Robert: Om, shanti, peace. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It's good to see you again. It's very commendable on your part that you can be here tonight. After all, you could be watching TV, you could be going out with your girl friend or boy friend, you could go to a good movie, go get drunk.
Student: Then what am I doing here?
Robert: I don’t know. Ask yourself. But you decided to come here and that means something, not to me, but to yourself. It means that you're tired of the world, to an extent. It means that you realize what this world really is. It's not bad, it's not good. That means that you want to wake up, so there is something within you pushing you. All you have to do is to quiet your noisy mind and allow it to happen. That's all. You do not have to go through rituals, initiations or anything else. You simply have to quiet your mind and everything will take care of itself.
Let me ask you a question. What do you think is the difference between this teaching, Jnana marga, and the rest of the yogas, prayer, religions or whatever? What is the basic difference? Who can tell me?
Student: Jnana marga is not concerned with anything of a relative nature, not even becoming enlightened.
Robert: Well, in a way that’s true.
Student: No objects?
Robert: In a way that’s true too, but there’s a more rational explanation.
Student: There is nothing to be obtained. Just recognized.
Robert: Well that’s true too. Actually, the answer I'm looking for is this -- in every teaching besides Advaita Vedanta, there’s a personal I. Think about that. Let's take Hatha yoga. The I learns postures and the ego becomes expanded. Because you can say, "I can stand on my head and twist my feet," and you give it a Sanskrit name. But you still say, "I can do this," so the I has become inflated.
Take raja yoga, the eight limbed path. Now these things are good. There’s nothing wrong with these things. I'm not putting them down. But there has to be someone to learn the jamas, nejamas, the virtues. There’s someone who is learning all these things. The I has learned to become virtuous.
Take Kundalini yoga. I am focusing on the chakras, on each chakra. There’s always I and I and I.
Take prayer. I am praying to God. Again there’s nothing wrong with these things, but the reason we call this the direct path is because this is the only teaching that investigates the I. We're not interested in the effects. Whatever the effect may be, we realize that the I is behind it. We realize that if we find the I, and follow it to its source, everything else will be wiped out and we'll become free. This is why it is called the direct path.
Also what is the difference between meditation and Jnana marga, because most of you realize that on this path it is not really necessary to meditate? So what's the main difference between meditation and this path?
Student: There has to be someone to meditate.
Robert: True, but that’s not the answer I’m looking for. In meditation there's always an object of your meditation. And again the I is concentrating on certain words, mantra, or whatever. Therefore you're not getting rid of the I. You're concentrating on something else, where you exclude everything except the mantra or the words of your meditation, whether it's God, or whatever.
In this teaching you simply inquire for the source of the I. "Who am I? Where did I come from?" Even when I say to you, "Where did I come from?" some of you are relating to your body, aren't you? You're thinking where did I come from, as a body? But that's not what we mean. You want to know where the I came from, not where you came from. If you find out where the I came from you will realize that you do not exist. You never did and you never will. That's the point. Where did I come from? And as you get used to this kind of thinking, whenever you use the word I, you will never refer to your body again.
For instance, if you have a cold you usually say, "I have a cold." Only now you will catch yourself and you will laugh, because you will say, "I has the cold." Sounds like bad English. I has the cold. It has nothing to do with me. So where did the I come from that has the cold? And as you follow the I it will lead you to the source, where there’s no I, there’s no cold.
You can use this method for everything. "I am hungry." Well catch yourself, and realize that I is hungry. I is not my real self. I is hungry, yet my real self can never be hungry. I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm happy, I feel beautiful, I feel wonderful. It's all the same thing. As long as you are referring to your body you’re making a big mistake. Separate yourself from I.
There’s only one I actually and that I is consciousness. When you follow the personal I to the source, it turns into the universal I, which is consciousness. Begin to catch yourself. Begin to realize your divine nature. And you do this by keeping quiet. The fastest way to realization is to keep silent. Yet you have to know why you are keeping silent. This is why you can't tell this to the average person. If a person has no inkling of Advaita Vedanta, you can't say keep silent. For to them it means just to be quiet. They don't realize it means to go deep, deep, deep, deep within, to that place where absolute reality lives, and that's the silence.
Actually the human body cannot keep silent. There’s something else that enters the silence. It has nothing to do with your humanity. Then suddenly after years perhaps of meditation and previous lives, that you can be mature enough to really know what this path is all about. When I give you these practices, it's not for you as a human being. You appear to be able to go through it as a human being, but I can assure you your humanity has nothing to do with it. When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace, bliss consciousness, pure awareness. That's what the silence is. It's not being quiet. It's beyond that. It's not just quieting your mind, like I say it all the time. It's understanding that there’s no mind to quiet. When you realize there’s no mind, you automatically become silent. When you still think you've got a mind, you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can't.
How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort? You can't do that. It's not the effort that makes you quiet your mind. It's the intelligent understanding that you have no mind to begin with. Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself. If you have to meditate, by all means meditate. This path is never against any other method, due to the fact they all eventually lead to awakening. You have to do whatever you have to do. But for those who can understand what I'm talking about, and realize you're dealing with no mind, no body, no world, no universe, no God, an awakening comes immediately, because there’s no one who is sleeping. Do you follow this?
If you think you've got something to overcome, if you’re going to believe you've got to work on yourself, you've got to make some kind of effort, it will be hard. After all, who makes the effort? The ego. Who's telling you all these things you've got to overcome? The mind. You think you've got to overcome your bad habits, you've got to overcome past karma, you have to overcome samskaras. That's all a lie.
I realize that I talk about these things sometimes. It sounds like a contradiction, but I am sharing with you the highest truth. There are no samskaras to overcome, because they never existed. There’s no karma to overcome because it doesn't exist. But for those immature students, they have to work on something, so we explain to them there's karma, there’re samskaras, there are latent tendencies that have got hold of you, and you have to transcend them. Yet I'm telling them a lie. But they really need to hear that at this time of their evolution, otherwise they couldn’t work anything else.
But the truth is, you have nothing to overcome. Think about that. If you had something to overcome you would never overcome it, for it is the nature of mind to play games with you. As soon as you overcome one thing, another thing pops up, and you have to overcome that. When you overcome that, something else pops up. Say you have a drinking habit, and you say, "I've got to overcome this." You may overcome it. It leads to a bad temper. Then you have to overcome the bad temper. It leads to telling lies. Then you have to overcome telling lies. It never ends until you begin to realize I has nothing to overcome.
Then you start working on the I. It is then you finally realize it's this personal I that's been giving the trouble. That's an advanced state, but that's also a lie, due to the fact the personal I never existed. But you don't know that. Because you think the personal I exists, you have to use self-inquiry to lead you to the place where you realize the personal I does not exist. It never has, and it never will.
Yet wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just sit down and realize all this in a flash and become free. We'll not allow ourselves to do that for some reason. We want to play the game of overcoming. So we say, "I've got to work on myself. I've got to practice. I've got to meditate. I've got to be alone. I've got to do this and I've got to do that." But I say to you tonight, there’s no thing you have to do. You just have to realize what I'm saying and awaken, and that's it.
Again, who has to awaken? It's all a pack of lies, but I'm using words. How can the self awaken? The self never went to sleep. Do you not realize who you are now? You're not a mortal human. There are no words to express what you are. You have to find out. So you practice. But while you're practicing your sadhana, keep in back of your mind someplace, there’s really no one who practices. After all who does the practice? It's your body and your mind. If you can only remember there’s no body or mind that exists, then there’s no one to practice. So while you're practicing, remember that.
I know you're going to walk out tonight and say, "Well, what do I do now?"
Look at it this way. As long as you feel body consciousness, and as long as your mind, so called, still has the power to make you feel this way and that way, then you have to do some practice. Otherwise your body-mind will control you. The highest practice is atma-vichara, self-inquiry. The reason I'm talking to you like this tonight, is because I can feel that all of that who are here have been through many paths and you're not newcomers, so you're ready for this. You're ready to hear that there’s no practice, there’s no God, there’s no enlightenment, there’s no past lives, there’s no you, and you're free.
People still want to know, when everything is gone, what's left, what is the substratum, the cause, the underlying cause of all existence? There has to be something that holds it all together. Says who? There’s nothing to hold together. Remember, also, that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. So when I say there's nothing that holds any thing together, I mean there's nothing that words can describe.
When I use the words like bliss or pure awareness, consciousness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman, and Parabrahman is very powerful because it means beyond Brahman. What can be beyond Brahman? Silence. There’s no such thing as Parabrahman, due to the fact when you think of it, it signifies an object to you, for instance, a place to be in. A place to be in the silence, that is Parabrahman. You're wrong. There's no place, there’s no silence, there’s no Parabrahman. Then what is there? Find out. Only you can know yourself. For there are no words to describe it.
You have to come to terms with your life. It takes total honesty to do that. You can't go on fooling yourself. Look how you run around from pillar to post. You go here, you go there. You're always searching, you're always looking, you're always striving. For what? Some of you think that you're going to find a teacher up in the sky someplace, and you're going to go searching for that teacher until you find him or her. No such teacher exists. When you finally settle down and start going into the silence more often, your teacher will appear to you and you will find he’s none other than yourself.
You may ask then, "What am I doing here with you people?" I am yourself. I can see that very clearly. There’s no difference between you and me. When you feel depressed, when you feel angry, when you feel out of sorts, that's me you feel. When you feel happy, when you feel enlightened, when you feel beautiful, that's also me you feel. All this is the self, and I am that.
Some of you still think I'm talking about Robert. Robert has nothing to do with this. I'm speaking of omnipresence. I'm speaking of no-thing. And I think to continue speaking is a waste of time.
Student: Then what am I doing here?
Robert: I don’t know. Ask yourself. But you decided to come here and that means something, not to me, but to yourself. It means that you're tired of the world, to an extent. It means that you realize what this world really is. It's not bad, it's not good. That means that you want to wake up, so there is something within you pushing you. All you have to do is to quiet your noisy mind and allow it to happen. That's all. You do not have to go through rituals, initiations or anything else. You simply have to quiet your mind and everything will take care of itself.
Let me ask you a question. What do you think is the difference between this teaching, Jnana marga, and the rest of the yogas, prayer, religions or whatever? What is the basic difference? Who can tell me?
Student: Jnana marga is not concerned with anything of a relative nature, not even becoming enlightened.
Robert: Well, in a way that’s true.
Student: No objects?
Robert: In a way that’s true too, but there’s a more rational explanation.
Student: There is nothing to be obtained. Just recognized.
Robert: Well that’s true too. Actually, the answer I'm looking for is this -- in every teaching besides Advaita Vedanta, there’s a personal I. Think about that. Let's take Hatha yoga. The I learns postures and the ego becomes expanded. Because you can say, "I can stand on my head and twist my feet," and you give it a Sanskrit name. But you still say, "I can do this," so the I has become inflated.
Take raja yoga, the eight limbed path. Now these things are good. There’s nothing wrong with these things. I'm not putting them down. But there has to be someone to learn the jamas, nejamas, the virtues. There’s someone who is learning all these things. The I has learned to become virtuous.
Take Kundalini yoga. I am focusing on the chakras, on each chakra. There’s always I and I and I.
Take prayer. I am praying to God. Again there’s nothing wrong with these things, but the reason we call this the direct path is because this is the only teaching that investigates the I. We're not interested in the effects. Whatever the effect may be, we realize that the I is behind it. We realize that if we find the I, and follow it to its source, everything else will be wiped out and we'll become free. This is why it is called the direct path.
Also what is the difference between meditation and Jnana marga, because most of you realize that on this path it is not really necessary to meditate? So what's the main difference between meditation and this path?
Student: There has to be someone to meditate.
Robert: True, but that’s not the answer I’m looking for. In meditation there's always an object of your meditation. And again the I is concentrating on certain words, mantra, or whatever. Therefore you're not getting rid of the I. You're concentrating on something else, where you exclude everything except the mantra or the words of your meditation, whether it's God, or whatever.
In this teaching you simply inquire for the source of the I. "Who am I? Where did I come from?" Even when I say to you, "Where did I come from?" some of you are relating to your body, aren't you? You're thinking where did I come from, as a body? But that's not what we mean. You want to know where the I came from, not where you came from. If you find out where the I came from you will realize that you do not exist. You never did and you never will. That's the point. Where did I come from? And as you get used to this kind of thinking, whenever you use the word I, you will never refer to your body again.
For instance, if you have a cold you usually say, "I have a cold." Only now you will catch yourself and you will laugh, because you will say, "I has the cold." Sounds like bad English. I has the cold. It has nothing to do with me. So where did the I come from that has the cold? And as you follow the I it will lead you to the source, where there’s no I, there’s no cold.
You can use this method for everything. "I am hungry." Well catch yourself, and realize that I is hungry. I is not my real self. I is hungry, yet my real self can never be hungry. I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm happy, I feel beautiful, I feel wonderful. It's all the same thing. As long as you are referring to your body you’re making a big mistake. Separate yourself from I.
There’s only one I actually and that I is consciousness. When you follow the personal I to the source, it turns into the universal I, which is consciousness. Begin to catch yourself. Begin to realize your divine nature. And you do this by keeping quiet. The fastest way to realization is to keep silent. Yet you have to know why you are keeping silent. This is why you can't tell this to the average person. If a person has no inkling of Advaita Vedanta, you can't say keep silent. For to them it means just to be quiet. They don't realize it means to go deep, deep, deep, deep within, to that place where absolute reality lives, and that's the silence.
Actually the human body cannot keep silent. There’s something else that enters the silence. It has nothing to do with your humanity. Then suddenly after years perhaps of meditation and previous lives, that you can be mature enough to really know what this path is all about. When I give you these practices, it's not for you as a human being. You appear to be able to go through it as a human being, but I can assure you your humanity has nothing to do with it. When you enter the silence you enter a profound peace, bliss consciousness, pure awareness. That's what the silence is. It's not being quiet. It's beyond that. It's not just quieting your mind, like I say it all the time. It's understanding that there’s no mind to quiet. When you realize there’s no mind, you automatically become silent. When you still think you've got a mind, you make every effort to quiet the mind, and you can't.
How many of you believe you can quiet the mind through effort? You can't do that. It's not the effort that makes you quiet your mind. It's the intelligent understanding that you have no mind to begin with. Then you just keep still and everything takes care of itself. If you have to meditate, by all means meditate. This path is never against any other method, due to the fact they all eventually lead to awakening. You have to do whatever you have to do. But for those who can understand what I'm talking about, and realize you're dealing with no mind, no body, no world, no universe, no God, an awakening comes immediately, because there’s no one who is sleeping. Do you follow this?
If you think you've got something to overcome, if you’re going to believe you've got to work on yourself, you've got to make some kind of effort, it will be hard. After all, who makes the effort? The ego. Who's telling you all these things you've got to overcome? The mind. You think you've got to overcome your bad habits, you've got to overcome past karma, you have to overcome samskaras. That's all a lie.
I realize that I talk about these things sometimes. It sounds like a contradiction, but I am sharing with you the highest truth. There are no samskaras to overcome, because they never existed. There’s no karma to overcome because it doesn't exist. But for those immature students, they have to work on something, so we explain to them there's karma, there’re samskaras, there are latent tendencies that have got hold of you, and you have to transcend them. Yet I'm telling them a lie. But they really need to hear that at this time of their evolution, otherwise they couldn’t work anything else.
But the truth is, you have nothing to overcome. Think about that. If you had something to overcome you would never overcome it, for it is the nature of mind to play games with you. As soon as you overcome one thing, another thing pops up, and you have to overcome that. When you overcome that, something else pops up. Say you have a drinking habit, and you say, "I've got to overcome this." You may overcome it. It leads to a bad temper. Then you have to overcome the bad temper. It leads to telling lies. Then you have to overcome telling lies. It never ends until you begin to realize I has nothing to overcome.
Then you start working on the I. It is then you finally realize it's this personal I that's been giving the trouble. That's an advanced state, but that's also a lie, due to the fact the personal I never existed. But you don't know that. Because you think the personal I exists, you have to use self-inquiry to lead you to the place where you realize the personal I does not exist. It never has, and it never will.
Yet wouldn't it be wonderful if you could just sit down and realize all this in a flash and become free. We'll not allow ourselves to do that for some reason. We want to play the game of overcoming. So we say, "I've got to work on myself. I've got to practice. I've got to meditate. I've got to be alone. I've got to do this and I've got to do that." But I say to you tonight, there’s no thing you have to do. You just have to realize what I'm saying and awaken, and that's it.
Again, who has to awaken? It's all a pack of lies, but I'm using words. How can the self awaken? The self never went to sleep. Do you not realize who you are now? You're not a mortal human. There are no words to express what you are. You have to find out. So you practice. But while you're practicing your sadhana, keep in back of your mind someplace, there’s really no one who practices. After all who does the practice? It's your body and your mind. If you can only remember there’s no body or mind that exists, then there’s no one to practice. So while you're practicing, remember that.
I know you're going to walk out tonight and say, "Well, what do I do now?"
Look at it this way. As long as you feel body consciousness, and as long as your mind, so called, still has the power to make you feel this way and that way, then you have to do some practice. Otherwise your body-mind will control you. The highest practice is atma-vichara, self-inquiry. The reason I'm talking to you like this tonight, is because I can feel that all of that who are here have been through many paths and you're not newcomers, so you're ready for this. You're ready to hear that there’s no practice, there’s no God, there’s no enlightenment, there’s no past lives, there’s no you, and you're free.
People still want to know, when everything is gone, what's left, what is the substratum, the cause, the underlying cause of all existence? There has to be something that holds it all together. Says who? There’s nothing to hold together. Remember, also, that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. So when I say there's nothing that holds any thing together, I mean there's nothing that words can describe.
When I use the words like bliss or pure awareness, consciousness, sat-chit-ananda, Parabrahman, and Parabrahman is very powerful because it means beyond Brahman. What can be beyond Brahman? Silence. There’s no such thing as Parabrahman, due to the fact when you think of it, it signifies an object to you, for instance, a place to be in. A place to be in the silence, that is Parabrahman. You're wrong. There's no place, there’s no silence, there’s no Parabrahman. Then what is there? Find out. Only you can know yourself. For there are no words to describe it.
You have to come to terms with your life. It takes total honesty to do that. You can't go on fooling yourself. Look how you run around from pillar to post. You go here, you go there. You're always searching, you're always looking, you're always striving. For what? Some of you think that you're going to find a teacher up in the sky someplace, and you're going to go searching for that teacher until you find him or her. No such teacher exists. When you finally settle down and start going into the silence more often, your teacher will appear to you and you will find he’s none other than yourself.
You may ask then, "What am I doing here with you people?" I am yourself. I can see that very clearly. There’s no difference between you and me. When you feel depressed, when you feel angry, when you feel out of sorts, that's me you feel. When you feel happy, when you feel enlightened, when you feel beautiful, that's also me you feel. All this is the self, and I am that.
Some of you still think I'm talking about Robert. Robert has nothing to do with this. I'm speaking of omnipresence. I'm speaking of no-thing. And I think to continue speaking is a waste of time.