Robert: Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. Chanting has been known to calm the mind, to calm the nerves, and to calm the soul. It makes your mind one-pointed. When your mind becomes one-pointed, you can practice atma-vichara or self-inquiry. Then the path of jnana becomes easier. So lets all join into the chant.
[Chanting]
I welcome you again. Good Evening. Hmm…, I have a Zen microphone tonight. It has transcended.
It's appropriate on an occasion like this to talk about freedom. We're celebrating Passover, Easter and the beginning of spring. During the time of Moses, he led the Jewish people out of the land of Egypt, and set them free. Jesus transcended the body and became free. In the spring flowers bloom, leaves begin to grow on the trees, everything becomes brand new. So again it is appropriate that I discuss freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the mind. Freedom from fear, from want, from suffering of any kind. Your real nature is freedom. You are not confined to a body, and you are not confined to a mind. It appears that way, but I can assure you, you are totally free.
It's like the story of a man who was thrown into a dungeon. He stood there for many years. No one came to see him. His food was pushed under the door every day. He was confined for forty to fifty years. Time passed. He grew a long beard, long hair. One day he got disgusted, totally depressed, and he said to himself, "I'm going to commit suicide, but how shall I do it? I know. I'll hit my head against the wooden door." But when he touched the door, it opened. The door had never been locked. He walked out the door and nobody even recognized him, and he was free. He could have been free from the very beginning, but he chose to be confined by not touching the door.
This is true with most of us. We think we have a problem. We think we are limited. We think we are the body, the mind, and we’re finite. Little do we know the power that we really are. Little do we know that we have the ability to transcend the universe, and become totally liberated. Instead we identify with the world. We identify with conditions. We identify with person, place and thing. We believe we are born, and we live so many years, and then we die. Then what is the purpose of life? To work hard, to suffer, and then to leave everything to your children, and they go out and spend it all in a week?
What is the purpose of life? I tell you the truth when I say life has no purpose, as it is. The material relative world has no purpose. It has no purpose because it doesn't even exist. You may say, "But I see it, I feel it, I'm in it." but are you? Aren't you also, in a dream? You partake of the dream. You go to school in a dream. You get married to a dream girl or a dream boy. You have dream children. You have a good job in your dream. You become the President of the United States in your dream. You become a Queen or a King, and you believe it's real. No one can ever tell you it's not.
If I came into your dream and I told you, "Don't identify with this, you're only dreaming," you would laugh in my face and say, "Look, I can pinch you. Can't you feel if this is a dream?" And I say, "Yes, it's a dream pinch. So I can feel a dream hurt. It's all taking place in a dream." But you still don't believe it because you're going through it. But then one day you wake up in the morning. It was all a dream.
Perhaps the world is like this. Is it? As I always say, why should you believe me? There are methods to discover this truth for yourself. As we go through the vicissitudes of life we have all kinds of experiences, some good and some bad. This is a world of duality. For every forward there’s a backward. For every up there’s a down, and so forth. What this means is if you experience one thing, you have to one day experience the opposite.
This doesn't mean in one particular lifetime. Perhaps you can see now why some children are born into families that are impoverished, in families in Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, and they never find a day's peace, while others are born in the United States perhaps, to wealthy families. They never have to work a day in their lives. Is this good and bad luck? Is there a reason for this?
We do not live in a capricious universe. We live in a universe of law and order. Everything that you are, you deserve to be. Now that's a hard thing to say. You can say, "Robert, I didn't deserve to get hit by a car and become crippled." You don't know that. Why should it happen to you? Let's just say perhaps in a previous existence, you ran over somebody with your car, and this is just karma returning to you.
Now the beginner in spiritual life goes through this process, wondering why things happen, why some people suffer and some people don't, why some people are sick and some people are healthy, some people are poor and some people are rich, some people are happy and some people are miserable. Why? Does it just happen? There is a reason for everything. And the reason is within you.
But we don't want to get further into that subject. For as I mentioned before, the world has no purpose. So you say, "Is reincarnation real? Is karma real? Am I born again when I die? Do these states really exist, the astral plane, the causal plane, the mental plane?" The answer is, "For whom do they exist?" They exist only as long as you believe you are related to your body-mind phenomena. As long as you feel you are a body, then there will be many bodies, and they'll never stop coming. They'll come again and again and again. And you'll go through karmic experiences again and again and again. This is the grand illusion called maya.
Many spiritual people who understand maya, believe it only relates to the physical plane. But maya is the universe. The entire universe is maya, illusion. It seems to be real. It seems to be very real for some people. Then how do they get out of their predicament? People still believe that if I change my status, if I'm poor and I become rich, or if I'm sick and I become healthy, if I'm miserable and become happy, then everything will be OK
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. To acquire happiness, true happiness, unalloyed happiness, forever happiness, it is your true nature. You have to transcend the world. You have to become non-attached to this world. I'm not saying you have to give up anything. I'm not saying you have to go live in a cave or live in a forest. You merely have to give up everything in your mind. And when you give up everything in your mind, then you have to give up your mind also. When you give up your mind, what is left? Pure awareness, consciousness, absolute reality, this is your true nature.
So you see, you are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not the universe. You are not the world. You just have to change your identification. How do you do this? By simply acquiring the knowledge to know what to do. So it's knowledge that you begin the true spiritual path with. What kind of knowledge? The knowledge to realize I am that I am. I am not anything that I associate with. Then who am I? That question is never answered, due to the fact that you are the answer yourself. If you answer the question, there has to be a doer, there has to be a seer who sees the question, observes it, and answers it. As long as you do that, it is always the mind or the ego answering the question.
You therefore begin a procedure, and you start this in the morning, just before you wake up. Before you start saying I am awake, try to see, observe in your mind, from where the I comes from. Between awakening, and as you awaken, you are in a deep space of consciousness, you are in your true nature. As soon as you say the word I, you spoil it. And you don't have to voice it. You automatically think, without even knowing it, I am awake.
As soon as you do that, you should ask yourself, "Who is this I that is awake? Is it the body? Who is awake?" You say, "I slept." The same I that is awake is the same I that slept. And then you say I dreamt. Again it's the same I. I is always present. You ask yourself, "Who is this I? Where did it come from? What is it's source?" You hold on to the I. The way you hold on to the I is by posing the question, "Who is I?" I know that doesn't sound like proper English. That's if you're referring to the I as a body. You inquire, "Who is I?" or "Who am I?" and you keep still.
When you keep still in the beginning, you will find that thoughts are running all through your mind, all kind of thoughts. You ask the question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" no matter what the thought is. Even if the thought tells you I am God, I am Brahman, I am nirvana, I am emptiness. It makes no difference what the thoughts tell you. If you were truly Brahman, if you were truly nirvana, consciousness, you would never voice it. The true self is silence. It has no voice.
Again you ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come, the thoughts that try to tell me I am Brahman, that I am absolute reality, to whom do they come? They come to me. I think them. Who is I? Where did the I come from?" This is called abidance in the I. As you hold on to the I, and again, how do you hold on to the I? By inquiring, "Who is I?" or you can say "I, I," "I, I.” Every time you mention the word I to yourself, the ego/mind is becoming weaker and weaker, and the "I, I" is going deeper and deeper within your heart center, and you are becoming more and more peaceful. You can say, "I am." Not "I am this" or "I am that." That spoils it. Just "I am." I am is beingness. Beingness is absolute reality. It is your true nature. As you pose this question again and again, as you abide in the I-ness, it will begin to disappear. It will turn into the real I am, into beingness. You will find bliss. You will find joy. You will find total happiness.
This is the best way in our time, to awaken to your self-realization. This is the best method, the highest method. Other methods are good also, but they don't lead you directly to transcendence. This has nothing to do with meditation. It has nothing to do with yoga. It has nothing to do with prayer. It is called self-inquiry, atma-vichara. It is for mature souls, for the mind that appears to be sort of intellectual to an extent. But yet if you're too intellectual, you'll not be able to grasp it, for you will learn theory and dry words. And you will be able to recite all the phraseologies, but you'll never have the experience.
To have the experience there has to be total surrender into the I am, and this requires devotion, love, bhakta, total surrender, they both go together. As you practice self-inquiry, you are also surrendering your body, your mind, your affairs, your ego, everything. One day you will awaken and be free. Let that time be today. Thank you. Any questions?
Student: Robert, is the love that a person feels when they sing or they play an instrument, is that the love, the actual consciousness, love bliss of consciousness coming through, even though it’s filtered through the mind?
Robert: Not really. Consciousness can not be filtered through the mind. The mind has to be totally transcended for consciousness to be aware of itself. Consciousness is self-contained. It has absolutely nothing to do with the mind. But, what you're talking about, when you chant, when you play beautiful music, when you feel that feeling, it's on the way towards that. It makes you one-pointed. If your mind is one-pointed, you can easily practice self-inquiry. When your mind is thinking about so many different things, about the world, about your job, about your family, about your car, about your dog, about all kinds of things, then it's hard to get through. So we chant, we do yoga, we do different exercises, we sing, bhajans, and the mind becomes calm, quiescent.
When the mind becomes quiescent it is like a clear lake. The clear lake reflects the sun and the moon and the stars. If the lake is murky and moving about, it does not reflect anything. And so it is when your mind is clear, quiescent. It reflects your divinity. When it's murky, it reflects the world. All these things are good, chanting, yoga, singing bhajans, everything is helpful. They all lead to atma-vichara.
Student: Can an emotional love become divine love? Can it increase to an infinite proportion to actually disappear into divine love or realize its oneness with divine love?
Robert: What do you mean by emotional love?
Student: Well, like singing and kind of dissolving in feeling.
Robert: Again, all these things simply make the mind quiet. Their purpose is to make the mind quiescent, calm, and peaceful, and then your self, your real self will shine through all by itself, when the mind becomes absolutely still. It will not happen during the singing or during the chanting. The purpose again is to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, when all the chanting has subsided, when all the music has subsided, when you have entered that place where there are no others, then you will awaken to your true self
Student: Does there ever come a time when your mind will not need a device like chanting to become quiet?
Robert: As you keep practicing whatever method you're using, you can practice meditation, you can practice mantras, whatever you're doing to quiet the mind helps. Of course karmically if a person has been doing this in a previous existence, it will be much easier in this particular life, and you'll fall right into it. But all these things are simply gimmicks to quiet the mind. They're necessary for most people, but not for everyone.
Student: Robert, when you talked, you mention bhakti Yoga as a way to lead into selflessness, or the I am state. Aren't there other variations of Yoga, like Kriya and Raja, which is a culmination of the whole?
Robert: The closest thing to atma-vichara, to realization, the next closest thing, I should say, is bhakti Yoga. Kriyas, mantras, Kundalini Yoga, are all very good for themselves. They open the chakras, they make you clear, they cause you to develop siddhis, powers, but they have nothing to do with self-realization. Actually these things must be given up if one wants to acquire self-realization. If you're looking for powers, siddhis, if you're looking for ways to be powerful, then you practice Siddha Yoga. But like it says in the Upanishads, when you get involved in these practices, you can go through thousands and thousands and thousands of incarnations and you'll still be practicing at that level.
But some yogis call self-realization Siddha Yoga. So it depends what you mean by Siddha Yoga. But all the rest of the practices, Ashtanga Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Karma Yoga, and the rest are very good by themselves, but they do not lead to ultimate awakening.
Student: Would you select one over the others?
Robert: Raja and Hatha Yoga are very good for your body, very good for your mind. Raja makes you very powerful mentally. But of course what we're trying to do is to kill the mind. We don't want to make the mind more powerful. So again the second best thing to Jnana marga is Bhakta Yoga, devotion, and surrender.
Student: Is there something more than beingness? Nisargadatta says beingness was food.
Robert: Beingness is food as far as it goes, when you look at it that way. But true beingness… it depends what you mean, they give many terms for different words… true beingness is I am. You can call true beingness ultimate reality. That's the way I see it. That's the way I use it. This is why, when you read so many books, it becomes sort of confusing, because many writers mean well. They're talking of their personal experiences and trying to put words to it, which is very difficult. We use a word and it has different meanings to us. We use the word of Parabrahman, beyond Brahman. What is beyond Brahman? Your true self, your reality is beyond Brahman. It is I, but yet we use the word Brahman. It means the same thing to certain people.
So this is why I always suggest, work on yourself. Don't worry about the words. Transcend the words. Have the experience for yourself, and then there will be nothing to say. But as long as you are a book reader, you never stop reading. There is a time to read, but there is a time to stop also. There’s a time to put the books aside and to intensely practice, and give your life up to the practice. What you put first in your life, that's what you get. So think about it. What is first in your life, a book, a house, a job, a body? Whatever you give your attention to most of all, gives its attention back to you. So if you're always thinking of God, or the self, or consciousness, by chanting to yourself "I am," with your breath, - with your respiration, inhale, you say I, exhale, you say "am," - this will eventually transcend everything else, and you'll begin by feeling a peace that you never felt before, a profound peace.
Then all of a sudden you'll have a feeling of immortality. There will be no words to explain it. You will just realize that you are all-pervading. You have always been all-pervading. There never was a time when you were not. There never was a time when you were born. And there will never be a time when you vanish. You are omnipresent, absolute reality, ultimate oneness. Your true nature is nirvana, emptiness, I am that I am. You have to discover this for yourself.
[Chanting]
I welcome you again. Good Evening. Hmm…, I have a Zen microphone tonight. It has transcended.
It's appropriate on an occasion like this to talk about freedom. We're celebrating Passover, Easter and the beginning of spring. During the time of Moses, he led the Jewish people out of the land of Egypt, and set them free. Jesus transcended the body and became free. In the spring flowers bloom, leaves begin to grow on the trees, everything becomes brand new. So again it is appropriate that I discuss freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the mind. Freedom from fear, from want, from suffering of any kind. Your real nature is freedom. You are not confined to a body, and you are not confined to a mind. It appears that way, but I can assure you, you are totally free.
It's like the story of a man who was thrown into a dungeon. He stood there for many years. No one came to see him. His food was pushed under the door every day. He was confined for forty to fifty years. Time passed. He grew a long beard, long hair. One day he got disgusted, totally depressed, and he said to himself, "I'm going to commit suicide, but how shall I do it? I know. I'll hit my head against the wooden door." But when he touched the door, it opened. The door had never been locked. He walked out the door and nobody even recognized him, and he was free. He could have been free from the very beginning, but he chose to be confined by not touching the door.
This is true with most of us. We think we have a problem. We think we are limited. We think we are the body, the mind, and we’re finite. Little do we know the power that we really are. Little do we know that we have the ability to transcend the universe, and become totally liberated. Instead we identify with the world. We identify with conditions. We identify with person, place and thing. We believe we are born, and we live so many years, and then we die. Then what is the purpose of life? To work hard, to suffer, and then to leave everything to your children, and they go out and spend it all in a week?
What is the purpose of life? I tell you the truth when I say life has no purpose, as it is. The material relative world has no purpose. It has no purpose because it doesn't even exist. You may say, "But I see it, I feel it, I'm in it." but are you? Aren't you also, in a dream? You partake of the dream. You go to school in a dream. You get married to a dream girl or a dream boy. You have dream children. You have a good job in your dream. You become the President of the United States in your dream. You become a Queen or a King, and you believe it's real. No one can ever tell you it's not.
If I came into your dream and I told you, "Don't identify with this, you're only dreaming," you would laugh in my face and say, "Look, I can pinch you. Can't you feel if this is a dream?" And I say, "Yes, it's a dream pinch. So I can feel a dream hurt. It's all taking place in a dream." But you still don't believe it because you're going through it. But then one day you wake up in the morning. It was all a dream.
Perhaps the world is like this. Is it? As I always say, why should you believe me? There are methods to discover this truth for yourself. As we go through the vicissitudes of life we have all kinds of experiences, some good and some bad. This is a world of duality. For every forward there’s a backward. For every up there’s a down, and so forth. What this means is if you experience one thing, you have to one day experience the opposite.
This doesn't mean in one particular lifetime. Perhaps you can see now why some children are born into families that are impoverished, in families in Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, and they never find a day's peace, while others are born in the United States perhaps, to wealthy families. They never have to work a day in their lives. Is this good and bad luck? Is there a reason for this?
We do not live in a capricious universe. We live in a universe of law and order. Everything that you are, you deserve to be. Now that's a hard thing to say. You can say, "Robert, I didn't deserve to get hit by a car and become crippled." You don't know that. Why should it happen to you? Let's just say perhaps in a previous existence, you ran over somebody with your car, and this is just karma returning to you.
Now the beginner in spiritual life goes through this process, wondering why things happen, why some people suffer and some people don't, why some people are sick and some people are healthy, some people are poor and some people are rich, some people are happy and some people are miserable. Why? Does it just happen? There is a reason for everything. And the reason is within you.
But we don't want to get further into that subject. For as I mentioned before, the world has no purpose. So you say, "Is reincarnation real? Is karma real? Am I born again when I die? Do these states really exist, the astral plane, the causal plane, the mental plane?" The answer is, "For whom do they exist?" They exist only as long as you believe you are related to your body-mind phenomena. As long as you feel you are a body, then there will be many bodies, and they'll never stop coming. They'll come again and again and again. And you'll go through karmic experiences again and again and again. This is the grand illusion called maya.
Many spiritual people who understand maya, believe it only relates to the physical plane. But maya is the universe. The entire universe is maya, illusion. It seems to be real. It seems to be very real for some people. Then how do they get out of their predicament? People still believe that if I change my status, if I'm poor and I become rich, or if I'm sick and I become healthy, if I'm miserable and become happy, then everything will be OK
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. To acquire happiness, true happiness, unalloyed happiness, forever happiness, it is your true nature. You have to transcend the world. You have to become non-attached to this world. I'm not saying you have to give up anything. I'm not saying you have to go live in a cave or live in a forest. You merely have to give up everything in your mind. And when you give up everything in your mind, then you have to give up your mind also. When you give up your mind, what is left? Pure awareness, consciousness, absolute reality, this is your true nature.
So you see, you are not your body. You are not your mind. You are not the universe. You are not the world. You just have to change your identification. How do you do this? By simply acquiring the knowledge to know what to do. So it's knowledge that you begin the true spiritual path with. What kind of knowledge? The knowledge to realize I am that I am. I am not anything that I associate with. Then who am I? That question is never answered, due to the fact that you are the answer yourself. If you answer the question, there has to be a doer, there has to be a seer who sees the question, observes it, and answers it. As long as you do that, it is always the mind or the ego answering the question.
You therefore begin a procedure, and you start this in the morning, just before you wake up. Before you start saying I am awake, try to see, observe in your mind, from where the I comes from. Between awakening, and as you awaken, you are in a deep space of consciousness, you are in your true nature. As soon as you say the word I, you spoil it. And you don't have to voice it. You automatically think, without even knowing it, I am awake.
As soon as you do that, you should ask yourself, "Who is this I that is awake? Is it the body? Who is awake?" You say, "I slept." The same I that is awake is the same I that slept. And then you say I dreamt. Again it's the same I. I is always present. You ask yourself, "Who is this I? Where did it come from? What is it's source?" You hold on to the I. The way you hold on to the I is by posing the question, "Who is I?" I know that doesn't sound like proper English. That's if you're referring to the I as a body. You inquire, "Who is I?" or "Who am I?" and you keep still.
When you keep still in the beginning, you will find that thoughts are running all through your mind, all kind of thoughts. You ask the question, "To whom do these thoughts come?" no matter what the thought is. Even if the thought tells you I am God, I am Brahman, I am nirvana, I am emptiness. It makes no difference what the thoughts tell you. If you were truly Brahman, if you were truly nirvana, consciousness, you would never voice it. The true self is silence. It has no voice.
Again you ask yourself, "To whom do these thoughts come, the thoughts that try to tell me I am Brahman, that I am absolute reality, to whom do they come? They come to me. I think them. Who is I? Where did the I come from?" This is called abidance in the I. As you hold on to the I, and again, how do you hold on to the I? By inquiring, "Who is I?" or you can say "I, I," "I, I.” Every time you mention the word I to yourself, the ego/mind is becoming weaker and weaker, and the "I, I" is going deeper and deeper within your heart center, and you are becoming more and more peaceful. You can say, "I am." Not "I am this" or "I am that." That spoils it. Just "I am." I am is beingness. Beingness is absolute reality. It is your true nature. As you pose this question again and again, as you abide in the I-ness, it will begin to disappear. It will turn into the real I am, into beingness. You will find bliss. You will find joy. You will find total happiness.
This is the best way in our time, to awaken to your self-realization. This is the best method, the highest method. Other methods are good also, but they don't lead you directly to transcendence. This has nothing to do with meditation. It has nothing to do with yoga. It has nothing to do with prayer. It is called self-inquiry, atma-vichara. It is for mature souls, for the mind that appears to be sort of intellectual to an extent. But yet if you're too intellectual, you'll not be able to grasp it, for you will learn theory and dry words. And you will be able to recite all the phraseologies, but you'll never have the experience.
To have the experience there has to be total surrender into the I am, and this requires devotion, love, bhakta, total surrender, they both go together. As you practice self-inquiry, you are also surrendering your body, your mind, your affairs, your ego, everything. One day you will awaken and be free. Let that time be today. Thank you. Any questions?
Student: Robert, is the love that a person feels when they sing or they play an instrument, is that the love, the actual consciousness, love bliss of consciousness coming through, even though it’s filtered through the mind?
Robert: Not really. Consciousness can not be filtered through the mind. The mind has to be totally transcended for consciousness to be aware of itself. Consciousness is self-contained. It has absolutely nothing to do with the mind. But, what you're talking about, when you chant, when you play beautiful music, when you feel that feeling, it's on the way towards that. It makes you one-pointed. If your mind is one-pointed, you can easily practice self-inquiry. When your mind is thinking about so many different things, about the world, about your job, about your family, about your car, about your dog, about all kinds of things, then it's hard to get through. So we chant, we do yoga, we do different exercises, we sing, bhajans, and the mind becomes calm, quiescent.
When the mind becomes quiescent it is like a clear lake. The clear lake reflects the sun and the moon and the stars. If the lake is murky and moving about, it does not reflect anything. And so it is when your mind is clear, quiescent. It reflects your divinity. When it's murky, it reflects the world. All these things are good, chanting, yoga, singing bhajans, everything is helpful. They all lead to atma-vichara.
Student: Can an emotional love become divine love? Can it increase to an infinite proportion to actually disappear into divine love or realize its oneness with divine love?
Robert: What do you mean by emotional love?
Student: Well, like singing and kind of dissolving in feeling.
Robert: Again, all these things simply make the mind quiet. Their purpose is to make the mind quiescent, calm, and peaceful, and then your self, your real self will shine through all by itself, when the mind becomes absolutely still. It will not happen during the singing or during the chanting. The purpose again is to quiet the mind. When the mind is quiet, when all the chanting has subsided, when all the music has subsided, when you have entered that place where there are no others, then you will awaken to your true self
Student: Does there ever come a time when your mind will not need a device like chanting to become quiet?
Robert: As you keep practicing whatever method you're using, you can practice meditation, you can practice mantras, whatever you're doing to quiet the mind helps. Of course karmically if a person has been doing this in a previous existence, it will be much easier in this particular life, and you'll fall right into it. But all these things are simply gimmicks to quiet the mind. They're necessary for most people, but not for everyone.
Student: Robert, when you talked, you mention bhakti Yoga as a way to lead into selflessness, or the I am state. Aren't there other variations of Yoga, like Kriya and Raja, which is a culmination of the whole?
Robert: The closest thing to atma-vichara, to realization, the next closest thing, I should say, is bhakti Yoga. Kriyas, mantras, Kundalini Yoga, are all very good for themselves. They open the chakras, they make you clear, they cause you to develop siddhis, powers, but they have nothing to do with self-realization. Actually these things must be given up if one wants to acquire self-realization. If you're looking for powers, siddhis, if you're looking for ways to be powerful, then you practice Siddha Yoga. But like it says in the Upanishads, when you get involved in these practices, you can go through thousands and thousands and thousands of incarnations and you'll still be practicing at that level.
But some yogis call self-realization Siddha Yoga. So it depends what you mean by Siddha Yoga. But all the rest of the practices, Ashtanga Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Karma Yoga, and the rest are very good by themselves, but they do not lead to ultimate awakening.
Student: Would you select one over the others?
Robert: Raja and Hatha Yoga are very good for your body, very good for your mind. Raja makes you very powerful mentally. But of course what we're trying to do is to kill the mind. We don't want to make the mind more powerful. So again the second best thing to Jnana marga is Bhakta Yoga, devotion, and surrender.
Student: Is there something more than beingness? Nisargadatta says beingness was food.
Robert: Beingness is food as far as it goes, when you look at it that way. But true beingness… it depends what you mean, they give many terms for different words… true beingness is I am. You can call true beingness ultimate reality. That's the way I see it. That's the way I use it. This is why, when you read so many books, it becomes sort of confusing, because many writers mean well. They're talking of their personal experiences and trying to put words to it, which is very difficult. We use a word and it has different meanings to us. We use the word of Parabrahman, beyond Brahman. What is beyond Brahman? Your true self, your reality is beyond Brahman. It is I, but yet we use the word Brahman. It means the same thing to certain people.
So this is why I always suggest, work on yourself. Don't worry about the words. Transcend the words. Have the experience for yourself, and then there will be nothing to say. But as long as you are a book reader, you never stop reading. There is a time to read, but there is a time to stop also. There’s a time to put the books aside and to intensely practice, and give your life up to the practice. What you put first in your life, that's what you get. So think about it. What is first in your life, a book, a house, a job, a body? Whatever you give your attention to most of all, gives its attention back to you. So if you're always thinking of God, or the self, or consciousness, by chanting to yourself "I am," with your breath, - with your respiration, inhale, you say I, exhale, you say "am," - this will eventually transcend everything else, and you'll begin by feeling a peace that you never felt before, a profound peace.
Then all of a sudden you'll have a feeling of immortality. There will be no words to explain it. You will just realize that you are all-pervading. You have always been all-pervading. There never was a time when you were not. There never was a time when you were born. And there will never be a time when you vanish. You are omnipresent, absolute reality, ultimate oneness. Your true nature is nirvana, emptiness, I am that I am. You have to discover this for yourself.