Om, shanti, shanti, shanti, om. Peace, peace. Good evening. I welcome you with all my heart. It is a pleasure to see you again. It is always good to be with you.
Every once in a while I ask you the question, "Why do you come to satsang?" What is the reason that you come here? What do you want to achieve? What are you looking for? Perhaps some of you ladies come here to meet interesting gentlemen. Some of you fellows come here to meet some ladies. That's OK, if that's what you're looking for. Some of you come here to judge the speaker, to compare him with other speakers, other teachers.
Most of you are aware that in the greater L. A. area, most spiritual people are burnt out, so to speak. They’ve been to so many movements, so many teachers, so many so called gurus. They don't know what to believe, what to accept. Always remember, the true teacher is in your heart. The real teacher is within you. A person who has gone within for many years, has become silent within, will be attracted to the same silence in the without. In other words, they will come to the place that agrees with the within. When you have attained a degree of spiritual knowledge, truth, realization from within, you will meet the sage or the teacher without. It’s the same difference. There’s no difference whatsoever.
But those of you who shop for teachers, who shop for gurus, who go shopping for spiritual life, will always be disappointed, for you will find some fault wherever you go. And again, the fault that you find, is also within yourself. Everything is within yourself. You've got all the answers. Don't look to me for the answers. You've got all the answers yourself. They're within you. I'm only here to advise you that you are free and liberated. That's all I'm doing. I'm here to tell you don't do anything. Whatever you're looking for, you already are, you already have. You are that.
It's amusing and funny to me that so many of us are looking for enlightenment, looking for realization, looking for liberation, looking for peace, when we’re already immersed in that. Consciousness is our very nature. We are that. And the interesting thing is, you cannot put down consciousness in any way. There’s nothing you can do to it. You cannot taint it. You cannot dishevel it. You cannot burn it. You cannot kill it. It is all-pervading. If it is all-pervading, and you are that, how can you think there's something that's keeping you back from realization? How can you believe there’s something somewhere else that's got hold of you, that’s keeping you back from seeing yourself, knowing yourself and being yourself?
There’s no room for anything else. The self pervades all space and time. There’s nothing else. So how can you think there is such a thing as sickness, lack, limitation, depression, and these things that some of us go on with believing we have a fight on our hands, something to overcome. That's a joke, funny, ha-ha.
There is no thing that you have to overcome. There is no karma that you have to overcome. There are no samskaras. You’re not a sinner. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect just the way you are. You are the self, the immutable self, self-contained absolute reality. You have always been this. You are this. And nothing can tarnish this.
Just understanding what I'm saying will liberate you, totally. You are perfect right now, this moment, just the way you are. There is absolutely nothing you have to do, or become, or read, or seek. You are that now. All you have to do is to accept this. Nothing can change this, no matter what you think, no matter what is going on in your mind, what you may think is wrong with your life, what you may think is right with your life. None of that matters. You are freedom, total freedom, total joy, total peace, total Love.
Think of a block of ice. Picture a block of ice. You've all seen a block of ice. And you pour a few grains of sand on the ice. What happens? The ice cleans itself, doesn't it? It washes itself clean of the sand. So it is with consciousness. Consciousness always washes away those things that
do not belong to it. The superimpositions, the images, the thoughts, the beliefs, are like grains of sand on the ice. Always washing itself free from anything that comes upon it. What I'm trying to say is you cannot affect consciousness. Nothing you can do can affect consciousness or change it in any way. It is your liberation. It is your freedom. It is you.
No matter what your mind tells you, no matter what your mind does to you, no matter how your body appears or what your body is doing, it’s a lie. It is not the truth. There is only one truth, and that truth is the absolute reality, what we call God, sat-chit-ananda, pure awareness. That is the one truth, and you are that. It's you.
What have you been doing with your life? What are you thinking about? What are you feeling? There is nothing to let go of. There is nothing to change. For if you have to let go of something or you have to change something, you're saying that something existed in your life that has to be changed, that has to be removed. And that's impossible. Can't you see that it’s impossible? There's no room for it. For wherever you look there's all-pervading consciousness. Everywhere. There's no room for anything else. This means you are totally free, totally liberated. Congratulations.
Do you feel liberated. Some of you don't feel liberated. I can look at you and see this. What do you feel? What is there to feel except liberation? What are you afraid of? What could possibly happen to you? You cannot die. You will never die because there is no such thing as death. You cannot suffer, for no one suffers. This may sound strange to some of you, but where would the suffering come from if we knew that God, penetrating the universe, is all pervasive? And there’s nothing else. How can you suffer? Just to see this, to understand this, frees you from suffering.
Even when I say who suffers, or we say the ego suffers, that's also for kindergarten people. There is no ego to suffer. This is something you must remember. Self-inquiry, that we practice, is simply a method to get us to the place where we see that no one suffers, there’s nothing going on. But some of us do not have to practice self-inquiry. We can go right beyond it, and see there’s no suffering, there’s no one to suffer, there’s no one that’s hurtable, and there’s no problems. There’s nothing to fix. Every time you try to remedy something, what you're saying to yourself is something is wrong, and you have to take some action to fix it up.
But I'm telling you there is no place in this universe, where there can be anything wrong, for consciousness is the only power. So how can there be anything wrong, to begin with, to fix. Things like karma, samskaras, samsara, all these things are just told to you, so we can write books. And you can read these books and drive yourself crazy with them, one after the other, read hundreds of books. They give you names for everything on this earth, that names your suffering, and how to get rid of it. There's no such thing. Why won't you believe me?
There's nothing going on that you have to remedy, or fix, or rectify. All you really have to do is turn within and realize that you are perfect, right now, just the way you are. Do not try to analyze this statement. Do not try to figure it out. Just accept it, and do it, and be it. If you’d only say to yourself, "I am perfect just the way I am, and all is well, and everything is unfolding as it should." That's all you have to do.
But nooooo... You refuse to do that. Instead you want to think about it, try to figure out what it means, how it applies to you, and compare it to the problems that you think you have, and all you do is to perpetuate your misery. You are all gods. Not gods in the making. You're all gods right now. All there is of God, whatever was of God, is you, right this moment, this time, this second. You are that, right this moment
Every time you look at yourself as a human being, you are committing blasphemy, for you are putting yourself down. Who told you you were human to begin with? Where did you ever learn that you are a human being, in school, in churches, your parents taught you? This is a lie that has been perpetuated since the beginning of time, that you’re a human being. You're not human. You never were human. And no matter how human you think you are, the time will come when you will see that you're not human, and you will rejoice.
Why not let this happen now, here, tonight. Why not understand your divinity right now and accept it. It's not hard to do. Remember, there’s nothing to let go of. You do not have to affirm yourself to death, saying things like, "I let go now of all of my fears, all my sorrows." There are no fears and no sorrows to let go of. There never were any like that. They do not exist. Try to remember there’s absolutely nothing to let go of. There’s only to be. In other words, you do not have to redeem yourself. You do not have to pray to an anthropomorphic deity up in the sky somewhere. There’s nothing you have to do, for you are already that. You have always been that, and you’re that right now, beautiful, happy, joyous, fulfilled, complete, absolute. It's wonderful.
Feel your freedom. Feel the total feeling that you've missed all these years. Feel it right now. There is no tomorrow, so don't wait until tomorrow to feel what you're feeling. Feel it right now. Do not wait until things get better in your life. There’s no such time. This is it. There is nothing else.
If you cannot do this, or it's too hard for you, then try to keep your mind stayed on God. If your mind is stayed on God, then everything will work itself out in your life. That means if you have decisions to make, things to overcome, if you believe you have problems in your life, whatever you believe, turn from this belief. Do not consider this belief any longer, this situation or condition, and turn to consciousness, to God, the same thing. Allow your mind to rest on God.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because a fellow called me Tuesday night, a young boy. I had been doing some counseling with him. He comes from a foster home. He’s been in jail a few times. And one of his counselors got a hold of our transcripts, and spoke to me, and asked me if I could talk to this boy, because he seemed to be spiritually inclined. So I've been seeing him a couple of nights a month, for about three or four months.
He called me this evening, and he told me he was in jail, if I could bail him out. I asked him what happened. So he said, "I did what you told me to, I kept my mind on God. This is what happened." He said he went into Lucky's, and filled a cart up with goods, and walked out door with it, and a security guard caught him. So he asked me, "What happened? I kept my mind on God. Why did this happen to me?"
This is true with all of us. We think we can keep our mind on God, and this gives us license to do whatever we want. The truth of the matter is, if you kept your mind on God, and you were really in God, involved in God completely, what we call God, which is absolute reality, which is consciousness, you would never even feel like hurting anybody else. You can't hurt anybody else. It's impossible. It's virtually impossible to hurt another human being if your mind is stayed on God.
When your mind is stayed on God, it means you have surrendered completely, totally, absolutely, to that which is divine, sacred, which is your self. You have turned within, and given it all up to God. Therefore your life becomes a blessing. If you can do it, truly do this, not make a statement and talk about it, but truly surrender yourself so completely that you have nothing to think about, nothing to say, you're giving yourself away to the universal intelligence, absolutely, then you will find things will work themselves out totally and completely. Every move that you make will be divinely inspired. Every step that you take will be divinely guided. Everything you do will be sacred.
So we're not making an affirmation. We are simply surrendering ourselves to that which is. We're just dropping ourselves completely, totally, to that which is, to that which always was, to the universal intelligence, to the infinite presence, which is and has always been, and will always be, that perfect something, that you are right now, this minute.
Ponder these things. Think of these things when you get up in the morning, before you go to sleep, during the day. Understand that you are not alone. Look at the boundless space all around you. Understand that you are that boundless space. This is you. The body is a false image. It doesn’t really exist. It has no background. By no background I mean it never came from anywhere. The body is a bad dream. It therefore is up to you to stop thinking about your body, your affairs, your life, and surrender those thoughts to the self, which is you, the infinite self. It will take care of everything for you.
This has to be done by you. You can go through your life trying to overcome problems, trying to make things better for you, trying to hold on to the goodness that you've got already, but things will change as they must. So I say to you stop being human. Stop trying to work things out. Nothing really ever happens to you that you have to work things out.
If something really happened, you'd have a job on your hands trying to work things out. You'd really have a tough job, trying to straighten things out. It would never end. There would always be something for you to straighten out, something to fix. Turn from everything. Turn away to the one presence, the one power, the one self, the one which is unaffected by person, place or thing, yet which accommodates everything in itself.
I'm not saying to identify with anything. Do not look for identification with anything. Do not look for anything. Just be. See what I'm trying to say? Leave it alone. Do not try to change a thing. Leave everything alone Just by leaving everything alone, you will become what you are. You will be aware of your own divinity, by leaving everything alone. The worst thing you could ever do is to try to change bad situations to good situations, for you're playing with the law of cause and effect. Which means sometimes you’ll have a good situation, sometimes you’ll have a bad situation. You’ll go round and round this way.
Leave everything alone. Leave the world alone. You will find that when you do this, your so called body will take care of itself, it will know what to do, it will do the right thing at the right time, and it will be a blessing to everyone. Stop trying to make things happen for yourself. Stop comparing yourself to others. Live a simple life. The simpler your life can be, the better.
I know some of you think this is impossible, for you’re involved in so many things. You are afraid that something will happen if you give up the things you're involved in. I'm not saying to give up anything. It all starts in your mind, not in your activities. Continue to do what you're doing, but in your mind give up the fear, the frustration, the anxiety, that’s been motivating you, leading to all of these things, making you do all these things. This is what I'm asking you to give up, the mental stages. Then your fears will follow. Your physical life will follow. Everything will take care of itself. When you become peaceful mentally, then the peace that is mental becomes physical, and your whole world will be a world of peace.
Always remember you are like a mirror. A mirror cannot see itself. It sees its reflection. What kind of a reflection are you seeing in your life? Everyone sees something else.
Be still. Stop struggling. Enter the holy shrine of your heart, and there find peace and joy. You have always been perfect and you will always be perfect. There’s absolutely nothing you have to delete or add. Remember why? If you have to delete something from your life, or add something to your life, what you're doing is you're saying, "There is something else going on in this universe besides perfection, so I have to add something to my life or delete something in my life."
But I say to you there’s only perfection. Only the absolute reality exists. Only sat-chit-ananda is. Pure awareness exists. You are that. You have always been that. You will always be that, no matter what you say, what you do, what you hear. You are totally perfect, totally pure, untainted. This is called the self. You are the self, right now, right this minute, right this second. Hearing me say this to you will awaken you, and set you totally free, right now.
So be it. Peace.
