Roberts’s teachings often seem complex because we try to understand it with our complex minds. The truth he points to has nothing at all to do with the mind, and cannot be grasped by it. Contradiction, paradox, and therefore problems, are necessary consequences of the mind that attempts to understand by means of ideas arising from analysis of phenomena.
Essentially Robert is saying: You are not who you think you are. You are not the body, not the mind, not the soul. Space, time, causality, and all experience have absolutely nothing to do with you. They are transitory appearances only. You are prior to all that. You are consciousness itself within which all phenomena appear. Yet, they are not separate from you.
Robert leads us to understand that all that we believe we are, believe we see, and believe exists, are only appearances that have nothing to do with our true Self.
Robert:
Someone told me last week: "Robert you gave a great talk on Sunday. And, you'll probably attract millions of people."
They were wrong on both counts. First of all, I do not give talks. You have to get to the point where you are tired of listening to talks. Then you will begin to make headway in spiritual practice.
As long as you still want to hear talks, you have a long way to go before you wake up. It's not the talk that is going to do it for you. It's a click that takes place inside yourself when you are in the right state of consciousness.
Satsang is to bring you to the right state of consciousness without words. Just by being. Then everything happens by itself. But if you come to listen to a talk it becomes intellectual, conceptual, ideas, words and that causes confusion. So, what attitude should you have? Even when you hear me talk, you should not believe I'm talking. You should open your heart and allow your real nature to express itself, and it will if you allow it to do so.
As far as crowds are concerned, I am not interested in having crowds. I am not ambitious. I have no goal. I am not seeking anything. I'm doing what I came here to do. I didn't plan it. I didn't say I want to be a teacher ascompared to an electrician, or as compared to a positive thinking teacher or a philosopher or a preacher. I'm none of those things. I am nothing.
You can perhaps say that I am a mirror for you. What you see in me is what you are. And as you meditation yourself, you will begin to see me as yourself. For in truth there is only one Self and you are That. Expect nothing and you'll have everything. Be spontaneous. Concern yourself only with the present. Forget about the past and do not worry about the future. Be what you are, absolute Reality.
What is absolute Reality? It's called the fourth state of consciousness. There are the three states of sleeping, dreaming and waking. These states limit us.
is a fourth state. It is called by many names: Absolute Reality; pure awareness; Nirvana; emptiness. Most people never get into that state in this life for no one has told them about it. They are satisfied with dreaming, waking and sleeping. That's like being satisfied with kindergarten.
Other people are afraid of going into another state because they believe they have got to give up something. They feel they'll lose something if they experience another state of consciousness. In reality, you lose nothing.
The fourth state is simply extended awareness. It's like this. Imagine you are looking through a keyhole and all you can see through the keyhole is someone being killed by someone else. You see a man killing a woman through thekeyhole. All of your concepts about what is happening in the other room revolve around that. That's how we see the world. Through a keyhole. We see a partial picture.
But, let's say you open the door instead of looking through the keyhole. You would look through the left and you would see, perhaps in a previous life, the woman killed the man. It's in reverse. Now, in this life, the man is killing the woman. And, you would understand what's going on. Then you would go further and you would look to the right and you would see they are both together again laughing and having a good time. And you would realize that no one is killed and no one kills. It's all a game. You would see the complete picture.
As long as you only look through the keyhole, you are going to see a limited view of things. You become judgmental.
This is why we are told not to judge, because we are only getting a limited picture. Everything that you see in your life is looking through a keyhole. When you awaken, the door opens, that is all. You then understand why everything is happening and where it comes from. This is the reason why sages remain so calm and never react to anything. Not because they don't care. They see the whole picture. The door has been opened for them and they see that the person who wins the fifty million dollar lottery earned it someway, somehow. There is no such thing as luck and there is no such thing as chance.
Then they see the end picture where they wake up and laugh at the whole game. For, no one lost anything and no one gained anything. It's like a movie. The movie has a beginning, a middle and an end. And, when the movie is over there is the screen. The screen is the reality. The movie just makes impressions upon the screen. All the impressions have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Most people go through their life as an impression, as a fantasy. They react to everything they see, hear, smell and touch and taste. They're always angry, they're always mad because they are not getting what they want. This islooking through the keyhole.
As you begin to go within, as you take time to forget a little bit about the world and you begin to ask yourself: "From where does the world come? You begin to investigate within yourself: "Where does my world come from? How did it originate?"
As you begin to do this every day, you will eventually question your own existence, asking, "Why was I born? Who am I? Why am I going through this experience? Who's going through this experience?" The more you do this and the less you react to your external conditions, the sooner you will awaken.
So, awakening isn't something you have to search for. Awakening isn't something someone can give you. Awakening is your true nature, it's your real Self. You are already awake but you believe you are asleep. You believe you are human. That you are the doer. You believe that all of your experiences are real. Then, a little more advanced, you think all of your experiences are karmic.
I say to you there is no karma, and there are no experiences. You are bright and shining just the way you are. But if you want to play the game of karma you can. It's only a game. Where did it come from?
You created it out of your mind. There are those people who teach courses in karma and reincarnation. They believe the truth of these ideas. The mind creates reality, and if you believe in karma and reincarnation you create this destiny. The joke is you keep coming back again and again and again and again having all sorts of experiences.
So, a century from now or one billion years from now you get tired of playing the game and you will say, "Wait a minute. I seem to be going around in circles. Does it ever end?"
Eventually you will ask the question: "For whom is the game? Who believes in their humanity? Who believes in their experiences? Who is it that seems to suffer? Who is it that seems to be happy?" Remember human happiness and human suffering are two sides of the same coin. There's no difference. You get tired of the whole thing. So you pose the question to yourself, “For whom is this karma? For whom is this world? For whom is this game? Who has to go through these things?"
But, instead of doing this, most people go to psychiatrists, psychologists, preachers, ministers and so forth. They never get the right answer because those aforementioned people tell you how to deal with symptoms and effects. You go to a doctor and you say, “My arm hurts when I hold it like this." So, he says, "Don't hold it like that."
We are looking for answers from external sources and you can never get an answer to your problem, or do anything to solve your problem from the world. Because the world changes continuously. One time the answer may be this way and another time the answer may be that, depending on circumstance, culture and history.
Fifty years ago if you had a cold and you went to a doctor, they would draw blood, they would give you all kinds of antibiotics. They would give you everything that was in style during those days. Today if you have a cold, they'd do something else. Everything changes. People do what's in vogue at the time.
The solution to all problems is within you. Yet you go about it the wrong way when you are looking to solve a problem with another problem which is your mind. You cannot use your mind to solve a problem because your mind is the cause of the problem to begin with.
You can't ask anybody else for the solution because they are using their mind to give you a solution, which they think is right. The answer is, of course, to know yourself.
When you focus the attention on your Self, problems resolve automatically. How do you focus the attention on your Self? By asking, “What am I, or who am I?" Simply ask, “Who am I?" When anything takes place in your life thatyou wish to change, do not try to change the thing that is disturbing you. If you do, it will pop up somewhere else. Go right to the source.
What is the source of my depression? I am. I am depressed. Who is the I that is depressed? Where did it come from? Do not answer your question. You need a listening attitude when you ask the question. Then an answer may come to you as, “The depression comes to me. I feel it. I have it."
So the I has the problem, not you. It is always your personal I that has the problem. The problem has absolutely nothing to do with you. The personal I has absolutely nothing to do with you. Just understanding this awakens you.I is not the Self. The personal I is the ego.
When you say, “I don't feel good, I don't feel happy, I am worried," or even when you say, "I feel good, I feel wonderful, and “you are still talking about your personal. That personal I is part of the world of duality.
Therefore when you say, "I feel good!" in the morning, the first thing that comes along that you don't like, you'll say "I feel bad." Instead of believing in the ego and that you can solve personal problems by changing something, you want to say to yourself, "This has nothing to do with me. 'I' feels bad. 'I' feels good." That's not bad English; I'm just showing how to talk to yourself. The I is separate from you.
You have nothing to do with I. Just being able to see that resolves your problem. You create a distance between you and the problem and the I that has the problem. If you will try, you'll see I'm right. You begin to see that the I and the problems have nothing to do with you who is witnessing the problem.
When you get depressed, when you feel out of sorts, when you feel something is wrong, when you feel angry or whatever, just ask yourself, "Who feels this? I do." Then realize that I has nothing to do with my Self, my true being.
Your perfection is always shining. You are pure consciousness. You are not the personal I. Let the personal I have all the problems it chooses. I has nothing to do with you, but observe for yourself. Become the witness to the fact that the personal I has the problem and not you. That's all you have to do. Just watch it and look intelligently. See where the problem comes from.
Then ask, “If the personal I has this problem and not me, where did the personal I come from to make me feel as if I've got a problem?" That's the mystery. Don't try to be smart and answer the question because it's your ego that answers. Ask yourself, "Where did the personal I come from?" Or you can just ask, "Who am I, (or what am I)?"
Never answer.
Yet you will notice something very interesting begin to happen when you get to that stage. You will notice that you are starting to feel better and better and better. And you even begin to laugh at yourself. Why? Because you are going to the source of your personal I and that source is absolute Reality, consciousness. This means, of course, that your personal I does not exist. It never existed. It is an illusion. You don't have a personal I. And if you don't have a personal I, you don't have any of the problems that come with it.
This means you are not the body/mind phenomena, you are not the doer, you are not the sufferer, you are not the person that you think you are. All these things are attached to the personal I and if that goes away, everything goes away with it.
Then you become totally free. Then you begin to feel omnipresence. For your real Self is not personal. Your real Self is the Self of the universe. Your real Self is everything. Everything is the Self. You realize that your body is sort of an impression on the Self, and it has no power of it's own. It doesn't even exist. The Self exists. Consciousness exists as itself and not as the body.
Where did the body come from? If the body doesn't exist, why do I see it? Ask yourself: "Who sees it?" You get right back to the personal I. For the answer is, "I see it. Who am I?" You are back to the personal I again. Don't you see that the personal I is gone? There is no body. There is no mind. There is only consciousness. But as long as you believe there is a body, there is a personal I.
Therefore you cannot say: I am consciousness appearing as a body. That is wrong. Consciousness does not appear as anybody. It doesn't have to. Consciousness is always self-contained pure awareness. It is something we cannot even discuss for there are no words to describe it. It is something you have to find out for yourself.
The Jnana Marga Society
This talk was edited, introduced and manufactured by Edward Muzika, Ph.D.
Copyright (C) No-Self Press, 1992
