Session 5: The Mind Mirror (31 May 1966)
Now why do we, who are more with this subject than others, why are we in a position where we don't have joy all the time, with no sorrow?
Why, after having been with this subject and following the great masters, why can't we get that thing we are looking for? What is wrong?
Well, I believe if you look into it, you will discover that there's only one thing wrong, ONLY One thing. Our wanting this growth is not as strong as our wanting this world, as our wanting Ego approval.
Therefore, I try to be as practical as can be by presenting you with methods that you can use every day to grow by.
There is no moment in life that cannot be used as an opportunity for growth. Now the ONLY growth, and I'm capitalizing this word ONLY, the ONLY growth is — letting go of ego. When the ego is zero, God is all.
If we are not finding ‘enough of God’, or ‘enough of happiness’, it's only because we are holding on to our ego’s desires.
So I think at each meeting I'll present one particular method that we can use in everyday life to help us let go of our ego. I think today I would like to say this. As you see the world, so are you.
I'm taking off on, “As a man believeth in his heart, so is he.” — Which is correct. But I say this is a much more advanced way of looking at it. — “As you see the world, so are you.”
Now every day when we get up and open our eyes, we start looking at the world. We meet people, and as we see those people — so are we. It is impossible to see a Fault in anyone else that we don't have in ourselves.
If the fault is not in us, it's impossible to see it out there in anyone else. It's almost the same as, in order to understand Greek, you must know Greek. Anything we understand out there, we know within.
So every time we see something out there that we do not like, a person who is doing something that we don't like, and it bothers us, it is only because that very same thing is in us. Now this is a powerful method of growth, because most of us unfortunately see things that are wrong in this world.
When a master looks at the world, he sees nothing but perfection. We should try to get the same viewpoint. If we will hold on to just this one thing, there will be a tremendous growth. Every time you see something wrong in someone, look for it in yourself, and when you see it, let go of it. Keep letting go. And every time you let go of it, you're letting go of a bit of ego.
The whole thing is very simple. — “Thou art that, here and now.” Remove the covering of the ego. Let go of the ego.
And when the ego is completely gone, the only thing left is the infinite Self. Where the ego rises not, there is the Self.
So in everyday life, as we meet people, situations, every time we see something we don't like, we should turn within. See it within ourselves, let go of it.
Now this will not clear us in one day or one week, because there's an awful lot to be cleared. We have developed for many lifetimes — ego attachments and desires, — and they don't go in one or two days.
When we start letting go of the ego, it appears sometimes as though the ego is getting stronger and stronger and bigger and bigger. That's not true. It'll never get any bigger than it is right now.
What happens is that as we let go of it, more of it presents itself to us. We are looking at it more, and it appears sometimes as though the ego is getting bigger. Actually we're just facing up to more of it that was there all the time.
Looking away from ego does not dissolve it. It just remains there. Until the time comes that we are forced to let go of it.
So daily, right through the entire day, if we would just look at the world and realize that we are seeing it through our own eyes, through our own consciousness, through our own understanding, that what we see out there is nothing but ourselves, this can affect a rapid positive growth that will show results immediately.
The first week you'll feel better. And as you keep doing this, you'll get lighter and lighter and lighter. Happiness will get more and more and more. Sorrow will get less and less. But the main warning I give you is — don't expect it overnight. And if the ego appears to loom up larger, it's only because you're facing it. Whereas before you were looking away from it.
Nancy just asked, “Well, how do you do it?” Well, you see someone out there who's trying to be the life of the party — the number one. And you don't like it. And that’s a very obvious thing. — If we don't like the other one trying to be the number one, it's only because we want to be the number one.
All right, so what do we do? You have to go within and look for it and stay with it until you see it. If you will go within, meditate on it, quiet your mind, the answer will always come. You will see why, — “Yes! I too want to be the number one. And I was resentful because the other one was trying to be the number one.”
And then when you see that you want to be the number one, say to yourself, “This I must let go of!” — with a wish to let go. And just by the wish to let go, you are letting go of a bit of ego.
There are no better lessons than those we get from our family. You'll find family the best means of growing. And the main reason for that is that we choose our parents, and we choose parents who have similar characteristics to our own. And so there's always a to-and-fro between parent and child because of this.
Parents are telling their children what to do, and the children are fighting right back, up and back, up and back, all the time. Most of the time, a parent and child are together. There's a constant to-and-fro on the thing we're talking about. Because we have it in ourselves, we see it in our parent, or we see it in our child. And they see it in us, which causes quite a lot of friction.
Now, there can be the opposite relationship, too. We can have an ego lift if our parent has the things that we like. If parent and child are together on something that they both agree on, then there's an elation, a support of the ego going on all the time. That's possible, also.
Now, ego, the same way — it goes down on rebuff, goes up on praise. So we should look for two ways. And remember, anything that can be lifted by words of praise can be as quickly dropped by the opposite word. [Knowing this, we can use our awareness to notice the change of our state at anytime, and let go of the ego. ]
And the state that we want to attain to is one of equanimity, where we are always happy, where our happiness does not depend upon things and people outside of ourselves. The real Happiness, with a capital ‘H’, is our natural state and is independent of people and things.
Anytime it's dependent upon anything outside of ourselves, it's an ego pleasure, which must necessarily have an ego pain after it. And yet all joy that we feel in this world is only the feeling of the self, more or less. Even though we attribute it to someone or something outside, that feeling of joy that we feel is nothing but the Self.
And so I say all joy that we feel has its source in the Self. And all misery that we feel has its source in the ego.
And there's another way of letting go of ego. — Every time we feel unhappy, look for the ego motivation. There's something we want and we're frustrated and we're unhappy. Seek the ego source, you see it, you automatically let go of it and you'll feel happy again.
Another way of saying it is, — there's nothing out there but our consciousness. Whatever we see wrong out there, the moat is in our eye. A master sees nothing but perfection in you in every moment. If he says otherwise, he's just talking for the benefit of the hearer in order to communicate.
There is only the truth, the absolute, eternal, infinite, unlimited joy, omniscience, omnipresent, all glorious. That's all there is in truth. Anything other than that is a falsity, the appearance, the delusion, the Maya.
Well, isn't this Maya true?
So the only thing I can say is, “No, it isn't.” See the truth and you'll see that everything is absolutely perfect.
Everyone is trying to return to the full Self, to let go of their ego. Some of us make errors in that direction. — By going further into an ego direction, we get more and more apparently in trouble. And it's an apparency. Until the apparency gets so difficult, we start looking in the other direction.
If you want to know light, don't look at the darkness. If you want to know truth, good, don't see evil. Ego is the sense of separation from the all. Before we got ourselves into this apparent delusion, we were that infinite being that we are now seeking.
Through some quirk and beingness, we decided to play a game, really a game of limitation. We decided to be just a little limited.
But when we started that direction, we fell into a trap. In the game of limitation, we, instead of going back to the unlimited, we went further and drew a less wide circle around ourselves and became more limited and tried to get out of that.
We kept doing that, and the main divisions of it is, first, we were what is called a causal body. We created a body to be separate in. And in the causal body, it's the realm of ideation to us now, the realm of ideas.
And in that causal body, the moment we had an idea, it was completely fulfilled. It's almost like hurting yourself and stopping and saying, “Gee, that feels good.” You create a little separation, and it feels good to go toward the all each time.
So we first created the causal body, and the moment we had an idea or a thought or wish, it was immediately fulfilled. Then we tried playing more limited through an astral body, which to those of us who are now in a physical is a heavenly life.
In the astral body, whatever you think is immediately affected. We're not limited by time there. Then we moved from the astral into the physical, which is the slowest, the most dense realm possible to any being in the universe. This is the lowest state possible, the physical.
There's only one possibility of going lower, and that's lower in the physical. But the physical state is the lowest state. This is the deadest state that's possible unto us.
When you know this, you'll never fear death, because death feels like a wonderful freeing. It's a tremendous experience after you do it, not before. [Laughter] Because before we think “We are nothing but this body, when this body goes, we go.”
And even the pain in death is not nearly as much as the pain you suffer through life. — You have migraine, headache and diseases, and mental agonies with families and heartbreaks and love. — That's more severe than dying at death, because dying at death generally is just a pain for a moment, and then this tremendous feeling of freedom.
So we came down to this most limited and densest state called the physical. And now all of us are on the way back, and there's no question about that.
We're in a period of the world that is relatively low in vibration, very difficult, very physical. And those of us who are on the path are definitely on the way out. Because if we can get the right direction in this morass of livingness as it is today, it's because we started on this a long time ago, and we're continuing it in spite of the world, so to speak.
And we can go from the physical, we can graduate, get our wings, and fly off into the astral. And you can spend far more millenniums in the astral than you do here, because it's an easier way of life. And then we can graduate into the causal.
And we can go from the physical, we can graduate, get our wings and fly off into the astral. And you can spend far more millenniums in the Astral. When you do, here [in the Astral Realm] because it's an easier way of life and then we can graduate into the causal.
But if you understand what the ego is, you can go all the way from the lowest realm that we are in now back to the highest by eliminating the ego sense. When we lose all of our ego sense, we are fully realized. We go all the way. We return to being the all.
The opportunity to do this exists more in this physical realm than any other realm, because it is so difficult that the incentive is greatest in this realm.
As life gets easier, the incentive to grow gets less. But when you think you are not going to eat, and the whole world is going to collapse on you and so forth, and you have a sick body and all these troubles, you have a tremendous incentive to get out of that. And the incentive being so much stronger in this Physical realm than Astral and Causal realm, it's possible to transcend all the realms and go right back to the one, or the All.
So this sense of egoity is very basic and very important. It's the start of all trouble, and letting go of it — is the elimination of all trouble. It's the sense of not being the all, not being that God which we are.
And if you're not the all, there's something missing and you're trying to get it. First a hundred dollars, then a thousand, then a million, then a billion, then the earth, then the moon, then the solar system, then the galaxy, until you wake up to the fact that everything you're trying to get — you are. Once you see that, there's nothing to be gotten anymore. You are it.
It's really a joke when you see the overall picture of how people struggle to get tiny bits of what they are.
So every time you see something wrong in the world, look upon it as a mirror, and that's all it is. It's reflecting to you your consciousness, and if you accept this, you can use it to undo your ego.
There's nothing out there but our consciousness. If you ever want to know what your consciousness is — just take a check on what is around you and what you see and what you go through every day in life. — That's your consciousness.
This is the danger in reading newspapers, listening to the radio. The world in general has a very negative consciousness. If you go with it, it helps to push you in that direction.
Now, if someone tells you that that's escape, but it's not just that. Any time you acknowledge anything in the world, you're supporting it. If you acknowledge war and death and misery, you're supporting it. That's the mental thoughts you're sending out.
You see, we all send out thoughts. Every time we have a thought, we think it's a secret little thing within ourselves. — It goes out to the universe.
So the Masters support the world. They counterbalance all the apparent negativity by just sitting in a cave and sending out the good whole thoughts, constructive thoughts, thoughts of oneness.
So the only way we can give real help to the entire world is by helping ourselves. The more positive our consciousness is, the more we send that out to everyone!
[Transcripted on 20 Sep 2018]
[Updated on 20 May 2024 - assisted with TurboScribe.ai (free version)]
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