John Richards – Page 9 – Ramakant Maharaj Dakshina

This is the Tuesday Talk held August 2, 2022. Tuesday Talks is a gathering on Zoom of devotees from the Ramakant Maharaj USA visit. This is a gathering of devotee’s to discuss and clarify the teachings of Sri Ramakant Maharaj. These spontaneous utterances are recorded and shared with anyone who may find them useful.
Jai Sadguru!

Alain: Just want to say thank you to be here it's really helpful. Keep on yeah pretty good. But if I’m not there I catch it on YouTube and it's fantastic. And it's very important. Instead of it's like okay I have to take care of what I said it's okay right now it's very important it's on top of everything, I feel something I never had before. Inside good just connect with who I truly am. Discover that step by step. And there's nothing can compare. There's no words to explain it properly. But I just want to express that.

John: Absolutely

Alain: It's so nice that you have the permanent recordings, and you know that's the wonderful part of where we are in the technology. Many years, so many years ago, well you need 12 years of waiting before you get the information. Right now, we push the bottom, and we got it. That's true we have to have a lot of gratitude for that and i appreciate it. And invest some time on our side too because we got all the cake free. Now take the time to eat it and chew it and swallow it.

John: Absolutely

Alain: And the outside world running so crazy right now. It's good that you have the capacity to just watch it and say that's another thing, it's okay, nothing wrong, nothing right, you just freeze a little bit, but it's okay.

John: Exactly. Remaining with Selfless Self and the entire world just collapses into That, and you're no longer seeing and being disturbed by any kind of outside anything. Because you just remain with yourself and even if you're watching some news report or something and it gets to be a little bit disturbing, just, okay, just here. It's passing, okay, just a scene. Scenes appear and disappear. No problem.

Trish: Yeah, I need to hear that because I still get drawn in.

John: The answer to every question, the solution to every problem, is your own self. You just remain, that's it. It dissolves everything.

Trish: It's so simple and yet you know my mind just keeps running out there.

John: But mind can run. Let it run. Okay, okay, mind is doing what it's doing, I'm just here. Mind is a flow of thoughts and I’m not getting involved. You know it's the old analogy of standing on the riverbank. Thoughts are flowing by. You know, you stand on the riverbank. If the water's polluted, or if the water's clear, it has no effect on you. Once you jump in the stream then you start to experience polluted water or clear water and you desire clearer of course and not polluted. Then you start to get wrapped up in ‘why is this water so polluted’ and you lose knowingness of ‘I can step out of this water and go back to the bank, I don't have to fight with the polluted water and cry about the pollution, I can just step out on the bank and watch and observe’. Okay water has pollution, water is clear, ‘I am unaffected unless I jump in’. That's the crazy thing about jumping in once I jump in, I forget that I can just step out.

You know. I get very involved in this and then I try to fight as best I can to swim. It's just like when they say when people are trying to be rescued. They tell them just to go limp, let us grab you and take you and put you in inner tube and bring you onto the boat. Don't fight. It'd be very easy. But if you're drowning, then you're struggling, you're struggling and fighting and fighting and it makes it more difficult for those rescuer guys, those frogmen guys, to try and rescue you. Or the lifeguard even to try and swim out to get you. Again, even for the lifeguard trying to rescue you, you are your own worst enemy. In trying to struggle, In trying to survive and trying to make sense or whatever or try to ‘oh my God! I'm drowning’. You're causing all the trouble. If you just say, ‘okay there's lifeguards coming and I'm just going to lay back, I, I, don't need to fight’. ‘Because he's very close I'm safe.’

Because I have to basically understand that I'm not this separate autonomous thing. That everything is flowing and in this manifestation this lifeguard is flowing along. He's doing his thing in the moment, and I just need to do my thing in the moment. Which is relax and then the energy to get me and bring me aboard the boat is all the process. If I try to separate myself and I say ‘I am drowning, help me, help me! That's where the problem is, ‘I am lost in thoughts, I have so many thoughts, I can't stop thinking’. But these are all, just I've jumped in the river, and I've forgotten I can just stand up and get out. Because I'm not involved in thoughts. Thoughts can be there, thoughts cannot be there, when you remain with your Selfless Self you get that what they call that thought-free state that unmani. Where it's no mind so you know That. That's not death. You're not thinking and you're not getting involved in mind, but you're still very much there.

So, now you're seeing that okay, thoughts can be there, thoughts cannot be there. Even in meditation the very first step is ‘Oh wait a minute there's nothing there’. It's very scary because I have nothing to say about this nothing. And mind wants to say ‘Hey we have to have something to say about something. I'm going to call it a void and I'm going to say No Thank You, Thank You anyway, I'm going to back off a bit. Because I'm terrified to go there. What happens to me?’ Because there is no me and when I'm in that space with my own Selfless Self the mind cannot keep the illusion of me. I realize Oh So That I, I am That. ‘But what about this what about that’? No, No, No, Wait, wait, wait. ‘How about’. No, no, just here, eventually I stop listening. Knocking on the door. ‘Hello, hello, I would like to come in’. No, no, no. I'm really enjoying myself please. Just, just, be okay. Just you be over there, and I'll be here, no need to bother each other.

Feelings come in and suddenly mind wants to jump up and label the feelings or label an experience or say this is why we're feeling this feeling. No, this is a five-elemental body. Feelings will come and go as Maharaj says, ‘Remain with the feeler’ The feeler is the one who says, Oh there's a feeling. But the capability of saying there's a feeling is because there's someone there or something. I won't say someone, a thing. Something, That. The sense of existence appeared to That which exists and did not have any knowledge of existence. As soon as the sense of existence appeared, the concept ‘I exist’. And then this concept ‘I exist’ immediately sort of looked inside the dream-based reality of body-based existence and said ‘I exist, as this. Huh okay, now I understand. This is me. And Mom and Dad are saying this is me. So, this must be me’. Which is nice except now that I know myself. ‘Oh, now bad things can happen to me, well that's not good, that's terrifying actually. If this is me, what happens when I'm not here?' But you're never not here. You're just not here as this particular something. But you're not that particular something in this moment, and you never were. This particular something or this local identification is within your own self, it's just because the sense “I exist’ clicked with this body. ‘Oh, I exist, as this. Mom says ‘This is me. ‘I'm your mother, I'm your father, welcome to the world.’

You're crawling around on the floor and exploring and suddenly ‘Oh my gosh, pain, what's that? I don't want that to happen again.’ Then we start running away from pain and seeking pleasure and this egoistic sense of self is developed. Because not only is there a ‘me’, but me can do things. And that ‘me’ doesn't want pain and would really like pleasure. I'd like to repeat the pleasurable things and remove the pain. But definitely not repeat those painful things and therefore the sense of doership is heavily impressed. As I am doing these things in this body. But what's the reality. There's no sense of existence. And then, That that exists, senses this sense of existence. A dream world is created and populated; we call it waking world. But at first, we are understanding it as waking world. And then there's the sense of existence, that is ‘I exist, as this, the sense of existence.’ In reality it is just formless Presence. But there's not an identification with the formless Presence because it's immediate. Remember Maharaj says ‘What is impressed, reflects, so immediately this body is ‘Oh this is, oh this is I, I exist.

Alain: Just want to check back something what does impressed reject?

John: What's impressed is projected, reflected. So, it's immediate. That's why if Master says, ‘I am Brahman’ or he uses the example like if the Master says ‘you're, you're, very silly or you're very slow’ and you immediately say, ‘Maharaj said I am slow!’ So, it's impressed. And it's like, it's deep within you. ‘Oh, I'm slow, Master has said I'm slow.’ Emotion is there exactly this. So, if you're saying to yourself ‘I exist, I exist as this, this is me, it's impressed.’ It's like you are basically the unlimited and this is limiting and limiting and limiting and limiting. And then there's if I have a body, this body needs clothes, this body needs things, this body needs all the, all the everything, that it needs. I want to just go out and just grab that's why Maharaj very nicely says ‘When you were born, you didn't come with pockets’ This body doesn't have pockets and yet when I'm sitting there saying ‘I must have all these things and I truly then believe this and what's worse is ‘If I don't have these things, I become depressed, I become sad, I don't have these things. I should have these things.’ But you are not a thing! When you know yourself in a real sense there's really no pull of things. Even the thoughts, which are technically things, because they're objects within your own self that can be thought into existence within the dream-based kind of existence, the body-based illusory existence. Thought comes ‘I'm thinking this thought’ and we all know you can get lost in the thought. Because see, you the Selfless Self, are projecting the entire world. So, what makes you think you can't with one thought project an entire world around this thought, this concept? Then that builds. And then you build more and more and more concepts. And we all know it's called you know, lost in thinking, lost in thought. You can literally be sitting there creating a thinking world and totally be not consciously present in this other, you know, this right here.

Alain: That's happened really often, and I catch myself ‘So where are you?’ Stop exactly and don't judge. Just observe, watching that and say, ‘Okay what do you choose?’ Come back to yourself, Selfless Self. Exactly but it became really automatic and often enough and what's helping me in different situations when sometimes I catch myself on some crazy way whatever. Say ‘ah okay.’ I like that because I get that from you John. ‘Oh, okay. Don't panic, Don't judge just stay. Okay that's a flag. You can still go there but you got another choice.’ Really more comfortable and easier. you know what I mean. Just that's okay because there's no judgment. No yap, yap, yap. Okay, okay.

John: Yeah, Because the last thing you want to do is say ‘Oh my god I shouldn't be thinking these thoughts and what about my spirituality and I should be remaining with myself.’ No, it's just like ‘okay now I remain with myself. I no longer choose to chase the thoughts. I love remaining with myself. I'm training this mind to basically enjoy the Selfless Self.’

You know I’ve used the example of the jacuzzi. I'm up to here just sitting in this jacuzzi of Selfless Self. Oh, so nice. Everything's so good. Something calls over here. I'm not getting out of my jacuzzi. Let's go see what this is. But I remain in the jacuzzi of Selfless Self. I have no desire to get out and go see and then ‘Oh, this was not worth my time. getting out.’ No, I don't. I remain in the jacuzzi when I’m speaking to others. Okay, I'm in Selfless Self it's no problem this is happening, and I don't have to, like we talked about before, I don't have to put on a body to do these things. I don't have to put on John and say ‘Okay, You know whatever, or how dare they talk to John like that.’ No in reality they're talking to the formlessness and there seems to be a body that is available. But no matter what they say it's not about me. There's no me. And the person who's saying anything about me is my own self. So, even since there's nothing here and there's the knowledge that there's nothing there, then how is the offense? To whom? Who is offending and who is being offended? No one. The air. Yeah, space with space.

I shared when I used to go to the Metro, or the Marc Train and you would see somebody, and they'd step on your foot, and they'd look right at you. But you could easily get rid of it. I mean because that's me. Like no matter even if that person gives me an evil little look or whatever if I react then I suddenly create a story of what's going to happen, and I’m involved. If I don't react it's like boom it passes, and that's it. Because. it's just my own self. And in the very early stages you could use this with mine to say ‘Okay I’m kind of testing myself. My Selfless Self is testing myself. I stepped on my foot to see what the reaction would be’ even in mind. Because at first maybe I don't react in physical, but I still say ‘How dare this guy step on me’ but the whole idea is Selfless Self with Selfless Self. Selfless Self steps on Selfless Self's foot and okay there's no reaction here and that's it, it's finished. Then the event becomes a non-event. That's right, that's freedom complete. You continue to go through life but you're no longer having these events that impress you and wreck your whole day. That's a morning time, you get angry, and you're all through the whole day thinking about this event and its long past. It happened hours ago but you're at lunch angry. You know why. When you begin to see the entire world as a reflection on your spontaneous Presence you know that it's just scenes appearing and disappearing. and that no scene needs to carry its own self along the way. One take. We don't have to do one take here and then 60 million takes up here, of how it could have gone different. ‘Oh, you know, action. Oh, this person's a little bit out of place. I don't like this; I don't like that. This should be this way.’ No! One scene, one take, finish. One scene, one take, finish. I actually saw a documentary on how they were making movies and they don't do it the way we see a movie. We see the beginning scenes and we see all the scenes and all this. But, when they make a movie, it's different locations and they shoot different portions of the movie and then put it all together. So, you don't need to put it all together. It's literally just these scenes. ‘Okay, action!’ Oh, doing this job. Action, off to the store. You don't have to put together a whole thing and say, ‘this is the movie.’ Now at the end you may say ‘Okay, this is my day. I can talk about my day. I did this, I did that, I did this. Because I’m not going to sit there, somebody says ‘How was your day?’ ‘Oh, no, no, no you see I’m not a doer. I'm the self. The Selfless Self I’m formless. All these activities are occurring within me. So, I can't really tell you how my day was because there's no me and there's actually no day. That's egoistic spirituality.

Alain: Of course. They're not there. It's harder to take as you said. Yes, one take. One take, one, one take, one take. One thing, yes. No story. No blah, blah, blah. Shorter, it is more comfortable with this.

John: You prolong it by putting a ‘you’ in there and then giving it over to mind to create the rest of the story. Just do the scene, finish. Don't care about what or how it relates to anything. It doesn't relate to anything. It's right here, right now, whatever's in the moment. Do your job. Do your duties and finish, that's it.

Alain: We create relation and all the mess, all the mess upcoming.

John: Because of identification with a body form and the mind's need to keep this. See it's impossible. When you know yourself in a real sense, it's impossible to keep up this illusion of being someone separate. It, it’s a full-time effort. And when you're not paying attention to the guy back here who's trying desperately to write the extras dialogue in every scene, you’re not involved, and you're not you know. He's like ‘okay here this is. They're going to say this, you're going to say this, you're going to say this, you're going to.’ No, no, no, let's just. Let's be here now. Let's see. Even at work many times my boss will say ‘okay when you meet with this customer you know their past is this. And they've done this. And I always tell him, now he knows but, I always tell them I was like I’ll just meet them you know and see what happens in the meeting. Because if I go in with any kind of preconceived anything, then I’m not really having the meeting. You know, I’m not really there in the meeting. Because I’m trying to run the script of how we say the meeting could or should go or might go. It's better just to be in the moment. And the truth is other people appreciate it when you don't bring yourself to the conversation.

Alain: I remember that you say connect, before correct. Connect first, connect spontaneous with nothing at all. Full open connect and from there we'll see. But I got all reflects. Would like to drive the show and I am training sales. Got a lot of training of manipulate. And you're going to see this, and you're going to see that. There's no joy. There it's a lot of effort.

John: Exactly that's why I took a test right after coming back from India. One of the tests was your communication style. Everybody was supposed to have a specific communication style. I answered the tests just, you know, answering them. It said I had a fluid communication style. Because in each one of the examples it was whatever was there in the moment, it that's what we do. It wasn't like, because some people were like, very I think it was like commanding or director or some people were laid back or some people were very structured or whatever. But the test said that I was fluid and able to just go with whomever. If I’m speaking with someone who's structured, then it seemingly is going to be in that way. Someone who's a little bit more domineering, seemingly, in that way. Or backing down when you need to back. I didn't really think about it I just answered these questions based on the test. That's life. You know, you don't bring you into it. Oh, I'm this way therefore things have to go that way. No, no me, no you, nothing is there, and nothing's happened nothing will ever happen. So, why am I going to be irritated about a happening?

Alain: It took a long time and I still digest that. Nothing happened. It's not full fully inside. It's I am chewing. It's okay, it's coming, but I've got the perception. That's true, nothing happened. But there's some past coming, nothing happened. I said no don't chat with them.

John: Well things are happening within the body-based illusion that are appearing in your Presence. You are observing things happening. But nothing is happening to you. Therefore, nothing is actually happening. You are formless Presence and when you really remain with your Selfless Self you can look out the window or look out anywhere and know. How can this, relate to? How can the space in the room relate to the trees or relate to the people or the houses? How could if there's a house on fire, god forbid, how does it affect the space? If they build new houses, even if they build a lot of houses and they tear down all the trees how does it affect the space? So, when you know yourself in a real sense, just I, just I, formless Presence. The appearances are in the body-based illusion, but I am not body. Therefore, nothing is happening, nothing can happen, nothing will ever happen. Even this body falling, will not affect the Selfless Self that I am, at all. From the body based illusory experience, you could go and say, ‘Oh we're at John's funeral, we're putting John in the ground.’ We've seen this, so then people say, ‘How can when Maharaj left the body and was put in the ground. They were, buried or burned or whatever. They said ‘Okay, so like it's finished.’ But only in that specific instance, through that specific lens of seeing within the body-based illusion or the dream. Because there's just one dreamer. The dream is ‘I am somebody else, and this is a life.’ When this somebody else is no more, the dreamer is not affected. The dream goes on, so to speak, but not in, this little character has been taken off the board and can never go back on the board. But there's no gain, no loss, to That. That You Are. Because there's plenty of other forms being created and destroyed all the time. And you're none of these, yet you're all of these. So, when one is gone; I think Nisargadatta Maharaj says the Tsunami comes and it wipes out a thousand people, this is a terrible thing, but in reality, nobody's dying. You know that's the whole preface of the Bhagavad-Gita. Do your job, do your duties, go out there and fight. Don't take it egoistically that I’m some great warrior and I’m killing people and all this. But do what needs to be done in the moment because you cannot not do it. And know that no one's dying and no one's killing. And I think Krishna says all the people that are on the battlefield, they're already gone. So, there's no, no one's dying, no one's being lost, nothing. And as Nisargadatta has said too that the saints who have come, the saints who've gone, they've not changed the world. They're it's an individual aspect it's an individual kind of perspective, the telescope, all these different telescopes, looking into your own Selfless Self. We call it the world. Whether one telescope less or two telescopes more, just the body-based illusion. It doesn't, you're not in it, it's in you.

Alain: Yeah, yeah, that's the conviction that has to come. Yes, this is me, that's all the rest. That's going gradually like, remove all the layer and gradually this conviction is coming out.

John: Absolutely, and the more you remain with your Selfless Self and don't get caught up in the body-based illusory happenings then you just know. For my own self, after taking mantra and going through like food poisoning and all these sort of things, with mantra, rather than creating an experience or having an experience through mind, was amazing. It was like. So, all this stuff, there was no experience, no experiencer here. No impression and memory of a good thing, bad thing. Of course, food poisoning is not good, but when you're not really experiencing it, you're seriously just seeing scenes appearing and disappearing. Scenes appearing, you remain with mantra, remain with the Selfless Self, That, Presence. Just I, Just I. Before you know it, then back in the ashram doing the Bhajans and food poisoning has passed. That's even, that is just like Maharaj says, ‘Pick up the water, drink, put it down.’ Oh, food poisoning, so terribly sick, going to the hospital. Pick up the water, drink, put it down. Back in the ashram with the symbols, doing Bhajan.