Interview with Bob, 2012

I say for newcomers that are listening to this, it can be a long story, but it's not. It's just the way life unfolds, really. And as I say, I was taken into that life. I never set out to be an alcoholic. None of us ever do. Nobody ever starts off and says, Daddy, when I grow up, I'm going to be the greatest drunk in the world. These things happen. But at a certain stage, when it took me into the depth, it turned me around. And I think there's a saying from Thomas Akempis in The Imitation of Christ. He said, when I had no being, you brought me into existence.

And when I went straying afar from you, you turned me around and brought me into your service. Well, that's a similar sort of thing. That's the thing that we're talking about. So as I say, the thing that turned me around was I got two alcoholics and none of us. Now, I didn't want to go there. I had no intention. If I could continue drinking and got away with it, I couldn't, but it was killing me. And I didn't even realize that. But the unhappiness and everything was almost there, but I managed to get along. And I'd heard of it years before. People have tried to point me in the right direction.

But I'd never taken that advice. The ego was so great that I thought I knew it all and could do it all. But then when there's nothing left, I went there. And I had no spiritual understanding, so-called spiritual understanding at all. I didn't believe in anything. I was here to have a good time and didn't care who I hurt or what damage I did, as long as I wasn't getting hurt. But when I started hurting me more than hurting anybody else, that seemed to be the turning point. And in the big book of AA, it says, makes a statement, we stood at the turning point.

And then we asked His care and protection. And I don't know who this His was or anything like that. They talked about a God, as you understand Him. But I was certainly at the turning point. Like I couldn't go back. And I couldn't stand still. And there was only one way to go. Well, that was the turning point. And I thought, where do I go? Well, that's when the chink in the armour came. And I thought, well, maybe there's a power greater than the self, as what they called it in the Fellowship of Power, greater than the self, which they said, God as we understood Him.

Not as God as everybody else was putting out there. Something that I could, or the person, so-called person, could understand. And somebody handed me a book called Sobriety and Beyond, written by a Catholic priest who was an alcoholic, and based on the 12 steps of AA. In the introduction, he said, we alcoholics are given a second chance at life. And this was a fact for me, because I'd gone to the Fellowship and got dry for a little while, and then the ego and arrogance returned, and I said, I don't need you anymore. This will be our Fellowship anymore. Went out and drank again. And naturally, I finished up worse off than I was before.

So I managed to get back to the Fellowship. Why or how, I don't know, but I finished up at a meeting there. When I was given this book, you know, and I read it, and that hit me. I'd been given a second chance, yes. You know, why am I here? Because two fellows that were in the Fellowship, the same as I had gone out and drank, one had jumped out of the window of the Federal Hotel in Collins Street, and another one had shot himself. And here I was back in the Fellowship again, with a second chance. And I had underneath that, how well, you know, we alcoholics are given a second chance.

And then you had the big question, how well do you use that second chance? And that's what I was doing. And that really hit me too. And it came to me then, wherefore, how, why, what for? There's only one way you can use it. Find out what it is that's given you the second chance. Maybe what they talk about, a higher power or a god or whatever, maybe there is something. Because of my own accord, I wouldn't know how or when or why to take that second chance, you know. I wouldn't have known, whether it was about the Fellowship or anything else. But it got me there and pointed this out to me.

So that was the chink in the arm. I said, well, maybe there is such a thing as a higher power. And that little maybe was so there's not, the devil was, maybe was the opening. And it came to me then, well, that's, you know, the first and foremost thing in my life. I've got this life. How well am I going to use it? So that started the search. Being a Westerner, into Christianity first, then later into Eastern stuff. Well, I had sort of, must have done something, you know, in the mind because there was visions and things which took everything away seemingly, you know. And there was a great sense of peace and love there.

And of course it didn't last long. People noticed the difference in me almost immediately. There was a difference. But the old habits kept coming up. And I followed that out for a few years. Then something took me away from that and there was a photo in the paper of a yogi that was coming to Melbourne. And something about that photo, there was a light or life in it or something that attracted me. And I said, I've got to go see this guy. And it was Muktananda. Well, I went to Bombay one time. I used to go in there every now and again. And I went into a bookshop looking up something to read on the Veda and non-duality and all the rest of it, which I was looking at more, so many more moved into that, or Kashmir Shaivism, which was along the same lines.

And searching around for books. And a lot of places I'd been, you know, looking into books and different things, somehow or other the book would fall into your hands. You'd go to pinpoint one book on the shelf and you'd go and read that and open it and read something in it which would resonate with you. And I wasn't looking around, wasn't finding much there. And I started to go out and the bloke behind the counter, the shopkeeper said, you've got to read this book. And it was the same book I'd been pointed to back in the day. And I said, well, it's in the ashram.

And he pointed me to it and I wouldn't look at it. It was I in that. Now, being as open as I could be in those days, I said, well, this is too much of a coincidence. So I picked it up and had another look, opened it. And I read a couple of pages and that resonated, rang a bell or whatever you like to call it. And I looked in the front and his address was there and I went around straight away to see him. But, of course, it was in the middle of the day and when his session was over and somebody had a little, boy little, what's the name, boy ran, I want a bigger boy, running around there and he directed me to where to go and I went up there and he translated from the saga there and the saga says to come back tomorrow at 11 o'clock.

So I went back the next day and that was it. I heard what he was saying, really heard. Well, he pointed out what I'd read many times and heard many times, that you're not the body, you're not the mind. You know, you are that pure consciousness or awareness. And he says the only way I can help anybody is to take them beyond the need for further help by pointing out what you're not. And that was a big thing, beyond the need for further help. And that was something. And it proved to be true because I saw what he was saying, heard what he was saying and I haven't needed help from then to this.

No matter if I heard something clearly, I'd be able to help anybody. And he gave an answer, he kicked that out too, pointing out that they didn't even know how clear it was or would have if it wasn't it either. And where I couldn't, like that story of Bishop, that many arrows in his body that wherever he lay down he was lowering on the back of an arrow, just like I suppose that's where the bed of nails evolved from, that thing, you know. That many arrows that he couldn't, no matter where he lay, he couldn't get away from any of it. When I initially went there, I saw what he was saying, which wasn't the body on the vine, but he kicked all that out.

And when I didn't have anywhere that was not a, somewhere was pointing at me that, made sure that there was nothing left of Dom. But the thing was he was a wonderful man, like he was a very lovable person. And you could approach him, there was no higher or lower, you could very approach him all the time. And so where I probably would have hesitated, I'd given my book to Nanny or some of these other so-called people that set themselves up, you know. I took all that away too where I could, approached him quite openly and naturally, and what I had to say was, what had to be said is, but once having seen it, it could never be the same again, because once you see something as false as not real, you know, anything at all, can you believe the truth of it again?

You might get seemingly hooked into it again, and you know, not recognize it, but it dawns on you pretty quickly, yeah, this is the same false, not the truth. And you must move back into it. So the old habits start to lose their whole, their whole conditioning and falls away and everything like that. When it's no longer, there's no energy going into it, no energy of belief going into it. And nothing can live without energy. Nothing at all. There's going to be no thing whatsoever without activating energy going into it. Well naturally, I was still living in the ashram, and I had nowhere else to go at that time.

And it had taken all that discipline of the ashram away from me, and that had dropped off. I didn't need to do that, as I say, you know, but I still had to do it to live in the ashram. So, and that was the main interest, you know, was if there was nowhere to go, I might as well get in front of it, see him as much as often as I possibly can, you know. So whenever I could get away from the ashram, I'd go in and spend a couple of days in one way. But you couldn't be away from the ashram too long if I threw you out.

And if I was thrown out, where would I be? Yeah, well, as I say, in the seeing, it needs to be seen, recognised that it is false, you see. In seeing the falseness of it, can the false be true? And recognising the false, you know, can you believe in the false anymore? I've heard to say that the ancients have put a round river. I am that. There is only that. That is all there is. If you like to use the term, it's, as they say, there's one God. There's only one God, you know. If you like to use that label, but I don't use that label because as soon as we use the term God, we've got the belief of what we think God is, the traditional belief that's been put into us, you know, from the Christian, Hindu, atheist, agnostics, whoever.

We've got this concept of what we think God is, or somebody separate in a path that's running the show. But it's the non-duality of it. When I say the non-duality tradition is, you know, it's not just to the Hindus. You'll see it in all the great traditions if you look closely enough in different, put in different ways, different terms. There is only the one. And recognising that you can't, there's only the one. Can you be anything other than God? Is there anything other? Not two. That's the simple way they put it. Not two. Only this. And the beauty of this, patterns, expressions, in all this diversity, in the total manifestation, this whole cosmos or universe is this, only this.

Seemingly displaying in all its variety, in all its diversity. Couldn't possibly be any separation. They use the term, I think it's in Christianity, not in other religions, but in Christianity. Other traditions, they call it omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience. Three aspects of the one thing. Total presence. Total power. Total intelligence. Now, if it's total, does that leave room for two? If it's the absolute, is there anything that's not absolute? But to see the trouble is they divide it into awareness, conscious, absolute, seemingly split it up and make it appear to be three different things. But they're labels we put on it. They're labels we put on the one, the non-geo one without a second, seemingly dividing it.

But the label can't divide anything. It's this simple. As they say, if it's one, there's nothing simpler than one. But it's not even one. Which they put without a second on that one, implying there never was a one in the first place. Which two could come from? You are the life. That is what you actually are, not any editing. There is only, as the Sargada says, there is only life. That is all there is. There is nobody who ever lived a life or ever will live a life. And life continually living on itself. If there's only life, what can it live on? Life is always living and expressing as life, from life, into life.

There's no from or into even. That's how it seemingly happens. That's why we say you'll never find the answer in the mind. Because the mind, the way the mind, so-called mind functions, it divides. It constantly vibrates in the opposite direction. It's always dividing, seemingly separating it by concepts, ideas, images. And look in all the great traditions and see there is no mind. Call it empty mind, no mind, you know. An unborn mind. So, if the mind's no thing, what can there be, something come out of nothing? Can any of these thoughts, feelings, we think, believe to be things, they're really only that, no mind also.

Even though it's displaying a seeming other. And again, that's not a new statement or a new idea. You'll see that in the scripture. Well, they call it cognizing emptiness. They call it in Buddhism. An emptiness infused with a innate intelligence or knowing. Not that we are cognizing emptiness. But the emptiness itself is cognizing. Well, you cannot separate the emptiness from the cognizing. You're sitting here, you're knowing that you are, aren't you? Can you separate that from anything in the room? The emptiness or the things in the room even? That's gone. As they say, we don't know. They call it wakefulness in some of the traditions.

We wake up this morning, and you've been awake all this time. You know? And ordinarily, because we've never investigated, we think, you know, we think that wakefulness has changed throughout the day. But it's the same wakefulness you had this morning. The content has changed. Of course the content has changed. But it's the same wakefulness. And when did that begin? Did it begin with the waking? Or wasn't it there prior to the awakening? And, you know, wasn't it there so-called yesterday or any time at all? What does it not mean there? The same with the hearing. It's the same hearing. It isn't the content of the hearing that's changed.

It's the seeing. Same seeing. And then the same content of space. You know, what's appearing in space? Hasn't got any boundaries. No limitations. This pattern is appearing in awareness. It is awareness that's a patterning shape and forming. It's changing the pattern, shape and form of what it's appearing to. But everything is appearing in this awareness. How many awarenesses are there? Look at that. You know, if everyone's awareness is in everyone, they think that they are the awareness, how many myriads and millions of awarenesses would there be? That's the definition of phenomena, that which appears to be. And the definition of the known and the unmanifest is that which is.

So it's that which is the unmanifest, which is the unchanging, beginningless and endless, timeless and spaceless, in which change, beginning, end, time, place, and everything else appears. Well, have a look. If we start from the idea that we're separate, that there is two, and realize that any dualism, there can be absolutely no duality and non-duality, with the point out, starting from a dualistic appearance, what's your reference point there? It's really untrue. There's nothing you can really start from there. Though we're seemingly starting from that. So if you go back to what the base, it was not a metaphor, going back to the essence that you are, you can't negate that knowingness or awareness.

You can't negate it. So start from what you can't negate. Simply that. Like a rainbow seems to appear in the sky, trying to get the rainbow back, from the rainbow back to the sky. You've got to establish yourself in the rainbow. Where is it when you go to reach it? You can't. There's nothing to establish yourself in. So this belief in entity, we're seemingly establishing ourselves there all the time, there's nothing really there. It doesn't mean to say that things won't happen. There is no one to do anything, but things appear, play around, and disappear. But if you start from the fact you already are that, all that needs to be recognized is what's seemingly obscuring it.

And you don't have to get rid of what's, what's obscuring it, until you realize that, you know, that obscuration is it also, appearing as different. But you know that all the manifestation is that appearing as different. So there's never any time or place or anywhere at all you can be away from it. Never have, never will be, or never could be. Even though it's seemingly believed to mean so, while that belief was going on, it was still it. No one to do it. But the thing, you know, the no thing, or the doing, happened. Like it, there couldn't be any manifestation if it didn't vibrate dualistically.

See that in nature. Have a look in nature. Nature is suffused with that same awareness or intelligence energy, if you like, I like to call it intelligence energy, that we are. We're no different from nature. You're not separate from out there, in the universe or the cosmos at all. And nature manifests in the pairs of osses, dualistically. And it couldn't be any other way. Could there be day without night, or could there be silence without sound? There couldn't be one without the other. But there could have been some thing, some seeming subject to a real object, or some division there. But with us we've got the reasoning mind, to come early on that, patterning, dividing the same way as it does in nature, but we take one part of it to be real.

The believed in entity. That's not it. Realize that subject to object is dualism, isn't it? And the way it's appearing, the way it manifests in shape, doesn't it imply a wondrous intelligence? That can form a tree, a blade of grass, you know, or an insect, or form a galaxy, or a star, or whatever, and the same thing that forms this pattern, this human pattern. Doesn't imply a wondrous intelligence in that. It's timeless. If it's ever fresh in the new, it's timeless. It's just a media, see. Without a reference point, the so-called reference point, what are you going to relate to? See, that's the cause of it all, relation.

Relating to something. A relationship is duality again. Without that reference point, there's no nature, no reference point in nature. Day doesn't fight or argue with night, or night doesn't fight day. Winter doesn't fight with summer, right? Each takes a turn. There's capacity of reasoning and form this reference point. But we are no different from, we are nature, you know. You separate yourself from out there and nature or anything you do. We, these human patterns, have the capacity of reasoning and it's very useful. It's a wondrous capacity again. But it can be very self-destructive even while we believe it has some substance and independent nature of itself.

It's the cause of all our psychological problems. See, now, there's a, see in that also, it seemingly divides into two and the two come back in one and the one divides into two again. So there's got to be the opposite spot in any reference, any appearance. But they tell you, really recognise that there's not two. There never was two, even though it appears to be two. Greater proof of the power of your love have you shown me than this, that when I had no being you brought me into existence. When to straying afar from you, you brought me back to your service and taught me to love you.

And of course, if you've got some concept of what you think that power is, and if you realise it's a natural state, the true essence, it's, realise it was always so. Well, there's a lot of the texts in that point to devotion. And devotion can manifest in two ways. Either in love, loving everything, or compassion. And that's a natural form of that. If you understand your true essence, your true nature and the nature of everything, how can you not love it? And how can that compassion not be there? If you've got no division from it and no separation. So compassion is a natural manifestation of that devotion.

Loving yourself, honouring yourself, worshipping your own being is looked in hand about it. And put in some of the other scriptures, you know, love yourself, and love your neighbour as yourself. Well, how can you love your neighbour if you don't love yourself? So that compassion or love has got to shine out and express and see it as everything. So compassion is not something we have to acquire or learn. It's naturally there in everyone. And you felt it, and you know it. Each one of us knows it. We've had tastes of it. What concept or idea, what do they think enlightenment is? No matter what idea of it, what concept they've got at it, isn't it all about becoming?

If they don't recognise what they are naturally right now, there must be the concept or idea or belief that it's, oh, I'll become something. And they put that enlightenment label on it. But what the ancients have told us is omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience. There's no becoming in presence, no future time at all. And not even presence is just another concept of time, past, present and future. It's just this isness, this naturalness. Enlightenment is just another label. What you are, you already are and always have been. Put different labels on it. Whatever label you put on it, can you say it's this or that if you investigate?

What label can you put on it that fits it? Well, investigation is a recognising, I look in there, there's a statement that's made, I think it was by Herbert Spencer they put it down, it doesn't matter who made the statement, but if you look at it, it's very true. There is a principle that is a bar against all information and proof against all argument. And it cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. And that principle is contempt, contempt prior to investigation. From that point of view, to get the reality of the truth, it needs to be looked at and tested. You know, as you say, before I have said, people say there's no me, no mind.

But they've got the theory. Yeah. And the theory, oh yeah, when there's no me and things come up, oh there's no me, but what is there experiencing? And we look and see that the me has no substance or any independent nature. There never was a me or a mind even. Mind is, that's why they call it in scripture, empty mind or unborn mind. You know, without a concept about it, can you say there is such a thing as a mind? You can't. And when you put the concept on it and say it is mind, can it be? Can, you know, again, can something come from nothing?

And we've got this concept that there is something in every core mind, isn't there? Yes, nobody, as we say, nobody can do it for you. Nobody can give you anything and you can't get anything from anybody because is there any other that you can give it to you or you can get it from? If it's one without a second, who is going to give it to you and what are you going to get? So it's a matter of looking and seeing for yourself that you can't negate that oneness that you are, the being that you are, you know. You can't put a label on it and say what it is but you can't negate it.

So, what can be added to it or taken away without a concept? Right here, right now, in this immediacy. That's the only actuality. Have you ever been away from it? When you look, investigate that, you see no. It's always, when you go back to your childhood, what was there? Wasn't it that sense of presence, the knowing that you are? But you had a different concept about it then and even the body shape and the body was different. That's changed. That's transient. The thoughts and ideas and images you've had about yourself has changed. They're transient. But that sense of presence or the knowing, being and knowing that you are hasn't changed.

Just as you say, we woke up this morning, the waking, the wakefulness hasn't changed but the content has changed. So on a larger scale, you know, when you came into a world that was not a world that was a world of knowledge, when you came into a existence that had apparent conceptual birth when the idea of I and me came onto it, you know, and that's, that sense of presence has appeared. It hasn't changed but all the dramas, traumas and everything else have taken place in it and being closely, the mind, or the so-called mind, the thinking being closely associated with it thinks that it's done the changing like the piece of iron in the fire.

Got red, got hot, pick it up, it burns you like fire. Take it out of the fire, it can't do anything. Take that idea that you're an entity out and what power has it got? What power has a thought got without any life essence in the body? Well thinking is closely associated with that pure intelligence. So it's somehow much so that it's come to believe it is the intelligence itself. We take on the belief without investigation and nobody teaches us or tells us to investigate it. Nobody tells us to investigate at that stage. And it's reinforced daily by the myriads of people who don't investigate and have taken themselves to be that separate entity too.

And they're constantly reinforcing it and so naturally we start to reinforce it ourselves. So it becomes seemingly solid that piece of iron, you know, got that belief and it's taken on all these qualifications and thinks it is the fire itself. Well they call it see they divide it up, call it consciousness, then awareness, then the absolute and many other things. But if it's absolute, what does absolute mean? Doesn't absolute mean it's total? When was it not the absolute? Could it be the absolute in something? Or did the absolute ever have to become absolute from a starting point? It always was and ever will be so.

Continue to recognise it, know it for certain, and then it doesn't matter what happens, who to or where or how. And without that conceptual interference life's going to be much freer and natural. In nature it flows naturally and effortlessly. It does the same here if we're not conceptualising about it. Or even if the conceptualising is going on you understand the concept for what it is, a mental construct, something that's been thought up or believed in. But you understand it has no power in independent nature. It's just a concept in the nature of itself. Is it going to do any damage? Maybe just another label we put on some sensation or thought or image or whatever.

We label it with all these labels which we've learnt are required over the period of life. Little child's got no labels. Nature has no labels. Does the sun know I am the sun? Does the wind know I am the wind? But it's not a matter of it ceasing because they call it cognising. Cognising, emptiness. Not a vacuum or a void where there is nothing. But the cognising, another word for cognising is knowing or intelligence or gnosis, you know, knowledge. So in the cognise, the emptiness itself is suffused with that knowingness. Not two. You can't separate the knowingness from the emptiness or the emptiness from the knowingness.

So two aspects of the one thing, seemingly. Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness. Yeah, that's what the Buddha tells us. Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is no other than form and form is no other than emptiness. No other. No other. Is there any other way out of the mind? Because you look at it, whichever way you look will always be in the mind when you try to find the answer. But if you're not thinking, pause a thought or drop a thought or whatever, you recognise you don't disappear. There's so much functioning going on in the body, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, feeling, and all the thought has stopped.

And the recognition of that, all these other things are going on, but thinking has stopped. There's only one aspect of it. And we've believed we were the thought with all this conditioning we've taken on and never investigated. But if you really were, if you truly believed that and really were that thought, you wouldn't lose sight of it. You'd be frightened of losing sight because that would be the finish. A lot of people are frightened of letting go of the mind. But if you pause a thought, let it go for a moment and realise that there's so much lovingness going on, then you're seeing the difference between the pure intelligence and the thinking, that the intelligence is there prior to the thought.

Because when there's no thought there, you are prior to thought. Thought has finished, has stopped, or not there for a minute. It'll only be there briefly, off for a while, because it's natural thought to flow. And there's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it there. Well, the pairs of opposites come into it. Recognising that, what are we going to look at? If you see the difference between intelligence and thinking, and in that intelligence, where there's no thought going on, you can't say it's good or bad or pleasant or painful. Isn't there an equilibrium there? We're not being liable in the opposite? Isn't there the natural, what they call the peace of the past, that's all understanding?

It's beyond the understanding or thinking mind. It's prior to that. Natural equilibrium or peace is there. And recognising that, where are you going to want to be? Don't you want to be in that? That's what we've been looking for all our life. We've called it peace of mind, not realising the mind will never be at peace. It's the nature of the mind to vibrate. And it's constantly vibrating into the interrelated opposites and continues to do that. Can't do any other way. So when does the vibration stop? When does it stop rattling around with a thought or a concept? But it doesn't, and people think you've got to be a stop forever, but it's not going to stop forever.

Well, everywhere in the body, that's the functioning of this manifestation, of this pattern, this particular human pattern. It's functioning is to think. Thinking is happening. But again, it's in the right understanding, and understanding that thought has no power or independent nature of itself. The metaphors we use, the blue sea, the rainbow, the water in a mirage, you know, you go down to the ocean and try to get a bucket of blue water out of the sea if you investigate, it looks, going down to the sea, all our life we've seen a blue sea. But at some time in your childhood or whenever you've been taking the ocean, you pull the bucket of water out.

And was it blue? No. No. So you realise, though it appears to be blue, water is not blue. The water you get out of your tap, is that blue? You know, anywhere you go, can you find blue water? You know the water was never blue. It's colourless. But we believe that. But when you question it and see it's not so, does it stop appearing to be blue? The appearance doesn't stop. It still appears. The difference is, know the truth. And that belief, investigating the belief and seeing the belief's not the actual, it's not so. And you're free of it. That's the old scripture saying, know the truth.

And the truth will set you free. And knowing that truth, you're free of the belief that you're never going to get a bucket of blue water out of the sea. And that applies to all these things if you look into them, you know. If you know the truth about it, investigate and know the truth. That's why we say investigate. And then people will say, who investigates? Well, investigation just comes about naturally. You know, if there's no me there, you recognise there's no me, who's recognising there's no me? Intelligence. Intelligence itself. Intelligence knows. It's the knowing. Take the K off it, it's knowing. And again pointing out to the point, you know, we've never been away from this knowing.

If there's no me there, isn't there a pure knowing? And it's not knowing this or knowing that. It's just the knowing itself before. But the this or the that we put on are labels, which have been acquired or learnt. And without those labels, as I say, as far as I thought, that's all thought is doing is labelling. Far as I thought, without any labels, there's just that knowing there, seeing or hearing. Hasn't been divided into subject, object. Hasn't been divided dualistically by concept. It's just that knowing there, it's going on right now, or seeing or hearing. Thinking is going on right now, no other time, immediately.

And then I think, we've formed a subject conceptually. I see the chair or the table, I think this thought or that thought, we've formed an object conceptually. But that subject, object, couldn't take place without the thinking. So they're thinking, could they? Could you have a subject if you're not thinking? Could you have an object? So though it's seemingly clear, it's not simply divided by concept, it's not. Never was, never could be. So you know the truth about it, there's no division anywhere. Doesn't matter what you're thinking, saying, touching, tasting or smelling, that's the natural functioning. Put labels on it. And the actuality always is the ing.

Any effort, you know, effort is needed, effort will be made. But who's making the effort? The life energy. The life energy right now. The life energy. And you're talking, you can do that, that one about whole breathing out and holding your breath. What makes you take the next breath if you're trying to hold your breath with all your mind? You know? And you realise there's something stronger than the mind that makes you take that breath. What is it? What must it be? Must be the life energy. That life energy is rolling this earth around the sun, forming galaxy, taking planets and moving around, you know?

Day and night, winter, summer and all these things. It's that same life energy that's breathing, you're beating your heart, growing hair on your fingernail. Again, not two. Well, as I say, it all comes about because of the belief that we are separate. And that doesn't come about. The little child, you look at a little child when he's first born, they've got no idea they're separate at all. At about two and a half or somewhere around that, the capacity of reasoning develops in the human pattern, which is useful. It's not their capacity, but it's not their prior to that. You know, it's a little child seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, just like the rest of us.

But the capacity of reasoning comes about, and that comes about with words the child learns from his parents. This thing called mind or thinking, as we pointed out today, the mind is empty. There's no thought in mind whatsoever. It's actually empty. So the thoughts that do appear, come up and appear in our emptiness also. They can't be anything other than that. And the little child learns words. And the nature of thinking, of being a vibration, functions in the pairs of horses. So it's either good or bad, pleasant or painful, past or future. And as soon as it starts vibrating in interrelated opposites, we put these labels on it.

There's me. As soon as the idea, the child learns the idea of me, or I, the opposite of I or me or other than I or me, not I or not me. Now with this reasoning, he reasons that is not me when he looks out there. That's not I. It doesn't fit the description of what I've heard about it and taken myself to be. What they're telling me all the time, you little boy, you're this, that and the other. So naturally you feel separate from it. And with the separation comes insecurity and vulnerability. And we start even then, not liking to be separate or isolated or alone.

We start even then to seek security, wholeness or completeness. But because the majority of people haven't looked at it, haven't recognized it, there's always been some down the ages of heaven passed it on, but the majority of people don't. They teach us to look out there, to add to it, to accumulate, to amass together. That's what we learn, to make this I feeling solid or whole or complete. Because it's taken on this idea it's separate, and isolated and alone. So we're conditioned to do that and we do that for you and you. And it's seemingly, energy of belief going into it has seemingly made it solid, made it something that it's not, made it, made that something solid and substantial.

So there's a seemingly subject, solid subject, me. I is there now, being reinforced day in, day out. And it's fearful of the not me, that which is separating it. It doesn't, you know, a little child, doesn't like to be separate from everything because it feels like separated, it feels isolated and alone. And that's why it likes a warm loving family around it, much more secure and less vulnerable. And that's been going on down through the ages. People are even reinforcing this belief in the separate entity and that's where all our conflict comes from. Because we've got this belief we're a separate entity, you know, we don't took it whole and complete, something comes up that doesn't fit this entity, doesn't sit well with it, you know, the concept you've got about yourself, you know, you don't want it to be there.

So you resist it. Or something you like, and all the manifestation is transient, it's going to change, the good things are not going to be around forever. We don't want it to go, we want to stay in this good feeling. Something that doesn't sit well with it, doesn't fit it, we resist it. There's a constant resistance going on with us. And what's hanging on to it, what's pushing it away is a fiction. We don't realise that. Because in nature there is no reference point, nature doesn't, nature appears and appears in opposite. You've got to realise that. The whole manifestation couldn't appear if it didn't appear in opposite.

There could be no manifestation if there wasn't day and night, if it wasn't winter and summer. So this mind is no different in the microcosm from the macrocosm, it functions the same way. It's good and bad, but it's painful, you know. But the words we put on it, the separate labels, concepts we've learnt. So when we've got this label of believed in nature, and the me and the not me, and the me doesn't want to be affected or hurt, so it resists. But nature hasn't got a reference point, so it doesn't resist. And nature's been going on for millions of years. And all sorts of things have happened to it.

There have been ice ages, seemingly wiped out, come back again and all the rest of it. There's no resistance, it still carries on. With us this constant resistance causes the disease within us. The very words you've used, it doesn't seem to matter. What's matter mean? Matter means something solid and substantial, doesn't it? And when you say it doesn't matter, and really, no it doesn't matter, it doesn't really matter, it hasn't concretised within you. Does it cause a problem then? Somebody does something or it doesn't matter, you don't care about it. But if somebody does something to you and it does matter, you're moving something. What happens?

There's going to be a conflict with it, a resistance to it or whatever. So you see, no matter how the world appears, what you are, the essence that you are, has never been corrupted or contaminated by anyone. In that essence that you are, there's no birth, there's no death, there's no time, no space, there is nothing that has any solid or substantial essence of itself. So naturally, as the patterning and as the life is expressing through and as that pattern, it'll do what's necessary for it to do, what's done all along. No thing has really happened. But the whole manifestation is things. And things are appearance only, so there is no thing.

But continually expressing or happening. There's nothing incarnated in the first place, nothing created, so how can it reincarnate? Just a belief. Yeah. And that belief, you know, keeps the me going. I haven't got it this life, but I'll get it next life. Then they've set up an image or a concept about, what's going to happen to some future time. No destruction. Just life. Continuous patterning. Or seemingly so. And hasn't that been so as far as we look into the seeming manifestation? Civilizations have risen, gone and done all sorts of things, and they've disappeared. And all these civilizations have come about and disappeared. Saviors, saints and sages have come along and have saved the world.

Yeah. What have they done? Anything in the manifestation has been lasting, has it? No. Yeah. And you see the obvious of it all and recognize it, you know, so it's simple. Was it a token bullshit or was it simple for you? It's the same, isn't it? Yeah. In the seeing of it. And you know that. That rain, there again. What do you do when it rains? Well, you don't resist that and try and go out and hold it, not if I reckon. It'll stop, but it'll stop directly. Yeah. Continue to know that you are that life essence. And sense the vibrating and functioning and patterning, shaving and feeling.

Let it well up and shine through. Self-shining, ever-fresh, presence awareness. Just this, nothing else.