KH Tang's Blog: Self Development Idea (25): Session 6: The Path to Happiness (7th June 1966) by Lester Levenson

Transcription of Lester Levenson Audio Tape

The Ultimate Goal Volume 1

Session 6: Your Path to Happiness (7th June 1966)

There are two laws that will cover all behavior. And I say if you'll use these two laws, it'll lead you into full realization:

The first is — an attitude of harmlessness toward all beings.

The second is — the law of mutuality. That any behavior, if agreed to by both, is correct.

If one doesn't agree, the other should not try to make the one do it. For instance, I want to go to the movies. I say, “Come on, let's go to the movies.” And you say “No.” And I say, “Well, why not? Come on, you should go.” And so forth and so on. That's wrong on my part. If you don't want to go, I shouldn't want you to go. It's only mutual if we both agree on it.

There is no act that cannot be used for helping one grow on the path. And it must be a full-time thing if we want to get realization.

It can't be a weekend or a one hour in the evening or one hour in the morning kind of thing. It must be all the time! Relatively speaking, there's little growth until the subject is every minute, every day.

The happier we are, the more we are dwelling in God, in the Self. We falsely attribute the happiness to the person out there or the thing out there. But what actually happens is — is when the person or thing out there satisfies our desire, we stop thinking.

And when we stop thinking, we feel good. When we stop thinking, we are being our own Self. Someday, we all discover that the only joy there is, is the joy of our beingness, of our Self, which we before attributed to people and things.

All right, knowing that, when we know that point, — that the only joy is our very own self, it follows that the opposite, — misery is just ego. And more specifically, ego frustration. We have desires, we want things, we can't get them, we feel unhappy. — So all misery has its source in the ego.

All Happiness has its source in the Self. Now this can be used 24 hours a day for growth. As I said before, the only growth there is, being that we are now, we always have been, we always will be this infinite self, it is changeless, perfect.

So the only growth is, we cannot grow into the self, because we are that. But we do grow out of the ego. The only growth there is, is letting go of the ego.

So to use this concept of Happiness versus misery, every time we are unhappy, if we just assume that, “Well, this has its source in the ego.” We may then look for the source of the misery, and when we discover it, we automatically let it go.

The only reason why we don't let go of misery, or can't, is because we don't see the cause of it. When anyone sees the cause of the misery, he lets it go, naturally.

So if we hold on to that concept that all misery has its source in the ego, we can use this as a method of growth, by looking at, every time we are unhappy, looking at it, but with the desire to let it go.

All right now, looking at it is not so easy, because we must learn how to look at it. — When we are unhappy, we should look within for a frustrated desire. This is the source of all misery. We had a desire, and it's selfish. We wanted something, we couldn't get it, therefore we're unhappy.

So every time we are unhappy, we should sit with it, look at it, see its source in the ego, and when you see the source of it, when you see that desire that's being frustrated, you'll automatically let go of it. And by doing so, you're letting go of a bit of ego. Continue this, and you'll get full realization. You'll eliminate the ego.

This can be used every day. If you try it, you'll discover that it affords very rapid growth. When you're miserable, get quiet, look within, look for the desire behind it, when you see it, you'll automatically let go.

There's another side to desire called ‘Aversion’. Things we dislike, we have aversions to. But an aversion is a desire not to have. So even an aversion is a desire. — It's a desire not to have.

So to sum up what I've just said, a very rapid means of growth, one that could give us full realization, is simply looking at our joys and sorrows. [Awareness watching awareness method.]

Looking at the sorrows, we look for the ego source of it, the desire and its frustration, and when we see it, we automatically let go of it. By so doing, we let go of a bit of ego, we keep it up, and eventually there's no more ego.

Now it's also good to approach it on the other side, on the Happiness side. If you'll study your Happiness, you'll see that the more you are with the Self, with a capital ‘S’, or the more you are with God, the happier you are. When we see that our Happiness is nothing but being, that which we are, we will automatically try to just be what we are, more so.

So we may also look to the Happiness, discover what that is, and find that it's simply our very own beingness, and that will encourage us to just be what we are, really, more and more.

So these two big things in life, joy and sorrow, can be used every day for growth. Now, since we all know it, if we don't use it, I say “It's only because our desire for the world, our desire for misery, is greater than our desire for this infinite joy, and that we hold on to that desire merely by habit.”

And I also want to repeat something else that I said, that this path has to be a full-time occupation. It cannot be part-time. We must be with it 24 hours a day, if we expect realization.

It matters not how busy we are in life. If we have the right attitude, if we have that seeking attitude all the time, we will be doing those things that will be leading us out of this confinement, out of the trap that we've gotten ourselves into. It must be 24 hours a day.

[Comment: These twenty-four hours a day refer to the Attitude and Consciousness of us, — of applying the concepts that we’ve learnt, applying it in the background mode as a way of habit. Just like the computer running that anti-virus program twenty-four hours a day and it does not affect the use of the computer.]

Now when I say 24 hours a day, that includes sleep. We carry into our sleep the stream of consciousness of the daytime — what the stream of consciousness is when we fall asleep, it so remains during the night.

If we're intensely on the path during the daytime, we actually grow during the night. Our dreams will change. Instead of having horrible dreams, they'll become good dreams. We'll even meet higher saints and sages in our sleep state, in our dream state. We will get lessons from them in that state, sometimes more easily than in the waking state. So the growth does go on during sleep.

If we make enough effort in the waking state to make it all the time. So growth can be 24 hours a day, and should be. And if we want realization, it must be.

We can only help ourselves if we want to take it from the top, and helping the other one, you're only helping yourself. There only is your Self in the end, you'll see.

And looking at the separation, each one is fully responsible for what happens to him or to her. I can't help you one iota. It's only an apparency that I'm helping you.

If you get any help, you do it. You'll listen to what he says, and you'll say, “Oh, I like that, and I'm going to use that.” But you do it. No one can help you. And if no one can help you, no one can hurt you. That's also nice to know.

All right, I'll give it to you from the top. — “Before ye ask, believe that ye have already received.” The way the Bible puts it. — When we pray, if we know that our prayers are already answered, so it is. Whatever we want would be ours instantaneously.

If you've got that much faith in God, your prayer will be answered immediately. If we haven't got that much faith, then we must do our best. — Pray for how you best know how to pray. Now the one prayer that we should have above all other prayers is to pray for Wisdom.

The mind is only creative. It creates what we hold in mind. And it doesn't recognize the word ‘not’ or ‘no’. If I don't want to think of a monkey, I'm only thinking of a monkey.

If I do not want to be sick, if I do not want an accident, — I am thinking of accident and tending to create it. So instead of thinking of no accident, we must think of safety. Instead of thinking of sickness, we must think of health.

This is the greatest weakness in so-called demonstration*. — People think in negatives. They don't want this, and they don't want that, and that's what they create.

demonstration*: same as “manifestation”, “Law of Attraction”, etc…

So we must think Only what we want, never what we do not want. And if we would think only what we want, that is all we would ever get. It's as simple as all that. Not easy, but it's simple. If we would think only what we want, that is all and everything that we would get.

KARMA

Karma is the automatic behavior. Karma is past habits. Karma is our unconscious mind. Etc., etc.

Being infinite beings, we can transcend karma. It's impossible to work out karma. Because as you are working out one act, you're creating a similar act for the future.

By its very definition, it's impossible to work out karma. Every act now creates an act in the future. So while we're trying to work out all the past action, we're creating action for the future. So it's impossible to work out karma. Karma works for the ego. Karma is a law for the ego.

Once we know who and what we are, karma does not operate. Karma does not exist. Someday we get to the point where we see this, and we just step out and above karma, and it is no more.

FROM THE TOP

See, these things are so simple, if you'll look at it from the top. I use the word ‘from the top’. Any time we reason, we should always start reasoning with Truth. With a true statement, then everything is simple.

As statements of Truth, we may take God as All. God is Perfect. Start reasoning from there, and see where your troubles are. They'll disappear. They have to.

When we start with the Truth, everything is simple. If it's complex, it's wrong. If it's complex, it's steeped in the realm of ego. The greater the ego, the greater the complexity. God is simple. The ego is complex.

Karma is created in our thoughts. The action is just an aftermath of thought. It's impossible for you to commit any act without a thought of it prior to it, right? The act is created, the karma is created in the thought.

It's the thoughts we take with us. It's not the acts. The act is gone through and it's finished, but the thought remains.

In the era that we're in, it's called the Kali Yuga, so it's a low period. The majority of people are in the tamasic, or in the state of lethargy. It looks like a very peaceful, docile state when one is in there.

It's a state of apathy. The Rajas, the energetic state, is much higher. When we start to move into that energetic state, we begin to express the subconscious desires and wishes.

And so they come out, and we seem to be getting worse, whereas before we were thinking it unconsciously. Now we want to carry it out. We want to hit somebody. We're angry. We start fighting. And it looks as though we're going in a wrong direction, but it is a higher state.

Arjuna did not want to fight. He was told by Krishna that he had to fight. [from Bhagavad Gita] If you can't fight, you must fight. If you can fight, you don't have to fight. That's the way it comes out. If you can fight, you're already moving above the state of Rajas, the energetic state, and you're moving into the sattvic, the spiritually peaceful state.

When you're moving toward that spiritually peaceful state, you're able to fight, but you don't want to, and so you don't. So when you move up out of the lethargy state, it looks as though your character sometimes is becoming worse. It isn't.

You're just expressing more, and it's showing what before was unconscious. Anger, an Anger mood is a higher mood than the mood of Apathy. The highest mood is that of Peace, bliss, and it's all degrees between those three states.

A fully realized master, a Jesus, or any master to whom you look to. It's possible to keep his company all the time. You can learn that positively by testing it out.

These masters are omnipresent. They are right where we are all the time. They are readily contacted. They're not difficult to contact, because they are pushing toward us much more than we are pushing toward them. But we must open ourselves to it. We must make the contact.

So the very best of holy company would be a fully realized being. Next best would be a saint, and so forth on down. Coming down to everyday life, it would be people who are on the path with us, people who think the way we think.

But the very best is the highest. The highest can be contacted, not with people, but when you're by your Self. Therefore, the more you can be by your Self, the better.