CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
Vol. 1, No. 6
April 1984

QUESTION: I would like some food for thought on the subject of what we normally call death, or transition. There are a whole bunch of things that we are taught, or we come into the habit of expecting to behold or to experience. And, I think the misunderstanding around the topic has been so great that there has been actually almost no time for focusing on the truth of it.

It's like somebody can go up to a wall and say, "Oh, yeah, I've knocked my head against you a few times, and you're solid, and that's the way you are." And yet, being such a painful experience it's difficult to sit down and relax and say, "Okay, the wall has other qualities or characteristics about it."

RAJ: In the first place, it is important to understand that absolutely nothing happens outside of the Life-Process, outside of the scope of Consciousness, or Being. Therefore, what is called death is not a movement out of Being into non-being, or nonexistence, but is, for lack of better words, a movement in terms of levels; a movement out of the three-dimensional-only frame of reference into another level of belief, which is not so binding from a physical standpoint, although the experience of physicality is still present.

The disappearance of a friend or relative or pet is an illusion of the same sort as the disappearance of a friend on a plane as it moves into the distance. It is a perceptual loss of the degree of sensitivity needed in order to continue to perceive their presence. Your continued ability to be consciously aware of their presence must occur at finer, more subtle levels of consciousness, rather than with the grosser physical sense. And, even then, your ability to do so is governed by the degree of belief they may entertain regarding your presence or availability, since they are still blinded to one degree or another with the idea that they are still what they see themselves to be, rather than the Consciousness in which their experience of body is taking place, and therefore in which your existence is taking place.

Passing on is not the means of Awakening, and therefore those who have passed on do not automatically find themselves in a state of Totally Awakened Conscious Being.

QUESTION: What do we understand by passing on? I suppose the difficulty comes because I can't perceive that as being valid. And, if I can't, I wonder how somebody else could?

RAJ: You are correct that it is impossible to understand an illusion, just as it is impossible to understand the existence of a "creature" attacking you in a dream. The only solution or resolution of such an illusion is to wake up and find that it was not actual in the first place, and therefore there is no explanation to its structure, color, nature, intent, and so on.

Nevertheless, as long as the attempt to understand one's existence is being made through the five physical senses, and all the conclusions about it are drawn from the evidence of the five physical senses, false conclusions are going to be arrived at and acted upon. And, one is apparently going to experience illusion and inharmony, due to his inability to be appropriate and his unwillingness to gather data from other than the five physical senses. So, there must be some means of dealing with the illusion in order to get beyond it.

Your inability to believe it, or buy into it or understand it, is evidence of the strength you have been able to keep uncovered, unblocked -- a perceptual connection with the eternality of your Being. And, it is this unshielded Knowing, which will put you in the position of being able to demonstrate the nonexistence of the illusory experience called death.

There are those, however, who have not remained in touch with or connected with their Knowing about their eternality. And, they conduct themselves in a progressively destructive manner, until they "do themselves in," out of ignorance, by virtue of having evolved a body, which will no longer support the identification of their presence. This is their own illusion, which they are apparently succumbing to. But, nevertheless, it is one which, as long as they are denying themselves and their actuality, they will experience, only to immediately find that they are still with that which identifies their existence -- body -- and thereby have the opportunity to significantly grasp the fact that Body is identical to and simultaneous with their Existence. In other words, the opportunity is there for significant enlightenment regarding what they are and what identifies them.

You may seem to be deprived of your conscious awareness of their presence by virtue of their ignorance and insistence that they are mortal creatures, which fade and die. But, it is not necessary for you to buy into that. It is not necessary for you to think that they have become something different from you. It is not necessary for you to think that you still have a body, which they have now discarded, and therefore you are beyond each other's reach. They still exist in the only place they have ever existed, and that is within the conscious infinitude of your Being, because your Consciousness is the Universal Consciousness, the infinite Mind, in which nothing is ever lost to its immediate and direct perception.

Those who see themselves as "body," or a body which has evolved a capacity to think, by virtue of the brain -- those who have not made any shift to an awareness of themselves as Consciousness, in which their body is embraced -- will find it impossible to experience significant communication with and awareness of the presence of those who have passed on, because they limit themselves with the belief that they are a body with a brain that can think. Thus, the subtler levels of their conscious experience of Being, those levels in which the infinite aspect of their Being is present to be experienced, remain unavailable to them.

You are not fundamentally bound by such idiocy, and therefore, you are in a position of having a less restricted experience around the loss of anyone or anything. By the same token, it puts you in a dilemma, because you are confronted with the social expectations and the accumulated beliefs held by others around this illusory transition.

You are not obligated in any way to be in any kind of agreement with popular conceptions about "death." It should be apparent to you that to those who think they are simply a material body, an organism with a capacity to be conscious, death is a final separation from those they love and know. And, out of their very finite self-conceptions it is inevitable that they will experience varying forms of grief and sorrow. But, these are simply aspects of the belief of finiteness and material selfhood, and are no more real than the so-called "event" of death.

The apparent death and the subsequent suffering are all part and parcel of the illusion, and it is absolutely unnecessary for you to buy into any of it. Such "grief work" simply amounts to the process of deciding that, indeed, one's loss is real, one's finite self-perception is absolute, and coming to some state of equilibrium around that finite belief system.

QUESTION: For example, if someone is grieving over one thing or another, and I can see that they're grieving -- so many times it's like being aware that the grieving person is actually partially aware of the stupidity, and then partially not aware of it, and therefore truthfully believing that the grieving is 100%, so that we have a split there. I find that my most natural and comfortable centered point is not to respond at all, which, of course, oftentimes triggers off in them the feeling that there is hardness or lack of compassion and understanding, which, in itself, is a trap.

RAJ: You are quite correct. It is an attempt on their part to get you to join them in their illusion, and your inability (rather than unwillingness) to do so, because you can see the facts more clearly (minus the illusion), does, indeed, arouse their accusation that you are cold, unfeeling, and crazy.

You will remember that when Jesus was brought to the child who was dead, and he said to the grieving family, "she is not dead, but sleepeth," they laughed him to scorn! They insisted that he join them in their loss, not realizing that their definite belief was what blinded them to her presence. Jesus, on the other hand, was totally aware of her presence and LIFE, and attempted to soften their definiteness by alluding to her simply being asleep. If he had joined with them or reacted to them with hurt ego-oriented feelings of being misunderstood, he also would have lost his perception of her presence and life, and there would have been no "resuscitation."

Never feel obligated to join anyone in their illusion or belief. Stand with your own clarity, because it is that clarity which has the power to subjugate the beliefs to the divine facts, which, in the final analysis, are always healing and revealing, rather than obscuring and densifying.

QUESTION: What is my mother doing? What comes through is, there is a moment of transition here, and it feels like she's going to dribble off.

RAJ: Please understand, that any death, no matter what the details of its process, is a suicide. It is chosen by the individuality.

QUESTION: How can I help, then? Because if I know what is going on, then how can I stand in the way? I mean, I am not here for sitting and watching a picture of idiots! Please help.

RAJ: And all of them are pointing the finger at you!

QUESTION: Why? Why are they pointing the finger at me? Does it appear that they are pointing the finger at me, or what is the truth of that?

RAJ: The fact is that Tom was pointing the finger at you. He was attempting to express an action, which would create guilt. But, in the final analysis it was his decision, and that is where the Responsibility lies, not with you.

In the other examples, YOU are the one pointing the finger at yourself. Because you feel that you have (and you are correct) a comprehension of the lunacy involved in death, and because of that comprehension it seems to you that you should be able to help, and therefore have an obligation to your brother to provide that help.

It must become very clear to you that no one grows, except by virtue of his decision to do it! All that you can do for another at any time is to provide the atmosphere in which that decision can be most easily made. But, the responsibility for the change in decision lies ENTIRELY OUT OF YOUR REACH!

It is impossible to violate the integrity, the right of each individual to decide to flow with or resist his Being. Therefore, it can in no way be your responsibility to relieve someone of the idiocy of his belief. It is, however, your obligation to sense into the appropriateness of any given moment with that individual and trust what you are led to do, leaving the responsibility for responding to what you are being up to the individual, and not burdening yourself with a feeling of obligation to do something you have no ability to do. You can only decide for yourself. Tom could only decide for himself. Your mother can only decide for herself.

I encourage you to be completely open to whatever emerges when you sense into the appropriateness of any given moment, especially with your mother at this time, and not assume that because you cannot be responsible for her decision, that you must therefore just be sweetly, passively supportive of her idiocy. That is not what I am saying.

You do whatever you need to do. But, realize that the one thing you cannot do, and therefore you shouldn't burden yourself with the responsibility for, is actually making the decision for sanity or lunacy. And, give her the full right to make that decision, even though in the process you may scream bloody murder because that is what is perhaps appropriate.

QUESTION: It seems to me that if I'm going to sense into the appropriateness of the moment, that I'm going to be more or less spread out (energy wise) instead of settling down into doing my own life.

RAJ: Do not make any assumptions and then generalize your future in your mind based upon those assumptions, and as a result of that, then try to conform yourself to that concept you have developed -- all based on an assumption.

Again, be aware that your mother is taking responsibility for herself, even though it is not a path, which you see as being intelligent or real. You have the responsibility to do likewise: Take responsibility for yourself.

Be aware that there may be times when it will be appropriate for you to be available. You are not to become obligated or available just because someone else is taking responsibility for themselves in a way that will increase the amount of attention they get. You are YOU. You have your Path. You have your life. And you have the responsibility of making decisions, which are consistent with your Path, the unfolding of your Being. You are not required to be consistent with someone else's conceptual framework and the decisions they make concerning their concepts.

Begin at this very minute to be consciously aware of your integrity. As I told Paul: It may be your purpose, by virtue of being a member of the Brotherhood of Man, to serve your fellow man, but you are not to become the main dish! You are not to sacrifice your integrity for anyone else's point of view.

The "state of helplessness" that is apparent in infants and in the elderly, prior to death, is a farce! The infant is very actively taking responsibility for itself and seeing to it that it is being fed, and changed, and bathed, and coddled, and does an excellent job at it, even though the parents take the responsibility for it and think that they are the ones being so excellent in discharging their responsibility.

Likewise, the elderly, prior to the transition, consciously adopt a role, which invites and encourages others to take responsibility. And all the while, they are the ones exercising the power of decision.

The necessity for you is to always be checking in with your Self, rather than checking in with them to see what needs to be done, what more you have to do, how quickly to do it! Check in with your Self, and you will know when it is time not to do a thing, and you will also know when it is time to do something. But, do not transfer your power, or the authority for your actions "out-there" at any point, or you will lose the ability to be in touch with your own integrity. And, thereby you will lose any ability you naturally, divinely have for being an agent of change, a helper to someone else. This is extremely important.

As best you can, put down the idea that it matters whether you like what is happening or not. She will do what she will do, whether you like it or not. And if you respond from the level of the ego, you will get sucked into a role of a puppet at the end of strings that are attached to her decisions about herself.

She is no more here to please or displease you than you are here to please or displease anyone else! ALL are in the process, one way or another, of Awakening, even though the details of it are at times absolutely idiotic!

Obviously, to the degree that you are hurt by someone else's actions, or pleased by them, you are participating in the game of manipulation that people enjoy in their ignorance of their divinity. Do not waste your time being happy or unhappy, pleased or hurt by her actions, because there is no clarity there, and in the final analysis it serves as the basis for manipulation. Ultimately, if it hurts you enough, maybe she'll change her mind.

The control is not in your hands! It isn't supposed to be in your hands. Control is an inside job, and the only place it has any actuality is at the level of your Being as it relates to your unfolding Path, and as your Path relates to others' unfolding Paths, and ALL OF IT occurs within the context of Awakening.

Now, you can get caught up in the dream if you want, and you can go through all the emotional trauma if you want, but that's your decision!

QUESTION: My husband died recently, and I'm faced with a lot of legal stuff, as you can imagine. I finally realized that I'm very bitter about the will. The way the will is set up, the Bank of America will be the trustee and the executor, and I will have really very little to say about it. I find myself very resentful. I have to get rid of this . . . I have to learn to accept this, and how do I do it?

RAJ: It is mainly your ego, which is hurt and distressed. But, at deeper levels of your Being, and not beyond your conscious awareness, you are perceiving that you are secure, and that your needs will be taken care of. The fact is that your future was never in your husband's hands, nor in his legal transmission of authority to the bank, nor is your future held by the bank.

Your future and your present literally arise out of your Being and its intent to fulfill itself completely. Your Being is not limited to or bound by any external authority, and has full capacity and capability to bring into your experience all the fulfillment you would desire, whether the bank has anything to do with it or not. You will have problems, however, if you overlook this fact and buy into the concept that the bank is holding your future in its hands. There can be no sense of independence or your Completeness on that basis.

To the degree that you are willing to honor the divinity within you, the divine spark in you, and recognize that it is constantly working on your behalf, and that it is not limited by man-made rules, you will begin to be able to relax and watch for the ways in which it brings about your fulfillment, whether or not the individuals at the bank concur with it or not.

The integrity of your Being literally functions, and has always functioned, outside human limits, and it has infinite resources to draw from for your fulfillment. Do not lose sight of this fact. If you will be willing to lay aside your anger and begin to, consciously depend upon this Self-fulfilling nature of your Being, you will be surprised to find that the bank officials will not oppose any needful and necessary and appropriate action that needs to be taken.

QUESTION: Well, I guess what you're saying is to have more faith in . . . well, what? I'm not very spiritual minded, I guess, and I have great difficulty thinking that I have any divineness in me. That, for me, is very difficult to have.

RAJ: Your inability to grasp it does not in any way alter its function. It only puts you in a position of doubting and being concerned more than you need to. It continues to function, regardless. It is not necessary for you to believe in it in order for it to be what is happening.

Even if you do not think of it in religious terms, you can conceive of it in the same sense that you recognize that there is an orderliness to the Universe. And that thereby, as a part of the Universe, "orderliness" must be innately a part of you and your experience, because you are not an "alien."

It doesn't matter what words are used. But, it is necessary to grasp the fact that you fit into a fundamentally orderly Universe of movement, and movement that is progressing or unfolding, even though at the level of the details of your daily life there may appear to be disorder and problems.

To the degree that you do not govern yourself according to the local appearance of problems and give your attention, rather, to the way in which you and your life must fit into the larger Orderliness of this physical universe, you will begin to find yourself able to know the steps to take and how to take them in a way that brings out a greater degree of order in your life.

For example, to the degree that you allow yourself to look for orderliness, rather than being overcome by the appearance of disorderliness, you will begin to be able to see that regardless of the egos of the men working in the bank, they must also, somehow, be fitting into the larger Orderliness. And, this very attitude on your part will cause you to relate to them in an entirely different way than if you are seeing them as personal little minds with personal preferences that may or may not be at odds with you and your needs. And, your difference in approach will bring forth a difference in their response, because there will be a basic respect for what they HAVE TO BE in terms of the larger picture, even though at a personal level they may appear to be far less. This will help to remove you from feeling like you are at the mercy of personal opinions of particular people in the bank, which is what is getting your goat at the moment.

QUESTION: I would like to ask about a dream that I had. Would that be all right?

RAJ: Certainly.

QUESTION: It was a very short dream as I remember it, and I was with a group of people, and there was a man up on the stage, looking something like a guru, and when he held up a card, whatever it said on the card everyone would immediately become. I was there as an observer. I do not know if I participated in the "becoming," but I saw very definitely this action happen. He held up four cards, and I'm not quite sure of the order. But, he held up a card that said, "light," and everyone became light. And the next card was love, and the next wisdom, and the fourth, rejuvenation. And that dream was a very strong one for me. Could you make any comments on that?

RAJ: The individual on the stage represented what you recognize as being the Authority or Source --the ACT of igniting the spark of recognition in you and, indeed, in everyone, that the need and the responsibility for being the four things on the cards was essential, rather than thinking about or talking about or hearing about them. That was the focal point. It left you with the unavoidable and specific awareness of the necessity of being those things first-hand, subjectively, rather than allowing them to simply remain "objects" of study and contemplation. It was a simple but meaningfully clear awareness of a fundamental essential, and it most definitely was experienced with the support and guidance of your Guide.

QUESTION: One of the things I've been wondering about is: I'm-here on earth . . .

RAJ: Earth is here in You.

QUESTION: . . . and we talk about health and how to improve it. I think the question is, does it matter at all how long we stay on earth in this body; and if it does, what is to be gained by that? When we leave here, or when we drop this body, or whatever, then we go on to another "school" or another experience, and I would like to know why it matters, or if it does, how long we stay here? Or is it, what we do here?

RAJ: You must stop conceptualizing your Eternal Being as consecutive grade levels of experience. This is a product of the three-dimensional sense of things, which causes life to be stretched out on a time-line, and one is either moving forward or backward, progressing or not.

There are only two apparent states of being, and they are either being Awake or being asleep; and in actuality, being asleep is nothing more than a very limited sense of being Awake and doesn't actually constitute a "separate" state of being.

It is the present necessity for the illusionary line separating these two apparent states to be dissolved so that there is no longer a finite three-dimensional-only conscious experience of Being.

By the very nature of the state of "sleep," it impossible for those in the waking state to communicate with those in the sleeping state. And so, the necessity is to be willing to move into the "sleeping state," the three-dimensional-only frame of reference, by virtue of what is experienced as the birth process, and subsequently, while in this finite sense of things, to rouse oneself out of it and wake up! In the process, you are functioning at a level where those who are also asleep can communicate with you, and you with them. And, in the process of being able to communicate with them, remind them also that this was their intent in "being born," and binding themselves temporarily to a finite sense of things.

It is those who are asleep that must be awakened. But, the Awakening can only be initiated from within the finite sense of things, because fundamentally it is only to those who are in that finite sense that the sleeping ones will listen.

Contrary to the popular concepts of reincarnation, what I have described is the only reason for incarnating, no matter how many times one may choose to attempt to contribute to this process of Awakening.

QUESTION: Do you mean, then, to say that the only reason we come back here is to awaken so we can help other people to awaken?

RAJ: Exactly.

QUESTION: That goes for everyone "down here"?

RAJ: Every single one.

QUESTION: We are all messiahs?

RAJ: Exactly. And that brings you back to your educational "dream" wherein it became apparent that you must be the thing. You must be the Messiah; you must be the Christ, because that is what You Are. There literally isn't anything else for you to be that means anything, even though it seems important to be successful in the business world, or it seems important to be wealthy, or it seems important to be the best darn wife and mother. There is nothing meaningful for you to be, other than the Christ, the perfect expression of the Life-Principle that You Are.

You can appropriately add a fifth card to that dream right now that has the word "Christ" or "Messiah" on it. It doesn't mean a thing to watch for Him or study what He has done in the Bible as a history lesson. It only matters to what degree YOU are willing to own what You Are CONSCIOUSLY and BE IT!

QUESTION: I have difficulty understanding. We come here for the purpose of awakening, so that we can help others to awaken. It sounds terribly naive, but I wonder why everybody just doesn't stay wherever they are, and in a matter of 80 or l00 years everyone would be "over there"?

RAJ: Because the nature of the three dimensional experience, minus the Fourth dimensional perspective, is, in itself, quite "capturing," because it engrosses the five physical senses with grossly stimulating sensory data which preoccupies the attention.

Passing on does not automatically release one from the belief systems, which arise out of a lifetime of sensory experience. And therefore, one is not immediately returned to the full open conscious experience of Being, and a process of Awakening continues until total Awakening has been achieved -- and I mean by this, that the process of Awakening continues after what you call death.

The return to physical form, as you recognize it can be achieved prior to total Awakening. And therefore, there is, or has been, a portion of the Brotherhood of Man, the Sons of God, who have been caught in this pattern of moving into the finite, three dimensional conscious experience of being over and over without gaining release from it.

It is the breaking of this pattern which has been the goal, and which is in the process of being broken at the present time.

QUESTION: There was a book that I was reading called Ramakrishna and his Disciples. One of his closest disciples, Mather, passed on and someone said to Ramakrishna that maybe Mather would never come back, and Ramakrishna replied sadly that he believed that he would come back because he still had a desire for pleasure. Does that relate to what you have been saying?

RAJ: Yes, in the sense of sensory pleasure.

Now, I mean by "sensory pleasure" something far more all-inclusive than physical, sensual pleasure. I am talking about the process of becoming engrossed with ALL sensory stimulation, together with the beliefs, which evolve around the acceptance of that data as it appears to the five physical senses.

In other words, it engrosses one into the belief that he is IN what he sees. Literally, to stand on the moon and view the earth in the heavens is a sight to behold, and one of rare beauty; one which almost without exception would cause one to feel grateful for being a part of such a magnificent universe. Again, a little closer to home, to be in Grand Teton National Park and observe the crisp, clear, magnificent, craggy, majestic beauty of the scene is enough to cause one to come out of his centered place to ride the crest of the wave of his awe and amazement, while at the same time increasing or substantiating his perception that he must be "some part" of this magnificent creation called the world.

The experience of pleasure, therefore, in the way Ramakrishna used the term, is not at all limited to the very narrow concept of bodily sensual pleasure, but applied to the sensory thrill of forgetting Who and What You Are because of the overwhelming effect of the Universal Beauty of Being when it is being experienced through the partial vision of the five physical senses.