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 its 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 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 you 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, he'll give you a boon. If he's not feeling too good that day, he'll 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 in 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 then 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 the rock by mistake, and saw the diamonds. 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.
A question I'm asked over and over again is, "While I practice self inquiry, atma vichara, 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 decisions, 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 a joy within yourself, humility. You should not be concerned with what the world is doing. You should not be concerned 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 with 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'm happy, there are times when I'm depressed, there are times when I'm 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 ." I am, is the reality. Then where does the war come from? Where does man's inhumanity come from? Where do all these dastardly things in the world come from? And as you keep enquiring, 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 the chalkboard. Then somebody comes and erases it, 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, 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 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 Iraqi's, 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 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 as they say, "To whom does this come?" the world gets 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. The secret is, let go of the 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 have 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 gave you. In hypnosis you can imagine something to be real, but it's 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 friends 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 abiding 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 illusion. 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 a 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. 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 Para-Brahman. That is your true nature. Attend to that nature. See it. Feel it. Worship it. Become it, and you will be free.
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