Practicing the Four Principles

Robert Adams

 R:   Greetings and salutations.   We can be real informal.   All I can do is tell you about my own personal experiences, not what I read.   And I can tell you that nothing exists the way it appears.   Everything is an appearance, and the trap is we get pulled into the appearance.   We react to it.   We feel hurt.   We feel slandered.   We feel as if something is wrong.   We have emotions and they become negative, because we are falling for a false premise, and the false premise is that the world is real.

In fact, the world is not real and neither are you.   What we have to do is stop reacting to anything.   And the only way to do that is to discover who you are.   When you discover your true nature, when you awaken to your true nature, everything becomes perfectly clear.   You're at peace.   If something works out, it works out.   If it doesn't, it doesn't.   But you don't look at it that way.   Your feelings have been transmuted.   You no longer feel what human beings feel.   You just have a great love for all things, a great compassion.   And you know that the substratum of all existence is harmony, peace, emptiness, and you feel wonderful all the time.   What can disturb you if you are at peace?   If you've found true peace, what can possibly disturb you?
The world comes and goes.   One day the world is like this, the next day it's like that.   But what does it have to do with you?   Nothing.   You are free.   You are not the world.   You are not your body, you are not your mind.   You are total freedom, total joy, total love.   You have to awaken to this fact.   It's truth. Science is beginning to see this more and more.   They are beginning to see that the only thing permanent in life is change.
We speak many words, we take many actions, but to what avail? Does it mater in the end?   We build our life, we own positions, we father children, and what happens at the end?   Poof!   It's all gone.   Everything just disappears (he laughs).   There's nothing. So what's the purpose?
People say, "I'm making this world a better world for my children."   They're just dreaming.   The world will never be better, it'll never be worse.   The world just is a dream of existence and it's like this one day, it's like that another day.
But you are not the world.   You have to awaken to that fact.
You are not your thoughts.   You are not your karmic expressions. You are not your inclinations from past lives.   These things appear real as long as you believe in them.   As an example, if you believe in the devil, the devil will appear to you, because you are creating the devil yourself. If you believe in a god, the god will appear to you.   As, for instance, Rama Krishna believed in the god Kali.   Kali used to become very real to him, and he used to dance and sing with Kali (he laughs), and this was true as far as he was concerned.   But he created Kali.   That's why nobody else was able to see him but him.   And that's how we create our lives.
Think of the things you fear in your life.   Say you fear becoming sick, you fear poverty, you fear getting divorced, you fear getting married.   Whatever you fear is a concept created by your own mind.   There is no question of should I get married or shouldn't I get married.   It doesn't matter.   What matters is how you react to it, how you see it, what you expect of it.   This is true of every aspect of your life.   That's what you've been trained to believe since you were a little kid.
It first started in kindergarten.   Your teachers brainwashed you, your family brainwashed you, the outside world brainwashed you, the system brainwashed you, and here you are.   You are filled with ideas, concepts, notions, feelings, attitudes, and that makes you what you are: miserable (everyone laughs).   As soon as you wake up all that disappears.   Nothing can ever happen to you that is of a destructive nature.   There is absolutely nothing that can ever destroy you.   You can not be destroyed.   Your body may appear to vanish, but that's like a dream.   You dream about yourself, you doing something, and you get shot, and you disappear.   But then you wake up.   So my question to you is, "What do you believe about yourself and about the world?   What's most important to you?"   This is why I feel that a spiritual path, not necessarily this one, but a true spiritual path, should be the first thing of importance in your life.   Why?   Because it wakes you up.
No matter how good of a life you live, you may become the richest and most famous person on earth, you will have to experience the other side of the same coin one day and be the poorest, most miserable person on earth.   That's the way it works.   You may say to me, "My neighbor never has any problems. It's like he fell into a pot of gold.   Everything he touches turns into money.   He's as healthy as a horse.   He's got a beautiful wife, a big house, everything he could possibly need, and look at me!   And I know that guy's life hasn't changed in forty years."
You're making the wrong conclusion.   He has earned this karmically, and, if he doesn't pull away from it, he might spend his whole life in goodness, human goodness.   But then he will be drawn back again, by the law of karma_, which is in his mind, and he doesn't know it, and this time he will be a homeless person. And whatever he does, he won^’t be able to make a dime.   He'll try his best, but he'll always be poverty stricken.   He won't be able to earn a dime no matter how hard he tries.   This is why we should never judge.   You have no idea what your neighbor's going through.   Never say, "He or she has a wonderful life and look at mine.   Why am I poor?   Why am I sick? Why am I this way? Why an I that way?"   The idea is to wake up, not to look at yourself, not to feel sorry for yourself, not to compare yourself with others, but to awaken.
When you awaken something happens that is unexplainable. There are no human words to explain.   When you awaken you just understand, not even understand, you know, you feel, and those words are inadequate.   You become… divine harmony.   You are no longer fooled by person, place or thing.   You no longer react. As an example, someone tells you, "Oh, you won the lotto, you won fifty billion dollars."   It's O.K.   You do not become a slave to that.   Someone tells you, "You lost fifty billion dollars."   Same thing, same reaction.   You do not become a slave to that.
What happens in the human life does not matter.   When you know who you are you do not say it doesn't matter.   You simply exist. You exist as yourself.   You're at peace.   No one can ever take the peace away from you, no matter how hard they try.   You're not fooled by things.   Rather, what you do is you deal with yourself.   You can give to yourself because you become the Living Self. Therefore you can give yourself away and you're still there, for you've become the Infinite Self, the Divine Mother, Omnipresence, total oneness with all things.   So you can give of yourself and yet you're always there.
When Ramana Maharshi was being robbed by robbers his devotees wanted to attack the robbers, and he said, "No, no, no.   It's our dharma to be what we are, and it's their dharma to be what they are.   We should not interfere in their dharma.   Therefore give them what they want."   And that's very profound.   We are spiritual people.   The world is not.   Therefore we act in accordance with spiritual principles.   What this really means is we, as human beings, become last, not first.   That's what Jesus meant when he said, "Those who go first will be last, and those who are last will be first."
You have to develop a great humility.   Do not long for anything.   Do not long to be famous, or rich, or great.   And do not say, "I want to be poor and have nothing," either.   They're both wrong.   Just be yourself.   When you are yourself you will be amazed how the universe takes care of you.
It's like the body with vitamins and medicines.   Your body, you know, is a natural healing factory.   It really knows how to heal itself.   But when we start taking too many vitamins and not enough sugar (he laughs), when we start taking medicines too much, the body says, "Well, you have made that into your god, so now you've got to depend on it."   And then you have to keep gulping vitamins for the rest of your life or you get sick. Really, think about that.
You've got to depend upon yourself to take care of everything. Now yourself is yourSelf.   There's one Self, so we take care of each other.   But you don't think of that.   When you think of others you're making a mistake.   The feeling will come to you one day that you are all others.   There are no others, there is just the Self, appearing as others.   So how do you treat others?   As you treat yourself.   You don't think about it.   You do not say that person is worthy and that person is not, so I'm going to help this person, not that person.   You give of yourself automatically.   You do not think about it because everything is yourself, and that includes the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, and everything else you don't understand.   It's all part of the One.   What you do to the One you do to everything.   How you treat one person, that's how you treat the whole universe, because everything is one.
Now, these four principles I gave you (back to the four principles) have to do with all these things.   You're supposed to ponder these things.   How do you work with these principles?
First, who can tell me what they are?   (A student recalls them).   Now you said them correctly, in a way, but it's like you're reciting a lecture.
Question:   We're just learning them.
R:   But it's the way you say it to yourself.   As soon as you open your eyes in the morning (I'll speak in the first person) you have to say to yourself, "I feel, and realize, and understand, that everything, everything, say everything twice, is a projection of my mind."   And think about what that means.   Forget about the other three.   Work on that.   "Everything! Everything!   I feel that, I realize that, I understand that, that everything is a projection of my mind."
And then you may think of the problems you have, if you have any, and you say to yourself, "If everything is a projection of my mind, where do these problems come from?"   You then realize, "Why, they came from me.   I projected them.   I created them."   And then you say, "Who is this 'I' that created them?"   See?   Now you're getting to the meaty part, to the substance.   "Who is the I that created all this illusion in my life?   Where did the I come from?   Who gave it birth?   My mind.   Where did my mind come from?   The I.   Why, they're both the same!   The 'I' and my mind are the same."   And it's all a revelation.
You think along these lines. "Where does the mind/I come from and to whom does it come?" And you follow it deep, deep within yourself.   If you do it correctly you will realize there is no I, there is no mind, so there are no problems, and it'll be over, and you'll start laughing.   You'll actually start laughing at yourself.   You'll say, "To think, I feared this and I feared that."   And once you get into that consciousness something will happen to actually physically relieve you of the problem, or what you think is a problem.
As long as you believe in your mind that there's a problem, whether it's little or big doesn't matter, they're both the same, but as long as you believe you've got a problem, you'll have a problem, and it'll grow, and you can't change it.   It may appear that you change it, but it turns into something else of a worse nature, when you try to work with the problem itself. Never try to work with the problem but ask where the problem came from.   "How did I get it?   How did I get this birth? Where did it come from?"   That's the problem.   The birth's the problem. Because you believe you were born you have the problem, and you can go on and on and on.
That's how you work with the principles.   "Everything!   I feel and understand that everything is a projection, a manifestation, of my mind.   Whose mind?   My mind.   Who's 'my'?   'Mine'.   'My'. 'I' am 'my'.   Who am 'I'?   Who am 'I' who has this problem?"   And as you ask yourself this question, you will begin to feel better, and better, and better.   You will actually begin to feel better, and as you feel better the problem becomes less and less important, and it will vanish.   This is great psychotherapy.   It works.   If psychiatrists gave this to patients they wouldn't have to give them any drugs.
So you understand, you feel, that everything is an emanation of your mind, or it wouldn't exist.   All existence, from the smallest atom to the greatest cosmic galaxy, it all comes out of your mind.   But even if I tell you this you still feel that something is real, don't you?   You feel that something is real.   You may say, "The sun is real."   You may say, "Well, God is real."   You may say, "An atom is real," but you do not comprehend that you are creating these things.   They're all a projection of your mind.   If you didn't have a mind, you would not have these concepts.   That's why we are told to annihilate the mind, to kill the mind.   No mind, no concepts.   All these ideas come as you begin to realize that everything is a projection of your mind.
Q:   Can you say the Self is real or is 'real' a term that doesn't exist?
R:   Well, if you say the Self is real you don't really mean   it.   If you meant it you wouldn't have to say it, but you can say it when you are truly yourself, because it makes you feel better. It helps you live.   It's better than saying that my world is real or my problem is real.   It's better to say the Self is real than to say that.
Q:   But better would be …
R:   to keep silent.
Q:   That nothing is real?
R:   Don't even say that.   Say nothing.   When you ask yourself the question, "Where does the mind come from?", or "Where do my problems come from?", then you keep still, that's real.   The emptiness is real.
Q:   Isn't the emptiness the same as the Self?
R:   Yes, but when you speak you spoil it to an extent.
Q:   That's right because the Self doesn't know...
R:   When you say the Self is real, that becomes personal. When there's silence it becomes omnipresent.
Silence is always the best policy after you say all those things to yourself.   And it's in the silence that your problems just dissolve.   Try it.   It really works.   When you keep still after saying all these things your problems will dissolve by themselves.   Do not think, "I am getting rid of my problems," because that enhances the problems.   Do not think about the problems at all but work on yourself to see your own reality, and in reality there are no problems.
You may also note to most people, no matter how many times I say this, their problems are very real to them.   And they've got a hold of them like a vice.   They really feel their problems.   So to those people I say, "To the extent that you can realize that your mind has created these problems, and in reality you are mind-less, to that extent, your problems begin to dissolve."
But do this when you wake up, when you open your eyes in the morning.   Don't go through the four principles all at once and say, "I'm finished.   Now I can go worry about my problems".   Take one at a time, even if you do not get to the second one that morning.   An hour or two has passed and you're working on the first one, that's good.   You can work on these things all your life if necessary.   It's better than worrying about your problems.   But take them one at a time.
Now you go to the second one and you work on the second one just like on the first one.   (He asks a student for the second principle).   Yes, but it's the way you say it to yourself that counts.   Use your own words that are comfortable for you.   You have to sort of say something like this:   "I perceive, I feel, I understand that I was never born.   I am unborn.   I do not prevail.   All my existence does not exist, and I will never disappear."
Q:   Do you say "I perceive" or "I understand" before your mind really has fully accepted it?
R:   Whatever's more appealing to you.   Whatever you can work with.   But let yourself know that you perceive or you understand that you feel.
Q:   I mean, how about..., would it be more honest to say "I am beginning to perceive..."?
R:   There is no beginning.   So when you say "I'm beginning" you begin, and begin, and begin, every day.   Isn't that right?   Stay after the truth.   You can say, "There's something within me that perceives, there's something within me that knows I was never born, I do not prevail, and I will never disappear.   And I am that one that knows."   So you start working on that.   What does this mean, "I was never born.   I am unborn?"   It sounds like a contradiction because you say my father and mother gave me birth.   This appears to be true.   Who gave them birth?   My grandmother and my grandfather.   And you go all the way back.   Who gave them birth?   Who gave them birth?   And you go back to the beginning.   Where did the first man and woman come from?   Who started this?   Who started the human race?   Who started the idea of birth?   Now don't come up with your answers because the mind answers.   You can say, "Adam and Eve, God".   Somebody told you that.   You learned it from reading in the Bible.   But is it true?   Where did God come from?   Who created everything?
So you go back to the beginning and you can say to yourself, it's like saying what came first, the chicken or the egg?   The tree or the seed?   It's the same thing.   What came first, the man or the woman?   How did they both get together?   Who made them? Then you will realize they don't exist.   Nothing gave you birth.   Because the whole origin is false.   That's what they call false imagination.   The whole origin of birth is false.   It's a dream.   It doesn't exist.   Therefore, I do not exist the way I appear to be.
Then you go right back to the first premise.   Then who am I?   See, you're always going back to self-inquiry.   Who am I that exists?   If I am not the body, am I my thoughts?   I can't be my thoughts because they keep on changing and changing.   Then who am I?   Then you keep silent for a while.   You know it's working when you start getting a quiet, loving feeling.   You start to feel peace that you have not felt before, and you start to feel that all is well.
Q:   So even if you say... what if you say, "I am the eternal now"?   Even that's a product of the mind.
R:   Yes it is.   It's a temporary help, because the mind creates it.   If you do this often enough (this is why you have to do this every day, when you wake up) pretty soon you will start to feel something.   Really, you will feel a happiness that you never felt before, an extreme happiness, and you couldn't care if they dropped a bomb on your head.   You would feel this happiness because you will know that you can't die.
See, right now they're just words.   But you will actually know some day that you just can't disappear.   Nothing can kill you.   "Kill" is just a word that means something that you have accepted.   It's just an ignorant word.   We make up words and we put feelings behind them.   Say it to yourself for a while.   See how ridiculous it sound.   Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.   It's just an English word that human beings make up to connote some kind of danger.   The word has no power except the power that you give it yourself.
When the mind is silent then reality comes of its own accord.   When you're thinking, and thinking, and thinking, then the world has got you, and you become worldly again.   So self-inquiry causes the mind to be quiet.
And after you work on that you go on.   "I do not prevail."   So you say to yourself, "You mean my entire existence, since I was   a baby, until I die, means nothing?"   And then you say to yourself, "I have just proven that I was never born, because I've gone way back to the beginning.   So if I were never born, how can I prevail?   What prevails?   Who prevails?"   And you will see it's the mind that prevails.
The mind wants existence, wants strength, wants power.   It makes you believe that you are a body.   You ask yourself, "To whom comes the mind?   Where does the mind come from?   Who gave it birth?   How did it originate?   What is its source?"   And then keep quiet, keep still.   And you will begin to laugh because you will actually feel, even if for a moment, that there is no mind. You will actually feel no-mind.   In the beginning it may last for a moment or two.   But as you practice everyday those moments of no-mind will become greater, and greater, and greater and greater.
And then you go on and you'll say, "I will never disappear." So now you're laughing again because you realize "Who disappears?   That which never existed disappears.   But I am no-mind so how can I disappear?"   And this becomes very meaningful for you, and as you do it everyday, you become stronger and stronger in mindfulness.   And something happens that's so beautiful that I can't describe it.   You feel such love, such joy, such harmony, such bliss.   Then you carry on.
Now what's the third principle?   (student responds). Say it the way you're supposed to say it.   You begin with "I feel."   You've got to feel it.   You've got to say:   "Something in me feels, understands, the egolessness of all things."   All these principles are alike.   Did you come to that conclusion yet?   They all have the same source: nothing.   But you have to work with them until you get there.   I feel and understand the egolessness of all things.   And you say all things, not just some things, but all things, from the greatest galaxy to the minutest atom.   Nothing has an ego.   If it has no ego, it has no source, because to have an ego there has to be a source, and just by realizing this great truth you become free immediately.   That blows your mind.   It's like a Zen koan.   All of a sudden something snaps in your mind and your mind is gone because it has no source, since there's no ego.   It never existed, and you feel so good.
[There was a tape break here - Must have been a question concerning Hussein and the gulf war - ed.]
I can like them or dislike them.   For this is a worldly thing and you are not of this world.   So you react completely differently to things like this.   When I discuss these things with you it's to make conversation.   But it doesn't exit.   It will come and go.   Where there is a war, where there's not a war. The fact remains you're still going to die.   So what's more important?   To discuss who's good and who's bad in the world, or to find out your true self, and become free from everything.
Q:   I just meant would it help something like that, not matter...
R:   Of course it helps because it makes them disappear.   You realize its part of the mind, like the blanket, like the radio.
Q:   And just saying its egoless doesn't mean it in the way we would say that.   But it means he has no source; he came from nothing.
R:   How he appears does not exist, just like his body.   Same thing.   See, when you say, "I am not the body" you are not speaking of your body.   You're speaking of the body, the universal body.   Nobody is the body.
Q:   So you could say, "I AM is not the body"?
R:   Yes, you could say that.   That's why I tell you not to use that too much, because you make it too personal.   You're still into yourself as an individual.   When you read in the text books, "I am not the body, I am not the mind," they're referring to the universal body and universal mind.   That there is no body, nobody, noooooooo body (everybody laughs).   Nobody exists.   That sounds ridiculous to the average person.
Now you may say, "What does this do for me?"   It does everything for you.   If you are creative in music, or in art, or in anything else, you'll become a greater musician or a greater artist without wanting to, without going after it.   Your body will do what it's supposed to.   There will be no karmic attachment.   As an example, if you are a great artist and a great musician, or a great carpenter, or a great loafer, or a great homeless person, and you go after it humanly this is what is holding you to the earth, and you're going to have to come back again, and again, and again, because you made yourself earth bound, don't you see?   Anything that you attach yourself to pulls you back to the earth, whether it's good or bad.   If you hate something it’s the same as if you love something.   It pulls you back to the earth.   You've got to let it go.   If you read that lesson on non-attachment I gave you last week it explains it all.   It's not being indifferent.   It's just that you're letting go because you know, "I am my brother and my brother is me.   I am everything."   So you're not into attachment or into anything.
And now I go to the last principle which is what?   (A student replies) .   Good!   You say, "I perceive and understand what realization is.   I know, something within me understands, and feels, what self realization is," and you keep still.   Then the thought will come to you that the only way to find out is through negation.   So you can say to yourself, "It's not the sun, because the sun is a projection of my mind.   It's not the moon.   Same thing.   It's not my husband or my wife, it's not my body, it's not my organs.   It's not Hussein, it's not peace, it's not the war."   And everything you name, it's not.   So when you get tired of naming things, you keep silent, and that's what it is.   Everything is silence.   All four principles end in silence, they're all the same.   Any questions about this?
Q:   Yes, I have a question concerning two things that you said which I have difficulty with.   One of the things you said is never deal with a problem.
R:   Right.
Q:   And I know that if you concentrate on the positive things you were speaking about, that's the essential teaching, say to express all the ideas you already talked about today.   I realize that that is the energy that must be expended.   But still, in this period of life that we have, as we make these statements, and as we move towards this goal which I can accept, and this theoretical idea which I accept, still there is the life to be lived, and there are issues to deal with.   So it seems to me that if you say, don't deal with the problem, this leads to enormous problems.
R:   On the contrary.   You're separating both.   You're putting them into categories.   But, there's only one.   As an example, say somebody cheated you, and you sue them in court.   When you sue somebody, and you're getting involved in something like that, you're sending up an energy.   Even if you win the case you're going to have to sue somebody else, and then sue somebody else, and it never stops, because you've created a pattern for yourself.   But, if you go about it the other way, if you know the truth about yourself, you also know the truth about the guy who cheated, because you're both one.
Q:   All right.   Let me give you another example.   Let's say that were all here and we all stay here and we have no money.   And tomorrow were hungry.   We're all hungry in the morning, and we say we're not going to deal with this problem, but because our hunger is so great and keeps mounting, we really can't think of anything else.   Eventually we can't think of any of these ideas that you told us about because we're so extremely hungry.
R:   Your first premise is wrong.   It doesn't work like that.   It'll never work like that.   If you are hungry, something will happen to appease your hunger.   See, what you're thinking about is you sit down and you do nothing.   It doesn't work like that.   When you know the truth somebody will knock on the door and bring you food.
Q:   I brought up the example a week or two ago about the holocaust, and remember I said how the attitude of the Jewish people, and especially the Rabbis was that God is living in Nazis, God has manifested himself through Auschwitz, and the others, and so we must go along with this.   Would you say that is the attitude the Jewish people should have had?
R:   On the contrary, because that's an attitude.   I'm not talking about attitudes.   I'm talking about realization.   See, reading the Bible and making quotations is one thing.   Being a living embodiment of the truth is another thing.   So I'm not saying you're supposed to be passive.   There are times that you're not passive.
Q:   Then, you are saying, "deal with the problem".
R:   On the contrary, if you are in the truth, the problem will deal with itself.
Q:   Yes, but you're speaking of a state to which we are aspiring, and I grant what you say.   I believe that would happen, but we're not in that state yet.   I mean, we are, but we are not fully in the state because we cannot fully grasp it and manifest it.
R:   If you take it personally and you work on yourself as I said, you will do what's right.   You will not be passive.
Q:   So you didn't exactly say don't deal with the problem, but just to realize that the body doesn't really exist.
Q:   So you would say that your body will do the right thing by itself.   It's not matter of trying to think of it or not think of it.   That's the easiest way to look at it.
Q:   It isn't that at all.   It's your mind that tells you to put on clothes and go out and find food in the morning.   Your body too, but it's the body and the mind working together.
Q:   Remember what Christ said when he said, "Put ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto you." Isn't that sort of the same thing you're saying?
R:   Yes, it is.
Q:   If you dwell on self inquiry or self realization, somehow these things will be taken care of, maybe even by the body.
Q:   Wasn't it Christ also who said "render unto Caesar what it Caesar's"?   And that's the critical point here.   There's no argument with the concept, the idea, and the goal and the abstract reality.   I am talking the about the interim period as we live in our daily bodies during the day.   And that's why I bring up these problems of the fan, which I did the other day, and the food, as examples of these things that we have to deal with every moment.
R:   Your body and your mind are motivated by karma.   The law of karma takes care of them.   But you are not your body.   If you are aware that you are not your body, the right action will pursue.
Q:   You mean you can be aware that you're not your body, and yet your body will go out and get food.
R:   Exactly.
Q:   But you would know that you are not the doer.
Q:   But you say, "if you are aware", those are your words, "if you are aware that you are not the body".   I would say from my understanding of the teaching, there are degrees of awareness. If you are fully and completely, and absolutely, and totally and wholly aware that you are not the body, then O.K., I grant you that.   But there are these degrees of awareness, and if you are not at that particular state then you must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
R:   In reality, there are no degrees.   So you either are or you're not.   If you think you're not, then you have to fetch for yourself.   If you think you are, you'll think about these things, and then you'll go do something.   But you won't be doing it.   It will do itself.
Q:   That's what I was going to say.   The answer to me is what Robert was telling us before about not being the doer.   The realization that you are not the doer is even what Christ was talking about.   That is, you dwell on the self, on realization, and your body will continue to do whatever is necessary karmically, but your realization that you're not the body and you're not the doer doesn't mean it doesn't get done.
Q:   Well, now we're getting down to the nitty gritty.   All right, then what you're suggesting is this.   Let's talk about tomorrow morning.   And I'm hungry so if my body-mind says go out and try to find some money to get breakfast, but all the time that I'm doing this I can still think I am not doing this (No). I am not going to be getting the money (No).   I am not going to be eating it.
R:   No, no, no.   See what's going to happen when you work on the principles, and if you have hunger in your body, you will automatically, spontaneously go get food.
Q:   But you won't be dwelling on it.
R:   Your mind will be somewhere else.
Q:   Could you say like, "O.K., Here I am going to La Brea Bakery, but this is all a dream".
R:   See, take my life, for instance.   When I get up in the morning I have no idea what's going to happen during the day, but I am active and I'm not active.   I do certain things but I don't do purposely.   It happens spontaneously.   I didn't ask to teach classes like this.   It happened.   I never asked for anything.   But it happens because my body does it, spontaneously.   But my mind is not aware of it and I'm not involved in it.   But I'm fed, I live in a house.   I come to these meetings.   But I never say I'm going to do it.
Q:   You don't plan?
R:   I don't plan.   I may plan a couple of hours in advance, or something like that, but I have no long drawn out plans.   But everything works out.   I know it is hard to perceive.   It's really hard to perceive this....
Q:   My second point is related to this one.   At the beginning of your speech you quoted Ramana when he was being robbed, and you said that he told his followers to allow the robbers to take what they wanted, and that was their dharma, and it was his dharma to have it and to give it.   Why couldn't it also have been his karma to protect?
R:   Because it was not his dharma, it was not his way.
Q:   What's the difference between dharma and karma?
R:   Dharma is the way things are.   The truth.   The truth is the way things are.
Q:   Another enlightened teacher could have said anything.   They're two side of the same coin.   He could have said go kill them, or not kill them, but you know what I mean.   In reality there's no difference.
R:   That's true.   You're right.   It's like in the Bhagavad Gita with Arjuna, where Krishna told him to fight.
Q:   So he could have said, "Let's protect what we have."
R:   But he said, "This is not our path."
Q:   You're saying dharma.   I had the same question because I thought dharma and karma were the same thing.   So they're not. So the dharma would be the teaching them not to resist.   But their karma might be to beat the shit out of them.
R:   Yes.
Q:   But if you were holy enough you would go with the dharma.
R:   It depends on the path that you're on.   People are on different paths.   Not only that, Krishna himself didn't have to fight, did he?.   He told Arjuna to fight.   You see?   When you get to the highest there is peace.   There is no need to do anything.
Q:   Maybe to just show, maybe as a demonstration for somebody else you could say fight or don't fight.
R:   For your students.   It's like in the martial arts.   When somebody becomes so proficient in the martial arts, I mean proficient to the highest you can ever go, higher than that, they do nothing   They don't even defend themselves.   They go the other way.   They just sit.   They accept being killed.   There's nothing to fight.   But Arjuna was not up there.   He belonged to the warrior class.
Q:   But so do we belong to one of the lower...
R:   You belong to whatever you believe.   It's all in your mind.   If you want to believe you've got to fight, then go fight. If you've absolutely got to take care of yourself, because if you don't do it who's going to do it, then you've got to.   You've got to do what you've got to do.
But I'm speaking of the highest teaching, where everything is taken care of.   Look at Ramana again, as an example.   When he was a boy he would have been dead if it were not for this mysterious power that took care of him.   He just went into the jungle, went into a cave, and sat there.   He didn't know where his food was going to come from.   He didn't even think about it.   Who was going to take care of himself.   It didn't enter his mind.   He just sat motionless for days, until a woman came up the hill and started to feed him.
Q:   But he was more or less born enlightened, and we're just struggling.
R:   But I'm just speaking of the highest ideal.   What I'm trying to tell you, if you have trust and faith, there's a mysterious power that will take care of you, and supply all your needs.
Q:   (to Q)   You've mentioned several times, "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's,"   but also continue to "render unto the Lord that which is the Lords," and that "man does not live by bread alone, but every word that proceedeth from the mouth of the Lord."   So let us ask ourselves, "What is Caesar?", and "What is the Lord?", and "What is the bread of life?".   To feed the body alone does not sustain you.   Life does not proceed from the body alone.
R:   That's a good point.   Jesus himself never rendered unto Caesar.   He told that to the people.
Q:   (students laugh)   He passed it on.   Better you than me...
Q:   I don't dispute what you're saying at all, but my problem is the acknowledgement of the bread part of it, the Caesar part of it, how one deals with that.   And I think people have those concrete problems, life in the world, dealing with the world as you deal simultaneously with the work of the Lord.   While you pay your attention to spirit, at the same time you have these other problems.
R:   Remember, you're speaking from your point of view.
Q:   Ultimately there are no problems.   It's a matter of where we put our attention.   Wherever we put our attention, that becomes our reality.   So if we focus in on the bread, if we focus in on the Caesar... But what if we ask ourselves, "What is the source of our life?   Is it from Caesar?   Is it from the bread?" That's the question.   So even if you solve the problem of the bread, then you are fed.   But if you never know who you are, subsequent problems are inevitable.
Q:   Well that's true.   I don't deny that.
Q:   So it's not only finding out who we are, but it's also a matter of that there's a flow, and to realize that flow, and connect ourselves with that flow, and from that flow comes the bread.   But it's not just us.   It's all things.   So it's not just conquering that one problem.   When you conquer the problem of yourself, all of the other problems are conquered.
Q:   Theoretically.   But remember also in the past, I've mentioned that in every culture, in every time, whether it's Catholicism in the middle ages in the west, or whether it's the Buddhism in the east, because of the awareness of this problem, those who are in control have established communities, they have established ways in the world for the process to go on.   And that's why these have existed.   That's why monasteries do exist. That's why there are groups of teachers, of Sufis, throughout the desert everywhere, and that sort of thing.   Arrangements are made for survival while the process is underway.
Q:   But even as those arrangements are made, they're not really made.   They happen of themselves.   And again, that's the flow.
R:   You're speaking of appearances.   That's how it appears to you.   That's what I said in the beginning.   This is your point of view.   That's how you see it now.   But it's not like that.
Q:   The ashrams themselves didn't say, "Well let's make an Ashram."   They happened of themselves, because the people that were involved out there were unfolding of themselves.   Everything unfolds of itself.   Our life should unfold of itself.   But when we think we're the doer, then there's a problem.   It's not that we don't do anything, it's not that we do nothing, it's not that we do.   We be as we are and it unfolds of itself.   There's no stopping of action, and there's no action.
Q:   Well maybe it's just.... Let's try another tack.   When I came here... someone said to me several times that I should come here.   It just happened.   I didn't go to him.   I didn't say, "Please, tell me what to do, where to go."   I didn't ask, I wasn't even aware that he was thinking of me.   It came to me just in the manner we're speaking of.   And I did.   Nevertheless, every week I have to arrange to come here.   So the two energies exist simultaneously on this plane.   That's all I'm saying.
R:   No.   This plane doesn't exist.   But, as long as you believe it does, it does, because you are creating it.   You're giving it its power.   You are its power source.   When you take the power away, everything just is.
Q:   That kind of gets to a question that I have, which isn't really a question.   Everything is an emanation of the mind.   But the mind does not exist.
R:   Exactly.
Q:   So we have different levels here.   Everything is an emanation of the mind as if it's a dream.   However, the dream does not exist.   So one level is, everything is an emanation of the mind thus there is a process which is a dream.   Yet, the mind does not exist.   The dream itself has no reality.   It's real but it's not true.
R:   It's better to ask questions to yourself, than to make statements.   When you come to this conclusion you ask yourself, "Whose mind doesn't exist?   Where does the mind come from?   To whom does it belong?"   And you keep silent.   Then your answer will be Emptiness, Nirvana, and you will know.
Q:   Well, what questions should Q ask himself?
R:   The questions he's asking me.   He should ask himself, "Who has all these questions?"
Q:   You mean like, "Who has to get his act together?"
R:   All these things.   You start with realizing that 'I' have to do these things.   And go back to the 'I' and say, "Where did the 'I' come from?   Who has to do all these things?"   And follow the 'I' through to its culmination, to its source.
When you realize that you are not the doer, your body will do whatever it came to this earth to do.   Your body follows karma, and your body will do whatever you're supposed to do.   But it’s not you, and that can only be experienced.
Q:   So you do all the worldly things, but you just say I am not the doer.
R:   You don't say that.   If you have to say that, then you are.   You just realize you are the universe.   You're playing all the parts.   That's way you have to enquire, "For whom are there levels?"   When you know you're not the doer you won't say anything.   Remember, you can never become God, because God is you.   You don't become anything, because you don't exist as it appears.
. . .
Remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that this is my confession.   This is the way I feel about it.   To most people it's ridiculous.   It's gobbledegook.   It doesn't mean a thing, it doesn't seem practical in the beginning, to most people, because most people want something practical, so they can improve their human-hood with it.   But the highest truth is human-hood does not exist.   And if you come to that conclusion your life will be bliss.
Q:   But isn't one of the purposes of Satsang to ask questions?
R:   Yes, that's what satsang's all about.   But then you have to practice the things I tell you and watch what happens.   In other words, you can't go home and get caught up in the world and forget about this until the next meeting.   You've got to work on yourself, work on yourself, and you'll see what happens.
Q:   I'd like to write the four principals down in your words, as succinctly as possible.
R:   Sure.
1.   I understand, I feel, I perceive, that everything, everything twice, emphasize the second everything, put a line under it, is a manifestation of my mind.
2.   I feel and understand deeply, that I am unborn, I do not prevail, and I do not disappear.
3.   I feel and understand the egolessness of everything, of all creation.
4.   I have a deep understanding of what self-realization is.
That's it.
Q:   Now when you said that we perceive or have a deep understanding, and though we don't feel that, we say that...
R:   It's good to say that when you wake up, because it starts something going.
Q:   But during the day when we do the principles, do we say the same thing?
R:   You can sort of make it a little different.   During the day you can just think about that everything is a projection of your mind.
In the morning it's good to say "I perceive."   You know why?   Because when you first open your eyes you're not awake yet, and you're your real self.   So you're actually confessing to yourself your real nature.   "I perceive, I understand."   And it goes deeper into the subconscious mind because you just woke up.   Your mind is fresh.. no ideas.
And during the day, when the world's got you, you can just say, "Everything is a projection of my mind.   Everything,"   And leave the “I perceive” off.