Who Were You Before You Were Born? 1993-02-21 Transcript 225 Robert: Good afternoon. (Students: Good afternoon Robert.) Greetings and salutations. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again this lovely Sunday afternoon. How many of you believe you were born? Thats the first mistake you make. To believe that you were born. You may say to me, you may say, Of course I was born. Everybody was born. (Robert turns to the barking dog as students laugh and says): You wasnt born. It appears as if everybody was born doesnt it. Yet water appears in the mi- rage. The sky appears blue. Appearances are all over the place. We accept them until we know otherwise. To know that you were never born, that you can never die, that you do not exist, frees you from the attachments that most people are attached to. It gives you a different life, totally different life, to realize that you were never born but yet youve always existed. So the question is, Who were you before you were born? Where were you before you were born? Only you can answer this question. I can tell you all kinds of nonsense, why should you believe me? You must answer this question for yourself to find happiness and freedom. For as long as you believe you were born, you suffer. Everything was born to suffer because everything dies as soon as it is born, it begins to die. Everything trees, animals, people. As soon as it opens its eyes when it is born it begins to die. There have been those few people in the world who have gone beyond birth and death. There have been those people, very few, who know the secrets, the answers to life, to the mysteries of life. Yet they can do nothing for you until you can find out yourself who you really are, what you really are, what youre all about. For if you believe you were born you begin to accumulate knowledge, as soon as youre born. You become aware of your environment, then you become aware of other people. Your parents feed you all kinds of knowledge and all this does is expand your ego. Your ego begins to live. Its fattened up by thoughts, knowledge. Just like the body is fat- tened up by food. When youre about four or five years old you go play out in the street with your friends, you acquire further knowledge. You go to your particular church or school, you acquire further knowledge. And the more you grow up the more knowledge you receive. And the ego expands and expands until you believe you know something. When you believe you know something the ego has taken over completely and you become an ego. So when some of us believe there must be an answer, or this is not the answer, there must be an answer to the riddle of life, we start to give ourselves further knowledge by reading books, searching out teachers, listening to lecturers and we receive further knowledge. It appears to help but its fooling you. The appearance is a lie. You become intellectual, youre able to debate, you acquire more knowledge at university, you study philosophy and soon you become a walking encyclopaedia. Youre now filled with knowl- edge, filled with relative knowledge, worldly knowledge. Has this done the world any good? Look at the precarious condition the world is in. Has all the knowledge of lawyers, politicians, doctors, Indian chiefs done this world any good? Knowledge seems to be destroying this world not making it a better place in which to live. The great secret is we have to unlearn everything weve learnt if we wish to become free and liberated. No matter how many times I say this to you, youre still acquiring more knowledge, some of you. Think of the books you read recently. The news youve watched on TV. The news- papers you read. Arent you acquiring more and more knowledge? What is this knowledge doing for you? Expanding your ego and your ego grows and grows and encom- passes the whole world, the whole universe. You have complete knowledge of the universe, of the world in which you live and you think this is going to free you. Freedom comes when youre empty, when you know nothing. Thats when youre free, completely absolutely free. Not when you accumulate knowledge yet you keep on doing it. And you will keep on doing it until life throws you around so much, that youll get disgusted with this world and start searching for answers within yourself. Then you will know that you have to give up everything, not gain anything. Youll have to drop everything you ever learnt. Everything that youve learnt in school, in your travels. All of this must be given up if you want to be free, if you want to be liberated. Liberation is your very nature, your swarrupa. Absolute reality is what you really are. Pure awareness. But its emptiness. These things are totally empty of anything. Pure awareness, absolute reality does not carry any knowledge to it. It does not contain any bit of knowl- edge whatsoever. It is emptiness. Total absolute emptiness. Emptiness is what makes the universe comes to pass. It is out of the emptiness that the universe grows. Everything comes from nothing. There is a story I tell you every once in a while about the boy who is going to the school on Advaita and the teacher is telling him, Everything is nothing. Everything comes out of nothing, there is no creator, there is no creation. Its all nothingness. And the boy keeps telling the teacher, I dont understand this please tell me more, explain it to me more. I do not comprehend what youre talking about. The teacher told the student, Go out and get me a fig thats hanging on a fig tree outside. So the students obeyed obedi- ently and he brought the teacher a fig. The teacher said, Cut open the fig, what do you see? The boy said, I see seeds, tiny little seeds. Here is a razor blade open the seed and tell me what you see. He opened the seed with a razor blade, a little hard to do but inside the seed there was a hollow, nothing, emptiness and the teacher wisely said, The emptiness that you see in the seed produces the fig tree. When you see emptiness within yourself you will then realize that the whole universe emanates out of your own mind, but the mind must be free and clear. The mind must be empty like the seed to realize this. And so it is with us. Were all looking for freedom, for happiness, for fulfillment, for joy, but you are all of these things. Youve always been all of these things. Nothing can stop you from being this. You can only stop yourself by accepting your limitations and the biggest limitation is that you were born as a person. You are consciousness, youre not a person, you have never been a person, even though you appear to be a person. You must find this out for yourself, by going deep within yourself and see that Im telling you the truth. Who are you? What are you? Never accept things as they are. Nothing is as it ap- pears due to the fact that we live in a world of constant change. So nothing is ever the same. Youre not the same person you were ten years ago, twenty years ago, youre a to- tally different person now. So where did you really come from? What is life all about? There are valid answers to these questions but you have to discover them for yourself. You should not believe a word Im saying to you. Find out for yourself. You are the one with the answers, yet you keep reacting to life outside of yourself. You keep allowing the world to show you how you should feel. If the world shows you something nice and good you become happy. If it shows you something that is not nice or good you become miserable. Depending on your upbringing, what you believe is good, what you believe is bad. But yet nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. It is your mind that dictates to you and tells you that this is good or this is bad. It is your mind that tells you that this is right and this is wrong. Where did you mind get this knowledge? From experience. But is experience the truth? No. The experience is not the truth, its just your training, how you grew up. If you want to make this world a better world in which to live look within yourself and inquire, Who lives? Whos world is this? To whom does this world belong? Some of you are saying to yourself, It belongs to God. How can it belong to God if you dont even know what God is? The word God is just a word that youve been trained to say. You picked up the word in your church, in your synagogue, in your mosque, in your temple, God. People kill for God, rape for God, murder for God, do all these dastardly things in the name of God, their God. My God is better than your God. Its like a world full of kindergardeners, fighting with each other, killing each other, murdering each other. Trying to achieve success for ourselves or we step on somebody else. Were filled with fears, frustrations, most of us become psychopaths and we think were living. Youre not living until you know who you are, until you find out what you are. What you are doing now is vegetating. Most of us are not satisfied with our lives and we try to improve our lives and what do we do we try to improve everything external to ourselves and this can never be done. We try to change our environment, meet certain people, do certain things and we think this will make us happy. But it only lasts for a short time doesnt it? And youre back to what you were before. This world can never make you happy, its impossible. It may appear to make you happy for a while because youre gaining something that you want. But it will only last a short time. True happy...true happiness comes from nothing. When your happiness arises from nothingness then youre really happy, because nothing made you happy and nothing can take it away. If something makes you happy then if something take it away you will be miserable. But if you learn to achieve happiness from nothing this is everlasting. It will never leave you because there is nothing to change. The same is true for peace of mind. If you want peace of mind stop reacting to lifes situations. Turn within to yourself. Nothing can keep you back from knowing your- self except you. Know yourself! Who am I? Where did I come from? What is the cause of the I? These questions must be pondered within yourself and inquired within the self over and over again. In all situations at all times. Do not think about what Im saying to you. When you think about it you spoil it. Do not accept anything Im saying to you. If you accept it there will be a fight within yourself. Your ego will fight you at every turn. So how are you to react to me? Youre not to react to me at all. Listen to the words I speak to you. Just become still within yourself. Never attempt to analyze anything I say. Empty yourself, and the truth of life will be revealed to you. Get rid of this extra- neous knowledge and then you will know. Remember you do not know by acquiring knowledge, you know by getting rid of the knowledge. When you are empty you will know. As long as you are filled with knowledge then you will know relative knowledge of this world, but you will never know the truth of your existence, of who you are, where you came from. With all these things you have to be empty, not full. You appear to have taken the body that you have because of karmic reasons. The body that you appear to have right now, you have created yourself. You have made this body and now you appear as it. If you do not like who you are or what you are, first real- ize that you have made the body for yourself, then understand that you are not the body. You have never been the body, even though you have appeared to have made it out of karma. When I say you have made this body out of karmic substance, I mean every so- called cell of your existence appears to be under the laws and influences of karma, and everything you do has been preordained. Every step you take, every move you make, has been preordained. Youre like a puppet on the strings being manipulated by the laws of karma. Therefore you appear to be not free at all. Now how do we get out of this trap? The first thing we do is we surrender everything to the Self, everything. We do not try to analyze things and figure it out or try to come up with more knowledgeable facts about who we are or what we are. We surrender it all, we give it all up to the Self. We surrender everything to the Self, everything. Then we inquire, Who am I? Who appears as this body? Where did this body come from? To whom does it come? Then you say, Why it comes to me. I feel this body. I feel hurt, sad, happy, depressed, peaceful. All these changes are going on within me. But then catch yourself and remember that you said, I feel these things. Not you, but I. You are the imperishable Self that was never born and can never die. You are the absolute reality, Brahman, infinite bliss consciousness. This is what you are, but I is the ego. Therefore you begin to follow the I to its source. For I is the first pronoun that you learnt when youre born. You say, I, mine, thats what inflates the ego. Now youre going to reverse the situation. You are going to cause the I, the ego, to return to its source from whence it came which is pure awareness, sat-chit-ananda, the atma Brahman. The I causes everything to happen to you thats happened to you. You are the I, the ego I. Follow it, follow it to its source. When the I goes into its source, its completely swallowed up and your true nature emerges, all-pervading, all-encompassing. Whatever happens to you, wherever you go, whatever you do, practice self-inquiry. It doesnt matter where you are, whether youre in prison or a castle or market place, if you live in Egypt, wherever you live it doesnt matter. Who am I? should be asked of yourself twenty-four hours a day. Where do I come from? What is my real nature? Who feels hurt? Who feels depressed? Who feels this way? Who feels that way? I do. Then who am I? So the important point to remember, do not acquire any more knowledge. For it sort of makes sense to you to realize the more knowledge you acquire the more your ego grows. That is what youre doing expanding your ego more and more and more. Then some of you are saying, If I do not acquire any knowledge then how am I going to make a living? Nobody will hire a dummy. See youre becoming judgmental. Youre believing that unless you have relative knowledge that you cant get a job, you cant work on the contrary. When you let go of the relative knowledge there is a power that knows how to make mangoes grow on a mango tree, oranges grow on orange trees. The power that makes the grass grow. The power that makes the sun shine, the rain fall. That power will sustain you and maintain you of this I can assure you, when you let go of all the knowledge that youve had. But as long as youre fearful to let go, then you have to fetch for yourself. It appears that you have to make your own life. But when you develop faith then you will realize that there is nothing in this world that can give me anything. Everything comes from within. All my needs are met from within. And you turn within more and more each day, surrendering everything and everybody. Then you will find that youre in the right place, going through those experiences that youre supposed to go through, totally happy, completely peaceful and all is well. Lets practice this right now. Close your eyes. Free yourself of any...of all your preconceived ideas, your dogma, your feelings, everything. Feel yourself becoming perfectly empty. Feel all those years of karma loosening up. Feel how light youre becoming. Youre breaking down the circumference of your body, as you begin to expand throughout the universe. Feel that youve got no shape, no circumference. All the animals, all the plants, all of the people of the world are all within you and you keep on growing and growing until you feel all of the planets, the galaxy, all within you. Feel all of your Gods that youve always believed in, the heavenly bodies, the heavens, the hells, all of your beliefs are all within you. All within yourself. Surrender every- thing to the Self. Give up everything. Feel how light youre becoming, how happy youre becoming by surrendering everything, that you have no life of your own any more. From now on consciousness will be your guide. You will never worry about anything again. You will never be concerned about anything again. For the power which knows the way is now active in your life. Become aware of your respiration, as you inhale say, I, as you exhale say, am. I- am encompasses the entire universe. Your real nature is in I-am. With your breathing in- hale, I, exhale, am. As you exhale feel the thousands of years of karma going out of you, youre blowing it out. Youre inhaling the I-am, reality. (silence as tape ends) [TOC] https://youtube/watch?v=oSOsPh2a5DA
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 14:02:24 +0000
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