It really is this that is of value because it's all of you who made this possible. I think it's very necessary for us to have within our consciousness the fact that we really are the people who love us and the people who allow us to draw from them for any moment in our life.
You too are the accumulation of the people that you're connected with in your life. If you were able to be more conscious of them and more open to them with less tension, you would have taken more. But it's impossible for another human being to ever evaluate another person and to have any sense of the depth that any human being touches us with, because each person contains within themselves something of such an extraordinary nature that they themselves many times haven't the consciousness of that content. So we go through life judging instead of being open to that, which is there for us.
And it is really in that that I am grateful because from so much of you am I able to learn anything from, and I thank you very much for it
(Woman singing)
The thing that we basically suffer from which is the lack of awareness of what we're involved in, and it has to do with this thing that we call life. The very nature of it being that it is life means that it does have a quantity and it does have a quality and it has a density. And our lack of awareness, our unconsciousness of it allows it to not use it properly and so we have this silt, this slow buildup of unassimilated energy and unassimilated consciousness that every day builds up in a human being. And it isn't this that has to do with profundity; it has to do with the absolute simplicity of any product, which isn't used properly.
Life is a product and it is a quantity. And by not working with it consciously, we in every sense are not without guilt, because not knowing does not in any way absolve a human being from his responsibility in life.
Life is a conscious creative quantity. And by not being open to it, it drops in us every day some dust, some unassimilated creative energy which builds up and buries us and it's this very quiet dirt, this silt of the unconsciousness that really destroys a human being.
We really get deeper and deeper and we become completely covered by this energy. And we have no way of dealing with it except by a spiritual capacity that allows us to rise above our day, to assimilate the energy of our day and to really break down in ourselves, the energy that we use in relating to the world and relating to other people. And because of the quietness which this silt accumulates, we don't make dramatic moves, because it doesn't provoke a drama, it just allows for this quiet depth to build up in a human being and so that after a week or ten days where we haven't worked properly, where we haven't flushed from ourselves the tensions of living, when we haven't assimilated the consciousness of the energy in which we
are moving, we really start to become dulled, and we really in every way reject ourselves because we're not using our life for the purpose for which it was made.
And within us, in a very great depth, underneath all of the silt is the consciousness of our past lives, something that really does know better, and so it begins to form diseases, it begins to form all of the kind
And it's better being provoked to a conscious effort. We have ourselves go out and being cut and mauled and psychologically taken apart because we really do not do that which is within us and which is our capacity to really live in a deeper way.
And it is this thing that destroys in people who have money and power and all kinds of material things. It doesn't give a capacity to live. Life can only be taken consciously to produce the inner effect that gives us a sense of vitality and a sense of well-being. It is everything in us that is trying to talk, when we don't work correctly, when we don't relate correctly. So these pains, these feelings, these tensions, these dullnesses, all of these things that speak from within us that show that we rejecting our self.
We attack the people who we should love, that we in no way become a vehicle for life, for others that we can't nourish when we are responsible for. And so we build blocks and thickness and this is exactly what we are trying to break down by doing conscious work. That you just with your own breathing which is the simplest and most obvious of all methods of trying to reach something on the inside. You're drawing in the energy of the atmosphere and really trying to stimulate and remove the blocks that exist within you. And it isn't the dramatic effect that you're working for, and all of the movements that go on only represent energy being taken in muscles that are almost dead, and so when you feed them they start to make these little spastic movements.
It isn't for anything else but this feeding that we have to have the consciousness to really open to and be quiet and easy. It is the simplest of forms of consciousness. Plants automatically, with their own consciousness are constantly taking in and fending for them selves, but human beings have the capacity to live like the simplest animal in which case, if he lives in a simple atmosphere he can thrive and really have in him that which every human being is entitled to which is peace of mind and a sense of well-being. But the minute you take a human being into a more complex atmosphere, the tensions on the outside produce on the inside something which makes for the rejection of life, closing off of different vessels, the closing off of
muscles, the closing off of blood and circulation and air.
And so we are living in an atmosphere like this city which is very, very dense and very, very compacting as far as the tensions are concerned. So our conscious effort must increase to compensate for
the tensions around us. But this is not a bad thing. It is the most wonderful place in the world to live because the effort needed, if it is done consciously will make you the strongest of people.
We get strong by living a strong life, by consciously accepting our role with the understanding of the purpose and with the love and the gratitude for the opportunity that is there to sit in the country where there is no demand, there is no potential, there is no competition, it is almost impossible to work without tension, without something to overcome within your self. And we have in all of these natural capacities around us
suffer because we can't make a simple effort. We can't really do within ourselves that which is needed to rise ourselves above all of this silt and the smog and this density. And we continually complain about that which is really our gift of life.
It's something which gives the capacity to grow very very strongly a creative life which is certainly equal for every human being is the ability to take the total person and put them in a situation which tests their capacity. And we continually look at somebody else and see their situation and project upon that our situation and it becomes an endless stupidity. It is the individual facing his individual test. We can't possibly learn by seeing the way somebody else works, by seeing somebody else's abilities or limitations. It is our individual connection with our creative source of energy. And if you believe in God or you don't believe in God it certainly does not change the ability to work with your creative energy consciously. And it is exactly this simple way that is called consciousness, which makes the difference. Ordinary breathing feeds a physical person. Conscious breathing, that is drawing in the energy and feeling it go into muscles and really expand, gives you a totally different type of ventilation. It certainly allows an energy to be assimilated in you because you're aware of what you're overcoming. And to do anything without consciousness is just a waste. The effort that you make, because there is no return, there is definitely no return in spirituality. Doing good work in the world in no way returns for a person the capacity to transcend their own karma. In an ordinary way it's called sublimation. When you do the same thing with a spiritual effort, it's called transcending. And the difference between sublimating and being very under your effort or transcending and being lifted above your effort. The whole difference between one kind of breathing and another kind of breathing. And we continually justify our lack of internal effort by outside reasons. And you have to take care of it, and you have to within yourself be rational and test yourself and see the difference between doing something with logic and doing something with consciousness. Logic gives us one-way out and consciousness gives us all the way in, to really rise above, and the answer is of no consequence because you have finished the situation. You're above the situation and you don't have to have these small satisfactions because you have within yourself the freedom and this thing of taste and appetite and breathing-- you are released completely from it, and we fight always for any answer instead of really fighting for a result, which carries us forever above a situation. So this ability to rise continually above a situation represents a human being not wishing to fight, but a human being wishing to surrender. That's the entire difference between conscious effort and unconscious effort. You fight and express your energy in fighting and winning, which gives you nothing but heartache and tensions. But to use the same energy to open and really rise above a situation, you understand that the situation was non-existent. You are willing to surrender the tensions with consciousness so that you don't win anything except your freedom. And it's the tenaciousness of a human being's mind, his willfulness that requires him being right and being right at the cost of his life. It is better to surrender and even be wrong in a spiritual sense than it is to be right in a spiritual sense, because you're always right at the sacrifice of another human being when you work with your will. But when you work spiritually, you really are freed of the situation and then it matters not whether you are right or they are right because the situation no longer exists. It dissolves into the nothingness where you understand you're above it, and it can be right, you can be right, they can be wrong, you can be wrong, but the fact is you're free, and so that when we work consciously it is to be free, not necessarily to be right. It is an ego, which needs to be right, and it is only the ability of a human being who wishes to grow to be above this kind of reason and this kind of an answer. I've watched people come endlessly and I've really worked in myself and I found out that I was free of that relationship. They were right. I was wrong, and this goes on quite a bit, and it takes a long time to begin to understand that you can be victorious and be wrong and somebody else can be right and be totally miserable. It's a question of the end effect, not of the momentary effect, that you can work and really understand that what you did was not right. It was not a right move. It was not a nice thing to do and it represented a lack in you which when you surrendered you became aware of, and then you rise with that and then you transcend the situation and you transcend it-again. and you begin to understand that you can give someone else the credit for being right. You're really free of them. You really never want to see them again. So you can admit and apologize that you were wrong and then walk away. It allows you for detachment, and it's a remarkable thing to find somebody pulling on one end of the string and you're on the other and you can actually let go because you absolutely have no need to care anymore, you have become free by the ability to rise above the situation and you begin to look at the string and you say, well, why was I tugging. There was no reason to tug. You become free of this compulsiveness of being involved and expressing tensions and ego. And so much of life is that. We are involved with other people not because we want to be involved with them, but because we are involved in the game of being involved. And they're pulling and we're pulling and they're pulling, and we no longer have a principle. We no longer have anything of value in the situation; we are just with this game of making tensions and reacting to a situation and being caught under the situation. There is no longer any energy in the situation. There is no longer any love. There is no consciousness. There is just the outside manifestation, which has to do with the nothingness, and most of the things that we are caught on really are the illusion of life. There is not life because there is no content. There is no love. There is no feeling. There is no flow. It is just the need to possess something, which we feel somebody else wants, and so somebody's going to take this from me so that I poke and really say it's something that I wish for.
We have to really become aware that what we attach to is the nourishment that is feeding us and we can't surrender it because when you have a mouthful, you can take a breath and you open automatically and let go. No child can suckle on his mother's breast endlessly. It belches. It gurgles. It falls asleep. It does all of these things, which allow nourishment to manifest in detachment. The only thing that pursues a man endlessly and relentlessly are the illusions of life, hatred, possession, lust, passion, all of these things will eat you out. They don't serve you and they certainly don't feed you. They really have you. And because you're chasing something, which has no content, it has no capacity to ever free you or detach you for itself. You can be a mess forever. And it's only the realities of life that frees us and allows us to detach from them. It has to do with a person. It has to do with our attitude towards whatever we're connected to. You can be with someone who is possessive and your taking of energy, your being open and drinking in and taking and taking allows you to rise above the situation. It isn't really the cow that gives milk. It is the milk that we buy and the cow is a personality whose acquaintance we do not know. We're not involved with the cow. We're only involved with the milk. And we continually we get involved with the cows in our life. We don't get the milk, but we have this strange relationship with the things, which we feel are responsible for our life. We over identify, we overvalue and we continually make lives, which over dramatize what we're not
getting. We worship an animal, we're involved with the animal and for twenty-five cents a quart you can go out and buy it. It's as simple as that. We must become aware that our consciousness, our ability to grow is a technique that we learn and this is what you're here for, to learn a technique that can allow you to milk life, not just this way, but eventually every way. You can grow strong and go out and take from life on every level its content. Not to have to worship this one or be involved with someone else or under somebody else's tension, but to become a free human being who can take and take and take and take because this exchange is possible. But it's our need to over identify with the sources from which we take, from the sources which we make essential for our life because we're so busy squeezing that we're not busy eating and we're not busy growing and we're not busy transcending. Our whole life is filled with enormous symbols because our life is not filled with essential simplicities, which allow us to go through life accepting the goodness, and the beauty that is there. When we come to something, which is more, and something, which is wonderful, we can appreciate that because of the ease with which we are given; the simplicity with which we can receive it and the freedom that it gives us. But to a life of tension and limitation is that which we inflict on ourselves because we cannot open within ourselves with gratitude for living. And it's our lack of gratitude for our existence for our life as it is given, that forces us to make tensions just like a child throwing a tantrum. We continually exercise our will to show how unacceptable it is and so we forget to take what is available. It is this unconsciousness that keeps people in this ridiculous state of starvation. They're busy making tensions instead of taking the very simple quantity that can free them, that really represents love and nourishment and growth. Some are here for a very simple reason, that's just to take a little more to eat a little more and to be free a great deal. You can take from your own environment, from the atmosphere of your own life that which you're entitled to. And that consciousness is really understanding the difference between tension which is the game of wasting energy, of not clearing yourself out on a day by day basis, not recognizing the difference between something that doesn't nourish you and something that does nourish you. And the reason for growing becomes evident because the energy that you gather within yourself has within it the capacity to talk and to explain to you the purpose of your life. But we don't hear the language of life because we're continually involved with the language of death, which is tension, which is fighting, which is all of these negative things. Life is such a complete thing and it was named as such. It has life. It can impart life to us whenever we have the capacity to be open to it. And it's the great simplicity in which we live and in which we destroy that simplicity by almost every act of our existence. We can't open inside and let this thing pour into us. The whole atmosphere is loaded with this energy and we have to come to a place like this under special conditions to get our system back to a point where it can exhibit this simplicity in its ordinary day under extraordinary or ordinary conditions
When you really try to work and you try to grow, it represents simply your ability to take nourishment and not take tensions to destroy the nourishment, which you are taking. Otherwise you'll spend the next six million years doing this thing, which is basically very simple. It's feeding yourself, releasing tensions and becoming free. It's essential for all of us to understand that spirituality is just the releasing of spirit by feeding nourishment into tension. What could be simpler? Underneath the tension is an extraordinary mechanism that has the capacity to instruct you. It has its own voice. It has its own intelligence, and it certainly shows you that when you treat it correctly, what it can do. It's no different than having a child who's the product of two people express by its tantrums, by its attitudes, when it is not made happy. And we have to learn that this
thing within us is another kind of a child. When we feel something which is not easy for us to identify, we have to stop for a second, detach for a second and try to understand what is wrong with it; not to beat it because it's not doing what we want, not to starve it, not to burn it up, but to just look at it objectively and try to understand the language of life that our own body and system is trying to express. It needs to rest. It needs to be nourished. It needs to relax. It needs to be recognized as having value by everything else around it. If we put ourselves in relationships, which torture us, then there's something wrong within us. We
have to continually feel the openness to this life flow. Is there anyone who has a question? QUESTION: When you're trying to free yourself from other people's tensions and when you work with people and you have to get something done, instead of trying to accept them and surrendering to them and walking away, how can you work with them and get it done? RUDI: You try to feel inside when you talk with them, right? And you try to feel whether they're in their head or whether they're gripped inside, or they're trying to be in their heart, and you say, "Look let's try to feel and see where you are and where I am." And just relate to them in a very conscious way for a minute, so that you can begin to see they're looking like this and you try to talk to them this way and then get spaced out. I've had people come to me my whole life and they say, "I want to talk to you about a question" and their eyes are upon me like a goldfish, they're not looking at me, there's no communication, there's no openness. And you start talking for two hours, what does it matter? It makes you a horse's ass. If you don't have someone's attention and you don't feel communication with them then what are you doing? You're calling to a fool and it makes you a fool, right? It's essential that you begin to understand before we talk, before we in any relate to someone that we understand that they're on a level that we can really relate to them. If you're talking there and they're here or you're talking there and they're there, it's really this thing that stops you, and you really have a right, particularly with anyone in the Ashram, that you really demand that of them. And if they don't wish to comply with that, then they shouldn't be here. It's just like a child who doesn't listen. You let them get away with it and it becomes a very bad adult. Well, if we don't begin having that kind of communication on a one-to-one basis in this kind of a situation, then this is going to be a madhouse. It certainly will not become a place where spiritual energy can rise; the energy will be continually destroyed on this ordinary level. We're not on a deadline. We really are trying to work with consciousness. There are people who are willing to work and there are people who are not willing to work correctly. It's working correctly which is really what we're after, because it makes for a harmony, which allows us to use our energy in a positive way. It allows us to grow. Not to you to be under their tension, and if you work better than they, then they have to listen to you; and if they don't listen to you, then you can really speak to whoever else is involved in it, whether it is Richard or myself. And it's really how you train any animal, you take an animal that has to be housebroken and you put it next to an animal that is housebroken. And its responsibility is to be housebroken. It is there for that purpose. Anyone who comes to an ashram or a school of this kind, it's to learn to work in harmony. If they steam a little bit or they make a little noise, it's no different than someone coming off dope. They're on the dope of being unconscious and not wishing to do that disqualifies them from being here. It's a very simple thing. And if you let go of them then somebody will come who is a better person and the atmosphere will be improved. It's quality that you want. It's not quantity and it's not to sit and have fights with people, understand? They're attracted by a level and we allow the level to become less because we don't demand quality. And I would much rather spend six more months at it and have a building express peace and quiet and love and then be able to sit down to a table with people who are on this level than to begin four months earlier and have this atmosphere that is less. We really have to aspire to that in our life, really. It's better to have less people and more quality than more people and more tensions, because tension certainly don't allow for evolvement And it's really ego, on people's part. They won't do it your way because they really have an ego and I really don't care for that. QUESTION: Why do people insist on holding onto tensions when they know it's bad? RUDI: Because they hate themselves and they really are afraid that if they grow they'll liable to get shot down. People are afraid to live; basically they're very afraid to -- they can't open their heart to themselves. It's the same thing as being here. If your heart isn't open, if you don't inside yourself open to your potential, it means that you're going to reject the energy in a million different ways. It means that their basic intention in themselves, in their unconscious mind, is not a positive one. And this is the whole thing before anyone comes to such a class or goes to any kind of a meditation, they should be responsible and be made responsible for going inside their own heart and asking deeply that they really wish for a great spiritual life, and that they really want to surrender and they want to be happy. And if they can't open their heart to that, then they should never be allowed to come to a class, because otherwise they'll continually take in energy and brutalize it and then destroy other people around them. It's part of not having been a happy child. It's really basically a tension machine that we live in. We don't live in this thing that's throwing out daffodils all over the place. And it takes a great deal of effort to become aware that basically what we do is take in life and we turn out tension, and until we begin to be aware of what we do with energy, we can't identify the mechanism. When we begin to take in tension and turn out life, then we have something that's wonderful, and this is what we're working for, so that you're responsible for your attitude, not because you are here, but you're here and you change your attitude to raise yourself. You talk nicer, you are polite, you do a million things to express a depth and a wish within yourself, understand? QUESTION: Sometimes I can stand outside of myself and see my self doing something that's stupid and tension producing and I still do it as a watch myself do it. RUDI: Well it's because you have no respect for yourself. You have to be strong. You have to immediately stop it, and try to be very severe with yourself. But we laugh at that. We always laugh at the things we do which are terrible and we gasp at the things that somebody else does which are exactly the same. We're very forgiving. Does anyone else have a question? QUESTION: I have a question which is really hard to form because I feel from all my teachers that (inaudible) and my life has been a pretty joyous one but I am feeling now like I am failing my potential, that I really should be creating more-- what, I don't know, and it's going in... RUDI: Well, I understand your question, but your question is the nature of what is happening to energy. Energy is expanding in the universe, so the lake that you're on was wonderful for twenty or forty or fifty years. It's like the Hudson is great until they make an ocean liner that needs a deeper bottom. They have to dredge it. So as energy expands, regardless of how good you were for twenty or forty or sixty years, the expansion of life needs more depth and the only way to get more depth is to dredge out of you all the silt that's on the bottom of you, and that's really by making a deeper commitment and surrendering in more depth and you deeper inside you the volume of the energy that flows through you. It's like being a sweet little old lady walking around with white gloves and an umbrella and getting your head based in. If you walk around that way, you are a living victim. You have to really have inside you something, which says
you come near me and I'll really -- I can even the score. And so what was good in Victorian times doesn't qualify today, what was a good life doesn't qualify today either because it requires a new depth because of the new energy that's in the atmosphere. I mean, what is a good raincoat in Seattle, Washington, where
the rain is so light and it comes down as a precipitate, isn't good in a hailstorm in Oregon. It's a different climate and it has a different need. And so as tension in the atmosphere builds and energy builds, we also have to adjust and live accordingly. You find yourself kind of a different -- sort of out of step with the energy around you, not possibly with some people, but with yourself. I mean you need a more dramatic and a deeper life to have more value so that you can feel comfortable. And it really is this whole thing of an evolving quantity. And many people have that; they can't see in a rational way why their life is not good or why they are not happy because nothing has changed. That's their lack of consciousness that the atmosphere has changed. It's just like inflation. What you lived on a few years ago, doesn't qualify for you to live today. It's a very real expression of our time. Money is worth less and so is the energy that we have. We need heavier energy, deeper energy stronger energy to pay for this existence. QUESTION: How do you open if you need more energy? RUDI: Open to it. Consciously open to it. I mean it's just like you go to a fire department or a police station and there's a policeman who long hair, you know? And the garbage men come by and they all look like somebody coming to a party, they all have hair down to their shoulders. It's extraordinary. If this happened twenty years ago they'd be laughed right off. It's an accepted phase. And I've had parents come down and they'd say, "I want to talk about my son," and their heart was breaking. The kid just dropped heroin three months ago and stopped taking marijuana because he was strong enough and now he has a spiritual life and what are they worried about? '"Why does our kid have such long hair, the neighbors don't like it." They couldn't see that he was out of his mind and he was dying. They couldn't afford to see that, but they can afford to relate to the level of the length of his hair. And we do this with life. We don't see the big things because we can't afford to contend with them. We see the stupidity and the superficial and it then satisfies our superficiality. So we're tussling with this and meanwhile this is coming down on us like a ton of bricks. Does anyone else have a question? QUESTION: Sometimes my consciousness will go through sort of a pulsing madness, and I try to concentrate on my hands or then I try to concentrate somewhere else. RUDI: Well somebody's using you for a pinball machine who is on a higher level of existence. You go clunk and it goes bang bang bang bang bang bang bang. It shows that you have no control. You're a toy for somebody else. And they see when your eyes light up there's a tilt and the game is over. I mean you have no control and it's showing you that there's no control in you, so what does it make you? I mean a lot of people live in a very strange way because they are being used by something else. In a very silly way, you can look at women and you can look at men. You see a woman looking down who looks like a seventy-year old Shirley Temple doll and somebody four levels above is playing a rerun and they are looking at this thing, this person and laughing. Or somebody else looks like a rabbit, or somebody else looks like a this or looks like a that. It really is-- they're working on the demand of a will which is using them for a toy. So you're a pinball machine, and you accept your role in life. It really has to do with your limitation against your capacity to work and demand that this energy aligns itself in a very real way. When you make a deep wish, and you really deepen it tremendously, you take all of this scattered stuff like this and the molecularity straightens out. You really pull it together. Because your wish is here everything else is underneath you and it serves you instead of serving all of these silly things that are in existence. And it's the strength of your will and your wish straightens inside that really out all of this garbage inside, the limitation that what you get from your own life. You're obviously being used by something else, and not by yourself. So you have to make up your choice whether you want to be a toy for somebody else or you want to be a reality for yourself Life is getting good for me; I won't even accept the goodness of it, for that understanding, the reason behind it as far as my own spiritual potential is concerned. And you have a right inside, after you work correctly to ask and get an answer. And these things are really structured as far as your own potential growth is concerned. That you don't get an answer in only proof that you're not working correctly. A human being working and evolving is a harmonious example of the consciousness of the universe and then everything is possible. It's really an expression of creativity. Not that you can control it, but that you understand it, and you can live with it in a very wonderful way. Does anyone else have a question? QUESTION: When you mention getting an answer, do you mean actually getting an answer that is a tangible answer and you know it's an answer RUDI: Sure QUESTION: Not just a vague intuition? RUDI: No. There's nothing vague about it END OF TALK