The Human Soul in Courage and Fear(Rudolf)

*note* great links about Rudolf Steiner above..are they worthy of reading?..I don't know,but I found this one which appear important..

-added by danny-

The habits of thinking that have come to be accepted in the modern study of nature [Naturerkenntnis] can yield no satisfying results for the study of the soul. What one would grasp with these habits of thinking must either be spread out in repose before the soul or, if the object of knowledge is in movement, the soul must feel itself extricated from this movement. For to participate in the movement of the object of knowledge means to lose oneself in it, to transform oneself, so to speak, into it.

How should the soul grasp itself, however, in an act of knowing in which it must lose itself? It can expect selfknowledge only in an activity in which, step by step, it comes into possession of itself.

This can only be an activity that is creative. Here, however, a cause for uncertainty arises at once for the knower. He believes he will lapse into personal arbitrariness.

It is precisely this arbitrariness that he gives up in the knowledge of nature. He excludes himself and lets nature hold sway. He seeks certainty in a realm which his individual soul being does not reach. In seeking self-knowledge he cannot conduct himself in this way. He must take himself along wherever he seeks to know. He therefore can find no nature on his path to self-knowledge. For where she would encounter him, there he is no longer to be found.

This, however, provides just the experience that is needed with regard to the spirit. One cannot expect other than to find the spirit when, through one's own activity, nature, as it were, melts away; that is, when one experiences oneself ever more strongly in proportion to one's feeling this melting away.

If one fills the soul with something that afterward proves to be like a dream in its illusory character, and one experiences the illusory in its true nature, then one becomes stronger in one's own experience of self. In confronting a dream, one's thinking corrects the belief one has in the dream's reality while dreaming. Concerning the activity of fantasy, this correction is not needed because one did not have this belief. Concerning the meditative soul activity, to which one devotes oneself for spirit-knowledge, one cannot be satisfied with mere thought correction. One must correct by experiencing. One must first create the illusory thinking with one's activity and then extinguish it by a different, equally strong, activity.

In this act of extinguishing, another activity awakens, the spirit-knowing activity. For if the extinguishing is real, then the force for it must come from an entirely different direction than from nature. With the experienced illusion one has dispersed what nature can give; what inwardly arises during the dispersion is no longer nature.

With this activity something is needed that does not come into consideration in the study of nature: inner courage. With it one must take hold of what inwardly arises. In the study of nature one needs to hold nothing inwardly. One lets oneself be held by what is external. Inner courage is not needed here. One forgets it. This forgetting then causes anxiety when the spiritual is to enter the sphere of knowledge. Fear is felt because one might grope in a void if one no longer could hold onto nature.

This fear meets one at the threshold to spirit knowledge. And fear causes one to recoil from this knowledge. One now becomes creative in recoiling instead of in pressing forward. One does not allow the spirit to shape creative knowledge in oneself; one invents for oneself a sham logic for disputing the justification of spirit knowledge. Every possible sham reason is brought forward to spare one from acknowledging the spiritual, because one retreats trembling in fear of it.

Instead of spirit knowledge, then, there arises out of the creative force that which now appears in the soul when it draws back from nature, the enemy of spirit knowledge: first, as doubt concerning all knowledge that extends beyond nature; and then, as the fear grows, as an anti-logic that would banish all spirit knowledge to the realm of the fantastic.

Whoever has learned to move cognitively in the spirit often sees in the refutations of this knowledge its strongest evidence; for it becomes clear to him how in the soul, step by step, the refuter chokes down his fear of the spirit, and how in choking it he creates this sham logic. With such a refuter there is no point in arguing, for the fear befalling him arises in the subconscious. The consciousness tries to rescue itself from this fear. It feels at first that should this anxiety arise, it would inundate the whole inner experience with weakness. It is true, the soul cannot escape from this weakness, for one feels it rising up from within. If one ran away it would follow one everywhere. He who proceeds further in the knowledge of nature and, in his dedication to it feels obliged to preserve his own self, never escapes from this fear if he cannot acknowledge the spirit. Fear will accompany him, unless he is willing to give up the knowledge of nature along with spirit knowledge. He must somehow rid himself of this fear in his pursuit of the science of nature. In reality he cannot do so. The fear is produced in the: subconscious during the study of nature. It continually attempts to rise up out of the subconscious into consciousness. Therefore one refutes in the thought world what one cannot remove from the reality of soul experience.

And this refutation is an illusory layer of thought covering the subconscious fear. The refuter has not found the courage to come to grips with the illusory, just as in the meditative life he has to obliterate illusion in order to attain spiritual reality. For this reason he interposes the false arguments of his refutation into that region of the life of the soul that now arises. They soothe his consciousness; he ceases to feel the fear that, all the same, remains in his subconscious.

The denial of the spiritual world is a desire to run away from one's own soul. This, however, represents an impossibility. One must remain with oneself. And because one may run away but not escape from oneself, one takes care that in running one loses sight of oneself. It is the same with the entire human being in the soul realm, however, as it is with the eye with a cataract. The eye can then no longer see. It is darkened within itself.

So, too, the denier of spirit knowledge darkens his soul. He causes its darkening through sham reasoning born of fear. He avoids healthy clarification of the soul; he creates for himself an unhealthy soul darkening. The denial of spirit knowledge has its origin in a cataract affliction of the soul.

Thus one is ultimately led to the inner spiritual strength of the soul when one is willing to see the justification of spirit knowledge. And the way to such a knowledge can be had only through the strengthening of the soul. The meditative activity, preparing the soul for spirit knowledge, is a gradual conquest of the soul's “fear of the void.” This void, however, is only a “void of nature,” in which the “fullness of the spirit” can manifest itself if one wishes to take hold of it. Nor does the soul enter this “fullness of the spirit” with the arbitrariness it has when acting through the body in natural life; the soul enters this fullness at the moment when the spirit reveals to the soul the creative will, before which the arbitrariness, existing only in natural life, dissolves in the same way as nature herself dissolves.

The funny chronic of E.J Gold

*note* funny chronic....worthy of examination.
-added by danny-

"If we want to discover our chronic, all we have to do is go into horizontal sleep and have somebody shake us awake in the wee hours of the night or sometime in the pre-dawn and observe our first reaction. That will be our chronic.   

The machine doesn't want to enter the waking state; it resists it right up to the last moment. But once it's in the waking state, it can't imagine what it was ever doing in the sleeping state, why it preferred the sleeping state, why it developed a defense mechanism against this wonderful waking state, and may even wish never to return to the sleeping state again. 

But when it has returned once again to the sleeping state, it can't imagine what it ever saw in the waking state, and it wants to stay where it is now just as powerfully as it wanted to remain in the waking state a few moments or hours ago."
"...there's a barrier between the sleeping state and the waking state. This barrier is maintained by the chronic. You actually are quite frequently near the waking state.
"In fact, as a child you were probably in the waking state almost all of the time, and the chronic developed to bring the machine into the sleeping state so that it could function...
"...Social, economic and cultural functionings are governed by the sleeping state..."
"...when you look at the machine - or view the machine from the standpoint that the machine is actually functioning correctly in the sleeping state - as far as its survival in the ordinary sense is concerned, you'll have compassion for the machine in the sense that you'll recognize the wisdom of the machine in developing the chronic defence mechanism in the first place so that it can maintain the sleeping state, and therefore, function properly from the cultural view..."
"...People react differently... Someone whose chronic is anger will be angry upon being awakened suddenly from a sound sleep, especially a sleep which contains a dream. It could also be resentment, hysteria, shock or fear; it depends upon the chronic."
"...You were in the waking state most of the time as a child. What happened is that the defence mechanism in the sleeping state imposed itself very little, in which case, you didn't become an adult, you just got to be a bigger kid. Where the defence mechanism kicked in,
you became an adult.

"The defence mechanism kicked in because somebody you trusted - implicitly trusted - told you to develop the defence mechanism against the waking state and to grow up - in a particular way - to adopt certain habits and make behaviour modifications and so forth..."
"...Shamanism is a way of reintegrating the sleeping state from the waking state deliberately, freely leaving the sleeping state, entering the waking state, and then leaving the waking state and entering the sleeping state at will... To enter the sleeping state from the waking state, you must enter it without fear - without the fear that you're going to be trapped there..."
"...The key to awakening is actually hidden away in the sleeping state..."
"...The machine avoids the waking state because it 'dreads' having to put the meaning of its ordinary existence back together again. The sleeping state has to be reconstructed each time from the waking state. It's all shattered and fragmented into its 'skandas', its primary components.
"That 'is' what the Bardo Todol is all about: the reintegration of the primary components of the sleeping state which periodically shatter and are put together and shatter again and are put together, and which the machine avoids. That is to say, it avoids the fragmentation of the waking state. It avoids the loss of face..."
"...If you ask anyone on the street, 'What is the purpose of your existence?' they will give you an answer which translates roughly to, 'My purpose in existing is to maintain the sleeping state of the machine.' It translates that way.
"They may say it in a different way and they may have totally different ways of going about it, but it will come to this, that everything they do reinforces the maintenance of the machine's sleep..."
"...another name for the chronic defence mechanism is chief weakness, and in the Gurdjieff terms, chief feature. It all boils down to 'how your machine defends itself against the waking state..."
"...What I plan to show you is how to re-enter the sleeping state without the chronic, and how to maintain the sleeping state without the chronic, or by using the chronic in a conscious way. At the same time, you must learn how to use the chronic to thread your way through the labyrinth out of the sleeping state into the waking state. The chronic will tell you whether you are hot or cold. So eventually, you are going to have to have the courage to stimulate the chronic right up into the waking state..."
"...The majority of popular movements or self-development programs are designed to maintain the sleeping state and to go as far from the waking state as possible. In this way, the chronic defence mechanism remains perpetually unstimulated. If you see that, you
understand what calmatives are all about..."
"...you don't want a calm environment in a school. The calm state is what we would call a 'false waking state'. False waking state mimics the waking state but in a much lower scale..."
"...Catharsis - blowing it off - leads to the false waking state. You'll also find it available to you in skydiving, hanggliding, impact sports, roller coasters, downhill skiing, many things in the sports area which push your machine to the limit. You'll find that when it goes past that limit, a false waking state is produced..."
"...Remember that the chronic serves as thread through the labyrinth of sleep toward the waking state. One way is that you can work toward the waking state, which will activate the chronic. At this point, you can note that the chronic is getting more and more intense which indicates that you're getting closer to the waking state with the machine. So you can use the chronic as an indicator.
"Another way is to actually allow the chronic to deepen, to intensify itself, to wildly allow it to become deeper and deeper up to the point where it would be expressed, 'but not expressing it'. I don't mean suppressing it, I mean not expressing; there's a difference. At that point, at the very, very verge of the waking state, you must hold everything in rein, hold yourself in check and wait. Sure enough, the waking state will be produced..."
"It sounds like hell!!!"
"It is hell! If you were in heaven, you wouldn't work for the waking state, would you? The Buddhists knew this. Only in hell could you work toward awakening. It's the only place that will motivate you well enough..."


Slimeworld WareHouse -- Esoteric Lectures:
http://www.slimeworld.org/warehouse/totm/totm019.html"""I understand completely what You have been trying to explain to me through the analogy of that story, Lord," I said. "But it still leaves me in the dark about what happened to Harold."

"You ignorant twit!" His voice was silky. "You do not need to know anything about this. It would simply serve to satisfy your already overwrought imagination and curiosity."

"But Lord..."

 

"But Me no buts! In the course of human events, it eventually became necessary for me to encapsulate their world into a completely mechanical process. These beings, on their typically circuitous paths, were already quite destructive...

"This mechanical format of existence for humans is all that prevents them from destroying the objective pattern of their world, and that of all forms. The problem for them is that although the Essence is immortal, it is usually stupid, while the body and psyche are very intelligent but limited in duration to the life of the planetary body, which even though it recurs endlessly, is not always occupied by the same being, for as soon as the body has run down through entropic failure the essence separates from it, leaving it to blend once again with the organic body from which it arose. 

"Unless the being who has up to that time inhabited that planetary body has transformed the Essence into an active and permanent entity in which habits have been formed consciously along certain definite lines...thus helping to create the subtle body required for the placement of a soul, and in that way justifying and completing my hopes for humans on the moon earth...Do you understand what I am trying to tell you, Gabriel?"

"Yes,Lord, but what happened to Harold?" 

The Lord compassionately drove His right knee smartly into my groin, which is an already agreed-upon signal between us that I had in some way failed to comprehend exactly what he had been saying. 

"This can only mean one thing, Gabriel," He said. "A basic inability to grasp the subject at hand--and far worse, since a simple intellectual understanding of these ideas is of no value, an example of vivifying force will have to be used."

The Lord sat back and waited for that bit of information to sink in, and I, sure that I had already received sufficient data at that moment for the attainment of a new gradation of reason one degree above Ankhlad, periodically felt at the top of my head for any sign of the appropriate horns, which I expected imminently, according to some very intricate calculations using the old Gregorian calendar and some litmus paper. But all I got for my trouble was scalp flakes on the fingertips--and suddenly I realized that after all this time I still had no idea what had happened to Harold.

Habits are so completely automatic that our nonphenomenal attention is blind to them. We are not able to study the habits of the machine directly, because when we exert our attention upon the machine, the machine wakes up a little and the habits disappear momentarily. The most difficult manifestations to observe are those tiny little unconscious habitual expressions of the motor centrum. The smaller they are, the harder they fall. 

  To be able to gather data about the very smallest negative manifestations, those most automatic, we must receive help from outside because the machine cannot be trusted to give us correct information about itself. A work-circle is useful for this, because in the beginning we really cannot see the manifestations of our own machines with enough impartiality to categorize them. The habits of the motor centrum are so trivial that we may not be able to see them without special help, and for this we must use a group of people engaged in similar work, who can see our machine with much more objectivity than we can ourselves. Naturally they may miss one or two particularly revolting manifestations, but leave that for later. Sometimes an outside observer can catch us in an uncustomary posture and delineate it clearly to us, even considering our clouded vision.

Let's say you have been practicing. Then what are you doing with a paperback version of this book? Well, first of all, it's absolutely necessary to rid oneself of that pride peculiar to human primates, that conviction that we need none of this stuff because we're already there. This is just the sort of arrogant nonsense that's going to guarantee that we get knocked off in the first stages of the between-lives section of the labyrinth. Imagine someone saying to the Clear Light, 'Well, as it happens, I was just a Sufi before I woke up dead!' That puts a nice neat barrier between you and a gentle blending with the Absolute, doesn't it? 

When you first came into the cosmos, your idea principally was--or at any rate your hope is now--to maintain the thread of consciousness throughout your experience in the universe, Usually it works out that what with all the fascination and sudden experiences and emotional-sensory shocks, and sympathy with the focus of attention of the biological machine, and constant demands on your attention, before you realize that you're being quietly dragged into a tar-baby little by little (you rarely get caught all at once), there you are, nodding ironically, muttering something in the general direction of 'Sonofabitch! Got me again!'

Self-Remembering-Ouspensky

*note* I'm not a big fan of Ouspensky(Gurdjieff's disciple) but for the sake of the link I'll introduce this post.Be aware he talks from the seekers point of view.
-added by danny-
...................................

Trap: Split Personality. Keeping our spiritual and personal life separate, we fall into a trap. We think that spiritual work is not related to our day-to-day actions and keep the two sides of ourselves, the actual personality and the spiritual ego, separate and unconscious of each other. We are thus capable of being a negative self-serving robot while believing and projecting we are a sincere seeker of Truth.

Tricks: Here are three tricks to bridge the gap between our ego/idea of ourselves and our fact status:

1. Practice a technique for seeing the personality indirectly. In the beginning, we may not be able to see ourselves directly, so the use of techniques such as dream study or journaling can help get us started on the path of self-discovery. Reading back through a journal can be a shock, we may think we are an earnest, positive and altruistic seeker, when the journal notes may show us to be a negative whiner who thinks only of himself.

2. Group Work. Nothing can help with seeing ourselves quite as much as the mirror of a group. To take advantage of the group setting though, one may need to learn to listen. Even in the work place, we may be getting all the information about ourselves we need, but refuse to hear it.

"Try to understand the necessity for introducing the methods and principles of the work in your personal life and first of all the necessity for right thinking on all personal questions and their possible relation to your work. Without this, you will never reach unity. You cannot allow one part of yourself to think wrongly and hope that another part will think rightly."

" Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and, having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease being a machine.

" Our ancestors were very rich and eminent people, and they left us an enormous inheritance, which we have completely forgotten, especially since the time when we began to consider ourselves the descendants of a monkey.

" If suffering did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, because without it one cannot come to correct self-remembering.

" When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

" Think about death. You do not know how much time remains to you. And remember that if you do not become different, everything will be repeated again, all foolish blunders, all silly mistakes, all loss of time and opportunity - everything will be repeated with the exception of the chance you had this time, because chance never comes in the same form.You will have to look for your chance next time. And in order to do this, you will have to remember many things, and how will you remember then if you do not remember anything now? " - P.D. Ouspensky

"Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry." - Charles Osgood

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

We must make mistakes says Gustav

*note* interesting talk from Gustav Jung..
-added by danny-
.................
Is Analytical Psychology a Religion?

After speaking at the Harvard Tercentenary Conference Jung spent a week at Bailey Island, Maine, giving the first half of
a seminar on "Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process," based on his 1935 Eranos lecture. Afterward, Jung traveled
to New York City for another week of consultations and lecturing, and he sailed for England on October 3.
After speaking at the Harvard Tercentenary Conference Jung spent a week at Bailey Island, Maine, giving the first half of
a seminar on "Dream Symbols of the Individuation Process," based on his 1935 Eranos lecture. Afterward, Jung traveled
to New York City for another week of consultations and lecturing, and he sailed for England on October 3. The previous
evening, during a farewell supper party, Jung talked extemporaneously. Several members of the audience took notes,
which were compiled by Eleanor Bertine, Esther Harding, and lane A. Pratt for restricted circulation among the members
of the group.
Finally in Spring 1972 the notes were published, as edited by Mrs. Pratt, who included the following introductory:

"Few who were there will ever forget the circumstances under which Jung spoke that evening. Immediately preceding the
supper with his friends, Jung had given a large public lecture in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. This lecture, entitled 'The
Concept of the Collective Unconscious,' was difficult, and dealt with controversial ideas crucial to the understanding of
his work. All of Jung's most prominent New York supporters and detractors had come to hear it. But the occasion was not
propitious. The lecture (at that time) required slides, a lot of them, and an enthusiastic follower had volunteered to project
them, but either this man's skills were insufficient, or the slides were possessed. They came on upside down or reversed,
and fell on the floor when he attempted to right them. If Jung wanted to see one again, they moved forward, if he said to
go on, they went back. So Jung stood, pointer in hand, on a raised platform before his huge audience, either waiting for
the right pictures to appear, or hurrying to comment intelligibly upon them before they passed on. Meanwhile his
adherents suffered. Reacting at first with great consideration to the awkwardness of his assistant, his remarks became
sharper by shades-since negative feelings will outand the suffering of the adherents increased. Yet that misfortunate
lecture ended without anything basically human being destroyed-not even Jung's relation to the assistant, who admitted
the justice of a certain irritation. Only the muddle and all the interruptions had completely destroyed the continuity of
Jung's important argument. Later he was reported to have told someone: 'I was analyzed tonight, if never before.' In
place of the impressive exposition that he planned, Jung had given a small demonstration. Conceivably this may have
influenced the content of what he said later"-as follows:

(Gustav speaks now,he enters the building)
I hardly know what to say to you tonight. I have talked so much, twice already this evening. I do not know what more
there is. I can only hope that something will come to me that I can give you.

Many people have asked me, and doubtless asked you too, whether analytical psychology is not really a religion. Also, in
connection with the subject of my Yale lectures, as well as that of the Seminar, I have had to give a great deal of
attention lately to the relation of psychology to religion. So now at the end of the Seminar I would like to speak to you
about this question. The activation of the unconscious is a phenomenon peculiar to our day. All through the Middle Ages
people's psychology was entirely different from what it is now; they had no realization of anything outside of
consciousness. Even the psychological science of the eighteenth century completely identified the psyche with
consciousness.
If you had a kind of X-ray by means of which you could observe the state of the unconscious in a man of two or three
hundred years ago and compare it with that in a modern man, you would see an enormous difference. In the first man it
would be quiescent; in the modern man, tremendously aroused and active. Formerly men did not even feel that they had
a psychology as we do now. The unconscious was contained and held dormant in Christian theology. The
Weltanschauung that resulted was universal, absolutely uniform-without room for doubt. Man had begun at a definite
point, with the Creation; everyone knew all about it. But today archetypal contents, formerly taken care of satisfactorily by
the explanations of the Church, have come loose from their projections and are troubling modern people. Questions as to
where we are going, and why, are asked on every side. The psychic energy associated with these contents is stirring as
never before; we cannot remain unconscious of it. Whole layers of the psyche are coming to light for the first time. That is
why we have so many flourishing "isms." Much of this energy goes into science, to be sure; but science is new, its
tradition is recent and does not satisfy archetypal needs. The present psychological situation is unprecedented; from the
point of view of all previous experience, it is abnormal.
As a result, men have begun to be aware that they have a psychology. A man from the past would have no
understanding of what we mean when we say that something is going on in our heads. Nothing like that happened to
him. Had he felt such a thing he would have thought himself crazy. Men used to say: "I feel something move in my heart"-
or, before that, they felt it lower down in the stomach. They were aware only of thoughts that moved the diaphragm or the
guts. The Greek word phren, meaning "spirit," is the root of the word "diaphragm." When people began to feel things
moving in their heads they were afraid, and they vent to the doctors, for they knew something was wrong. It was from the
doctors that this new kind of psychology came. So it is a somewhat pathological psychology.

Latency is probably the best condition for the unconscious. But life has gone out of the churches, and it will never go
back. The gods will not reinvest dwellings that once they have left. The same thing happened before, in the time of the
Roman Caesars, when paganism was dying. According to legend, the captain of a ship passing between two Greek
islands heard a great sound of lamentation and a loud voice crying: Pan ho megas tethneken, Great Pan is dead. When
this man reached Rome he demanded an audience with the emperor, so important was his news. Originally Pan was an
unimportant nature spirit, chiefly occupied with teasing shepherds; but later, as the Romans became more involved with
Greek culture, Pan was confused with to pan, meaning "the All." He became the demiurgos, the anima mundi. Thus the
many gods of paganism were concentrated into one God. Then came this message, "Pan is dead." Great Pan, who is
God, is dead. Only man remains alive. After that the one God became one man, and this was Christ; one man for all. But
now that too is gone, now every man has to carry God. The descent of spirit into matter is complete.

Jesus, you know, was a boy born of an unmarried mother. Such a boy is called illegitimate, and there is a prejudice
which puts him at a great disadvantage. He suffers from a terrible feeling of inferiority for which he is certain to have to
compensate. Hence the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, in which the kingdom was offered to him. Here he met his
worst enemy, the power devil; but he was able to see that, and to refuse. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world." But
"kingdom" it was, all the same. And you remember that strange incident, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The utter
failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" If you want to
understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to
the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he
had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the Cross his mission deserted him. But
because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body.

We all must do just what Christ did. We must make our experiment. We must make mistakes. We must live out our own
vision of life. And there will be error. If you avoid error you do not live; in a sense even it may be said that every life is a
mistake, for no one has found the truth. When we live like this we know Christ as a brother, and God indeed becomes
man. This sounds like a terrible blasphemy, but not so. For then only can we understand Christ as he would want to be
understood, as a fellow man; then only does God become man in ourselves.

This sounds like religion, but it is not. I am speaking just as a philosopher. People sometimes call me a religious leader. I
am not that. I have no message, no mission; I attempt only to understand. We are philosophers in the old sense of the
word, lovers of wisdom. That avoids the sometimes questionable company of those who offer a religion.

And so the last thing I would say to each of you, my friends, is: Carry through your life as well as you can, even if it is
based on error, because life has to be undone, and one often gets to truth through error. Then, like Christ, you will have
accomplished your experiment. So, be human, seek understanding, seek insight, and make your hypothesis, your
philosophy of life. Then we may recognize the Spirit alive in the unconscious of every individual. Then we become
brothers of Christ.(Gustav leaves the building)

Hello, and welcome to the mental health hotline...

Hello, and welcome to the mental health hotline...

# If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
# If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
# If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
# If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.
# If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transferred to the mother ship.
# If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.
# If you are a manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press, no one will answer.
# If you are dyslexic, press 9696969696969696.
# If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the pound key until a representative comes on the line.
# If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, telephone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's maiden name.
# If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, s-l-o-w-l-y and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y press 000.
# If you are bi-polar disease please leave a message after the beep, before the beep or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.
# If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9.
# If you have low self-esteem, please hang up. All operators are too busy to talk to you.

Your duty is to merge with the Source

*note*-great talk about Karma from Robert Adams-
-added by danny-
.................................
You Only Believe You Are Trapped by the World

Robert: Om, Shanti, Shanti, Om. Peace, peace. Good afternoon. I welcome you with all my heart. It is good to be with you once again. I love every one of you unconditionally.

Never judge things as they appear. Never look at the world and allow the world to tell you how things are. The world is false. There are all kinds of people living in the world, all kinds of beings, all kinds of animals, all kinds of insects, all kinds of birds.

Everything intermingles with everything else. Nothing is as it appears. By judging the world you become very frustrated and your equilibrium gets out of balance. Rather, turn within to Reality and see the truth which is within each one of us. The truth is that you are the universe. Everything in the whole universe is within you. You have given birth to the universe. If you did not exist there would be no universe as when you go to sleep at night. When you're in deep sleep the universe does not exist. You may say it exists but you don't know; it doesn't as far as you're concerned.

So it is with the Sage. It's like being asleep but awake. There is no universe yet there is a universe. What do you see when you look at the world?

Problems. Man's inhumanity to man? You're seeing what you are that's all you can ever see. Each one of us is like a mirror. A mirror can never see itself but sees it's reflection. There's only one. One is all-pervading, omnipresence, the Absolute Reality. That One is you. When you look at the world you're seeing yourself what else can you see? So if you're seeing the wrong things in this world, do not think they appear wrong or there is something wrong in the world. Look at yourself ! Ask yourself, "Why do I see these things?? Why so I feel these things? Where do these things come from?" And soon you'll discover you've been giving birth to them. It will change your mind and everything else will change.

Change your mind and change the world!

One day a man was walking through the park late at night and he heard somebody yelling at him. "Hey you! Come here!" And he looked around and he didn't see anybody. And he kept walking and the voice said, "Come here! I'm over here!" And he looked down at the rock and he saw a frog sitting on the rock. So he bent down to the frog and the frog said, "Kiss me and I'll become a beautiful maiden and do anything you want!" And he didn't say anything and the frog said, "Didn't you hear me? I said, 'Kiss me and I'll become a beautiful maiden and I'll do anything you want." So the man picked up the frog and put it in his pocket, and he proceeded to walk along. And the frog yelled, "Hey! I told you, kiss me and I'll be a maiden and I'll do anything you want!" So the man said, "Well, I'm deciding whether to turn

you into a maiden or to keep a talking frog." And so it is with us. Are we all talking frogs? What does this story have to do with anything? (Laughter) Interesting story. Remember it always I for no reason just remember it.

I receive many phone calls, as many of you are aware. This morning I received a phone call from a lady who asked me an interesting question. It was a question so interesting that I'll share it with you. I got permission from the lady first. She's here this morning so it's O.K. She asked me, "Robert, when I was younger, I lived a rich, full life. I was really a bitch. I teased people. I hated people. I did everything to get my way and I hurt a lot of people. Now my question is, can karma be abated? Is there some way I can forgive myself, expunge the karma, or does it have to come back to me? The things I have done to people, is there any way I can be free of this? Also in my past lives a psychic told me I was a rotten person in those lives too!" What to do? "Is there any hope for me?” she wanted to know.

Well, my answers are always ambiguous. I said, "Yes and no." So we'll talk about this. I asked her if I could talk about this in class. She said yes. So we'll discuss my answer. What I mean by yes and no?

No, you can't abate your karma. You cannot remove the karma that's coming to you. This is a very difficult thing to do. And yes, you can. It depends on who you are what you know, where you're coming from. There is no human being on this earth who has not gotten into problems growing up, of some sort, of some kind. There's no such thing as a perfect human being on this earth! This earth is not meant for perfect human beings. If you want to be a perfect human being, you got to go to another planet! You're on the wrong planet. There's no perfection on this planet.

I kid you not. This is not a planet of perfection; there are such planets, but this is not one of them.

So, when one realizes this, in order to abate their karma, they have to change their lifestyle totally and completely and absolutely. And not many people are willing to do this. In other words you have to do a turn-around, a complete about-face. Anything you believe has to be dropped. Every action you've ever taken has to be changed. The more you react to person, place and thing, it has to be totally changed completely and absolutely. Not just slightly but altogether. In other words, if you want to transcend the karma, become totally free and liberated, you have to look at yourself totally differently.

It's very rare that this happens. It's very rare because most people refuse to change themselves. They don't want to. They want somebody else to do it for them. They want to keep on going the way they're going. And it's true that when you come to Satsang, things begin to happen to you. But yet I am with you about twice a week, maybe about 4 or 5 hours altogether. And the rest of the week, you're on your own. What do you do when you're by yourself? What do you do when you're on your own?

What kind of life do you live? Only you know that! Do you have loving kindness in your heart for person, place and thing? Do you have peace in your heart? Or do you allow things to bother you, annoy you, make you upset, angry, mad? It is only when you calm down totally and completely, and you have peace in your heart that that a change takes place within you. And unless that change takes place within you, you're in the laws of karma.

Most of us here know the ultimate truth; karma does not exist. But what's the use for most of us to get up and say karma does not exist, when we're controlled by it? It's fine to be able to say that intellectually. There's no karma. There is no world. There is no liberation. There is no illusion. There is no God. In the ultimate sense this is true. But is it true for you? Are you living that sort of life or are you just speaking words? People learn at the talking school where you just talk... talk.... talk....talk, talk, talk on spirituality.

But are you learning to keep silent and make something happen with your life? The choice is always yours.

What difference does it matter? What difference does it make what happens to you as far as going through life? What difference does it make, whether you lose your job or you get a job, whether you have money or you're broke, whether you have health or sickness, whether you're happy or sad, whether you get what you want or you don't get what you want? There should be no differentiation in your mind. If you can learn to treat these two imposters just the same they're all imposters, human good, human bad; they are all imposters. If you learn to treat them just the same, then you'll see you'll be free. But if you keep reacting to things, all you're doing is you're accruing more karma. That's all you're doing.

Karma comes in two different sections: what you call Boomerang Karma and Parabdha Karma. Boomerang Karma is like when you step on a rake, the handle hits you in the head. That's Boomerang Karma. It comes right back to you. You step on the rake and the handle hits you in the head. It's karma like this when you do something; it comes right back.

Then there's Parabdha Karma, which is your destiny which comes to you from past lives, from things you've done when you were little. This seems to go through time and space. In other words, there seems to be a long time before you get it back.

What I'm trying to say is that most of us have no idea what karma has in store for us. We have no idea. We may believe and think things are well, that things are going right for us. Then we may step off the curb and a bus hits us and breaks our back and we become paralyzed and we're in a wheelchair the rest of our lives. We don't know! Not one of us knows what's going to happen tomorrow. But by what you do, you can tell if your karma's going to get you by the way you act, the way you think, the way you react. If you begin to understand and realize, what ever has happened to me is the result of karma, good, bad or in between, whatever situation I am now, is a result of karma. Nobody made it like this. No one's responsible for my being who I am.

This is the first truth that you have to remember. No one is responsible for your being the way you are, where you are, where you're living or whom you're living with. No one is responsible NOT EVEN YOU!

If you knew what was going on, you'd put an end to it. But unfortunately, you don't

know what's going on, so you're experiencing karma, apparently different situations different moods, different times, different days, different weeks, different situations. All kinds of things come to you.

The important thing for us to understand is that this is all karma. If you know it's all karma you realize if you react to any condition that comes to you, you're accruing more karma; that's all you're doing. Nobody wins and nobody loses in this game called life. There are no winners and no losers. You're always accruing karma, always, by the way you react to a situation. It's up to you to see this, be aware of this.

If you can see this and be aware of this, you develop loving kindness, peace. You no longer believe there's a god that dealt you a bad hand or you can't be like this one or that one. Or, " I wish I was like this person or that person." You stop thinking like this. You look at yourself, you make the best of who you are, and you work through it. But you've got to do it ! You've got to do it yourself ! This is what I mean when I say you take an about-face. You reverse everything. Never mind what anybody else is doing! What are you doing? That's what matters. For what you do determines what's going to happen to you over and over again.

So here we are. Karma's all over the place. Do you really wish to transcend karma? Do you really want to get rid of it, totally and completely? Then you must turn within and never react to the outside world again! Understand that your happiness is WITHIN YOU, not in things or people or places. Everything you're looking for is within you. That's the first principle you have to understand. All the answers are within you. The way to become free is within you. Liberation is within you. It's all within you...... you've got it all. Not outside nothing's outside. Do not pay attention to one thing in this external world. Do not take one thing seriously.

You've got the power to change anything if you would but recognize it. But as long as you keep blaming person, place or thing, as long as you keep reacting to things, then the power lies dormant within you. It's in abeyance. It will not come forth until you begin to recognize it.

Principle number two: Realize that there's a power within you and know that it transcends all the karma that you ever had and sets you free. You must call upon it, acknowledge it, for it to do anything for you. This power is beyond any earthly person, any earthly situation, and it's beyond all phenomena. This power can be called the Self the Absolute Reality. It is the Self that seems to have created karma and the way to get rid of it. The Self is the source, the source of everything imaginable.

Your duty is to merge with the Source. Your duty is to become the Source. When you are the source of karma, how can you experience karma? When you realize that you are the Atman, the Self, and you're all-pervading omnipresence, there's no time and space, then where can there be karma when there's only the Self? Do you see what I'm getting at? Only the Self exists! The Self is pure awareness, Nirvana, Satchitananda. I am that I Am. Only That exists, nothing else. There's nothing else...only That!

Now with what are you identifying, worldly situations? You're not identifying with the Self. You can't identify with both! You have to become absorbed in the Self. This is your duty! to become absorbed in the Self, totally and completely. Now do you see why very few people can overcome their karma, for most of us do not want to be absorbed in the Self. We want to go on playing games. We think that if we become absorbed in the Self, we'll become lonely, we won't have anything to do, all the fun will be gone, there will be no T.V. to watch, no music to listen to, no sex, no friends! Where are you coming from that made you believe that? That's not the Self that you've talking about, it is you, It is your idea of what liberation is.

Liberation means that you're totally and completely free, without thoughts. There are no thoughts in the Self. If there were thoughts in the Self, it wouldn't be the Self. For the Self is only one and all-pervading. When you become absorbed in the Self, it's completely different than what you ever believed. It's not explainable. But as far as you're concerned, you become totally free, happy, peaceful. There is no longer anyone to argue with or become upset over. This is the Self. You become absorbed in the Self by thinking about the Self. How else? And you stop thinking about your problems, your affairs, your mind, your karma. And you begin to think of your Self and you never acknowledge the world again!

But you remain absorbed in the Self, all the karma will disappear and you'll never have to worry about karma again. You won't even think of the word. You will no longer think about overcoming karma, transcending karma, for there is no such thing to transcend.

And it's a new stage of your life. It is only where most of us are coming from now that we have to worry about karma so to speak. But when you start diving deep within yourself and you become absorbed with the Self, that's it. You're cooked. There's nothing else you have to do. So my question to you is, what are you doing with your life every day? How do you see things every day? Do you still have to be entertained by the world? As long as the world has to entertain you and you don't get entertained by Reality, you're stuck in karma and you're accruing new karma every day.

Leave the world alone. Leave people alone, mentally. Mentally. If you mentally begin to go within then you never have to worry about the physical again, the so-called physical body will take care of itself. You'll always be happy, always. You'll have real happiness, real joy, real peace. It's not what you think it is. It's complete bliss. Bliss in itself.

Feel the peace that prevails. Feel the emptiness. Feel the love. Feel the harmony. Do not think about it; feel it. If you think about it you spoil it. Just feel it; it's here; it's everywhere.

Feel free to ask questions. I know why you won't ask questions, you're afraid of this:

(Robert presses a button on a small electronic box which caused a voice to say...."Were you always this stupid?" Laughter )

Student: What's wrong with laughing?

Robert: Nothing.

Voice from the box: "You're a schmuck !" (Laughter )

Student: More!

Voice from the Box: "Screw you and your sister too."

Student: Robert, if it isn't necessary to overcome karma, nobody objects to good karma, they object to bad karma. What I object to is my own reaction to karma, not the karma itself. So there's no need to overcome it. If I don't care about it, it doesn't matter as long as I don't react of it.

Robert: This is true of course.

Student: So there's no need to overcome it.

Robert: No, you're right. When there's no reaction, there's no karma. When you learn to be still you'll never have any karma to worry about. But when your mind is always rattling, making noises, always thinking, thinking, thinking, you accrue karma by the very thoughts. Noise is still the mind. Keep the mind quiet, quiescent. Then you don't have to worry about karma.

Robert Adams: There is one thing I can tell you for sure. All is well. Everything is unfolding as it should. I can tell you that truly nothing is wrong anywhere. If you think you have a problem, that's the mistake — thinking you have a problem. As soon as you stop thinking, everything will go right.

Questioner: Isn't everything going right while you are thinking?

R: Yes, but you don't know it. Some of us don't think it is, saying, "I've got a problem," or "I'm involved in some-thing I can't handle which is bigger than I am," or "Some-thing hurts me," or "I feel anger." But I can assure you, there is nothing wrong!

All that you have to do is watch yourself. As soon as your mind starts thinking past your nose, grab it — not your nose, but your thoughts. You can grab your nose too if you want (laughter). Grasp your thoughts with your mind, and put a stop to them any way you can, either by observ-ing the thoughts or by practicing self-enquiry and asking to whom they occur. Whatever you need to do, do not allow yourself to think. If your mind does not think, you will be exceedingly happy. You will have unalloyed happiness.

Some people ask me, "Robert, why don't you just speak the highest truth all the time?" Some others tell me to speak in such a way that they can understand what I am talking about (laughter). So that is the dilemma. I do whatever I have to do. I plan nothing. Everything is extemporaneous. I have no rehearsals.

A man called me yesterday telling me he had been practicing for two weeks, took a seminar and paid seven hundred dollars, and is still not realized. I get calls like this all the time. What you say determines the answer I give you. But there is a standard answer. Think of the question, "When will I become self-realized?" Before I answer this one I usually ask "Please tell me what do you mean by `I'?" Then I further ask, "What do you mean by `Self-realization?"' They usually become silent, so I finally ask, "Who do you think the `I' is? Who wants to become Self-realized?"

If you can't do anything else, surrender to consciousness. By surrender, I mean surrender your ego, your problems, your emotions, your fears, your frustrations and anger. Give it all up. Say, "Take it, consciousness!"

Do not get carried away by your emotions. Stop in the middle and watch. Watch your emotions ruling you. Watch your fears controlling you. Watch your anger arise. Do not try to stop it, just watch and observe. Look intelligently and realize who it is that is getting angry. It is not you. It is not even your ego because there is no ego. It is not your body because there is no body. It is not your mind because there is no mind. Therefore, what is making you angry? Nothing.

I was talking about all the phone calls I've been receiving. People still ask what I think about this or that teacher, this or that person, or why shouldn't they go to see other teachers as well? I really don't know what to say. You have to do what you have to do. I can tell you that the more people you consult, the more confused you'll become. I don't care if you never come back here again because I am not looking for anything.

If you do find a teacher that you seem to have an affinity for, you should stick around for a while. If you run from teacher to teacher, you will become totally confused. Every teacher has his place. You will be attracted to the person you have to be with for as long as necessary. It depends on where your consciousness is.

Q: Robert, throughout the spiritual literature there are distinctions made between a gradual path and instantaneous enlightenment. A lot of this stuff about passing through stages — I can't relate to it. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

R: What can't you relate to?

Q: Just the idea that you pass through one stage to the next stage.

R: This is for the person who is striving. The truth is there is nothing to pass through. It appears that some people, who need to understand these things and research them for themselves, will be helped to see where they are coming from. Perhaps you don't need it.

Q: The state of happiness you talk about I would not callhappiness. The state seems far above happiness — happiness as the opposite of sadness.

R: You are right.

Q: Sadness could even come into that state you are I and it would only be something that was passing through with no identification.

R: You are right. As an example, I can cry at a funeral but I realize who is crying. I can have sadness if I want to but I am never really sad.

Q: The state of non-attached mind, that's really the closest thing to it, isn't it?

R: That's true. I am looking for words to describe things. More importantly, there is always total happiness. It i not human happiness. For most people to be happy, there has to be a person, place, or thing involved in their happiness. In true happiness, there are no things involved. It's a natural state. You will abide in that state forever.

Q: From the standpoint of practice, I have noticed that no matter what state arises, the problem is whether I am willing to let this go. Is it important for me to stay in my emotional state. The answer is that there is nothing you can do anyway as it come and goes.

R: Act as if there is something yo can do, even though there is nothing you can do. If you were passing a starving man in the room. don't think there is nothing you can do. Give him a piece of bread.

Q: But in that state of mind arising, emotions arising, perceptions arising, there is nothing you can do.

R: Except watch. Just watch. Just observe. Another thing to consider is this: if you were here as avisitor, having only one meeting with me, and you would never see me again, I would expound the highest truth to you and take off. You would say how great that is. But when I see you twice a week or more, I begin to know you quite well, and everything I say is to help you grow because that is what is needed at that time, since I'm going to be with you again. To people who were with Ramana Maharshi as devotees, he didn't expound absolute truth to them all the time. He would talk to them like an ordinary person. He would inquire about their welfare, their health, about their problems, and he would give them practical advice. He wouldn't say, "Nothing matters because nothing exists." They had problems. So he would talk to them in a practical manner.

Q: If we don't see progress within ourselves and see we are continually getting upset, we shouldn't let that bother us?

R: Keep observing, keep watching, keep focusing on the Self, and there will be nobody to ask who is bothered or who is not bothered. You only ask such a question when your attention is more on the bothering than it is on the Self. If you change your attention to the Self, see what happens.

Q: The question is, is that gradual?

R: For some people. It depends on how much time you give to it.

Q: We can't just turn our emotions off. When I go to work sometimes, I find such an intensity there, with people snapping at each other, I get caught up in it. Of course I be-come aware, usually after the fact, asking myself, "will this disappear gradually by abiding in myself, or will I someday suddenly awaken?"

R: In the morning, when you first open your eyes, that's the time to work on yourself. Ask yourself, "Who am I? How did I get here?" Reconcile yourself with yourself. If you do that upon first waking up, the whole day will be good, without these problems. Just don't go straight to work. Get up an hour early if you have to. See yourself for what you are, and realize the truth. Focus on the self. Ask yourself, "Who Am I?" and wait. Concentrate on the source of "I Am," or say to your-self, "I Am, I Am," and then go to work. Then you will see changes. You will build up a power that you will carry with yourself all day long.

Q: To follow that "I" to its source, to find the "I" by self-enquiry and abide in it seems to mean non-existence, statelessness.

R: Don't worry about being non-existent. Simply observe the "I," and watch it going into the heart.

Q: It is not so much a following then, but that it hap-pens by itself?

R: It happens by itself.

Q: When I contemplate "I Am," does it means that al-ready I am the Self?

R: Yes it does.

Q: Robert, it's because we have the concept we are not the Self that we miss the fact that we are abiding in the Self all the time. As Ramesh Balsekar has said, we only have the doubt we are not the Self, but the truth is we have always been it.

R: Exactly. When we don't see that, we go through all these troubles and play all these games, until we realize we are the Self. Then that is it. But it's fun.

Q: If we don't have the Self and are saying, "I am it," what is to keep that from becoming a parrot-like repetition?

R: It doesn't become a parrot-like repetition if you do it with your breath. When you inhale, say "I." When you exhale, say "Am." A subtle change of energy takes place within the Self, and you will become more peaceful, calm, and soon you will lose all identification with your body and mind. You will remain as "I Am."

Q: Robert, when we do self-enquiry, actually that is the beginning step to find the "I." When we develop a sense of abiding in the "I," there isn't much need of enquiry because we go straight to the abidance.

R: Self-enquiry has no beginning. If you practice "Who Am I," it sounds simple, but is very powerful. Only say, "Who Am I?," then pause, then say it again, "Who Am I?" Never answer the question. Just keep repeating "Who Am I?" Eventually, something will happen.

Q: I'm asking, if you develop a sense of self-abidance, you can watch states come and go, watch identification with the ego, and then self-enquiry is not necessary if you can go directly to that.

S: If you are abiding in the Self, there is no ego to watch — there is only the Self. You watch the ego with the mind, not with the Self. If you abide in the Self, there is nothing else. You are finished. You're cooked. Everything else is of the mind. When I say abide in the Self, I mean for-get everything and be yourself. There is nothing else to know at that point.

Keep observing, keep watching, keep focusing on the Self, and there will be nobody to ask who is bothered or who is not bothered. You only ask such a question when your attention is more on the bothering than it is on the Self. If you change your attention to the Self, see what happens.