Transcript:
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)