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