Ram Dass | Outgrowing Duality [Pt. 1]

This talk explores the transition from dualistic perception to non-dual awareness. It examines how thought, identity, spiritual roles, and even refined practices can reinforce separation when they are mistaken for truth. The core message points toward simplicity: awareness clarifying itself when mental grasping relaxes.

• Duality is sustained by thinking and naming, even at advanced spiritual levels
• Silence and direct experience reveal what concepts cannot
• Spiritual identities easily become refined ego structures
• Methods are useful until they become obstacles
• Presence transmits more than explanation

• Talking about truth increases distance from it
• The mind becomes shaped by whatever it continuously contemplates
• Devotion, sound, rhythm, and form can act as bridges beyond thought
• Spiritual roles are functional masks, not identity
• Awakening unfolds through subtraction rather than accumulation

The talk dismantles the assumption that more understanding, better concepts, or higher narratives lead to liberation. It shows how even subtle identification with “the seeker,” “the teacher,” or “the holy one” maintains duality.

Practices such as devotion, meditation, sound, or ritual are framed as temporary scaffolding. Their function is to bring the mind to one-pointedness, after which they naturally dissolve. Non-duality appears when the experiencer itself is relinquished.

A key theme is transmission. Presence, sound, rhythm, and silence operate beyond explanation. When attention stabilizes, perception reorganizes without effort. Enlightenment is described less as an event and more as the absence of interference.

Freedom emerges when the need to define, explain, or position oneself falls away. The talk emphasizes humility, simplicity, and direct experience. What is sought is already present, revealed when the habit of grasping stops.

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[Music] be here [Music] now if therefore thine eye be single the whole body shall be full of light that was from m when mind Soares in pursuit of the things conceived in space it pursues emptiness but when man dives deep within himself he experiences the fullness of existence May her [Music] B we are only that that is exists only in the world of Relativity the vanity of man jibes at that statement man is accustomed to think himself important his ego he likes to think holds the attention of superhuman


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Powers gods and demons carefully watch his acts and thoughts applauding some and punishing others in himself man has built a sub Office of the invisible tribunal of divine judges and there he distributes praise and blame so says Alexander David Neil in these secret oral teachings allegiance to the void implies denial of its voidness the more you talk about it the more you think about it the further from it you go stop talking stop thinking and there is nothing you will not understand return to the


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root and you will find the meaning pursue the light and you lose its source look Inward and in a Flash you will conquer the apparent and the void all come from mistaken views there is no need to seek truth only stop having views so says Sing [Applause] son when the Mind perceives an object it is transformed into the shape of that object so the mind which thinks of the divinity which it worships the ISA deata is at length through continued devotion transformed into the likeness of that devat by allowing the deata the god to


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occupy the mind for long it becomes as pure as the deat this is the fundamental principle of tantric sad or religious practice there are two views which are statements of dualism or non-dualism is the first adism and dualism DWI ISM when you realize that all talking and all thinking is dualistic you got to think about something and talk about something and talk to somebody you realize that and when you realize that what we seek is non-dualistic we understand the words of K son says stop talking stop thinking


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and just be it's an interesting question of what we're doing here tonight why we're here more words I guess we have to be here until we don't have to be here anymore that's the only way I can figure it I the remotest idea why we do I mean I can tell you game Within game Within game Within game but I don't think it has anything to do with it I just turn out to be here and you turn out to be here well is by our being here are we getting deeper into a [Music] trap nist said we would be he said stop


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talking about it just be it and what the Duelist says is you use the crutch until you don't need it anyway anymore Raman Mahari says you use a stick to stir the funeral P knowing full well that at the end you'll throw the stick into the fire too certainly must be apparent to all of us that this is a sort of a middle position we're in but how can we use this Gathering as an exercise in order to help ourselves on the way this says nothing else to do anyway but become [Music] enlightened we can retain a degree of


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Consciousness throughout this whole experience in which we see it as an experience instead of collecting an experience wow I got so high the other night man that's like a thing out there let's just all be here and dig this whole drama unfold I was trying to figure out driving up Bayshore what about holy men trips CU it's very heavy I was in Los Angeles the other night and um the scene got very far up and at the end of the evening in this beautiful Unitarian Church there were several hundred people standing there


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for eternity we were all just Zs and people would come up to touch my feet now I go through a number of trips about that as you might well imagine the first time it happened to me in in India when I walked around and see when you take on a certain Garb of the doy and so on walk Barefoot with you know you're a sadu and then it is a spiritual Merit to gas or householders to honor aadu to feed him or to touch his feet or something like that and in India there are 10 million sadus who are sort of like uh dropouts


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they Dropout specifically for the purpose of serving God now within such a collection of people obviously many of them are in it because it's an easy trip and there's a lot of impurity obviously but it is a major spiritual active force in a country and it's just what the very mobile young monks on the path are doing in America they're becoming these spiritual uplifters that are just going from place to place being straight being here you see them thumbing everywhere around the country and they just they're like um


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there's little short of being what mayab Baba dealt with is Ms you know those God intoxicants You' find one sitting in a garbage dump somewhere he'd been sitting there for 20 years and he just sort of kept the spiritual scene in his community cool that was his trip and in a way you see these kind of seeds of spirit just sort of drifting around light going hither and Y and when it first happened in India that somebody touched my feet I um I got very uncomfortable because I felt like a I've said before an overage hippie of


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Explorer you know dilaton whatever else you might call me um but I didn't feel like a holy man and bwan Das my Guru brother who's very very far out guy he's the one from lagona Beach he said well when they do that he's my teacher one of my teachers there he's 23 of he said well when you when they do that to you you just honor them in your heart you touch their feet in your heart because you can't do it there because that's not the way sadus do the thing okay so I started to do


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[Music] that the other night when it started to happen again in America you know because it was people understand that prawn is emitted from high Spiritual Beings and people go through a trip I've gotten so high being around you you must be really high so I'll come touch your a feet and get PR or I want to honor you or I love you or whatever it is and I dug after a while that that was like a failure on my part because if the thing really was working you would turn around and touch each other's


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feet or honor each other in other words everybody would see that it's us and that I wouldn't be in we wouldn't start a new game of holy man and after a number of people had done this I was just so zoned I could hardly move cuz that what happens is when they do that to you they feed in all their love and energy and it just takes you out I mean it's like a gift of so much pride and I was just going out and out and out and [Applause] out once in a temple in um in nanito in India and I was um sitting in


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meditation and it was looking out over a valley in Theus it was very very beautiful and I was quite uh centered and I was not very much in my body and I suddenly experienced these hands my eyes were closed I suddenly experienced these hands massaging my arms and my legs very strong hands and of course the the thing happening to me brought me down to another state because I couldn't um I wasn't harmonious with a model I had of the world that people come up and rub your legs and I opened my eyes just a trifle


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I came down and there were this elderly couple who would come to pay homage at the temple and they saw this sadu meditating and so they came up to do this thing which was a thing to help me with my work and of course it got me so high because of the Purity with which they did it because there was no hustle it was so pure you and so I there's a a sequel to that story a strange one but uh the other side of the coin the yin-yang of it all that on the train from berelli to Delhi a night train bandas and I had third class seats


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so whatever the lowest class is where you go with your knees up to your chin and you you know there are 100 people in room about this big and everybody's grooving you know all the muscles and bones and it's just a mass of you know train goes about 18 mes an hour for 10 hours of year and you might as well give in see it's the surrender to humanity because if you fight India it's horrible you know and the minute you surrender to the Divine mother it's oh wow you she just ah you


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know she is the mother she's really the mother and so I was looking forward to the scene cuz I know how I have to go through all my trips about everything before I Surrender into that but I know it demands it finally very unrelenting feacher and um this baggage man came along and he said sadus American sadus from America he said you know sit in Carriage come come come I run baggage cars I have whole empty baggage car I'll give just you wow that's pretty far sure man so we go and it's a baggage cart


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it's got places to put bags and but there's a PL you can sort of stretch out on the floorboards it's sort of like that you know and he says I won't let anybody and what I want I come in and visit I'll knock closes the door and he says all of Freights in the next car and he goes away and the train starts and um after a while his not and we let him in and he says oh sadus I am so honored to have you here and I was starting on my trip again you know like the the people up in the temple and I'm


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sitting there and I'm in the Lotus position and I'm just sort of going with the train and going out on the train on the wheels and St and U I feel these hands on my legs massaging I thought oh wow I'm going to get this trip again you know this is why so much you know and I really settle into it see I ah then the hands keep going higher and Higher and Higher and Higher and Higher until I oh wow a thought form enters my head so all I did was I just created a field in which that thought form didn't


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exist I just became a statue you know and it really turns you off to make it with a statue you know it just gives nothing at all there's just no one home you know so he immediately finished you know he lost interest and he said I can't keep this place for just you people I've got to let many people in and then he let in you know all of us again so this happened in Los Angeles see this feet touching business and uh I thought well now this is getting with lot of hands because I don't think we


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can handle all that you know and I sat there it was so beautiful and it was pure but it was scary because of the impurity of my thoughts you know finally I I guess I got to my point and I stood up and I said well everybody that's Showbiz so the latest report I got yesterday was somebody said they heard somebody say oh Albert oh you know he's that standup Jewish Comet actually I'm a sit down one why I've been become a holy man is because there's nothing else to do and why I come on like a holy man in


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other words why I play the holy Man game being a holy man and playing the holy man game quite different most of everybody here is a holy man but not everybody's playing the holy man game it's a game with rules and rituals and you know very stylized thing it's like a barber or a policeman or the holy man but the reason I play it is very much because I understand the only thing I can do is work on myself that's the only thing I can do either for my Enlightenment or for the enlightenment of any other being in the


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in the in form is to work on my own Consciousness and I dig that when I'm around a certain kind of Consciousness that I'm uh helped greatly I'm opened up great F and that kind ious is called in India in Sanskrit it's called satsang and in Buddhism it's called s you know in Buddhism you take the the U you make the three statements uh that's I take refuge in the Buddha I take refuge in a being who is enlightened somebody makes it and in Buddha Consciousness I take refuge in the


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Dharma meaning the law or the way or the process the method the karma the Suns scaras that's all Dharma the laws under which you're functioning in nature and all the astral and causal ples that keep you being what you're being at this moment that's your Dharma and I take refuge in the SA or the community of monks who are on the [Music] path now there is a stage in one's development in one's opening where you are still using methods and one of the methods this is the time when the tree is very young as


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ramach Krishna says and it's the time when you're surrounded you surrounded by a fence to keep it from being broken down and that's the time when you surround yourself with beings who are who understand what you understand that's sa sat so I dug that by being a holy man in the game sense that the only people that would hang out with me would be people who were digging to be around holy men which is a self- selecting factor I mean psychiatrists for the most part won't be around holy


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men because they'll say they're nuts and they don't hang out around psychotics government officials for the most part won't hang out with holy men upand cominging young businessmen won't hang out with h if you read one of the highest books that's ever been written the gospel of Shri ramak Krishna it's a big fat book there was a guy by the name of M who was a devotee of ramach krishnas and he had a phenomenal memory and every day just dedicated years of his life to copying


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down everything that was said at these Dar where ramach Krishna hung up and you watch businessmen come to ramach Krishna trying to hold on to their business manness you know a corner on the energy Market on the physical plane and you see people from every Walk of Life and you'd see phony holy men coming to ramach Krishna and he was really doing them in lovingly the other day I was staying with Laura Huxley down in the in Los Angeles and Laura said to me everything you're doing sounds so beautiful but


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what about all the people that are really lost I mean what are you doing about for anybody like that all everybody that comes to have Daran is somebody who's come to have Daran that already is a self- selecting factor and I said well as far as I understand light it just spreads and that each of us just emits whatever light we have and it just keeps spreading through everybody it touches all the time and everything that goes out in waves from each of us those High beings who are here who are feeding energy into


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me that energy is coming out again for us we're taking it out we're taking it out we're taking it out and people we will be meeting a month from tonight will be receiving the light that we are sharing this [Applause] moment the purification just goes out like ripples on a [Music] lake and I thought to myself if I get highest when I'm alone which is true when I do the purest work why am I sitting with other people why am I seeking this why am I creating what kind of design s are creating this


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phenomenon since your desires are creating me as you see me you might see me as a a hippie playing a role you might see me as a holy man you might see me as old dick Albert you might see me as ramas you might see me as somebody who's been to India you might see me as another cat who's laying out a line like who knows that's your desires for my desires that's all this I thought why aren't I sitting in the temple in the himayat what am I doing here I can sit in the temple in him this


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is nothing keeping me just go to the Himalayas and sit in the temple and then I remember sitting in the temple in the himas and I sat in the temple in the himas and I would the way I would do it is I would in the mornings I would meditate to calm my mind down I'd sit i' have my do all my aens and my PR um first you go and you take an ice cold bath in the river 4:30 in the morning in the dark chanting that's far out and you go to the toilet and you do the whole thing and then you come in and


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you light your incense your candle po your table and you you do your P job and then you meditate and you do breathing payam and then you do atin's body ha yoga then tea or whatever you had that was my addiction was tea then I'd sit by the river as the sun came up and look out and then I would start to meditate and when I'd meditate I would do usually this method that I've talked about a lot the method enunciated by the southern Buddhist the terad the hinan see if you went to certain


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monasteries you say well man this is all groovy here but this is too much of a scene I'm going to a monastery so you're now transported to say Salon or some place like that and you knock on the door of a monastery and you say I'd like to be enlightened and they say come this way and you think aha I'm in I'm in I got one when we got to um sarth that's where Buddha delivered his first sermon at the Deer Park we were staying usually at hostels or at temples and we got to sarth and


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there is a Tibetan Buddhist temple and a Jane Temple and there's the Indian mahab bodyi society and they have a hostel but you got to pay 50 cents a night and then there was a Chinese Buddhist temple that was very remote feeling a remote so the Tibetan Temple was full because the Dal Lama was coming cuz they were going to consecrate a new school the Jane Temple didn't like westernness because they had a lot of trouble and they called everybody hippies the mahabo society charged so we sat in the chai Walla the


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chai stand the tea stand figuring out what to do next and my Guru brother said well go get us into the Chinese Buddhist temple I said but they don't take Wes he said well go do it so he never asked me to do anything he always fed me and took care of me so I figured if he wants me to do it I guess I do it so I walked into this very Chinese inner Garden Place in the temple awesome huge uh sitting Stone Buddha in the temple and that's practically all there is and it's a huge building it's high as this and there's


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nothing else practically in the room there's two Buddhas back to back actually little one behind and I found a man watching the floor and I said to him um I and another American would like to stay here to study and he says he didn't understand come in this way and he let us me into a room you stay here and pretty soon as I sat there these monks started to drift into the room they smiled and I smil till there were about eight or nine of them people monks and others from the temp and uh there was a big fan going around


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and then this old man monk came in and he sat down and he motion for a young interpreter he says what does he want so I said well this other fellow and I are traveling and we would like we're making a religious pilgrimage and we'd like to study for 2 weeks and we'd like to stay at your temple and he looked at me and they looked and I didn't know what was going to happen next and he burst out laughing and then he got up and walked [Music] out and then all the other nine monks got up and walked out and I was left


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there alone I thought well what do you suppose just happened I can't I don't know what is Happ and then uh fellow came along he said come this way took me to a room opened it said this this is the beds this the bathroom and he gave me the key and that was it I'll tell you just a just another smidgen of that part of the drama cuz it was so beautiful about the middle of the night around 3: in the morning I was sort of in a sleep half meditation half sleep State and I started to hear this awesome


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chanting so I went to the door and I opened the door and it was the sky was beautiful the Moon was full and it was all like a uh all old Chinese type trees and uh a pagota style roofs and all with a moon on it and there was this chanting that was coming from somewhere else and I stuck Along by the temple till I came to the temple door and I realized it was coming from inside the temple and there was a candle lit in the temple and I didn't dare look in the temple because it seemed like it was


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none of my business I hadn't been invited in and maybe this was some ceremony and they didn't tell me about that I just sort of sat down outside to like tune in on it and I went on and on and I assumed I they've got many more people living here than I thought they must have 30 40 people here and after about 2 hours of this absolutely beautiful chanting coming from all different spaces and so on it stopped and out walked a little old man and I followed him and there was a gate in the front of the


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temple that was locked it was locked until 700 in the morning and the gate was very far out because it had the swastika on it you know which is the you know but when you look at it from one side and you're standing there holding bars looking through a swastika it takes you on an interesting side trip and he walked up to this huge 8ft gate he must have been well into his middle 60 and I thought we just stand it together till the gate open and uh he just climbed over the gate and walked away so I figured all the other 39 guys


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went out another way cuz I didn't understand the temple so the next morning at around 3:30 or 4 I got up again and I went in this time I peeed and there was this one guy you one corner was a huge drum and another Corner was a symbol and somewhere else were bells and he was working with the Echoes of this building and he was just walking around chanting to different walls and different ceilings and you knew he had been doing this like for maybe 30 40 years every night in the middle of the night and it was that kind of


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music I was meditating in the temple and I was doing the rising falling see if you went into the temple in Salon they'd say come this way and they take you in a room and they'd say you sit right here in this mat and they'd say please notice that right in the middle of your below your rib cage when you breathe certain muscles move so you breathe and you see that certain muscles move and they say when the muscle moves follow it so you follow it it goes out and then it goes down and it goes


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out and it goes down there are a lot of muscles in there but some one of them goes out when you breathe in and it goes down when you breathe out or out and in and that one you tune in on and every time it goes up you think rising and every time it goes down you think falling and the man says you understand you say yes he says thank you and he leaves you came all the way to Salon see and you joyously been accepted into a temple and you've been put in a room and you've been told to watch this


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muscle go up and down right and the door has been closed and that's it right every day your food's left outside the door everybody Smiles at you when they see you now what do you get enlightened well I'll tell you what happened in my part of this journey that I sat in the temple and I did Rising falling Rising falling Rising falling and and I would go deep into it and I would get into waves of bliss and then a thought would come up a thought form and the thought forms some of them at first were very agitated little


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thought forms like your knee hurts or maybe you ought to have another cup of tea before you [Music] begin or uh you think the males here yet or these damn flies whatever it is one of those little ones thought formy most of them don't capture your Consciousness after a while because you're used to them you know and they're like demons that you had visit before and you welcome sit over there you know it's cool have some tea biscuits we're all here screw me and you go on doing your thing Rising


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falling they don't want to interrupt you really I mean they just want to create a little hassle they just want to be known that they're present you honor them you don't try to stop the me know say get out I'm busy meditating sure you got to pain your knee come on in might as well anyway it's going to come in you know [Music] you and then I have some of these thoughts like um I wonder what I'll do back in the United States now those I couldn't dismiss so easy those would fascina me see and I'm just


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sitting there hanging out I mean one of the hippies in Kat Mandu said to me that meditation passes the time to lunch and I was passing the time to lunch and it was a good thing to think about what do you do back in America once I was thinking about that and in that afternoon or I think it was that afternoon maybe the next morning I got a message that maharaji wanted to see me and I went over to see maharaji and I came to him and he said uh you were in America last [Music] night it's like who do you think you're


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kidding you know I mean you can leave your body around but who do you think you're fooling we know where you are you're in America so after a while when you're just doing this kind of idiots Delight there Rising falling Rising falling Rising falling and you go through everything you can say to yourself like you know I've got a whole routine of these now you say because they they've blown my mind so many I run through them all I think you know things like for this you got a PhD you know ring falling


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[Music] [Music] [Applause] see it is a standup comic routine is anybody a [Music] matching maharaji once said to me in in India he said called me over and he whispered in my ear you make many people laugh in America and I said yeah he says that's [Music] good see it's a two in one trip you know after about 2 weeks the guy comes back and he says how you doing he say doing with what and he understands that you haven't yet heard the first message so he says well I'll tell you did you notice that right below your rib


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cage there are these little muscles he's very patient in his whatever accent it is he speaks with you know and he takes you through the thing you're a Wester after all you got to understand you you think you got to do something [Music] now all that that exercise does when you do it by the way is it helps you burn away all the places you aren't it helps you burn away all your desires and your attachments by noting them bringing them into Consciousness CU what you do is you focus on one thing


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which could be your breath going in and out it could be a point of a candle flame like two hands away from your eyebrow out at The Point equal at the height of your AA is a good place for you just sit and hang out with a candle and there's the candle and there's you and you're just hanging out together you're not saying I am going to see Christ in the candle or light become me or you mean you can do all those those are other trips but the other the simplest one this one of one point in


00:38:45 - 00:39:48
this is you just hang out with a candle there's you and the candle and then there's all these thoughts did you ever see in the spring in I know in New Hampshire it's certainly very clear the spring all those tiny little bugs that hang around lights millions of them well those are like your thoughts there's you and the candle and all these thoughts but because you've got the candle as a focal point you see the thoughts as thoughts rather than going on each one's trip cuz if you don't have any focal


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point at all [Music] if you don't have any focal point at all every time there's another stimulation you'll just go off on that trip and then you are at the whim of your senses and you're at the whim of your thoughts that's like everybody's trip every day all through life most of the time that's totally in the [Music] illusion the other end of that scale of course is with there's nobody there and then you're responding to every stimulus that's when you finish that's


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the no mind state but where you still are attached addicted to your rational mind the game is to bring it down to one point and then just keep hold one point and then watch everything else do its Dance all the feelings all the Body Sensations all the thoughts just going by like so much hamburger I've got to save the world I'm sick going to do moreo whenever you Tripp [Music] is you see it there's another trip you see your own desires you see yourself creating thought forms and you dig the thought forms


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determine what you see around you all the time I mean I was looking out here before and I saw two huge eyes of my Guru you a nose coming down I was sort of standing right on the tip of the nose looking into these two big eyes wow man you come at last which level do you want you want to focus in on the cells you want to see the organism which the cells [Music] [Applause] apart and you focus on one point and you just stay on that point and everything just keeps Drifting by until there is only that point now that is the farthest


00:41:38 - 00:42:47
you can go in dualism it's one point to this there's you seeing one point that's on this side of the doorway it's all within the Illusion in Buddhist terms it doesn't exist nothing's happened yet of course in Buddhist nothing's ever going to happen either but nothing's happened yet I'm and at that point the game gets very interesting because at that point the point is to give up the place you've just been [Music] standing the highest meditation in that direction is done by Raman Mahari is


00:42:23 - 00:43:52
given by Raman Mahari and it's called vich Atma the method of self inquiry or who am I it's an absolute Fierce noons method of taking you gate bodh swaha taking you beyond the beyond beyond the ocean of existence all you need to be able to do is be totally one-pointed because if you can't be one pointed in mind you can't do any method in yoga ha yoga is a joke without one pointedness of Mind certainly Baki devotion how can you sing love songs to somebody at the same time be wondering what time you're going


00:43:09 - 00:44:28
to go home I mean bakti is totally one pointed this just your beloved that's the whole idea of B Young so Dian yoga The Yoga of meditation the highest method you can use work assuming that you are so totally committed to doing what you're about to do that you can do it cuz there's nothing else to do because there aren't any attachments to put you away any so what Roman Mahari suggests is you sit down and you put the ey your eye I I or I can make it eye even put it right in the middle of your


00:43:55 - 00:45:20
head and then you say I am not this form body and you experience the form as object and the eye as subject and then you break down the parts of the body and you do this you say I am not the five organs of motion arms I am not the arms and you experience your arm and you see it as an object see it doing its thing you see how the wrist works and the fingers wow look at that it's Exquisite mechanism can do fantastic things you know it's preh hensil you get ODed by the preh hensil trip you know that we got on a


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while back I'm not the arms I'm not the legs I'm not the tongue and you do your tongue and you see your tongue from I and see I is here and the tongue's there arms I am not the arms and you experience your arm and you see it as an object see it doing its thing you see how the wrist works and the fingers wow look at that it's Exquisite mechanism can do fantastic things you know prehensor you get odd by the preh hensil trip you know that we got on a while back I'm not the arms I'm not the


00:45:37 - 00:46:53
legs I'm not the tongue and you do your tongue and you see your tongue from I and see eyes is here and the tongue's there I am not the anal sphincter it's the fourth organ of motion you feel your anal sphincter tightening and loosening and you see it there doing its thing and the ey is in the middle of your head fifth one is I am not my genitals and that takes many people on a number of side trips with a number of demons dropping by you experience your genitals and you experience it from the eye in the middle


00:46:21 - 00:47:50
of your head and you see it as object then he says you say I am not my five organs of sense now you listen to your ears hearing see you note your ears hearing don't identify with your ears hearing just note them hearing note your eyes seeing note your nose smelling note your tongue tasting note your skin feeling I am not any of those see did just doing their thing in nature and that isn't who I am either I'm right back here I know where I am then you say I'm not the five internal


00:47:09 - 00:48:26
organs I'm not digestion and you experience the stomach digesting I am not excretion and you experience the [Applause] intestines I am not respiration breathing circulation blood perspiration sweat each of these systems you note it in your body bring it to Consciousness see it as object and stay in the eye in the middle of your head and there's one more see the system is I am not this body one then five five five then one now you're ready for the one you're down to the place where you've gotten


00:47:53 - 00:49:01
rid of everything else and all there is is the eye in the middle of your head and then you say say I am not the thought of I I am not this thought which thought am I not I am not the thought I am not the thought oh you're not that oh you're not that you're not that either you're not that either you've got it You' got the leverage on the system see every thought you think you're not that one either every place you try to stand you can't stand there either what you've


00:48:28 - 00:49:46
done is you put yourself out on the farthest branch and you just cut off the branch and you see your own thoughts going by like like news flashes on the Times building I am not this thought no not that either you see your thoughts going by like news flashes on the time that's the way you should be seeing the whole scene now going down by the way just as stuff happening you have to collect it's just stuff happening and that's what takes you through the doorway that's what takes you from dualism to


00:49:21 - 00:50:51
non-dualism because at that point you give up the experiencer you give up the knower who knows see God doesn't sit around saying hey man I'm [Applause] God he just is God he just is a Consciousness he just is manifesting he's not laying it on anybody he's just is [Applause] that that's why it's reasonable to say that higher Consciousness is exactly the distance from you of your next [Applause] thought see if you think you're going to go to India to find a guru you're going


00:50:09 - 00:51:04
to be thinking in India just like you're thinking here and sooner or later somebody's going to put you in a room see and tell you to bring your mind to one pointedness and they're going to leave you there till you do it and the person that's going to do it to yourself is you because you dig that your outut of- control mind is just running the show all the time so that the whole process of bringing your mind to one point in this becomes a central matter now the people that say bakti is


00:50:37 - 00:51:55
the only way in the Kaluga are saying in order to bring your mind to one pointedness use the heart use emotions use love love is a way to generate the energy to override all the other demons and get you to one pointedness and they say Dion yoga or The Yoga of Mind beating mind the Western mind can't work with it because it's too he'll he'll be too [Music] cute he'll undermine it every time only the Western's heart is strong enough to override the control of the ego when you go to try to develop the


00:51:25 - 00:52:33
witness in yourself the guy who sees or the gal who sees it all going down every day all the time that's another part of it's like in the gief system self-remembering that's also in the rational mind on this side of the of the doorway see it's part of your rational mind that's digging the rest of your rational mind [Applause] [Music] but what happens is that witness wakes up for one second and then the ego takes over the witness if you want a whole catalog of the way that's done read St John of The


00:52:08 - 00:53:15
cross's Dark Knight of the Soul it's got a whole list of them it's got The Groovy one where you've just done prayam and you've just come into high life see you've just transcended your ego and the ego Pitts around behind you and Pats you in the back and says pretty good and you realize you have an adversary that you hadn't bargained on you know because everywhere you are the ego is close behind it's like Mary's little lamb it's like your Shadow did you ever try to beat you


00:52:46 - 00:53:57
Shadow the ego is exquisite at taking over any game you can conceive in form of course it can make itself in any form that's who your adversary is how are you going to stab the enemy when they when this the the knife you're going to use to stab him is the enemy and the arm is stabbing it with is the enemy and the thought you're Desiring to stab the enemy is the enemy gets very [Music] headyy Krishna says in the ga he who thinks there is a slain or a Slayer or one who is slain knows not me


00:53:30 - 00:55:05
[Applause] there are so many ways that we can identify in a dualistic framework in a devotional way in a very high way and get stuck get stuck at the most Exquisite causal [Applause] planes and that's what I dug was the problem with the holy man trip that it tended to play into the desire of people to create dualism Paul Farmer who's been traveling with me said to me man what you create is a feeling in people that you're somewhere they're not now I said well that's their problem that is the problem of he of us


00:54:22 - 00:55:51
who is them that's our uncooked car that was still looking for it out [Applause] there because as I've said before it must be obvious to everybody that everything I'm saying you already know all we are doing is reciting it to one another we're talking to oursel all I am is the mouthpiece for us at this moment [Applause] and I'm saying what we have to say to oursel what I have to say to myself since it's only us I guess we all have to say it to ourself but we wouldn't be


00:55:17 - 00:56:40
here tonight we're going to attempt an exercise in one-pointedness [Applause] about uh 3 years ago I was in Berkeley I was studying for the summer with aliak lakan with Mahar Mishra the tablea at the Berkeley summer school the summer school aliak Khan school and um while I was there um I was one day driving I had an old school bus and I was driving across the Oakland Bay no the San Mato bridge I picked up a hitchhiker and we Groove Together for a while and then he asked if he could bring a friend over and he came to visit


00:56:07 - 00:57:15
one day and we hung out for a number of hours talking and um the end of that time the friend said that he played the guitar and he'd like to play for me sometime and I thought well that's nice but I think I'm finished with music because I'm at the predicament now where when I take my earplugs and stick them in my ears and go inside I hear the sounds of the Universe I start to hear oh and I start to hear choruses and I start to hear flutes and I start to hear but they're Divine and I begin to realize what a


00:56:41 - 00:57:42
gross form it is coming in through my senses I mean it's groovy the way music is but it's still stuff and behind the stuff you start to get into this Divine sound and one of the highest yogas is what's called sh yoga also called called nod yoga which is the yoga of inner sounds and you can just put in earplugs or do the VES of a mudra or something like that close off your ears and just start to listen to your inner sounds and there are nine of them my teacher wrote in a slate the ninth one


00:57:12 - 00:58:18
is the sound of thunder after that you will have a fever for 24 hours I mean they know man they right down at the edge and then he put a footnote he says the sound he listed them and when he opposite the um flute he had put an aster and he put a note down he said the flute is so beautiful it is like a deer being caught in a trap you can't go on cuz the flute's so beautiful he says after much uh after a few days with much obas practice you can get on with it in other words Groove with it for a little


00:57:48 - 00:58:42
while and get on he's pointing out where you might trip you know along the way to help you that was the inner sound so when this fellow offered to play the guitar I sort of well that's groovy but man like you know that's not my trip and as I was getting ready to go to India I was visiting a fellow in Berkeley and he said I'd like you to hear this tape and he put on a tape of guitar and it was a very beautiful thing and it was sufficiently beautiful so I had my tape recorded there I said can I


00:58:20 - 00:59:45
make a tape because I'm going to India and I'd like to have that with me so I took it to India and every time I would get sort of into certain States I would play things like this guitar business at that time I did not realize really that the same guy was those two guys now I came back to America and about two weeks ago I was talking with somebody about um Sufism and they said to me this Sufi teacher said that buff is very high that he was one of the the last westerners that understood in the total plan the role of


00:59:05 - 01:00:18
Rhythm and structure and he understood it so well and when he spoke it spoke to those places in a person and it was like causal knowledge in nonverbal form he was telling you how he was he was describing the universe at a plane that was not in the physical plane he was just using sound taking you out on sound it's like Mantra same thing as Mantra it takes you a certain place through rhythmic [Applause] structure and at that time I remember thinking gee wouldn't it be a Groove to try and exercise with bck because that


00:59:46 - 01:00:59
will bring the whole Western business back into perspective and so on and last Tuesday night here after I was leaving a fellow came up and he said you remember sitting and talking one day he said I play the guitar and that was the guy that played B so he is here tonight I said to him why don't you play next Tuesday night with us he said I'd love to he's a lover of Baba also and um I thought we would do this as a meditation exercise um now in order to do that you can get caught in the sheer beauty


01:00:29 - 01:01:25
of the structure you're going to hear and you can stay as the enjoyer of the beauty if you do that you've blown the exercise it's groovy and enjoy it this lifetime and you know hear some or guitar right or you can use this as an exercise just become one with a sound let it do it to you let the music do you instead of you listening to the music forget you're a listener and just be the music okay