So then, here's the drama. My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, are that
 there is the central self, you can call it God, you can call it anything you like, and
 it's all of us. It's playing all the parts of all beings whatsoever, everywhere and anywhere.
 And it's playing the game of hide and seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved
 in the farthest out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself.
 And when you're ready to wake up, you're going to wake up. And if you're not ready, you're
 going to stay pretending that you're just a poor little me. And since you're all here
 and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume that you're
 all on the process of waking up. Or else you're teasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation
 with waking up, which you're not serious about. But I assume maybe you are, not serious but
 sincere, that you are ready to wake up. So then, when you're in the way of waking up
 and finding out who you really are, you meet a character called a guru. As the Hindus say,
 this word, the teacher, the awakener. And what is the function of a guru? He's the man
 who looks at you in the eye and says, "Oh, come off it. I know who you are." You know,
 you come to the guru and say, "Sir, I have a problem. I'm unhappy and I want to get one
 up on the universe, or I want to become enlightened. I want spiritual wisdom." Ah, and the guru
 looks at you and says, "Who are you?" You know, Sri Ramana Maharshi, that great Hindu
 sage of modern times, people used to come to him and say, "Master, who was I in my last
 incarnation?" as if that mattered. And he would say, "Who is asking the question?"
 And he'd look at you and say, basically, go right down to it. You're looking at me, you're
 looking out, and you're unaware of what's behind your eyes. Go back in and find out
 who you are, where the question comes from, why you ask. And if you've looked at a photograph
 of that man, I have a gorgeous photograph of him, and you look in those, I walk by it
 every time I go out of the front door, and I look at those eyes, and the humor in them,
 the lilting laugh that says, "Oh, come off it, man."
 Shiva, I recognize you. When you come to my door and you say, "I'm so-and-so," I say,
 "Ah-ha, what a funny way God has come on today." There are all sorts of tricks, of course,
 that gurus play. They say, "Well, we're going to put you through the mill." And the reason
 they do that is simply that you won't wake up until you feel you've paid a price for
 it. In other words, the sense of guilt that one has, or the sense of anxiety, is simply
 the way one experiences keeping the game of disguise going on. Do you see that? Supposing
 you say, "I feel guilty." Christianity makes you feel guilty for existing. That somehow,
 the very fact that you exist is an affront. You are a fallen human being. I remember as
 a child when we went to the services of the church on Good Friday, they gave us each a
 colored postcard with Jesus crucified on it. And it said underneath, "This have I done
 for thee, what doest thou for me?" You know, you fell off. You nailed that man to the cross.
 Because you eat steak, you have crucified Christ. Because you killed the bull, after
 all, you depend on it. Mithra, it's the same mystery. And what are you going to do about
 that? "This have I done for thee, what doest thou for me?" You feel awful that you just
 exist at all. But that sense, that sense of guilt, is the veil across the sanctuary. Don't
 you dare come in. In order to, you know, in all mysteries, when you're going to be initiated,
 with somebody saying, "Uh uh uh uh, don't you come in. You've got to fulfill this requirement
 and this requirement and this requirement and this requirement, then we'll let you in."
 And so you go, you go through the mill. Why? Because this is, you're saying to yourself,
 I won't wake up until I feel I deserve it. I won't wake up until I've made it difficult
 for me to wake up. So I invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking
 up. I put myself through this test and that test, and when I feel it's been sufficiently
 arduous, then I may at last admit to myself who I really am. And draw aside the veil.
 And realize that after all, when all is said and done, I am that I am, which is the name
 of God. And when it comes to it, that's really rather funny. They say in Zen, when you attain
 Satori, nothing has left you at that moment but to have a good laugh. But naturally, all
 masters, Zen masters, yoga masters, every kind of master, puts up a barrier and says
 to you, "It simply plays your own game." You know, we say anybody who goes to a psychiatrist
 ought to have his head examined. Because you, when you go to a psychiatrist, you define
 yourself as somebody who ought to have his head examined. Same way, the Zen masters say
 anybody who studies Zen or comes to a Zen master ought to be given thirty blows with
 a stick. Because he was stupid enough to pose the question that he had a problem. But you're
 the problem. You put yourself in the situation. So it's a question fundamentally. Do you define
 yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world? You can define yourself, you see, if
 you identify you with what you call the voluntary system of the nerves, and say only that's
 me, and that's really a rather limited amount of my total performance, what I do voluntarily,
 then you've defined yourself as the victim in the game. And so you are able to feel that
 life was a trap. Something else, whether it was God or whether it was fate or whether
 it was the big mechanism, the system, imposed this on you. And you can say, "Poor little
 me." But you can equally well, and with just as much justification, define yourself not
 only as what you do voluntarily, but also what you do involuntarily. That's you too.
 Do you beat your heart or don't you? Or does it just happen to you? And if you define yourself
 as the works, then nobody's imposing on you. You're not a victim. You're doing it. Plus
 you can't explain how you do it in words, because words are too clumsy. And it takes
 too long to say. You get bored with it. But actually, then you can say, with gusto, "I
 am responsible for this life. Whether comedy or tragedy, I did it." And it seems to me
 that that is a basis for behavior and going on, which is more fundamentally joyous and
 profitable and great than defining ourselves as miserable victims or sinners or what have
 you.
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