize it. Become it and put your doubts at rest. I am the Self that has always existed and will always exist. It will never cease to exist. I am pure intelligence, absolute reality, consciousness, emptiness, space. I am that I am. That's your real nature. Confess that to yourself. Do not tell yourself that you're not the Self, because you're lying. It's like saying, "There's no sun," because the clouds are covering the sun and you're swearing up and down saying, "look Robert there's no sun the sun doesn't exist!" but if I take you up in an airplane above the clouds there's the sun. It's the same thing as us. We're so covered with delusion that we believe that we're not the Self. Be Still And Know That I Am God. Therefore, you just have to be still long enough and know and all will be well. SN: But until then do we know? (R: Until when?) Until then. R: There's no then. There's no time that you are not the Self. SN: I've been examining this, see when we are asleep, the Self is no different? R: The I-am is always the same. Because when you get up you say, "I slept." Who slept? I dreamt. SN: I seem to be identifying I-am with consciousness, when we spoke of consciousness before. Say for instance, the Self in between thought is the I-am, that is consciousness, yet when I sleep there's no consciousness, there's nothing. So I-am is just nothing. R: You think there's nothing. (SN: Right.) But when you get up you say, "I slept." I was always present. I-am is always present. Even when you're sleeping, except you're not conscious of it. (SN: So when you become realized though, you're conscious even when you sleep?) Exactly. SD: A Jnani is conscious of dreaming and of dreaming within the dream. SN: So until we're realized - see I'm trying to make a connection of the Self - and so I say, "Well when I'm asleep I'm not aware of the Self, so when I'm awake am I awareness?" So I'm trying not to delude myself. R: What you should rather do is say, "When I am asleep who is aware of the Self?" Ask yourself that question. "When I sleep who is aware of the Self?" And you will realize Iam. You are always aware of the Self except when you sleep. You're not conscious of it. But it still goes on. SB: Robert is it because when you're asleep, the consciousness is not associated with the physical brain. Is that it? R: No, the physical brain has nothing to do with it. When you're asleep you're dreaming just like when you're awake. This waking state is just like the dream state. So we don't say it's just because we're associating with the brain. It's because we're deluded into believing that we are not the Self. So you make it simple. The brain has nothing to do with it because the brain is part of the body. If the body does not exist, neither does the brain. So when you're sleeping the brain is at rest, the body's at rest but you're still abiding in the Self. You're always abiding in the Self except you are not conscious of it. (SB: What happens to the consciousness that is…?) Nothing. It's still there, except just like now. Let's take the waking state. You say, "What happens to reality while I'm awake?" Reality is still there but you still believe in the body and the mind. It's just like I give you an example of the sky is blue. In reality there's no sky and there's no blue. So in reality there's no body and there's no one to be unconscious. (SB: When you abide in consciousness in the waking state will that help you to actually be conscious of the sleep, the deep sleep state also?) Yes it will, because there is only one state. SB: In some of the Ramana books it says when you're abiding in the Self more and more your deep sleep will be conscious. (R: Yes.) One time I was in deep sleep and I like was aware, I was actually conscious that I was deep asleep and it was like being in a cave. There was like awareness, it was very strange. R: That's a good sign, that's how it is. When you become realized… SB: It was like a very sweet bliss not a powerful ecstasy but a kind of like a, just a background kind of just a vague but very sweet bliss and it was like being in a cave. It looked like a cave and it was like asleep while awake. R: Well those are just pictures you drew for yourself. But when you awaken, you will be awake in the three states, sleeping, dreaming and waking. SB: So if we can hold onto this position of consciousness that we have at satsang, if we can maintain that pure consciousness without adding the whole mind to it and be established in that then that's the… R: That's abiding in the I, exactly. (SB: So that's all it is, really.) That's all it is. (SB: Right this minute we're that, if we don't add the whole me on top of it.) Exactly so and you don't put yourself down, do not say, "I am not conscious of my Self. I don't know who I-am," realize the truth like you just said. SB: And yet for this moment we're abiding in the Self without the mind, we can't say that we're God realized because there's a certain process that happens that actually, right? (R: It's better to say nothing.) Yeah, because there is a process that happens as a person establishes in that. Something happens. R: Every time you say, "I am not God realized" you pull yourself backwards. But like Nerada said, don't fool yourself. So you have to walk the middle path, the razors edge, between realization and not realization. SB: So actually we're just hung up with the relations of consciousness and the associations of consciousness and we're just not being pure consciousness, without adding all those associations on top of it. (R: True.) That's it. (R: That's it.) SF: Robert, actually this body-mind will never abide in the Self? (R: No, because it's false.) So when I say, "I am abiding in the Self," when I make that suggestion it means — it’s an expression rather than being. R: It's an expression. It means I am is abiding in the Self. (SF: The I-am?) The I-am. Same thing as the Self. It's an expression like you say. But when you say I am you're not referring to your body. (SF: Not to your mind?) Not referring to your mind, you're referring to your Self. It's like saying, "I am that I am." The same thing. "I-am abiding in the Self, I am that I am." By saying these things to yourself, it pulls you closer to that state. (SF: Yeah it's sort of a process of elimination of your ego self.) You can say that. That's why you shouldn't say anything negative about yourself. Never say anything bad about yourself. Always say, "I am abiding in the Self, I am the Self." And then somebody might say to you, something this "I" can say, "No I'm not because I feel problems." So you practice self-inquiry and you ask yourself, "Who feels these problems? To whom do they come?" and go back to abiding in the Self. (tape break) R: The only reason karma exists is because you believe that you are the body. Once you realize there's no body. For whom is there karma. Karma is for the body not for your Self. But as long as you don't believe that, then there's karma. SD: And Robert has also explained to us that self-realization gets you off the wheel. SN: Robert, when we’re asleep are we closer or further away. R: Closer, self-realization is just like being in deep sleep. In deep sleep, only you're conscious and you're conscious of bliss. So when you're in deep sleep you're in bliss but you're not conscious of it, that's all. SN: Now when we're in satsang and we have devotional feelings — say when we come to satsang to develop something, attaining something, that we don't get when we're alone or in the world, when we come to satsang and feel something, a devotional feeling, is that the Self? R: That's the Self trying to emerge. Yes, it's the self. Try to abide in those feelings. (SN: Now when we're asleep though, it's more, it's like without emotion.) Because you're asleep you're not conscious, but if you were conscious you'd be in bliss. (SN: But it would be different than the feeling it when we have for devotion?) No it wouldn't. It would be self-realization. (SN: In other words, the feeling that I get is a love for all things. Okay, yet when I'm asleep it's not like love.) How do you know? (SN: Yeah, well I don't.) You're asleep? (SN: Yeah that's the whole thing. I'm trying to make a connection — is that what the feeling is?) The feeling of love abides when you're asleep only you're not aware of it because you're not conscious. When you're illumined then you're conscious of being in sleep and then you realize that it's just called sleep, but you're in love, you're in bliss. (SN: Now that love is the Self?) The love is the Self. (SN: But what comes to mind is you ask, "Well who loves?") Why should you ask that? (SN: Well only to not delude yourself. To see well is this real or is this just another play of the mind?) That's only when you love your tape recorder more than anything else. So you ask yourself, "Who loves my tape recorder?" and you will realize it's your ego and once the ego is abolished there is only a tape recorder. Period. SF: Robert, even the egoic love, egotistical love or the love of the Jnani for persons or objects, to me that kind of thing should be the love of the Self that has been misdirected? R: Yes it does, exactly. Whatever you do in life, even a crook or a bank robber is really trying to find himself. That's why he does those things. We're all inadvertently searching for the Self and we don't know it. (SF: So every desire which is attracting me is the Self?) Yes, every desire, every urge is a search for the Self. But we're misdirected. (SF: With self-inquiry what you do is you go deep, down the hole?) You go beyond the conscious and you jump deep like you're diving in the ocean. You dive deeper and deeper and deeper till you make contact with reality. That's good. SF: Robert, about when the Jnani talks about omniscience and says, "I'm omniscient." The Jnani has a concept about omniscience and it's a mundane type of omniscience. The Jnani says he's omniscience, he must know everything. He must know all the mundane knowledge. That's not what implies in the statements of the Jnani, right? R: Your right! Omniscient for the Jnani is being in everything, but not necessarily knowing what's going on in China. That's a different kind of omniscience. SF: Because people are using nowadays omniscience they say to be channelers. (R: Yes.) They think they are channelers, they are very knowledgeable and sort of think that is a form of omniscience. But that's not what we call a Jnani. (R: That's a limited form of omniscience.) Yeah. SD: Is omniscience the same as omnipresent? R: Omniscience is all-knowing, all-knowing. Omnipresence is the same thing, really. It's all presence. You're everywhere present. (SD: Aren't they the same?) It's like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. All power, all knowledge like being everywhere at the same time. (SD: You were saying, not necessarily knowing what going on in China but it's knowing the oneness of all things?) Yes. It's like you become the rock, but you're asleep on the rock, because the rock has no power to move, but you become the rock. (SD: When you are omnipresence you are a rock?) Yes. You become a rock but you're not aware of it. You just are pure unconscious awareness. (SD: So you're not aware of anything, exactly.) (Robert laughs) You're on the right track. You're just being. Pure being. Absolute being. You're everything. It's something like when you're asleep and you expand yourself in a dream and in that dream you know what's going on in the dream, but you're asleep. So with a Jnani being omnipresent, omniscient, you are everything but you are not aware of everything. (SD: You're aware of being then.) You're aware of being, just being. SK: Is there a way to be aware of everything as well? R: As long as you are carrying a body, you won't be aware of any other thing because your mental process won't allow that to happen. SD: It seems like if you're aware of it, everything is an illusion to be aware of it, right? R: When you drop your body, it's no different. When you drop your body, there's no difference, you expand a little bit more. SB: Robert, how come the Buddhist say, that the Vedanta are deluded because they're looking for the Brahman and the Self and that there's no Brahman and no Self and use different terminology? Is there emptiness of all things the same as the Self when it happens? R: They're right! Because there is no Brahman and there is no Self. Those are just words to describe it. (SB: It's easy to confuse the ego-self with the real-Self.) That's why we discuss it, because the ego-self is the I and when the I disappears it becomes the I-am. And the I-am is pure emptiness. Nirvana. SN: Robert, when you said the best way to help other people is to know the Self. So when you know the Self you become the other people. (SM: And realize that you are the other people.) So, that's what I was trying to get at earlier. To get to know what is the Self? What is the Self that we must know? And it seems like sometimes I know what it is and then I forget. And now it comes back to me, I feel that. If I have a feeling of love it's like it becomes expansive and I can understand what it means. You become everything or everything becomes you or whatever it is. SD: So is self-realization the awareness or the oneness of everything? R: Always remember If you know what it is, it's not that, because the finite mind cannot know. It's beyond the finite. So when you think you know, ask yourself, "Who knows?" And you back to your ego again. Only the ego knows. (SN: But what if you say, "Who knows?") That's good. (laughter) SK: What about a realized being that whoever comes before them so-to-speak, they can know everything about them. Not only what their Self is because it's the same as their own Self but about their arrogance of the ego and mind conflicts? R: You don't have to be a realized being to do that. SK: Yeah I realize that. So taking an opinion from a being who is considered to be realized also that happens. He can remark when it's spontaneous that something about that being that maybe will turn them towards a spiritual path. Like Jesus healing others. R: But a true realized being does not need to do that. By his very presence, changes take place. (SK: But not everyone is so receptive or open.) It's just like grace. Gods grace is always available but only some people pick it up. (SK: Yeah.) The same thing. SK: So sometimes that grace for me seems to be extended and then some action that can be done that that person can understand more than just subtly. And it may not take effect then but it may take effect in that persons life six months, a year down the road. R: That's possible, but again, a realized being does not interfere in anybody's karma, if they are prepared and ready, they become realized also. By their very presence. It's like Ramana again, we go back to Ramana. People used to come to him from far and wide and say, "I looked at your picture and healed myself, you healed me." "I made a million dollars and you did it." This happened and that happened. And Ramana would look at his attendant that pulls the fan and say, "Why do they always tell me I did these things? I did nothing." (SD: But his grace might of done it.) That's possible. (SD: Because he could give the darshan.) But he couldn't possibly be aware of it. Because to be aware of it there would have to be somebody left to be aware. (SD: But he could do it unaware?) Yes. SK: He didn't say anything to people who came to him. (R: No.) SN: Even when it's his grace, you have to understand that everything is one. So who's grace is it. (SK: Who's grace is it?) Right who’s grace is it? It's you! Everything is you and this is similar to the stories when the person touched the garment of Jesus and was healed and Christ always said, "Be it according to your faith." SM: Don't you think that a person who wants to be healed so badly almost heals himself? SN: That's the whole point, everything is the Self. (SM: It is the Self.) And Ramana was the Self, and they say, "Ramana you did this" and that's true because they did it themselves, because they are them. R: Well the point is, a truly realized being, does nothing. SN: It's not so much he's a realized being, he's a realized non-being. (laughter) (R: Okay.) And we always think in terms of a realized being of Ramana as if he's the body and the idea of the Self is one. Robert told the story of the woman, he and himself is one, healing and the Self is one and Ramana and the Self is one, and that Self… see I always try to grasp this Self with my mind and that's where I get lost. But now I know if I sink into deeper than the mind, intuition, heart, whatever, then I can explain, Oh that… SB: In other words he realized no Self. He realized that there isn't any Self. He realized nothingness. But the whole thing dissolves in a big mystery. (R: Exactly.) And then whatever is going to happen is going to happen spontaneously. R: Ramana was a simply humble person. People would come to him with all his problems, all their problems all day long. "Help me, please help me overcome this." At the end of the day he would look at his attendant and say, "To whom shall I go for help?" They all come to me. SD: One of my favorite stories is that there was a swami who could perform tricks or magic or whatever and he lived near the Ashram. So a lot of people on their way to see the swami would stop by to see Maharshi. They'd just peek in at him because they've heard about him too and he told one of his devotees because he had a lot of trouble with his feet he said, “keep rubbing my feet and they'll see that I am just an old sick man and they'll leave me alone. (laughter) R: There's nothing special about a realized being. SF: Robert it seems that with a little understanding, using quotation mark, "If there is a Jnani, or anybody approaches him, is karmic, all karmic." all karma. (R: Yes, Yes, that's true.) However, the fact that there is hypocrisy on that quotation on the Self because the presence of the Jnani, there can be, maybe a sort of acceleration, a catalytic effect… (R: That's true too.) …and that also is karmic? (R: That's also true.) Depending on the openness of the disciple, devotees? R: Yes, the teaching is full of contradictions. That's true, you're right. All these things are true. SB: So Robert, you're really going into battle with your karma. (laughter) Confrontations with our ignorance, right? R: If that's what you say, so be it. You see this is why I emphasize over and over again, we've got to develop a great humility, a great compassion, a great love. Not play tricks and have all these siddhas, powers and materialize all kinds of things. Anybody can learn that, if you practice enough. SK: How does one express these things? (R: Express what?) Compassion and love. R: By being your Self. If you become your Self it's automatic. If you abide in the Self. You have to have compassion and love for yourself first and you do that by letting go of your thoughts. Controlling your thoughts and compassion and love and humility come by themselves. It always goes back to that again. Goes back to you. You can't develop enough love yourself. It has to come from within yourself. It appears that the world has a very strong pull on us and you have to try to resist that by everyday practicing these things. That's why I gave you all these techniques. You have to keep remembering everyday. And soon it'll become automatic. I feel this is a very important meditation to help us. For what it does, it goes deep within the subconscious and pretty soon it starts doing you, instead of you doing it, it’s really helped many people to see the way. And the way you do this is, you relax yourself and with your breathing you inhale and you say, "I," you exhale and you say, "am." Now you can also do this all day long. When you're driving your car or your bus, whether you're washing dishes, whether you're making supper or dinner or breakfast. You can watch your breath and do I-am with your breathing. So let's do it together. Make yourself comfortable and you can close your eyes to remove obstructions. Acquire a good feeling in yourself and the formal way to do it is first, you relax your body. To make sure every part of you is relaxed. You can start with your knees, relax your knees. Relax everything below your knees, your feet, your toes. Relax everything above your knees, your thighs, relax your hips, your abdominals relax, your chest relax, relax your back, fingers, hands, wrists, forearms relax, upper arms relax, shoulders, neck. Back of your neck relax. Back of your head, top of your head. Your forehead, your face. Every part of you is now totally relaxed. Focus your attention on your breathing. Before you do I-am, you can practice Vipassana meditation, Buddhist meditation, where you watch your breath. Watch yourself breathing. Watch the sensations in your body. Just watch. Do not react to them. For instance, if you have a pain in your thigh, watch, do not react to it, observe it and observe your breath at the same time. Do not force your breath just breath naturally. If you get lost in thoughts, as soon as you catch yourself, go back to your breathing. Do not become discouraged. Do not force your thoughts out, ignore them and go back to observing your breathing. (short silence) Now you ask yourself the question, "Who is the observer? Who observes my breathing?" Of course the answer is, "I am." Now with your breathing start the "I am" meditation. Inhale normally, say, "I," exhale and say, "am," with your normal breathing, do not emphasize your breath. Normal breathing, "I am." "I" inhale, "am" exhale. Again, if your mind wanders, do not be mad at yourself but gently go back to "I am" and ignore your thoughts. (long silence and break in tape as Robert wraps up) Remember to love your Self, to worship your Self, to pray to your Self, to bow to your Self because God dwells in you, as you. Om Shanti, Peace. Happy you could come. See you again soon. That's all she wrote. (tape ends)

Robert: Thursdays, we're very informal. We have a chance to get into things perhaps, we don't usually talk about on Sunday. We should continually remind ourselves of Truth, of who we are and what we are. Don't let yourselves get caught up in your jobs or in your work, or in whatever you do, where you forget about yourself. Always confess the Truth to yourself. So when I make my confession, I speak in the first person, "I Am". And as you are aware, when I say, "I Am," I am not referring to Robert. I'm referring to "I Am," omnipresence. Which includes all sentient beings. So the confession includes you, not me. For I don't have to say anything myself. So let's close our eyes and remind ourselves of this Truth. I am absolute reality. I am unfathomable wisdom. I am pure intelligence. I am satchit- ananda, parabrahman. I am of the unborn. I am perfect intelligence. Divine mind. Nirvana. Emptiness. I was never born and I shall never disappear. I am that I am. This is the Truth about me. This is my confession. This is my reality. (silence) Who am I? I am He. I am not the body. (phone rings) I am not the doer. I am not the mind. I am pure consciousness, parabrahman, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience. This is my Truth. (short silence Robert continues) Om Shanti, shanti, shanti, peace, peace. You can open your eyes. Become aware of this truth all of time. Do not let an hour go by, when you are not aware of this truth about yourself. Someone called me on Tuesday and asked me this question, “Sunday you said that the best way to awaken is to be at Satsang all the time and then later you said the best way to awaken is to practice the teaching at home. Which is which? Sounds like a contradiction.” Who can tell me the difference? (Students guess) SD: I can guess that satsang is more or less an attitude. R: You're on the right track. Anymore answers? SK: Satsang is where you can get a taste or understand what the state is and you go home and develop that doing your practice? R: In a way that's true too. SD: What's the original question? R: I said that Satsang is the best way to awaken, but then later I said, if you practice the things at home that we learn. That awakens you also. So which is real? Which is better? (laughs) (Students ponder and guess) SF: No difference? R: There is no difference? But remember we're talking to students. So if a person is a real devotee, then Satsang is a thing for them. But if they're a disciple, or if they're a student who goes from teaching to teaching, then they should practice at home. That's the main difference. Do you see that? For a real devotee, all you need is Satsang, nothing else. (SD: Continue learning at home?) No, whenever you're there. That will do it for you. SG: I've never separated the two before. (R: It depends on your discerning.) SN: Robert once gave a Satsang on the difference between a devotee and a disciple. It's worth hearing. I think I have it on tape. Robert is there a difference between a devotee and a disciple and between a bhakti and a Jnani? R: In reality as you know there’s no difference. But at a level from where somebody is coming from, or where they think they're coming from, there’s a difference. So it depends on what level you're talking about. Bhakti leads to Jnana. Everything leads to Jnana. When you love God with all your heart and with all your soul, you become God. So you become a Jnani. SD: Isn't also a Jnana is acknowledging bhakti with devotion? (R: Yes.) So devotion is leading to ultimate reality? R: Yes, and when you're devoted to God, really devoted, and you really surrender your life to God. Then you will merge with God. SN: Now if you go to satsang with a devotional attitude, I can see how that would make one a devotee. However if you're more tending toward Jnani then would you still feel that devotion in satsang? See what I'm getting at? R: Yes. When you attend satsang, the vibration for a devotee, makes you equal with the Jnani. You become one with the Jnani. (SN: But if you're more tending toward being a Jnani then is that devotion near?) The devotion is near. (SN: So even if you're a Jnani you could feel a great love still.) Yes, you always feel great love. (SN: So what's the difference?) At that stage there’s no difference. SD: But if you actually in sanscrit break the words down there’s a slight difference between devotion and knowledge, Bhakti means devotion and Jnana means knowledge, that's all. SN: But really isn't it having love but as well as understanding? R: It's all one. For whom is there a difference? For the ajnani. The person that still thinks they are the body. Then there’s a difference. And that’s the person we're talking about. So for instance we get some students who go from teaching to teaching. Read all kinds of books. Do all kinds of things. That’s more of a disciple type person. So that person has to practice and come to satsang. But the true devotee, like the person I always talk about who used to fan Ramana. Who used to pull the fan and fan Ramana for forty years. (laughs) That's all he did. He was a devotee and when he dropped dead, Ramana said, "He's not coming back." (SD: So he would have reached enlightenment by devotion.) By pulling the fan. (SD: Which is devotion?) Yes. (SN: He didn't have to do anything else?) That’s it. He was always at satsang. SF: I was going to ask you Robert a question. Of course it seems like aside from the Jnanic gesture or inquiry I would say self-inquiry, but yet devotion to the guru per se also takes you to the Self, doesn't it? R: The devotion of the guru? (SF: To the guru.) Oh to the Guru, oh yes, of course, but it doesn't mean you have to worship the guru. (SF: No.) It means if you're devoted to the guru you're devoted to God and to your Self. SD: That's what he was telling us, the man who did the fanning on Maharshi, he was a devotee and that devotion led him to enlightenment. SF: Okay. So, would you consider in the process of self-inquiry somebody may just be a devotee more than a disciple or he could be a next step right? R: Well, what usually happens is that a devotee becomes a Jnani and the Jnani becomes a devotee. But they're all are the same there’s no difference and the devotee is to the Self. They begin to see, if somebody like Ramana, as the whole universe. Everywhere they look they see Ramana. SD: Then are you saying that the devotee has reached enlightenment? (R: Possibly.) In the case of the man who fanned Ramana he didn't know within this lifetime that he would not come back so at his death… R: Well even when he was alive because he knew nothing else. (laughs) All he knew was Ramana. He didn't have a mind of his own anymore, his mind was gone. His mind became Ramanas mind. (SD: He would be enlightened in a sense that he did for forty years?) Yes, he never said anything. SN: You know how they say in the Bhagavad-Gita. The thought, the last thought you have before you leave the body, think on that and it's not so much the last thought but progression, what you are, you become. So he became Ramana in his lifetime. R: Well not only that if you take it literally. If you say, "Well I don't have to do anything, on my last thought I'll think of God-realization and become realized" But the trick is you won't be able to. SN: You won't be able to? (R: No) And also isn't there a principle when you leave the body then you become enlightened, like at that moment it's like sudden or final enlightenment? I forget what the term is, I've been thinking about that. SD: That's Jivan-mukti when you're enlightened while living and there’s another kind and I forget the word too but another kind of mukti? SU: For whom does all this come? (R: That's right.) Who wants to know. (laughter) SD: I've a question, and I know what your answer going to be, but when you had us close our eyes and more or less repeat with you or absorb with what you were saying about the "I AM." There’s always the part of me, and I know this will be your answer to this, "Who thinks that" but, that feels too insignificant and humble to believe that stuff. (R: Just observe.) Observe that there is a part of me feeling too insignificant. R: Observe what’s going on, become aware of it.Just to be aware of it,get's rid of it. SG: That's just the difference between I Am and your little self. SN: But I would say, the truth is, is that you are that. First of all, yes you, yes you! But also to feel humble in such a way, well not humble but… (SD: Well it is humble and insignificant.) Insignificant, that's kind of blasphemy again because I remember once I mentioned to Robert, "Well I'm just ignorant" and he said, "Well that’s blasphemy." (SD: Well I maybe feeling that once I question your words but nonetheless that’s how I feel, that keeps me the same way.) Well what I'm trying to say, it's kind of a reverse psychology because one is like the ego is saying, "Well I'm great" which is like not specific and the other one is saying, "Well poor me." Which is the same thing because it's still me. And it's the same thing, Yes you!!" I would say, "Yes You!" (SD: Well I knew you would say, "Well who feels insignificant, right?") R: Well, not only that but just to be aware of your feelings, makes those feelings disappear. Just to be aware of them. To watch them. To observe them. SD: I sometimes don't feel worthy when you say, "I Am." I started to ask should I resist that feeling but I just observe it. R: No, resist nothing. SG: You merge into that and there’s no ego to feel in that sense. SD: Yeah that’s true, does anybody else have a hard time dealing with their omnipresence. SN: Well I did, I did and then when Robert brought that to light I saw the mechanism. (SD: Two sides of it?) Yes, So my point to you is understand the mechanism. It's the same force showing it's face at a different thing, and know that you are, you are that, you are that, you are all of that. And when you think, feel like Robert says, the four principles. When you think it and feel it and you understand it, you become it, don't resist. “Who me?” Don't say that, that’s blasphemy. “Yes me! I am That!” And I did feel that way, I did feel that way and he, Robert pointed that out to me and I meditated on it and never put anyone down, never put yourself down. R: No matter how many mistakes you make. Just pick yourself up, brush yourself off and start all over again. Another question people ask me. Somebody in particular called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me the question, which is real interesting. They said, “I used to be a Jnani, (laughter) but what happened is, it didn't do me any good.” (laughter) (SD: I used to be a wife but…) “…but it didn't do any good physically" (laughter) (SN: So then I took up baseball.) (laughs) Exactly! (SD: What did you say?) R: Well I explained that if you were a Jnani you would always be a Jnani, there’s no turning back. You can’t intellectualize it and say you're a Jnani, but the important point is this, actually of what significance is it, what good does it do you in the world? Well to begin with, it's hard to explain, because when you realize you are not your body. This is literally what it means, you are not your body. Even though the appearance of the body is still there. Even though people look at a body and say well I see your body. Who sees the body? The ajnani sees the body. But the body is not there it doesn't exist and in the appearance world the body seems to be going through all kinds of things. Just like the sky is blue. The sky is not blue and there’s no sky. But we say the sky is blue because it looks blue and it looks as if there’s a sky. In the same way, it appears as if there is a body, but this is like hypnosis. This is the mortal dream. We're seeing with our senses and we're seeing with our false imagination and we believe what we see is real. So the secret is to not identify nor judge with your eyes or with your senses, the things that you see. We just watch like we're watching a movie. But we realize it has no substance. There’s no cause, it's egoless, it's all an emanation of my mind. That's how we should talk to ourselves and get rid of the feelings that bother us when we observe something we don't like. But again the question really is, while I am not enlightened what good does it do me? Will it make me rich? Will it give me a new house? New companions? Will it give me love, happiness, Joy? Of course I try to explain, those things are your very nature. So it can't give you those things because you are those things. But as long as you believe you're not, the path to this Jnana Marga, the path to Jnana will make you dream a better dream. Do you see what I'm saying? (SD: Yeah) As you unfold even though you still believe that you are the body, you'll become happier, you'll have more peace. Things will go better no matter how they look. SN: Things seem to go better with Robert. (laughter) R: And you'll stop worrying. All your worries will just cease as you unfold. Until the time comes when you realize, nobody's home. There never was a body, there never was a mind, but until then your so-called humanhood does improve if you're following the path. In other words, the things that used to bother you before will cease. Before you used to look at the pictures of the world. You would become disillusioned, there’s wars, man's inhumanity to man and you'd worry you'd be sad. All those feelings will go away. Not because you don't care, because you realize what’s really going on. You will know the truth about the world, as you will know the truth about your body. The reason the world is the way it is, is because you believe you are the body. You're giving birth to the picture. But then you say "Well Robert everybody else gives birth to the same picture," true because collectively we're all dreaming the mortal dream. SD: Are we all dreaming the same dream? I thought the reason…??? R: In reality that's true also, but we're all dreaming. SN: But we perceive people to be a certain way and then when we get to know them we find out that they're not that way. We only thought they were that way. We never really know. We can't judge a book by it's cover. It happened to me continually then I said, "That's what it means, don't judge." R: We leave things alone. We stop fighting, we stop trying to get even. We stop trying to change people, to make them believe what we believe. We're just easy and gentle and watch. We have extreme compassion, mercy and we just observe. We float through the world. We're in the world but not of the world, but again the answer to the question is, your life does improve. What you call your life now. This is why I say sometimes, it's dangerous to expound these truths to people that are not ready because it seems to give them license to do as they please, and you can't do it. It's like what we were talking about in the car. We were talking about rules and some other people and you said, "Well that's their Karma". But that's a mistake I didn't want to say anything. Even though that’s their karma, we have to act like karma doesn't exist. Until we realize that we don't exist. SD: Do you mean disciples too, or everyone? R: Everybody. (SD: Everyone has to act like karma doesn't exist?) Yes. Exactly because karma only exists because you believe that you are the body. SN: I mean I can see that in terms of myself and I said that was their karma as if I'm trying to work on myself in trying to understand that I have no karma whereas they aren't doing that therefore they are bound by their karma. R: But it's not your business what they're doing. (SN: True.) In other words, if you were in trouble, say you went to court yesterday, right? And you were locked up in jail. (SN: I did go to court yesterday.) (laughs) And if I heard about it, I would come down and bail you out. SD: Even if you thought that was his karma? (R: I wouldn't think about it.) SG: You would just do it. (R: I would just do it.) Out of compassion or whatever, just do it. Without analyzing.) (R: Exactly.) SD: Yeah but you could mean that it was your karma to bail him out and that could go…? R: That's how the ajnani sees it. (SN: Yeah but you could take it either way.) Who takes it either way? (SN: The ajnani?) That's right. That's false imagination. The Jnani just does what’s present. (SN: Okay my question is, should we not only act and understand as if we have no karma but also as if other people have no karma?) Yes, exactly. See we have wisdom that goes along with that. We do not become a door mat for people to step on. But if someone is in trouble we help. If they're in our path. SD: Well aren't you saying that the Jnani lives in the now? R: Spontaneously. Everything is spontaneous. So somebody tells me, "Glen is in jail," I don't think about it, I don't care what you did. I won't try to analyze it. I'll just go down and bail you out. (laughs) SN: So when I say that well so and so is going through this, but that's their karma. R: That makes it sort of cold. You know what I mean? (SN: Yeah, I see that, yeah.) It makes it like, we're better than that we know it's their karma so they deserve it. (SN: Well yeah.) (laughs) SG: Because they believe they have to go through karma and that karma exists for them. R: Yes but it's not our business. (SN: So when you say that that's cold, then how should we view it?) By not viewing it at all, by just being. (SN: Just a total objectivity you mean?) Yes. SF: What about guilty feelings, that's a problem because I'm…? R: Ask, "For whom are the guilty feelings?" Observe them. (SF: Okay, then you question yourself about action?) For whom is there action? (SF: Right action?) Right, right action. If you're living spontaneously you will know what to do. You'll take the right action. Anything you do will be the right action. If you're doing it spontaneously. But if you have to think about it, that's something else. (SF: Right, so you do your first impulse?) It depends who's doing it. Because the first impulse may be to kill somebody. (laughs) (SF: The first impulse could be egoic or it could be spontaneous depending on what you are doing?) Well look at it this way. If you're on a true Spiritual path and you're devoted to the path you don't have to worry about those things, it'll work out. But what I said is also a contradiction. Because let's say Rahul calls you and wakes you up at three in the morning and says, "Glen, drive me to the dentist." (laughs) Then what you should do, if you're really on the path you spontaneously say, "Rahul I'd love to take you but I just can't because I've got to sleep, it's very important to me. I'm sorry I'll try to help you next time, good bye." And you forget it, no guilt feelings, no feelings whatsoever. You're just doing what's right. But you don't even think about it. So it happens in the right way if you do it spontaneously. But if he calls you and then, "Can you drive me to the dentist" and you say, you think about it and you get guilt feelings, and say "gee I wonder if I should, I wonder if I shouldn't," and you feel mad and angry. (SF: All these things are again analogies and then you keep going on rolling and rolling.) And it never stops. The whole thing keeps going on and on. SF: So Robert by doing spiritual practice things will take care of itself? R: Yes. That's why I gave you that mantra on Sunday. If you work on that all the time. When you're mind starts bothering you, when you have guilt feelings. When you feel something is wrong somewhere. Immediately catch yourself and do that mantra. SD:You told us that mantras do not lead to enlightenment. They can help to still the mind. R: It helps to still the mind. Everything I told you, everything I give you is to make the mind quiescent. Once there's an empty mind you're realized. Those things are important when you're troubled. SD: Do you dwell in the "I-am" as a Jnani, but do you personally breathe the "I-am." R: Well you just answered the question. Do I personally? Is there a person left? Could I still be there? If there were a person. (SD: What about Robert?) Robert doesn't exist. SG: I cannot understand, Robert doesn't exist. (R: Robert only exists for you because you exist.) So you really didn't come out here. (laughter) SN: What about other mantras that other people get is there any difference? (R: They're all produced of the same thing.) So there's no difference. (R: There’s no difference.) SK: What about the mantras that actually seem to give you something? R: Who is the you who gets anything? (SK: I don't know?) There's no you that needs anything. (SK: At the same time on a relative level there seems to me to be some kind of feeling that pleasurable.) If it helps you use it. If it helps you to get rid of the feeling that you just described, use it. (SK: Or if it gives you a divine energy of some kind and it also leads one to the state of emptiness of mind.) Then use it as long as it helps. SD: Robert has mentioned before, anything that quietens the mind makes you one-pointed. R: But always remember who needs a mantra? The body, the mind. SN: So Robert, people can become self-realized on any path as long as it's usually either through devotion or through Jnana which almost any path takes on one of these colors. right? (R: Yes.) So, self-realization can happen on any path through these methods? (R: Yes it can.) Because ultimately they all lead to self-inquiry. R: But unfortunately what happens in most paths, they get lost in the process. SD: The first lesson in the book of Ananda Mai-Ma she said "That to any path, whatever path that suits you, pursue with all your heart and you will reach enlightenment." R: Yes, but she had to take that statement, "pursue it with all your heart." "Pursue it with all your heart," think about that. (SD: Well maybe I said it wrong not in the same reference.) You're right! SG: And the changes that occur when a bhakti and bhakta becomes a Jnani and Jnani becomes a bhakta. Those are very nauseas images that I've never seen myself. It's all ego self? R: Yes it is. (SG: If one is a bhakta becoming a Jnani do they ever go to a state of a bhakta again?) No not really but when you're a Jnani you just have unconditional love, devotion. If I go into a holy temple some place, I start crying. SD: You would be seeing it as a bhakti… (R: Exactly.) …me too, what is it about that is there a holy energy or something. I find it in the churches and temples not even of my own… R: There is a divine energy that's who you really are and your heart just opens up. SD: Is there something in that place? At least on the earth plane, something that's collected like in the old churches, like you said in a holy place, you know what makes this holy? R: Something within you remembers, remembers your divinity. SD: There seems to be a collective consciousness in certain places, holy places. (R: Yes, but it's you.) That’s right because you are collective consciousness? R: You remember, from past lives, from past experiences. You remember your divine nature. Who you really are and you start crying. Why are you crying? Because you believed that you are the body all these years and you don't know it. (SD: It's just seems to me what I felt was a feeling of release.) Yes. (SD: It's not a sorrow, your tears just flow.) Exactly. SF: Robert, in several traditions I see, I think they talk about realization it comes along with the elimination of thoughts. Is that true or is the thinker which is creating that and thoughts are still happening in the Jnani? Of course I believe that thoughts are happening in the Jnani it's just that he doesn't identify with them or he doesn't think? R: That's true. They like bounce off. The thoughts come and disappear at the same time. They come and they're gone, they come and they're gone. SD: That's right, you don't dwell on them do you? (R: Exactly.) SF: But the Jnani or the realized one doesn't see them as factual things. R: Indeed that's right. No the thoughts are just return to nothing. They come and they melt. Like ice. They come and they melt and they go, and they come and they melt and they go. (SF: No clinging whatsoever?) No clinging, no attachment. (SF: So that's what it means, elimination of thoughts?) Yes, you can say that. (SF: Because actually thoughts will always happen, within the nature of things while you are living in this world.) It's not like the thoughts that the average person has. The thoughts that come to me. I realize that they're not real. So I just look at them and they go away. (SF: So they acquire a new quality?) They're a different quality of thought. But you're right as long as there’s something present, some part of the body is still present, thoughts come, but they don't come to me. They just pass through. Like empty mind. SD: Indira Devi, remember her? (R: Oh yes.) Used to talk about that they were like clouds over a lake that don't touch the lake at all, they just pass by. (R: Yes.) They're reflected in a way, but they don't affect the stillness or bother whatsoever. (R: You can say that.) SN: Robert the thought came to me, well does a Jnani cry? And then I thought well does a Jnani laugh? And then I thought well does a Jnani eat? It's so stupid. (laughter) (R: Exactly.) Yeah, I mean, you know the mind wants to say, “well does a Jnani cry?” But then think about it. R: This is the karma of the body, but I-am not the body. That's the way you see it. SD: If you cry or Robert cries is that what remains of you as a body is that real? R: No what you're seeing, is like you're seeing the body, the body is going through that, but I'm not. (SD: Aren't you the real you moved, by those feelings?) There's nothing to be moved, but that's how it appears. (laughter) SN: Because you know Ramana cried and so to understand. (R: That's difficult to understand.) Yeah so it's a very profound thing because some people will react, "Well why does a Jnani or why does Robert do this? Why did Ramana do that?" Of course they don't understand, of course you can see why they can ask that. So something to ponder. R: Yes there is something to ponder because it's beyond words. Only when you touch the deepest part of your Self can you understand that. I seem to be walking, I seem to be sleeping, I seem to be dreaming, I seem to be here with you and yet I'm not doing any of those things. (SD: But somehow we're getting emotions from you.) That's how it appears, that's an appearance. (SD: Well it seems to happen only in your presence.) R: It's like the sky is blue again, like a mirage in the desert. SN: It's kind of like when you come to see Robert you get a chance to look in the mirror and then you say, "Ahh, here I-am, that’s who I-am." (R: What you see is what you get.) But you said the last satsang that people think when you become self-realized that you have siddhas or whatever, and we would think that someone who is self realized is absolutely perfect. That’s why they don't cry, they don't fart, they don't, you know, they're just perfection and that's not what this path is saying. (break in tape as another Robert continues) R: There's a mysterious power, that's prepared you for something like this and brought you here and there' s a mysterious power that made me appear this way. SD: So that same power brought us together. (R: Exactly.) That's why they say, "When you're ready the Master will come." R: Yes. We've prepared ourselves for this path a long time ago in passed lives in whatever we've done and here we are. SF: Every single feeling or thought regardless of quality of that omniscience, bliss from you Robert? (R: Bliss? I always feel Bliss.) With or without thoughts all the time. R: No thoughts. There's an indescribable feeling of love and peace and bliss and happiness. It's always available. (SD: Peace.) That's always there but I can't describe it, because it's the natural state. (SD: It's our natural state.) Yes, there are no words to describe it. SF: What I mean is the actual Jnani. Every thought, every feeling, everything, could be sometimes presence, could be sometimes limitation. But I have the feeling that maybe the Jnani, sees everything in bliss. So its bliss with a stimulus all the time. R: I see my Self wherever I look. So what I-am I see wherever I go. (SD: So you see perfection right?) Everything is perfect. Again it's a difficult thing to explain. SN: And yet we see ourselves in whatever we see too. Except that you see perfection and we see whatever our projection is. R: Everybody sees differently. If I ask you all to look out the window and I ask you what do you see? I'll get six, seven different answers. One person will say, "I see dirt in the street." Another person will say, "I see the blue sky." Somebody else will say, "I seeing my car being towed away." Everybody will se something else. According to your state of consciousness. That's what you see. But when I see. I see oneness. Like a moving picture and I see beyond the screen. SG: I don't know how to describe this but there's this feeling that comes. It's more peaceful, more powerful silence. Beyond silence itself, but it permeates everything. Even the most noisiest situation. I've been to concerts and even within that, even loud rock concerts or parties or the most peaceful park scene, there's still an underlying vast peace that doesn't matter where I am and it’s as if that thing is so distant from you and yet it permeates you and it doesn't matter where you are. You can be anywhere and there's a vast - I can't describe it. (R: You're on the right track.) There’s a deafening silence, that's just… (SD: That you can always call on?) No it's there, you don't have to call on it. It doesn't matter where you are and what situation you’re in. I can't describe it but… R: Let’s say here's another example. Say for instance you started a fist fight and you're all fighting with each other. So I see the fight, it's not that I don't see the fight but I see through it, like you were saying. I see through the fight. So I'm not disturbed because I know, all is well. (SG: It’s as if it doesn't exist. It exists but there's permeating through it…) Like when you go to a movie, you watch the violence on the screen. But something within you tells you that's not real. It's only a movie. SD: No matter how much you get caught up in it, you can get up and leave. R: Exactly, it's the same thing. I look at the world and I see the world going on. But I realize the world has a middle and a beginning and an end. And this too shall pass. So I don't get caught up on a minute of illusion. SG: In the practice on the path one can use every moment and every situation and shouldn't just try to find peaceful places or peaceful moments but should permeate that in every moment and find that everywhere. (R: That sounds good.) It's hard in the beginning I know. R: That's why if you look at the three vessels I gave you. The first one when you begin, you have to be alone. You have to find time to be alone a lot. So you can work on yourself and become strong, then you can do what you said. (SG: Yeah.) SD: So the vehicles or the vessels are the way to that feeling? (R: Yes.) SG: So everything is holy and unholy, I mean everything is the same at that point. R: When you are by yourself a long time and you're working on yourself you become stronger and stronger and stronger. (SD: Some people do and some people get cranky.) Well that's because they have no practice. (SD: Yeah what about the people who are lonely?) We're not talking about those people. We're talking about people on a spiritual path. (SD: So even just being alone, but also pondering spiritual matters?) That's why you're alone. SN: It’s a wanting to be alone. (R: Yes.) Some people are alone but they don't want to be alone. (SD: Right. It's not even wanting to be alone, it’s what you do when you're alone.) That too. SF: It’s a yearning. SN: Because one could hear the first vehicle, well because I heard this then I should do that and it's not that, it's something that you desire, something that you understand, it's something that you do. And it's also like meditation because when I was on another path of meditation and they would say that meditation is something that should be done lovingly, it should not be a burden, and for so many people it was a burden and they miss the whole point. SD: Would now be a good time to share about that retreat you went on cause you never really told us briefly what that path was about and how you kept going back to it. (Nerada talks about his experience when on retreat) R: (Robert responds to Neradas experience) You must be careful when you tell somebody, "You are God". When it said in the Upanishads, "Ahum Brahman," the true interpretation of that is, "I-am is Brahman." So I-am is God, Not I-am God, because, I-am God, you're saying my ego is God and that's not true. (SN: Or how about you are the guru?) Well what part of you is the guru? (SN: Just to say that you are the guru?) You can say that, but explain it more specifically. Because this guy can say okay I'm a guru now that's great. But when you say, "I Am is God" you're speaking about your real nature. SD: Oh right, because you're speaking of everything. Because everything is God. R: So be careful about that, because that can also build your ego up. So you say, "I am God, wow that’s great, I am God imagine that that’s wonderful and I can do anything I like." (laughter) And you can actually freak out, I've seen it happen. People go and rob a bank, or go kill somebody they don't care, I'm God I can't do anything wrong. ST: I read an interesting story of a - Tibetan story - there was this young boy and his father was a painter in one of these temples and he painted these demons and demigods and the boy died. And as he was passing into the other worlds, he saw these very same beings because this was all he experienced visually and he wasn't scared of them he just acted toward them in the very same way and they just went away. He just said, you don't scare me. (SD: It's just a creation of the mind.) Yeah, exactly. Well it’s just where he was at and how he approached it. SD: Well isn't that the third fundamental that everything is egoless and has no source, isn't that sort of what he's talking about? (R: You can say that, yes.) SG: But if he was scared of those things, then they were real, very real. (R: Because his mind is giving them power.) Right. SD: Isn't that the same thing you said on evil, the concept of evil? That it only exists if you believe in it? (R: Yes, true.) You said if you believe in it, you've granted it power and it's existence. (R: Your mind creates it. Your mind creates everything.) SD: In the first fundamental, is it the same to say everything is a manifestation, or emanation, or projection. R: It doesn't matter, you don't have to change it. But you have to remember these things especially in the mornings when you get out of bed. Your mind will start thinking as soon as you wake up. Catch yourself and don't allow it to think. If you're feeling sorry for yourself, catch yourself and do something about it. Just realize that feeling sorry for yourself is a mental emanation, it's not true, it's not real. There's no one to feel sorry. (students talk between themselves) R: Just to realize that all things are an emanation of the mind, doesn't it make you feel good? (SD: Well you know how it occurs to me that if everything is an emanation of my mind why can't I just make it more to my liking?) You can. (SD: Is that what they call creating ones own.) Creative minds. (SD: Like science of mind sort of?) Yes. (SD: Yes but that’s still on the mortal plane?) On the relative level. SD: If someone is coming toward you with a knife and you say, "Well these are just a projection of my mind," how would you… R: And then you get stabbed. (SD: It's only a dream anyway. No but how would you change it?) You would change it by pulling out a gun and shooting him. (SD: Or getting out of the way, you wouldn't think about that because that's the mind again thinking about you being stabbed.) We have to use common sense. (SD: Well can you give me an instance of how you can change it if you really…) Here's what you would do. First you would have to get out of the way or whatever you have to do to stop the situation and then when you get home and you're by yourself, you would ask yourself the question, "Why did I attract this? What am I that I attracted a condition like this?" because if it weren't for your mind you wouldn't have attracted it. So there's something in your mind that pulled you to that condition. (SD: Is it your mind or is it karma?) Both, same thing. The same. Your mind is karma. (SD: Your mind is karma?) Yes. SK: Karma is action just another meaning for it. SD: So you know you hear these freak things like an innocent young girl killed alone in her apartment, I find that difficult how she might attract that. I find it easier to understand how that might be karmic. R: That's how she attracted it, through karma. (SD: Cumulative karma?) Yes. But if you realize the third principle, the egolessness of all things, there's no karma. (SK: Do you dissolve it with thoughts like that?) Yes immediately. SD: So if you wanted to change your earth reality and you asked, "Now how did I attract it?" That's how you would change it? You would think what thought patterns am I… R: You would work on yourself. "Where did this come from? How did I get involved in this situation?" (SD: That's true. Science of mind is not a bad path but it's definitely mentally oriented. That would be kind of what they're doing in feeling our reality?) No what they're doing is they're creating it again and again and again and again, it doesn't stop. (SD: So they stay on the karmic wheel?) Yes. SK: This process seems to dissolve everything. (R: Yes.) SN: How do they finally break that cycle? R: By realizing the truth about your Self. (SN: What would differentiate one from another on that same path?) There's no differentiation, when you know the truth, the whole cycle stops. SF: Karma is only for the non-self? R: Oh yes of course. As long as you believe you are the body there's karma. So it all goes back to the first principle. Everything is an emanation of the mind. And there is no mind so nothing is happening. SD: So that's why you take it to a degree you could turn it to a path on the earth? R: If you're working with your mind. The mind appears to be very powerful. And you can do alot of things with it. (SD: So Science of mind is not incorrect, it's just relative to the earth or astral plane, is that right?) To an extent. SN: So how did the ignorance originate? (R: It never did.) Yeah this is the paradox, it's perfect. (R: How come the sky is blue? It never was.) SD: We are already realized but we don't realize it, right? (laughs) There’s nothing to become, is there? (R: Exactly.) We are self-realized. But that's what we're talking about. R: But you don't want to believe it, so you keep working on yourself until you know. (SD: Who doesn't know?) You, everybody. Your ego. SN: Well it’s like saying life is a dream. But the dream doesn't exist. (R: Yes.) SK: It’s a divine paradox. (SG: So wake up!) SD: Even though you're not asleep. SF: So Robert, I've heard you several times say that everything is all predestined and what's going to happen is going to happen, regardless of what you do, what's bound to happen will happen. That implies the elusive egoic entity because in actuality nothing exists. R: Yes exactly. We go right back to the old saying, "As long as you believe that you are the body-mind phenomena, whatever's going to happen will happen. (SF: Okay. Then from that sense the ajnani will have to leave all the things which aren't supposed to happen to him?) He'll have to live through it. (SF: Have to live through it? But those things are not of any concern to the Jnani.) No, because those things don't really exist. (SF: Right. So if the Jnani can see the same things happen to his body?) Yes. (SF: And he would have rest.) Yes. SD: Yeah, because that’s just a certain kind of karma, not boomerang karma, but a karma like the arrow that’s been shot and still has to reach it's destination, but to a Jnani it would be nonexistent. (SF: But his life is no anymore a concern to the Jnani.) Yeah, but he takes care of his body while he's in it, but he knows it isn't real. (laughter) (Students discuss how Robert takes care of his body and a jnani does) R: See I take all the stuff that Bob brings me. I get up in the morning, early and think about it. I throw everything in the blender, everything. Then I mix it up… (SG: Hows it taste?) It tastes good. (SD: Oh yeah, I bet.) I wouldn't drink it if I didn't like it. (SD: But if you don't have it, you don't take it right?) I don't take it if I don't have it. But I don't think about it. It's like a game. I put it in the blender then I mix everything, then I pour it over the… (SD: But you do that when you have it but if you don't have it it’s the same difference.) I'll eat something else. (SD: Yeah or nothing.) (Students continue discussion along these lines) R: Well everything becomes spontaneous, I walk to the park in the morning. I do push ups on the bars. So somebody asked me, "Why do you do push ups?" So I say, "Because the bars are there." (laughter) If they weren't there I wouldn't do it. SD: Thank God the bars are there for our sake. We like to take of you at this point because our egos need you at this point. R: You're just saying that. (SD: No I love you Robert, I want you in my life.) I'm always there. (SD: I know but I'm not strong enough to realize that you're with me. I feel you with me all the time, but if and when you leave your body I hope I have the strength to realize it.) I probably out live everybody. (SD: Probably we'll die first and you'll be doing pushups on the bars.(laughs) SN: Ramana's disciples didn't understand though. (SD: I know. Remember they begged him not to leave and he said, "Where would I go?") And even Christ's followers didn't understand. R: You only hear about the ones that didn't understand. (SD: There must have been some who grasped it?) They keep silent. SN: And Robert said, the last satsang, I asked him a question whether we're getting into people experiencing self-realization and I asked him whether he had witnessed people having that experience and so he's seen it quite a few times. SD: How do most people react, do they start laughing, crying? R: They just wake up. (SD: What does it look like?) They just wake up. (SD: Isn't there sometimes they start laughing like it's a joke.) Oh yes that’s after. (SD: Do they cry for relief?) That's after. (SD: Oh that’s after. The moment of realization is like opening your eyes or the veil is removed?) Like waking up in the morning. Say, “now I see.” There's nothing mysterious about it. (SD: About the process?) Yes, It's just like we're all in the dream and we're all asking, "How is it when you wake up, how is it when we wake up," and I keep saying, "You just wake up." But you say, "I don't understand, what kind of a feeling do you have?" The same feeling you have when you wake up now. You just wake up. (SD: Yeah, there you are.) But not when you think. (SD: What was the thing that you said you would like to have on the phone, when you wake up, there you are.) (laughs) You know what I mean, when I say, "just wake up" It's not like when you wake up now and your mind starts thinking. It's the moment before you start thinking, that's how it is. (SD: I'm not aware of that, Robert.) Catch yourself, before you think about it. Think about it the night before. (SD: You mean of being aware of that moment before you start to think?) Yes. (SD: Because the first thing I'm aware of is my thought.) Because you started to think. But there is a split second there, between waking and thinking, that you're self-realized. (SD: So you think the night before, you sort of try to program yourself to be aware of that state.) In a way you can do that, yes. SG: It's like when you're daydreaming and you're gazing, but you're not gazing at any thing in particular and you're not thinking. SN: And also you know how you're very tired? It happens to me often and I sit in that chair and I listen to tapes and I wait till I'm tired and sometimes I might meditate even during the day and then I'll fall asleep when I'm meditating and sometimes I won't get right up or lie down in a bed I'll just go in and out, in and out, so you get a semblance of waking up in the morning when you're in that state. So at night sometimes you should try to stay awake a little bit when you're feeling sleepy and you go in and out. SD: Is that sort of what they refer to in earth terms as the alpha state? R: Well the alpha state is more of a psychological state. In way it's like that, but that's more like samadhi. (SD: What, the alpha state is more like samadhi or the state you're talking about?) The state I'm talking about is beyond samadhi. (SD: It's beyond samadhi? So alpha is like samadhi?) Yes. Well of course the state I'm talking about is no state whatsoever. As long it's a state it's not that. You just become your Self. The Self you’ve always been. Here I am, da, daa. (laughs) SK: (Student talks about a Twilight show on TV night before. Reminds of this state) R: He brought some Prashad. So lets cut up the apple and eat it. (general talk between students) R: When we eat prashad we have to know what we're doing, you know. We shouldn't just eat it. For we have to realize that we're eating God. We sort of have an attitude of gratitude. We’re able to eat blessed food. It's part of a ritual, but it's still good. SD: Like breaking bread? (R: Yes.) SK: Is that the original meaning of blessings before food? (R: Yes.) Food is God also, but then it became a blessing of God. SD: But everything is God so is this plate and the cups, even the styrofoam. (laughs) R: But the food that’s prashad is something we eat, so it merges with your blood and your guts and everything else. SD: I remember once you said you must eat flesh referring to eating meat, to everyone that would be eating God. Wouldn't that apply to all foods though? (R: Yes.) (more general talk) R: Another one of the signs that you see in yourself on the way to self-realization is you begin to have reverence for everything. The ground that you walk on, the minerals, the animals, the vegetables. You have respect and reverence for everything. SD: Even the things that seem negative? (R: Yes.) Really? (R: Everything.) SD: That's difficult for me because (mentions something about smog?) R: Because, you're seeing that. Who sees that? (SD: My ego, the mind.) So when you have reverence for something you have no quarrel with it. (SD: But I do have a quarrel with the smog.) Then it will hurt you. What ever you have a quarrel with, it has the power to hurt you. But when you reconcile yourself with the smog, it loses it's power to hurt. (SD: Is reconciling the same as reverence?) In a way. Take the human condition. If I have a quarrel with you and if I reconcile myself with you then I have reverence for you, then you no longer want to hurt me… (tape ends abruptly)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. It's good to see you again. Those of you who are new, welcome. I confess to you that I am not the body-mind phenomena. That I am eternal spirit. When I use the pronoun I, I refer to omnipresence. I'm not talking of myself, personally. I'm speaking of the universal, I. So whenever I use that pronoun, this is what I refer to, and so when I make a confession I'm not talking about Robert. I'm talking about every sentient creature on this earth. I am absolute reality. I am birthless, deathless and do not disappear. I am eternal bliss, no beginning and no end. I am that I am. I am pure intelligence, always available, omniscient, omnipotent, residing in everything. I am that, sat-chit-ananda. All knowledge, existence, bliss. I am Nirvana. I am emptiness. And because I am that, all is well. There are no problems. Nothing is wrong. There is no creation. Nothing has ever been created. I am that eternal something that has always existed from the beginning, exists now and will always exist. All is well. No problems. No anxiety. Peace, harmony, love, bliss, I am that. (tape break) I get a few phone calls from different people all over the world. Basically they ask the same questions. How do I solve my problems and how do I become self-realized? And that's a funny question to me. It's like a person standing in the middle of the ocean, asking for water. Self-realization is your very nature. You are already that, but because we are attached to maya, we are earthbound. We use discrimination and we believe everything we see is real. Because of this, because we believe the body is real, the mind is real, it becomes like the clouds hiding the sun. You do not say there is no sun, you wait for the clouds to dissipate and the sun shines again in all its glory and splendor. You are Divine. You are a radiant being of light. Only the clouds of ignorance appear have to fallen upon you and so do you believe you are human. You believe you have problems. You believe you need enlightenment. You think something is wrong someplace. But I say to you that there are no mistakes. No mistakes have ever been made. No mistakes are being made. No mistakes will ever be made. Everything is right just the way it is. Everything is beautiful. Everything is God. Everything is absolute intelligence, absolute reality, parabrahman. That is what you are. That is your real nature. How did we get lost? Again one way is by reading too much. There are so many books. So much to read, we become confused. We do not know which path to follow. We get involved in all kinds of pseudo-religious cults and this causes us to go down, as it were, until we can really find ourselves again. Reading is only for motivation. Be careful what you read. There are too many books. If you speak to those people who have really become enlightened, you will find that they hardly ever read at all. May be a couple of books but what they did, was the sadhana, the spiritual practices required. They worked on themselves consistently, constantly, 24 hours a day. How bad do you want realization? This is determined by what you do. If you're more interested in entertainment, TV, parties, drinking, going out a lot, spending time with the idiot friends, what do you expect? You get out of life what you put into it. If you're really looking for enlightenment in this incarnation, before you leave your body it's possible, but you have to do certain things, and through investigation, we have found that the fastest way for the average person to feel the urge for enlightenment is to sit in satsang. It tells you this in the Upanishads. Only those who sit in satsang will achieve the final goal. This means you do not even have to read. You do not have to practice meditation, formally. All you have to do is sit in Satsang and things begin to happen of their own accord. You automatically start inquiring yourself. You begin to investigate. It happens spontaneously. Now this is an important point. Most people read books, Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, whatever and they see what they did, but yet they do not do anything like that themselves. They never inquire. They read the books and they obtain intellectual knowledge, mind knowledge, head knowledge. If they have a good memory they can quote passages, remember phraseologies, certain clichés, certain sayings, but they never have the experience. The experience only comes when you have complete humility. When you just let go of yourself, your little self. When you stop worrying about yourself. Stop thinking of your little self so much. Stop saying, "I need this and I need that," and "I've got to become this, and I got to get this." Give up all desire. Give up all attachments to person, place or thing. Relax. Make your life very simple. Sit in silence, investigate. Find out who has problems. Find out who feels depressed. Find out who is not enlightened and you will laugh. For you are a radiant light in a world of darkness. You are divine. You are a wonderful being. Never criticize yourself. Never put yourself down. Think of yourself as God and act the part. I give you this information so that you can do something with yourself, something practical. I give you the three vehicles that cross the ocean of samsarra to the land of selfrealization. But you have to use the vehicles. You have to work with them day after day. When you first get out of bed. When you first open your eyes. And these vehicles begin to make sense to you after you practice the four principles that I shared with you. The First Vehicle is this: You have a strong desire to be alone. This doesn't mean you become antisocial. It means that you have to make the time to be alone. For instance, yesterday morning before 10 o'clock, I got three phone calls, invitations to go here, to go there, to go to a movie, to go to this place, but I declined. I was all by myself in the house. I sat down and looked at the trees and before you knew it, it was five o'clock, but I was filled with bliss, filled with joy, filled with happiness, which never goes away, anyway. There's a time to be by yourself and there's a time to be with people. But those who really want to become enlightened, have to make the time to be by themselves. So they can think of the four principles. They can inquire, "Where does the mind come from? Who thinks these thoughts?" Watch the thoughts, watch what they're doing to you, observe them, do not react to them, but ask, "To whom do they come," and realize they come to you. "Who are you? Who am I?" and as you follow the I thread to its source, there will be perfect peace in your life. Many people say, "Is a path like this practical?" and I always answer what do you mean by practical. Is your life right now practical? You have no idea, I say, what life is all about. You have no idea whether you're living or dead, you just exist. Find out who exists? Discover who you are. As far as practicality is concerned, as you discover who you are your humanhood seems to increase and become better, because the vibrations you're putting into your image-body, that appears to be real for you, is of a higher vibration and life becomes easier for you. You stop struggling. You stop reacting. You simply exist and like a divine magnet, you seem to attract everything you need in your life. But this only happens when you're truly on the path. Everything is supplied at the right time. The right people come into your life at the right time. The right things always happen. But you have loving kindness for all things. Your temper, your ego, your emotions have subsided. You no longer become angry at things that don't go your way. Because you realize you have no way. You no longer try to make God into your image and believe God is Santa Claus and you ask God for gifts or to have mercy on your soul. You realize all that God is you are. And you inquire within yourself, "To whom comes this emotion? To whom comes these questions?" This begging to God for things, "To whom does it come?" You will realize in time it's your ego and it will happen by itself. Something will tell you, your ego has to be annihilated, removed, destroyed. You do this through self-inquiry, "Who has an ego? Where did it come from? Who gave it birth?" You will come up with your own answers and the answers are never the solution. But you come up with answers to help your humanhood. Things unfold properly, in the right way. There's nothing to fight. Nothing to change. Everything happens by itself. And the question many people ask, "How can things happen by themselves? How can that be?" Well, when you understand who you are, you realize, that which you call your body, has been programmed before you were born. When you first came into this body, everything was already mapped out for you. What the body was going to become. Where you're going to end up. Even the day of your the so-called death of the body, it is all mapped out, everything is mapped out and nothing changes. So why worry? Again, this doesn't mean that you've got license to do whatever you want. As I said previously, you have to have loving kindness for all. Humility, mercy, you always have to remember, "I am my brother and my brother is me." What's good for you is good for your friends and your relatives and everybody else. Do not separate yourself from anything. Everything is one. Not only human beings but animals, minerals, vegetables, it is all one. However you treat anything, you're really treating yourself. The whole world is a looking glass for you. And what you see is what you get. So what do you see? This is why it is so often. I am merely a mirror for you. When you see me, you're seeing yourself. The question is therefore, "What are you seeing, what kind of self are you seeing?" If you're seeing something ugly, something negative, you have to work on yourself. Do not try to change other people. Do not try to change your circumstances. If you get rid of one set of circumstances, another one of the same nature will pop up later. You can't get rid of yourself until you change yourself. You have to work on yourself all the time and above all you've got to have patience. Patience is the key, especially when you're practicing this path. You must have a lot of patience. Do not ask when. Live each moment as it comes, in beauty and joy. One day you will be awaken and you will be surprised and you will laugh hysterically, but patience is the key. It's like the story of the two frogs, who lived in a milk factory outside in the woods, a fat frog and a skinny frog. One day they inadvertently jumped into a milk vat and they couldn't get out. And the fat frog said, "Brother frog we've been paddling like this for a long time, we'll never get out of here, I guess we're doomed to die." And the thin frog said, "Brother frog, have hope, have faith, keep paddling something will happen, somebody will rescue us, never give up." So they kept paddling for a few hours and they still couldn't get out, and the fat frog said, "Brother frog this is the end, I'm getting tired, it's hopeless. I see no rescue coming, it is impossible, there's no way out." And the skinny frog said, "Brother frog, do not give up hope, keep paddling, don't think about it, just paddle something will happen, something will give, we'll be rescued." So he paddled a couple more hours and the fat frog said, "Brother frog, you don't know what you're talking about. There's no hope, this is the end. I'm going to give up." And he stopped paddling and sank in the milk and drowned. But the thin frog kept paddling without thinking. After a while he felt something solid beneath him. He had churned the milk into butter and he was able to hop out of the vat. And this is like us. We see no hope. We think it's the end. Nobody loves us. We have incurable diseases. We have no job. The world looks like it's coming to an end. There are wars. Man's inhumanity to man. And we don't know when it's going to end, but for whom is this? For you? Find out for whom is all this destruction. For whom is the negative conditions? Not for you, because you are not your body. As long as you believe that you are your body, then the world becomes very real to you. As long as you believe you are your mind, then your thoughts will frighten you, scare you and make you do strange things. Will make you hate people, be suspicious, be doubtful. You'll have all kinds of problems. But when you inquire, "For whom is the mind? For whom is the body?" everything stops. You see, the substratum of all existence is bliss. That's the bottom line, simply speaking. The substratum of all existence is bliss. You come from bliss and you go to bliss. It is your real nature. It's like you're watching a movie and in the movie, there are good people and bad people and all kinds of people, yet you watch. You do not get involved in the movie, even though you're watching the movie, you know that it'll have an end and you'll awaken from the movie and you'll get up and go home. Life is like that. Life is a cosmic movie. Things begin, things have a middle, things have an end. Everything changes, changes continuously. Nothing is ever the same and it pulls you in. It pulls you into what we call maya, into the grand illusion. It makes you believe that life is virtuous and interesting and gets you enmeshed in certain things of this world. Until you become totally involved and when you become totally involved, you see it turns out to what you didn't expect. It's different to what you thought. Then you go after something else and you go after something else, it never ends. Until you become so discouraged you don't know what to do with yourself. This is true of every human being, everybody. So what to do? Take timeout by yourself, think about these things. That's the first vessel. Be alone, be happy to be by yourself, where you're not disturbed. For it’s only by being by yourself that you can think of these things and take control of your mind and your body. Spend lots of time by yourself. Being by yourself is not loneliness, when you understand what you're doing. Begin to love to be by yourself. You can't wait for the time that you can be alone. Number two the Second Vessel: Is love to be in satsang. Satsang literally means, to sit at the feet of the Master with an empty mind, not with preconceived ideas. Not with doubts. Not with a fighting spirit, but with an open heart. Love for satsang leads to enlightenment. But you have to be careful in this world, to whom you go, where you go. They have so many movements, so many organizations, so many pseudo-spiritual groups that it's hard to decide where to go. The best way to know, is to ask yourself, be by yourself. If you are sincere, if you have been working on yourself diligently, something in you will lead you to the right place. Where you can grow and unfold beautifully. Vehicle Number Three: You have to have a desire to associate with people on the path like yourself, your friends. To associate with Sages, with people who think like you. Who are trying to unfold. It's easy for the world to pull you down. You can associate with the wrong people and they look very interesting to you. They pull you down into maya and then you have to start all over again, to work your way up. You've got to be careful, you've got to be aware where you go. With whom you hang around. Let your heart tell you. Those are the three vessels. Now we'll play some music. (Music played) Satsang is usually where I don't talk as much as I usually do here. Where we ask questions about spiritual life. And I know you have questions about the path and about what I was talking about, generally about anything and this is where we get a chance to find out what really is going on. Because if you don't ask, you will never know. So feel free to ask questions at this time. Anything you would like me to expound on, to talk about or whatever you feel inside. Nerada? SN: Second principle: I have a deep feeling that you're never born. R: That you are unborn, you do not persist and you do not disappear. (SN: When you say that you do not persist?) It means your life between so-called birth and death does not exist. (SN: Does not exist? Okay and trying to reconcile that with, when we were doing the meditation, "I exist.") "I exist." When I’m referring to, you do not exist, I mean you do not exist as an entity as a person. (SN: So "I exist" is just self-inquiry to find out who exists?) Exactly. (SN: And when you say, I do not persist, I do not persist as an ego entity.) As an ego entity doing all kinds of things in the world (SN: But I persist as the Self?) The Self is. (SN: Persistence?) Persistence is the ego. (SN: But the Self is ??? thinking.) In other words what I'm trying to say is this, it appears that you are real the way you are, but science has proven that nothing is the way it appears. Think for a minute, if you were the size of an atom and you found yourself in my body. Would I be a body? Do you know how small an atom is? And if you found yourself in my body, every cell of my body would be the equivalent distance of the Earth to the Moon and to Mars and all the planets. There would be cells and as an atom you would be able to look up and see a universe like you do now and that would be my body or your body or anybody's body. So as you can see you are not what you appear to be. It is your senses that fool you. It is your ego-mind that tells you that you are a body and you look this way and you have to eat and drink and you get older and you die. It's a lie! But as long as we collectively believe in it, the lie becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. So when you are working on yourself with the principles and this is the second principle: you have a deep feeling, a deep realization, that you are unborn. There was no time that you were born. And you prove this again by realizing, who gave you birth? Your parents. Who gave them birth? Their parents and you go back all the way. Now when you go back to the end what do you get? Nothing. Who is the first person that lived? If you believe in the biblical tale, you believe in Adam and Eve, but that's nonsense that's a fairy tale for children. You just appear just like in a dream. When you dream do you dream about Adam and Eve giving birth to the human race? Of course not. The dream just begins in the middle as it appears, like everything is already here. This life that you call real is the same as a dream only longer. Everything just appears because of your mind and everything keeps appearing because of your mind. When the mind is transcended everything stops and you wake up. Just like waking up from a dream. So you have to understand that you were never born. You do not have a life that appears to be real, just an appearance, a dream. And you do not disappear in the end, you do not die, because there is no place to go, since you are omnipresence itself. But do not allow this to confound you. Keep it simple within yourself. Let the message go deep into your subconscious. And you will know the truth by yourself, not intellectually, but you will become a living embodiment of the truth involved and you will become free. What seems to confuse some people is sometimes I intermix absolute terms with relative terms. I talk about the self as human and the Self as divine. There is really one Self, but for discussion to take place, we have to divide it to show you that your human self is not real but your real Self is real. So do not become confused. SS: You mention about reading and that you could do it for motivation and for inspirational words. It lifts me out of maya somehow. (R: For a while.) For a while, it's temporary, yes. R: Well it's like people smoking grass, it lifts them up for a little bit, makes them feel high, but then they drop down again. And then they've got to get stronger grass and stronger grass, ganja and the best stuff they can buy and then they've got to switch to cocaine, to get a more high. Books are the same way. (SS: But then would you think that not reading at all is better.) Sometimes, if you have a class like this to go to, read very little. SS: Joel Goldsmith and Paramahansa Yogananda, are those paths or those readings in conflict with what we're talking about here? R: There’s only a conflict when there is not realization. When there is a realization there is no conflict. (SS: Well then there's conflict at this point.) (laughs) See a real Sage never writes too much or hardly anything. Every stage that I have met in India or elsewhere, Buddhists, Indian or whatever was not well read. It is only after they attained enlightenment that people gave them books. And they started to confirm their own experiences. So after your enlightened you can look at anything it doesn't affect you any longer because you know who you are. But before that you are very impressionable, you get pulled into the wrong teachings. Joel Goldsmith and Yogananda are good teachings but you've got to be careful. It's better to sit by yourself and argue with yourself, yell at yourself and investigate yourself, find yourself, work with yourself, spend more time doing that than reading. Somebody gave me three books during the month and I've been trying to get to them but I can't. Because like yesterday morning I was telling you I was by myself all day. I opened a book and I read a passage or a sentence or a paragraph and I get blissed out and I've got to put the book down and get lost in consciousness. But to read and read and read is not too healthy, you've got to be careful. SS: Was Yogananda and like Joel Goldsmith were they realized beings or not? R: Who is to say? I can't go into things like that, it doesn't matter. What matters is your life, your enlightenment. When you're in a burning building you do not stop to admire the pictures on the wall. You get out of the building as fast as you can. So when you're engulfed in maya do not take the time to watch everything. And say this is interesting and that's interesting and I'll go here and I'll go there. Work on yourself, diligently, before you leave your body in this life. So you will not have to come back again and you will be free. No matter where we are, no matter what we think of ourselves, we can always work on ourselves. There's no one who can not work on themselves because you exist and as long as you exist you… (break in tape as Robert continues) …and watch and work with yourself. Something will give, something will happen, wait and see. But you've got to do it, do not waste any time. SS: Relax with it I guess. I thought if one say loses their job, then there's this hole and automatically we go and try to fill that hole often times don't we? R: Sure we do. You have to stop thinking of yourself so much. (SS: You have to let the holes be?) Let everything be, stop fighting. Merge into it, become one with it. Do not fight. Do not try to change anything. But merely look at yourself, observe yourself, find out who you are and everything else will take care of itself. (SS: So you should love the nothingness. Enjoy that space of nothingness?) Well don't enjoy the space, like you say, due to the fact that you enjoy it as an ego. Don't do that. Don't love and don't hate. Leave it alone. Just watch, become observant. Watch the feelings, watch the thoughts, watch how you act, observe yourself and see what happens. That's how it begins and as you keep observing yourself, all of the negative conditions will begin to diminish and you will start to feel a peace that you never had before. You will feel a joy, a peace that’s beyond comprehension. (SS: Do we sometimes get afraid and we try and hold onto those things, is that what happens?) Well of course, but you must ask ourselves before that happens, "Who fears? To whom do those feelings come?" (SS: Like I'm losing my identity.) Who is? Ask yourself, whatever you feel ask yourself. All the answers are within yourself. SS: A thought came up while coming here. How we want to hang on to certain identities and I thought that going to satsang, is that trying to fill a space? How is that different? R: It isn't any different, but you have to ask yourself, "Where do these thoughts come from? Where do these feelings and emotions come from that tell me this? Where did it arrive? How did it get here? To whom do they come? Who is bothered by them?" That's how you go about it. Whatever happens you ask yourself the same question, "To whom does it come? What gave it birth? How did I get this feeling?" And when you do that for a while your heart will take you to the right place and you will know what you have to do. Trust your Self. Think of yourself as a divine person. Forget about the old you. Lift yourself up and worship your Self. (SS: You mentioned positive thinking at one time.) Well positive thinking is better than negative thinking. When you practice self-inquiry your thinking patterns begin to change automatically. So you don't have to worry about that. (SS: So you don't practice either positive or negative.) No you don't. (SS: But if you catch yourself in negative thinking?) Ask yourself, "To whom does it come?" That's all you've got to do. SS: You’ve mentioned positive thinking some time, right? I don't know if it was when I talked to you on the phone? R: Well I did that because there are some people that just can't practice self-inquiry. So they have to do the next best. You have to do whatever you have to do. But self-inquiry is the fastest and best way to get rid of yourself and become aware of who you are. SG: I'm just curious, what do you think about. I mean as an alternative, just sitting in the silence. Is that as fast as self-inquiry or it depends on the person? R: It depends on the person. Silence is the best way. But when we speak of silence it's not really silence, it's bliss. We just use that word. (SG: Not silence but…) Just like emptiness. (SG: Not even that, it's just…) It's not really emptiness. (SG: …you can't describe it.) But you have to be sure that you're sitting in the right silence. That's why self-inquiry is better because it brings you to silence in the right way. (SG: Right. If the silence is not silence, but it's not nothing or something.) If you feel a joy. If you feel something you can't explain. (SG: Something all encompassing.) Then you know you're on the right track. When you follow the I when you ask "Who am I?" It leads you to silence because you don't answer. That's the true silence. But if you're into the occult, or you're into channelling, or you're into the rest of these things, if you try to sit in silence, you'll be bombarded by voices, by things, by all kinds of nonsense and they all come from your own mind because you believe certain things. That's why people say, "These entities have gotten hold of my body," because they were dwelling in these things and they believe in Spirit entities. So naturally they create it in themselves, but they think they're coming from somewhere else. SN: So when we sit in silence, I see how the thoughts arise. We should inquire, "To whom do these thoughts come?" R: Exactly, all the time. Whenever a thought comes, it's like you have a gun, you shoot it down by self-inquiry, by asking, "To whom does it come?" That's gone, then another thought comes. (SN: Now if we sit and the thoughts arise, but we don't inquire is that also another practice?) That's another practice, that works also, by just watching and by not reacting to it. But you have to be able to do that. And it's not easy for most people. But if you can watch your thoughts they'll just disappear by themselves, but you have to be able to be the witness, to watch. (SN: You know if the thoughts arise, rather than say, "To whom do these thoughts come?" if you say, "Who am I?" it gives you a different impression.) You can do that. It'll change your mode of thinking. (SN: You know what I've noticed is that if I was doing "Who Am I?" it starts to become like a mantra.) It shouldn't be a mantra, it's not a mantra. (SN: Right.) SS: Do you do it fast when you do it? (R: No.) SN: Rather than to do self-inquiry through "Who am I?" If I just let the thought arise and then ask, "To whom do the thoughts come?" that gives a different practice. R: Yes it does. Whenever you inquire, "Who am I?" you just don't repeat over and over again like a parrot, but you take a space and rest in between each one and you say, "Who am I?" then you can change it and say, "Where does the I come from?" "Who am I?" and you emphasize the I, "I," "Who am “I,” I? Where did the I come from?" SF: Robert, or just sitting with I, does it have the same effect? R: Yes, it does. If you can just sit with "I, I." It has the same effect as "I-am." (SF: Or "Who am I?" too?) It has the same effect. It depends what your nature is. Everyone's nature is different. If you repeat, "I - I," you can do that like a mantra. You can say, "I - I, I - I," it's like saying, "I-am, I-am, I Am That I Am," that you can do like a mantra. SN: What is "I - I?" (R: I am that I am, I am I) I am I, okay thank you. SF: Even though it has a mantric appearance it’s more or less an equivalent to inquiry? R: It's inquiry yes. The I comes to pass. It comes out. It's a very good thing to do. Do whatever you have to do, but make your life simple do not make it complicated. In other words don't say, "I've got to do this by 5 o'clock tonight." Take your time relax. Forget about time. Forget about days. Forget about lifetimes. Just do what you have to do and let nature take it’s course. Everything will happen like it's supposed to. SB: When I inquire it always leads me back to bare consciousness. Which is like an impersonal mystery. R: That's good too. As long as you think it's an impersonal mystery then something is working deep within yourself and something will answer the call and you'll be told what the mystery is, but don't try to figure it out. (SB: It's like not knowing anything at all and not being anything, no space, spacelessness, no dimension.) How do you feel? (SB: The feeling of it is a lovely feeling.) Then it's good. (SB: A joy probably.) Then keep it up, something will give. (SB: It feels like being in love with Self.) That's a good feeling. SG: I had a similar feeling I guess it was two Saturdays ago. An amazing peace, it wasn't like I had explosions or anything, it was just so firm that everything just contracted upon itself. There was no…I feel it was stronger. R: Well how did you feel after? (SG: I don't know when it ended?) See when you have these feelings and they're real feelings they have an effect on your humanhood. (SG: Yeah, I didn't feel emotional, I felt very peaceful. It's hard to say.) Yes. (SG: Love for everything, but there was no need for love for everything you know because it was there.) You have a feeling of immortality. (SG: Yeah.) You just know that all is well. (SG: Yeah.) See the funny thing about this is enlightenment doesn't make you a soothsayer or magician. You do not perform occult acts. When I was with Ramana Maharshi, I remember people used to come up and look at him and they used to look at me and say, "He's just a funny old man, I get nothing out of him, who's he?" and they'd go away. So you see, people who appreciate Sages like that and who know where they're coming from, they would've had to have done something to themselves for many years before. Many life times. Otherwise they just can't get it, or you will not understand what it's all about because you're looking for something and there's absolutely nothing to look for because everything is. All is well. SS: Is that why some people aren't interested in spiritual paths? I see people getting married, their babies getting baptized and they seem well and happy and they don't have problems or any other things wrong, or maybe they're already there. (laughs) R: Well that has to do with karma. See you're speaking on a human level. (SS: Yeah because they don't seem interested in this kind of stuff at all.) Everybody who experiences human happiness will have to experience human unhappiness. They're two sides of the same coin. (SS: Maybe not even in this lifetime?) Maybe not, but it's not for us to judge it's for us to be. See we learn to leave the world alone because the world is so strong, it'll grab you, it'll fool you, it'll say look at this person, look at that person, they're fine they're like this, they're like that, they're not doing what you're doing. But don't fall for that, they've got their own problems. SS: I went to dinner with a friend about six months ago and she kept "lets get together for dinner," I kept having to say, "Oh well this is not a good time," we finally went. After the first five or ten minutes I didn't have anything to say, I felt very uncomfortable being there because everything we said was more like chit chat, it didn't mean anything. I guess these things just fall away. R: Do not concern yourself with why things happen to you. SS: It bothered me that I was there and couldn't wait to get home. I'll have more excuses next time because I couldn't feel any reason to get together really. R: Again, do not make your life complicated, keep your life simple. Try to be by yourself. Associate with those people who think like you. Try to keep yourself happy and peaceful. Don't make your life too complicated with people or places. SS: Not too many people in Orange County that are into this. I hope you guys are familiar with Orange County but it’s pretty conservative. I guess there's people out there. R: If you're doing the right thing, the right thing will happen. (SS: So those people will meet up with people.) Like begets like. So don't criticize yourself. Do not look for anything, just be your Self. Be natural, be yourself, be simple, be spontaneous, be happy. Do not look for things to complicate your life. (SS: Kind of child-like in a sense?) Yes, simple. Another thing Ramana used to do. People used to tell him that were some intellectuals coming to see you, some Pundits. Who are coming to have a discourse with you about the religion, about hinduism, about this, about that. So he used to go outside of his place and he always wore loin cloths. And he would rub himself with mud and become filthy and sit in the mud. And when they'd come by they would say, "Where does the Sage live?" and he would say, "he's gone, he doesn't live here anymore," and then they would inquire up the hill and they would say, "you just passed him sitting in the mud." (laughter) And they would become disillusioned and go away. There was no time to argue. Nobody is trying to prove anything. Nobody is better than anybody else. Simplicity is the key. Do not try to convert anybody, be yourself and then they'll ask you, "How come you're like that, I want to find out," then you can tell them. Become a living example and people will follow you. Play some more music. (tape break then Robert continues after the music played) This is your class. SM: How long were you in India with Ramana Maharshi and when did you receive your enlightenment? If you want to talk about it? R: It's a long story, but I was with Ramana Maharshi for two years before he died, 1948 to 1950 and I don't know anything about enlightenment. I've always been this way. Except what I've read in books when I was a teenager that that's what is called selfrealization. (laughs) SS: Did you talk about realization during the time you were with Ramana? R: I went to see him because he felt like I did. He had the same experiences. SS: You've had this since you were a child? Yes. SB: A few weeks ago Robert, you said when you were with Ramana and you had a profound experience. R: Oh of course, but it wasn't an experience that I didn't have before. Just sitting there, things happen. (SB: Did it become permanent at that time?) No it was always permanent. It was just - when you're with somebody like that, you just merge into them and you get an extra dose of bliss. (laughs) (SB: How many years were you with him?) Two years. (SB: Two years you were in his presence?) Yeah, not all the time. That was my main headquarters, but I went to different places and came back. SB: You said you went to see Amanda Mai Ma. Was she a great realized person? R: Oh yes, she was a great person. She was like Ramana, female version. I know you like to hear stories about those things, but I purposely cut it short because you get enthralled with the story and you forget about your Self. It's important to remember that you are Ramana. What he had you have, and to awaken yourself to that fact, through selfinquiry. SB: You know I was thinking just now, Robert. This whole process is similar to, like a caterpillar shedding its caterpillarness and becoming a butterfly. (R: You can say that.) You know it's just like here we are as mind, my self, this ego self and this you know. Becoming more of consciousness and less of mind and it's like becoming a whole different animal like… (R: That's a good analogy.) And yet we were that all the time, the potential of that and we weren't. We were being the mechanism, the apparatus mind, instead of being the consciousness which we really really were. It's just the other way around. We were animating and acting like the mind and forgetting about the consciousness which is our real life and now we're just putting the mind aside and using it only when we need it and abiding in the consciousness and then something magical happens, then we become the butterfly, like in a whole different dimension. R: Yes. When we're babies, we're free and we actually have a semblance of selfrealization, when we're a little baby. But then we become brainwashed by our parents and then by our schools and our churches and our environment and here we are, totally brain washed into believing we're something we're not. SN: Robert have you seen this type of metamorphosis happening to people along the way? R: Yes I have. Quite a few, not quite a few but quite a few. (SN: Was it a permanent thing?) Oh it's a permanent thing. When this affects you it’s like contagious. It affects you permanently and then everybody else is affected too. But it doesn't come and go. It's something that stays all the time. If it comes and goes, it's not that, it's something else. (SN: And then these people go on and live their everyday lives?) Yes. The body does what it came here to do. Again that's something that people still can't understand. They can't understand that for a self-realized person, why they would do this or do that, or act like an ordinary human being. But the fact is, that's how you see it. That's not what I see, that's what you see. Like when Ramana was dying he was laughing and his disciples were crying, they said, "Master don't leave us, we've seen you heal other people, just by them being in your presence, why can't you heal yourself? Don't go away," and he said, "you fools what did I teach you? Where can I go? There's nowhere to go. I will always be here." He saw something else. He was living in the world, but he saw reality. He saw himself as eternal bliss, as absolute reality and he was not dying. But those people who are not enlightened see death and that's the difficult part to comprehend. Try to remember that everything that you see with your eyes is erroneous and false. That's why when someone who wants to argue with me about it, I always say, "The sky is blue." Because in truth there's no sky and there's no blue. It's an optical illusion. That's how our life is, it's an optical illusion, it does not exist the way it appears to and when we wake up, we'll see that. SS: You said we can do self-inquiry when we're driving anyway? (R: Yes you can.) But if you want to make it more of a habit if it's fairly new, I mean I've meditated but self-inquiry feels different to me than when I've meditated because I kind of get relaxed or something. Is there a specific amount of time that you would recommend doing it? R: If you want a time, you can use two hours in the morning before you get up, just like If you get up at seven, get up at five. (SS: Before you do anything?) When it's quiet in your home and you're not disturbed. Sit by yourself. And do it two hours before you go to sleep, sit by yourself, if you need a time. But make it go on, all during the day. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to give you a mantra to help you out. This is a self-inquiry mantra and you can alternate with this and everything else you do. Now the way you're going to use this is this way. Whenever something is bothering you, whenever you feel out of sorts, whenever you feel something is wrong, stop thinking of your problem and do the mantra. Do it before falling asleep and as soon as you get up in the morning. This will help tremendously. You can interchange this with the four principles. When you get tired of thinking of the four principles, you can do this mantra. And it's very powerful and it works wonders. It starts with your breathing, here's what you do. You inhale and you say, "Who am I?" and before you exhale you say, "I am He," then you exhale and you say, "I am not the body." You inhale and you say, "Who am I?" before you exhale you say, "I am He," before you exhale you say, "I am not the body." Simple. Any questions about that? (tape break then student asks question) SS: Go through the principles, the four principles first that you gave? R: You can interchange. If you get tired of the four principles and the three vessels, use the mantra. (SS: When you say use the four principles you mean recall them to mind observe them and be silent?) Yes, but when you get tired of doing that use the mantra, or during the day you can use the mantra, or whatever you like whatever is easier for you. So you've got something to do and something to use all the time. That's important, to keep your mind busy. SM: Would you say it again? R: You inhale you say, "Who am I?" as you hold your breath you say, "I am He" and you exhale and you say, "I am not the body." It's very simple, but very powerful. Things will begin to happen if you do this. (SN: This shouldn't replace self-inquiry?) No. What I'm trying to do is to give you ammunition. So you can handle every situation that comes along. (laughs) SB: So you do this when you're like disturbed and your mind is racing, angry? (R: Yes.) SN: When you can't do self-inquiry. (R: Yes.) SG: It shouldn't be in place of, because some people could be attached to the mantra. R: It won't do you any harm. It'll do you good. It's good to be attached to it. Because you're stating the truth. (SS: It's okay to be attached to that mantra?) Yes. As a matter of fact let's do it right now. Make yourself comfortable and you'll see how good you feel. You can close your eyes if you like. First relax yourself by taking ten deep breaths, diaphragmatic breaths, ten deep breathing breaths, for relaxation. (silence) Now ask the question, inhale and say, "Who am I?" hold it and say, "I am He," exhale and say, "I am not the body." "Who am I, I am He, I am not the body." If thoughts interfere, just ignore your thoughts and go right back to it again. (silence) Did anything interesting happen to anybody? This is very powerful stuff. SM: Really deep energy. R: Did your thoughts bother you and interfere? (SM: Definitely.) Your thoughts are very powerful. They don't want to be left out. So they're going to butt in and you'll start thinking about dinner or what you're going to wear tomorrow or whatever. When that happens don't fight, but simply in a gentle way go back to the mantra and keep on doing it again and again and the thoughts will come less and less. This makes you one pointed. SG: When I was doing it, it dissolved after a while. (R: And what happened?) Everything was gone. (R: How did you feel?) Oh it was great, I mean, it was great, it wasn't an experience per se, it was just a very deep state with nothing. A very peaceful state. R: It affects different people differently, but that's good. (SG: Very peaceful state, I wanted to stay longer. (laughs) There was no thought.) Yes, all these things bring you to no thought to mindfulness. (SG: Yeah.) Effortlessly, there's no fighting, no shoving. You simply let it happen by itself. SS: I felt calm and then I did the self-inquiry and then I felt that I was gone and I jolted like this because I started to fall asleep. (laughs) (R: Umm. It's good for your body.) It frightened me at first but then as soon as I caught myself I just went back to it. R: It will make you peaceful and calm. (tape ends)

Robert: Greetings and salutations. We can be real informal. All I can do is tell you about my own personal experiences, not what I read. And I can tell you that nothing exists the way it appears. Everything is an appearance, and the trap is we get pulled into the appearance. We react to it. We feel hurt. We feel slandered. We feel as if something is wrong. We have emotions and they become negative, because we are falling for a false premise, and the false premise is that the world is real. In fact, the world is not real and neither are you. What we have to do is stop reacting to anything. And the only way to do that is to discover who you are. When you discover your true nature, when you awaken to your true nature, everything becomes perfectly clear. You're at peace. If something works out, it works out. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But you don't look at it that way. Your feelings have been transmuted. You no longer feel what human beings feel. You just have a great love for all things, a great compassion. And you know that the substratum of all existence is harmony, peace, emptiness, and you feel wonderful all the time. What can disturb you if you are at peace? If you've found true peace, what can possibly disturb you? The world comes and goes. One day the world is like this, the next day it's like that. But what does it got to do with you? Nothing, you are free. You are not the world. You are not your body, you are not your mind. You are total freedom, total joy, total love. You have to awaken to this fact. It's the truth. Science is beginning to see this more and more. They are beginning to see that the only thing permanent in life is change. We speak many words, we take many actions, but to what avail? Does it matter in the end? We build our life, we own possessions, we father children, and what happens at the end? Poof! It's all gone. Everything just disappears (he laughs). There's nothing. So what's the purpose? People say, "I'm making this world a better world for my children." They're just dreaming. The world will never be better, it'll never be worse. The world just is a dream of existence and it's like this one day, it's like that another day. But you are not the world. You have to awaken to that fact. You are not your thoughts. You are not your karmic expressions. You are not your inclinations from past lives. These things appear real as long as you believe in them. As an example, if you believe in the devil, the devil will appear to you, because you are creating the devil yourself. If you believe in a god, the god will appear to you. As for instance, Rama Krishna believed in the god Kali. Kali used to become very real to him, and he used to dance and sing with Kali (he laughs), and this was true as far as he was concerned. But he created Kali. That's why nobody else was able to see her but him. And that's how we create our lives. Think of the things you fear in your life. Say you fear becoming sick, you fear poverty, you fear getting divorced, you fear getting married. Whatever you fear is a concept created by your own mind. There is no question of should I get married or shouldn't I get married. It doesn't matter. What matters is how you react to it, how you see it, what you expect of it. This is true of every aspect of your life. That's what you've been trained to believe since you were a little kid. It first started in kindergarten. Your teachers brainwashed you, your family brainwashed you, the outside world brainwashed you, the system brainwashed you, and here you are. You are filled with ideas, concepts, notions, feelings, attitudes and that makes you what you are: miserable. (laughter) As soon as you wake up all that disappears. Nothing can ever happen to you that is of a destructive nature. There is absolutely nothing that can ever destroy you. You cannot be destroyed. Your body may appear to vanish, but that's like a dream. You dream about yourself, you're doing something, and you get shot, and you disappear. But then you wake up. So my question to you is, "What do you believe about yourself and about the world? What's most important to you?" This is why I feel that a spiritual path, not necessarily this one, but a true spiritual path, should be the first thing of importance in your life. Why? Because it wakes you up. No matter how good of a life you live, you may become the richest and most famous person on earth, you will have to experience the other side of the same coin one day and be the poorest, most miserable person on earth. That's the way it works. You may say to me, "My neighbor never has any problems. It's like he fell into a pot of gold. Everything he touches turns into money. He's as healthy as a horse. He's got a beautiful wife, a big house, everything he could possibly need, and look at me! And I know that guy's life hasn't changed in forty years." You're making the wrong conclusion. He has earned this karmically, and if he doesn't pull away from it he might spend his whole life in goodness, human goodness. But then he will be drawn back again, by the law of karma, which is in his mind, and he doesn't know it, and this time he will be a homeless person. And whatever he does, he won't be able to make a dime. He'll try his best, but he'll always be poverty stricken. He won't be able to earn a dime no matter how hard he tries. This is why we should never judge. You have no idea what your neighbor's going through. Never say, "He or she has a wonderful life and look at mine. Why am I poor? Why am I sick? Why am I this way? Why am I that way?" The idea is to wake up, not to look at yourself, not to feel sorry for yourself, not to compare yourself with others, but to awaken. When you awaken something happens that is unexplainable. There are no human words to explain. When you awaken you just understand, not even understand, you know, you feel, and those words are inadequate, you become, divine harmony. You are no longer fooled by person, place and thing. You no longer react. As an example, someone tells you, "Oh, you won the lotto, you won fifty-billion dollars." It's okay. You do not become a slave to that. Someone tells you, "You lost fifty billion dollars," same thing, same reaction. You do not become a slave to that. What happens in the human life does not matter. When you know who you are you do not say it doesn't matter. You simply exist. You exist as yourself. You're at peace. No one can ever take the peace away from you, no matter how hard they try. You're not fooled by things. Rather, what you do is you give of yourself. You can give yourself because you become the living Self. Therefore you can give yourself away and you're still there, for you've become the infinite Self, the divine mother, omnipresence, total oneness with all things. So you can give of yourself and yet you're always there. When Ramana Maharshi was being robbed by robbers his devotees wanted to attack the robbers, and he said, "No, no, no. It's our dharma to be what we are, and it's their dharma to be what they are. We should not interfere in their dharma. Therefore give them what they want," and that's very profound. We are spiritual people. The world is not. Therefore we act in accordance with spiritual principles. What this really means is we, as human beings, become last, not first. That's what Jesus meant when he said, "Those who go first will be last, and those who are last will be first." You have to develop a great humility. Do not long for anything. Do not long to be famous, or rich, or great. And do not say," I want to be poor and have nothing," either, they're both wrong. Just be yourself. When you are yourself you will be amazed how the universe takes care of you. It's like the body with vitamins and medicines. Your body, you know, is a natural healing factory. It really knows how to heal itself. But when we start taking too many vitamins and not enough sugar (he laughs), when we start taking medicines too much, the body says, "Well, you have made that into your god, so now you've got to depend on it." And then you have to keep gulping vitamins for the rest of your life or you get sick. Really, think about that. SD: Or you become a crazy addict. R: Or a crazy addict, doesn't matter. (laughter) But think about those things. You've got to depend upon your Self to take care of everything. Now yourself is your Self. There's one Self, so we take care of each other. But you don't think of that. When you think of others you're making a mistake. The feeling will come to you one day that you are all others. There are no others, there is just the Self, appearing as others. So how do you treat others? As you treat yourself. You don't think about it. You do not say that person is worthy and that person is not, so I'm going to help this person, not that person. You give of yourself automatically. You do not think about it because everything is your Self, and that includes the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, and everything else you don't understand. It's all part of the one. What you do to the one you do to everything. How you treat one person, that's how you treat the whole universe, because everything is one. Now, these four principles I gave you (back to the four principles) have to do with all these things. You're supposed to ponder these things. How do you work with these principles? First, who can tell me what they are? Go ahead. (A student recalls them) R: Now you said them correctly, in a way, but it's like you're reciting a lecture. SD: That's because we're just learning them. R: But it's the way you say it to yourself. As soon as you open your eyes in the morning (I'll speak in the first person) you have to say to yourself, "I feel, and realize, and understand, that everything, everything, say everything twice, is a projection of my mind." And think about what that means, forget about the other three. Work on that. "Everything! Everything! I feel that, I realize that, I understand that, that everything is a projection of my mind." And then you may think of the problems you have, if you have any, and you say to yourself, "If everything is a projection of my mind, where do these problems come from? Where did they begin?" You then realize, "Why, they came from me. I projected them. I created them." And then you say, "Who is this I that created them?" See? Now you're getting to the meaty part, to the substance. "Who is the I that created all this delusion in my life? Where did the I come from? Who gave it birth? My mind, where did my mind come from? The I. Why, they're both the same! The I and my mind are the same," and that's a whole new revelation. You think along these lines. "Where does the mind-I come from and to whom does it come?" And you follow it deep, deep within yourself. If you do it correctly you will realize there is no I, there is no mind, so there are no problems, and it'll be over, and you'll start laughing. You'll actually start laughing at yourself. You'll say, "To think, I feared this and I feared that." And once you get into that consciousness something will happen to actually physically relieve you of the problem, or what you think is a problem. As long as you believe in your mind that there's a problem, whether it's little or big doesn't matter, they're both the same, but as long as you believe you've got a problem, you'll have a problem, and it'll grow, and you can't change it. It may appear that you change it, but it turns into something else of a worse nature, when you try to work with the problem itself. Never try to work with the problem but ask where the problem came from. "How did I get it? How did I get this birth? Where did it come from?" That's a problem, the births the problem because you believe you were born you have the problem, and you can go on and on and on. That's how you work with the principle. "Everything! I feel and understand that everything is a projection, a manifestation, of my mind. Whose mind? My mind. Who is my? I, my? I and my. Who am I? Who am I who has this problem?" And as you ask yourself this question, you will begin to feel better, and better, and better. You will actually begin to feel better, and as you feel better the problem becomes less and less important, and it will vanish. This is great psychotherapy. It works. If psychiatrists gave this to patients they wouldn't have to give them any drugs. So you understand, you feel, that everything is an emanation of your mind, or it wouldn't exist. All existence, from the smallest atom to the greatest cosmic galaxy, it all comes out of your mind. But even if I tell you this you still feel that something is real, don't you? You feel that something is real. You may say, "The sun is real." You may say, "Well, God is real." You may say, "An atom is real," but you do not comprehend that you are creating these things. They're all a project of your mind. If you didn't have a mind, you would not have these concepts. That's why we are told to annihilate the mind, to kill the mind, no mind, no concepts. All these ideas come as you begin to realize that everything is a projection of your mind. SD: Can you say the Self is real or is real a term that doesn't exist? R: Well, if you say the Self is real you don't really mean it. If you meant it you wouldn't have to say it, but you can say it when you are training yourself, because it makes you feel better. It helps you live. It's better than saying that my world is real or my problem is real. It's better to say the Self is real than to say that. (SD: But better would it be…) (R: To keep silent.) (SD: …that nothing is real?) Don't even say that, say nothing. When you ask yourself the question, "Where does the mind come from?" or "Where do my problems come from?" And you keep still, that's real. The emptiness is real. (SD: Isn't the emptiness the same as the Self?) Yes, but when you speak you spoil it to an extent. (SD: That's right because the Self doesn't know anything.) When you say the self is real, it becomes personal. When there's silence it becomes omnipresent. Silence is always the best policy after you say all those things to yourself. And it's in the silence that your problems just dissolve. Try it, it really works. When you keep still after saying all these things, your problems will dissolve by themselves. Do not think, "I am getting rid of my problems," because that enhances the problems. Do not think about the problems at all but work on yourself to see your own reality, and in reality there are no problems. Yet I also note to most people, no matter how many times I say this, their problems are very real to them. And they've got a hold of them like a vice. They really feel their problems. So to those people I say, "To the extent that you can realize that your mind has created these problems, and in reality you are mind-less, to that extent, will your problems begin to dissolve." But do this when you wake up, when you open your eyes in the morning. Don't go through the four principles all at once and say, "I'm finished. Now I can go worry about my problems," (laughter) Take one at a time, even if you do not get to the second one that morning. An hour or two has passed and you're working on the first one, that's good. You can work on these things all your life, if necessary. It's better than worrying about your problems. But take them one at a time. Now you go to the second one and you work on the second one just like on the first one. Now what's the second did you say Sam? SM: We were never born? R: True, but it's the way you say it to yourself that counts. (SM: Right.) Use your own words that are comfortable for you. You have to sort of say something like this: "I perceive, I feel, I understand that I was never born or I am unborn. I do not prevail. All my existence does not exist, and I will never disappear." SD: Can you say, "I perceive" or "I understand" before your mind really has fully accepted it? R: Whatever is more appealing to you. Whatever you can work with. But let yourself know that you perceive it and you understand it and you feel it. (SD: I mean, would it be more honest to say, "I am beginning to perceive or…?") There is no beginning. So when you say, "I'm beginning" you begin, and begin, and begin, every day. It never ends. Speak up for the truth. You can say, "There's something within me that perceives, there's something within me that knows I was never born, I do not prevail, and I will never disappear. And I am that one that knows." So you start working on that. What does this mean, "I was never born, I am unborn?" It sounds like a contradiction because you say my father and mother gave me birth. This appears to be true. Who gave them birth? My grandmother and my grandfather. Then you go all the way back. Who gave them birth? Who gave them birth? And you go back to the beginning. Where did the first man and woman come from? Who started this? Who started the human race? Who started the idea of birth? Now don't come up with your answers because the mind answers. You can say, "Adam and Eve, God." Somebody told you that. You learned it from reading the Bible. But is it true? Where did the God come from, who created everything? So you go back to the beginning and you can say to yourself, it's like saying, "What came first, the chicken or the egg? The tree or the seed?" It's the same thing. "What came first, the man or the woman? How did they both get together? Who made them?" Then you will realize they don't exist. Nothing gave you birth. Because the whole origin is false. That's what I call false imagination. The whole origin of birth is false. It's a dream. It doesn't exist. Therefore, I do not exist the way I appear to be. Then you go right back to the first premise. Then, "Who am I?" See, you're always going back to self-inquiry. "Who am I that exists? If I am not the body, am I my thoughts? I can't be my thoughts because they keep on changing, changing. Then who am I?" Then you keep silent for a while. You know it's working when you start getting a quiet, loving feeling. You start to feel peace that you have not felt before, and you start to feel that all is well. (SD: What if you say, "I am the eternal now?" Even that is a product of the mind?) Yes it is. It's a temporary help, because the mind creates it. (SD: There should be no knowing just an inner knowing?) Yes, if you do this often enough – this is why you have to do this every day, when you wake up – pretty soon you will start to feel something. Really, you will feel a happiness that you never felt before, an extreme happiness, and you couldn't care if they dropped a bomb on your head. You would feel this happiness because you will know that you can't die. See, right now they're just words. But you will actually know someday that you just can't disappear. Nothing can kill you. Kill is just a word that means something that you have accepted. It's just an ignorant word. We make up words and we put feelings behind them. Say it to yourself for a while. See how ridiculous it sounds, Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. It's just an English word that human beings make up to connote some kind of danger. But the word has no power except the power that you give it yourself. When the mind is silent then reality comes of its own accord. When you're thinking, thinking, thinking, then the world has got you, and you become worldly again. So self-inquiry causes the mind to be quiet. And after you work on that you go on. "I do not prevail." So you say to yourself, "You mean my entire existence, since I was a baby, until I die, means nothing?" And then you say to yourself, "I have just proven that I was never born, because I've gone way back to the beginning. So if I were never born, how can I prevail? What prevails? Who prevails?" And you will see it's the mind that prevails. The mind wants existence, wants strength, wants power. It makes you believe that you are a body. You ask yourself, "To whom comes the mind? Where does the mind come from? Who gave it birth? How did it originate? What is its source?" And then keep quiet, keep still. And you will begin to laugh because you will actually feel, even if for a moment, that there is no mind. You will actually feel no-mind. In the beginning it may last for a moment or two. But as you practice everyday those moments of no-mind will become greater, and greater, and greater and greater. And then you go on and you'll say, "I will never disappear." So now you're laughing again because you realize, "Who disappears? That which never existed disappears. But I am no-mind so how can I disappear?" And this becomes very meaningful for you, and as you do it everyday, you become stronger and stronger in mindfulness. And something happens that's so beautiful that I can't describe it. You feel such love, such joy, such harmony, such bliss. Then you carry on. Now what's the third principle? (Student responds.) SM: Isn't it that everything is egoless? R: Say it the way you're supposed to say it. You begin with "I feel."(students laugh) See how easy we forget. You've got to feel it. You've got to say, "Something in me feels, understands, the egolessness of all things." All these principles are alike. Did you come to that conclusion yet? They all have the same source: nothing. But you have to work with them until you get there. I feel and understand the egolessness of all things. And you say, "All things," not just some things, but “All Things,” from the greatest galaxy to the minutest atom. Nothing has an ego. If it has no ego, it has no source, because to have an ego there has to be a source, and just by realizing this great truth you become free immediately. That blows your mind. It's like a Zen koan. All of a sudden something snaps in your mind and your mind is gone because it has no source, since there's no ego. It never existed, then you feel so good. [There was a tape break here - Must have been a question concerning Hussein and the gulf war - Ed.] (Robert continues) I can like them or dislike them. For this is a worldly thing and you are not of this world. So you react completely differently to things like that. When I discuss these things with you it's to make conversation. But it doesn't exist. It will come and go. Whether there is a war, or there's not a war. The fact remains you're still going to die. So what's more important? To discuss who's good and who's bad in the world, or to find out your true Self, and become free from everything. (SD: I just meant, would it help something like that, not matter?) Of course it helps because it makes them disappear. (SD: Yeah.) You realize it's part of the mind, like the blanket, like the radio. (SD: And just saying he's egoless doesn't mean it in the way we would say that. But it means he has no source, he came from nothing.) How he appears does not exist, just like his body, same thing. See, when you say, "I am not the body" you're not speaking of your body. You're speaking of "the" body, the universal body. Nobody is the body. (SD: So you could say, "I am is not the body?") Yes, you can say that. That's why I tell you not to use that too much, because you make it too personal. You're still into yourself as an individual. When you read in the text books, "I am not the body, I am not the mind," they're referring to the universal body and universal mind. That there is no body, nobody, noooooooo body. (laughter) Nobody exists. That sounds ridiculous to the average person. Now you may say, "What does this do for me?" It does everything for you. If you are creative in music, or in art, or anything else, you'll become a greater musician or a greater artist without wanting to, without going after it. Your body will do what it's supposed to. There will be no karmic attachment. As an example, if you were a great artist and a great musician, or a great carpenter, or a great loafer, or a great homeless person, and you go after it humanly this is what is holding you to the earth, and you're going to have to come back again, and again, and again, because you’ve made yourself earth bound, don't you see? Anything that you attach yourself to pulls you back to the earth, whether it’s good or bad. If you hate something it's the same as if you love something. It pulls you back to the earth. You've got to let go. If you read that lesson on non-attachment I gave you last week it explains it all. It's not being indifferent. It's just a letting go because you know, "I am my brother and my brother is me. I am everything." So I do not have to attach myself to anything. The egolessness of all things. And now I go to the last principle which is what? (A student replies.) R: Good! No, you say, "I perceive and understand what realization is. I know, something within me understands, and feels, what self-realization is," and you keep still. Then the thoughts will come to you that the only way to find out is through negation. So you can say to yourself, "It's not the sun, because the sun is a projection of my mind. It's not the moon, same thing. It's not my husband or my wife, it's not my body, it's not my organs. It's not Hussein, it's not peace, it's not the war." And everything you name, it's not. So when you get tired of naming things, you keep silent, and that's what it is. Everything is silence. All four principles end in silence, they're all the same. Any questions about that? SA: Yes, I have a question concerning two things that you said which I have difficulty with. One of the things you said is never deal with a problem. (R: Right.) And I know that if you concentrate on the positive things that you're speaking about, that's the essential teaching, say to express all the ideas that you've already talked about today. I realize that that is the energy that must be expended. But still, in this period of life that we have, as we make these statements, and as we move towards this goal which I can accept, and this theoretical idea which I accept – this abstract idea – still there is the life to be lived, and there are issues to deal with. (R: Yes.) So it seems to me that if you say, "Don't deal with the problem," this leads to enormous problems. R: On the contrary, you're separating both. You're putting them in two categories. But, they're only one. As an example, say somebody cheated you, and you sue them in court. When you sue somebody, and you're getting involved in something like that, you're setting up an energy. Even if you win the case you're going to have to sue somebody else, and then sue somebody else, and it never stops, because you've created a pattern for yourself. But, if you go about it the other way, if you know the truth about yourself, you also know the truth about the guy who cheated, because you're both one. SA: All right, let me give you another example. Let's say that we're all here and we all stay here and we have no money. And tomorrow we're hungry. We're all hungry in the morning, and we say we're not going to deal with this problem, but because our hunger is so great and keeps mounting, we really can't think of anything else. Eventually we can't think of any of these ideas that you’ve told us about because we're so extremely hungry. R: Your first premise is wrong. It doesn't work like that. It'll never work like that. If you are hungry, something will happen to appease your hunger. See, what you're thinking about is you sit down and you do nothing. It doesn't work like that. When you know the truth somebody will knock on the door and bring you food. SA: I brought up the example a week or two ago about the holocaust, and remember I said how the attitude of the Jewish people, and especially the Rabbis was that God is living in the Nazis, God has manifested himself through Auschwitz, and the others, and so we must go along with this. Would you say that is the attitude the Jewish people should have had? R: On the contrary, because that's an attitude, I'm not talking about attitudes. (S: But it's a problem to deal with?) I'm talking about realization. See, reading the Bible and making quotations is one thing. Being a living embodiment of the truth is another thing. So I'm not saying you're supposed to be passive. There are times that you're not passive. (SA: Then, you are saying, "Deal with the problem?") On the contrary, if you are in the truth, the problem will deal with itself. SA: Yes, but you're speaking of a state to which we are aspiring, and I grant what you say. I believe that would happen, but we're not in that state yet. I mean, we are, but we are not fully in the state because we cannot fully grasp it and manifest it. R: If you take it personally and you work on yourself as I said, you will do what's right. You will not be passive. SG: So you would say that your body will do the right thing by itself. It's not a matter of trying to think of it or not think of it. That's the easiest way to look at it, right there. SA: It isn't that at all. It's your mind that tells you to put on clothes and go out and find food in the morning. Your body too, but it's the body-mind working together. SD: Remember what Christ said when he said, "Put ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto you." Isn't that sort of the same thing you're saying? (R: Yes, it is.) If you dwell on self-inquiry or self-realization, somehow these things will be taken care of, maybe even by the body. SA: Wasn't it Christ also who said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's?" And that's the critical point here. There's no argument with the concept, the idea, and the goal and the abstract reality of it. I am talking about the interim period as we live in our daily bodies through the day. (SD: Before we are realized.) Yes, and that's why I bring up these problems of the fan, which I did the other day, and the food, as examples of these things that we have to deal with every moment. R: Your body and your mind are motivated by karma. The law of karma takes care of them. But you are not your body. If you are aware that you are not your body, right action will pursue. SD: You mean you can be aware that you are not your body, and yet your body will go out and get food. (R: Exactly.) But you would know that you are not the doer. SA: But you say, "If you are aware," those are your words, "if you are aware that you are not the body." I would say from my understanding of the teaching, there are degrees of awareness. If you are fully and completely, and absolutely, and totally and wholly aware that you are not the body, then okay, I grant you that. But there are these degrees of awareness, and if you are not at that particular state then you must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. R: In reality, there are no degrees. So you either are or you're not. If you think you're not, then you have to fetch for yourself. If you think you are, you'll think about these things, and then you'll go do something. But you won't be doing it. It will do itself. SD: That's what I was going to say. The answer to me is what Robert was telling us before about not being the doer. The realization that you are not the doer is even what Christ was talking about. That is, you dwell on the Self, on realization, and your body will continue to do whatever is necessary karmically, but your realization that you're not the body and you're not the doer doesn't mean it doesn't get done. SA: Well, now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. All right, then what you're suggesting is this. Let's talk about tomorrow morning. And I'm hungry so if my body-mind says go out and try to find some money to get breakfast, but all the time that I'm doing this I can still think I am not doing this (R: No, no.) I am not going to be getting the money. I am not going to be eating it. But both can exist simultaneously. (SG: You don’t think about it.) R: No, no, no. See what's going to happen when you work on the principles, and if you have hunger in your body, you will automatically, spontaneously, go get food. SD: But you won't be dwelling on it. (R: Your mind will be somewhere else.) Could you say like, "Okay, Here I am going to La Bread Bakery, but this is all a dream?" SG: You won't even say it like that. (SD: Yeah you wouldn't, I understand.) R: See, take my life, for instance. When I get up in the morning I have no idea what's going to happen the next day or that day, or during the day, but I am active and I'm not active. I do certain things but I don't do purposely. It happens spontaneously. I didn't ask to teach classes like this. It happened. I never asked for anything. But it happens because my body does it, spontaneously. But my mind is not aware of it and I'm not involved in it. But I'm fed, I live in a house. I come to these meetings. But I never say I'm going to do it. (SD: You don't plan?) I don't plan. I may plan a couple of hours in advance, or something like that, but I have no long drawn out plans. But everything works out. I know it is hard to perceive. It's really hard to perceive how I live. SA: My second point is related to this one and you said at the beginning of the speech tonight. You quoted Ramana, for him being robbed. And you said that he told his followers to give. To allow the robbers to take what they wanted and that was their karma. (R: Their dharma.) And it was his karma to have it and to give it. Why couldn't it also be his karma to protect what he has? R: Because it was not his dharma it was not his way. (SD: What is the difference between dharma and karma?) Dharma is the way things are. The Truth of the way things are. SG: So another enlightened teacher could have said anything. I mean they both are the two sides of the same coin in reality, right? (R: In a way that's true.) Just say, "Go kill em" although… you know I mean not kill them but I mean, in reality there's no difference. R: Well you're right. Just like in the Bhagavad-Gita with Arjuna. (SG: Yeah exactly.) When Krishna told him to go fight. (SG: Or go sue them or go fight them.) SA: So he could have said, "Lets protect what we have?" SG: Yeah and they're really both the same, but that wasn't his… (R: He said, "This is not our path".) This is not his path? SD: Saying dharma? See I have the same question because I thought dharma and karma were the same thing. (R: No.) So they're not so, the dharma would be the teaching, to teach them not to resist, but karma might be to beat the shit out of them. (R: Yes.) (laughter) But if you were holy enough you would go with the dharma without taking really… R: It depends on the path that you're on. People are on different paths I guess. But the highest teaching of all, not only that, Krishna himself didn't have to fight, did he? He told Arjuna to fight. (SG: That's right.) You see. SA: Well it's easy to tell somebody else to fight. (laughs) R: When you get to the highest, there's peace. SG: There's no need to. (R: There's no need to do anything.) Theres no need for anything. Maybe to just show, maybe as a demonstration for somebody else, you could say, "Fight or don't fight." I mean as an extension… (R: For your students.) …for your students, yeah. R: It's like in the martial arts, when somebody becomes so proficient in the martial arts. I mean proficient, the highest he can ever go, higher than that. They do nothing. They do not even defend themselves. They go the other way, just sit. They except being killed. There's nothing to fight. But Arjuna was not up there, he belonged to the warrior class. SA: And so do we or one of the more… R: You belong to whatever you believe. (SG: Castes are like beliefs in your mind.) So you belong to whatever you believe. It's all in your mind. If you want to believe you've got to fight then go fight. If you have to believe you got to take care of yourself because if you don't do it then who's going to do it then you've got to. You've got to do what you've got to do. But I'm speaking of the highest teaching. Where everything is taken care of. Look at Ramana again as an example. When he was a boy, he would have been dead, if it weren't for this mysterious power to take care of him. He just went into the jungle, went into a cave and sat there. He didn't know where his food was going to come from. He didn't even think about it, how he was going to take care of himself. It didn't enter his mind. He just sat motionless, for days, until a woman came up the hill and started to feed him. SD: But he was more or less born enlightened and we're just struggling. R: Well I'm just speaking of the highest ideal. What I'm trying to tell you is that if you have trust and faith, there is a mysterious power that will take care of you and supply all you need. SN: Arnold you've mentioned several times, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's but continue to render unto the Lord that which is the Lords, and that man does not live by bread alone, but every word which proceedeth from the mouth of the Lord. So let us ask ourselves, "What is Caesar?", "What is the Lord?" and what is "The bread of life?" It seems the body alone life is not sustaining, life is not perceived from the body alone. R: That's a good point. Jesus himself never rendered unto Caesar. He told that to the people. (laughter) (SN: He always passed it on.) (SD: Better you than me.) (laughter) SA: I don't see that what you're saying at all, but my problem is with the acknowledgement of the bread part of it, how one deals with that, and I think people have those concrete problems, like in the world dealing with the world as…you all do simultaneously with the work of the Lord and all that. While you pay your attention to the spirit. At the same time you have these other problems. That's the fact. R: Arnold, remember Arnold you're speaking from your point of view. SN: Ultimately there are no problems and it's a matter of where we put our attention. Wherever we put our attention that becomes our reality. So if we focus in on the bread, so if we focus in on the Caesar but what if we ask ourselves, "What is the source of our life?" Is it from Caesar or is it from the bread? That's the question, so even if you solve the problem of the bread then you are fed, but if you never know who you are, subsequent problems are inevitable. (SA: That's true, I don't deny that.) So it's not only finding out who we are, but it's also a matter of… that there's a flow, and to realize that flow, and connect ourselves with that flow. And from that flow comes the bread and it's not just us, but it's all things. So it's not just conquering that one problem. When you conquer the problem of the Self all the other problems are conquered. SA: Theoretically, but remember also in the past I've mentioned this. In every culture, in every time, whether in Catholicism in the middle ages, in the West or whether in Buddhism in the East, because of the awareness of this problem, those who are in control have established communities, they've established ways in the world for the process to go on, and that's why it's still existent. That's why monasteries do exist. That's why there are groups of teachers of Sufi's out in the desert everywhere and that sort of thing. Or where arrangements are made for survival while the processes…) SN: Even as those arrangements are made, they're not really made, they happen of themselves and again that's the flow. R: See you're speaking of appearances. That's how it appears to you. That's what I said in the beginning, this is your point of view, that’s how you see it now. But it's not like that. SN: The Ashrams themselves didn't say, "Well let's make an Ashram". They happened of themselves because the people that were involved of it were unfolding of themselves. Everything unfolds of itself. Our life shall unfold of itself. But when we think we're the doer then there are problems. Not that we don't do anything. It's not that we do nothing, it's not that we do. Be as we are. It unfolds of itself. There's no stopping of action and there's no action. SA: Maybe it's just semantics, let's try another attack. When I came here Sam said to me several times that I should come here. This just happened. I didn't go to Sam, I didn't say, "Please tell me what to do where to go?" I wasn't even aware that he was thinking of me. It came to me just in the manner we were speaking of. And I did. Nevertheless every week I have to arrange to come here. So the two energies exist simultaneously on this plane, so I see. R: No, this plane doesn't exist, but as long as you believe it does, it does because you're creating it. You're giving its power. You are the power source. When you take the power away, everything just is. SN: That kind of gets to a question that I have, it's not really a question and I kind of know that. I feel it's a little fruitless for me to ask questions? R: No, that's all right. (SN: Well, I feel I'm kind of doing it for conversation too, because I realize that I'm at a point where I'm beyond questions but, everything is an emanation of the mind?) Umm, yes? (SN: But the mind does not exist?) Exactly! (SN: So we have different levels here. (Pause) Okay, Well; Everything is an emanation of the mind, but the mind does not exist. Everything is an emanation of the mind as if it's a dream, however the dream does not really exist. So one level is first of all, if everything is an emanation of the mind thus there is a process which is the dream, yet the mind does not exist. The dream itself has no reality. It's real but it's not true.) It's better to ask questions to yourself than to make statements. When you come to this conclusion you ask yourself, "Who's mind doesn't exist? Where did the mind come from? To whom does it belong?" and you keep silent. Then your answer will be emptiness, nirvana and you will know. SD: What questions should I have asked myself? R: The question that you're asking me, you should ask yourself, "Who has all these questions?". (SD: Are you meaning, "Who has to get her act together again?") All these things. You start with realizing that, "I have to do these things." Then go back to the I and say, "Where did the I come from who has to do all these things?" and follow the I through to its culmination, to its source. SA: Let me try another tack to express these ideas. A parent has a child and the child, let's say that the child is afraid of a bogey man or whatever. And we know that children have this fantasy life and I know as a parent how you deal with children. If you have a little child of yours who is going to bed, you know very well that these fantasies that he's having, they're not real. You know that they're not going to have any substance in his future life or in your life, there is no substance to it whatsoever. Nevertheless because you know he is a child and you know that he is on a certain level, you go along with it and you know that he is moving gradually towards greater realization as he gets older and as the reality of the world, or the unreality if you like, becomes more apparent to him. But nevertheless you have to deal with him on those levels and that's why a parent will say, "Oh, I don't think that terrible man's going to come in the door," and you'd talk to him about all of these things and you go along with him on his level even though you know it's not real and he knows it too in some way inside. R: But you're doing all that in the dream. That's all part of the dream. (SA: That’s true, but in doing it you enable him to move to higher levels of realization. If you said to the child, "I am not going to discuss this because there is no reality there, I am not going to do this." Then you keep the child from moving.) That's the dream, what you're saying is the dream. But if you just wake up, all that doesn't exist and you wouldn't have to do all of those things. (SA: What would you do to the child, what would you say to the child?) As long as you're not listening, you say what you think. (SA: What would you say if you were deep in the reality?) I have two girls and when they were babies I read books to them and did what you said, but I realized that I was not the doer, that's the point. I went through all that. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to do anything at all. I realized that I was just playing a part. I was not the doer so I read them books, calmed their fears and did what a father has to do. But I knew I am not the doer, that's the difference. (SA: Yes but in doing that you helped the girls to move to higher levels. It's the girls that I'm thinking about as being the important issue here. I'm using that as an example of our own position in life. People who are…) R: Are you going Sam? (SM: Yeah.) Go in peace. SD: Are you going to play music? (SM: Yeah.) R: When you realize that you are not the doer. Your body will do whatever it came to this earth to do. Your body follows karma and your body will do whatever you're supposed to do. But it's not you. And that can only be experienced. SD: We were just talking while you were out of the room. I don't know if this is correct or not but in a way as I perceive it, it's taking an overview and knowing as you go through these bodily actions, it's a dream. You're captured in the dream, and you're watching yourself as on video, you know you're not and you know that's you… SN: You do all the worldly things. (R: Umm.) But you say, "But I'm not the doer." R: You don't say that, if you have to say that then you are. (SD: True.) You just realize that you are the universe and you're playing all the parts. (SD: But we cannot just say that, "I'm not the doer," Robert?) SN: Some of the other teachings would say, "That you are not the doer" but this isn't thinking that. You know, we interpret it that way but that isn't what it's saying. SD: Well I agree with Arnold that we're all at different levels that we're all at. R: It appears that way. (SD: We seem to need words.) That's why you have to inquire, "For whom are there levels?" (SD: So after "I am not doer," you have to say, "Who is I?") No, when you know that you are not the doer you won't say anything. (SD: But in the meantime I seem to need to say, "I'm not the doer," to remind myself, because I'm at a lower level or I feel that I'm at a lower level. I need words like that to tell me.) SN: Better to not say that, I'm not the doer, because that's that type of certain pattern. It's better to ask yourself, "Who is the doer?" than to say, "I am the doer." (SD: That's a good point.) Yes, see that's the point. The point is that, "I am not the doer" is not this practice. Question. (SD: Because that's duality?) Well it's not self-inquiry. (SD: Well it could lead to self-inquiry, you could say, "Who is I?", I is nonexistent.) When you're conquering something in the world and you say, "I am not the doer," that is not what this path is teaching. That's like a negation. You neither affirm nor negate. This is non-duality, you ask yourself, "Who is the doer?", "To whom does this come?" Not "I am not the doer" because in a sense what you're saying is, "I am," you're already affirming yourself, by saying, "I am not the doer" you're saying well I exist. (SD: You could be saying, "I am is not the doer." ) That's different! Yeah but in your mind, what do you do? See when I was saying, in the Bible it says, "Be still and know that I am God". Well, I got one impression when I was doing that, but when I said, "Be still and know that I am is God," I got a totally different impression because I became God rather than a God outside of me. So when we slur that, we have to be very careful. (SD: Yeah.) Better to define it and say, "I am" or "To whom does this come?" rather than… R: Remember that you can never become God because God is you. You don't become anything because you don't exist as it appears. See, remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned this is my confession. This is the way I feel about it and to most people it's ridiculous. It's gobbledygook, it doesn't mean a thing, it doesn't seem practical in the beginning, to most people, because most people want something practical that they can improve their humanhood with. But the highest truth is, humanhood does not exist and if you come to that conclusion your life will be bliss. SD: But isn't one of the purposes of Satsang is to ask those questions that we're asking so that we are aspiring to understand? R: Yes that's what Satsang is all about. But then you have to practice the things that I tell you and watch what happens. In other words, you can't go home and get caught up in the world and forget about this until the next meeting. You've got to work on yourself, work on yourself and you'll see what happens. SD: But I think it's so in vain Robert, the reason Sam was unable to say the four fundamentals with feeling, like an actor or something, is because we are still at the point of learning them and the grasping of each individual one will come later. It's very helpful you to tell us to like expand on each one or maybe do one at a time. But if we know we're going to be questioned when we come to class, the night before we're going to be ready you know. Otherwise don't you have to start that way before they become out of the attic? R: Yes, you work on one until you become a living embodiment of it. You can repeat all four to yourself or when you work on yourself you take one at a time. (SD: Right.) SA: I'd like to write them down in your words if I may as succinctly as possible, is that all right? (R: That's fine.) I'll need a pen. (SD: I think I wrote them down the other day. Every time he says it, it's kind of different anyway.) Could you tell me the four as a… R: Okay, Number One: I understand, I feel, I perceive that everything, Everything twice everything, two times everything. Everything, emphasize the second everything. Put a line under it. Is a manifestation of my mind. Number Two: I feel and understand deeply that I am unborn, I do not prevail and I do not disappear. (SD: Either die or disappear?) Same thing. Number Three: I feel and understand the egolessness of everything, of all creation. Number Four: I have a deep understanding of what self-realization is. That's it. SD: Wasn't number four, the ending of that, by what it's not? R: That's how you work on yourself, through negation. (SD: Because you always say it different, the way you told me was, "You can discover what self-Realization is by what it is not?") Yes. (SD: Or Neti-neti.) If I were quoting from books I would say the same thing all the time, but I say it as it comes and that's the only difference. SN: Yeah when you said that we perceive and we have a deep understanding and though we don't feel that, we say that? R: It's good to say it when you wake up because it starts something going. (SN: But I'm saying during the day if we do the principles do we say the same thing?) You can sort of make it a little different. During the day you can just think about, that everything is just a projection of your mind. But in the morning it’s good to say, "I perceive, I understand," you know why? Because when you first open your eyes you're not awake yet and you're your real Self. So you're actually confessing to your Self your real nature. That I perceive, I understand and it goes deeper into the subconscious mind. When you just woke up you're fresh, your mind is fresh, no ideas. And during the day when the worlds got you, you can just say, "Everything is a projection of my mind, EVERYTHING!" and leave the I perceive off. (SN: Yeah but does the tree think I Am?) Yeah, but does a tree exist? (students laugh) You see it's a perception of your mind. (SN: Well some of the principles are easier than others. "Everything is a projection of the mind," I can follow that, but, "I have no beginning." There's not a feeling inside of me that I don't have a beginning because I identify with the body.) I exist, remember. You work with "I exist," that's the beginning, because you can't say you don't exist. So you exist and you say to yourself, "I exist" and you put more space between "I" and "exist" as you keep going. "I," "exist" and then you ask yourself, "who is this I that exists? Where did it come from?" SD: My mother used to instill that to us, she used to say, "Where will you spend eternity?" As if eternity was in the future. And I would say even then, "Mother how could eternity be something that comes later. It has no beginning and no end." (SG: And what did she say?) Blasphemous sort of words. R: See real satsang is non-intellectual. (SD: Then what is it, is it emotional?) It's not emotional. It's the reality of the person giving it. Whenever we have new students they'll ask the same questions, but that's their perception. That's where they're coming from. And no matter what I say they will not be able to see it until they become it. Because they're identified with their body. But you're getting more advanced because you're realizing things of a higher nature. (SD: The more advanced the more confused.) That's good, that's a good sign. (SD: (laughs) I don’t know, is it? The more I know the less I know. The more I know the more I don't know what anything is.) That's good because you're getting rid of your ego. The ego wants to know. It has to know. For when you begin to feel the less I know that's a good sign for you, because you know less about the world and more about the Self. (SD: (Unclear) That's good. (SD: Even the Self. (laughs)) Keep it up, it happens. SN: Arnold, Do you feel that your perceptions are different from a non-dual point of view since you've been coming to satsang for quite a while? SA: Well not particularly because I have been aware of this teaching for a long time. (SN: Non duality?) Yeah, oh yeah. I would say that since I've been coming here there is a deeper quality of realizing, but intellectually I've been aware of this for a long time. (SN: No, well I don't mean intellectually, I'm just saying, well basically do you feel any difference.) Well I would say there is yeah. I would say it has permeated myself more, my non-self. R: You see the more confounded you become the more the ego breaks up, whether you know it or not. (SD: Does it or doesn't it sort of become more manageable?) No it breaks up. When the ego is… (tape ends)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. Most of us have been searching for reality for many years. We've been to many teachers, many groups. But we still haven't found peace. Why? Because we're searching. That's a direct, succinct, answer. Because we're searching for something. No matter how many times I emphasize there's nothing to search for, people still search. Sometimes it would be better if we tore up all the books. Books are only to motivate us, to make us know there's something else. But there comes a time when we have to go within and try to understand what this body really is. The truth of course is, not a teaching. I do not philosophize. I do not give a teaching as it were. I simply give a confession and to most people it means nothing. But we're not trying to attract most people. Those who feel something in their heart will always come to Satsang. And you'll always attract a teacher that is more to your liking. I do not consider myself a teacher or a guru. I do not consider myself anything at all. But, the reality that is left over is your reality. It is omnipresence. There is one unqualified reality and this is it, right here, right now. There are no bodies here. What you see is your own business. When you see others you're making a mistake. There never were others. We're always looking for something. We want to find the right teacher. But, as I often say, you are the right teacher. The right teacher is where you are. Person, place or thing is not the right teacher. You probably saw the movie Siddhartha, where he found the river and the peace of the forest. Even that's a mistake because he took the river seriously and made too much of the forest. He was the forest. He was the river. What we're seeking is utter foolishness. There's nothing to seek. I get so many calls. People tell me their problems all the time. And I really don't know how to respond. To whom shall I tell my problems? There just are not any problems. There are no problems, there never were problems, and there never will be problems. You may say to yourself, "If he only knew my problems." But if you live in the moment, is there a problem right now, this second? There's nothing. Nothing is your real nature. A problem begins only when you start thinking. But if you learn not to think, where's the problem? So, we have to empty the mind and then get rid of the mind. And we cannot empty the mind by thinking, only by observation. Only when there is no thought, is there reality. There's no sense saying to yourself, "I am parabrahman, absolute reality. I am unborn." Those are just words. And the next moment you have a problem, you have an emotion, you feel something is wrong. But you keep declaring, "I am unborn. I am the absolute reality." It is better to say nothing, to believe nothing, to be nothing, and that's just being yourself. It's better just to sit and think of nothing and try to become nothing, than it is to chant mantras, or to make affirmations, or to keep saying, "I am Brahman." Just by sitting you will become yourself. Last Sunday I gave you four principles, which I usually don't do. But I shared four principles with you, and everybody was in awe. But in the next couple of days I received phone calls from people, still telling me their problems. If you understood the principles, where is the problem? Even if you understood one principle and you ponder that you would be at peace. So what are the four principles? Who can tell me? Sam do you remember? SM: I know it but I uh… R: But yet you know about food, you know about sleep. You know about girls. SM: Count me out of that. (laughter) SD: I know the first one. That everything emanates from the mind. R: Yes. Think about that. Everything in this universe, person, place or thing, everything, your body, your thoughts, creation, God, everything you can think about… (SD: Each other?) …yes, everything, and I mean everything, is a projection of your mind. If you really understand this, how can you have a problem? But you may say, "Well, my rent's due on the first and I don't have any money, so how can this help me?" You would be amazed at what it does for you. Do the trees lack for leaves? Do the flowers fail to bloom? If you could realize the truth, that everything is an emanation of your mind, you would become yourself, and your Self is omnipresence. It includes everything for the survival of your body. Think about that. Your body comes from your mind. But as long as you believe your body is yourself, and you understand that it comes out of your mind, it will be provided for, just like leaves are provided for the trunk of the tree. So this teaching is quite predictable and it can be used to improve your human-hood. Not by trying to improve your human-hood directly, that's where you've got problems, but by forgetting about your human-hood and realizing everything is a mental projection. Again what happens? When you realize that the whole universe is a manifestation of your mind you become omnipresence. And in the omnipresence is contained all of your needs, and all of your needs are met from within. But, when you start worrying or thinking about it, you spoil it. Then you have to do human things to take care of you. But if you leave the human-hood alone, and go back to the understanding that it's all in your mind, you automatically let go of your mind, and the Self takes over, bringing the right people into your life, the right situation, the right address. Remember again, your body came to this earth because of karma. And it's going to go through whatever is has to go through. But you've got absolutely nothing to do with that because you are not your body. But if you think about it you spoil it. Subsequently, allow your body to do whatever it came here to do. Do not interfere. Do not fight. Simply observe. Do not react. You will be okay. SC: Is it okay to ask questions during this? (R: Sure.) How about following your inner feelings? What I've been doing lately is going by my inner feelings more. This feels really right for me. Is this also… R: You've got to watch yourself because most of the time inner feelings are really habit energy from past lives… (SC: OK.) …and from this life when you were a little kid. You developed certain habits. Most people believe their inner feelings. (SC: Well I feel I go against my inner feelings, like church. I stayed in there against my inner feelings and it tore me apart to stay there. I feel so much clearer now that I've left.) Well you were meant to leave, so you did. (SC: Pardon me?) You were meant to leave. You were not meant to be there. SD: Well what about this inner voice people talk about? Is that the unconscious, and how reliable is that? R: Most of the time it's a bunch of nonsense, because to whom comes the inner voice? To the mind. (SC: It's all part of the body?) Yes. It's all part of astral planes, mental planes, causal planes. It all has to do with your body. So you have to ask yourself, "To whom does the inner voice come?" SD: Would it be distinguished from instincts? R: It would in the mental plane. When we're speaking of the mental plane we speak of distinguishing between instinct and intuition. (SD: And is one better than the other?) They're both the same. When we're talking about this path we realize that intuition, as well as instinct comes to the ego. It is the ego that feels these things. The Self is omnipresent. There's no room for anything else. It's emptiness, nirvana, the unborn. SC: Is it possible that this body and mind can go on living, like it seems like, maybe go on inner feelings, maybe not, that always looking beyond that into, who am I? R: Your body will go on living anyway. (SC: Right.) It'll take care of itself. (SC: Right.) And all those thoughts come from the ego. (SC: Okay. So that's the point, if you look at it properly.) Yes. (SC: To see that it goes on by itself.) Exactly. (SC: Okay.) But do not concern yourself with what you should eat, what you should wear, or where you should go. (SC: So it all becomes apparent?) Sure does. (SC: It all becomes apparent, That's good.) R: There is something within you that guides you. It'll direct you when you become still, when you make the mind quiescent, quiet, calm. You will then be guided to know what to do. It is true that some people use their intuition and accomplish great things. But how long does it last before it attracts misery to it? As long as you're living in the world of cause and effect, the world of duality, for every good there's a bad, for every bad there's a good. For every up there's a down. Don't be fooled. You use your intuition, you hear voices, and they guide you and tell you to do this, and you become successful. And you think you did something good. But before you know it the IRS gets a hold of you (laughter) and they throw you in jail. (SC: Well I guess they drive you right into the grave one day.) Of course. SD: I think the question is, "Is the inner voice superior to regular feelings?" R: Nothing is superior to the Self. Be your Self, abide in your Self and you'll never go wrong. But when you hear voices it comes out of your mind. You're trapped. (SD: And the mind is Maya.) The mind is very powerful. SC: Isn't that one of the questions: Who's aware of this? R: Well tell me who is? Who is? (SC: Who is?) Who's aware of it? There's nobody to be aware of anything, nobody is home, emptiness. (SC: I feel that that's true.) Who feels that? (SC: Uh-uh okay.) Even the feeling is wrong. You just abide in the Self. There's no feeling. There's nirvana, there's emptiness, there's the state of the unborn. (SC: It's really interesting that all the manifestations can point to that. Even the words, "Who am I?" It just says, "Oh." To me it says something's aware of it. That seed.) The seed's got to go. (SC: Pardon me?) The seed has to go. (SC: Seed?) It has to go. You should have no feeling. (SC: As myself?) As yourself, but something will take over. Something that's beyond words. There's a something that will come. It can be called sat-chit-ananda, bliss. Call it whatever you like. But something will take over, and you'll feel divine, and you'll be okay, just the way you are. Now, what's the second principle we were talking about. See, the secret, as I told you Sunday, is to think about these things as soon as you open your eyes in the morning. As soon as you open your eyes, what do you think about? You think about food, you think about your day, you think about work, you think about money, you think about friends, relationships, but you do not think about your mind being a projection of all the things that happen. Whatever you think about in the morning will carry you through. Therefore, you have to think about the right things in the morning as soon as you awaken. Don't wait. So what's the second principle we discussed Sunday? Who remembers? (Students guess.) R: See? So again I ask you, what do you remember? You remember your personal problems, you remember your needs, and you think you're human. You think about the body continuously. That's why there is trouble with self-realization. (Door Bell Rings as someone arrives and is greeted, then Robert continues) R: So you've got to investigate your mind and watch it all the time. See what it's doing to you. Watch how it controls you. It makes you emotional. It makes you believe something is wrong. It makes you angry. All these things come from the mind. The idea is to be aware of this. The awareness alone leads you to the light, just being aware of that alone. You don't have to know any book knowledge. Just be aware of what your mind really is. That's how you conquer your mind. By being aware of it, and no longer responding to it, no longer to react to the mind. Something that usually makes you angry, before you'd respond, and you'd want to win the argument, but now your reaction is no reaction. You simply smile and you watch. When your mind sees there's no response it will become weaker and weaker, until it disappears. It's just like arguing with a person. What happens if you stop arguing? The person goes away. They don't know what to think. They just won't have anything to do with you. They just leave. So when you stop responding to your thoughts your mind will go away, and become weaker, and weaker, and weaker, until there is no mind. So what's the second principle? (SD: Give us a hint.) Some of the words I spoke were them. (Students guess some more.) R: See, think about this. There are so many things you remember. But they all have to do with your body. True? (More remembering.) R: Okay. The second one was to have a deep feeling, and a realization, that you are unborn, that you do not prevail, and you will never disappear. Remember? You will never die. Think about that. Just to think to yourself that you are unborn. There's no cause for your birth. Cause doesn't exist. There's no reason for your birth. You never were born. And as far as your existence is concerned, it's not there. You do not prevail from birth to death. There is nothing going on, absolute nothing. And you do not get older, you do not disappear, or you do not die. Think about that. How free you'll become when you understand what this means. It's a beautiful feeling to know that you were never born, that you've always existed, but not the way you think you are. Your life as it is right now, whatever you think you're doing, however important it may be to you, is totally meaningless. Why? Because it'll be gone soon. So whatever you're getting into, whatever excites you, is only for a time. Take Elvis Presley, people still remember him. But will anybody remember him five-hundred years from now? Take your great classical musicians, concertos, Bach, Schubert, everybody else, Rachmaninoff. They're important to you right now, but five-hundred years from now nobody will remember them at all. Everything will be so different it'll be like you're in another universe. So the point is, if you get too involved in those things you're missing the mark, because you're not understanding your real nature. You're not understanding who you really are. You should be searching for the meaning to yourself, and spending 80% of the time doing that. I know it's not easy to do for some people because they seem to be involved in life. But yet you can do it. It doesn't matter. You don't have to set aside a time for meditation. You can do it while you're driving your car, while you're at work, while you're playing music. Just be aware of yourself, of who you really are, and realize the rest are a projection of your mind. To be aware of these truths sets you free. Just to be aware of them. SD: Would that be the same when you say you are unborn or you will never die, would that be the same as saying nothing exists? R: Yes, it is. Nothing as you think or as it appears, exists. It appears to exist but so does a dream. A dream appears very real. But is there a creation in a dream? Is there an end? Everything just begins, and ends when you wake up. The world is the same. SG: You should not say nothing exists, because even "exists" is an idea. R: It's an idea. That's got to go in the end. In the beginning, when you're finding yourself, you realize that I exist. "I am that I am," means I exist, same thing. But then you find out who is the I that exists? And you follow it through. And that's got to go. SG: The I has to go too? R: Everything has got to go. Now the average person will think, "If everything goes, what's left?" What's left is everything, you are left as your Self, and that's beyond explanation. Then you turn back to yourself and you become humble, compassionate, loving, because you are aware that you are the whole universe. And you can say, "All this is the Self, and I am That." (SC: Is that an experience?) That's an experience. It's beyond experience. It's a revelation. It stays with you all the time. (SC: Because appearances fall down?) Exactly, true. That can be called sahaja samadhi, when you abide in the Self all the time. But that's ineffable, it's beyond words. SC: The experience does it matter, does how deep, really matter? R: There's no such thing as deep. Deep is a mind concept. You're either that or you're not. So what's the third principle? (Silence) R: (Robert laughs) I'm going to ask you again on Sunday. Egoless-ness is at the basis of everything. Everything has no ego. Now I'm not just talking about sentient things, everything. The mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, and so forth. There is no ego behind it. SD: That's number three that there is no ego in existence. R: That means there's no cause for its existence. And just to understand this perfectly, makes you live in the moment all the time. It gets you centered. Think what that means to you personally, that there's no ego in back of anything. There's no cause for anything to exist. Like the dream again, is there a cause for the dream? All of a sudden you find yourself dreaming and everything exists. Where did it come from? It came from the mind. It's a dream. And the only way to get out of the dream is what? To wake up! So this is also a sort of a dream, it has no substance. Everything is transient, no ego in back of it. SD: I don't quite understand there being no ego and there being no cause as being the same things, really? (R: The ego is what makes something real.) Makes it appear real? R: The reason your body is doing what it does is because of your ego. That's the cause of your body function, the ego. So if there's no ego, there's no lack, there's no limitation, there's no sickness, there's no death, there's nothing like that. SD: Are the ego and the mind the same, or are you making a differentiation? R: They can be synonymous, in a way. Take for instance, you've got a sickness of some type. If you realize there's no ego in back of it, there's no cause, where did it come from? It didn't come from anything so it doesn't exist. SD: So could you also just say nothing exists? R: But is it meaningful for you when you say that? See, it has to be meaningful for you. If you say nothing exists, your mind and your ego will come and fight you and say, "What do you mean? Look, the chair is solid. It exists." So you'll become disappointed. SD: My non-existent ego will be disappointed. (laughter) R: But when you understand the entire principle, that everything is egoless-ness, everything, then you just exist in the moment, like that (snaps his fingers). You exist in the second, in the moment, and in that moment all is well, and everything is unfolding as it should, in that moment. But as soon as you start to think, then there's a cause. SC: So the only cause is the thinking process. (R: Exactly.) What you are telling us, it's truth. (R: Yes.) Yeah because I’m experiencing that right now. R: Exactly. And you may think it's hard to do, to think like that, to be like that, but it's not. Just by remembering the egolessness of all things, will wake you up. And you will become free. Now, what's the fourth principle? (More guesses, including, none of these principles exist.) R: You're right. I usually don't do this, but I'm giving you these principles to help you. (laughs) Right. They don't exist, you're right. But as long as you believe your body exists they exist also. As long as you feel the world exists, your body exists, and your mind exists, then the principles also exist. And karma exists, and God exists, and creation exists. Nobody remembers the fourth principle? Well, I'll share it with you again. (More guessing) R: Well if you recall. You have to have a strong feeling and realization of what selfrealization means. And what's the only way you can do that? Remember? (More guessing) R: That helps. By realizing what it is not. So you're right. You can't know what selfrealization is because you are already that. But you can know what it's not. So by eliminating everything, then what is left is self-realization. SD: So how would you simply define number four? R: By realizing there's no body, there's no world, there's no God, there are no organs, there is no mind. (SD: It sort of summarizes all the others.) Yes, that there's nothing. So every time you think of something you say, "Neti-neti. Not this, not this." And you go all the way down until there's nothing left to say. Then you're that. (SD: I still would like a simple explanation, three or four words.) Three or four words? (laughs). There are no others. Nothing else exists but the Self, and I am That. You've got to work it out in your own head. You've got to use your mind to destroy your mind. (SD: But it's based on neti-neti?) Yes. (SD: Rather than emotion?) Exactly. Even if thoughts come to you like, "I am perfect." Get rid of that. (SD: Never had that problem.) (laughter) "I am not the body." Get rid of that thought. SN: I wrote down, realize what is not. R: That's good. Whatever you come up with, it's not that, until you're completely empty. It's like emptying out a garbage can. As long as you keep turning it back over, the garbage will stay in. You've got to hold it upside down until all the garbage falls out. So, we've got a lot of samskaras, past tendencies, karma. All that's got to go. So we empty everything out so there's nothing left. (SG: Stay upside down.) Stay upside down. Then you become free. It's really simple. It's not complicated. But if you remember the principles it helps you. That's all I've got to say. Questions? See those of us who come here are tired of playing mind games. We want to become free and you become free by not wanting to become free. It's just abiding in the Self. By being yourself. And if you follow those four principles, you will become your Self very fast, but you have to think of them all the time. ST: May I ask you a question? (R: Of course.) When you spoke about the first principle, you spoke a lot of what was going on with me, and I realize the answer is stressful. I also hate the situation. (R: Change it.) That's what I wanted to ask, do I accept it or change it, relatively speaking. (R: It depends on where you're coming from.) I haven't been able to transcend it as yet. (R: So change it.) How do I do this? I have no alternatives. R: Look at your past, look at your background, if you've seen that you've changed things a lot in your life and things are still bad then don't change it, but work on yourself. But if you have not had negative experiences and this is pretty bad for you, then change it. ST: I have a pattern of being in negative experiences. One in particular is I've been working in the world, different jobs, just making a living in the world. Like teaching for now and then I take on routine jobs, and then I go back to teaching. And with this job which just about finished, it's getting me back on my feet just a little bit. R: Find out who is going through those experiences. You're not going through any of those experiences, you are free. Find out who is free and who is going through those experiences. Separate them. ST: May I still change the job, it still represents itself a possibility. (R: By all means.) And so I'm in a job that my heart says I hate. It's hard for me to get up in the morning to go to it, very hard to. I don't have to force myself to keep the job if that means doing my practice, is that wrong headed? (R: No it's not.) It means that I'm not really deep enough, I know I'm not deep enough. R: You're going to find that things will improve for you this year. (ST: I'm sorry I didn't hear you.) Things will start improving this year for you, to your liking. SD: You said, ask to whom do these things occur, and that's self-inquiry right? R: Of course it always does, if you do it in the right way. SD: Because if you ask, "Who hates this?" it turns out to be the ego who hates. ST. It doesn't work for me, not as an experience. (R. Then don't do it.) Yeah, any intuition I'll share it, but it does not take me to the experience that I am not the mind and the body, it does not cease suffering. Suffering does not cease, I do not go to the point of the cessation of suffering of the body, by inquiry, and yet the teaching is true, what it means. What seems to work partly for me is surrendering, a giving up, but it's not sufficient. Giving up isn't sufficient. I realize that, I listen to that whatever, whether it's the strength or the insight, there's still fighting, there's a partial giving up and still there's a tremendous suffering. R: Then simply quiet your mind, sit still and do nothing. Everything will happen by itself. Like you're doing now, become still. Do not try to do anything to yourself. If thoughts come just watch them and everything will take care of itself. (ST: Don't inquire and surrender. You know it makes sense, that makes perfect sense, it's a matter of depth.) That's when you abide in the Self, when you do nothing and everything stops, all action stops and no matter how things come to you, you don't care, you just don't react. Even death, makes no difference. (ST: Would you say that there is something more important than all of the sadhanas?) No you can't say that because that's the ego again, but when you just sit and all fear leaves you, something else will take its place and that will be bliss and happiness. When you stop fearing. (ST: Yes.) So just sit and let all the fears come. Smile and sit still. SD: You mean just look at them and detachedly? R: Just watch them. Let them come, let them do their worst, let them drive you crazy and you don't care, let them. But you try to stop, now, let them. Just whistle, sing a song, do nothing and watch what happens. (SD: So you're talking basically about selfobservation, Robert?) Not even self-observation because you've got to think about that, to do self-observation. You're actually just doing just absolute zero. You've turned yourself off and you have the attitude, even if I die right now, so what, doesn't matter. Even if my worst fear manifests, good, let it. (laughter) (SD: It seems difficult.) No not really, it seems difficult but it's easy if you do it, try it. Get by yourself and just sit down, put your hands together and do absolutely nothing. Don't tell yourself you're watching or you're practicing anything at all. Give all practices up, give it all up. SC: So even questioning, "Who am I?" is still ego? R: Yes, definitely, give everything up and let the worst come. ST: One problem with my job is that I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning and I meditate best in the morning, and its been eliminated in my life in the last three weeks and I find it hard in the evening because I come home so stressed out. I still will try it but I felt crippled by not being able to meditate in the mornings… (SD: Can you get up a half an hour earlier?) Then I will have to get up real early actually. (laughs) R: No your problem is this, you think you have to meditate. You don't have to do anything. (ST: I understand you don't do anything or you think you can't really sit?) No just be your Self. You don't have to meditate, you don't have to do anything, be yourself just the way you are. SN: The path that Robert teaches really blew my mind because I was on a different path and I've been meditating for like eight years and I was taught that I needed meditation it was a dualistic path. (ST: I'm not into that, I was.) Well whatever right, but the thing about what Robert has taught me, I mean the main thing, first of all that growth doesn't come about when you're conscious of it, even here it's not coming about through words. Yet it's happening, it's not through words and the same growth in your lifetime does not come about when you're sitting and meditating. Not that that's bad but even while you're meditating and trying to meditate. I used to have to sit away and have a practice. Now if I do sit to meditate, according to what I've learnt from Robert, it's just, it's just like, I-am, I am That I am, I-am. What I-am is the feeling that's behind when I say, "I-Am." So whatever that feeling is…I don't do anything, I don't think, I know nothing and I just try to be like Robert and I see how he sits. So the growth that occurs, so in a way he was saying that maybe you don't have to meditate, if you want to meditate, that's fine. ST: It's beneficial, being still and I realize you can be still in action, but I do find it, especially when you're teaching it's not only still. SN: It's not only being still but I still like to sit, but then Robert says that you don't even have to sit. And I understand how growth is occurring when I'm trying to still myself and how Robert says, you just think and try to be that by sitting quietly helps me to do that. Although, you don't grow just when you sit quietly, it's a twenty-four hour feat and for me it changes, if I'm out during the day I may ask, "Who am I? To whom does this experience come…?" R: It's important that you make your life simple. (ST: That's the thing, mines very complicated.) But when I say simple, I mean your mind. (ST: Oh?) A person can do twenty different things, but mentally you're not doing anything at all. Detach yourself from everything. Go to work if you have to, come home wash the dishes, eat, do what you do, but don't think about it. Don't get involved in the thought process. Just by doing that alone something will move you to wherever you have to be. In other words what I'm saying, when you go out of this situation mentally, you'll be forced to leave, by the momentum of your mind. When you're doing what you're doing, without attachment, without being the doer, without thunking that it is hard or easy. It's like being at school and graduating and the momentum will pick you up and put you on the next plateau wherever you've got to be. So if you're supposed to be in China, something will put you there and you'll wind up in China. That’s your next step. You've got nothing to do with it. SI: Is that how you went to India? R: Exactly, you have absolutely nothing to do with it. There's a mysterious power that takes care of everything, all you've got to do is abide in the Self, and you do that by keeping still. SD: So he's talking to us about that we are not the doer. SN: You know how you blew my mind, as I was always taught of the so many different paths of meditation, the key word is kind of like, self-realization. Almost the first time I met Robert he said, "There's no Self and there's nothing to do and just…there are no words. SC: Is not doing anything different from the practicing of witnessing? R: Yes it's different, because you're not witnessing. (SC: Is witnessing doing something?) Yes. There's nobody to witness. You're just empty. (SC: Well I can see that that's true, okay, and things appear, and there's no one really witnessing because that hasn't come into being yet, as far as the witnessing goes, so obviously there's no one doing it?) To witness there has to be an ego. (SC: So the witness would come later and say, "I've got to witness this.") Yes, just watch. (SC: Can you say that just witnessing goes on without being…) Without being aware. (SC: Pardon me, without being aware?) Yes, it just happens by itself. (SC: It does just happen by itself. It's always happening. In this manifestation it's always happening.) When you're not aware of your comings and goings that means you've arrived. (SC: Okay, you mean as a person?) As a person, as a mind. (SC: And as emotions, is there a difference?) As a person, it's all your actions, mind is all your thoughts. (SC: Okay, so the thoughts are still something?) When there is nobody left to pay attention to the comings and goings of your body or your mind, then you've arrived. (SC: Okay, paying attention though is the key to that space.) The key, yes. (SC: The attention… Okay, so if the thoughts are there, just like the buildings are there and the sky is there and so on.) They're just there. (SC: They're just there, you don't have nothing to do with it?) Nothing to do with you. (SC: Someone?) Exactly! That's why the example I always use every time is, "The sky is blue." If you go outside and show me the sky and say, "Look Robert how beautiful blue it is." I will agree with you, but in reality there's no sky and there's no blue. (SC: Right.) So in reality there are no thoughts and there are no actions. There is nobody to act and there are no thoughts, it's like hypnotism. (SC: Do I need to realize that?) You just have to be that. (SC: Okay.) (laughs) It's like you've been hypnotized. (SC: Can you just see the truth of it?) You don't even do that, no. (SC: This is good.) There are no words to explain it, you just, you're just there. (SC: Who's the Self?) That's what bliss is. (SC: Yes, there's a touch of that. It's kinda like practice without practicing.) That's right. R: (Turns to another student) John, What do you think of all this? SJ: I try not to. (laughter) R: How do you think this affects your music? (SJ: I think that Brahman and Shakti are the same thing, that manifestation and non-manifestation are the same thing.) You're right, true. The music will go on, but you've got nothing to do with it. (SJ: That's the work I have to do is to, if it's time to go on, then my work is to get out of the way of it.) The music will become more beautiful, but your ego will not be involved. SJ: Umm, I still have an appreciation for the beauty of…well we all have an appreciation for life. I need to love life and the manifestation of life and I think that, that aspect of the manifestation that is the same thing as the mother aspect of God. (R: But where does it come from?) I recently read a story of Rama Krishna and how his teacher brought him into Samadhi. (R: Yes.) And Rama Krishna could not experience it because he was too attached to the mother. His love for worshipping the mother - I forget what his teacher did but I think he picked up a piece of glass and pressed it between his forehead. R: He pressed Krishna between his eyes. Pressed Krishna between his eyebrows. SJ: Yeah and to bring him into… (R: Oneness, right.) …one pointedness and so I can see how we can be too attached to the beauty of nature. (R: Well look at it like this.) But also, later Rama Krishna's teacher began to realize that Shakti was simply the same thing. That in appreciating the beauty of a tree, you're also appreciating the non-existence of the tree too or God, and that it's the same thing. That we can worship God in mindlessness or one pointedness in asking, "Who am I?" Also when one sees God in manifestation are we not, is it not the same state? R: It depends what state of consciousness you're speaking from. As long you are aware that all things are of your mind. That you're creating the universe out of your own mind, then you can worship whatever you like. But look at it this way again, I appreciate a flower, so I take the flower into my room and worship the flower and in two days it's dead, so what have I accomplished? I have become disappointed, discouraged. So it is with life, we worship somebody, we worship something and everything changes and now we become disappointed but like you said before, if we worship those things as the Self, that's a different story. SD: If you see that all is one that's a different story. (R: That's different.) SK: You can say also that the manifestations are really not out there either? (R: True.) SJ: Is that what Rama Krishna did? R: Umm. See that's why in the beginning stage you learn to shy away from everything, because you realize that everything is duality. It's transitory, it comes and goes. But then the realized Sage, you begin to love everything again because it's all part of the Self. You just see it differently. SD: So his appreciation of nature is the appreciation of the Self, right? (R: Exactly.) You are what you see? (R: Yes.) SJ: I can see that there is also within duality, light and the dark. God or Brahman also has the qualities of shakti that perhaps by understanding the mother that there is life, there is death, there is constant change, maybe that's also an aspect of the father, constantly renewal. That God is not stagnant. He lies beyond concept. If you can imagine life and death at the same time, constantly renewing and constantly dying at the same time. And that perhaps nature is, you know the aspect of the mountain lion consuming a deer, is simply the aspect of Brahman consuming himself. R: Umm. If you can see it like that then you're okay, that's good. (SJ: I think that nature is simply a manifestation of the qualities of the Godhead and…) This is true but from your talking you have a tendency to separate both of them. Again God is myself, everything is the Self. So when you're talking about getting realized it's the Self you're talking about. You're talking about your Self. (SJ: Right.) The tiger consuming the deer, is your Self. It's going on within you. (SJ: Right.) But if you see it from that aspect, then you can go back into duality it doesn't matter. SG: So at that point there is neither duality nor manifestation. R: That's right. There's just bliss. SJ: I see then in the ecosystem that aspect of nature which has had thousands of years to work out balance, and life is coexistent with life and in that ecosystem it functions like music does. It helps me to understand how I can balance my own life and helps me to see God. R: But you're still separating yourself. (SD: Separating yourself from God.) SJ: Well right now I'm speaking as the ego as Arjuna now. R: Look at it this way, it's like this. It's like you're having a dream, but you're aware that you're dreaming. You're awake in the dream and you know you're participating in the dream, but you know that you're dreaming and going to wake up. (SG: Think of it as a lucid dream.) It's the same thing. Except, what we have a tendency to do, is we get involved in the dream. We think the dream is real. We get involved and we have emotions and the dream becomes more powerful. So we're giving power to the dream. Thus we suffer. That's why we suffer. But if we're always aware it's a dream we can't suffer. It's impossible to suffer because you're aware that you're dreaming and the dream is going on and you're in it. (SJ: The question came up about whether or not to change ones lifestyle?) Not to change your lifestyle? (SJ: Whether or not to? To make the decision to change something in ones life or to accept it.) There is no standard answer because it is determined by the person or karma and everything else, everybody's different. SJ: What I've been thinking about is what part does the so-called, "Science Of Mind," creative visualization, what part does that play in our lives as far as imagining something first so then you can manifest it. R: That's completely mind power. It's all mind. (SJ: Is it natural, but? Is it natural for us to do that as human beings?) We have to learn to do it also. It's like going from Grammar school to high school where we learn all about the mind. Now when we learn all about the mind we have to go higher and drop the mind completely and go beyond the mind. SD: Plus Richard wouldn't we create in our own reality as they're taught in those paths. Also all of that is predestined so whatever reality you create on a certain level would've happened anyway. You were predestined to create that in life. SJ: Are we not co-creators with that destiny or part of it? R: No we're not co-creators at all. There's only one creator, there's only one. There's not a 'co' and you are that one. Everything else is mental. SJ: Seeing the mind as a tool in the process of creativity. (R: Who sees?) I know that I'm not the mind, but can I not learn how to use my mind naturally in the process of creativity? R: As long as you use the mind you've got to suffer. Say you use the mind to become a great musician and you're going to play a concert in London and the plane crashes and you're dead. That's from the use of your mind, but if you go beyond that and you understand what the mind is and where it comes from then you begin to realize that the only freedom you've got is to turn within and see the truth. Everything else is karmic. SG: That in itself is a path to the creative process I suppose, one level of that, because we're watching something manifest but you're watching yourself do it rather than to be immersed in it. (SD: You're kind of knowing that you're not the doer right?) Yeah. Much less ego annoying you for it and then it's like doing work, it's like doing anything else, you do it better, because you're not there, you're there but you're not there. (laughter) (SD: It sounds paradoxical when you know that you are not the doer you just do it. That sounds like a paradox but it really works.) R: See you can create the whole world with your mind. The mind is very powerful but you've got to watch out what you create. SG: Frankenstein. (laughter) (SC: We're creating monsters.) (laughter) R: What you should rather do is to ask yourself, "To whom comes this mind? Where did the mind come from?" Find out, you got the power, "Where did it come from? Where does all the power in this mind come from?" Ask yourself. SJ: Where this thinking has led me is that there is that aspect of mind, of subconscious or world mind or universal mind that's able to see what I need in my life, better than me and so the words, "Seeking the kingdom" makes sense. To me it makes sense that that is part of creativity that in seeking the kingdom would I manifest in it, will I also create in it, as part of my reality and if that's the case then there's no need to think or create anything other than that, because universal mind knows what we need in order to live a balanced life. R: How does it know? Where did it get its knowledge? Where did the knowledge come to? (SJ: The Self?) Exactly, so you've been giving it power all the time. You thought it was outside of yourself because all the time you're coming from there. Take back the power. Do not think anything has power outside of your Self. (SJ: If I see that the world is also the Self, I can understand that, but the illusion is also the Self isn't it? There is nothing other than the Self?) But what self are you talking about? (SJ: Brahman?) If you're talking from the standpoint of parabrahman then everything becomes love, compassion, joy and bliss. SD: The Self with a capital "S." That's the one. R: In other words you treat your enemies and your loved ones alike. You look at an animal and a human being and they're both the same thing. You stop differentiating. You don't do it consciously, it just happens that way. So the closer you get to selfrealization, the more unity unveils itself. You like become one with every living thing. There's no difference. (SD: And everything that you're doing is the Self?) Yes. (SD: You're one with all things?) With all things. SC: (tape unclear.) (R: It depends who's talking.) But there's no one talking. R: That's why silence is the greatest teacher. When Nerada came over to my house the other day with Joy, some other people were there. There was a big conversation going on. What was I doing? (SN: Sitting in silence.) I just sat there. (SN: I learned a lot from that. It blew my mind. I saw that.) So I'm not too good of a conversationalist. (laughter) SN: I saw it. It was very blatant because he was sitting in a chair and he was hiding in the middle of the room and I was like nothing will happen except the meeting is going to blow up and it was something. Hang out with Robert a little bit more next week because you'd see. Like I was saying about meditation earlier, it's like self-realization, there's no Self there's nothing to realize, so when you sit and meditate there is no you theres no… It's just sitting there and everything is perfect as it is. And when I saw Robert sitting there it's like I visualized, I saw what I knew. You know it'd be perfect if he could just come here and sit here in silence. R: So don't invite me to your party. (laughter) No, remember also, I didn't consciously say, "I'm going to sit here and say nothing." There was just nothing to say. In other words don't put it on. Don't imagine you're like that. I remember one time when I was in Fallsberg New York. Muktananda invited me over to see him, when Muktananda was alive. So he was having all the Shakti going on, and everybody was jumping up and down and doing all kinds of things… (laughter) …and screaming and going crazy. So I was really amused. And he went to all the monitors, he said, "Throw this guy out, throw that guy out, throw this guy out, because they're all putting it on, they're all playing games." They imagine all kinds of things are happening to them and spirits are there and all kinds of nonsense. So the point is, "Be Your Self". Don't put anything on, do not imagine you're somebody else, just be yourself. SC: You told me that on the phone, that there are two ways, another was to be myself during the day and be as natural as possible. (R: And what about at night?) Pardon me? (R: What about at night?) What about at night? Same thing, same thing (R: Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde.) SD: Are you saying, "Be your Self," or "be the Self?" R: Same thing. When you just think… (SC: Don't separate it?) Don't separate, "I am myself." Just that alone makes something happen. SC: Is it the same as saying, don't make this Self any different? (SD: From that Self?) From everything else? R: That's right. In the beginning stages you try to separate your Self from your body. You say, "I'm not the body." Then I must be something else, so that's duality. But as you advance you realize, "There's no body. There never was a body, there's only the Self and I am That." (SD: Which is the fourth principle right?) Yes right. In other words, what you believe as your body is the Self, but you think it's the body. (SD: Because everything is the Self?) Sure. You're not limited to a body. SJ: Is it possible to experience the Self through focusing on, say a waterfall, or a tree, or something outside of our own body presence? R: It can give you a good feeling, give you a very high feeling, but there has to be an experiencer to experience. Yet no experiencer exists. So as long as you're the experiencer, you'll be experiencing all kinds of phenomenon. When you transcend the experiencer, then you are the waterfall or the mountain or whatever. There's no difference. SJ: It's the same obstacle though isn't it? The obstacle that's in the way of realizing the Self within the body is the same as realizing the Self in the waterfall. R: Yes, you are the obstacle, exactly. (SC: Did you say you are the obstacle?) Yes you are the obstacle. (SC: You mean the mind?) The mind, yes. SJ: If the Self is in a tree as well as inside us. Then should it not be possible to be in touch with the Self by meditating on the tree rather than on my own chakras? Ask who the tree is? (Robert laughs) (R: That's separation) SG: A good analogy would be, instead of trying to look at the tree, look at everything as one big I. That we're all one, that this is an I that sees, but this is all an I. There's nothing to look at. An I that just exists by itself, which is the same as I. There's nothing to look at. You're the I and that's the I. You're not looking at anything because then you're looking at something and saying that's not… (SJ: Then you'd be imagining an I, rather than…) No you don't imagine the I, because everything is the I. You aren't imagining an I, you are it, you are already I and that's the I and it's not looking. The waterfall's the I and that that looks at the waterfall is the I. R: When the average person looks on a tree, they don't really see the tree. They have a concept of a tree. SC: Robert I have an experience that feels like everything is myself and then sometimes it turns around and it feels like I'm not there, it's so obvious from that experience. A kind of experience from this point of view, when I'm in that, it's like there's obviously nobody there, it's just things that seem to…it's hard to explain it… (R: I know what you mean.) And later I say I experienced that, but at the time there's no one there to experience that, that's what it feels like. SD: Do you feel anything? SC: I don't feel anything. I don't feel like I'm even here. Seeing that it's only an experience, no it's not an experience, right now I'm saying experience, it feels like there's no one there, there's no one anywhere and everything is… (SD: Just beingness, right?) R: Well my question to you is, "Are you happy?" During these experiences. SC: Am I happy during the experience? It feels very…I can almost say happy, it's a transcendence kind of happiness though, there's a… R: If you have a semblance of reality, it's untold happiness, extreme happiness. So it's a mental condition. You're either the Self or you're not. There are no gradual stages. Everything else is mental. (tape break, as Robert continues and finishes up Satsang) R: Shanti, shanti, peace, peace. Did you get your answer to your last question? When I said, "So what who cares?" (ST: Yes.) Remember that your problem has no substance. It's like a shock, if it appears, so what. There is no basis for the problem. They're just disturbances in you. Get it out of your mind. It's not good. So, it's been nice being with you. Remember to love yourself, to worship yourself, to bow to yourself, to pray to yourself, because God dwells in you as you, Peace. (tape ends)

Robert: I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. Problems just mean that the world isn't turning the way you want it to. But in truth, there are no problems. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything is right. You have to forget about yourself and expand your consciousness until you become the whole universe. The reality in back of the universe is pure awareness. It has no problems. And you are that. If you identify with your body, then there's a problem, because your body always gets into trouble of some kind. But if you learn to forget about your body and your mind, where is there a problem? In other words, leave your body alone. Take just enough care of it. Exercise it a little, feed it right foods, but don't think about it too much. Keep your mind on reality. Merge your mind with reality, and you will experience reality. You will live in a world without problems. The world may appear to have problems to others, but not to you. You will see things differently, from a higher point of view. I had an interesting phone call this week. Someone asked me, "Do self-realized people dream, or have visions?" Now, in order to have a dream or a vision, there has to be somebody left to have it, and yet if you're self-realized, there's nobody home. There's nobody left. So it's a contradiction, as truth is. All truth is a contradiction, it's a paradox. The answer is, Sages do dream sometimes, and have visions. But they're aware of the dreamer. In other words they realize that they are not the person dreaming or having the vision. But as long as there's a body there someplace, there will be dreams and visions. Even though there's no one home, there will still, once in a while, be a dream or a vision. As an example, Ramana Maharshi often dreamt and had visions. Nisargadatta dreamt and had visions. And they were both self-realized. But again, the question is, who dreams, who has the vision? There's no ego left, as long as the dreamer is separate from the I. I can only speak from my own experience. There's no difference, to me, in the waking state, the dreaming state, the sleeping state, or the vision state. They're all the same. I'm aware of all of them, but I am not them. I observe them. I see them happening. As a matter of fact, sometimes I don't know the difference. Sometimes I don't know whether I'm dreaming, or awake, or having a vision, or I'm asleep. It's all the same, because I take a step backward, and I watch myself going through all these things. So, for some reason, lately, I've been dreaming about the Queen of England. She was coming to Satsang. I don't know why… for about three nights in a row. But I did have an interesting vision this morning at about four o'clock, and we'll spend the rest of the time discussing them because I found it very interesting. As many of you know, I have had a constant vision, periodically, of myself going to Arunachala, the sacred mountain where Ramana Maharshi lived. And the mountain is hollow, in the vision. And I go through the mountain, to the center, where there's a bright light, a thousand times more brighter than the sun, but yet it's pleasing and calm, and there's no heat. And then I meet Ramana, Jesus, Rama Krishna, Nisargadatta, Lao Tse, and others. And we smile at each other, we walk toward each other, and melt into one light, and become one. Then there's a blinding light and an explosion, sort of. And then I open my eyes. I've shared that with you before. But this morning, for the first time, I had a very interesting vision, which I'll share with you again. I dreamt I was somewhere in an open field, beautiful field. There was a lake nearby, trees, a forest. And I was sitting under a tree, in this open field. And I had on the orange garb of a renunciate. I must have been Buddhist. All of a sudden hundreds of bodhisattvas and mahasattvas come from the forest and start walking toward me. And they all sit down in a semi-circle around me, in meditation and I wondered what I was doing. Then I realized that I had become the Buddha. And we all sat in silence for about three hours. Then one of the bodhisattvas got up and asked a question. He said, "Master, what is your teaching?" It was not in English. I don't know what language he spoke. But I understood quite clearly. And without hesitation I said, "I teach Self Realization of Noble Wisdom.” And he sat down. We sat for about another three hours in silence, and then another bodhisattva got up and asked a question. "Master, how can you tell when one is close to selfrealization? How can you tell when one is about to become self-realized? How does one tell?" And this is what I'd like to discuss today. How can we tell if we're on the path correctly? I gave four principles, which I really never do in the waking state. I never have a teaching. But I was giving a teaching, so I'll share it with you. I explained four principles, where you know that you're close to self-realization. Of course, we're all self-realized already. Principle number one: You have a feeling, complete understanding that everything you see, everything in the universe, in the world, emanates from your mind. In other words, you feel this. You do not have to think about it, or try to bring it on. It comes by itself. It becomes a part of you. The realization that everything that you see, the universe, people, worms, insects, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, your body, your mind, everything that appears, is a manifestation of your mind. You have to have that feeling, that deep understanding, without trying to. So you ask yourself, "What do I think about all day long?" Of course, if you fear something, if you worry, if you believe something is wrong somewhere, if you think you're suffering from lack, or limitation, or sickness or anything, then you're out of it completely, because you're not understanding that all these things are simply a manifestation of your own mind. And if you worry about these things you become attached to false imagination. It's called false imagination. You've been attached to habit energy for many years, and all these attachments and beliefs come from habit energy. It's like watching a TV show and becoming one of the characters, when you know that you're not even in the TV. But you believe you're one of the characters in the TV show. So it is with the world. Do not get involved. I don't mean you become passive. I mean your body does what it's supposed to do. Remember, your body came to this earth to do something. It will do something without your knowledge. It'll take care of itself, don't worry. But do not identify your body with your Self. They're different. Your body is not your Self. And I'll prove this. When you refer to your body what do you say? Don't you say, "My body?" Who is this "my" you're referring to? You say, "My finger,” "my eye.” Who are you referring to? You couldn't be talking about your body, because you’re saying it's my body, like you own it. Who owns it? This proves to yourself that you're not your body. So do not identify your Self with the body and the world. Therefore the first principle, to see how close you are to self-realization is: You are not feeling that you are identifying with the world. You're separate and you're feeling happiness, because your natural state is pure happiness. Once you identify with worldly things, you spoil it. The happiness disappears, it dissipates. But when you're separate from worldly things happiness is automatic, beautiful, pure happiness. It comes by itself. So that's the first principle. The second principle I explained to the bodhisattvas was this: You have to have a strong feeling, a deep realization, that you are unborn. You are not born, you do not experience a life, and you do not disappear, you do not die. You are not born, you have no life, and you do not die. You have to feel this, that you are of the unborn. Do you realize what this means? There is no cause for your existence. There is no cause for your suffering. There is no cause for your problems. Some of you still believe in cause and effect. This is true in the relative world, but in the world of reality there is no cause. Nothing has ever been made. Nothing has ever been created. There is no creation. I know it's hard to comprehend. How do I exist if I was not born, I have no life and I do not disappear in old age? You exist as I-am. You have always existed and you will always exist. You exist as pure intelligence, as absolute reality. That is your true nature. You exist as sat-chit-ananda. You exist as bliss consciousness, but you do exist. You exist as emptiness, as nirvana, but you do exist. So don't worry about being non- existent. But you do not exist as the body. You do not exist as person, place or thing. Do you feel that? If you have a strong feeling about that, then you're close to selfrealization. Principle number three: You are aware and you have a deep understanding of the egoless-ness of all things, that everything has no ego. I'm not only speaking of sentient beings. I'm speaking of the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom. Nothing has an ego. There is no ego. And do you realize what this means? It means that everything is sacred. Everything is God. Only when the ego comes, does God disappear, what we call "God." Everything becomes God. You have reverence for everything. When there is no ego, you have reverence for everybody and everything. So you have to be aware of the egoless-ness of all things. Animals have no ego, minerals have no ego, vegetables have no ego, and humans have no ego. There is no cause, so there cannot be an effect. There is only divine consciousness, and everything becomes divine consciousness. So if you look at your fellow man and animals and everything else as being egoless-ness, you will see them as your Self. Can't you see that? It's the ego that causes separation. When I am full of ego, I become strong within myself. I become totally separate. So the more you like yourself as a person, the bigger your ego is. You say, "Well, I'm not supposed to like myself?” You're supposed to love yourself, but what self are we talking about? We're not talking about your body-self, because that comes and goes. We're talking about your permanent Self that has always been here. And your permanent Self is me, is you, is the world, is the universe, is everything, that's your permanent Self, egoless-ness. That's the only time that you can love your fellow human beings, when you have no ego. That's how you can tell where you're at, if you're close to self-realization. That's principle number three. Principle number four is simply this: You have a deep conviction, a deep understanding, a deep feeling of what self-realization of noble wisdom really is. What is Self Realization of Noble Wisdom to you? You can never know by trying to find out what it is, because it’s absolute reality. You can only know by finding out what it is not. So you say, “It is not my body, it is not my mind, it is not my organs, it is not my thoughts, it is not my world, it is not my universe, it is not the animals, or the trees, or the moon, or the sun, or the stars, it is not any of those things." When you've gone through everything and there's nothing left, that's what it is, nothing, emptiness, nirvana, ultimate oneness. Anyway, I explained these four principles to all the bodhisattvas and all the mahasattvas. Then we sat three hours in meditation and they got up and walked back into the forest. Then there was a flash of light, and I opened my eyes. What do you think of that? Any questions? SD: Was it a dream or a vision, and how do you distinguish between the two? R: Well, I don't really know, to tell you the truth. I'm usually aware of what's going on, so all the time I was aware of the vision/dream taking place. (SD: Including this time?) Yes, I realized I was doing all these things. It was like I was watching everything taking place. But there was never a time when I actually became the dream or the vision. (SD: Or felt totally caught up in it? You always observed it.) Right, I was always observing. But it was like an omnipresent observer. So that's the teaching, that's how you tell when you're getting close to self-realization. So, do you remember the four principles? Glen why don't you repeat them for George because he came late? (SG: I don't think I remember the four.) I think they're very important to remember. Which ones do you remember? (SG: That the second principle is that all things are egoless.) No that's the third one. (laughs) Sam how about you? What's the first one? SM: Stop identifying… (R: See how easy we forget?) (More guessing) SD: Everything emanates from the mind? R: That's right. That the whole universe is a manifestation of the mind, everything. You've got to feel that and know it's true. SS: As long as we're identified with the body or the mind, then we're not very far off. R: Exactly. You're part of the world. (SS: How do we say that in short sentencing?) The basic one? (SS: The first one?) The first one is that everything, and I mean everything, the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, everything your senses show you, is an emanation of the mind. You're projecting a picture, just like you project a moving picture, and everything you see right now, in this room, comes from your mind. You may say, "How can we collectively see the same thing?” That's because of the habit energy that we're brought up in. So collectively we seem to be seeing the same thing, the same picture. That's number one. What's number two? Who can tell me? Do you remember Ben? (Students try to remember.) SN: We're not regarded, we're just nothing? R: We're just nothing? Doesn’t sound too good (laughs) (SN: We're not born and no one dies?) That's right, but there's something in-between. We're not born. We have no existence. In between the time we're born and when we die we really have no existence. And we do not die. There's no disappearance. SD: So how would you summarize it? That we are non-existence, or that we have no beginning and no end? (R: Both are right. We have no cause.) SM: So you're saying that existence implies a relative cause… (R: Yes.) …and existence only takes place in the relative world… (R: Yes.) …and we're not really a part of it? (R: Exactly.) SN: And non-existence? (R: Non-existence also does not exist.) ST: But then couldn't you say the mind doesn't exist. I mean you say that everything that exists… (R: Nothing that you can explain exists.) But earlier you said that everything emanates from the mind. So how can you say it? (R: Yes, because you're projecting the picture.) But then you have a mind. (R: You don't have a mind.) SD: I think he means everything in the earth plane world. R: In the relative world. In reality there's no mind. That's how the picture appears. The mind projects the whole universe. So if you get rid of the mind, there's no universe. We have to kill the mind and the whole universe is annihilated, because it's the mind that projects the universe, and tells us all these stories. Think, for a moment, of all the problems that you believe you have. Think of what's bothering you. You can tell me your story for four hours. This is wrong and that's wrong. It's all a projection of the mind. So by getting rid of the mind, everything stops, and beauty, and joy and bliss ensue. But you're covering the beauty, and joy and bliss when you worry, when you fear, when you think something is wrong someplace. So that's precept number two. What's number three? Who can tell me? SN: Egoless. R: Right, everything is egoless. Not only human beings, but everything, mountains, trees, the sun, nothing has an ego. That means it has no existence. So where did it come from? When you have a dream, where does the dream come from? Same place, from nowhere, from false imagination. SD: I don't understand the expression "false imagination,” because the word imagination implies a certain falsity. R: We're imagining a false world and a false ego. (SD: That's sort of a paradoxical saying.) Sure, it's all paradox, because it doesn't exist. But that's how we imagine it. This is the reason I always go back to the sky is blue. Somebody takes me outside and says, "Look at the beautiful blue sky.” And I agree with them, but I know deep inside that that's not true. There's no sky and there's no blue, it doesn't exist. Or the oasis in the desert, the water, it doesn't exist, it's a mirage, the world's the same thing. The universe only exists in the dreaming state. It's like a dream. Now what's the fourth precept? What's number four? ST: It has something to do with we are nothing. R: (laughs) Well everything has to do with that. But it's actually to have an understanding, and a deep realization, of what Self Realization of Noble Wisdom is. SD: And how is noble wisdom defined from regular wisdom? R: It's not, it's the same thing, just more wordy. It's a Buddhist expression. ST: They have all these real long expressions. And then they always say what it is. They call it as it is rather than give a name to it. R: The eight-fold path and then they take years explaining it. But when you get into the highest teaching there's nothing. (ST: So would you go through the fourth one again?) The fourth one, the only way to know what self-realization is, is by knowing what it is not. And whatever is left, that's what it is. (SD: And that's noble wisdom?) Same thing. So you say it's not the body, it's not the mind, it's not my organs, it's not my thoughts, it's not the world, it's not the sun, it's not the universe, it's not God, it's not creation, and you go on, and on and on. When you get out of breath and out of words, that's it. SD: Is that what the expression, "Neti-neti" means? (R: Not this, not this, yes.) SN: It's sort of like nowhere, nowhere, if you spilt the two words there is no where. SS: Is it boring though? If all that goes away and there is nothing? R: (laughs) No! See, that's what people think. That's why I explained before, the mind will make you say that because it doesn't want to be annihilated. It wants to rule you and control you completely, because that's its nature. That's the nature of the mind that doesn't exist. SD: It sounds like the survival instinct. The ego wants to survive. (R: The ego wants to survive, of course.) Survival instinct. (R: Exactly.) ST: When you're meditating, are you totally separate from this physical world and everything? R: When who's meditating? When I'm meditating personally? (ST: Umm-hmm.) Well, I don't usually meditate. I sit sometimes with my eyes closed but that is just to rest my eyelids. (laughter) SD: Because there's no one there, right? There's no one to meditate. R: There has to be someone to meditate. (SD: (Student talks to other student with question) He feels that he is no thing, nothing. So while you're self-realized you need to know that what would they meditate about?) That doesn't mean you should stop meditating. It means you should look at these four principles and compare them to where you are yourself, and work on yourself so that you can apply these principles to yourself everyday, until the day comes when you don't have to talk about them any longer. You just become a total manifestation of those principles. SS: Work on them but you don't make effort ever? That's what I find… R: You just realize. You become aware of. (SS: You can do mind games with that too. There is a principle and say, "Okay I'm not going to look at things and identify with them." I don't know if that's a way to start?) No, you don't start like that. You start by mindfulness. (SS: By what?) By mindfulness, by being aware of all your actions from the moment you get out of bed in the morning. (SD: Or observing yourself.) Observing yourself. Like, what are the first thoughts you think about when you open your eyes? It doesn't matter, but you just watch. Don't try to change them, that's when your mind will fight you. And that is when the games begin that you're talking about. But if you make no effort to change anything and you just watch that will kill it. SD: So self-observation and mindfulness are the same thing? (R: Yes.) ST: Another thing this man also taught me about, when you talk about just watching everything? He also talked about accepting everything. R: The same thing, yes. You don't fight, you don't try to change. But I don't like to use the word accepting because if some horrid thought comes to you, why should you accept it? You don't accept it and you don't reject it. You just watch it. (SS: So it's like when you were having visions or whatever you just sat and watched them?) I just watched. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad. Just observe. SA: Can I make a comment about this? It leads into this. I'm caught in that area at the moment, of austerities. (R: Okay.) I've been thinking about a different approach to this. It seems to me that for example if we take advantage of a fan, and because we feel this cool air our attention is really…it comes because of our attention to the body. We all sit here and we all participate in this, and incidentally we can only participate in anything because of the positive efforts of the rest. Which says that there is a reality and that there is evolution and there is growth in that realm. So, wouldn't it be better if we declined this attention to the physical self. Wouldn't it be better if we just got rid of the fan? We wouldn't have to think it's hot, we have to cool the body. By using the fan…and of course this is only one side example, we acknowledge the reality of the body. We're acknowledging the reality of the Self because we're really concerned in this particular moment right here and now with the status of the self in the physical world. And we're emphasizing it, we're going on about it, we're developing it. Why not go the other direction? Why not turn off the fan? R: Because while you're on the path why not be comfortable? Simple as that. (SA: Okay why can't I have a Rolls-Royce outside, it'd make me very comfortable.) Well go ahead, who said you can't? See we're not saying how to live. Living this in the world has nothing to do with it. You can be rich, you can be poor, you can be well, you can be sick. It has nothing to do with it at all, that's the point. SS: So how will this happen? R: Because your karma. If you are karmically supposed to have a Rolls-Royce your body is going to have a Rolls-Royce whether you like it or not. But it has nothing to do with it. SD: My feeling also is that this comes from being very sensitive to heat but if we did not have the fan on I would be more focused on the body than I am in comfort. (SA: Yes but that's a special situation.) Well doesn't it apply to everyone that if you're comfortable you're not as distracted? (SA: I'm aware of the pleasure right now. I'm aware of…my attention has turned to my body because every time I feel the fan I feel the sensation.) SN: That's good, every time the fan goes by, that's good. SA: So the attention is toward to the transient and the physical rather than to the other… R: Then you have to work on that. If the fan were off you would be sweating, you would be thinking about that. SD: That is what I was saying. If we were uncomfortable wouldn't we be more… SA: It would be worse is what you're saying, yeah. But it's a very important point. SS: You're very hedonistic. R: They're two sides of the same coin. ST: Maybe now while we’re on our way to self-actualization. Maybe later on in our progression we will be able to sit in the room without the fan and feel comfortable. Now while we’re… R: Self-actualization is Mazlow don't talk about that. (laughter) ST: You know that is one thing I wanted to bring up. I have the hardest time with words. I wish that I could communicate without words. (R: That's good. You can) Because of right definitions and… (R: I know.) …that was something I wanted to ask you whether you have a hard time giving us the definition of self-realization? R: Oh yes because I have to use words. That is why when you get to know me better we sit in the silence and don't say too much. And then you get a direct teaching that's silent. In the silence you get the highest teachings. But if we have to use words we have to do the best we can. So let's play some music. (Music played.) (general talk continues during prashad on different topics) R: There are three methods we use to help us on the path, so we can realize what we were talking about before. Number one is self-surrender, where we surrender completely to God, or to the Self. But that's hard to do for most people. It sounds easy, but it's not. It means that you have no life of your own. You surrender completely and totally everything to God, totally. Every part of your life goes to God. "Not my will, but thine.” that's devotion, bhakti. Again, it sounds easy to some people, but it's not when you get into it, because it means every decision that you have to make is left up to God. You give your mind to God, totally, completely and absolutely. And that leads you to selfrealization. Number two is mindfulness, which we were talking about, becoming the witness. Watching yourself continuously. Watching your thoughts. Watching your actions. Sitting in meditation and watching what goes on in your mind. Not trying to change anything or correct anything. Just observing. Becoming the witness to your thoughts in meditation, and to your actions in the waking state. And number three is the one that I advocate, self-inquiry. Asking yourself, "To whom do these troubles come? To whom does this karma come? To whom does this suffering come? It comes to me? Well, what is me? I am me. Who am I? From where did the I come from?" And following the I to its source. You can use any of those three methods, the one that suits you best. But by all means do something. Don't waste your life with frivolities. Work on yourself, if you want to become free. It doesn't mean you have to give up going to the movies, or going to work, or anything. You give nothing up. You just become aware of what you're doing. You become a conscious being. You become conscious of your actions. You become loving, compassionate, gentle to all people. You stop watching out for number one. Most of us say, "Number one. I'm number one.” Forget it. That's how you suffer, that's ego. It's hard to understand, when you give up your ego, how you can have a better life? But you do. Try it and you'll see. When you stop thinking of yourself, and you start thinking on yourself, but yourself becomes omnipresence, that means you're thinking of everybody else as yourself. So if any human being suffers, you suffer too. But in a way we differ from Buddhism, not much, but a little. Because the bodhisattva says he will not be realized until everybody else is realized. But then they have a higher bodhisattva called the Arhat. It's like the Avadhut in Hinduism, who becomes self-realized, by himself, because he understands that his Self is the Self of all. And that's what we accept. In other words, if you want to help your fellow man, if you want to make this world a better world in which to live, find yourself first, and everything else will take care of itself. Any questions about that? SF: You mention about the, self-observing or observing your thoughts… (R: Yea.) Isn't it the same thought just mixed into observer and observed or same…? R: Only when you give it power, only when you think you're doing it. But when you just stop and watch, there is no action taking place, there's nothing moving. (SD: Isn't watching an action?) But you're not watching just observing, watching, but you're not. You're not, but something is but it's not you. Only when you think I'm watching the problem arises. SS: Isn't that the voice that says, "To whom does the suffering come?" SD: Yeah it would be the same. (R: Yeah, same thing, yes.) SS: Because I've been watching that voice, because if you feel a calm after that, or something starts to dissolve, then you start doing that… R: Well actually what you're doing is you're using the mind to annihilate the mind. (SS: But you're not identifying with it?) You don't identify with it, but you're using the mind when you say, "To whom does this come? (SS: That's not the Self is it?) It's the mind. (SS: It's still the mind.) But you're using it to get rid of the mind. (SS: It's becoming more one pointed so that you can dissolve.) Yes. Only when you think that it's you, is there any Karma or action. SF: So in the mature phase of observing thoughts there will be a point in which there's no awareness of observing? (R: There's no awareness, no.) Observing, and things are being observed without somebody being aware of observing and that's the mature phase of observing? (R: Exactly, yes.) SS: That's difficult to do, when you first start observing, to say that, "To whom does this come?" and sometimes you feel a sense of it dissolving or whatever and at other times the body is real strong. (R: Of course it is. So you try something else.) Well, okay then we'll fix this… (laughs) R: You just try to ask yourself, or you watch yourself or you surrender. You can tell yourself, "Okay God take this from me, I give it all to you". That's a total surrender to God, give it all to God, give it away. (SS: And if that's the thing that I don't want to go.) But that's what you have to do. (SS: If you're having pain or something and you're say, "Take it away?") Give it to God say, "Take it, take it God it's yours, I've got nothing to do with it". You have to do what you have to do, depending on where you're at in consciousness, but by all means do something, or you could just sit down and do nothing, that helps too. SD: I think letting go is the same as just like taking control of yourself, just a little easier, with a little difference. SS: What about sleeping? (R: What about it?) If you're feeling certain feelings and then you go, "I'm just going to lie down." R: Then you have to do that, that's what you do. (SS: Is that similar to letting go too?) In a way. (SS: I fight that, you know. I don't like that.) Don't fight anything. It gives you another chance to relax and when you wake up you can start again. ST: Sometimes though it seems that when they have problems and they seem to go to sleep and go to sleep and go to sleep. (SD: Yeah, it can be an actual depression.) R: Well, those are people who are not working on themselves, but those of us here realize… SS: You can be observing that in yourself that you're fighting in your sleep, even though it's really what I want to do, but maybe something's telling me, maybe that's what you need to do and let go and don't fight the sleep. R: That's why I say, don't fight anything, just go to sleep and when you wake up start again where you left off. (SS: I have felt sometimes worse when I woke up. So that's why I avoid sleep.) SD: Because you're using it as an escape. SS: No, legitimately I felt very, like I just couldn't… Like I'm just sitting here, "why don't you just let yourself go to sleep, okay I'll just let myself go to sleep," and I go to sleep and I wake up and it'd take me about an hour or two to bring me back… R: Now from this moment on, how will you react when you wake up and you feel better? (SS: Detach from it?) Observe it, watch it, even if you're feeling bad, no matter how bad you're feeling. (SS: Don't fear? I get fears, see that's what happens like, "So what does this mean?" See I start questioning. See that what happens and I'll question "Now why does happen?") You may ask, "To whom does it come?" But observe it, watch it, let yourself be fearful don't try to change it. SK: Watch yourself fearing? (R: Just be observant of what's going on.) (students discuss different ways with other students) SA: I would say that today my mind is full of heresy. (laughter all round). Today it's very difficult to let go of the idea in the Bible that, "I am the vine, ye are the branches". That the great drama of realization is being lived out in each differently, in each human being and at that living out, that drama is important! (R: In the relative world.) I can't accept that today. (R: Don't!) (laughter) My feeling is, you could say that, the divine being, or God should I say so, that it thrills to the individual drama, the individual adventure. (R: In the relative world that's true.) I was going to, Robert ask about this, my understanding, I don't know if it comes to the same point? I was wondering, isn't it self surrendering, self surrender isn't it…for instance to decide to live of course always within the context of devotion to God, try to live as one lives with all your demons, all your evil deeds, everything, and take life as it comes and accept it. Of course knowing that consequences are coming from action and the action will come and accepting everything. I understand that if devotion is strong, things will start moving little by little, going to showing up as beautiful, or, better integrated being and maybe the beginnings of self-realized. In other words if there is devotion, self surrender, no matter what you do, things will take care of itself. R: Exactly, that's very true. If you surrender to God, you don't have to worry about your life again. SF: I mean you don't have to be compulsively observing of the egoic drive or…? R: Not if you surrender to God correctly. (SF: Because you could be acting for instance, from another observer but you keep pursuing that devotion and surrendering even when you look for observers, outside observers…) It's like when you, imagine you have a pail of dirty water, scummy water. It's been standing for years and the water's very dirty. But there's a hole in the roof and every time it rains a drop comes in and it starts clearing the water. Maybe after twenty years the water will dissipate and will be clean. That's what happens to us. The more we surrender as you say, the more pure we become, little by little, by little, by little and everything will take care of itself, if you surrender, properly. SD: Isn't that bhakti, isn't that what you were talking about the different methods that we use? (R: Yes.) More or less the same as devotional bhakti? As opposed to self observation. (R: Yes.) As opposed to self-inquiry? (R: Yes.) SN: Horat mentioned acceptance, and also Dana mentioned acceptance, and Robert said earlier, "Don't accept, just watch," because when you accept there's someone to accept. Just watch, because when you accept, it sounds like you're affirming your ego again, just watch. So acceptance is good but you can also just watch. (SD: Yeah, watch without judgment.) Maybe it's just words again. And also Arnold's comments on God and the vine and the tree and the branches, and Robert said, "Well that's just the relative world," and that's kind of like subject/object again. And in the book Ramana said, "As long as you believe that you are the self then there is a God. So it's kind of like going from non-duality into duality. So if you're dealing on the level of duality, what you're saying is true, but when you go into non-duality then there are different principles. So Arnold says, "This week I'm into non-duality, next week I'm into duality, I don't know if that would help Arnold. Do you see what I'm saying? SA: I know what you're saying. SN: As long as you believe that you're the self then there is a God then those principles apply. But then if you go into non-duality then you are God. So there are different principles, you know, you don't use the analogy of the tree and branches because you are the tree and you are the branches. (SF: What you mean to ask was just like saying that God is saying there is a good time, good play going on, why get rid of it?) (laughter) Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's so wise. (laughter) SA: Not exactly, God is saying that because of his play, when the play is over, I am the play, it's true, but when the play is over, I will know more about myself. I will be in a different spot from when the play began, because of the play and all the participants in the play. And through the participants, through the actors having lived in each of the actors, I will be in a different place afterwards. R: Yes but you'll have to come back again and play another role, again and again and again. (SS: Because we're still identified with an actor?) That's what they mean in Buddhism, getting off the wheel. You want to get off the wheel. From turning around, keep turning around, again and again and again. We want to get off. SA: But what if God is standing and watching this and knows that he is in a sense, his projections are part of it but his essence is apart from the play? But even that essence which is a part will be in some way changed. I will not be on the wheel because it never was on the wheel. R: But as long as you believe in duality you are on the wheel. As long as you are approaching a God outside of yourself, you're on the wheel. SS: I have a question, what you were referring to when we talked surrender to God, accepting a God outside of yourself and yet that's where…with the devotion thing because I feel like I'm…I mean with all three of these, you can say, you can pick one of these, or you can use all three of these. (R: Sure.) Where actually they're not in conflict? (R: No they're not.) That to talk about God and if you surrender to God it sounds like outside yourself. (R: That's how it sounds, yes.) How can we surrender to God and be full of light, because I have a certain part of me that has this devotional part, but I also have a part that is more of the knowledge part too, you know. (R: Umm.) But I like both, I like the combination, I want the combination play. So how do I…I do go to my knees with "Oh God your beautiful" you know. Now when I hear that I can feel it in my being, I don't think of it as some man out there with a beard out there, I do feel it in here. In the matter of surrender how can we do that without making separation? R: Simply surrender to yourself. That's all. (SS: We don't, at this point, we don't really know it, because we haven't realized it.) So where's the God you want to surrender to? Where does he live? (SS: He's in here, well I don't really know?) It all has to do with your own mind. You talk to yourself, you surrender to your Self. You have to reconcile yourself with your Self. (SS: So it's passed the ego, it's passed the mind, and surrender to that?) You can be very humble and have a lot of humility and talk to God, but realize you're talking to your Self. SD: I don't know about you but it seems like surrendering is dualistic. R: It seems that way. But you can keep it like that if you like. SS: It will go away after a while anyway, huh? R: If it doesn't you'll still feel great. If you surrender totally, like Rama Krishna. He never wanted to become one with God, he wanted to worship Kali. Which was an image of God and he did so all of his life, but in his own way he was self-realized. In his own way. But he never separated God from himself. (SS: He was after surrendering to Kali, but he never did.) He never did. He was unique. (SS: But did he go back on the wheel then or not?) Well he was totally free, because he became one with Kali, he merged with Kali, which is God. (SS: Because I have tapes at home and I like to listen to them and I like to go, "Well is that in conflict with…" or this is a different path and I say, "well this is in conflict with this, or this is separation, or this is duality?") See you make it a conflict in your own mind. There is no conflict. (SS: Just love it and enjoy it?) Exactly, there is no conflict except what you imagine. That's what is called false imagination. You imagine that there's conflict so there's conflict. But there isn't any. It's all one. SD: Like when you hear, "Oh God beautiful" you should have known that you are, because you're the Self. It's just a knowing, a way of just describing that, whatever that is. (SS: Yeah, you don't have to say it and even though that's some words or something about it.) But you know it's you, even that is dualism. SF: Robert isn't inquiry a tremendous surrender? (R: Tremendous what?) Surrendering. R: Oh yes. (SF: Utmost surrendering. In order to go through that it's so…) Devotion turns into self-inquiry, pure devotion. (SF: Or even when you go to self-inquiry intensely you are really surrendering the ego?) You are yes. Exactly, they're all the same. SS: It's still devotional when you do that, I have a feeling of devotion or surrender when… R: There are different paths to the summit of the mountain, but they all lead to the same summit. (SS: They're what?) There are many paths that go to the top of the mountain, but they all get to the top. So you can use any path that appeals to you. SA: Robert why is this teaching which is essentially eastern mysticism as I understand it. Why is it dying out through out Asia? it certainly appears to be? R: Truth never dies out. I don't know what you mean by dying out. SA: Well you look at countries like India, Japan, where Buddhism and Hinduism had very strong holds and now you see that these teachings are practiced by, from what I understand, by very few, fewer and fewer people all the time. Then we hear of tremendous growth in Bombay, the land in Bombay costs more than New York. The Indians are good businessmen, so you tell me. It's all becoming extremely Westernized. R: It's the way of the world, it goes up and it goes down, goes up and it goes down. It's been like that since the beginning of time. But you're looking at the world. Look to your Self, don't worry about the world. The world has been destroyed numerous times, and was built again. We have had many civilizations on this earth. (SA: That we don't know about?) We don't know about, throughout the billions of years of existence. We can't think about those things because they're passed our mind. We have to know who we are, then we'll know everything else. So we shouldn't concern ourselves with history too much, or get involved in the world situation too much, because it can pull you into it, but rather we should work on ourselves and then everything will take care of itself. SS: Don't things change though as your consciousness is raised, do you become less interested in certain things? R: Well naturally, just like when you were a little girl, you dropped stuff and now you're interested in other things. SS: Will I becoming antisocial or like you're invited to a wedding and I look at it and I'm going, "okay, if I go to the wedding and I get home I'm glad that's over…" R: You become selective, there's nothing wrong with that. SS: But I don't want them to think that I don't care about going to their sisters wedding and now I'm going to their wedding. But it didn't matter to me that I went to the wedding. I just didn't have a whole lot of interest in it. R: But are you happy? SS: When I was there I was there. When I went to the wedding, I was mindful I was at the wedding. I didn't sit there and go, "I can't wait to get home." I wasn't complaining or anything. But I could have been just as happy being at home and I learnt more out of somewhat obligation or you know families going to be there so I ought to be there. Then there's the persona that comes in and says that I might miss out on something…you know that sort of thing. R: There's nothing wrong with that, that's good, whether you miss out or don't miss out. (SS: No it doesn't matter.) I go to a lot of functions, but wherever I am is fine. (SS: But you're still active about it? I mean you don't have obligations?) I'm not normally selective about anything, everything just happens. (SS: But you don't accept everything.) See I'm not worried, I don't think about all these things. Whether I'm selective or non selective or whether I'm this or I'm that. I just am, and whatever happens - happens. SD: So you're the same wherever you are? (R: Whatever I do.) SA: What if I called you at 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon and said, "There's a good movie Bob, I'd like you to go, it's going to last for hours," and we all assemble here, so that means you are selective. (R: Why?) You made it a point to be here. (R: I made it a point to be here?) Yeah! (R: You mean I can't come because you went to a movie.) No what I'm saying is if that option had come up. (R: Oh I see.) You would've had to say no. Apparently you do say no to other things because you are here every Sunday. (R: Oh of course, but it's not being selective, it's a way of life.) SD: You can't be at two places at once. R: It's a way of life. I don't think about it, I just do it. SG: You don't have to be selective or non-selective. It doesn't matter, you can be selective or non-selective. (SN: There has to be a you to be selective.) Yeah, so you don't have to say, "I'm non-selective." R: I know it's difficult to understand, but I don't make a decision, I just do what has to be done. There's no thought, there's no thought process. If somebody says, "You want to go to a movie?" I'll say, "No I'm going to a meeting," and I forget about it. SA: It's the best way to be. (SD: So there's no moment of indecision or…?) R: There is no energy. SS: Should I go to the wedding now or care if I go to the wedding or should I not go to the wedding and you go back and forth. But if you still the mind… R: If you don't try to decide at all, you'll make the right decision. SA: For you it is. She's a good example of the importance of being selective. It really takes a lot of process of selection and determination to be here in the first place otherwise you wouldn't, or couldn't be here. (SS: I had to do that a bit today yeah.) You would have to do it everyday to go through what you go through. R: If you're here six months from now you won't have to do it anymore. (laughter) SS: After today I don't know. The body was hankering at me, you know, "Why don't you take a shower," that will zip me up sometimes, so I say, "okay I'll go try that," accept I just kept on going, I just tried not to think about anything. (SA: But you had a focus.) Took a shower, ate, got in the car and then got here. (SA: Then you got here.) But I don't like the going back and forth part. R: That's what you have to do now, but it will change. SG: A simple analogy is when you say, you need the fan and you don't need the fan on or also when you're turning the fan off and trying not to be the body. You're also going on one side of the pole as well. So the fan could be on or could be off and it shouldn't matter. Because you're also making a conscious process not to be a body by choosing one particular pole, a lack of something, or having something or not having something. SA: Theoretically that makes sense, but that's why I brought up the term austerity, but when you give solace and joy and comforts to the body, you encourage the body to want more. So you are feeding… (SG: Well that's two sides of the same pole.) …because are you saying then… (SG: It's the same as austerities.) It's not the same. If we sat here without the fan and you're sweating. Our bodies would not desire to sweat more and have more heat, but we do desire to be cooler and feel more pleasant. (SG: But you could also turn it the other way and say, "By feeling more pleasant I have to pay more attention not to feel pleasant.") SS: Yeah, they're two sides of the same coin. SA: But that was the entire reason for austerities all over the world whether Christianity, or Hinduism or Buddhism because of those reasons, because the fan is encouraging the body. It is encouraging all of us to want, to want pleasure and more joy for the body. SG: But that's like saying that it's better to be a monk. It's quicker to be on a spiritual plane by being a monk then being a playboy, let's say or being in a situation as a playboy. But on the other side, by being in the world with all those things around you, you can also, it's the same pull… SA: Perhaps it's true for some people. I know it is. The other point is a very important point to consider. SN: Even in austerity, "Who is austere?" It's still the self, the self is gaining all these, it's still the ego. So it's the ego that runs after things and it's the ego that runs away from things, but it's still the ego, so there's no difference. SA: To some extent while you're in the body, attention must be paid to these things. It's all a razors edge, but because we are here in a three dimensional world, to just constantly fall back on that idea, leads to problems because we must maintain the physical body. R: Who says you won't? Who is to say you won't? If you're practicing spiritual sadhana your body will take care of itself, you will take care of it. That's it. SS: I mean you will be aware of it but you'll just walk over to there and you're not going to go, oh this is making me feel better and it is giving me comfort, you won't go through all those processes. R: That's it, exactly! (Students talking between themselves over each other.) SS: Well there is nothing wrong to be in this musical and to enjoy it, did you say that? (R: Yes.) But what you're saying by enjoying it we're feeding it? But see that is another concept of mind. (R: Of course.) SD: Well I think the bottom line question would be, because Arnold brought up a good point that throughout history there have been austerities, are austerities necessary? R: They are necessary as long as they are there, but when you wake up they're gone. SD: So it would more or less be a matter of karma whether you are austere or not? R: Your body is karmic. It came to this earth for a certain purpose and it's going to accomplish that purpose whether you like it or not. It has nothing to do with you. SD: So that will be either you live in austerity or not that would be your karma or not… (R: Exactly.) …and it affects realization. R: If it was your karma you would have been born in Cambodia or Vietnam. SA: How about Paris? (laughter) Let's talk about Paris. R: Paris? The French riviera. (laughter) If that was your karma, Las Vegas. SS: Through detachment again, you could say, if you're sitting here and you're saying, this is totally within my body comfort, this is just total duality and you could stop your mind at that point and observe that and stop and say, "To whom does this comfort come?" SD: Yeah, and "To whom does the thoughts about it come to?" R: That's true it's all the same. SS: Or "From whence do these thoughts come?" Either one would that work out? (R: Yes.) You pose both of those, "From whence do these come?" and "To whom do this come?" (R: Makes no difference.) However I found this week and I observed making a judgement and I'm going "To whom does this judgement come?" because I felt like maybe I was making a judgement about someone, of course there's no one else out there, but I felt, "From whence does this judgement come?" instead of "To whom does this judgement come" because that's like pointing a finger. (R: Whatever turns you on.) Yeah I guess, as long as the observation is there as a means. SA: You see the problem is theoretically everybody's repeating this and it makes very good sense, I understand it as a teaching but, and I asked you about two weeks ago, I said, "It seems to me that the teaching is very dangerous," and you said, "yes it is". Your answer was, "Yes it is," and now to carry on what you're saying … Let's take a look further, beyond the path. Let's say we go to work tomorrow as bored as hell, "To whom does this happen?" It doesn't happen to anybody, so the work…you start doing less and less at your work. To make a long story short, one thing leads to another, the first thing you find yourself out on the street… (R: But why are doing less and less?) …And so somebody asks you and you say, "It's not happening to anybody," (R: Why are you doing less and less?) …And you're down and down and down… R: Okay, let's go to the first premise. (SA: Yeah.) Why are you doing less and less? (SA: Why what?) Why are you doing less and less work? SD: Yeah why do you assume that you do less and less? SA: Because it's no fun and who is it happening to? There's nobody sitting at the desk anyway, so what difference does it make? (laughter) (SN: Do you know that, though?) That's something I'm practicing. Self-Inquiry tells me that there's nobody there. (SN: But that's also your mind.) SG: If you were in that state, you're not thinking that. (SS: It's just words at this point.) SN: That's like saying, "I have the same consciousness as Robert," though you don't. Theoretically that's true but we don't experience that, so it's not a reality. SA: So then we must make choices, we must be selective and we must realize that the fan is giving us pleasure and it may lead to a desire for it. R: Because that's what I said before Arnold, you've got to work on yourself. If you're in that job, if you're working on yourself correctly, you'll do more and more work, not less and less. ST: Something came to my mind when we were talking about the fan. When I came into this room my first thought was, "It's so hot," and the thing is, everybody in this room is sitting here, is any body thinking, "I've got to get out of here?" (SN: I am) (laughter) No I was going to say that, if a lot of you are thinking that, then in a way you're accepting something that even like, not wanting to work, it's like all in the mind. I mean we don't realize that it's suffering because we're just comfortable here. Yeah and at your job, if you have a job that you do and you still the mind, it’s like you just forget what it's about and you do it… SA: Most people let things out and they're just aware of it all the time, that's not true, you don't forget. (SS: Well maybe your job will change when you work on yourself?) SD: Well don't forget what you just said about, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added to you" and I think that includes the productivity of your job. It's like what Robert said, "Focus on the Self and then see how you feel about that." SA: All of this leads back into the Western idea that there is growth and evolution, but if we concentrate on those things then to some extent then we're in a better state. If we accept the relative world and acknowledge it and really give it our attention and our energy, we're in a much better place to move on eventually to other realms. R: But the relative world changes, it's never the same. (SA: So we must change with it, that's why flexibility is important.) But then you change with it until you die and you haven't got anywhere. The whole idea is to change yourself, not the world. SD: This goes back to, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven." Robert often says, "Do selfinquiry and then see how the world…" we're still going, "Oh my God why is the world in such a mess, why would all…in Kuwait … yada-yada," but if we concentrate more on self-inquiry the world may look different to you. You won't know until you try. SA: It still seems very dangerous to me. SS: What do you mean when you said that Robert said that this teaching is dangerous. SA: Well he did say that, did you remember saying that? (to Robert) R: Yes, I said that. It's dangerous to new people because it gives them license to go out and do anything they want. (SS: I thought well you're preordained so…) Nothing matters. But it doesn't work like that. SA: But also it seems to be in stages, in some way it draws off energy and attention from the relative world. So that there isn't…and it's so hard to survive in the world. So that when that energy and attention is drained off in the world, you are left in kind of a limbo, and it's a bit more difficult to find yourself. (R: Who is me?) And before you know something has happened and you could be pulled under. R: Who is making that statement? Who says so? That's how you feel about it, but that's not like that at all. SA: But it reminds of a very simple cult based on "A glimpse of nothingness," by a Dutch writer who went to the Orient and began to sell books. Anyway before he left Amsterdam he discusses his quest and his spiritual desire to his father and his father says, "Yes but be careful, I knew a man who felt the same way you did and one day the embassy in Iran reported that he was found in a ditch on a country road." And that has always stayed in my mind because I mean those things are always happening to - or similar things… R: But you're working in the relative world, all this is relative. SD: In a way that's just a body that was in a ditch. SN: Well really, there are people that get involved in drugs and things like that, that end up in a ditch, not just people on a spiritual quest. There is a similar thing that happens in Hawaii, some people get into trouble there because they go into the jungle where they're growing all the dope, it's like they're looking for trouble. SA: Now that isn't true, history is full of stories of people, just the catholic tradition for example of nuns, monks, maybe a large number of them go crazy, they go psychotic. They go into the monasteries just because of their spiritual desires and yet the practices drive them out of their minds… (tape ends abruptly)

Robert: What I teach is utter nonsense, gobbledygook. It has no meaning except to my Self. I have no teaching. It is simply my confession. It’s useless for most people because I’m not giving you direction. I’m not telling you to meditate for twelve hours a day or to stand on your head or to utter mantras, there is no instruction. There is just my personal confession, the way that I feel. Now, it does some people good for it is an invisible instruction, by just being here, by just opening your heart, something happens. So don’t listen with your head. Do not try to analyze or judge or come to any conclusions. As I always say, "Do not even believe a word I say," why should you? Who am I? I am nobody, nobody important. Listen to your own heart. I’m sort of a mirror. What you see in me is your self. Subsequently the way you feel about yourself is the way you feel about me because you're looking into the mirror. I can truthfully say that I am ultimate oneness, absolute reality, emptiness, unborn, nirvana, I am that I am. When many people read spiritual books on Advaita Vedanta or on Jnana Marga, they immediately try to act out the part and they memorize many of these quotations, sayings, they become useless. You have to go through spiritual disciplines to get to the place where you wake up. In my own experience, I had probably did these disciplines in a previous existence, for when I was very young I had felt these things. I had no idea what it was until I read the books, so reading of books confirmed my experience. And then I went to see Ramana Maharshi, for I had already felt this. There is a difference. I've got to be very careful what I say, because this path sometimes gives people license to become arrogant, obnoxious, rude. It’s just the opposite if you really have Jnana, knowledge, you show lovingkindness, mercy, compassion, joy and you express your Self as that. Many of us believe in a cause. In metaphysics we learn that there is a cause for everything. And even on the path of Jnana Marga we say there is a substratum. But that's just to explain that there is an underlying power. But in truth I tell you there is no substratum, there is no cause. There isn't any cause for anything. Since there is no cause there is no effect. What I am saying is simply this: You're always looking for a reason, for why you are like you are, why you have these habits, why you look and appear to be this way, why your kind or why your mean. You're always looking for a reason, a solution, a cause, but there is no reason, there is no cause, there's no effect, there's emptiness. Emptiness is the Self and I am That. Now when I speak of I-am, I am not referring to Robert. I am referring to omnipresence. I-am is That. Therefore when I utter I am, I’m speaking for all of us. For there is only one, ultimate oneness and we are all ultimate oneness, there is no distinction. People ask me strange questions. It's strange to me but not to them I guess. For instance someone asked me this week, "How come all the great Sages died of disease, not all of them but some of them, like Ramana died of cancer, Nisargadatta died of cancer, Jesus was hung on the cross?" And the question was, "If these people are so great, why did they suffer so?" And I can only laugh when I hear a question like this. The answer is who sees the suffering? For whom is there suffering? This is why in my predicament, people say I've got Parkinson’s disease. And they try to help me with remedies and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing because I see perfection. Perfection is all there is, oneness, ultimate reality, there is nothing else. But you say, "But I see these people suffering, do my eyes deceive me?" And then I answer, "The sky is blue," when someone takes me outside and say, "Robert, look at the beautiful blue sky," so I agree, but I know in reality there is no sky and there is no blue! It just doesn’t exist! It’s an optical illusion – a mirage in the desert – there appears to be an oasis with water but when you get closer there is only sand. It's the same thing. Your eyes deceive you, your senses deceive you, things are not like they appear. All is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes. No mistakes have been made, no mistakes are being made, and no mistakes will ever be made. Everything is perfect just the way it is. Consequently when you see a condition, before you judge you have to ask yourself, "Who sees that condition? For whom is that condition?" For instance, let's take a simple example. If we all looked at this room and I asked you, "What is your impression of this room?" One person will say, "Oh I think it's lovely," another person will say, "I hate it!" Another person will say, "It's too small," somebody else will say, "It’s too big," somebody else will say, "It’s very clean," someone else will say, "It’s very dirty," that's how it is, you're seeing yourself. You're seeing nothing but yourself. The world is a reflection of your mind. The universe is an emanation of yourself. If you didn't exist there would be no universe. The universe exists because you exist. You are the universe and that's true of every so-called fact in your life. It's a fact that someone is dying and if someone dies, that's a fact but it’s not the truth. The truth is, we are all unborn. Noone was ever born. If noone was ever born how can you die? Noone was born and noone dies. Again I’m expressing my confession. That’s how it appears to me. That’s what I mean when I say, "This teaching is useless to most people," because you can't do anything with it, yet things happen, lives improve, spirituality grows, happiness ensues, bliss comes. It all happens spontaneously. Just by being present and this is what satsang is all about. By being present, without taking thought, without manipulation, without playing mind games, without trying to improve yourself, without thinking of yourself, without thinking of others, everything good happens, all by itself. Why? Because emptiness is goodness, nirvana is absolute reality. The unborn is the Self and you are that, what else can I say. So what do you think about this. I’m open to questions. SG: I have a question: The hill that Ramana Maharshi spent his life, Arunachala, what function did that play in his enlightenment? And what function does the natural areas, the harmonies that are out there and balanced ecosystems of the world important for us to keep in touch with? R: It’s important for some people. Arunachala for some reason had a tremendous impact on Ramana’s life. Arunachala is another name for Shiva, and Ramana's family, his ancestors, were all worshipers of Shiva. So the hill called Ramana at an early age. Some mysterious power led him to the hill, that was his experience. There have been others who have walked around the hill and felt absolute nothing and it was meaningless for them. The same is true of the other places you are speaking of. For most people they mean nothing. Now what happens to most people, especially in the West, they imagine they're feeling something, it’s a mind game. It’s just like the healing shrines. You work yourself up into a frenzy and you can’t wait to get to this healing shrine. So naturally when you go there, you experience a healing. It’s not the shrine that did it, it’s yourself because you worked yourself up into a frenzy. it is your mind that caused it. And I'll relate a true story that happened in this way. In Italy, in a little town there was a healing shrine. People used to come from all over the world and they would climb the steps and get on their knees and hundreds of thousands of people were actually healed from all kinds of diseases. Now, the fathers of the town found out from some scientists that there was going to be an earthquake in that town. This article was in Time magazine in about 1967. So what the fathers decided to do, is to remove the remains of the saint who was buried underneath the shrine to another point of town where there was no earthquake. They began to dig, and low and behold no saint was ever buried there, there was nothing. They built the shrine upon nothing. What did the healing? How come all these thousands of people were healed? It’s all in the mind. When you psych yourself out mentally, you can accomplish almost anything. So again to answer your question, most of these things are meaningless. Arunachala meant a great deal to myself. I've had experiences inside Arunachala. But for most people it’s just a hill. So again the answer is this: Work on yourself, worship yourself, find yourself, find out who you are. And when you do this everything becomes Holy, and like Moses said, "The ground upon which I stand is Holy ground." Everything becomes Holy, not only certain places but everything. And that’s only because you have become that your Self. Your omnipresence makes it Holy. You have become one with all there is and you can truthfully say, "All of this is the Self and I am that." Does it make any sense? (SG: Yes) Good. (SG: In what sense is the spirit of the whole earth our mother?) Our brother? (SG: Our mother, as giving us birth to another state of being.) The earth has no power without you, you are the power and the earth is within yourself. So when you become powerful, the earth has power. When you are weak, the earth is weak. The earth like the universe is an emanation of yourself. The mother, the father, it's all within you. Everything is within your Self. There is no power outside of yourself. When you see some power happening from some place, it is because collectively people are giving it their power. But the people are the power. They misunderstand. They think the thing has power by itself. Nothing exists except yourself. Nothing exists because everything changes, nothing is ever the same. What changes, cannot be real. Take your body for instance: You didn’t always look this way. When you were conceived you were no larger than the size of a pinhead, that was you. And then you became a little baby, a teenager, an adult and now here you are. So you were never the same as you were years ago. This is true of everything. This chair used to be a piece of wood, a tree. Now it has become a chair. Everything comes from the same source, nothing. Nothing exists, except the Self. Everything is like a dream. When you have a dream, you dream you're flying an airplane, you're going to China and to Japan, then you come back here and you go to sleep. And then you wake up, it was a dream. This life is also like a dream. One day you will awaken and realize who you are and you will realize there is no power outside of your Self and even there’s no power within yourself. No power exists only the Self exists nothing else is necessary. So we make up all these games, they're all mind games. They do not lead us to self-realization, they lead us to further delusion. That’s why we're born again and again and again, until we wake up. And then reincarnation stops and then we become totally liberated and free, which we already are. SS: When you go out and deny that there's a blue sky? Do you see the blue skies? Or doesn't it make any difference. R: No, I see the blue skies but I see my Self, as the blue sky. (SS: And you enjoy it?) Sure, I enjoy my Self. I always enjoy my Self twenty-four hours a day. SD: I asked him the same thing once, what about chocolates and sunsets? And he said, "You are the sunset which you enjoy." (SS: But that's after the ego dissolves then you're able to.) Annihilate the ego. R: Let's imagine you believe you're enjoying the blue sky, then the next moment there's thunderstorms, lightning and you become frightened and you cry. What happened to your enjoyment? When you realize that you are the Self, blue skies, thunderstorms they're both the same. Nothing can hurt you. (SS: So you can enjoy both of them?) There's no one left to enjoy, you just are these things. You are bliss. You have become sat-chit-ananda – being, knowledge and bliss. That's your true nature. This is why I said in the beginning, these words are meaningless, unless you've experienced That, otherwise they don't mean anything. (SS: Yeah you kinda lost me again.) (laughs) Most people like to go to classes. Where the teachers chants mantras and gives you relative knowledge and tells you how to improve your finances and your health and your lifestyle. Those people draw thousands of followers, but of course these things don't exist. They exist for a while. You get a good feeling. You improve your life for a while but you have to go on with your life and soon you die and then where are you? No-where. (SS: That's why I go and when I do, it gives me a good feeling, there's always something missing.) It's all good when you need it, nothing is wrong with anything. (SS: I'm still going to get the good feelings and…) Yes. (SS: …do the chanting and all that but I feel like there's something more, like I can't stop there.) Then you'll go onward. (SS: Pardon?) You'll go onward wherever you have to go. (SS: Look at discipline, sometimes I get the feeling that I'm just not very disciplined so I need to go to some place like that so I can get disciplined, like, I don't have enough of that or…?) As I said before, this path is sometimes a contradiction because it is true you need discipline, and then again you don't need discipline. There's a time when you do and a time when you don't, but, if you follow the principles involved, by asking yourself, "Who is it that needs the discipline?" You will realize that your true Self, never needed discipline but your ego does. And since you are not the ego there is no one left for discipline it all evens itself out. SD: When you refer to discipline what do you mean? What would be the definition of it? R: Well I mean not being rude to other people, not being obnoxious, being kind and loving, putting other people first, having compassion, helping others. (SD: So you're not talking about meditation or mantra's?) Well meditations and mantra's are good, but they are only to make you one-pointed, to make the mind one-pointed, so you can disintegrate the mind. SS: So it isn't important then, even now to do meditation? R: It's important for some people. Again if you can make your mind quiet then it's unnecessary, but all the spiritual discipline you are referring to, are only to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, everything happens by itself. When the mind is noisy the world becomes real and terrible for you. Therefore mantras quiet the mind. Meditation quiets the mind, everything leads to quietening the mind. (SS: Watching your breath?) To quiet the mind. (SS: So you don't need any fixed thing or fixed time or power of the mind to do all that?) Yet there are some people who do need that kind of discipline because that's the way they are in this life. (SS: How would you know?) It's all karmic. Your heart will tell you, what feels good, what feels right. SS: On the way out here today on the freeway today, I did that, “to whom does this state was?” or whatever and I did this on the way out here and I was just real calm. Even if I thought of like rushing, “who did this idea of time come?” You know, I mean the mind was going the whole time asking those questions yet even though it was, I didn't feel rattled or ruffled because I didn't get identified with any of the things that came up. (R: It's a great psycho-therapy.) Is that all it is though is it? (R: No, it's the highest form.) I mean it kept coming but inbetween there was some quiet because I mean as soon as something would come up, the question would be there to cancel out any dadadada, imaginings that go with it. Once you start thinking about, time in the traffic and – you know how the mind goes – so it just stopped. And another thing that it did was, it may be totally unrelated but every time I did that I could see that there was some kind of – I don't know? R: As you keep that momentum up you'll be surprised at what happens. (SS: Well I thought yeah, if you could do this all the time everything would dissolve.) Yes, you have to catch yourself. Whatever thoughts come to you, you simply ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" (SS: Even if they were good things, I did it, you know and it made those okay but I don't know how to say it.) I understand, you're doing well, that's good. (SS: I thought, gee if I could do that all the time, it would be good.) Then ask yourself, "Who needs to do it all the time?" When you do it often enough, it will begin to do you. (SS: It was kinda doing me after a while.) (laughs) It didn't feel uncomfortable, it felt very natural, a very natural place to be.) SD: It seems to detach you a little and not feel personally involved, which is great. R: It does yes. Just doing that is sufficient for most people. (SS: What's that?) Just doing what you're doing is sufficient for most people. (SS: But can you ask too many questions like that?) No, if you want to go deeper you can go deeper with that, but don't do this when you're driving your car. When you're driving your car what you did is sufficient, but when you go home then you could do it differently, you can ask yourself, for instance, if you're feeling depressed, "To whom does this come?" and then you realize it comes to you. So you say, "It comes to me, I feel this, I feel depressed, I feel terrible." Then you ask yourself, "Who is this I? From where does this I come that feels terrible?" But don't answer. Just follow it, follow the I to its source and you will realize that all of life, the relative world, is attached to I. And when the I is dissolved, everything else is dissolved with it. It happens by itself. You simply go deeper with the I, deep, deep, deep. "From where comes this I? Where does this I come from?" or "Who am I?" Whatever feels good for you and you will realize that the I comes from nowhere. It doesn't exist. It never did exist. You are free, you are bright and shining, you are the one. (SS: You're not going to sit and just contemplate your navel all day. You're still going to do your activities and all that?) Of course you are. You'll even do your activities better than you ever did before. (SS: I sometimes feel when I've gone into a yoga, I saw myself as strong.) You're having the wrong experience. The right way is to let your body do whatever it has to do. Your body came to this earth for a purpose, so-itappears, and your body is going to do whatever it came here to do, but it has nothing to do with you. SD: So is that what you mean when you say that we are not the doer? R: Exactly, you don't have to concern yourself about work or non-work, whatever you're supposed to do you're going to do, it's all preordained, just be happy SS: What happens when your money runs out and you're not able to work? R: Why do you believe this will happen? See you’re giving it strength. You're thinking mentally that this may happen. (SS: It may be close right now, it appears to be.) Well then thinking mentally about this makes it stronger. The more you worry about this the stronger it becomes, but, if you push that thought way out of your mind, your omnipresence will come forth. SD: What if you say, "To whom does this thought come? To whom does this fear come?" R: You can do that too, yes. SN: The fear of poverty is only because it’s the ego that's afraid that it's poor. R: Of course, remember the trees do not lack for leaves nor do the flowers fail to bloom, everything is beautiful and so are you. You can never experience lack, except mentally. Have faith, trust your Self and trust the power that knows the way. Which is within you, everything will be okay. SD: I remember you saying if everything is predestined then - at least on the earth plane - might not look at us trying to be poor or rich, couldn't you still look with the same detachment on that more or less? R: Well, but for whom is there poor or rich? Who has to look with detachment? It's back to the ego again. SN: The more afraid you are of being poor the stronger the ego is. For the Self, wealth and poverty are the same. So the more fear you have the further away you are going from the Self and what Robert says, "Is preordained," so worrying about it does not really alter it. Not that you should not do anything about it, but realize who you are. Who is rich and who is poor? When you reach a peace, it is beyond wealth and poverty. So whenever there's a fear of poverty, that's only the ego, and when there's the Self, you're always rich. The Book "The Lilies of the Field" and that's what that says, why worry about poverty, but of course we can do that but that’s… (SD: The goal.) R: The truth is you can never suffer, never, if you flow with the Dharma, you can never suffer, it's impossible. (SD: But if you seem to be then that's the ego suffering?) The ego is suffering, you've got to work on yourself. If you change conditions it's no good. As an example, if you think that your husband is giving you a hard time and he's unemployed and he can't support you, so you say, I'll trade him for another husband. Then when you get the other husband you've got other problems, because you've not resolved it in your own mind. It has to start and end with you. You can't change outside conditions. It only appears for a while that you can, but it always comes back again. The chickens always come home to roost. So wherever you go, wherever you run, you have to take yourself with you and if you've got a poverty consciousness, wherever you go you're going to experience poverty. So don't change anything, but work on yourself and see who you really are and what you really are and you'll never have to be concerned about poverty again. SD: It's like Jesus saying, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you," because we don't really do anything in that state because you've let go, you know. SS: Well, because I haven't worked and because I've got a disability now. And whether I should use the mind thing of picturing myself of being able to work and that's just as bad. Just to do that, or another way which is just temporary. And think I'm going to picture myself doing such and such… R: Yes. The best you can do is to make yourself happy. The happiness will take care of everything else. Really be happy from the depths of your soul. Do not look at conditions. Conditions change, but make yourself real happy because you are you. Not because you have something, but because you are you. Happiness has nothing to do with person, places and things. Happiness is a state of mind. If you can be happy it'll change everything in your life. (SS: You turn on the switch by self-inquiry?) Yes, but forget about the switch. Be yourself and you will know what to do. You did not come to this earth to suffer you came to find yourself and to be happy… (break in tape as Robert continues) R: …and a big income, to think we're prosperous. It's wrong, our values are completely warped. (SD: And you have to say, "Whoever has the most toys when he dies wins." (laughs) That's so ironic in the Self because who cares about this or that or…) See poverty and prosperity are secondary. The first thing is to find your Self. That's why you came to this earth. Everything else will take care of itself. SS: I've been in both places, I've never had true poverty, okay but I've had big houses and cars and all that whole stuff and then I've had, where, I've had just enough to meet my needs and either way's okay I feel that, I feel that burden kind of like keep on meeting my needs, okay like… (changes topic) Health insurance? Even though I'm going off topic, but health insurance, isn't that a fear thing? (R: Of course.) But do we get it anyway because we live in this… (R: If you need it.) …if you need it. I used it a lot this year. Some years I never use it at all, but you know, I have a roof over my head and food to eat, the things that I need money for are my phone, my health insurance and my car insurance and if I need to buy a pair of clothes. I'll buy that once in a while, I don't really need a lot. SD: But sometimes I say to myself and I think Robert taught me this, that at any given moment you have everything you need and this thought at any given second. (SS: I know right now.) Right now, are you hungry? (SS: No, no, insurance is paid. I go back to this health insurance business. There's something about it?) SN: Setting against the Self. (Yeah.) Any type of insurance. R: You have to do what you have to do. SD: Maybe she was led to have it for this need now, maybe she won’t need it anymore? R: Take this body as an example, I own nothing. (SS: You owe nothing?) I own nothing. There's nothing I own, but I've got everything. I have nothing but I have everything. (SD: But you're so much advanced, more advanced than us.) Well, I don't know about that, except that I have no needs. I live in a good place, I eat properly, but I own nothing, I'm just there. (SS: I don't own anything either.) I have no insurance. (SS: Oh yeah, I know that but I have use of a car, but I don't really own the car and I don't own the house that I live in.) SD: I think you are better off than me. (laughs) The way that I feel about insurance, this maybe a stupid earth plane reaction but it kind of ties in with this but the odds are just for money. Those companies wouldn't stay in business if they weren't making any money. (SS: I probably have used the insurance now, this year and why would they? They're way behind.) (laughs) Or they'll raise the rates. (laughs) R: But you got to be very careful when you talk about these things. (SS: You giving them power?) No I mean, if you don't have the consciousness, you can cause a lot of problems for yourself. I remember many years ago we had a class about something like this and I used to talk about when I lived in Hawaii, and I used to talk about the fact that I never locked my car and nothing has ever been stolen because I never felt that I needed to lock my car, so I never did. But I apparently said the wrong thing to somebody, because there was one person in the class who always locked his car because he didn't trust anybody. When he heard me talk about this, he said he was going to do the same thing. He was a shirt salesman. In the back of his car he had samples of about twenty different shirts and the one time that he didn't lock his car, someone stole all of the shirts out of his car. (laughs) So I said, "I didn't tell you to not lock your car" I said, "I don't lock my car!" But you have to do what you have to do until the time comes that you don't have to do it anymore. Everybody is different. (SD: That's what I meant by you being more advanced, you know.) I don't think I'm more advanced it just happened like that. SS: People are comfortable with that, you don't have any fear about it. R: I don't even think about it. (SS: The thing to do with insurance is if I still think about it, I probably just get it.) That's right. (SS: That means by buying it doesn't mean, make you get sick though necessarily? No, why should it make you get sick, unless you think you've got to get sick so you can use it. (SS: No, no, there has been a lot of times when I've had it and didn't even know I had it and didn't even use it.) Some people think that they're paying for nothing and they say, "So why don't I just get sick? I've got to use my insurance." (laughter) (SS: No, yea I don't care if I use it, I'll donate the money.) (laughs) (pause while students have some refreshments) SN: Robert I have a couple of questions. Do you consider Ramana your guru? R: I consider Ramana as my Self. I look at him as more than a Guru. I look at him as the Universe, as life itself, which is none other than my Self. So he is simply another aspect of me. When I was with him, I paid him homage because he was my Self. So I was paying myself homage, do you follow that? I treated him as I would treat myself. When I came, I brought food, I brought flowers because I am the flowers and I am the food. It's all one. But the actual word "guru" means teacher. And Ramana was no one's teacher. He was simply doing the same thing I do. He was simply confessing the truth about himself. And the people who wanted to sit around him were welcome. He didn't care. In other words he never said I am a teacher and these are students. He looked at everyone as himself and he just went on with his daily activities and people just sat all around him. When he would go to sleep on the couch, the whole auditorium they would go to sleep on the floor. SN: Well say for instance, some people will read some books, like "Who Am I" and they would be saying that, "Ramana's my guru." (R: Well it can't hurt.) (laughter) SD: In a sense of Master teacher? (R: It can't hurt.) SN: I was reading a book by Ramana. (SD: Did he really write it?) R: He just wrote some verses, but the mistake that most people make about that, is there's too much separation. And as long as there is separation there is going to be trouble. Because if you fall in love with the guru, the first mistake the guru makes, so it appears, then you hate him. Because physical Love is the other side of the coin of hate. But when you look at a guru as not being a person, but being your Self, that's different. (ST: Can you repeat that?) When you look at a guru as not being a person but being your Self that's a completely different story. You make a mistake according to your thinking. See because you give them your own… (ST: Egoless? That you’re egoless…) Yes I was just going to say that. You want God to live up to your expectations. (laughs) (SS: And that's your ego wanting freedom?) Yes, in other words, you are creating God in your image. So you expect the guru to do this. As an example, say you're celibate, so of course you're going to expect your guru to be celibate. Say you live in a cave, so you want your guru to live in a cave also. And if he lives in a house you'll say that's not a Guru because he lives in a house he should live in a cave. See we give all our expectations to the guru. SD: Don't we do that to God too? (R: To God, same thing.) And we anthropomorphize. R: Exactly, but the true way is to totally surrender to your Self. Then you will be led to the true sat-guru which is none other than your Self and then there will be harmony. Because then you couldn't care less what the guru does because the guru is your Self. SN: Robert doesn't that also happen in personal relationships rather than love the guru you have that love in your personal relationships and you have expectations and then you get put down? (R: Of course.) Not any different? (R: Of course.) SD: I think most people fall in love with an image of the other person, and what usually happens in relationships is that neither person can live up to the other so the other has to move forward. R: Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed. (SN: And should you also see the other person in the relationship as your Self?) Yes, you should. (ST: How do you do that?) R: You simply realize there is one Self and that Self is me. So you and I are one, therefore, whatever you do to me I can't be mad at you. (SS: Yes, but how do you do that? (laughs) By working on yourself. (SS: With self-inquiry?) Through self-inquiry, through mind control. (SD: Would you ask yourself, "Who feels hurt?") You can ask yourself "Who feels hurt? Who is seeing all these things? To whom do these feelings come?" ST: In every situation rather than change the situation you have to change yourself wherever you go? R: Yes you have to bring your Self with you. (ST: (tape unclear)) Same thing exactly. Well you have to draw a line some place, some time, depends on your advancement, your maturity. But if you're living with a person that you can't get along with and you want to develop yourself, and you can't be in those circumstances then you should change them. But if you're not working on yourself if you change your circumstances they'll pop up somewhere else. SS: But there's a lot of relationships where one person is working on themselves and the other person couldn't careless what’s happening and they can get along. Is that true? R: Yes, but as you work on yourself, you will know what to do. For instance if someone comes to me and they say, "I want your car." That’s not strange to me. (SS: They want your car?) They want my car, if I feel in the mood to give it to them, I'll say, "Take it," if I don't, I'll say, no, and forget all about it. But I won't think about it or I won't get caught up in the struggle. "Why does she want my car? What is he going to do with my car?" I don't think that way. (laughter) I'll say, "If you want it, take it," if I don't think so I'll say, "no I can't give it to you," and that's the end of that. There is nothing to think about, there's nothing to worry about. I once had a beautiful ring and somebody really liked it, so I took it off and gave to him because I'm not attached. What's rightfully mine can never be taken away and that's my Self, everything else comes and goes. ST: (tape unclear) R: You don't get attached but you have a loving feeling, a kind feeling. (ST: So how would you do it?) By being attached means you own them. It's like you own the person and they have to do what you want, that's attachment. SD: But can it be the other way round so that they own me? R: Yes it can, same thing, but if you're free then you love them, but you don't let them walk all over you. But you still love them. You do what is necessary. (SD: That's like the story of the man and his sons?) Something like that yes. Now I don't mean to make this cold and calculating. I mean, I love you more than anybody else can ever love you in your life and you don't know that but I'm not attached. Do you see the difference? SS: Even if you never saw us again it wouldn't make any difference. R: And yet I'd give up my life for you, can you follow that? You are me, we are one and I could do nothing but love you. Because I have no life. (SS: Oh?) Who's life are you going to be giving up? There's nothing to give up. ST: Well how do you deal with emotions? R: You ask yourself, "To whom do they come?" (ST: Yeah but why are they there?) They're not, you think they do, it's like hypnosis. You've been brought up in a way to have emotions but they don't really exist. So when you ask yourself "To whom do they come?" they'll disappear. SD: Emotions comes from thinking, right, and thinking comes from ego? R: Yes but then again you can say, "But I like to have good emotions I don't want to get rid of all my emotions." That's hard to explain, but when you're empty, you've got love and bliss and joy and you have those feelings toward everything. So you don't need those emotions that you're talking about, those are from the mind. You simply ask yourself "To whom do they come?" (ST: You mean it's that easy?) Oh yes, but you have to mean what you say. SD: And after, turn in again? (R: Yes.) Because we're so programmed and not aware of it. SN: It's not mechanical, it’s not a mantra "To whom do they come?" (SS: How can you keep that from becoming mechanical?) Mechanical is "To whom do they come? To whom do they come? To whom do they come? To whom do they come?" (SS: Right.) But when you really ask, "To whom do these come?" that's the difference. R: When you ask from your heart, instead of your head. (SS: Probably a different kind of feeling in a way?) Sure it does. SN: Well one you're truly asking, the other it's just mechanical, you're not asking at all. SS: That's how affirmations become, they just become mechanical - but there was nothing that soothed me and everything that I picked up or read that helped me in the past meant nothing. R: I'll tell you what affirmations do. Say you have to catch a plane and you're late, so you have to affirm to yourself, "I will catch this plane. It will wait for me. I'm going to catch this plane." So you go to the airport and the plane is late and you catch the plane and you say, "Boy these affirmations work," then the plane crashes. (laughter) (SS: Well you won't use that one.) (laughter) So forget about affirmations. (SS: Be careful what you ask for.) You'll get it. (SS: That's just the thing about health, wishing for that or wish for…) See that's funny to me, you know why? Because if you wish for health that means you've got a disease. (SS: Yeah, that's the affirmation for disease.) So you're affirming the disease is getting bigger all the time. You say I wish I was healthy, I wish I was healthy, I'm going to be healthier and healthier everyday. That means you are sicker and sicker every day so you can be healthier and healthier. (SS: How do they coin that, psychologists, Emile Coue?) Emile Coue. (French psychologist/optimistic autosuggestion.) (SS: Yeah and he had this everyday and in…) "Day by day in every way." (SS: …everyday I'm feeling better and better.) That helps to an extent. (SS: For a period of time, but if you don't resolve it from the top, it will always be coming back and it’s going to be two sides of the coin.) Yes, those things are for neurotic people, all these affirmations, I'm getting better, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Forget about it, there is nobody to get better because nobody's sick. (SS: There’s no better-ness.) SG: Isn't there the other aspect of introspection? Which is being part of the creative process of manifesting the I-am and isn't there two directions to go in the aim of searching or questioning, "Who am I?" and the result of that, the gift from that questioning, the answer to that question, "I am This" and so do we not have responsibility to create the Self. (R: No.) To manifest the Self? R: The Self does not have to be, no, because who is manifesting the Self? In reality nothing only the Self exists and nobody needs to manifest it. It's like asking God to manifest God. You already exist as the Self. (SG: Are we creators? We have a mind that wants to create?) The mind is the creator. (SD: Put the mind in the ego realm.) SS: But the mind merges into the heart though? Okay when you get to that point. Is that what you're speaking of John when you get to that point when the mind merges with the heart. R: Everything that the mind creates, it creates problems. (ST: So the mind is not really needed?) Yes. SG: Is music a problem or art? R: Art and music are part of the material world, they are of a higher state, they are of a higher consciousness. (ST: The highest consciousness?) No, higher, but they are still a part of the relative world. When you are your Self, you are music. So you don't have to create music. SD: But I think what John is talking about is like what Joel Goldsmith teaches, who was one of Robert's teachers, when he said, "There's no one to ask for abundance because you are abundance.” Abundance is not having a demonstration, you are abundance and those are simply manifestations of your abundance. SG: Well what makes so much sense to me, is the self-inquiring is that the answer to the question is not an affirmation it isn't, "I am this, I am that." In asking, "Who Am I?" The answer can happen naturally. Instead of a conditioned answer of who we believe we are. SD: Oh right, because you're not even supposed to answer as Robert says, you just wait for the answer and the answer will ultimately come to you. SG: Right but there is that aspect of the process, there is the - all I can do is ask, right? "Who Am I" but there is also the answer which is happening too right and is that the creativity? R: It's not really creativity. See the answer already exists by itself. And by inquiring, you're opening yourself up for the answer, but the answer is already there. (SG: Oh I see.) So there is noone needed to create anything. SG: But aren't we also opening up our bodies, our ego, our feelings and our minds, which have been in the past, closed, or we're not opening that up to the answers so that they can express through our minds? R: You can call it opening up, but those things that you mentioned do not exist. Therefore when you open up you just become, but you don't have to go through the process you're talking about. You simply ask the question and the answer comes by itself. It's like being in a room of darkness. To get to the light you don't have to go through a series of processes. You just turn on the switch and the light exists. It's the same thing. You don't have to create the light, you don't have to pray for the light. You don't have to make something so that the light will come, you simply turn on the switch. (SD: And it was there all the time.) (SG: Right) So by asking the question, that's the switch. (SG: But if we stop asking then the light goes out again uh?) You get caught up in the world, you get caught up in the world. (SG: Yeah.) SD: Also, I've got a question and tell me if I'm wrong, but the answer doesn't always come to you and that's why we keep having to do something for it. When it comes isn't that your awakening? R: Yes, it's like the sun and the clouds. (SS: It will come in the words?) No, it's like the sun and the clouds. The sun is always shining, it never goes away, but sometimes clouds block it. So it's an ignorant person who says there's no sun. What do I have to do to make the sun come out? So I'll climb upon a ladder and push the clouds out of the way. Or shall I get a wind machine and blow the clouds away. The clouds are always there because of ignorance. When the clouds dissipate the sun shines once again. (SD: But it never stopped.) It never stopped. The light within us is always bright and shining but we cover it up with ego and mind. So when the ego and mind is removed, we shine once again in all our splendor, like we're supposed to. (SD: Are the ego and mind the same thing?) Just about, the mind actually creates the ego, but those are just terms? (SD: So if you get rid of the ego, you get rid of the mind and vice-versa?) Yes, If you follow the I back to its culmination they both go. (SD: Oh that's right because you said that the mind is the projector and the ego is the screen.) Yes. SG: I can see that the highest aspect of the arts from the audience point of view is a tool to draw someone into reality. (R: That's true, true.) Like the Buddhist, Mendorla. But I know that without my mask of my ego I don't have a perspective, to create something. (R: How do you know?) Because I've been through that in my earlier years, of realizing that I had talent in a certain area, such as theatre. I also felt lost because I didn't have a perspective. I didn't know what I wanted to communicate. R: But you're still talking in egoic terms, because the ego was lost. The ego felt lost. (SG: Isn't there a positive aspect to the ego as far as being a mask of thought where the dance is concerned?) It appears like this. If you want to get caught up in the dance of life then you do those things you're talking about, that's true. (SG: And can we not wear the mask and be aware that it is the mask and see that there is a function for it in everyday life, getting along in the world?) If you want to, but it will still pull you back into earth again because you're attached to something. To become totally free you have to be unattached to everything. That doesn't mean you won't do it. You can become a great artist and not be attached and you do beautiful artwork. So you can do whatever you like but just don't be attached. Realize that you are not the doer. (SG: Is there a certain amount of attachment that a Bhodhisatva has to take on, in order to survive in the world?) No, your body will take care of itself. There's a power that runs the universe and it takes care of bodies. But you are not the body. So you work on yourself and your body will take care of itself and it will do whatever it came here to do. (SS: Whether it's theatre or not.) Whether it's theatre, whether it's not, whether it's nothing. Whatever you came here to do you are going to do but you have nothing to do with it. ST: But how do you know if you've done it already? R: You don't have to know. Something does know and something will lead you and guide you. But don't be attached to your body. (ST: To your body?) Yes. You will be guided. You will be directed in the right way. There is nothing to worry about. If you came here to be a nurse, no matter how you try not to be a nurse you're going to be a nurse. Nothing can stop you no matter what you do. SD: Because of predestination and karma? (R: Yes.) SG: In the younger years of life, isn't there a function that, what I want to be is the ego then right? But isn't there a certain amount that is necessary to get us through school and so training can happen, because if we decide before we've gone through that we are God and that's what we want to be then maybe we won't feel we have to go through the education and the processes of becoming. R: If you are realized, it all depends on what your body came here to do. Some people go to school, some people don't, everybody's different. But it doesn't matter. See we get caught up with all these thoughts. Keep thinking about your Self and everything will take care of itself. SG: It's like we have to have something to throw into the fire to begin with. You know what I mean? Doesn't there have to something, ego first, in order to burn up? R: The ego burns up last. It's like we have a fight with all of our thoughts and we get rid of everything and the stick we use is the ego and then we have to throw in the stick also. (SD: But I think he's asking if the ego's necessary up to a certain point? SG: Yeah.) The ego is never necessary. (ST: Why does it exist then?) It doesn't. You think it does. (laughter) It's because we're talking. SD: Because we're talking about the earth plane and the worlds evolution, right? (R: Yes, exactly.) It's all part of the dream. SN: Knowing the end you don't really have to ask questions and the only reason why you're asking questions so that you'll come to the realization that you don't have to ask questions. I have a question. (laughter) (SP: You don't have to ask it.) Dana Did you say, abundance is a Cadillac. SD: No I said abundance is not a Cadillac. I said abundance is within you. You are abundance and the Cadillac or Ferrari whatever was a manifestation of abundance, but… (R: How about the Volkswagon?) (laughs) …that too, you don't have to ask someone yourself or God or anybody else for abundance, it's not like, "Please, please, please can I have…" because you are abundance and that realization will manifest these things, but the things are not abundance. We have to make that distinction. Things are not abundance you are abundance. SN: I have a question on consciousness. I suppose the question is, what is consciousness? And is consciousness the Self? And the thing that brought the question on is I was thinking about the fourth state, the waking state, the dreaming state, the dreamless state. Now in the dreamless state is there consciousness? And in my experience there is no consciousness and I questioned what is consciousness and what is the Self? And is the consciousness and the Self the same thing? R: Consciousness is an aspect of the Self. Consciousness is the creative principle, of the true Self, it's the next step before the true Self. It's the creative principle that creates everything. Everything that appears created comes from consciousness. So in reality you are consciousness. It's another name for awareness. All these names are synonymous really. Consciousness, Awareness, the Self, God, but yet they're also different aspects. Consciousness is like universal mind. SN: But is there consciousness in deep sleep? R: Yes, there is but you're not aware of it. (laughs) (SN: That's what I'm trying to get at. I remember reading that in the waking state, the dreaming state and the dreamless state, there is still the Self. I can relate to the waking state, I can even relate to the dreaming state. For me the dreamless state is, before I go to bed I'm awake, and then I go to sleep, and then I wake up and the period between going to sleep and waking up is only one second, although it was so many hours. So where's the consciousness or where is the Self? And what is the difference between the two?) Consciousness permeates everything and when you are a Jnani you are aware of the dreamless state, you're in the dreamless state but you are aware of it. The ordinary is person is consciousness when they're asleep and dreamless sleep they're not aware of it, that's the only difference. (SN: Oh so it's just a matter of levels?) Levels, it's a matter of levels of enlightenment. (SN: So a Jnani is conscious during dream, dreamless sleep.) A Jnani is always in dreamless sleep but is aware of it. (SN: So even when he's asleep he's conscious he's aware?) Yes. (SN: But a person that isn't a Jnani, when he's in deep sleep, isn't aware?) He's not aware. SG: It's difficult for me to comprehend awareness without subject/object, without something to be aware of. R: Here's an example: You take a baby. The baby is asleep, but the mother gives the baby a bottle and the baby sucks on the bottle, but is not aware of it because it’s asleep, but yet it's sucking on the bottle. So in dreamless sleep you're not aware of what you're doing, but you're pure consciousness. So when you become self-realized, you're pure consciousness but you're aware of it. You're awake! That's the difference. SN: So basically we're all asleep and it's not until we become awake that we can be aware during dreamless sleep? (R: That's right.) ST: So what do the dreams mean? Is there something in consciousness that it talks about? When I had a dream about doing something and woke up, why did I dream about that when I can do that? R: Dreams are part of the relative world. (ST: They are a part of the relative world?) They have to do with your experiences in life. They’re a part of it. (ST: What if you dream about something that we fear?) Dreams are simply images that come because of your past experiences. In other words if you were brought up frightened, and you fear things, you will dream fearful dreams about things that never happened but they'll be fearful because you created this in your dream mind. SD: Are you saying that they are part of the earth plane existence? (R: Yes.) If you awaken would you still dream? R: You can't dream when you're awake you can only dream when you're asleep. (SD: So a Jnani never has dreams, right?) No a Jnani has dreams sometimes. But the dreams are meaningless most of the time. (SD: Dreams are meaningless?) Yes, don't pay too much attention to dreams. (ST: Why do they happen then?) Because of your state of affairs. It vents emotions. It gets rid of temper tantrums, emotions. (SD: So they have meaning in that sense right? To keep us from acting out some of these things during the day?) Yes, it's a release of energy. ST: But what if you wake up and you've had that sort of dream that wasn’t pleasant and when you wake up it affects your mood? R: Then change your mood. (ST: I mean is that possible?) Simply realize it's a dream and ask yourself, "Who had the dream?" Again it's your ego that dreams. It's your ego that dreams not your Self. It's a third person looking at it. So you don't give too much power to dreams. A lot of people make a lot of things out of dreams. (tape ends)

Robert: Think and ask yourself, "Why did I come here today? We come to a hot room for what? We could have gone swimming, bowling, we could be home watching TV, but something motivated us to come here, what?" Ask yourself. There is a mysterious power that motivates people to do what they do. Some people are motivated to go to a house of ill repute. Some people are motivated to go to the movies. Some people are motivated to go to spiritual meetings, what causes this? Who makes this happen? We can say God does it, but of course God is within yourself and some of the things you do, you would never allow God to make you do that, if God is yourself. So we would have to say it's your karma. It's your karma that motivates you to come here or to go anywhere else. When you come to a meeting like this you can rest assured that you have been working on yourself in past lives. You've been practicing for many lifetimes. Remember this is not a church and this is not a teaching, this is a confession of reality. Whenever I use the pronoun "I," I am not referring to myself, I am referring to I am. So when I refer to my confession, I am referring to our confession, omnipresence. Remember whenever I use the word "I," it means omnipresence. So, I am here to confess, of absolute reality, of being unborn, of ultimate oneness, of pure intelligence, of emptiness, of nirvana. I confess all these things for you. Let's ponder these things as we meditate together. [ plays music then Robert continues ] If you truly want to repent, just sit in silent meditation and see the perfect reality within, for all manners of error merely arise in erroneous thought, and like the morning due before the rising sun, can perfectly be eliminated through the benevolent light and wisdom. Om, shanti, shanti, peace. When we meditate like this, it's for the purpose of emptying the mind. The mind is like a garbage can. It's full of preconceived ideas, thoughts, concepts, not only from this life but from previous lives. There's a lot of stuff in that mind. In truth there is no mind, but as long as you're expressing concepts, ideas, opinions, then we will talk of a mind. As you sit in silent meditation and you watch your thoughts, observe how they come, and they go. Observe the kind of thoughts that come to you. We do not try to change them. We do not repeat affirmations. You merely watch the thoughts and they leave of their own accord. This is how you deal with your mind. You observe your thoughts, you become the witness to your thoughts or you ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" one or the other. If you do this often enough, the day is going to come, when you become totally free and you realize and understand what I mean, when I say, "You are unborn, you are nirvana, emptiness." What do I mean when I say you are unborn? Now the opinions that I express to you, does not have to be accepted. Remember I am speaking to my Self. I-am is speaking and I-am is the infinite, the absolute reality. And I tell you in truth I-am unborn, everything is unborn. Take a tree for instance, what gave birth to a tree? A seed, where does the seed come from? Another tree? Where does the tree come from? Another seed, and you go back like that and there is no answer, no validity. Take for instance, creatures, worms, cockroaches, bugs, who gave them birth, originally? Where did they come from? Flowers, the moon, the sun, the earth, the stars, human beings, ideas, intuition, discrimination. I tell you none of these things exist. Nothing has ever been born. It is a false premise you believe in. Changing bad to good, wanting positive experiences, it's all nonsense. The reason you don't want a positive experience is because you've never had a negative experience. There is no birth. What gave anything birth? Where did it come from? Do you know what anything is? You have no idea what anything at all is, you just give it a name. For instance, a cat, what is a cat? You have no idea. It was here when you came into existence and we called it a cat. Why don’t we call it a tree? We call it a cat. We give everything a name. That's the first mistake because no thing is, what it appears to be. Therefore the first rule of the true spiritual path is called divine ignorance. Divine ignorance. You have no idea what anything is, you just assume to know. You want to act intelligent, to imagine you know something. So you study harder, to learn relative existence. But what you don't realize, is that you're studying yourself right into the grave. You'll learn and you'll study and you'll become something as it appears, and you'll get older and older and older and before you die you'll wonder what anything is all about. You have no idea what anything is, but I tell you again, everything is unborn. Nothing actually exists and the only explanation is, it's like a dream. When you have a dream, do you give birth to everything? The dream just begins, with everything as it appears. You do not go to a beginning, or to an end. The dream just starts from nothing and it goes on until you awaken. The waking state is called the mortal dream. We're dreaming the mortal dream. All of the things that you are interested in, all of your fears, all of your frustrations, goods and bads, all of your happy and sads, it's all a dream. And the more you get attached to it, the more human you become. It's like getting attached to a dream and never waking up and you keep living the dream. Consequently, you create your own reincarna- tion because you are attached to person, place and thing. And this pulls you back into a body, over and over and over again until you learn to let go, until you start practicing, emptiness. Remember, there is no being and there is no non-being. There is no birth and there is no death. Just knowing this brings you a semblance of peace. Just thinking of these things makes you happy. But it is beyond human happiness. It is beyond human peace. It is beyond laughter. Laughter is when the body is happy over something. When you realize there is no body, where is the laughter? Where is the crying? Where is being impersonal come in? None of those things exist. Therefore you ask the question, "Well do I exist?" You have to ask yourself, "What do I mean by I? Do I exist as a human being? As a reacting mechanism? As a person who gets turned on and turned off?" That is a false concept. It is called false imagination. You imagine a world populated by insects, trees, the moon, the sun, human beings and everything else that appears to exist and you have discrimination. You like this, you hate this, you enjoy this, you despise that, but I say to you, you must go beyond these concepts if you wish to be free. Just imagine how peaceful you feel when your mind stops thinking, stops trying to change conditions, stops trying to get even, to fight for your rights. What rights? You have no rights. As a human being you have rights, and you always will have to fight for them, for it will appear that someone is trying to take them away, but in reality, there are no rights. There is nothing to stick up for. You may ask, "Well what do I become, nothing?" No, emptiness is not no thing. It is called emptiness because it means nothing exists as it appears. But there is something, a mysterious power that is an embodiment of love, compassion, peace, happiness, joy, bliss. Yet those words are meaningless. They do not give it justice for it is much more behind that. You have to experience it to understand it. You have to experience to go beyond cause. Metaphysics teaches you, there's a cause for everything but that's kindergarten. Cause does not exist. There never was a cause, for there would have to have been someone to make the cause, to produce the cause and of course most people call that God. So we get into duality, into separation. We say that God made the cause and we're experiencing the effect. So I ask you, "Where does this God come from that made the cause? And who made the God?" It's all concepts, it's all relative thinking. Do not try to understand this with your finite mind, you cannot. The infinite can never comprehend the finite or the finite can never comprehend the infinite. They are two different things. Suffice it to say, that you as you exist now are complete emptiness. You are pure intelligence, pure awareness, absolute reality, nirvana. Just the way you are right now! Do not think about it, if you think about it you spoil it. Do not just try to understand this with your finite mind, you cannot. The infinite can never comprehend the finite or the finite that can never comprehend the infinite, they are two different things. Suffice it to say, that you as you exist now are complete emptiness. You are pure intelligence, pure awareness, absolute reality, nirvana, just the way you are, right now! Do not think about it. If you think about it you spoil it, just the way you are this moment. You are pure intelligence, absolute reality, you are the unborn, but every time a thought comes into your mind you spoil it. When you first wake up, those few seconds between getting up, waking up. Just before you wake up, that’s when you are in your true state. You just opened your eyes and you haven’t thought of a single thought yet, that lasts a few seconds. Think about that time, don’t you really feel good in those few seconds. Before you start thinking about the days activities, that's reality. Try to catch yourself tomorrow morning as soon as you open your eyes. Before a thought comes. That is your true state and that is what you are. Forget about your problems. There is a power that knows how to take care of everything for you, if you allow it to. You have to allow it to. You have to surrender your ego, your pride, your concepts, your opinions, your questions, your answers, everything has to be surrendered and the power works on its own volition. A great Master said, "Take no thought of what you should eat, of what you should wear, of where you should go, but seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto you," it's the same thing. But how often do you take thought. Most people take thought every moment, you're always thinking, worrying, trying to correct something, trying to figure it out. And that's what keeps you from the kingdom of heaven. So what do you do, nothing. You do not try to fix anything. You do not even try to change. You simply become your Self, just the way you really are. You leave the world alone. You leave things alone, you leave people alone. So you say, "How can I exist? I have to go to work? I have to mix with people? I have to make decisions?" Have no fear. You will do all those things, but it'll be different. You will understand totally that you are not the doer. Your body came to this earth to do something and it will do its job. You have absolutely nothing to do with it. Stop fighting, stop trying to make things happen, keep your mind on your Self. What do I mean when I say, "Keep your mind on yourself?" Your real Self is your heart, not your human heart, but your spiritual heart. Your heart is God. Keep your mind stayed on God in your heart. If you want to use your imagination to begin with, you can image a sphere of white light in your heart on the right side of your chest, your spiritual heart. And allow all your thoughts to merge into your heart. In other words, do not allow your thoughts to go outward. When your thoughts go outward conditions take place. When you keep your thoughts in your heart centered, all of a sudden you find peace, pure happiness it comes by itself. We have to allow the power that we don’t understand to take care of us. This mysterious power knows what your needs are. I recall when I first saw a picture of Ramana Maharshi in my teens and I had to go to India to see him. I had no idea, why? I didn’t have the funds. A couple of months later my aunt died and left me fourteen thousand dollars. And I left my family and went to India. I don’t know why? And it has been like this all of my life. So I’ve learnt to surrender my wants, my desires, my ego, to the power that knows the way. And this power will always carry you on a stream of blessedness to your highest good, if you allow it. But you have to become humble and you have to let go of fear. You do this by this the methods we teach, through self-inquiry and becoming the witness. This is called Satsang: it means that I shouldn’t even be talking as much as I do and just answering questions and talking back and forth. So let's do that now. Express your ideas, ask questions, do something, share with us some of your experiences: SD: I have a question Robert, I understand the concept of surrender, but at the highest level you say to allow it but how could you possibly disallow omnipresence? R: It appears as if you are, that’s all a part of the appearance. (SD: That's on the mortal plane?) Yes. (SD: But I mean if everything is unfolding as it should and predestined, on the highest level how do you disallow it?) You do not try to disallow it, but you hear these words and you no longer react to it. By not reacting you disallow it. For if you didn't hear the words you would still be fighting. But now you watch and you see it unfolding before your eyes. Yet you do not react to it for you realize who you are. You're like the mirror, like that mirror over there and a reflection is taking place. But you are not the reflection, you remain as the mirror, so you do not fight, you do not argue, you do not fear, and you're not overly happy. (SD: Not overly happy?) Yes, physically. (SD: I do not know of anyone who is overly happy.) (laughter) If you, if someone won forty-million dollars in the lotto last night? If you won forty-million dollars would you be overly happy? (SD: For a while.) (laughter) That’s what I mean, for you become overly happy for a while. But if you understand what I’m talking about, all that stuff stops. (general talk between students) R: What's the other question Dana? SD: Oh my other question is that on a certain level I except that we know nothing and yet I think Arnold brought up the other day that the evolutionary process which has a certain logic to it, would that be, I guess that would be just part of the dream right, in other words, that would be an explanation within the dream? (R: All explanations are the dream.) That's true because how can they be, that doesn't exist? R: There is no cause, there is no birth of anything. So there are no explanations, you're wasting time trying to explain. (SD: That's true because you're explaining with the mind.) People write voluminous texts about nonsense, about existence. And we read and we get involved and we try to be intelligent about it and we suffer. All suffering stops when you stop searching and you stop fighting. SB: So Robert you’re saying, since we really don’t know what anything is, and since we don’t know who we are, therefore we would be released into a disposition, if we don’t really know what anything is and if we realize that the self that we think we are, is all perceptual or it's an illusion, that would automatically release us into a no-self condition? (R: Into emptiness?) Like a releasement into emptiness. R: But remember the emptiness is not real emptiness, it's bliss. (SB: It's like a nocentre, it's not like a regular spiritual path, they are always trying to get you to go back to a centre and that keeps you in the ego-self, you know. But this is like a releasement.) Total release, total emptiness, there's no centre. (SB: So no centre, that's tremendous.) For if there was a centre where did it come from? There is no centre. (SB: Yeah and as long that there's thinking, there's a centre. We separate ourselves right there?) Exactly. (SB: When you're released there's no centre.) So there is no thought to have no center. (SB: Then there is no differentiation between things?) No discrimination whatsoever. SD: A release is scary to the ego. SB: Oh, it's death, It's death. Nobody wants it. How many people are here, do you see the whole Los Angeles wanting this, nobody wants this. R: This is why I always say in the beginning, I'm just relating my confession, what I feel, the experiences that I’ve been through, and I ask no one to except it, but I ask you to work on yourself and see what happens. SA: I have a question about self-inquiry and self-observation. About a week or so ago there were just three of us here, Sam, myself and Dana. You asked us to speak about what has been happening in our lives and we all kind of spoke and we all gave a little brief, a very positive synopsis of the previous weeks. Very chipper, very up, each one of us. And I've been thinking about that and I’ve been thinking about the importance of being positive that you speak of and out-projecting the positive. And so I want to use one little example which will help you get to my eventual point, which gets us into the literature. There are two kinds of books, I'd say, one is a very famous bestseller type where people go through certain experiences and all ends well and there's true love and all that kind of thing and people are drawn to that and then there's, I'd say, war and peace. I don’t know how many people have read war and peace? Where you really get involved in life in a way that most literature does not allow us to get involved with or most experiences. There is the black and white in war and peace. There is the ying and yang. Tolstoy created a vast world of both pain and pleasure etc, etc. Unlike these other books. So my point is to get back to where I was before. When you read war and peace the final experience is one of being moved to a higher reality, of being moved by something beyond oneself. It leads you to something else whereas this other literature although in a temporary sense appears to be positive does not. Okay now to get back to my original point, my original example. We all spoke very positively about our little weeks. We’re all good little soldiers, good little boy scouts and girl scouts. Was this a valid experience of self-observation or was this positiveness that everybody is mad for in Los Angeles, or was it a distortion? Or would it have been better for us in the long run to have said something like for example, you know today, the morning was hell, this that and the other thing was hell, this afternoon I’m feeling better I can see certain things. In other words to give an experience in the ying and yang, the black and white which appears to lead to these higher realms. R: You’re right. Always be truthful to yourself. Don’t put it on, don’t imagine, things are going well when they’re not. Be free and be yourself. When you're free you can express yourself positively and negatively and you have no fear of either one because they're both the same as far as a human path is concerned. But when you’re not free you try to hide the negative and accentuate the positive and as you see you're making a mistake because you are just fooling yourself and in your subconscious you're hiding all the negativity. SA: That’s what I feel here very much and this is particular to Southern California which is where because of the constant sunlight and all that sort of thing and people want to have pleasure and they want to be positive, it’s a misinterpretation of what being positive is, it seems to me. (SD: It’s like happy faces.) It’s like it’s all happy faces all the time. And the ultimate result is that if anybody is honest - we've talked about this, is that people are not happy really underneath, it’s a surface phenomena, it’s an illusion again. R: But these people are going through whatever they have to go through. This is why when the question is asked, "What can I do to change the world and make everybody know the truth." The answer is become self-realized, because when you’re self-realized that's not a selfish answer. Self-realization means omnipresence and when you're self realized you see the world for what it really is. But when you see it through human eyes, you see suffering, you see good and you see bad and you think it’s true. So your omnipresence of self-realization helps others, just by being your real Self. In the beginning it appears selfish because you're saying I-am and self-realized, what about the other people that are suffering? What about the homeless? First become self-realized and then see what you think of the homeless, you'll have a completely new idea. SD: That’s what Maharshi always says too isn't it? Just do self-inquiry and the world will appear differently. R: And that appears strange and it even appears sometimes like a cop out. Because you say, "Work on yourself and you'll help others," how can you do that? But it's true, because as you know, God is in everyone and in everything and when you become self realized, you become God. So you become the Self of all. The real Self of all is perfection. So when you become the real Self of all you see perfection in everything. And the seeing of perfection, not with your eyes, but with your spiritual Self, that perfection causes the perfection to be in others. SA: Well that’s a different kind of positiveness than just saying, "Yeah, it's just marvelous… (R: Oh yes of course.) …it's a lovely day and I'm going to be marvelous?" (R: Of course, totally different.) SA: Would you analyze this thing that happened to me yesterday, what was really going on with this. I went to a party, a family party and I had an experience with someone else in the family several weeks ago. You know I used to write books and do quite a bit of writing and it happened that I was with these people and this cousin of mine read one of my books and he finished it and he threw it on the floor and this… (R: He really liked it huh?) (laughs) …was quite an experience. This is a very unusual thing for somebody to do. SN: I'd take that as a compliment. (laughter). SA: So, I was with these other family members yesterday and I wanted to tell this story. I took great joy in telling this story for one thing because it was an interesting story to tell and for another thing my cousins, I could arouse their intense interest which I enjoy doing. What was I doing? Was this kind of a negative experience for me, I wanted to communicate very much and also I wanted to, in this communication, I was relieving myself from the tension of this experience because it did happen (I didn’t comment on it) to this man who did it. I didn’t say anything because that’s a very difficult situation with that married couple, they wouldn’t be able to understand anything that I might say. So I repressed everything then. Do you have any comments on that? R: Yes, what was the name of the book? (Laughter.) Ask yourself, "To whom did this happen and who wants to comment?" It's your ego playing all these games. If you were coming from your real Self, it doesn’t matter, you would have no feeling for or against. SA: But since I still am involved in the ego, wouldn't it be better for me just to – now I'm trying to justify my actions of course – wouldn’t it be better for me to…? (break in tape then tape starts abruptly as another student asks a question) SB: …we have moments of being able to do the self-abiding and it happens and then just a moment later the habits of attention, the consciousness is addicted to the habit patterns and all of a sudden the self-abiding just seems to disappear and we're back in the ego again in the motions of attention. And we can never transcend that ego attention. (R: Don't say never.) Not never, but it seems to lasts for only a very short time and then by habit we're back. Then there is attention moving in, there is desire and the me and the memory. You know the whole thing again, you know? R: Of course, in the beginning this is quite true, but say you're trying to become a surgeon. You have to keep practicing, you make mistakes, that's why you practice on the stiffs and dead bodies. (SB: Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do right now.) What are you doing? (SB: By myself, practicing on the stiffs.) (laughter) Yes, you keep practicing, you practice again and again and you have more stiffs to practice on, until the day comes when you give a perfect operation, then you become a surgeon, same principle. You keep catching yourself. (SB: Yeah trying to recognize through recognition…) You keep remembering to catch yourself and it happens more often, more often. (SB: And that is what the inquiry is helpful for…) Yes. (…it keeps reminding me that I'm back in me again.) The time lapse becomes closer and closer to reality and starts coming closer to it. SB: It's really interesting because when you're doing even a little bit of self-abiding to some extent, no matter all the things that get you angry when you're in the ego, they don't bother you, you know people driving they cut in front of you, usually you get all tight and contracted and angry, but when you're self-abiding you are just resting, they can do anything, you don't react, you're released, you're not tense, the day goes smooth… R: If you're really doing it, it brings you perfect peace. (SB: Perfect bliss, yeah.) It really does. So we keep remembering, remembering, we'll forget. Then we'll remember again, sometimes we'll get disgusted with the whole thing and we'll stop for a couple of months, who knows? But then we'll go back to it. If we keep abiding, we'll get there and become free. But then again if you don't that's okay, because you'll come back again and you'll be ahead of the game. (SB: But the way you're speaking now it seems like we're going to get there. It seems like we're not there, isn't it true that we're there…) Of course. (SB: …only that we're just distracting ourselves?) Of course, you're distracting yourself. You can awaken anytime. (SB: Yeah, but it's not a goal to be attained, it’s just to recognize.) To awaken, just like from a dream. You keep dreaming the same dream until you wake up. (SB: So we're going to wake up to what is already the reality, truth, right there aren't we?) Of course. And the only difference about this and the dream is that this appears longer, that's all. SD: And another difference it seems to me that, with rare exception and I guess you'd call it lucid dreaming but we usually aren't trying to wake up from the dream at night when we have night dreams. (R: But some people are.) Yeah, in lucid dreaming you do. (R: It depends on the dream.) Because you know that you are dreaming but most dreams you aren't attempting to awaken within the dream and in this dream we are. Consciously we're attempting to awaken to this different dream. R: I had an interesting dream the other night. And I dreamt that I was conducting a class and Queen Elizabeth came in and she sat down and took off her crown and put her hands on her lap, then I woke up. (SD: That's interesting.) Whatever that means? (SD: Did she have a crown on, I was going to ask whether she had one of her silly hats on but she had a crown.) She had a crown on and she took it off and put it on her lap. SA: I know that we can't take this word literally, but it kind of leads to certain conflict. You speak of the great reality, at times pure intelligence, I think I've made this point before more than once, but you use the term pure intelligence. It's so hard for me to accept that term and not believe that intelligence leads to something else. Intelligence for us in our current state implies so many other things, so that this intelligence when you use the word, and I know you mean something more than intelligence. R: I mean non-discrimination, non-attachment. When there is non-discrimination and non-attachment there is pure intelligence because you see things as they are. (SA: But isn't there a suggestion that something develops out of this type of intelligence, that it is a pregnant situation.) If you accept it that way, but that's not the meaning. The meaning is just pure intelligence, period. No concepts, no definitions, non-discriminatory, nothing you hold onto, it’s pure existence, pure knowledge, same thing, pure bliss, those words are all synonymous. (SA: That reminds me of - I told you have been reading Plotinus again, Plotinus says, "Nothing can be said about the one. No attributes can be given to the one, beyond any such thing.") That's true. That's why we call it ultimate oneness, there’s no definition. SN: You can't even call it one. (R: It's not one at all!) One is also a concept. SB: That's why they call it non-dual, instead of one they call it non-dual, for not two. (R: Or emptiness.) Robert, I had an idea about it with that I think might be interesting. I think what it is, is really realization of consciousness. I've been living as realization of mind. You know, me wanting to know, wanting to get realized, you know, wanting to be released. I've been really living as realization of me, realization of mind, with memory, conditioning. I think this whole thing is coming to rest as realization of consciousness, just consciousness, not consciousness of anything but just consciousness. And when that position is held onto, rested in, established in that position, something magical happens. R: Yes, you are speaking of no realization. Realization of consciousness is really, no realization because there's no one to realize. (SB: Yeah, no self?) SD: Isn't it called pure awareness? (R: Same thing, absolute reality.) SA: The Zen Buddhists speak of no mind, that's a common term. (R: No mind.) SB: No Self. (R: Or nirvana, the same thing.) SD: So maybe Arnold when you think of pure intelligence, you might think of pure awareness or pure consciousness. (R: Why think?) (laughter) If only we could stop. (R: Who said that?) Like it says, my ego. Oh I have a kind of dilemma that has occurred to me in meditation once in a while and that is, say it goes on for a long time when we're listening to music and everybody, the natives grow sort of restless, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, "Well who is restless?" and I think as you have taught us, "I am," then I think, "Who is I?" but that's contradictory because the real I could not possibly be restless. R: Of course not, but when you realize who your ego-I is and you follow it to its culmination, you follow it to emptiness, to nothing. (SD: So it's the ego-I that we're asking about when we say, "Who is I?") It's the ego-I. (SD: And it will just annihilate itself by…?) It annihilates itself when you take it to its source, which is nowhere. (SD: Because I thought for a long time that it was the I who was awareness?) That exists by itself, but when you don't know it, then you're talking about the ego-I. (SD: So in self-inquiry when you say, "Who am I," you are talking about the ego-I?) The ego-I, yes. SA: The little I, you might say. R: Yes, and when I play music in between, it's not to make you feel nice listening to music. It's because it gives you the space to watch your thoughts when the music is playing and see how you respond, see what you do. Always watch, always be aware, always watch yourself, watch how you react, watch how you think, watch the kind of thoughts that come to you, while the music is playing, while you're meditating. Be aware of all these things and the more aware you become the more you disappear. All these concepts start to disappear, just by you being aware of them. It's like playing hide and seek. You're trying to find the person who is hiding. So you're trying to find the thoughts that are lurking deep deep in the subconscious and they come up themselves and you say, "I see you. I know that you're there. You cannot fool me any longer. The fear is there, I see where you are," and you ask yourself, "Who fears? Where did you come from fear? Who is your mother? Who is your father? Who gave you birth? You have no birth? You don't exist?" You keep talking to yourself like this, so that part of you no more exists and it dissipates of its own accord. That's how you work on yourself. Let's play some more music. (music played) When he says, "I need no one or I need nothing and I am free," he doesn't mean that literally. He means he's not attached to people, places and things. There's quite a difference. You ask perhaps, "How can I have a relationship without being attached?" You can have the most beautiful relationship that you can ever imagine. It doesn't mean you become a loner on this path. It means you have friends, you have loved ones, but you give them all the freedom in the world and you're not attached to their emotions or with anything else. That means total uncommitted love. It's a little different than what most people do. Being non-attached means being compassionate, being loving, being kind. Now you know what mercy means. Helping your friend before you even help yourself. If you're attached you think of yourself first but if you're not attached you think of the other person first, there is a lot to that. Any comments? SB: Robert being released from the self, I think instead of calling it self-realization it should be called, realization of there's no self. (laughter) That would be closer to… R: It would be complicated for some people. (SB: Because self-realization people think, "Oh me as the self is going to realize something," but that's absolutely the opposite.) That's what brings them in. That's how you begin. (SB: It brings them in, in the beginning thinking the ego's going to get something. It's just the opposite of that it's just losing everything.) Of course. SD: But it's also realizing that the Self is all there is. SB: Yeah. But you know my mind… it's such a strange condition. Like the mind is just not used to walking around being released from themselves. Like we walk around like we always hugging ourselves, like me, me and I'm trying to grab everything, you know. And understanding this it would be a release from everything, walking around it's like being a zombie. It's different to what we're used to. As a person educated, as a child, you know we're used to me and the world you know. It's a very strange condition and the mind doesn't like it. You know it's hard to have to constantly reinforce, to be able to… R: First experience the condition and then see how strange it is. (SB: It's like a zombie condition.) It's your natural condition. (SB: Yeah, it’s natural but we're so unnatural.) Yes. (SB: The self is so unnatural and that's all we know. So you glimpse it for a second and then you run back and grab hold of yourself again, you know.) That's how it happens. That's why you keep working on yourself, working on yourself. You keep remembering what to do until it becomes second nature. (SB: It's almost like floating around, you know it's so light, there is no tension.) You become light, that's true. (SB: It's so light it's pleasant.) Yes. SN: How do you know if you're so not in bliss. (laughs) SB: So in other words you have to go to total zero, from the point of the mind. So it's like dying, going to total zero. R: Well it isn't that bad really. What you are doing is that you are just changing your allegiance. Before you used to have faith in the world and people, places and things. Now you have faith in omnipresence, in the infinite. In something that you can’t feel, taste, touch, smell or see. And the more faith you have in that which is your Self the more faith that you have in the world, the real world, as your Self. (SB: So really it starts with an act of faith in that…) Faith in the invisible. (SB: …in the invisible so that you go on with it.) You drop your self-importance. And you stop having conflicts with people, places and things. And you just start loving and you become compassionate. And you realize everybody is your brothers and sisters and everything happens by itself. SD: Isn't he right in saying in a way that it feels like dying, because I think it was St Paul or one of those who said, "I die daily?" R: Yes, St Paul said that, you die daily to the world. But it's not a negative experience, it's a good experience. Every time you let go of something you feel better. (SB: Self transcendence?) As an example, say you have a job and you're worried about being laid off, inflation, pay increases, strikes, but as you begin to understand this teaching you let go of all those thoughts, you realize that you will always be at your right place and no one can take your right place away from you. So wherever your right place is that's where you are going to be. You subsequently stop worrying about your job, about layoffs, about strikes, about pay increases and you just do your work without fear and you become a better worker as a result. So you get promoted, you get a raise and everything happens by itself but all fear goes away. SB: It's really amazing not to be attached to body-mind and to people, places and things. R: And life goes on. But it goes on the way it's supposed to go on, naturally, infinitely and it's all good. (SB: I think it would make you healthy because you're not all nervous about things.) It improves you in every way. All parts of you will improve. It's amazing how it works. You stop seeing evil. First you stop seeing evil in yourself, you sort of forgive yourself for all of your mistakes. It's like being born again and then you can forgive everybody else, totally, completely. You become free, unlearn everything and you feel your omnipresence. You realize you are not yourself as a person, you are the Self as the universe, it's a grand feeling. (SB: Tell us about the bliss aspect of it.) Bliss, love, joy, happiness, those words are all synonymous. But take the happiest experience you can think of as a human being, what's a real happy experience that you've had in your life. An experience that really turns you on. Now compared to bliss, it's not even an atom of bliss. That's how more powerful bliss is, it has nothing to do with human happiness. It's a billion times more powerful, it's unexplainable, it's ineffable, nothing you can even think about. You can just be in it and partake of it, but nothing to explain. SB: How is it possible to stay conscious if it's that good? (R: Who's conscious?) If something is really painful you lose consciousness. So I would think if something is unbearably ecstatic one would also lose consciousness. R: You’re speaking in human terms, that's why they call it transcendental. You transcend human terms and you're in a completely different space, so there's no one to lose consciousness. You can only lose consciousness as a human being but if you transcend your humanhood there's no one left to lose consciousness. There has to be a body to lose consciousness but when you see “I am not the body,” there is no one left to lose consciousness, do you follow? To have any experience, there has to be someone left to have the experience. If you get rid of the someone then you become natural and you do not lose consciousness when we're natural. (SB: So there's no experience anymore?) There's no experience at all! (SB: The one who experiences has been transcended, is gone.) Is dead. (SB: So realization is a non-experience, it's like a primal…) It's not even that, it's beyond that, it's totally transcendental. SD: You can't experience bliss is that true? (R: That's right!) SB: You really do feel bliss, I mean, you feel bliss but it's different, it's not the mind experiencing bliss. R: It's like the sun trying to experience heat. (SB: (laughs) That's good.) You can't. (SB: There is bliss but there's no one experiencing, there is just bliss.) That's the natural state. (SB: Yeah.) SA: Speaking of the sun, I don't know if it's out of speculation but, there's a teaching that the world, the earth, is an intelligence. The earth is going through its evolution and it's struggling for its own revelations, its own enlightenment as we are part of this way of life. And the same is true for the sun. (R: Umm.) Do you have a teaching on that? R: That's the mental plane. In the mental plane everything is alive. There is no such thing as dead matter. Everything lives and wants to express itself, the moon, the sun, the earth, the flowers everything. But when you go beyond that, it doesn't exist. It only exists on the mental plane but in truth there is no mental plane. So none of that exists it's like a dream. Always go back to the dream. (SA: So the whole universe, the solar system and the universe are projections in a sense also.) Projection of the mind. SD: All part of the Maya? (R: All Maya.) SB: And all the inner planes too? (R: All the inner planes, projections of the mind.) Astral, causal, physical, all of that? R: For whom are these things, where did they come from? For whom are they? They're all projections of the mind. When the mind goes everything else goes. So that's why when you follow the I, the I is the mind and the ego. When you go to the source, everything is attached to mind — all the things that we've been discussing — they are all part of the I-thought. I see the sun, I perceive the moon. As you said, "I perceive the earth as being alive." I do these things. But when the I is transcended who's left? Just itself and all of those things are gone. So there's peace, there is nobody left to worry about those things, that they concern themselves with. SA: When you say you go beyond it reminds me of a line in a book I'm very fond of, it's called "the secret teachings of the Tibetan Masters" and one of the phrases that is used by the Tibetans is, "Going beyond the beyond." R: (laughs) Is that by Paul Brunton? (SA: No, Alexander David Neal, French woman from Tibet.) I don't know, her. SB: Was Paul Brunton a realized being? (R: Yes.) I thought he was because he had a whole series of books. SA: Oh it's a very thick book, it's very succinct, which is wonderful. She speaks on the misconceptions of the self of being having any identity at all, she pushes more of a scientific standpoint that everything is constantly in flux, although we don't see the changes from moment to moment, the things that you've said of course. We want to hold on to this idea of an identity which simply has no reality, personal identity. R: On the mental plane everything is in a state of flux, nothing is solid, everything moves. For it doesn't exist because it's non-duality, non-duality exists. Duality is when everything is in a state of flux, then there are atoms, there's energy, there are molecules, and there are things and they're in complete motion. But if you go beyond the molecules and the atoms and the energy then you'll have nothing, emptiness, and that's reality. It's like the story I tell of the monk, who is asking the Master, "What is reality, what is reality," and the Master said go pick a fig. And he picked a fig off a tree and the Master said, "open the fig" and the monk did. And the Master said, "Cut open the seed" and he cut open the seed and he said, "what do you see?" And the monk said, "Emptiness," and the Master said, "that's true, everything comes from emptiness," because in the fig seed there is a hollow, there is nothing. So out of the nothingness came the fig tree and so has everything else. (pause) Remember I love you all and I always think about you, but remember to love yourselves, to pray to your Self, to bow to your Self, to worship your Self, because God dwells in you, as you, peace. See you again next time, God bless… (tape ends as students organize to go to restaurant)

Robert: I welcome you with all my heart. This body does not presume that it has anything new to teach you. I will refer to this body as I, to make it short. I have nothing new to tell you. I am not a philosopher. I am not a preacher. I am not worthy. I simply have a confession. I confess to you, your own reality. It is not a teaching it's a confession. I am speaking to my Self confessing and you are my Self. You are sat-chit-ananda — knowledge, existence and bliss. You are not the body or the mind. What you appear to be is not the truth, it may be a fact but it is not the truth. A fact is something that appears to be true but it changes. You cannot be who you think you are for when you were a baby, you were quite different. And when you were a little boy or a little girl you were also different. And the way you are now is completely different than you were before. Consequently how can you be the body? What are you? Who are you? Sat-chit-ananda? What's that? Even if I tell you this, it means absolutely nothing. You must have your own experience. You mustn't believe a word I say. Why should you believe me? What do I know? I am simply confessing to you that there is only para-Brahman, consciousness, bliss, being, awareness, pure intelligence. This has been my experience. There is nothing else. Everything else is an experience of the mind, an appearance, like hypnosis. The world seems real, so does a dream. What is this world? It's as if you just woke up from your dream and you still remember the dream. In the dream you were going places, getting married, having children, getting older, then you wake up and you halfway remember the dream and halfway remember the world in which you wake up. So which one is real, the world or the dream? It has been my experience that they're both alike. There is no real difference. You attach yourself to this world, in the same way you attach yourself in your dream. If you were dreaming and you dreamt you were falling off a mountain and I was falling beside you. And I said to you, "Don't worry, nothing can happen to you, you're dreaming," you wouldn't believe me, you would be filled with fear and you would say, "Can't you see we're falling, can't you see what's happening, how can you tell me I'm dreaming?" Just before you hit the ground you wake up, and you laugh, "It was all a dream." In the same way you have attached yourself to sickness, to health, to good, to bad, to happiness, to unhappiness, these are all concepts. You've attached yourself to person place or thing. You have forgotten that this is a dream. You believe it’s real and because you believe it’s real you suffer accordingly. When you leave your body you will have to come back again and again and again, all part of the dream, until you become detached. How do you do that? By simply observing what's going on around you and not attaching yourself to it. By being awake to your reality. Understanding yourself that you are not the doer. Everything that you do has been preordained. It will be done. You have to let go mentally of all conditioning, of all objectivity. And you must still your mind. Make your mind placid, like a motionless lake. Then reality comes of its own accord. Happiness comes of its own accord. Peace comes of it own accord. Love comes of its own accord. Freedom comes of its own accord. These things are synonymous. They happen without you ever thinking about them. But first you must get rid of the notion, that I am the body, or mind, or the doer and then everything will happen by itself. Be still and know that I am God. There was once a girl who was born into a house of prostitution. And across the street in front of the market place there was a preacher, a holy man. He used to exclaim the virtues of God and talk about the house of prostitution. How it was filled with sinners and he told people to repent. Yet the girl who grew up in the house of prostitution was twenty-three years old. She used to look out the window everyday and cry to herself and she would say, "How I wish I was like that Holy man, how I wish I was spiritual," and she would imagine in her mind that she was a holy person and yet go on with her work. Now they both got old and died and went to St. Peter to go into heaven. St. Peter told the man, "You can't come in you've got to go to hell," and he told the girl, "you can come in." So the Holy man became dumbfounded and said, "Why? For all these years I've proclaimed your goodness and your virtues. I told people to repent. How can you let her in when she was a prostitute and leave me out?" And St Peter said, "You've been a hypocrite. You were very worthy and talked a lot and said nothing. In your heart you thought everybody was a sinner but you. Whereas the girl in her imagination, in her feelings, always was thinking of God. So she can come in, you can't." The point is this: It's not what you say. It's not what you proclaim. It's what's deep, deep, deep in your heart that determines what happens to you. It's not reading books, it's not studying, it's not going to classes. It's sitting by yourself, becoming quiet, going deeper and deeper within yourself. Transcending your mind and your body until something happens. When thoughts come to you, you simply ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come? From whence cometh these thoughts," follow the thoughts to their source. Find out the source of your thoughts. You will find that the source of your thoughts is I. Follow the I-thread to its source by asking, "Who am I?" or "What is the source of I? Where did this I come from?" You will realize that the pronoun I, is the first word that was ever spoken and everything else is attached to I. Every other word. Every other thought, every other feeling, every other emotion, they're all attached to the I. I feel happy. I feel sad. I feel sick. I feel well. I feel poor, I feel rich. Everything is attached to I. If the I becomes dissolved, so does everything else and you become free. Find out for whom there is an I and you will discover something amazing. You will discover that I never existed. There never was an I. You will discover that you never existed. There's no such thing as you. You will discover that you are the imperishable Self. That you are never born and you can never die. You will discover that you're omnipresence, omniscient, omnipotent. That there are no others. There is no world. There is no universe. There is no God. There is only the Self. All this is the Self. All that you behold is the Self and "I-am" is that. This will give you a feeling of freedom, of bliss, of happiness. You will not lose your awareness. When I speak these things people believe that they become completely annihilated and there's nothing left. They melt into the great ocean of nirvana. This is not necessarily true. You will always be awareness. You will always be pure intelligence for that is your real nature. You will always be blissful. Except you will understand that you are not who you appear to be. Your body will still appear to be doing things, going through its motions. You will appear to be an ordinary person but you will know. You have lifted yourself up above the gross world into the heavenly world of pure consciousness and you will be at peace. Any questions about that? Feel free to say anything you want: SA: Hi Robert, I've been thinking about the practice of the teachings in the world in daily life. I was mulling over this recent business of the problem of the two Christian Scientists in Boston whose child had died. I'm not sure whether you're aware of that? This was in the news recently. And of course there was strong similarities between the teaching and Christian Science. And of course these parents believed that the illness was error and they wanted to project only health, only divine health, divine reality which was all that existed according to the teaching whether it’s Christian Science or this teaching or whatever. And so they refused to acknowledge that the child was sick. So what do you have to say about this subject that has, do you want us to believe that you are projecting a different reality, the true reality or not? R: This has nothing to do with the belief system. You have to understand what's going on and where you are. If you are sick you see a doctor, if you're hungry you eat, if you're in the sun burning up, you get out of the sun. It's not a belief. This is why I tell you to believe nothing. Do not believe what I say. Do not believe anything. Christian Science unfortunately believes that you shouldn't go to doctors even if your sick. But they have a belief system. A belief system doesn't make it so. You have to have a consciousness of the Truth. That’s why there are some Christian Scientists who do not go to doctors and it works but most of them that do not go to doctors die because they are not high enough. You can't just accept this system and say, "This is the way it is," mentally. You have to become a living embodiment of the teaching and then it works. In other words you can't join a Christian science church and never go to a doctor again. You have to work on yourself. You have to do certain things within your own consciousness until you lift yourself up and out of the ordinary human error, then things begin to happen. But of course what I'm saying to you is go beyond sickness and health, beyond poverty and riches, beyond good and bad. We're not trying to exchange bad for good, they're two sides of the same coin. We are trying to get off the wheel. To become completely totally free of human good and human bad. It's a completely different dimension. If you exchange bad for good, you'll have to exchange good for bad. For we live in a world of duality. For every good there's a bad. For every bad there's a good, for every up there's a down. For every amount of pressure pushing this way an equal amount of pressure pushes the other way. Like in the flying of jet planes. Without pressure the plane couldn't fly, without resistance. This is the world in which we live. I am talking about transcending the world, going beyond the limitations of this world. Becoming pure bliss, pure consciousness while embodied. Completely different, do you follow? (SA: Yes.) SH: Three weeks ago you said something which I wish you could elaborate on, I think it's beautiful, you said, "the only choice you have is to abide or not to abide in the Self" R: Oh I was referring to, everything that’s happened to you in this life has been preordained, you're not as free as you believe. Every hair on your head is counted, every move you make: if I move my finger like this, (moves finger) it has all been preordained. SA: What is the source of it? Why did it begin though? R: It didn't. It never began, it’s hypnotism. SS: Who preordained it? (R: Noone.) Not yourself, nothing? (R: No.) Capital nothing? R: No, it's hypnosis. I always use the example the sky is blue. There is really no sky and there is no blue. If you fly up there is only space but we see the sky as blue. If you're in the desert and you see an optical illusion and you see water and you chase the water, it's a mirage. It didn't exist, same thing. SM: So you're saying it's the mind that has to believe it has a source. (R: The mind.) That's rejecting that upon itself? R: When the mind goes, all those concepts disappear with it. (SM: Those concepts also, uh-uh?) So what I was referring to, the only freedom the mind has - and this has to do with the mind — is to turn within and find the source. (SM: It's almost like connecting to the same circuit, just freeing it from the mind.) Yes, you have to use your mind to destroy your mind. (SM: Is that so, yeah.) The mind is nothing but a bunch of concepts. All that the mind is, is bunch of thoughts of the past and the future. If you understand that everything is preordained, you have nothing to worry about. (SS: Is that also what people say is you have an attitude of, "What the heck, it's preordained?") No, that's no good, I'm glad you brought that up, you have to act as if nothing is preordained. (SS: Even though it is?) Even though it is. (SS: Then why is that?) Due to the fact it will give people license to do whatever they like. The average person should never hear anything like this. For they will all go out and do all kinds of strange things. So we say, your life is preordained but don't just sit back and say, "It's going to happen anyway." Act as if it's not, act as if you're free, but realize it's preordained and everything will take care of itself. (SS: Because ultimately you're the watcher?) Yes, your real nature is freedom. (SS: But when you have all those stopping points in between is that worth it?) It's the mind, it all comes from the mind, all creation exists in the mind. Your universe, what you see and feel extends out of your mind. You create your own universe, everyday. The way you see things with your eyes and your senses, it's an extension of your mind. When you pull in your mind and rest your mind in your heart, you're in a completely different universe. (SS: You don't need a mantra to do that?) No, just awareness, it's a waking up process. SS: When you meditate there's so many things on meditation, contemplation, concentration and so on that recently I'll begin, I'll go in, I'll start with this mantra and then I'll go to that mantra, and then I'll think just thoughts… I'm having different mantras now, it's very dizzy, but then there's the idea of blankness, we don't want blankness necessarily either it's not just a void is it or is it? R: There is no such thing as a void. (SS: There's still awareness?) There is pure intelligence, absolute reality, but that's ineffable, you can't explain it, you'll have to experience it for yourself. What we call the void in Buddhism is pure awareness. It's not really a void, the reason it's called a void, it means it transcends the world, it's beyond anything you know and so it's a void as far as that's concerned but it's really pure awareness. (SS: And so in meditation if you have no experience, it means nothing?) Absolutely nothing, doesn't matter. Experiences are not reality. (SS: I'm saying that because I'm wanting confirmation on feelings that I've already had, you've confirmed many thoughts.) All forms of meditations, affirmations, yoga, breathing exercises are all to make the mind stop, to still the mind, to make the mind quiescent, but that's going about it the hard way. The fastest way to do this is to ask yourself the question, "To whom comes these thoughts?" As I mentioned before, you must use your mind to annihilate your mind. And by asking the question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" but not answering, it will take care of itself. (SS: By not answering?) Do not answer, due to the fact when you answer it's your ego answering. Your ego seems to have all the right answers and you never get anywhere. You do not answer but the feeling will come to you, "These thoughts come to me, I feel these thoughts," and the next query should be, "From where does the I come from?" or "Who am I?" and again you do not answer. And one day you will find out that the I does not come from anything, it’s mesmerism, there is no I, there never was an I, there is only I-am, freedom, bliss, consciousness, existence, they are all synonymous. And you will feel your Self not as a body but as omnipresence. You will realize everything as your Self. There's only one and even the one does not exist. There is no word to use. There is the Self. That's the only word you can use. Everything is the Self and you are That. (SS: So find that Self?) When you use words it spoils it. It's beyond words, beyond thoughts. It comes to you. It's like you wake up, it's like you've been asleep for all these years then all of a sudden you awaken and you know. It's like the story of the Buddha. He was sitting under the Bodhi tree for thirty days and he made up his mind he was going to sit there until he dies or until he awakens. And his disciples were sitting all around him, watching. On about the thirtieth day he opened his eyes and he was shining, he was smiling. His disciples asked him, "Master, what happened to you, did you see God?" He said, "No," "Did you become self-realized?" "No," "Well what happened," and he simply exclaimed, "I am awake!" Therefore all these words, self-realization, illumination, awareness, they're just words. You just wake up from the dream. Right now you feel your body. You feel your emotions. You feel pain. You feel hurt. You feel all kinds of things going on in this world. You watch TV, you watch the news and you get upset, all these terrible things, these dastardly things that are taking place in this world, but when you wake up all these feelings are gone. You realize the illusion, the dream, and you are no longer that. SS: Do you behave then differently in the world with things that used to interest you no longer interest you? R: In a way that can be true but in a way you could still be doing the same things except you're no longer attached to them. As an example if you have a good job. Be the president of a bank or if you're a garbage man, doesn't make any difference, you will do your duty whatever you have to do, better than you ever did it before. You will no longer look at time. You will no longer think that you are the doer. You will just do whatever has to be done. Whatever your body is supposed to do will be done. Your body is under the law of karma and whatever you have to do, you will do. But you will have no attachment, you will have compassion, you will have love, you will have lovingkindness and mercy but no attachment. (SS: Does it just happen like (flicks fingers) that?) Yes. (SS: So we're not in the process of that?) No, it appears that you're in a process. (SS: Yeah that's what I think, I feel like I know more now or I know now that I don't know, how do I say this?) The process is an appearance. SA: Couldn't you say that this is a necessary preliminary state though? (R: No.) SS: So somebody working at the car-wash down here could all of a sudden just (flicks fingers)… (R: Yes.) They wouldn't be going through any of the gymnastics… (R: Exactly.) …we would be going through? R: Some people call this God's grace but there is more to it than that. You had to be in this thing in a previous life. You did your Sadhana, you did your spiritual exercises, your Spiritual practices in a previous existence and you're now waking up. (SS: That makes it sound like a process.) That's how it appears, that's the appearance. SA: Wouldn't that be true of the fellow at the car wash too? If he'd done something in previous lives, while he was washing cars and suddenly he woke up? R: Yes, that's all an appearance, you're speaking of the appearance world. In reality nobody's ever done anything and nobody's ever become deluded. Everyone is already free. Identify with your freedom. Identify with the ultimate reality. Do not identify with the experiences you're going through bodily, leave them alone, leave them be. Do whatever you have to, to take care of them but do not put your mind to that. Keep your mind on your freedom, on your absolute reality and then you will see what happens. SB: What exactly does it mean when Ramana says, "The mind falls into the heart? The mind rests in the heart as the heart?" R: The heart he is referring to is absolute reality, pure intelligence. The mind has come out of the heart and does all its damage by making you believe you're worldly. When you go back again, the mind goes back into the heart, into the absolute reality from which it came, because it never really existed. And the absolute reality shines forth once again in all its glory and splendor. Just like the sun in the clouds. When the clouds cover the sun, the ignorant person says there's no sun. He or she does not realize that the sun is always shining but the clouds are now covering the sun. And whence the clouds dissipate, the sun is shining once again. So it is with us, we appear to have troubles and problems and all kinds of nonsense going on in our lives, those are clouds, but your true Self is trying to shine. You will not let it because you imagine your problems are real. You identify with the evil, with the negativity. You identify with the wrong conditioning. So you keep the clouds from dissipating. As soon as you turn from your problems and turn towards the light, the clouds of your problems will dissipate once again and your heart or your sun will shine through and everything will be resolved. SB: How does that relate to the physical body is there any relationship? (R: No.) Didn't Ramana used to say you can feel it in the right side of your chest? R: Yes, people always wanted to know where the absolute reality is, so he gave them a place on the right side of the chest, to focus over there. In other words people asked him for a process, "Ramana, where should I meditate? On what part of my body?" So he realized that they weren't understanding anything, so he said, "Okay, meditate on the right side of your chest, that's where your spiritual heart is, see reality there. Go, jump into the right side, that's where it’s at." He wasn't speaking literally, he was just giving people a place to go because they couldn't comprehend the absolute reality. (SB: But to be established in absolute consciousness, or to be established in Samadhi, it seems to be based on absolute faith that we're not a person, that we are consciousness?) On the contrary, faith has nothing to do with it. (SB: I mean trust in the Divine rather than trust in me as an ego? You know trust in that Samadhi…) No. (SB: …trust to be able to release into Samadhi, you know?) Remember the person who wants to trust is the ego. So you don't want to do any of those things. You just want to awaken and you don't even want to do that. Just be your Self, be your Self. Ask yourself, "Who wants to trust? Who wants to awaken?" and you will see it's all your ego, it's I. I want to do this, I want to do that, I want an experience, I want this. All of that has to go. When all of that has gone, the sun will shine by itself. And the way you get rid of these things is by asking, "From whence do they come? From whence do they come?" In other words, "Where does the idea that I have to trust some power come from? It comes from me. I believe that. Who am I who believes that?" Just observe your thoughts. Do not try to change them. Do not try to correct them. Just observe them. And you can ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come?" or you can just witness your thoughts without asking anything, and the process will take care of itself. You will know what to do. What we use here sometimes which is a very good beginning is the I-am meditation. You relax your body and you inhale and you say, "I," and you exhale and you say, "am, I-am." You can do this while you're waking, while you're walking, while you're washing dishes, while you're resting. What it does is it makes your mind one pointed, so it'll stop thinking. In other words, you use whatever method you have to, to still your mind. The whole secret is to quiet your mind. To keep it from thinking. To keep it from being active. Your mind is a bunch of waves. You want to stop the waves and you want your mind to become still and the fastest way to do that is by self-inquiry or by observing your thoughts, watching your thoughts, becoming the witness to your thoughts. SS: I was in a group for ages, are you familiar with Maurice Nicoll? (R: No.) He wrote, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He talked about doing self-observation. I thought it was too intellectual, too much trying. They say, "What am I observing?" "I'm observing anger," and they would bring up, what is the opposite of anger, and then they would say what would be the feature of consciousness. But I felt that was a whole… (R: It's a whole procedure.) …procedure just like any other school or clinic and I thought I couldn't do that anymore. (R: Whatever you think you need.) I have a question about illness. (R: Okay) Are personal questions appropriate? (R: Sure.) This one I call I, in November of ‘88 became ill, became very tired, went to the doctor, it was after some treatment. They can't do anything for me, he called it "chronic fatigue syndrome, S. T. R. I.” So somebody suggested to me to go to a naturopathic doctor. I feel that I felt myself trying to do those things and it came to me that as long as I am seeking health, I will always have an illness. And when I no longer care that there is a state of health or there is a state of illness, that's the place where I want to be. (R: You're on the right track.) There is no teacher that earnest and you know what you're to do now and that's all there is. R: Whatever your karma is, is going to happen, no matter what you do. So why concern yourself? (SS: Yet do I ignore the body?) See whatever you're going to do, you will not be able to stop. SS: I know, I find that. I write down, I say, "Why do I allow myself," I observe myself, look I went here, I went here, I went to this person, I asked this person, I see what I'm doing why do I allow it? When I can be here in this peaceful state sitting in my rocker looking out at the trees or whatever and yet I do that, but each time I do it, I feel like I'm learning a little bit. R: The way to see it is like this. Let your body do whatever it has to do. Do not think about it too much. Do not identify with it. Do not attach yourself to it. Everything was preordained before you came into existence. (SA: But still there has to be a rational process?) It will take care of itself. The apples grow, the grass grows, the sun shines, there's warmth to make human life exist, there is a power that takes care of everything and it has nothing to do with our thoughts. SA: Okay, now let me throw this back at you. I know you made a move recently, to move your apartment. You didn't tell me this I think it was Dana who told me this. As she was saying you moved into a better apartment and there were various advantages. Obviously some form of thinking went into this, you just didn't decide you were going to move into an apartment. So… R: On the contrary, it just happened. (SA: You didn't think about it?) No, it became available, I just did it. SB: But wouldn't it be intelligent to find out the needs of the body and then supply those needs and then just forget it. R: If that's your Karma, I'll give an example: At one of my experiences in India, I was with a yogi called Nimkarali Baba. And one day a bunch of us, and one of the people there was Ram Dass, you remember Ram Dass he was there too. We were sitting in front of him, when an old lady came up to him and spoke in Hindi, whatever language they were talking I forgot. And what she said was that her husband was dying, "Would you please come and save him, because only you can come and save him.” And Nimkarali Baba looked at me and said, "Should I go?" and I said, "yes go, let's all go." So we walked about two miles to a little shack and the husband was lying on the cot dying of some kind of disease. And he looked at him and all of a sudden the candles began to flicker. So he turned around and ran out the house (Robert laughs) and started to run back to the ashram and we all followed him. And we said when we finally stopped we said, "Baba what happened? Why did you leave?" and he said, "Ah, God wants him to die," and he died. The point is this: your life, your health or your sickness, your riches or your poverty has all been preordained by the law of Karma. And whatever you're going to go through, you're going to go through. If you're supposed to become a health fanatic and watch your health and eat the right things all the time, you will do that and if you're not supposed to, you won't. If you're supposed to take the middle path you will do that. Everything is ordained, planned before time. The only freedom we've got is to not identify with the process, even though your body's going through it. Do not attach yourself to what your body's going through. Keep your mind above it, keep your head in heaven and your feet on the ground. So we have no choice in the matter. Whatever is going to happen will happen. So if we have to do all kinds of things and we find ourselves running from one doctor to another doctor and so forth, do not attach yourself to that but do it anyway because you can't help it. SA: Can you try to clarify this a little more, you've just been speaking of karma, and yet I know that you believe that karma does not exist will you comment on that, karma exists and karma does not exist? R: Again the Buddha said, "Karma is a taskmaster for the foolish and the servant to the wise," meaning, if we in the level mentally of karma, we will suffer and it'll become our task Master. But if we lift our minds away from the condition and we keep our minds on the absolute reality, we will not suffer no matter what the body is going through. Who suffers? The mind, not the body, the body cannot suffer. The body is merely a lump of flesh and bone and blood, but it's animated by the mind, so the mind suffers and allows the body to suffer, but the body can do nothing by itself. So if the mind is taken away from the body something else will happen, you'll be free. (SA: What was the line again? Buddha's line, karma is the taskmaster for the foolish…) …and the servant for the wise, it's a servant because you do not pay any heed. (SA: Control it.) Exactly, you observe it and you do not respond. So it becomes your servant when you do not respond to karma, then you overcome it. In other words if somebody becomes angry at you and you do not respond, there is no karma, and you'll be free. Karma again is like a person, who talks to you and talks to you and talks to you but you say nothing. What will that person do? They'll get up and leave. So when your karma sees that you're not paying any attention to it, it dissipates and returns to the nothingness from whence it came. (pause) Let's play some music. Why don't you put the fan on while we're doing it? (tape starts abruptly after music is played as Robert continues.) …To assure you there is a power that knows how to take care of all things if you trust it. That power of course is you, but you don't know it. I've been trying to get a hold of a certain picture of Ramana Maharshi for quite a while but first I should tell you that, when I was seventeen, I was led in mysterious ways to Arunachala, where I met Ramana. I won't elaborate on that right now but there was mysterious circumstances that caused that. So going back to now, I tried to get a picture of Ramana Maharshi that I liked, and sure enough last week George brings me the same picture as a present, in color, that I had been looking for for a long time. So I took it home and hung it on the wall. But in the meanwhile I had a visitor from Hawaii. He used to be one of my students came to see me, he was traveling through and he brought a lae and put it around my neck. So I took off the lei and put it around Ramana's picture, and he said to me - after being on this path for so-called ten years or more, he said, "I didn't know you worship gurus." Now, he should've known better. So I explained to him the facts. Ramana's not a guru, he is the same as my Self, I am simply paying homage to my Self. There is only one Self and we are all that. So when I honor him with a lei I am doing it to me because he is none other than my Self, and you none other than my Self also. So it's not a guru worship, it's bowing to your Self, praying to your Self, worshiping your Self, because God dwells in you as you. But this just goes to show you that there is a power that knows how to take care of you, that loves you, that is always on your side. It only requires one thing, surrender. Surrender to your Self. God, guru and Self are one, bow down to your Self, love your Self. When I speak of your Self I'm not referring to your ego self. There is something about you that perhaps you're not aware of yet. The absolute reality that we've been talking about. It is you, that's what you worship, that is what you bow down to, that is what you express. Never defile your Self, by hating yourself. Never believe there is any mistake you've made that is going to rise up against you. Everyone has made mistakes, forget it. Begin to realize who you are, begin to love yourself dearly, have mercy on yourself, lift yourself up and become free, any questions about that? SA: Robert, I know that it's a mistake to take these words literally as you said many times that you speak of the One, as the one Self as being pure intelligence and then you speak of its great love and so it's so hard to realize that this thing is beyond these words which we can't help at our level in associating with a more tangible identity. (R: Yes.) Those words, pure intelligence, what do we think about, naturally we think about the workings of the mind. R: Human intelligence? (SA: Yeah.) Of course that's why I say, if I say anything at all, if I speak, listen with your heart not with your head. Get your head out of the way. Do not try to analyze because you can only analyze with your own concepts. Rather, let it happen, let it be, become open and then things begin to happen. SA: One other thing that went through my mind, this is a different one entirely, which indicates that the Greek teachings are the same as yours. I've read that over the entrance to the Greek mysteries where the words are written, "Know thy Self" which is really your teaching. R: Well this teaching is neither Greek, nor Hebrew, nor Christian, nor Hindu, it is just a universal message of the truth, that's as ancient as the hills, it's nothing new. Only it works, something happens to lift us up above the mundane and into freedom. And you will know when it happens because you will have a feeling of immortality, a feeling of spaciousness. Right now you feel bound to a body. When you become free your body will no longer hinder you even though you may appear to still have it. You will feel omnipresence. The whole universe will be you and you will be in bliss all the time but you will still appear as an ordinary person to most people. SS: (Student asks whether she is fooling herself by becoming quiet and writing to herself?) R: In a way you are because isn't that temporary? And then the condition comes back again in a different time? It's like using drugs to get high. They make you feel good for a while then when you come down you feel worse, anything that's temporary is an illusion. A better way, is to ask yourself, "To whom does this depression come?" and wait and see. (SS: Don't write?) If the writing has helped you feel better then you can use for a while, yes, why should you stop? But a better way is to ask yourself, "Who is depressed?" See your Self can never be depressed, your ego is depressed, it's playing games with you. In reality there is no ego, so there's nothing to be depressed, you're free. (SS: It never really answers anything about the question that I ask, (laughs) It'll say, "I know no such thing as depression.”) Umm. It's your mind playing with you, it's playing games with you, but if it makes you feel good for a while continue. (SS: It has given me some insight.) So continue for a while. It will not make you free but at least it'll give you spurts of happiness. So if you have to continue, then do it. But the better way is to ask yourself, "To whom comes this depression?" and realize there is no place for it to come. There is no body home to be depressed. Your real Self can never be depressed, it's free and happy. We have to do what- ever we have to do in the beginning. For instance, sometimes you have a depression you can't get rid of it no matter what you do. So a good way to help you is to take a cold shower. If you take a nice cold shower it will change the molecular structure of your body and you'll feel better or put ice on back of your neck (SS: Is that a mind game too?) It's a mind game. It relieves it for a moment, for a while, but tomorrow you maybe depressed again and until you get rid of the entire concept of depression. SS: That way as it becomes less intense it's easier for the mind to become detached from it? (R: Yes.) If you turn(your mind away), you're constantly not doing anything about it. R: Yes, turn your mind away completely. (SS: Sometimes. For a while I was doing gardening.) Whatever you have to do and when you do feel better, work on yourself and practice self-inquiry, that's the fastest way. SB: So the mind is creating its own depression? (R: Yes it is.) And trying to get out of it. (R: Yes it is.) So if we just realize that we'll just stop creating the depression. (R: Yes.) If we want to be happy just be happy instead of creating depression. (R: Sure.) SS: Do not figure out why it's there? (R: No.) I wonder why though? What caused it? R: You'll be doing that forever. That's just like a person who has a tumor. Instead of finding the cause, he makes the doctor cut it out. So it grows back on this side, then they cut it out of this side, then it grows back on his leg, it never stops. But if you went for the cause, why did he have the tumor? He might find the cure, so it's the same thing. Do not look at the effect, but go to your Self because the Self is always free. (SS: You don't ask why we got sick?) No, just ask, "To whom does it come?" and you'll realize it comes to noone, noone is depressed. It's part of the dream. SH: Do you know how did I come to find that picture? (R: Tell us.) It was about two weeks ago, I went to sit in the morning, to meditate. And I recall one of books of Ramana, called, Ramana ??? I think it was done in India and I saw there a beautiful picture of Ramana. And I was watching it and I lifted it up and there was a feeling, such a beautiful feeling interlocking the picture of Ramana and I said, I have to expand it, take it and make copies with a big computer graph. I couldn't find the time to do it but at midnight I went to some place to get it done. I was busy one week, the second week I finally find the break for it and that was when I brought it to you. (R: Umm.) I don't know why I did it or how I did it I just had to do it. (R: It's interesting.) I wanted to offer you the picture, that was the basic feeling I… R: About three months ago, I saw the same picture somewhere, I can't remember where I saw it, somebody showed it to me and I said to myself, "I haven't seen this picture before I'd really like to get a picture like that," and you presented it, it's funny how things work. (SS: It's not the picture that's in the books?) No, he was about forty-eight years old in this picture… (tape ends abruptly)