Transcript:
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)