Transcript:
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)