I Am Awareness

Good evening. It's good to see you again and be with you. Try to remember that I'm not a speechmaker or a minister or a philosopher. It^’s not words you want to hear. Many words can be spoken and nothing said. The answer you are looking for is within you. Everything you are looking for is within yourself. When I say within yourself I don't mean your physical self. I mean within the self. The self is not within you. You are in the self. So when I say everything you're looking for is in the self it includes your physical body and everything else. Everything is the self, and you are that. All is well.

From your upbringing you've probably heard the word blasphemy. The only blasphemy that exists is the fact that you believe that you are human. That's blasphemy, to believe that you are a human being. It's the ultimate lie. You are not what appears to be. No thing is what it appears to be. Then who are you? You have to find for yourself. Is there really a you? Are you really an individual? Are you separate from a tree, an animal, the world, the universe? Is there separation? Find out. Do you really exist? Find out. Do you have a purpose in life? Find out. Again, it's blasphemous to believe that you were born as a human, and that you prevail and you dissolve. That's true blasphemy.

It all begins when you awaken in the morning. That's the time you should work on yourself. As soon as you open your eyes you should make a statement such as, "I am pure awareness." But never believe that your personal self is pure awareness. You're saying I am is pure awareness. Your personal self, your ego, the personal I, can never be I am. That doesn't even exist.

Therefore think what you're saying when you say, "I am pure awareness". You're not speaking about your little self. That doesn't count because that doesn't even exist. You're speaking of I am, pure awareness. Awareness of what? You're aware of something, for you claim, "I am pure awareness." You are aware of the fact that I am is consciousness. Pure awareness is consciousness and I am is that.

Do you realize the revelation when you really know what you are saying, and you announce it with feeling, where you disregard the body/mind phenomena and you simply state the truth about yourself? I am pure awareness. Awareness of I am is consciousness. When you make such a statement, you will notice that you become blissful. You just begin to feel wonderful all over, due to the fact that pure awareness, I am, consciousness, expresses itself as bliss. They all really mean ultimate oneness.

But as you express yourself this way, as soon as you open your eyes, something profound happens to you. You begin to feel the joy of your self. You begin to feel total happiness, goodness, and then you can state, "All is well," and you will know and feel that you are the beginning and the end. You will understand what sat-chit-ananda means. You will know Parabrahman. You will feel a divine emptiness, nirvana. You will be at peace, for you will understand that you are the universe, and that no thing exists but yourself. You are the self of the universe.

Just to hear this, doesn't it make you feel good, when you realize your divinity, that you are not a man or a woman, that you are not reincarnation or karma? There never was a time when you are not. That you, are all-pervading, transcendental bliss. Abide in your true nature. Stop believing that you are a sniveling human with problems. For whom are there problems? How can you_, pure consciousness, absolute reality, think about a problem?

Even if you say, "Well, life still goes on. I^’ve got to meet my bills. I've got to go to the doctor. I've got to do this and I've got to do that." That's blasphemy. That's what you call blasphemy. Not that you're not going to do it, but your body has nothing to do with you. Your body/mind, and all of its affiliations, does not even exist. Even Jay who thinks he's blowing his nose, that's an illusion. You think I've got a cold. "I've got an allergy, I've got to go to work tomorrow morning, I've got to wear my clothes." It is this that keeps you from realization. You'll wear your clothes. You'll go to work. You will do whatever your body came here to do, but don't worry about those things. Do not concern yourself about those things.

The more human you are, the more you will say, "If I don't take care of these things, who will?" What are you talking about? There is only one I, and that is consciousness. Try to get it through your thick skull that the powers that be know how to take care of all your needs and meet them most abundantly. There is something that cares about you, the great mystery. Something loves you when you get your bloated nothingness out of the way. As long as you believe that you've got to solve a problem, then you will have to solve a problem. Something will take care of you.

Put first things first. And the first thing you have to remember is that you are pure awareness. You can tell yourself that. I am pure awareness. Sure it’s the mind that does this, but there is something that grabs hold of the mind and annihilates it as you turn into I am. These are the things that you should think about. I know it sounds strange when I say this, but do not concern yourself with the world. The world was here, with all of its destructive mechanisms, before you came upon the scene. It will be here after you leave.

People do not understand jnana marga, advaita vedanta. They say it's your duty to help others, to make this a better world in which to live. But they do not understand that if you awaken and you become liberated, you become others. You are others. There's no one to help. This doesn't mean again that you will do nothing. Your body will appear to be helping, to do all kind of things. But the truth is, when you help yourself, you help others. And when you help others, you help yourself. It's all One.

You wonder what to do with the rest of your life. Shall I work? Shall I sit home? Shall I join the army? Shall I become a dictator of a country? All these great thoughts go through your mind. Do not allow that to happen. Catch your mind. Catch your mind thinking and stop it. The mind is necessary as long as you are a human being. You make decisions. You know it's wrong or right, good or bad. Your mind creates the world of duality. But as you progress in the spiritual life you begin to realize that the mind is a hindrance, not a friend, for it brings up all the things of the past, and worries about the things of the future. Who needs a mind like that?

Therefore take control. And again, the best time to do this is early in the morning, as soon as you wake up, for the first thoughts that you think about will carry you through the day. And before you fall asleep. The thoughts that you think about before you go to sleep will continue when you wake up. So fall asleep understanding that I am pure awareness.

And you'll have a tendency to think, when you say, "I am," you're referring to your physical self. Catch yourself when that happens. Your physical self can never become enlightened. The finite can never know the Infinite. The personal I can never become the universal I. I am is pure consciousness. So you're consciousness. Consciousness, not personal. Not "I am this," or "I am that", but pure consciousness, existing as I am. I am that. I am absolute reality, beingness, nirvana, sat-chit-ananda, emptiness.

If you focus on those things during the day, before you fall asleep, when you wake up, most of the time you'll discover an amazing secret. You will discover that your work is being done better than when you were thinking about it. Everything will unfold the way it's supposed to. Yet you have to, sort of, in a way, feel that in the beginning. Make yourself feel it and put it first in your life, before anything else.

Think, if you will, of what comes first in your life now. It may be your husband, your wife, your job, your house, your car, your friend, your ambitions, your desires. This is what is keeping you back. You have to desire to rid yourself of past mistakes, past experiences. Stop thinking of the future. And this is hard for most people to do, for they are always anticipating the future and worrying about the past. Yet this is exactly what they have to let go of, past and future problems.

Your physical life is already planned, and all you have to do is to unfold beautifully into it. Everything will happen the way it is supposed to. You have to remember there is no evil in the universe, so nothing evil can ever happen to you. If you think it can, it's because of your imagination. You have a certain concept, a preconceived idea, of how you think things should be. And of course you're always disappointed because things are never the way you think they should be. Yet everything works out for your benefit, due to the fact that there's nothing in the universe that can or wants to hurt you. Everything is on your side, from the minutest blade of grass to the giant cosmos. Everything is on your side, due to the fact that you are that. Everything is on your side because there is only one. There is ultimate oneness, and that ultimate oneness is perfection, absolute reality, consciousness. That is omnipresence, all pervading. So where is there room for evil? Where is there room for anything wrong? Why do you worry? Why do you fear? Why do you become upset? The power that brought you to this class, knows what to do to continue your spiritual growth. But you have to put it first.

That's like the story of the student who was in a class like this, and he kept asking his teacher, "Teacher, explain it more. I don't understand, tell me more." And this went on and on. And at the end of the class, when all the students left, the teacher told that particular student to stay, and he told him, "Follow me," and he took him to the edge of a river. And he said, "Look into the river." The student did, and he pushed him into the water and held his head underneath the water until he nearly drowned. Then he pulled him up by the hair. And he looked in his face and he said, "What is it you wanted more than anything else in the world, while you were under the water?" And all the student was able to do is gasp for air. And he said, "Air, air, air." And the wise teacher said, "When you want to awaken as much as you wanted air, you will."

This is true of all of us. Just take a look at your personal life. Just for today, what did you want more than to awaken today? If you were angry, then you wanted that more than awakening. You see, whatever you put your feelings into, that's what comes first in your life. Does something upset you? Then that became your God. You wanted that more than anything else. If you were in doubt that became your God. Whatever turns you on, whatever turns you off, became your God for that time. And that's what you give your energy to, so you increase that condition. As an example, if are having problems with somebody, the more you think about it, the more you fuel it. The more you try to take any kind of action to stop it, or to prevent it, or to change it, the more you are saying, "This is the truth about me."

How should you react to something like that? You should not react. Something within you will do what it has to do, and you will be at peace if you will allow it to do so. First things first. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all of its righteousness, and all of those things will be added unto you," which means first things first. Focus your attention on the self. Realize that you are pure awareness, that you are aware that I am consciousness, resulting in bliss. Therefore you are a body of bliss, not the human body. When I use the term body, I mean the body of the universe. You are a body of bliss. This is your nature, and in that bliss there is nothing wrong.

Calm down, mellow out, relax. You are the body of bliss, and your divine nature is consciousness. You can never have anything wrong in your life unless you put your mind on it and make it so. This is why you have to control your thinking. Do not allow your mind to tell you what's going on. If you learn to live in the moment, if you learn to center yourself and stay only in that moment, then you will be expressing consciousness, for consciousness is a momentary thing. Consciousness is not yesterday or tomorrow. Consciousness is this moment. It's the gap between yesterday and tomorrow, the fourth stage of life. After waking, dreaming and sleeping, then there is consciousness.

So putting first things first will alleviate all the negative conditions of your life, if you have any, and will awaken you. And as you work on yourself, and your mind brings up all kinds of things, as it will sometimes, in a very gentle way ask yourself, "To whom does this come?" and keep still. And of course the answer will be, "It comes to me. I feel out of sorts, I feel depressed, I feel as if I'm not getting what I want, I feel that somebody is taking advantage of me." Question further, "Who is this I? What is its Source? Who gave the I birth? Where did it originate from? Who am I?" There is never an answer to the question of "Who am I?"

By doing this process you will immediately feel better. And every time the mind brings up something else, you use the same procedure. "To whom does this come? Who is feeling this? I am?" Just by saying, "I am," it will immediately take you out of your personal thoughts about yourself and lift you higher to what I am really is. Yet if you don't feel that, you can ask again, "Then who am I?" And you keep doing this over and over and over.

Someone called me the other day and told me, "Robert, I've been practicing for twelve years, and I feel despondent and I feel depressed." So I said, "Why?" So he said, "Because all my friends are enlightened except me." I had to laugh. "How do you know?" "They told me."

How can you explain that there are no others. It makes no difference what anyone else is doing. Let them all do what they will do. What does this have to do with you? When you try to straighten things out, when you try to change other people, when you try to make other people do what you want, you're holding up your spiritual progress. Bless everyone and let them go. Leave the world alone. The world doesn't need your help, thank you. This world, remember, is an emanation of your own mind. Therefore you are seeing yourself when you look at the world.

As you begin to go within, you will realize that you've always been within. There's nowhere to go. The within and without is the same, pure consciousness. It begins with you.

I can sit here and talk all night, but what are you doing about your life? How do you see yourself? Forget about time. Even though you say, "I'm getting older, I haven't awakened yet. I hope I awaken before I die," this is all false thinking. No one is getting older, and no one has to awaken before they die, because no one dies. Get rid of that type of thinking. Forget about your age. Forget about your body and identify with consciousness. Identify with your self. If you can just do that, everything else will take care of itself. I can promise you that.

Be happy. Be radiant. Have a good word for everyone. Stop thinking of your needs. They will be met if you stop thinking about them. How will they be met? Remember there is only ultimate oneness. And the ultimate oneness has never needed anything. It is self-fulfilling, self-contained, all-pervading. So the one who thinks they need something is the deluded self, the personal ego, the I.

But reality is present here and now. This means that you are fulfilled here and now. There is no thing you need and there is nothing that has to change. I'm not saying you're going to keep on suffering if you think you're suffering. What I'm saying is simply that the one who thinks they're suffering is deluded. No one suffers. Take your mind off the pettiness and begin to realize that your mind is causing you to feel these things, the belief that you are a body and a mind.

Begin to dwell on, "Who am I? Who is going through these experiences? Who thinks they're getting old? Who thinks they are not going to make it in this life? Who? I. I do. Who am I?" Continue the work. Do not worry about the world or other people. Work on yourself, diligently, constantly. Never let up, and you'll find that you become happier and happier. The old you is fading away. And you will awaken to yourself.