CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
DECEMBER 1985
VOL. 2, No. 12

QUESTION: First of all, do I have psychic abilities that would be useful to me in my life? When I think about getting in touch with these things, there is a deep sadness that comes over me, almost to the point of wanting to cry. Whenever I get close to the desire, there's this sadness that comes in my heart, and I don't know what that is.

RAJ: In regard to the first part of your question, you most certainly do have capacities that you are not currently availing yourself of. I would encourage you to think of them more in terms of divine capacities or spiritual capacities, rather than psychic. The word "psychic" tends to relate to a capacity of the human mind, which actually relates to the ego, the brain function of an organism on the face of the planet, rather than that conscious awareness, which constitutes your Being and has its source in the Life-Principle, Itself.

It is important not to get stuck at what is appropriately called the psychic level, which is simply an expression of divine capacities, which are bound by human limits. Your capacities go far beyond any brain-oriented limits, and so I would encourage you to see these capacities as capacities, which are inherent in your Being—which is absolutely divine—rather than capacities, which you, as an apparently human being might have.

In regard to the second part of your question, the feeling of sadness that you experience is actually a deep experience of Joy. It is felt at the level of your Soul because it constitutes coming very close to Home. It comes as great feeling of Meaning, which triggers your memory, but just beyond the conscious level of awareness. Nevertheless, it is close enough that there is an indelible awareness of the Love in you for that which constitutes your Home, and which actually constitutes the remembering of Who and What You divinely Are, minus the human sense of limitations, which you are currently bound by.

Do not shy away from or resist the feeling that surfaces as sadness. It is very much like a child who has been away on a summer vacation, who comes home and is so happy that he can only uncontrollably cry. There is nothing sad about it whatsoever, but it wells up from the depths of one's Being as a great surge of feeling and emotion. It is only at the surface, or at its initial stage, that it seems to be sadness. So, do not resist it, and understand that it is actually the leading edge of great joy being felt within your Being. It is not an uncommon experience.

If you will pay attention to the other times in your life when you have been confronted with a circumstance or an event, which brought tears to your eyes and made you cry, in which you could not account for the crying, it has always been something, which has reminded you of, or brought very close to your conscious level of awareness, the remembrance of Home.

Now, I want it to be very clear that Home is not so much a place as the clear experience of Who you Are, because Who you Are is the direct expression of the Life-Principle, and in remembering Who you Are, you remember What You Are. In the presence of What You Are as the direct expression of the Life-Principle, it constitutes the conscious experience of the Absolute union between you and the Father, God, the Life-Principle, the divine Universal Intelligence, or whatever words mean something regarding the Universal Cause. So, the remembrance of Home is the remembrance of your Self, and the falling away of the illusions, which temporarily bind you. This is why it is emotional. It is important to know, however, that the emotion is not sadness at the bottom line, but Joy, and Love, and Peace welling up from the very depths of Itself—meaning, from the very depths of your Being.

QUESTION: How do I move closer towards this spirituality and use it in my work, or whatever I do?

RAJ: Again, it is a matter of your desire. Literally, what you appreciate appreciates, or grows. It is a truism. When you are expressing a desire, you are expressing an appreciation for what you are desiring. It is not necessary for you to make that desire come to pass. It is not your job to figure out how to manipulate it into existence.

Desire, itself, is the movement that constitutes the manifestation of fulfillment. Therefore, if you will abide with the desire, you cannot help but be with it at its moment of fulfillment. Therefore, it is important to feel the desire, and then stay out of the way so that you may be present as it unfolds its completion of itself.

Understand, also, that your desire for that which is spiritual, does not arise out of your ego, out of your limited, human thinking. It does arise out of the very depths of your Being, and that is why it has power to fulfill itself, and that is why it is not necessary for you to take charge and bring it about. So, when you are paying attention to and feeling your desire, it is a matter of allowing yourself to feel what is already present. You do not have to manufacture a desire. In fact, pursuing a manufactured desire has nothing to do with what I have been speaking of when I have used the word "desire."

Desire is a movement within your Being which always leads to clarification and enlightenment, because your Being is constantly insisting upon emerging at the conscious level of your awareness so that you are not ignorant of it and do not continue to be blinded by your conditioned thinking. So, the key is your desire. Stay with it, and you will find it evolving the form, which will identify it in your experience tangibly. Remember that it is not necessary for you to manufacture the form. That is part of the process of the fulfillment of the desire, itself.

If you have not manufactured the desire, you do not have to manufacture the fulfillment, and that is a key point to understand.

QUESTION: How do I know if I've manufactured the desire or not?

RAJ: A manufactured desire will be a result of reasoning and thinking processes. When it comes right down to it, you cannot explain why you have a desire for that which is spiritual. You may be able to think up a pretty good explanation, but that thought process happens after the fact, after having already experienced the desire, and that is the difference. You know that you are moved. You don't know why. You can, perhaps, figure out an explanation. But, the movement you feel is happening before you have gone through any thought process. It is the reverse with a manufactured desire or want, because you go through the thought process first and come to a conclusion of what you think you want, and then work for it. So, the want comes after the thought process, after a conclusion has been arrived at. That is the fundamental difference.

QUESTION: I'm not going forward in any direction with my work. I spent a year becoming a trainer in the work that I do, and now I'm backing off because some of the people in the organization are not compatible. I'm not certain what direction to take. My health has been poor for the past few months. I have had lots of negative things come into my life, and yet I have not had that kind of thing for a long time prior to this.

RAJ: There has been an unnecessary assumption, that if you are unlinking yourself from an organization or from certain people, that the Value of the program that was involved has to also be released. This is not correct. As a result of that idea, however, you released a focus, or a sense of direction, and you have moved into a state of limbo, or floating.

Now, Value is Value. It is something that cannot be possessed. Your recognition of that which is of Value is yours to express. In fact, it is your responsibility to express it, because that is the nature of Being. You have not allowed yourself the freedom to incorporate all of the best, all of the Value that you have gained from many sources, in your work. You have not felt the right to express intelligence because of the belief that somebody owned it, and therefore you were not free to express it yourself, in your own original, unique way.

Thus, you have floundered in a sense of directionlessness that was not necessary. You are absolutely free to express intelligent ideas, which you recognize of value, and which you can relate to those you are working with in a way that is helpful for them. Again, Value and Intelligence cannot be copyrighted or owned. It is there to be expressed by whoever has the perspicacity or clarity to see it. You have squelched yourself unnecessarily, and as a result have not allowed your energy to flow into creative healing channels.

Whenever you sit on your energy, whenever you squelch it, whenever you devalue it in any way, you will inevitably become uncomfortable, because it is a state of Self-denial. Now, you are not only intelligent, you are the presence of Intelligence. You are Intelligence, Itself, in expression. You are going to have to be willing to dare to commit it to expression, to let it find avenues of manifestation. You are going to have to stop withholding it. And, you are going to have to see that you are not misappropriating it, because it was never owned by anybody from whom you could appropriate it in an illegitimate way. You cannot take Value or Intelligence away from anyone. Each of you are free to express it without interference, and without depleting the other.

So, the solution to the whole picture, which you were describing, revolves around your willingness to let the Intelligence You Are have expression. The physical conditions you have experienced have simply been indicators to you that you have not been valuing and appreciating yourself enough to let it flow into expression. You have unnecessarily been calling yourself into doubt, questioning and negating your Value, as though you did not have a right to express it. This must stop if you wish to experience the Movement of your Being, which will feel like and will manifest fulfillment, both in terms of your health and in terms of your wealth. You must let it flow, and you must understand that it flows from the Intelligence that you Are. It isn't something that came from another person or from a certain theory. It comes from the recognition in you that you have of what is of value and your caring enough to let that, which is of value flow from you into expression.

QUESTION: For this last twelve years, when I consciously went on the spiritual path—studying books and attending seminars, etc.—I always got the same message that there is karma, meaning "cause and effect," meaning "as a man soweth, so shall he reap." This is what I have built my life on.

I do not feel that God is punishing me or singling me out. I feel that there is a universal law that has been set into motion that whatever you do positive or negative it comes back to you. If I don't believe that, I might as well jump in the lake, because everything has got to make sense. If I'm suffering, at least I like to know that there is a reason for it. If there is no reason for it, then I don't know what I'm going to do.

I feel that there is a reason for my husband and I being married at this point. Since there is such great similarity between my husband and my father, I feel that they are trying to teach me something: that no matter how much they put me down, that I am worth something. By constant criticism, by constantly pointing out the inadequacy in me, I think I have to learn that no matter what they say or what they believe, that I am okay. Needless to say, I haven't learned it yet.

RAJ: Let it be understood, first of all, that cause and effect are always simultaneous. There is no lag between them. One does not go off scot-free at the moment and pay the penalty at a later date, or even in a future lifetime.

The only fault there ever is, is ignorance, and one always suffers from his ignorance while he is ignorant. As soon as the ignorance is replaced with understanding, with truth, the suffering from the ignorance ceases. Thus, all suffering is from current ignorance. This is very important to understand, else you will become a martyr, and you will endure suffering, and you will even elevate it to the status of a "purifying, divinely motivating device," thus substantiating it as a valid part of your experience. This, itself, is ignorant. And, of course, the ongoing suffering is the evidence of the current ignorance.

Now, if you are not paying for something out of your past...

QUESTION: And that's what I don't know.

RAJ: Exactly.

QUESTION: Well, my father was right, again. He always said I had looks, but boy, was I stupid. I just thought, "Well, I'm paying for something." So, it's ignorance, okay. I can buy that.

RAJ: Now, if the suffering is stemming from a current ignorance, then it means that you can do something about it. If, in fact, it were arising out of the past, and were a deserved penalty, then you would be bound to "serve your time" and pay that penalty in full, and you could do nothing about it. That would be worth being depressed about.

The fact that it is always current ignorance means that the focal point can shift to a conscious desire to experience the clarification in the present, which will lift you out of the ignorance and its accompanying suffering. And that is worthy of hope, and confidence, and joy.

QUESTION: What about people born crippled or blind? Aren't they paying also? There are so many people who cannot be helped in this lifetime.

RAJ: There is no one who cannot be helped physically in this lifetime, if they will make a decision for their health in this lifetime. And, no, they are not paying a penalty. For the most part, those who are experiencing congenital defects or birth defects are experiencing them by conscious choice. In other words, the body condition has been selected for a particular learning, but it is not a victimization.

Your birthright—and I am not speaking of your human birth—because of what you divinely Are, is to be free of suffering and pain.

QUESTION: As soon as I get smart.

RAJ: In very practical terms, that is correct, yes. However, as long as you think you must be paying for something out of the past, you will also assume that that smartness, that clarification, is not available to you until you have paid in full, and you will not even look for it. What I want you to know is that at any moment when you begin to look for the clarification on the basis that it is your birthright not to suffer, then you will truly listen with an expectation of an answer, and you will get the answer. You are not bound to suffering by any divine law of your Being.

Now, this is going to require you to re-think your position, and to be open to a new one. I also want you to understand that all who are not totally awakened are suffering from ignorance, and this includes your father. It includes everyone. Everyone is suffering from their ignorance of their divine Birthright, and the process of Awakening is the process of remembering It.

It always involves reaching beyond whatever the present sense of limitation is, whatever concepts bind one to his pain or his suffering or his depression or his negative sense about himself. Therefore, you are in no way singled out. Understand also, that it is in the realization that each one is responsible for his suffering, that he has in his hands the means to change the situation. As long as one's problem can be blamed on someone else, or even one's self in a past lifetime, there is no opportunity for change. There is no way to do anything about it. But, in the realization that one is creating for himself, even out of his ignorance, his problems, it becomes clear that the authority for one's experience is one's self in the present. If that is true, then what one is creating can be changed, because one's self is the creator. In this case I am not referring to Self, but the limited, finite, depressed, hurt, punished self that the imagination has been able to create in a manner that is reasonable.

Therefore, at this instant you are capable of adopting a new point of view, one, which allows you to look forward to today or tomorrow because you know that you are not legitimately bound by anything other than current ignorances.

Now, you can do something about current ignorances. You can get new information. You can start thinking in a new way if you release the false sense of karma, and you will find that as you change your position, as you change your theory, your life will begin to reflect that change as the decrease of pain, suffering, and depression. This is an extremely important point to understand. Everyone is bound unnecessarily. Even those who have chosen a form of bondage through a birth defect, have as their goal the remembering of the fact that it is an illegitimate bondage so that they may move out of it and never again be bound by it.

Therefore, you stand at this very instant at the threshold of fulfillment. You do not stand at the threshold of ongoing suffering for something that happened in your past during this lifetime or any other lifetime. You stand at the threshold of fulfillment. On that basis, you need to begin to ask yourself what constitutes fulfillment for you—what constitutes fulfillment for you in this marriage, what constitutes fulfillment for you in activities that have to do with your own spiritual growth.

If you are not able, through your desire and your attentiveness to what is fulfilling for you, to provide the environment in which that fulfillment can occur—if you are not able to do that in your present setting—then know that you have the authority to change the setting. You are not bound to conform to conditions, which prohibit you from experiencing your peace, your joy, and your fulfillment.

This means that you will have to get up on your haunches. You will have to stand up for yourself, rather than simply sitting back and letting the suffering be heaped upon you without objection because you "deserve it"—for God knows what, but obviously for something. That is the worst form of bondage. It is not a bondage to your husband. It is a bondage to your belief about karma, and it is time for you to be free of it. It is time for you to set it down, because it is absolutely invalid. Yet, in believing it, you are conducting yourself in such a way that is causing you to be severely limited, severely bound physically, emotionally, and mentally.

QUESTION: Well, It's because I feel guilty.

RAJ: Of course you do. That is always the way the ego will cause you to feel. Now, what is the ego? It is a false sense of self, which has been developed on the basis of what you can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. The five physical senses cause you to experience yourself as an object in the middle of a huge universe, and a planet and an environment, which are different from you, separate from you, and therefore not necessarily in harmony with you. This causes you to become defensive, and your defensiveness evolves situations for enemies, and the whole thing is a false perception about what you truly Are.

Now, the ego thrives on your feeling guilty...

QUESTION: So does my husband.

RAJ: ... because your guilt will keep you from sensing into the divine reality of your Being. It will preoccupy you and keep you from accessing your Peace, your experience of your Wholeness, and in depriving you of that, it secures its continued existence. But, the moment you assume that the "sentence" laid upon you to suffer is totally imaginary or totally ignorant, and you claim your freedom from that bondage, and you look for and sense into the Peace of your Being, which has never gone anywhere, and you insist on the environment where that Peace can be experienced, you will find the bondage falling away from you. But, first of all, you have to feel the right to claim your freedom. And the only way you can do that is in acknowledging a birthright...

QUESTION: Can you do that within a marriage when it is so different? I mean, my husband is a good man. He does not drink, he does not smoke, he brings home his paycheck, he does not chase around, but I feel like I have been wrapped in a wet blanket for thirty years. But, he's a good man.

RAJ: It is not my Purpose to judge him or to judge you. Even when I have made the statement that you are suffering from ignorance, it involved no judgment, but a simple clarification of the mechanics of the way things work, and the fact that when ignorance is indulged in, there is always accompanying suffering. That is just the way it works and does not constitute a judgment on you.

Therefore, you must first of all assume that you have a right to the experience of fulfillment, to the experience of joy, that it is your purpose to be experiencing it now, in this lifetime, and not somewhere off in the future. Then, on that basis, start right where you are, right within the marriage you presently have, right within the home that you have, right within the various activities you presently have, and pursue your fulfillment, pursue your joy.

If at every turn you find it is not allowed, then you must make a choice and provide yourself with the environment in which it can be found, and in which it will not be squelched. But, do not assume right off the bat that it is impossible for you to find it right where you are. You have not tried, because you felt that you were paying a debt you owed, for who knows what.

The point is that it is unreasonable for you to subject yourself to this belief system of karma any further, and your physical symptoms that you are experiencing are a direct result of something in you, which is objecting to that belief system. The symptoms are manifesting your frustration with that belief system, and the frustration is arising out of some level of awareness in you that it is illegitimate. That part of you which recognizes that it is illegitimate is already getting up on its hind feet in order to assert itself on behalf of its joy and on behalf of its health, and on behalf of its fulfillment, because it knows that that is its birthright. You know, at the deepest levels of your Being, that you were not created for the purpose of suffering, no matter how righteous that suffering might be.

Now, I have spoken brass tacks with you tonight. I have not provided you with additional means to put yourself down. I have said to you that it is time to wake up and enjoy the day. It is time to recognize that you are standing at the threshold of your fulfillment. That is what Being means! Being means standing at the threshold of fulfillment.

QUESTION: Thank you. I think I know what you are talking about. In fact, I have been sensing something like this lately. I just haven't had enough guts to do it.

I would appreciate hearing anything that you feel is important for me to know.

RAJ: The subject is "Pots and Pans: Paraphernalia." We always think that we have sorted through and cast out what is useless until we get to the point where it appears there is nothing else to unburden ourselves from and there is a tendency to relax and also feel secure in that what is essential has been done.

You are not burdened by too many "things," objects, forms. You are not controlled by them particularly. You are aware that there are mental equivalents of "equipment," paraphernalia, which are as binding as "material things," and you have worked diligently to sort through those as well.

I want you to consider that anything, any thought processes, any thinking, any belief structures that distract you from being in touch with your Self, constitute unnecessary equipment—pots and pans, if you will. At this point, rather than have you weed them out diligently, I would encourage you to utilize serendipity. That word, as I am using it, means "the discovery of that for which you are not looking."

In other words, I encourage you to anticipate that your Being will uncover and reveal to you what is no longer useful to you, thereby relieving you of the responsibility of personally having to ferret it out. Serendipity is a delightful process, rather than a laborious one. And in your willingness to lean into your Being, lean into Its movement of Self-fulfillment, with the knowledge that it will uncover whatever is not necessary to Its fulfillment so that it can be released, you will be practicing serendipity.

In approaching it this way, you set yourself up for experiencing the dependability of your Being—the fact that you can entrust yourself to it totally, and that you, personally, do not have to "think" your way into a state of enlightenment.

It is time for you to release effort from your spiritual growth. That is one of your big "pots". We both know that you do not "effort" as much as you used to, but effort is an exercise of control. Control always arises out of the ego. So, effort blocks Knowing.

I want to emphasize the words, delight and delightful—that serendipity is delightful, not effortful. You do not get into the Kingdom of Heaven by the sweat of your brow, by your hard work, by your self-discipline. You get in by allowing yourself in. The Kingdom of Heaven is You! You are already present; therefore, you are already "in" the Kingdom of Heaven.

By emphasizing the idea of serendipity, you facilitate the process of allowing what You Are to replace what you think you are and the thinking processes of that self, which actually block your undistorted Self-experience. As long as the ethic of work can be kept in the picture, you cannot make the shift, and it is time to turn the words "work" and "effort" into dirty words—something you do not want to indulge in.

QUESTION: Can you speak about Individuality? I am having difficulty understanding what you mean by that word.

RAJ: The difficulty, of course, is in attempting to express a Fourth-Dimensional Actuality in three-dimensional terms, when the Fourth-Dimensional Actuality is completely experiential. Individuality is the direct expression of the Life-Principle. Experientially they are not distinguishable, but I must make a distinction between the Life-Principle, or God, and Individuality when addressing those who are coming from an ego orientation. It provides the bridge over which one can grasp or begin to remember the fact that what God is, is what constitutes the experience of conscious Individuality without allowing any prior ego sense of self to slip into the new Self-definition. In other words, the ego cannot come across the bridge that is being built to facilitate the shift in Self-identification, which is called Awakening.

QUESTION: Is it correct that A Course In Miracles was dictated by Jesus?

RAJ: That is correct.

QUESTION: If the personality known as Jesus long ago...

RAJ: Individuality.

QUESTION: If the Individuality...aha!

RAJ: Personality is the ego sense of Self, the distorted sense of individuality.

QUESTION: That answers the question. The question was, if the personality known as Jesus had transcended the personal sense of being in the full realization of Conscious Being, what persists in calling itself "Jesus" to dictate a book?

RAJ: Individuality is ever present, even when personality is the only thing, which is owned or, you might say, practiced. The Individuality—which is forever Itself—which was identified as Jesus, humanly speaking, remains the same Individuality that was present, which everyone else called and recognized as Jesus.

His state of enlightenment allowed him to be Totally Awakened Fourth-Dimensional Conscious Being at the very instant that everyone else saw him as a mortal like themselves—a three-dimensional creature. His task continues to this day.

Once it becomes clear to you, once you are not suffering from any distorted ego sense, you are free to discern the divine Individualities present right where little egos are parading themselves around. Since every Individuality constitutes some facet of the infinitude of one's Being, it becomes obvious that some facets of one's Being are asleep. This is not Normal or Natural, and so, it becomes one's activity to bring all aspects of his Being into conformity with Reality so that every last little bit of ignorance is eliminated, every last little bit of separatism, fear, hate is dissolved—washed clean, you could say.

Those who have ascended constitute the first stages of the Ascension of the Brotherhood of Man. Because every other Individuality who is still asleep constitutes some aspect of the infinitude of the awakened one's Being, his awakening is not complete until everyone else has awakened also. So, it becomes the work of the enlightened Ones to help the apparently bound and unenlightened ones through that shift so that every facet can simultaneously experience every other facet—or you could say the absolute undistorted integrity of the Whole. This is why the fundamental of Jesus' teaching was love.

Love is initially the recognition of the divine Individuality that has to be present in order for an ego to seem to be functioning, and then the providing of the environment in which that ego sense of individuality can assume Its full Self-conscious Awareness. That which sees the Reality substantiates the Reality.

Jesus' work did not end at the time of his ascension. And, indeed, every other Individuality who has become totally enlightened is engaged in one way or another in providing the environment in which the "sleeping ones" can most easily release their dreams and join the Whole in Its conscious experience of Its Integrity, Its Clarity, Its Absolute divinity.