At one of my experiences in India,
I was with a yogi called Neem Karoli Baba.

And one day a bunch of us,
and one of the people there was Ram Dass,
you remember Ram Dass he was there too.

We were sitting in front of him,
when an old lady came up to him and spoke in Hindi,
whatever language they were talking I forgot.

And what she said was that her husband was dying,
"Would you please come and save him,
because only you can come and save him.”

And Neem Karoli Baba looked at me
and said, "Should I go?" and
I said, "yes go, let's all go."

So we walked about two miles to a little shack and
the husband was lying on the cot dying of some kind of disease.

And he looked at him and
all of a sudden the candles began to flicker.
So he turned around and ran out the house and
started to run back to the ashram and we all followed him.

And we said when we finally stopped we said,
"Baba what happened?
Why did you leave?" and
he said, "Ah, God wants him to die," and he died.

The point is this:
your life, your health or your sickness,
your riches or your poverty
has all been preordained by the law of Karma.
And whatever you're going to go through,
you're going to go through.

If you're supposed to become a health fanatic and
watch your health and eat the right things all the time,
you will do that and if you're not supposed to, you won't.

If you're supposed to take the middle path you will do that.
Everything is ordained, planned before time.
The only freedom we've got is to not identify with the process,
even though your body's going through it.

Do not attach yourself to what your body's going through.
Keep your mind above it,
keep your head in heaven and your feet on the ground.
So we have no choice in the matter.

Whatever is going to happen will happen.
So if we have to do all kinds of things and
we find ourselves running from one doctor to another doctor
and so forth, do not attach yourself to that
but do it anyway because you can't help it.

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Question : Can you try to clarify this a little more,
you've just been speaking of karma, and
yet I know that you believe that karma does not exist will you comment on that,
karma exists and karma does not exist?

Robert : Again the Buddha said,
"Karma is a taskmaster for the foolish and
the servant to the wise,"
meaning, if we in the level mentally of karma,
we will suffer and it'll become our task Master.
But if we lift our minds away from the condition and we keep our minds
on the absolute reality,
we will not suffer no matter what the body is going through.

Who suffers?
The mind, not the body, the body cannot suffer.

The body is merely a lump of flesh and bone and blood,
but it's animated by the mind, so the mind suffers and
allows the body to suffer, but the body can do nothing by itself.

So if the mind is taken away from the body something else will happen,
you'll be free.

(SA: What was the line again? Buddha's line, karma is the taskmaster for the foolish...)

...and the servant for the wise,
it's a servant because you do not pay any heed.

(SA: Control it.)
Exactly, you observe it and you do not respond.
So it becomes your servant when you do not respond to karma,
then you overcome it.

In other words if somebody becomes angry at you and you do not respond,
there is no karma, and you'll be free.

Karma again is like a person, who talks to you
and talks to you and talks to you but you say nothing.

What will that person do?
They'll get up and leave.
So when your karma sees that you're not paying any attention to it,
It dissipates and returns to the nothingness from whence it came.

Let's play some music.
Why don't you put the fan on while we're doing it?

To assure you there is a power that knows how to take care of all things if you
trust it. That power of course is you, but you don't know it.

I've been trying to get a hold of a certain picture of Ramana Maharshi for quite a
while but first I should tell you that, when I was seventeen,
I was led in mysterious ways to Arunachala, where I met Ramana.

I won't elaborate on that right now but
there was mysterious circumstances that caused that.
So going back to now, I tried to get a picture of Ramana Maharshi that I liked,
and sure enough last week George brings me the same picture as a present,
in color, that I had been looking for for a long time.

So I took it home and hung it on the wall.
But in the meanwhile I had a visitor from Hawaii.
He used to be one of my students came to see me,
he was traveling through and he brought a lae and put it around my neck.
So I took off the lei and put it around Ramana's picture,
and he said to me - after being on this path for so-called ten years or more,
he said, "I didn't know you worship gurus."

Now, he should've known better.
So I explained to him the facts. Ramana's not a guru, he is the same as my Self,
I am simply paying homage to my Self.
There is only one Self and we are all that.

So when I honor him with a lei I am doing it to me
because he is none other than my Self,
and you none other than my Self also. So it's not a guru worship,
it's bowing to your Self, praying to your Self, worshiping your Self,
because God dwells in you as you.

But this just goes to show you that there is a power that knows how to take
care of you, that loves you, that is always on your side.

It only requires one thing, surrender.
Surrender to your Self.
God, guru and Self are one,
bow down to your Self, love your Self.

When I speak of your Self I'm not referring to your ego self.
There is something about you that perhaps you're not aware of yet.
The absolute reality that we've been talking about.
It is you, that's what you worship, that is what you bow down to,
that is what you express.

Never defile your Self, by hating yourself.
Never believe there is any mistake you've made
that is going to rise up against you.
Everyone has made mistakes, forget it.

Begin to realize who you are,
begin to love yourself dearly, have mercy on yourself,
lift yourself up and become free,
any questions about that ?

From: You Must Have Your Own Experience