Robert: Good to see you again.
This week I got an unusual amount of phone calls, more than I usually get. People are telling me they feel depressed, out of sorts. I asked each one of them, "What are you doing all day?" and they said, "I am watching the war on TV." Is it any wonder they get depressed? When you still believe that you are the body then you also believe in other bodies. Consequently, when you watch a war on TV all day long you are feeling those bodies that are getting killed, and so you get depressed. You see what I'm saying? If you believe you’re the body-mind phenomena then you are also the body-mind of the whole universe, because there is only one body and that’s the entire world. In other words you are everyone's body. Naturally you will be affected by seeing bodies killed in the war. The smart thing to do is not to watch, but work on yourself. Raise your consciousness to such a high state that you will be above and beyond the war and you will see it from a different perspective.
Everything is consciousness, everything. When you ask "What is consciousness?" there is no valid answer, so I remain silent. Therefore you can say that consciousness is silence. When someone asks me to write a book or give a lecture, then I have to explain consciousness in about 50 different words, and each word has another 50 words to explain that, and those words have another 50 words. So a volume of this book is written, with 800 pages. What does it say? "Everything is consciousness." I could have written one page, and in the middle of the page I would say, "Everything is consciousness." The rest of it is blank. This is the reason why I do not write books, because there is nothing to say. See how confusing it is? You read so many books during the week. You usually do not remember what you read, and if you do, it's intellectual. You are using somebody else's words, where in truth you should be using your own words and having your own experience.
I don't know what consciousness is, but I am that. If I knew what consciousness was it wouldn't be that, because I would be voicing a word, and the word would be limited, by the very voicing of the word. So consciousness is a no-thing. It's nothing you can pin down. It's nothing you can describe. It's nothing you can write a book about. Consciousness is silence. Sometimes I say consciousness is absolute reality, which is more words, and I have to explain absolute reality. Consciousness is ultimate oneness, pure intelligence.
Consciousness is all of those things. But what are those things? Again they’re just words. Sometimes I say consciousness is love, bliss, sat-chit-ananda, knowledge, being, existence. Those are just words, and you get a good feeling from the words, but the feeling doesn't last too long, for you have not digested the words. You have not become a living embodiment of consciousness. The only way you can do that is by keeping still. If you want to solve any problem in life do not try to solve it verbally. Become quiet.
It is a known fact that people like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and others, when they had a mathematical equation to solve, they would sit in their rocking chair for hours in the silence, and everything would be revealed to them. That's how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, if you read his life story. He used to spend hours sitting by himself in the silence, and everything was revealed to him scientifically.
So it is with you. If you want the answer to any problem, do not run to a psychiatrist, or a lawyer, or even a doctor, but sit by yourself and listen. Yourself has all the answers. Why? For, as we discussed Sunday, every atom of the universe is within you. You are that. You are the entire universe. You are the microcosm and the macrocosm. Therefore all the answers in the universe must also be in you. All of the solutions, all of the wisdom, all of the happiness and bliss you've been searching for, it's within you. That's what Jesus meant when he said, "I and my Father are one," and also, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." He wasn't talking about a person called the Father. He was talking about a universal principal of harmony, of bliss, of joy. He was speaking of consciousness. It's within you. It is you. You are that. You always have been that. It isn't far away. It's right where you are.
And as you sit in the silence, and think of these things, you will begin to realize something very interesting. You will begin to realize and understand, "Well, if my body is consciousness, it can not be a body, for it cannot be both. It cannot be consciousness and my body." So as you start to think about the word consciousness in the silence, it is revealed to you that you have no body. There is only consciousness. And it doesn't seem strange at all. For when you begin to understand and fathom what consciousness really is you will realize it is self-contained.
Consciousness knows only consciousness. It doesn't know the universe. It doesn't know bodies. It doesn't know problems. It doesn't know wars. It doesn't know man's inhumanity to man. It doesn't know anything you know. It only knows itself as pure awareness. And as you sit by yourself in the silence this becomes perfectly clear. And all of a sudden the realization comes to you, "I have no problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the world. There is nothing going on. There is only consciousness."
I know this sounds strange to some of you because you’re so identified with your body-mind that you say, "But what about the experiences going on here? What about this? What about my rent that I have to pay next week? And what about my husband who left me? And what about my job that I have been terminated from? That's all very real." Of course it’s real because you are identifying with the body. So it is very, very real. There are not two worlds. There is not the world of the body, and the world of the universe, and the world of your problems and affairs, and also the world of consciousness. There is only consciousness and you are that. Just listening to this sets you free. It sets you free from all doubt and limitation. You begin to feel immortality. You begin to understand that you were never born. How can consciousness be born? And if You were never born, how can you die? What dies? Well you say, "the body," but I tell you there is no body to die. There is just nobody home. There never was a body, there is no body, and there never will be a body.
If you can't see that yet, or feel it, don't worry about it. All I ask you to do is to sit in the silence. Everything will be revealed to you. This is why I always tell newcomers, "Don't believe me. Don't believe a word I say. Find out for yourself." Everything I share with you is from my own experiences, not what I read in a book or someone else told me. When I went to see Ramana Maharshi in 1947 I went to confirm my own experiences, and I laughed when I realized there was someone else who felt what I felt.
This teaching appears abstract to some people, but it's not really abstract. It's truth. It's reality, it's your reality. Someone may say, "This is too highfaluting for me. I want something practical. I want to improve my humanhood. I just want to live my life out, and be a millionaire and be healthy, and have a mansion," and otherwise you want to have what you think you should have. So does everyone else in this world. But are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Statistics show that there are more suicides amongst the rich than the poor. Therefore if being a multimillionaire is so great why are there so many suicides? Simply because everything must change. We live in a world, as you know, of constant change. And if you don't accept that you suffer.
As I explained Sunday, your body, what you call your body, is in a state of constant flux. It's never the same, just like the universe. There is nothing solid. There is nothing permanent about anything in the universe. Everything is in a constant state of vibration. What appears to be this body vibrates in a certain rate. What appears to be a dog vibrates at a slower rate. What appears to be a chair vibrates at a slower rate also. The more gross something is the slower it vibrates, but everything vibrates. Everything is composed of atoms and energy with tremendous space between. Nothing is solid. When you realize that your body is not solid, and is not what it appears to be, how can you still identify with it? You can tell to what extent you are identifying with your body by the way you react to situations. If a situation still makes you angry, or uptight or depressed, then you know for sure you're identifying with the body.
On the other hand, you don't go to the other extreme and say, "I don't care and I don't give a damn about anything." If you didn't you wouldn't say it. It's not a case of not giving a damn. The more evolved you become, the more compassionate you become, the more you show loving kindness to everything, to the mineral kingdom, to the vegetable kingdom, to the animal kingdom, and to the human kingdom. You show total compassion, loving kindness. You become an embodiment of love simply because everyone is you. “I am my brother and my brother is me,” as Emerson said. There is no differentiation between you and Saddam or Bush or anyone else. So you don't humanly love these people and you do not humanly hate these people. It's just an experience that the world is going through. Remember when you believe in your body, then the world is becoming very real to you.
And this world is a third grade world, as a third grade in school. There are other planets and other galaxies, with a fourth grade, and fifth grade, and sixth grade, and high school and college, but that's all an illusion. Yet if you identify with the body-mind phenomena there's a whole series of planets, just as there’s a whole series of bodies. It's all the same. Don't you see? As long as you believe you are the body then there are millions and billions of bodies, and the world is a body, the universe is a body. So there are millions of worlds. There are trillions of galaxies. There are trillions of universes. And all this happens because you believe you are the body. Isn't that something?
So can't you see now it's your fault that everything is happening in this universe. You are the creator. Everything is an emanation of your mind. It's you who think up these things that are going on in the world today. If you want to stop it, if you don't like what you created, stop identifying with it. Instead dive deep, deep within and identify with yourself, which is consciousness, absolute awareness. As soon as you begin to identify with yourself then the whole world becomes yourself. As within, so without. As above, so below. Can you see the picture now? What you are seeing in this world is yourself. If you don't like what you see do not try to change person, place, or thing. Change your outlook. And you have to be able to catch yourself, all day long. Do not get caught up in the situation.
If you feel out of sorts, and you feel disappointed, and you feel depressed because someone spoke harshly to you, or someone told you something you didn't like to hear, or someone did something to you, or whatever, that's why it appears in most instances that as someone really evolves to a high state the worst of conditions sometimes seem to befall that person. And when the worst of conditions befall you it's a blessing in disguise. It means you're growing and all these things are coming to you to prove to you and to show you that you are not that. And so you turn within and see the truth, identify with the truth. I am the imperishable self, the absolute reality, pure intelligence, emptiness, nirvana, ultimate oneness. I am that. Then when you open your eyes you will see a different universe. You will see love, harmony, joy, bliss. You are seeing yourself.
I therefore ask you the question, what do you want to see in this world? Condition, after condition, after condition after condition? Even if, because of karma, you are living a relatively good life, it means nothing. Even if you are living a relatively happy life, you have perfect health, you have a perfect wife or husband, you have perfect employment, you have perfect income, you have a perfect home, you have perfect children, it means absolutely nothing, for there is a law of the universe that says everything must change. And as long as you identify with the universe, you must go through those changes.
Now you may not find much of a change in this life. But remember what you call your life is but a split second in eternity, [finger snap] like that, you're here and you're gone. Because of time and space you think you have seventy, or eighty or whatever years to live. No, your life is but a split second in all eternity, and you're gone. If you have not found your reality or your self, you may come back again to this planet or to another planet, and the person who is living a relatively good life here, has to go through the change. You may be born during the dark ages, when the world has gone back to the ground again, and you may get caught up in the inquisition, where you are caught as a spy or something, and you are tortured, and your toes are cut off, and your fingers are cut off, and your tongue is ripped out, and you go through happy experiences like that. That's the other side of the coin.
That's why I say if you are living a relatively good life, do not say to yourself, "I don't need the future, I've got everything I want." I've heard so many people tell me this. They say, "This teaching, Robert, is for people who are miserable, who are not fulfilled." I don't even answer those people. They are deluded into believing that because they've got the good things in life that's it. Little do they know, the experiences they’re going to go through when the change comes, whether in this life or another life. That's why the smart thing to do is to transcend all human experience, for human experience is a big lie. In reality there is no human experience. There’s no experience whatsoever. There is no foundation for creation. Only consciousness exists, and you are that.
This week I got an unusual amount of phone calls, more than I usually get. People are telling me they feel depressed, out of sorts. I asked each one of them, "What are you doing all day?" and they said, "I am watching the war on TV." Is it any wonder they get depressed? When you still believe that you are the body then you also believe in other bodies. Consequently, when you watch a war on TV all day long you are feeling those bodies that are getting killed, and so you get depressed. You see what I'm saying? If you believe you’re the body-mind phenomena then you are also the body-mind of the whole universe, because there is only one body and that’s the entire world. In other words you are everyone's body. Naturally you will be affected by seeing bodies killed in the war. The smart thing to do is not to watch, but work on yourself. Raise your consciousness to such a high state that you will be above and beyond the war and you will see it from a different perspective.
Everything is consciousness, everything. When you ask "What is consciousness?" there is no valid answer, so I remain silent. Therefore you can say that consciousness is silence. When someone asks me to write a book or give a lecture, then I have to explain consciousness in about 50 different words, and each word has another 50 words to explain that, and those words have another 50 words. So a volume of this book is written, with 800 pages. What does it say? "Everything is consciousness." I could have written one page, and in the middle of the page I would say, "Everything is consciousness." The rest of it is blank. This is the reason why I do not write books, because there is nothing to say. See how confusing it is? You read so many books during the week. You usually do not remember what you read, and if you do, it's intellectual. You are using somebody else's words, where in truth you should be using your own words and having your own experience.
I don't know what consciousness is, but I am that. If I knew what consciousness was it wouldn't be that, because I would be voicing a word, and the word would be limited, by the very voicing of the word. So consciousness is a no-thing. It's nothing you can pin down. It's nothing you can describe. It's nothing you can write a book about. Consciousness is silence. Sometimes I say consciousness is absolute reality, which is more words, and I have to explain absolute reality. Consciousness is ultimate oneness, pure intelligence.
Consciousness is all of those things. But what are those things? Again they’re just words. Sometimes I say consciousness is love, bliss, sat-chit-ananda, knowledge, being, existence. Those are just words, and you get a good feeling from the words, but the feeling doesn't last too long, for you have not digested the words. You have not become a living embodiment of consciousness. The only way you can do that is by keeping still. If you want to solve any problem in life do not try to solve it verbally. Become quiet.
It is a known fact that people like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and others, when they had a mathematical equation to solve, they would sit in their rocking chair for hours in the silence, and everything would be revealed to them. That's how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, if you read his life story. He used to spend hours sitting by himself in the silence, and everything was revealed to him scientifically.
So it is with you. If you want the answer to any problem, do not run to a psychiatrist, or a lawyer, or even a doctor, but sit by yourself and listen. Yourself has all the answers. Why? For, as we discussed Sunday, every atom of the universe is within you. You are that. You are the entire universe. You are the microcosm and the macrocosm. Therefore all the answers in the universe must also be in you. All of the solutions, all of the wisdom, all of the happiness and bliss you've been searching for, it's within you. That's what Jesus meant when he said, "I and my Father are one," and also, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." He wasn't talking about a person called the Father. He was talking about a universal principal of harmony, of bliss, of joy. He was speaking of consciousness. It's within you. It is you. You are that. You always have been that. It isn't far away. It's right where you are.
And as you sit in the silence, and think of these things, you will begin to realize something very interesting. You will begin to realize and understand, "Well, if my body is consciousness, it can not be a body, for it cannot be both. It cannot be consciousness and my body." So as you start to think about the word consciousness in the silence, it is revealed to you that you have no body. There is only consciousness. And it doesn't seem strange at all. For when you begin to understand and fathom what consciousness really is you will realize it is self-contained.
Consciousness knows only consciousness. It doesn't know the universe. It doesn't know bodies. It doesn't know problems. It doesn't know wars. It doesn't know man's inhumanity to man. It doesn't know anything you know. It only knows itself as pure awareness. And as you sit by yourself in the silence this becomes perfectly clear. And all of a sudden the realization comes to you, "I have no problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the world. There is nothing going on. There is only consciousness."
I know this sounds strange to some of you because you’re so identified with your body-mind that you say, "But what about the experiences going on here? What about this? What about my rent that I have to pay next week? And what about my husband who left me? And what about my job that I have been terminated from? That's all very real." Of course it’s real because you are identifying with the body. So it is very, very real. There are not two worlds. There is not the world of the body, and the world of the universe, and the world of your problems and affairs, and also the world of consciousness. There is only consciousness and you are that. Just listening to this sets you free. It sets you free from all doubt and limitation. You begin to feel immortality. You begin to understand that you were never born. How can consciousness be born? And if You were never born, how can you die? What dies? Well you say, "the body," but I tell you there is no body to die. There is just nobody home. There never was a body, there is no body, and there never will be a body.
If you can't see that yet, or feel it, don't worry about it. All I ask you to do is to sit in the silence. Everything will be revealed to you. This is why I always tell newcomers, "Don't believe me. Don't believe a word I say. Find out for yourself." Everything I share with you is from my own experiences, not what I read in a book or someone else told me. When I went to see Ramana Maharshi in 1947 I went to confirm my own experiences, and I laughed when I realized there was someone else who felt what I felt.
This teaching appears abstract to some people, but it's not really abstract. It's truth. It's reality, it's your reality. Someone may say, "This is too highfaluting for me. I want something practical. I want to improve my humanhood. I just want to live my life out, and be a millionaire and be healthy, and have a mansion," and otherwise you want to have what you think you should have. So does everyone else in this world. But are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Statistics show that there are more suicides amongst the rich than the poor. Therefore if being a multimillionaire is so great why are there so many suicides? Simply because everything must change. We live in a world, as you know, of constant change. And if you don't accept that you suffer.
As I explained Sunday, your body, what you call your body, is in a state of constant flux. It's never the same, just like the universe. There is nothing solid. There is nothing permanent about anything in the universe. Everything is in a constant state of vibration. What appears to be this body vibrates in a certain rate. What appears to be a dog vibrates at a slower rate. What appears to be a chair vibrates at a slower rate also. The more gross something is the slower it vibrates, but everything vibrates. Everything is composed of atoms and energy with tremendous space between. Nothing is solid. When you realize that your body is not solid, and is not what it appears to be, how can you still identify with it? You can tell to what extent you are identifying with your body by the way you react to situations. If a situation still makes you angry, or uptight or depressed, then you know for sure you're identifying with the body.
On the other hand, you don't go to the other extreme and say, "I don't care and I don't give a damn about anything." If you didn't you wouldn't say it. It's not a case of not giving a damn. The more evolved you become, the more compassionate you become, the more you show loving kindness to everything, to the mineral kingdom, to the vegetable kingdom, to the animal kingdom, and to the human kingdom. You show total compassion, loving kindness. You become an embodiment of love simply because everyone is you. “I am my brother and my brother is me,” as Emerson said. There is no differentiation between you and Saddam or Bush or anyone else. So you don't humanly love these people and you do not humanly hate these people. It's just an experience that the world is going through. Remember when you believe in your body, then the world is becoming very real to you.
And this world is a third grade world, as a third grade in school. There are other planets and other galaxies, with a fourth grade, and fifth grade, and sixth grade, and high school and college, but that's all an illusion. Yet if you identify with the body-mind phenomena there's a whole series of planets, just as there’s a whole series of bodies. It's all the same. Don't you see? As long as you believe you are the body then there are millions and billions of bodies, and the world is a body, the universe is a body. So there are millions of worlds. There are trillions of galaxies. There are trillions of universes. And all this happens because you believe you are the body. Isn't that something?
So can't you see now it's your fault that everything is happening in this universe. You are the creator. Everything is an emanation of your mind. It's you who think up these things that are going on in the world today. If you want to stop it, if you don't like what you created, stop identifying with it. Instead dive deep, deep within and identify with yourself, which is consciousness, absolute awareness. As soon as you begin to identify with yourself then the whole world becomes yourself. As within, so without. As above, so below. Can you see the picture now? What you are seeing in this world is yourself. If you don't like what you see do not try to change person, place, or thing. Change your outlook. And you have to be able to catch yourself, all day long. Do not get caught up in the situation.
If you feel out of sorts, and you feel disappointed, and you feel depressed because someone spoke harshly to you, or someone told you something you didn't like to hear, or someone did something to you, or whatever, that's why it appears in most instances that as someone really evolves to a high state the worst of conditions sometimes seem to befall that person. And when the worst of conditions befall you it's a blessing in disguise. It means you're growing and all these things are coming to you to prove to you and to show you that you are not that. And so you turn within and see the truth, identify with the truth. I am the imperishable self, the absolute reality, pure intelligence, emptiness, nirvana, ultimate oneness. I am that. Then when you open your eyes you will see a different universe. You will see love, harmony, joy, bliss. You are seeing yourself.
I therefore ask you the question, what do you want to see in this world? Condition, after condition, after condition after condition? Even if, because of karma, you are living a relatively good life, it means nothing. Even if you are living a relatively happy life, you have perfect health, you have a perfect wife or husband, you have perfect employment, you have perfect income, you have a perfect home, you have perfect children, it means absolutely nothing, for there is a law of the universe that says everything must change. And as long as you identify with the universe, you must go through those changes.
Now you may not find much of a change in this life. But remember what you call your life is but a split second in eternity, [finger snap] like that, you're here and you're gone. Because of time and space you think you have seventy, or eighty or whatever years to live. No, your life is but a split second in all eternity, and you're gone. If you have not found your reality or your self, you may come back again to this planet or to another planet, and the person who is living a relatively good life here, has to go through the change. You may be born during the dark ages, when the world has gone back to the ground again, and you may get caught up in the inquisition, where you are caught as a spy or something, and you are tortured, and your toes are cut off, and your fingers are cut off, and your tongue is ripped out, and you go through happy experiences like that. That's the other side of the coin.
That's why I say if you are living a relatively good life, do not say to yourself, "I don't need the future, I've got everything I want." I've heard so many people tell me this. They say, "This teaching, Robert, is for people who are miserable, who are not fulfilled." I don't even answer those people. They are deluded into believing that because they've got the good things in life that's it. Little do they know, the experiences they’re going to go through when the change comes, whether in this life or another life. That's why the smart thing to do is to transcend all human experience, for human experience is a big lie. In reality there is no human experience. There’s no experience whatsoever. There is no foundation for creation. Only consciousness exists, and you are that.