Robert: Ohm namah Shivayah. Ohm shanti. Peace.
I should really let you take home a blank tape tonight, and say nothing. Ed (That is me!) can transcribe it and have blank pages. And those pages can go all over the world and there’ll be nothing. And everybody will become enlightened.
Everyone is still looking for words. Words are meaningless. When you listen to words you’re really taking the power away from yourself. You have all the answers. All you have to do is to become still long enough and everything will be revealed to you. Then what am I doing here? I’m simply a mirror for yourself. I’m here so you can see yourself, your true nature. There’s no difference between you and me. What do you see? What you see is what you get. You can see your own divinity as the self, or you can see the personal I getting involved in all kinds of problems. The choice is always yours. Identify with the world and you suffer accordingly. Identify with your true nature, the Self, and you're happy and blissful. Of course your true nature is omnipresence, pure intelligence. Therefore if you are experiencing your real nature, wherever you look, you see harmony and peace, because you're seeing yourself.
Many people still ask me, "Robert, how can I tell if I'm making progress on the path? How can I be sure?" There are many signs. The first is A sense of peace, When you are no longer disturbed by worldly conditions. The world appears to go on. You begin to see there's a picture, a movie. You begin to recognize what the world really is, an expression of your own mind. And when you can do that the world will never harm you again. It will lose its power over you.
Of course your body is part of the world, and so is your mind. You therefore have to give up those also. When there is no thought for the body, no thought for the mind, and no thought for the world, then divine right action is taking place in your life and everything becomes joy. Everything becomes love, Without your thinking about it, without desire, without need, you become free. Another way to know if you're making progress is you’re no longer disturbed by any condition. You may lose. your job, you may lose a family member, you may go through various experiences, but you're not disappointed, because you're able to see through the experience to the other side. And the other side is the fourth state of consciousness besides dreaming, sleeping, waking. And in the fourth state of consciousness there's always happiness, for that is the substratum of every thing you see. Again the choice is yours. You have the freedom to identify with the world, to identify with your Self. There is no one, there is no thing, that can harm you or disturb you or bother you, if you focus your attention on God or the Self.
Yet most people do not understand how to do this. How do I focus my attention on God? By remembering I AM. I AM is the first name of God. When you think of I AM you're invoking the name of God and you're focusing your attention on God. So when you have some kind of problem or something disturbing you, if you feel out of sorts, if you believe something is wrong, if the war affects you, you do not have to turn off your television, or change your environment, or change your circumstances. You simply turn within and invoke the name of God by saying "I AM". What happens when you do this? You're really saying, "I am Absolute Reality, I am pure Awareness, I am Nirvana, Emptiness, ultimate Oneness, I am Sat-Chit-Ananda". All this transpires when you simply say "I AM". This is why, in the beginning stages, the I AM meditation is very important, with the breath. When you're doing that, you're pushing all your false notions, samskaras and the rest of the garbage out of the way, and you're coming into your true identity as I AM.
You can tell if you're making progress by how happy you’re becoming. When you see you're just happy, without any condition making you happy, then you know something is working. If you need something or someone to make you happy the same someone or something will make you sad. When the person who makes you happy leaves your presence, you'll be sad. When the thing you're enjoying is taken away from you, you'll be upset. Therefore do not depend on any condition for your happiness. Happiness is your real nature. All you have to do is to invoke I AM, and you're radiantly happy right there.
People still believe that they if become enlightened, only enlightened to themselves, they will have to stop working or stop going out. They will just want to be by themselves and they will care about nothing. On the contrary, remember that you are not your body. Your body will carry on and do whatever it came here to do, but it has nothing to do with you.
And that's hard to comprehend for some people. I am not my body. Your body is the body of the world, and as long as you identify with your body you have to identify with the world, because the universe is the body of God. You are the microcosm in a macrocosm. That's got to go or you'll be playing games in the world, in the universe . You may acquire occult powers, you may do all sorts of things with the chakras, but you're still working out of the mind. All these things have to do with the mind. Do not play these games. Go beyond that. Do not seek anything. By not seeking you'll find. By seeking you’ll lose. Everything is planned, everything is preordained, and everything is on your side. There is absolutely nothing against you.
If you really knew what was going on you would rejoice. If you really, really knew what was happening you would cry for joy. The universe loves you. What you call God loves you. Brahman loves you, for you are That, your Self. Therefore your nature is love. When I say these things love you, I am reversing the process to make you understand that your nature is love. It is your love that raised the universe . It is your love that loves. Otherwise where would it come from? So to make people understand that their nature is love I tell them the universe loves them, God loves them.
But if you think about it, where would the love come from? Is there a power outside of yourself that generates this love? Of course not. You are the only power. You are the only love. There is no one besides you. Yet you are not what you appear to be. Stop identifying with worldly conditions. Every time something comes up simply say to yourself, "I AM", and the I AM will begin the process for you. The I AM is like a switch. Whenever you get caught up in the world you merely turn on the switch by saying, "I AM", and all of a sudden you’ll find that you begin losing your identity and you merge into your own consciousness.
When I say that you merge into your consciousness I do not mean that there is consciousness and there is you. What I mean is you really awaken to yourself. You awaken to your true nature. There is not a consciousness hiding somewhere and you have to go and find it. consciousness is you. Simply stop thinking. Quiet your mind and you will begin to shine. Do not plan for things. Forget about goals. Forget about desires. Simply work on quieting your mind. And as you unfold you will find that things are getting better for you. Life appears brighter, more harmonious, more loving. It happens by itself. You merely have to slow down your thoughts.
You see a difference between this and psychology? You're not trying to resolve your problems. You're not trying to figure out why something happened in your life. You're going the other way. You're trying to become quiet, peaceful, no words, no thoughts. That's when things happen. You have to make up your mind in which direction you wish to go and realize that the more talkative you are, the less you’re going to awaken, because talk is part of the relative world. The voice has been given to you to express the material world. When you quiet down your voice, when you become still, then reality begins to shine forth of its own accord.
Now you can see why some saints and sages become silent and they do not talk for years and years, perhaps never, for they realize that talking is a waste of time. If you do not believe me, think back on your own life. Since you were a kid, look at all the words you used, all the words that come out of your mouth. What has it done for you?
I know some of you are saying, "I can't function if I don't talk. I've got to express myself and people have to know what I mean. How can I work? How can I relate to my family? How can I do anything if I don't talk?" Of course I'm speaking of mental quietness. As I'm talking to you now I'm not really saying anything., for within me there is quietness, stillness, emptiness. Yet words come out, but they affect me not. This is what I mean when I tell you that your body will continue its work by itself, yet you have nothing to do with it. For you’re looking at me and I appear to be a body and I appear to be talking, yet I'm not. I'm not a body and I'm not talking, but it appears to be doing that, just as the world appears to be real. The talking and the body's all part of the relative world, that's how it appears. But as you become quiescent, calm, still within, the world begins to disappear. Your body disappears, but you still see it, and you still see the world. That's the paradox. I see you, I'm talking to you, I see my body, yet they don't exist. Nothing exists, but everything goes on. There's no one to do anything, but the doing continues.
To find out what I'm talking about you have to turn within. You have to see yourself for who you are. You have to stop thinking that you're Robert, or Jane, or John, or Mary, or anyone else, and begin to grasp that you are consciousness. You have no shape. You are not limited. You have no distinguishing marks. You are total freedom, like the air, like space, and yet you are conscious. Remember consciousness is conscious of itself as Absolute Reality. So when somebody asks a question, "Do I have to give up my life to become consciousness?" you never had a life to give up. You are consciousness. But until you have experienced it for yourself it seems silly, nonsensical. But as you come to Satsang, as you begin to understand, as you invoke the I AM, as you practice self-enquiry, as you become mindful, as you do all of these things, the body begins to drop away. I don't mean you die. I mean mentally the body drops away, the mind drops away, yet you’re still you, and you appear human to all the people that you associate with. But you know who you are. You become fearless, for how can an illusion hurt you? How can the dream hurt you? It cannot. Yet you have to prove this to yourself.
Worlds come and worlds go. The earth is billions of years old. Every couple of years science tells us that the earth and the universe are older than we ever dream. There have been many civilizations on this earth. They come and they go. We’re just another speck of dust in the universal plan. Everything you worked for you’re going to have to leave. The intelligent person begins to see that there is no substance behind the world, there is no real cause and they stop identifying with worldly things.
Remember that this doesn't mean that you stop acting. Everything takes place mentally first. You disassociate yourself mentally with the whole universe, and when that happens the mind disintegrates by itself. After all, the mind is only a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future. That's all the mind is.
When you begin to recognize that the world is like a dream, like a bubble, the mind becomes weaker and weaker, and one day it just dissolves. It really doesn't dissolve because it was never there to begin with. Yet you awaken. We all it an awakening, and you realize that I and my Father are one. You just become the unity of all existence. There is no longer any diversity. You have become the imperishable Self.
Remember when I say you I'm referring to consciousness which is omnipresence. Therefore you have become the Self of the universe. Everything that’s transpiring is transpiring within yourself, and you watch, you observe, like you watch a movie. The movie has a beginning, a middle, and an end, then you go home. So you’ve expanded your awareness and you realize that the world has a beginning, a middle, and an end, then it's gone. You are simultaneously the world and you are consciousness . You become free.
Another reason you shouldn't react to any condition before this happens to you, is because you do not see the whole picture. Imagine you become terminated from your employment. You feel upset. You've been working for twenty five years and now you no longer have a position. The average person would become very upset. But as you observe, and you realize, you know, as I mentioned one Sunday back, you're simply looking through a keyhole and you're seeing limitation. You're limited, for you can only see one part through the keyhole, and the part that you see is that you are terminated from your position. But when you expand your consciousness it's like opening a door, and then you see a completely different picture. You see that karmically you deserve to have been terminated, no matter how it seems. And as you go forward, when you look you will see that if you stayed in that job, the building would have blown up, and you would have been destroyed physically. And as you keep looking you will see nobody dies, nobody is destroyed, life never began, life never ends. You are able to see the whole thing.
This is why a person who is on the spiritual path gradually begins to expand their consciousness and the door opens wider and wider. You’re able to see more clearly. Therefore you are not disturbed, for things are not like they appear. The end result is nothing is happening. Nothing ever began, no thing is going on, and nothing will ever end. You are simply Bliss consciousness . You are Sat-Chit-Ananda, ParaBrahman. You are a spiritual divine being. Water cannot drown you and fire cannot burn you. You were never born. You can never die. Your true nature is the Self, and your Self is the Self of everything, and all is well.
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