The Good for Nothing Man

The Good for Nothing Man

--Reflections on a Non-Guru—

A sage in the Jnana traditions is not a guru.  For him, there are no others to be saved or enlightened.  For him, the phenomenal world is illusion, it does not exist.  For the Jnani, only the Self exists and it is aware only of itself.  For him, the world as we know it, with our body-centered consciousness is only a joke, a mistaken identification.  Therefore, why be too serious about what is happening in politics, in our lives, the health of our body or of our family members' bodies? 

Robert often expresses this deprecating attitude towards what others consider important, sometimes just being himself, and sometimes as a teaching device to counteract our heavy seriousness.  The better you know him, the more he expresses attitude:  Don't take the world, your feelings or beliefs too seriously, or they will hurt you.  Relax, loosen up and rest in yourself rather than in the world of relative suffering and happiness; then all will be revealed to you and you will be free.

He is not a guru because that implies a teacher, a student, and a relationship between them--a duality. Yet, If we are not exposed to his words and being, we'd never be aware that an alternative existed except as a vague feeling that this world, as we know it, is somehow  wrong or incomplete.

Unlike an alien from a different star however, Robert does not tell about a world far removed in space and time, but about a world that is closer to us than our noses.  Indeed, he would say, our noses are part of an alien world perceived by our true nature--consciousness. Robert keeps pointing to our true nature, within which everything else resides.

The following talk is from a deteriorating tape. Sometimes after the microphone was placed on Robert, he’d turn his head to face one side of the audience for a long period and that microphone worked poorly. I might have a copy with better clarity elsewhere; if I can find it, I’ll post it.

The first ten minutes are difficult to follow, therefore the transcript helps a lot.

In any event, Robert goes from humor, to seriousness, and then goes much deeper in response to questions asked. It is as if he were trying to drag people deeper into their own absolute nature as Satsang progressed.

Robert: Yesterday I received a phone call from my brother. I have not talked to him for fifteen years. The first thing he asked was "Robert, are you still good for nothing?” (Laughter) I said, "Yes I am, thank you.” He then asked, "Have you accomplished anything worthwhile yet? Are you still a nothing?"  (Laughter)  I said, "I've accomplished nothing, and I am nothing, thank you.  Are you something?"

He then listed his accomplishments:  "I own a hardware store.  I bought a house.  I sent a son and dughter to college.  I have stocks and bonds.  What have you got?"  I said, "I've got nothing."

He said, "Why don't you give it up and start living?"  I paused a moment and then asked, "Are you happy?"  There was a long pause.  He didn't answer.  So I asked again, "Are you happy?"  He changed the subject.  He related that the IRS was on his back and his wife was running around with some other guy.  Finally we ended the conversation and I said, "You can be good for something, I'd rather be good for nothing."

But I am good for something.  I am good at relieving constipation.  (Laughter)  Friday a lady called me from San Francisco--I had never heard from her before.  She said, "Robert, you saved my life."  I said, "I did?"  She said, "Come on Robert, you know

 you saved my life.  Admit it."  I said, "Tell me what I did."  She said, "I have your picture hanging in the bathroom.  Yesterday morning, I was really constipated... (Laughter)

Q:  One look at you.... (Loud laughter) 

R:  "I thought I was going to die," she said. (Robert too is laughing)  "I was turning blue; I couldn't get up.  I looked at your picture and said 'Robert, help me!' You came out of the picture and you hugged me, and relieved my constipation.  (Laughter)  I said, "Well, isn't that interesting."  She wouldn't believe I didn't know what she was talking about. 

This is not the first time I have had experience with toilets.  (General laughter)  About two years ago, at aroundmidnight, another lady called me from San Clemente.  She said, "Robert, my toilet is stuffed up, please do something. (All laugh)  I said  "You have the wrong number." (Loud laughter) 

She said, "No, I don't want a plumber, I want you." (Laughter)  So I said you want me to come all the way to san Clemente with my tool box?"  She said, "No, I want you to do something, whatever you have to do."  I said, "O.K.," and she hung up.

The next morning she called and said, "Thank you Robert, everything became unplugged in the toilet."  (Laughter)  So you see, I am good for something.

The question arises, can a sage be in two places at the same instant?  Can someone think of a sage, be in physical contact with the sage, yet the sage is not there? 

When I was in Benares, in India, I went to see a Jnani no one ever heard of, named Swami Brahmanananda, which means 'The Staff of God.'  He had three disciples that had been with him for about 50 years.  He was about 90 years old.  I was invited to sit  by him.  I think I was the first Westerner to get permission to stay with him.  So I sat with him for a few days, listening to him say nothing.  He was mostly silent. 

On the third day that I was there he announced to his disciples that his body was in pain, that it was arthritic, but that he still had work to finish on this plane.  He said he was going to leave his body the next day at 3:00 P.M., and take on the body  of a younger person.  He said that someone would slip on the street--it was raining--and would crack his head.  "I will take up that body."  I listened as I usually do, and we couldn't wait for tomorrow to come.  (Laughter) Nobody cared that he was going to die, we wanted to see if he could do what he said.  (Laughter)

At 3:00, he was sitting in the lotus posture, he stiffened, and he did die!  I felt for a pulse and there was none.  I pinched him.  Nothing happened.  His body was an empty shell.  We fooled around with his body for about a half hour to see if we could bring him back to life.  Nothing.

We heard a commotion outside.  Sure enough, a young man had slipped on the street and hit his head.  A crowd had gathered and a doctor was there.  He was pronounced dead.  All of a sudden, the young man got up and ran into the forest.  No one ever heard of him again.  Explain that one.

This is a rare, but very possible phenomena.  When you realize your omnipresence, when you begin to know who you are, that you are not the body-mind phenomena, that you are undivided consciousness, the absolute, then you know you can be everywhere at the same instant.  You are everything.  Perhaps that is why the woman on the toilet was able to see me.  Yet, I was not aware of it.  I don't have to be aware of it, because I would need to be two people, one who was aware, and one who appeared somewhere else.  But there is only one.

The first thing you should realize is that there will never been a time when you disappear, or die, because there never was a time when you were born.  You have always existed as consciousness, and you will always exist as consciousness.

Even if your are sceptical, and say, "I am not consciousness, rather, I am conscious that I am a body.  I can feel my body and I am conscious of your body.  I can see your body and feel your body."  I could say to you, "Are you the same person as you were when you were concieved?"  When you were conceived you were no larger than a pinhead.  Yet it was you.  When you were older, you were no longer the size of a pinhead, you turned into a child.  When you were a teenager, you turned into someone else.  Now that you are an adult, you are, once again, someone else.

You are not who you think you are.  If you look at tissue samples from your body, you would see space and trillions of atoms.  The space is consciousness. The atoms are superimposed on consciousness and they appear to create what you are now.  So, you are not the body.  You are a bunch of atoms in a state of flux.  You are constantly vibrating.  You are not what you appear to be. 

When you identify with your body, you have problems.  The body is never the same and you will always be disappointed.  Sometimes the body is skinny, and you complain, "I am too thin."  Then it becomes fat, and you say, "I am too fat."  It loses its hair, and you say, "I am going bald, I have to do something."  The body gets ill, and you complain of pain.  You are never happy.

If you live just to make money to get possessions, and there is nothing wrong with possessions, but they will never make you happy.  You will wail and moan everytime something goes bad with them.  It is alright to have possessions, but don't be possessed by your possessions.  Nothing is yours for a long.

When you first begin to wake up, you begin to understand that the mind is not your friend.  It is no more than a conglomeration of thoughts about the past and worries about the future.  That is all your mind is.  Thoughts!  If you listen to these thoughts, you become disturbed because you bring the past into the present. Then you become disturbed about the future.

Who becomes disturbed?  The mind. You can never be disturbed.  You are egoless.  You are Satchitananda.  You are Parabrahman.  You refuse to believe that.  You believe that you are human and that your name is Mary, or Robert, or Jack or Jane.  You are deeply embedded in that belief system.  Therefore you believe the world is real, the world situation is real, and the universe is real.  You invent God in your own image and pray to this God just like you talk to Santa Clauss.  You ask Him to give you this or that and to take pain and suffering away. Its a funny game. Many times your prayers are answered. Such is the power of the mind.  The mind can create things.  But a time will come when we truly understand what the mind is.  We begin to observe it, realizing its functioning is not us. We watch it making us depressed or angry.  We watch it make us happy.  Just the watching alone helps.  This shows you that you cannot possibly be the mind because you have been watching.  You have watched your thoughts bring up the past and make you unhappy. 

By watching the mind do this, we get to a point where we ask, "Who is the watcher?"  You have to answer, "I don't know.  I don't know who I am.  I have no idea who has been watching, but I know I have been watching.  All these years I thought that when I say 'I', that I was referring to my mind.  Now as a watch myself get angry or depressed, I realize that I am separate from my mind.  Therefore, who am I?  Where did I come from?  It is amazing that I am able to watch my mind do all these things to me. Now I know that there is an I.  Who is this I?  I don't know.  How can I find out?" 

One can find out by becoming silent.  Through silence, by allowing my mind to empty itself, and by watching your mind in action without responding, you notice, that you become happier and more peaceful.  You feel more powerful.  You lose your fears and frustrations.  Even your search for truth has slowed down. You begin to understand there is nothing to search for.  It is all here already!  An amazing discovery.  Yet, you still do not know who you are.  But you also begin to understand that you don't  have to know who you are.  It is not necessary to know who 'I' am.  Do you follow.  'I' does not have to know what it is. 

You do not have to search for the I, or wonder who the I was that was watching the mind in action.  You simply have to become still.  Be still and know that you are God.  Watching has caused you to become still.  As you practice observation of your thoughts and mindfulness, your mind becomes more and more quiet. To the extent that your mind becomes more quiet, to that extent, your consciousness becomes revealed to you as absolute reality. 

When we talk about absolute reality, there are no words.  We therefore learn to be quiet.  We no longer become invoved in complications; we keep our lifestyle simple.  We stop worrying about the future, our existence or anything else.  Something tells us from within that the same power that knows how to make grass grow, flowers bloom so beautifully, and apples grow in an apple tree--with just enough sun, just enough rain--that that same power knows how to take care of me.  I can therefore be myself, silent.  Silence is consciousness.  I no longer have to make something happen.  I don't have to worry about tomorrow.  I can let go of all this, and I will be taken care of. 

The realization again comes to you that what you call your body, is not your body, but is also consciousness.  It appears as a body.  As you evolve spiritually, you see consciousness wherever you look, for you have seen yourself as consciousness and you  know there is only oneness ultimately.  Therefore everything must be yourself.  Everything becomes yourself and you are that.  You are in peace.  From that moment on, everything takes care of itself. 

What appears to be your body is governed by karma, the law of cause and effect.  Remember, that is an appearance.  Your so-called body came to this earth for a specific purpose.  It will fulfil that purpose without any help from you.  This is important to remember.  You will be fulfilled without thinking, wanting, worrying or any kind of concern. All your needs will be met. Everything will unfold as it is supposed to.

I know some of you believe you committed some great sins in the past because you believe you are suffering now.  Are you really suffering?  Is there such a thing?  The only reason you think you are suffering is because the world is not turning the way you want it to. You think you should be in different circumstances. This causes you to suffer.  When you focus on your Self, it is impossible to suffer because suffering does not exist. 

Perhaps now you can see why people like Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, and many others, who appeared to be suffering when they died, could tell their disciples, "Nobody suffers.  I am not suffering, you are suffering because you watch me apparently suffer."  When you realize you are not the body and nothing is the way it appears, it is easy to understand this. 

The secret is to investigate yourself within yourself.  the external world can never prove anything to you.  The external world is a world of effect and illusion, a dream, Maya, a play.  Do not stake a claim to the world.  Even if you have good karma, and things are relatively fine in your life, circumstances will change.  The universe is in flux.  If you have not found yourself and die like the average person, you are going to continue on to experience the opposite situation.  Even if things are good, you must continue spiritual efforts because this situation will change.

Realize you are not the person you think you are. Try to understand every day that you are not the body-mind, that you are not anything you appear to be. Find out by inquiring, "Who am I?"  Find out.  All the answers are within yourself.  Start in the morning.  Just before you wake up, there is a gap between sleeping and waking.  That gap is your reality.  Try to catch yourself in that gap in the moment before you open your eyes, before the mind takes over.  There is absolute nothingness.  That nothingness is the absolute reality.  When your mind takes over, I takes over, and that spoils it. You busy day with many 'have to doos' begins. If you saw yourself as consciousness and were able to see the gap, you will be in bliss all day. 

When you go to sleep do the same thing. Try to find the gap between waking and sleeping just as you are falling asleep.  This gap is who you really are.  This gap is consciousness, Nirvana.  If you search for the gap, you will find it.  Continue the search when you get up.  Ask "Who is awake, who am I?"  The I arises when you awake, and subsides when when you go to sleep.  Where does it go?  It goes into the gap.  As you pass into sleep, the I begins to weaken as I stop thinking.  Where does the I go?  It goes into the gap. This I is always available to you.

This gap is also known as the fourth state of consciousness after the deep sleep, dreaming and waking states.  The gap is the fourth state--your reality.  Just being aware of this intellectually helps.  So you think, "I know that there is a gap there but I haven't caught it yet."  So ask, "Who is the I that slept.  Who is the I that dreamed?  Who is the I that is awake.?  Who is the I that is looking for the gap?"  It is the same I.  Ask, "From where did it arise?  It appears to arise when I wake up, and

subside when I go to sleep.  Where does it go?"  It goes into the gap--the space between sleeping and waking.  When you go to sleep, say, "I think.  I think about my day, my problems, what I have to do tomorrow.  Who is the I that does all this?  As I go to sleep, the I begins to weaken.  I stop thinking.  Where does the I go?"  It goes into the gap.  Do this in the morning as you get up, and continue this sort of investigation during the day.  "Who am I?  What am I?" 

When you do this process often enough, every day, awareness will come to you.  Awareness will open up to you.  You will begin to realize that everything you talk about is attached to the I.  The I comes first, and everything else comes after that.  To be upset requires you to say, "I am upset."  You just can't say, "upset."  Everything is attached to the I.  Hold on to the I. Don't concentrate on the I, concentrate on consciousness, the source.  Follow the I deep into the heart by diving deep within yourself, and for whom is the I?  Pause, then ask again and again, pausing each time.  Soon you will see that the pauses are the same as the gap between sleeping and awakening.  You will become free.

Any questions?

Q:  When you call for us to awaken, are you saying we should awaken from being a mind to consciousness?

R:  Awake to yourself.  Wake up to who you really are, to peace, to happiness, to your real nature, which is love.  Everything else you experience with your body and mind is false.  When you wake up, you realize I Am absolute intelligence, absolute real ity, Satchitananda, Parabrahman.  Every cell in you body, so to speak, tingles with happiness when you wake up. 

Q:  Is it true that after you experience yourself like that, you experience everything else to also be the same?

R:  When you experience yourself as Satchitananda, you realize that this is your true nature as omnipresence.  You are no longer an individual.  Your individuality has merged into Brahman.  The whole universe appears as consciousness.  You no longer are John, with the attitude and problems that John used to have.  You are the universe.  You are the source of all creation.  Nothing!  You become nothing.  When some one calls you good for nothing, you say, "Thank you." 

Q:  Another word for 'nothing' is 'everything.'

R:  You are not everything, because you are no-thing.  Everything is a superimposition on you.  You are the chalkboard and images are drawn on you.  You know yourself as the chalkboard and the images.  But realize the images on the chalkboard are not real because they can be erased; nor can the images be grasped, only the chalkboard can be grasped.  In the same way you know yourself as consciousness, absolute reality, and everything else is a reflection.

Q:  Does enlightenment come all at once or in stages?

R:  It appears to come in stages, but in truth, it happens all at once when it happens.  Awakening happens suddenly, like when you turn on a light bulb in the darkness.  The darkness immediately disappears.  When you turn on your own light, Maya—ignorance, disappears.  You are home.  It happens when you don't want it to happen.  As long as you want it to happen, there is a somebody who wants it to happen.  That somebody has to disappear.  The person that wants it to happen is keeping you back.  That is the personal I.  Silence is the best way to wake up.

Q: Is silence where the shifts between waking, sleeping and dreaming consciousness takes place?

R:  Not really.  In silence, there is no-thing happening.  Silence is consciousness.  Consciousness is self-contained.  Consciousness is not the cause of anything but itself.  Everything else is an illusion. 

Q:  Does it cause itself? 

R:  It only knows itself.  It is self-contained.  It knows itself as itself--but as nothing else.  It doesn't actually cause anything. 

Q: When you started, you said atoms were superimposed on consciousness.  That implies two, atoms and consciousness. 

R:  Everything is in the same category, I.  It all belongs to the personal I.  Atoms are attached to the personal I.  They are like the body, an appearance, an illusion.  The thing that is true is yourself, which is consciousness.  Everything else only appears to be, like a dream, including atoms, your bones, your body.

Q:  This chair here, has the form of a chair, but is consciousness.  It is not illusion, but consciousness taking a form.

R:  As long as you believe you are a body-mind, and the chair feels solid, you will believe the chair is a chair.  Your saying it is consciousness is just an intellectual understanding for you.  There is only consciousness.

Q:  If there is only consciousness and it did not take on the appearance of a chair, then how could you walk with your body from one place to another?  I can't see how.

R:  You can't see; that doesn't mean it is not so.  It's like when you are having a dream, and all these things are happening.  I tell you the dream doesn't exist and all that appears in the dream is false.  You tell me it is real, just as you are telling me the chair is consciousness.  I am saying consciousness is all that there is, and you wake up, and everything is gone. 

Q:  We can't really undersatnd it until we wake up.

R:  That's right.

Q:  Where does love come in?

R:  Love is another name for consciousness, but not the love that you know.  It is a love that cannot be explained.  It is really a love that is absolute.  If you only knew how you were loved, you couldn't stand it.  That is how powerful it is.  It is identical to consciousness, and absolute reality. 

Q:  What happens to you after you awaken, when you die?  Where do you go?

R:  When you wake up, you stay where you are.  There is nowhere to go, no where to come back to.  You just are. You are yourself, omnipresence.