The Power That Knows the Way

Robert never had many students.  The messages, "You don't exist; the world is an optical illusion; you are nothing, your mind is your enemy; do nothing; be still," is not a message that appeals to many westerners.

Nor is the message, "You are not your body or your mind, you are consciousness itself," that helpful unless you define what consciousness is.   Many people when they hear that begin to imagine or create special states or imagine transcendent states, something new and special.

But Robert was talking about your everyday consciousness, the one you awake with each morning.  That 16-hour a day consciousness is all that there is for you.  It contains all of your knowledge, all of your experience, all of your memories right now in consciousness, and that consciousness is not very steady or reliable.  It comes and goes, and with it, comes and goes our experiences of self-existence, of being alive, and in that totality of sentient experience lies your body and mind, with which you identify, even though the body disappears at night when consciousness disappears.

Without consciousness your body does not exist for you.  Consciousness comes first, then the body and mind and the world.

All your spiritual knowledge too is contained in your every day consciousness.  It is your only inheritance.  Your most basic tool.

But by focusing on this consciousness, by making consciousness itself an object, you loosen your identification with the body and mind, because they are just small parts of your consciousness.  There is the external world, sounds, sights, smells, etc.

And inside that consciousness, many people can locate a sense of I or I Am, as a center of gravity of consciousness within your self-experience.

Focusing your attention on that I, that sense that you are, that you exist, can bring you to the most exquisite state of self-realization, when you realize that this consciousness is infinite, divine, and is God itself.

Many of my students have discovered this within themselves which  first appears to be separate from your sense of existence, like a divine object, like God within.  I call this the life force, some call it Shakti.  Robert called it "The Power That Knows The Way."

That is, in sefl-realization, your consciousness becomes aware of the divine energies within, their expansions and contractions, and how they fill your body and your sense of presence with life.  You become aware of the root, the impersonal power of the life force that lives through you and which you are now aware of.

With this experience of self-realization, consciousness begins to reveal all of its secrets to you.  After that there is a continuous, spontaneous unfolding of the power that knows the way without you needing to do anything more.