If you’ve read Robert before, the only practice he ever advised was practicing self-enquiry. In this talk, he does not even recommend that. He recommends doing nothing, not to try to control the mind or anything else, not to follow a thought, not to suppress a thought. But, most people do nothing to control their minds and none attain liberation, freedom. So, what is different?
He often makes a distinction between the jnani, or liberated, and the ajnani, he or she who is not. He says for the jnani, thoughts have no power, but the ordinary, non-liberation seeking average Joe, gives thoughts power. Who gives them power? The ego, which is just thoughts. This is circular reasoning and he knows it. The words are not actually meant to get you to do nothing, because the average seeker doesn’t know how to do nothing, but more or less to tell you to take it easy on yourself. Don’t get too wound up.
Doing nothing is something the liberated does naturally, but is extremely difficult for a beginning seeker. He is secondarily telling his troops to step up to his level and behave and be like a jnani, dwelling in the natural state of doing nothing.
I have a friend who practiced various meditations and self-enquiry for 27 years before he awakened, and that awakening occurred when he was doing nothing. But, would he have had an awakening if he had not sought and practiced 27 years? He found in awakening that all practices were irrelevant. Even the Void has nothing to do with liberation and there is no inner or outer, therefore, you cannot dive within, nor is there a mind to do anything.
You see, awakening is unlearning concepts. The first and most important, is to disabuse yourself of the idea that you are the body or that you are human. The second deeper concept is that you are or have an I. It turns out that the I is only a thought and has no real thing it points to. When you find there is no real I, the whole universe disappears because it is the I-thou dichotomy creates it. Therefore, how much practice is necessary to see that a concept is false?
So, Robert speaks to two levels, telling those who are too wrapped up to relax, and those who have practiced Zen meditation or yoga for 27 years to let go of meditation.
Editor—Ed Muzika
Robert : Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om
Peace. Peace. Good evening.
It is an honor to be with you once again, to see you, talk to you, say my piece and go home. It is a beautiful evening with a nice breeze blowing.
All is well. Everything is in its right place. There are no mistakes. And you are all Divine spiritual beings, whether you like it or not (laughter).
It has come to my attention that many of you are trying to stop your thoughts, control your thoughts. You cannot really do this. Trying to stop your thoughts, as Ramana Maharshi says, is like a thief becoming a policeman to catch the thief. In other words, the thief that becomes the policeman will not catch the thief, because he is the thief himself, and so it is with our minds.
When we use the mind to stop the thoughts, the mind will not stop the thoughts at all, because the mind wants to go on living. Stopping the thoughts is annihilating the mind, and the mind does not wish to be annihilated. The mind wants to live on to fill you full of nonsense, superstitions. Therefore we do not try to stop, the thoughts.
What do we really do? We do absolutely nothing. There is really nothing you have to do to make the thoughts cease. Always remember when you do things according to the sadhanas (spiritual paths) you've learned, the spiritual exercise you've practice, the meditations, the yogas. This will make you free for a couple of moments, and then the thoughts will come back to you with full force, knocking you over. You cannot stop the mind or control the mind with spiritual practice.
Again you cause the thoughts to cease by doing absolutely nothing. By being yourself. Unless the mind stops spinning there will be no realization, no liberation. Only when the mind stops, the thoughts cease to be, is there liberation.
Yet we use the words "to stop the mind, to stop the thoughts". This is sort of a misnomer. For again you have to use the mind to stop the thoughts, and. the mind does not want to do this. It does not wish to cease thinking. Yet it is by ceasing to think, that you acquire unalloyed happiness, infinite peace, Divine Bliss. When the thoughts stop, these verities come forward, and you become free.
You do not have to watch the thoughts, analyze the thoughts, be the witness to the thoughts, or observe the thoughts in any way whatsoever. All of these symptoms simply make the mind stronger really.
Most of you have tried to stop your thoughts with various practices like these for many years. And if you look back in retrospect you will see, it made the mind stronger. It causes the mind to have more power. Thoughts hit you from all directions. This means we do not wish to use any method whatsoever to stop thoughts. Yet the thoughts have to be stopped. They have to cease. By doing absolutely nothing, the mind will begin to slow down.
When you think you have to watch your thoughts, observe your thoughts, you're saying to yourself "I'm going to observe my thoughts, I'm going to watch my thoughts," you're using mind-energy to do this, aren't you? You're giving energy to the thoughts and you'll never do it this way. But again if you do absolutely nothing, you just sit there doing nothing, the thoughts will get weak.
Now really, no sage on this earth or anywhere else really stops the thoughts. As long as you see a body, and you call that body the sage, there will always be some sort of thinking in that body, some sort of thought. For instance I can be sitting here and I'll say to myself "When I go home I'm going to eat a dish of ice-cream". This is a thought. But what happens when I say it and what happens when you say it? When I say it, when I think it, it is similar to a burned rope. A burned rope may appear to be strong, but when you pick it up, it turns to ashes. It's burned. There's nothing there. When you say it, it is like a real rope, not burned. You give it energy, you give it power.
Again when the sage thinks of something, it is like a fan which has been unplugged. It's still turning, but there's no power. The power is dead. The power has been cut off. In other words, the source of a sage is dead. The source of the sage has no power, no power whatsoever. This is why it is said, a sage does not think, a sage has no thoughts.
What it really means is that the sage's thoughts are dead. When the thoughts are dead, you live in absolute reality. You live in pure awareness. When the thoughts are dead you live in Satchitananda, in Nirvana.
So what do you have to do to also cease thinking, so the thoughts can become dead? You simply do not attach yourself to the thoughts. By not attaching yourself to the thoughts, by not reacting to the thoughts, by not responding to the thoughts, they lose their power and begin to fade away. You do not give them any energy. Do not give them any power. Do not say to yourself, I have to stop my thoughts. Do nothing like this. Just slow down, slow down. Let the thoughts do what they may. Allow the thoughts to go their own way. Do nothing with your thoughts. Do not think about them. Do not fight them. And above all, do not try to stop them.
You may think this is so difficult, but it's not. It's like when you first wake up, before the thoughts come. You're still drowsy from sleep. And when the first thoughts come to you, you hardly pay any attention to them. That's the attitude to have.
Do not pay any attention to your thoughts whatsoever. But when you say "I am not paying attention to my thoughts", you spoil it. You are not to utter this. You are not to say this. You are just to become this. As you begin to let your thoughts alone, not to pay any attention to them, not to be attached to them, you'll notice something very interesting happening to you. You begin to notice that you're becoming very peaceful, very calm. You become happy for no reason whatsoever. All of these dastardly things that are still going on in this world, man's inhumanity to man, you have your own so called problems. Yet you become happy, you become peaceful, you become blissful. This comes all by itself, because your thoughts have slowed down.
You have absolutely nothing to do with it. You have not slowed your thoughts down. This is an important point to remember. You have not slowed your thoughts down, not you whatsoever. For you are the mind, and you've not used your mind to slow down your thoughts. You have done absolutely nothing, except to ignore your thoughts. Ignore the thoughts completely, totally, absolutely. Again, do not fight your thoughts. Ignoring your thoughts is not fighting your thoughts. Do not try to change your thoughts. Above all do not try to stop your thoughts.
It is enough to detach from them and ignore them. A simile would be, what happens to your friends whom you ignore. If you have a friend and the friend is talking to you, telling you things, and you ignore your friend, what happens? The friend will walk away. The friend will go away and that will be the end of the friend. And he or she will no longer be your friend. For you have ignored them totally, completely. You've not scolded them. You have not lectured your friend. You have not been evil to your friend. You have just ignored your friend. Your friend will back away and go away, because your friend gets no response from you whatsoever. This is how you want to treat your thoughts, same way.
It makes no difference if the thoughts are good or bad, they're both impostors. In reality there are no good thoughts, there are no bad thoughts. We're not trying to replace bad thoughts for good thoughts. We're trying to leave the thoughts alone, not to do a thing about them. I want to make this perfectly clear. This is the highest way to handle your thoughts.
There are so many practices. We have Vipassana meditation, we have Pranayama. There are so many different methods to stop thoughts. All of these methods are good to an extent. They make you sort of one pointed, but they will not stop your thoughts. This is why people who have been practicing Pranayama, breathing exercises, Vipassana meditation, even Zen meditation, and other forms of yoga meditation, having practiced for years and years and years and years. Perhaps they have achieved a semblance of peace, but they have not become liberated due to the fact that they are using methods, whether it is a koan, or it's watching your breath or your feelings, or whether it's changing your thoughts to something positive.
Whatever you've been doing, you're using your mind to do it. And your mind will always fool you. It will make you believe you're getting somewhere. You're becoming something great. But it's really the ego. It is the ego that is controlling the mind, and you are the ego. The ego trying to control the mind!
So again, what do you do to stop the thoughts? Absolutely nothing. Now why is the word nothing so important? You do absolutely nothing because in truth, everything is nothing. This is the reason you do nothing to stop your thoughts.
In reality there are no thoughts. There is no one trying to stop them. There is no liberation, there is no bondage. There is nothing. You're using the same nothing to stop your thoughts. Do nothing, because you are nothing. Nothing plus nothing makes nothing. Can you see why I tell you to do nothing now? Because you're using your real nature when you do nothing.
You are yourself, you are the absolute reality when you are nothing.
Consequently when you are doing something to stop your thoughts, you're fooling yourself. Nothing will ever happen. Like I say, you will acquire a little peace, that's it. But by slowing yourself down, saying nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing, being nothing, your thoughts will stop completely, totally absolutely. And as I mentioned before, you will feel beautiful happiness, peace of mind, bliss, you'll be free.
Practice this right now. Allow the thoughts to come whatever they are. Do absolutely nothing. It makes no difference what the thoughts are. Let them come, no matter how much they seem to frighten you, no matter how powerful they appear to be. Let them come.
Where do the thoughts come from to begin with? They come from nowhere. They do not come from consciousness. They do not come from true awareness. They do not come from the self. Where do the thoughts come from? From nowhere.
They're like an optical illusion. They do not exist. They are like the appearance of the sky on top of the mountain. The sky appears to be resting on top of the mountain. But it's an optical illusion. Thoughts do not exist whatsoever. Therefore you ask yourself, who is thinking? You will find out, the ego is thinking.
So here is another point. When the thoughts slow down, so does the ego. The thoughts and the ego are synonymous. As the thoughts slow down, the ego slows down, and begins to also disappear with the thought. When there are no thoughts, there is no ego. When there is no ego, there is nobody left to think.
Then the question you will ask is, how do I function without thinking? As I mentioned in the beginning, the Sage's thought is like a burned rope. They appear to be real, but they are not. In other words, your thoughts are not real. They are false. How do you function without thoughts? Very well, thank you.
Many of you still believe you have to have thoughts to function. You think you'll become a vegetable. But you will be spontaneous without thoughts. You'll be motivated by the Self. You will know what to do, where to go, whom to speak to, whom not to speak to, much better than you do now. Much, much better.
Things will happen to you spontaneously. Everything we always talk about is paradoxical. And the paradox is, even though you have no thoughts, you will still think about certain things. It has to be done. But there is absolutely no thinker alive. There is no thinker. There is no one left to think. You just appear to be thinking about certain things, so you can function.
It's similar to what we were discussing on Sunday. People always ask me, "What do you see? Do you see the world?" Of course I see the world. If I didn't see the world, I wouldn't be able to function. But I see the world as the Self. In other words I see the world as images on reality.
Like in the movies, the images are on the screen. I am able to see the screen and the images at the same time. I see the reality and I see the images. So it is with the thoughts. Same thing with the thoughts. You appear to be thinking, but you're not thinking. This is a very important point to remember. You will think whatever you have to think about, but the thoughts will be dead, like a burned rope. Like the fan with the plug pulled out, but the blades are still spinning, until they stop.
Why do you want to do all this? For life passes. Pretty soon you become old. And you appear to die. Do you want to believe this lie that you die, that you get old, that there are problems in this world? This is all a lie. It's the mortal dream. Do not identify with the mortal dream.
Know who you are once and for all. You are that which was never born, which will not prevail, and can never die. You are that which is beyond all concepts, all reasoning, all thoughts. You are that which has always existed as pure awareness. You are that which is not female or male, which is neither good nor bad, which is neither right or wrong, which just is beauty, joy, love, harmony, peace, bliss.
This is your true nature. This is who you are.
Why not accept this and become free right now?
It all begins by removing your thoughts. You now have an idea how to remove your thoughts. Get rid of your thinking process. You have to do it. You now know you have absolutely nothing to fight in this world, nothing to fear.
It makes no difference what's happening to the economy. It makes no difference if there are earthquakes, cataclysms, hurricanes. What have you to do with these things? What have these things to do with you? You are the source of all creation.
In this gap that I give you between sentences, at that time you are in Samadhi. Every time I stop talking, you are in Samadhi. Feel your divinity. Feel your bliss. Feel your love. Feel the truth, in reality. Clean yourself out. Feel all the karmas, the samskaras, all the things you've carried around with you for so many centuries flowing away from you, completely and totally.
You are absolutely free right now. Absolutely free! Absolutely free!
