CONVERSATIONS WITH RAJ
SEPTEMBER
1985
Vol. 2, No. 9
QUESTION: Would you define the term "personal
power"?
ANSWER: One must be careful, because the use of the
word "personal" in front of "power" is quite capable of
implying a personal form of power unique to one individual as opposed to
another form of power unique to another individual, and the potential for
conflict is still present. There is also a sense of there being a greater
amount of power available than one already has. All of that falls in the category
of the ego sense, and the simple fact is that the ego has no power except what
you could call the "power of suggestion." The ego cannot make
anything happen.
As one more significantly connects with and acts out
from his Center, from what he is aware of from his Center, the more he is
apparently empowered, for all practical purposes. His life, his contribution,
and the apparent effect of his presence, become greater, more meaningful,
because it becomes more transformational. Yet, to the individual, himself, he
is aware of a profound powerlessness, in the old ego sense, because all he is
doing is flowing with his Self, cooperating with his Self - not resisting It,
not fighting It, not disagreeing with It, not conflicting with It. It is quite
obvious to him that the harmony and the contributive effect doesn't come from
his reasoning or thinking capacities.
In other words, the Power is inherent in one's
Being, and there is no way for the ego sense of one's self to connect with It
or feel that it is responsible. Yet, the results will be unavoidable,
inescapable. It will become obvious that if he wants that Power to remain
active, it is his responsibility not to engage with It or become preoccupied
with It, but to insist on remaining in that Place where he willingly flows with
his Being. One forfeits the ego sense of power for the Power of one's Being.
For clarification, that will not always be the way
one experiences the Power of his Being. The time will come when one decides to
forfeit his residual private sense of selfhood that is "flowing with"
his Being. In effect, he will get up enough nerve, enough confidence, to
identify himself with and as his Being, and he will no longer
"listen" to It. He will own It and be It. Then he will be truly
empowered, but there will be no ego sense around it. He will experience himself
in his universal aspect, where there is no willfulness to the Power,
whatsoever, and to his ability to create, because he will simply be the process
of Creation, which everyone has always assigned to a God "out-there."
There will be no loss of the experience of
Individuality, and yet at the same time he will be totally conscious of the
universal Nature of his Being. He will not experience himself as being
different from and separate from other individualities, and each, in flowing
with his Being, will apparently function in absolute creative Harmony with
every other Individuality. There will be total freedom in a context of total
Harmony, without competition and without conflict.
As long as any ego sense remains, the full
empowering of your experience of your Self will not come into view. It is
impossible for the ego to access that Power, and it is impossible to experience
that Power while the ego is present. As one consciously sets the ego sense
aside in favor of accessing the deeper levels of his Being, the empowering will
begin to be evidenced in his life. But, as I said, it will be impossible for
him to in any way take credit for what is happening, so completely separated is
the ego sense from the Actuality of one's Being. This is why the element of
trust is so essential to the whole process.
QUESTION: Can you speak to me about
"individuality"?
ANSWER: The first thing about Individuality to
consider and give your attention to is your very own, because it is your
experiential comprehension of your Individuality, which will tell you something
of every other Individuality who exists, no matter what his shape, background,
or apparent point of origin in the universe.
As it has been said so often, you cannot understand
someone else until you understand yourself. This is very literally true.
Therefore, the primary focus of investigation needs to be one's own
Individuality, one's Self. In other words, you must be the guinea pig because
in your process of Self-discovery, others will begin to find themselves able to
relate to you with less facade, without their masks, from the deeper levels of
their Self-awareness, which they would otherwise hide.
You ask about "thinking." Yet, in your
process of Self-discovery, you will not utilize your thinking processes, and
this, in itself, will place the process of thinking into its proper
perspective. It is not a means to an end. It is the means of expressing or
sharing experientially perceived ends. In other words, thinking does not move
you to a point of Knowing. Knowing occurs prior to thinking, and the thinking
process only helps you to translate the Knowing into communicable terms.
You will, of course, have to deal with people who
are not perceiving their Individuality clearly, and who are acting out from
conceptual structures, which we have called the ego. Ordinarily one attempts to
grasp the ego structures, which another is employing, so as to be most
effective in dealing with that ego, even though it is not generally thought
through in those terms and happens rather automatically.
As one begins more and more to experience himself
from the level of his Individuality, from the level of his Being or Knowing, he
no longer attempts to deal with these apparent egos in a calculated way, but
simply observes the dynamic of that ego from the level of his Knowing. Thus, he
is able, without preplanning, to spontaneously deal with the essential dynamics
and sidestep the nonessential ego structures. The effect of doing this promotes
the ability of the Individuality underlying the ego, which is presenting itself
to the one coming from the level of his Being, to shift his allegiance from his
ego self-perceptions to his more natural, more comfortable Being level. As a result,
the process of communication is transformational.
Again, everything you learn about your Self - and I
am not referring to the ego, here - serves as the fundamentally enlightening
dynamic that allows you to approach and deal with people, others, in a more
creative way - in a way that more easily arrives at the fulfillment of need.
QUESTION: Can you speak to me about creativity,
motivation, and action? I'd like to concentrate on motivation and action,
because we get information, but we're either reluctant, afraid, or lack the
motivation to take it into action.
ANSWER: The inhibitor of motivation is fear, which
stems from ego self-perceptions: fear of failure, fear of losing something -
one's job, for example - fear of looking like a fool, fear of losing the
respect of those around one.
The problem stems from the means of
self-identification. When one sees oneself as an organism that has, through
evolution, developed the capacity to think, then insight - the experience of
creativity - is not seen to be an essential element of one's Being, but rather
as a fluke of evolution. That does not inspire confidence in the process of
creativity. And it is really only those hardy souls who have a thick enough
skin and a serious enough devotion to what they feel deeply, who will involve
themselves actively in the creative process because of that finite ego
self-sense or definition.
Once it begins to be grasped that Being is, Itself,
Creation, that it is the movement of Fulfillment, which never repeats Itself
and never bases what It is Being on what It "has been," and that
indeed, this is the definition of Individuality, of Conscious Being, then the
level of trust around the essential function of one's Self will increase. The
fear will decrease because it will be reasonable to assume that because
Creation is, Itself, the movement or process of the fulfillment of Being, that
the inevitable result will be affirmative success, rather than a haphazard
resolution of a fundamental fluke of nature. This will spur the intent to carry
out, to act out or express what is unfolding.
There should be the greatest support for this kind
of shift of self-identification. This is the bottom line, which needs to be
emphasized, because it is the key to what you call "progress". It is
the key to Enlightenment, Awakening - literally moving through and out of the
human, organismic sense inherent in Darwin's theory of evolution and into what
can be described in no other way than the divine status of Man as Conscious
Being, Fourth-dimensional Conscious Being.
QUESTION: I am told that I have an assortment of
things wrong with my body, including candida, a problem with my colon, etc. Am
I to buy into all of this?
ANSWER: The simple fact is that you do not have
candida. There is nothing wrong with your colon. You are, indeed, approaching a
threshold, which there is an underlying fear to cross over. But, let me assure
you that the only thing that can bring you up to a threshold, or an artificial
boundary of any kind, is your Being! The ego certainly will not bring you up
against it, because the boundary constitutes the ego's definition, and it will
not sacrifice itself.
It is the intent of your Being to fulfill Itself
perfectly. It is the intent of your Body to identify you/your Being perfectly.
To the degree that you are willing to trust into those Facts, and to the degree
that you lower the level of distrust around your body, you will find things
coming back into their natural, "physical" order. I put the word
"physical" in quotes because in actuality there is nothing physical -
in the sense of being material - about your body. It is the visibility and
tangibility of your Individuality, and your Individuality is absolutely mental.
Now, that which is mental, or shall we even say
spiritual, cannot be translated into visibility and tangibility by means of
something totally unlike itself called matter" - that which somehow is
supposed to exist on its own, independently, in a self-originated way in time
and space.
Please dare to relax and trust the fundamental
Purpose or Intent, which your Body has, and your Being has, and stop taking a
defensive stance against it. That is the fundamental source of the distress you
are experiencing physically. You are not treating your body as your natural
ally, but as something which you have to whip into shape, beat into submission,
coerce into orderliness, as though it were a fundamentally disorderly opponent,
which did not have your best interests at heart.
It is the antagonistic stance, which grows out of
fear (which grows out of a misunderstanding of your body's fundamental Purpose)
that causes the physical dysfunctions that you or anyone else encounters when
it comes to their body. This is a very simple, uncomplicated point to grasp,
but a very impactful thing to learn.
QUESTION: One of the problems that many very
beautiful people have is that they have an incredible power and/or beauty or
strength, and they're afraid of that power. They will do almost anything but
own that power. Is that strictly an ego thing?
ANSWER: Always. In fact, everyone is experiencing
that very dynamic, although not necessarily to the same degree. The only reason
you are not experiencing being totally Awakened is the fear of owning the
totality of What You Are. That fear does not originate in You, but in the ego
sense that has evolved in this lifetime, even though that belief system may be
supported by similar processes in prior lifetimes.
At the bottom line, everyone is afraid of
experiencing too much good, too much happiness, too much success, too much
fulfillment, too much of their Wholeness! That is the only reason there is any
partial, limited experience of the Wholeness of Who and What One Is.
QUESTION: Why could we possibly be afraid of
something so beautiful? Why would we opt to shut ourselves off from this?
ANSWER: It is really the tiny, fragmented ego sense
which is afraid, because it knows it will lose its sense of existence as You
regain your conscious experience of Your Wholeness. The ego sense, at its
deepest level, knows that its existence is fallacious, false, imaginary,
suppositional. Because of this, its existence depends on its ability to suggest
- as in the power of suggestion - that its existence is valid, and its ability
to defend itself by projecting a sense of fear around any attempts you might
make at regaining your conscious experience of your Wholeness.
Now, you must understand that in one way this is a
very mechanical process. Because, the moment one forsakes the
Fourth-dimensional or Whole view of himself, and limits himself to the first
three dimensions as the frame of reference through which he is going to
experience Existence, it immediately causes him to feel as though he, as a part
of the Whole, is located somewhere inside the Whole, and that, indeed, all the
parts of the Whole are something entirely separate from what he essentially is.
Yet, this Wholeness that is experienced in this separated or divided way is
really the Wholeness of his Being, which would be totally apparent from the
Fourth-dimensional frame of reference.
The three-dimensional-only frame of reference,
itself, is limiting in exactly the same way that the general belief structure
of men regarding the shape of the earth at the time of Columbus actively
inhibited the discovery of the fact that one could not fall off the
"edge" of the earth, because there was no edge. It is round. The
ignorant fear, itself, projects the images, which create fear at the very point
where the fact is available to be discerned. All around the four "sides"
of the earth, the "edges," as it were, the fear of men projected sea
serpents - things that would destroy you before you even had a chance to
destroy yourself by failing off the edge.
Likewise, the three-dimensional-only frame of
reference, which is called the ego frame of reference, projects fearsome images
around the very points at which one can access his greater capacity to be
aware. It, in fact, projects the idea that you will fall into oblivion, that
your desire to move beyond those points is caused by evil spirits, the devil.
Again, in Christian terms, the ego projects demons,
gargoyles, around the Door to the Kingdom of Heaven so that the moment you
begin to get close to Home, you are afraid. You are afraid of going crazy, that
you are stepping off the deep end, that you are being irrational,
irresponsible, and stupid. The boundaries, this time, are mental, not physical,
and therefore the projected forms that block your way are equally mental, as
the list indicates. The principle is the same.
You, at the very deepest levels of your Being, at
this very instant, are unavoidably unseparated from your remembrance of Who and
What You Are. You cannot ignore it completely. The Totality of You is
functioning in Its Wholeness, and as part of that function, insinuates Itself
into your present limited conscious awareness, moving you up against your
limits - up against the ego's limits - and lovingly moving you through them as
you will allow.
One may initially, consciously choose to view things
through the exciting and scary lens of the three-dimensional frame of
reference, but at the potential cost of losing his bearings, losing his
infinite Groundedness, at the risk of not being able to regain it because the
three-dimensional view is so captivating.
So, you see, part of the problem is inherent in
having shifted to a three-dimensional-only standpoint. Inherent in that
standpoint is a separated sense of self - meaning separated from what one
Wholly Is, and separated from the conscious experience of the Oneness of himself
and every aspect of his conscious experience. It is this tiny ego sense that
resists.
QUESTION: I'm reading a book, which expresses the
idea that earth is a school. Is everyone here to learn the same lesson?
ANSWER: Although the Kingdom of Heaven is not a
"classroom," it is the only Place there is to experience. Thus, when
one subjects himself to ignorance, the very Place of his Wholeness becomes a
"learning tool" - a school, if you will - simply because what follows
the embracing of ignorance is the process of Enlightenment.
Now, from the Absolute standpoint, Enlightenment is
ridiculous. One does not "progress." One infinitely be's. It could be
called "unfoldment" simply because Mind never stops to repeat Itself.
Being never stops to repeat Itself. It is always being Itself new, but not in
the sense of moving toward something. It is an infinite unfolding of the Now of
Being, with no place to move toward and no place that it is coming from.
So, the earth, being an aspect of the Kingdom of
Heaven, the infinite Reality of Being, is experienced as a school. It and every
other conscious experience become learning tools by means of which those who
have embraced ignorance may apparently be reawakened.
Although it is difficult to grasp, the simple fact
is that the partial view is illusory. It is experienced by only a part of Your
conscious awareness. The other 98% of your conscious awareness is fully aware
of Itself in its infinite perspective. So, when you apparently awaken and the
two percent that thinks it is really something releases its structures, it will
become apparent to you that You never were asleep, and You never went through a
process of Enlightenment, of learning, of going through lifetime after lifetime
after lifetime.
It will be apparent to you that the illusion was,
itself, an illusion. As I said, it is difficult to grasp, but you will realize
that it never happened, and it never happened to you. Everything that seems so
important and so imperative to you at this moment will not be seen as such. Nothing
that is real will disappear, but you will be amazed to find how much of what
you see is distorted by this tiny, private sense of self, with all of its
traumas and problems, and its struggle to grow and become enlightened.
This is why I say that one must allow himself into
the Kingdom of Heaven - you might say, into his right Mind - and that the key
element to that allowing is one's desire, without any effort being made to
implement it - just abiding with the desire. There is no way to have the desire
from an intellectual, ego place. The ego couldn't even consider it. So, any
level of desire you find yourself experiencing for Awakening is the evidence of
your being Awake. It is the Presence of the Reality of your Being piercing
through the ego's shell and, as I said, insinuating Itself into your present
sense of things.
QUESTION: I have a lot of trouble with my leg. I
have a lot of pain all the time. I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to
alleviate it, and will I someday not have this pain?
ANSWER: First of all, I want it to be very clear to
you that it is your birthright to be free of pain, and your birthright can
never be taken away from you. So, do not ever settle into an attitude of
acceptance of the condition or the pain and believe that you must just put up
with it for the rest of your life. If you indulge in such a belief, all it will
mean is that you are not hooking into your Power for your health. You will have
voluntarily set it aside because, to the human sense of things, "you have
no other choice."
It is not necessary for you to ignore your
birthright. Now, when I say "birthright," I am not referring to your
human birth. I am referring to what is inherently yours as a result of your
existing, because your existence is the manifestation of the Movement of the
Life-Principle, or God, and you, your entire Being, are the evidence of that
Movement of the Life-Principle. Therefore, you are the evidence of the
Life-Principle in Action, and you are not the puny little human being that your
puny little ego-thinking defines your self as!
It is the intent of your body to identify the
presence of your Individuality perfectly. It has no ability to do otherwise.
The distortions in its perfect functioning seem to manifest because you believe
only what you see, hear, taste, smell and feel. You assume that you are what
you appear to be, and what centuries of misguided thoughts have evolved about
who and what men are, and which you were taught as you grew up.
You did not arise out of the ooze and slime of
prehistoric swamps. You are not a part of an evolutionary chain of physical
being. You are the Presence of the infinite Mind as It is unfolding Itself, and
your body and your world are literally the visibility and tangibility of that
infinite Intelligence - that infinite Intelligence that constitutes your
Individuality.
Now, if you buy into Darwin's theory, you will be
stuck with the legs you are experiencing at this moment. But, his theory is
just that - a theory, an idea conceived in the mind of man within the context
of explaining existence on the basis of what appears. You do not have to buy
into it.
Your mind is not the end result of the evolution of
a physical organism. Your mind is the very Presence of the Life-Principle, the
infinite, divine Mind. It only seems to lack in its infinity because you
presently utilize only the data provided by the five physical senses. However,
when you do become Centered, when you do lean into your intuitive Knowing, you
are effectively moving beyond the range of the physical senses and tapping into
your capacities and your Nature as Consciousness - Conscious Being - and you
are lining yourself up for the greater experience of the divine Actuality of
your Self.
Your legs have a reason for existing. They have a
function to fulfill. They are not something to be risen above or someday gotten
rid of by virtue of dying out of your body. Sooner or later, you will recognize
the eternal Actuality of your Body. It might as well be sooner! You might as
well begin now to acknowledge that your body has an intent, as I said, and that
that intent is absolutely divine in nature, because it is rendering visible
your Individuality, and your Individuality is the direct expression of God.
Therefore, your body's function is to render visible the Presence of God.
Therefore, it must in every way be your ally, and worthy of your trust, rather
than distrust.
Bring your trust to this fundamental intent of your
body, regardless of what appears to be going on, regardless of what it feels
like. Admire and honor its divine intent. The development of the current
attitude you have toward your body is, itself, what has contributed to the
distorted experience of it, and it has brought about a level of distrust, a
level of frustration. It is the "thinking" that you should distrust
and be frustrated by. Being frustrated by the body distracts you from where the
problem lies. It misses the point that you are exercising distrust and then
defensiveness against your body. As a result, you live in a state of war, which
is totally groundless.
I encourage you to love your legs - not the ones
that are there hurting - but the Meaning, the Intent that is there and
experienced as legs. Stop fighting your body. Stop fighting your legs. Stop
defending yourself against your legs. All there is to them is Intent, and the
Intent is divine, and they are on your side. Treat them that way, and you will
have set aside your conditioned thinking, your education about your body, and
as you release that conditioning and replace it with appreciation, you will
find every aspect of the negative condition dissolving.
You literally are not bound! And you need not expect
to experience discomfort any longer than you choose to indulge in a conflicted
attitude about your body. It (the body) is not unspiritual. It is not mortal
and material. Do not demean it! Acknowledge and appreciate its divine purpose
for existing, and you will see it reflecting back to you what you are looking
at it with.
QUESTION: Can you tell us about karma - is it real,
or is it an illusion?
ANSWER: To be totally honest with you, karma is a
concoction of the ego, which allows guilt to be laid upon you, not only from
this life time, but from extended lifetimes in the past. It serves no purpose
other than to keep you in a state of conflict. You see, the process of Waking
Up is a process which arises out of trust, and it is impossible to trust your
Being, your Self, if you are suffering from guilt.
If you are going to use the word "karma"
at all, it must be understood that it is a pay-as-you-go affair. You can not
accrue a debt, karmic or otherwise, which you will pay for at some future time.
There is no axe somewhere ahead of you, waiting to fall when you get there. The
only thing you suffer from is ignorance, and you suffer only from the ignorance
you are currently under. In other words, you currently suffer for whatever
ignorance you are experiencing in the moment. You are not suffering from an
ignorance you experienced three lifetimes ago.
The simple fact is that the moment clarification
occurs, the moment enlightenment occurs, the ignorance is gone, and, along with
it, the suffering that accompanied it.
If you do not know how to appropriately make change
for a dollar bill, you will constantly be subject to suffering being
short-changed or short-changing the one you are making change for. And so, the
suffering is current with the ignorance. Once you understand how to make change
correctly, you are no longer subject to suffering being short-changed or short-
changing another.
It is extremely important for you to be present in
the Now. You stand at the threshold of discovery, at the threshold of
clarification, enlightenment, transformation. That is what the Moment of
Consciousness that you are always in is constituted of - pure opportunity. If
you are preoccupied with a past, whether it is good or bad, you are not totally
present in the Moment, and you are therefore not totally open to the
opportunity dynamic of your Being.
Literally, the release of the past and the release
of a preoccupation with the future allows you to be present on what you might
call the "razor's edge" of the Instant of Conscious Experience that
you are in. And it is in that Instant that your opportunity for transcending
your present sense of yourself and your present sense of your world can occur.
The Wholeness of your Conscious Experience of Being is only present to be
experienced in the Instant of consciousness, which you are experiencing. This
is why it is so important to allow yourself to relax into the Moment you are
in.
The majority of the energy which you expend is spent
being concerned about what is going to happen - the bill that is going to come
in the mail tomorrow, the meeting you have to attend the day after tomorrow,
etcetera. The fact is, that if you were to allow yourself to simply be fully
present, giving your attention to the Now that you are in when it is time for
you to simply fix a bowl of cereal, you would find no difficulty in responding
appropriately to the need in the moment.
Because of your capacity to imagine, you can imagine
your future, and then you can even react to your imagination of that future as
though it were the real future, and yet it is all imaginary. What isn't
imaginary is what is going on in your conscious experience at the moment that
you are conscious. If every single one of you will allow yourself to be present
in the moment at every moment through this weekend, letting Monday take care of
itself when it gets here, you will have begun to learn a skill that will allow
you to deal with Monday better, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday,
etcetera.
The world will not collapse if you are not prepared
today, for something that is going to happen next Thursday. It is very
important to be willing to drop any form of the concept of karma, any means one
has for justifying guiltiness. It is an ego ploy, as I said, aimed at keeping
you out of Peace, and apparently proving to you that you do not have a right to
Peace
QUESTION: My impression of karma is that it doesn't
include guilt. I'm surprised that you refer to it as an implement of guilt.
ANSWER: The concept of karma is a three-dimensional
concept of action and reaction. It involves a duality, which needs to be
released.
Mind moves, and the Movement is experienced as
conscious awareness, and Mind experiences that Movement as an infinitude of
form. The Movement is the action. There is nothing outside of the infinite
Oneness of Being, which can react to the Movement of Being, other than the
acknowledgement, which Mind makes of Its Movement. In Biblical terms - after
the apparent creation of the world - it says, "and God saw everything that
He had made, and behold, it was very good." In other words, "and
behold, it was verily God." It constituted Self-recognition. Yet, that is
not a reaction, but the conclusion of that conscious Movement of Mind -
infinite Intelligence.
The moment you have action and reaction, you have
division, and this division can only seem to occur in an imaginative way, an
artificial way, because in the Oneness of Being there cannot be reaction. This
division is the fundamental basis upon which the ego develops.
As I said, karma is a pay-as-you-go affair. You do
not act at one point and thereby accrue to your debt an obligation to pay for
that action. Likewise, a positive act does not include a delayed experience of
Joy. The ignorance you currently experience is, itself, the simultaneous source
of suffering. The clear act arising out of a connectedness with Who and What
You Really Are, is itself, the constituting Presence of Harmony, Joy, and there
is no delay to It. Action and reaction require time, and you do not exist in
time, even though you imagine that you do. You exist in the instant of
Conscious Awareness, which is infinite "in all directions".