Sailor Bob - nonduality. Clear and undisguised of 16 June 2019

Okay, we are starting. So we start from the names. I'm Catarina. Jane. Robin. Tony. Tony. Phil. Kristen. Chris. Justin. Adrian. Tina. And God. Okay, so the same old, same old. Get it every time. And sometimes it takes a little while to sink in. But if we don't get into all the different mental stories about it, keep it one-pointed as much as possible, you can be recognised and realise how simple it is. We don't teach you anything here. We don't tell you anything. Understand that right from the start. And when you realise what we're pointing to, you realise nobody can teach you anything and nobody can tell you anything.

There's nothing new we point to. You'll see it's the base. All the ancient texts or scriptures or religions, whatever you call it, Hinduism, they call it non-duality or Advaita. And Advaita, that's what Advaita means when it's translated. It means non-duality. And they try to describe non-duality by saying it's one without a second. And they put that one without a second on it because even the idea of one implies there could be other than one. So what's that? They're pointing it out there and saying one without a second. There's nothing other than that. And that's the Mahavakya, the great mantra you hear about it. I am that.

We don't understand that, most of us, because we don't realise it's naturally in our language. Because you look around the room and you say, that's the chair, that's the carpet, that's the tree, that's the flower, that's me, that's you. Everything is all that, which we put different labels or words on it. And what we've brought out here is the words, not the thing. And that's the only way. We've got to put it in our footers. I can't teach you anything. I can't tell you anything. And if it's all that, who is there to teach you anything? Who is there to tell you anything? It needs to be recognised by yourself.

And the self I'm talking about is not the personal self. It's the one self that's patterning, shaping, forming and expressing as everything. And you are that personal self. You are that one self, not the personal self. Where does the word person come from? Isn't it an ancient Latin word for, I think it was, persona, a mask? Pointing out there's this mask of concepts, a conceptual image we've got of ourselves, which we've taken to be real. And that's where we get lost and lose the way in the believing there's something separate and apart from the one. Another way I put it, I'm not speaking to anybody.

I'm not speaking to any mind. I'm not speaking to that entity you believe, that body-mind, that persona there. I'm speaking to that I am that I am. And the I am is not the body-mind, it's that sense of presence. The awareness of presence, the awareness of being, expressing through the mind as that thought I am. Just to this and nothing else. I'm not speaking to that I am. I'm speaking to that I am that I am, just to this. Nothing else. So don't get the idea if they think I'm having a go at you or anything like that, that I'm not speaking. So they believed in entity, if you're believing you are that, a separate entity.

Still. So it's nothing new we point to. But it needs to be recognized. They call it in Buddhism a cognizing emptiness. That's what the Buddha called it. It was not that we are not. We are cognizing the emptiness, but the emptiness itself is doing the cognizing. The innate intelligence of using that is cognizing. And he made it, went on to say that emptiness is form. And turned around the other way and said the form can be nothing other than the emptiness. Pointing out that there is only that again. That seemingly vibrating, the different patterns, shapes and forms. As they tell you in Hinduism, and again, the Satyajit, Ananda, Nama, Rupa.

The five factors. It says existence, consciousness, bliss, name and form. Well the name and form are Maya, they're illusions. Only appearing to be so. But the existence, anyone who is not existing right now. No, you'll say I'm existing and anyone who is not conscious right now. Or unaware. No, you'll say I'm aware or conscious. Anyone who is not happy to be right now. Or loving to be. Of course you are. So you already are that. But we add on to it the name and form. It's me, Bob, the Australian or the good fellow. That's not happy or not good. So we lose sight of the true nature.

So we say here, start from the fact you're already that. Whether you realise it or not. Because you've always and ever been that. But when you think you've got to become something. Another way of putting that Satyajit, Ananda is being, knowing and loving to be. So when you think you've got to become something, you've moved away from being. Being is not becoming. That's another way they put that Satyajit, Ananda. Being, knowing and loving to be. It's expressing the same thing. So try and get away from that natural pure intelligence energy that you already are. I don't use the term God here. Because you can get confused with that term.

Because all the traditions and everybody else have different... concepts and ideas of what they believe God to be. I use the term intelligence energy. And you've got to understand that's not it either. It's just another label we put on it. Intelligence, I don't mean you intellects. I mean the same intelligence that's functioning in this universe. Look out there and see the earth rolling around the sun. Seasons coming and going. Tides coming in and out. All sorts of things happening out there. And that's the same intelligence that's beating your heart. That's growing your hair and your fingernails. That's digesting your food. Replacing cells in your body.

And intelligence is an activity. A knowing. Not knowing this or knowing that. Just the very fact of knowing. And knowing, the I-N-G on it, something is happening in the immediacy of this moment. It's an activity. Any activity is a movement of energy. So that's where I get the word intelligence energy. The activity of knowing. And anyone who is not knowing right now. Well you are, realise it. Being, knowing and loving the being. Isn't that just it? You are already and actually are knowing at this very moment. Which I call a moment. That's another thing we need to look at. The concept of time. When you look into that you realise there's no such thing as time.

People say, I was in the past. Well try and actually live a moment ago. Try and live yesterday or last week. You can't. It's already gone. You can recall it. But you can't live a moment in the past. And when you're recalling it, the only actuality you're giving it is what you're giving it right in this moment while you're recalling it. Nobody can tell me what you thought of a minute ago now unless you recall it. It's already gone. The same in the future. You can anticipate and imagine the future. What you're going to do when you leave here, et cetera, et cetera. But you can't live a moment in the future.

And the only activity, the only reality you're giving it is what you're giving it in this moment. And in this moment while you're anticipating and imagining. And if you're not doing that, there's neither a past nor a future there. Not recalling it or anticipating and imagining. And have a look at this now. If you'd like to call it now. When does this now begin? Try and grasp it right now. And as you're trying to grasp it right now, it's already ending. And as it's ending, it's beginning again. So it's got no static point to it whatsoever. It's spontaneous, immediacy, always spontaneous. But we've taken the time to be the past and the future and given it some duration.

There's no duration to it whatsoever. So we need to look at these things. Are we this body, mind, entity we believe ourselves to be? Are we this persona? I'll ask you, when did you begin? You'll say, I began at birth. But can anyone actually remember your birth? And you realize, no, I can't remember my birth. You don't start recalling anything or going back as far as you can remember. It's not until you're about two, two and a half years old. When the capacity of reasoning developed in you, before that capacity developed, you had no idea. You hadn't learned any words. And with that capacity of reasoning, you started to learn words.

So realize from that, every word you've ever spoken or ever liked to speak has been picked up the whole time. You're not born with any words. That's when it tells you in the Bible, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. That's all that God is, is a Word. All things were made by Him, by the Word. There was nothing made that was made without the Word. And that's true. Isn't that right? You're labeling everything around this place, putting the Word on it. What is it for? Before you put the label on it. Isn't it just as is?

As is means unaltered, unmodified, unaltered. It's a word. It's a word. Unaltered, unmodified, uncorrected. No preference, no partiality, no comparison. Leave it as it is. And look out there in nature again. You'll see it's changing of itself. It's constantly transient. That's what they call you in Buddhism. They say it's what the great perfection is non-conceptual. Mine's gone. We're getting old. It's non-conceptual awareness. And as they say, it's transient. They call it transient. It's constantly changing, constantly vibrating. And it's a phenomenal manifestation. They call it, the name and form is Maya. It's illusion. It's illusion. And it's... So chicken and umbrage for the others. Yeah. Getting too old.

A phenomenal manifestation. And your dictionary definition of phenomenal is that which appears to be. So it's only appearance. All this manifestation in this room is appearance only. And if you're not, you know, you're not taking on that labels or concepts of the appearance, what must you be? You must be what they tell you is the ultimate, the absolute. What can you add to the absolute? If it's the absolute, what can be added to it? Not the minutest thing. The minutest thing can be added to it. It wouldn't be absolute if it was. What can you take away from the absolute? Again, not the minutest thing.

Nothing can be added to it. Nothing can be taken away. So this one phenomenal manifestation, the appearance, even though it's appearing to be so, it's never left its one essence or true nature. Pattern, shapes and forms appear in it. And we've learned words. And every word you've ever spoken and every like you've ever spoken has been a word. But the word, like the word you'd like to speak, has been picked up along the way. And have a look at the word. These words are all names and forms we've put on it. The word's not the real. The word can never be the thing or the real.

Take the word water. Can you drink the word? Can you swim in it? Can you wash in it? Will you drown in it? You can't. Will the word fire burn your mouth if you speak it? Can you cook with it? Can you heat yourself with it? You can't. So the word's not the real... What's this word, I or me? Maybe if you look into it you'll get a different idea of what it's all about. I or me. Words we've learnt. We are this body, mind, but are you the body? Innately you already know that you're not the body. Because don't you say my body. Don't you say my house, my car, my shirt, my coat, my hat.

You know damn well you're not the shirt, coat, car or hat. They're just labels we put on things. Maybe you're not the body either. And the same with my mind. You say my mind, but are you the mind? Well have a look. Is there such a thing as mind? Show me your mind if there's such a thing as mind. Show me it. What is it? There's nothing there apart from thoughts, concepts, words. What is it? And there's a concept mind. Or is it something that appears in this thing we believe to be there, this thing called mind. So you can't say you are the mind.

Mind is just a concept or a thought or a word. And the body, have a look at the body. My body. Investigate that because there's another thing we point out, that the false cannot stand up to investigation. Look at some of these things, start investigating some of these beliefs. You've had and they fall apart under the investigation. And look at that word belief. Look at the dictionary definition of belief. It's an unquestioned acceptance in the absence of reason. It means we haven't reasoned these things out. We've just taken them for granted from our parents, school, society, and everybody else that's told us about them. Unquestioned acceptance of something in the absence of reason, acceptance of an alleged fact, an alleged fact, without positive knowledge or proof, which is belief.

So that's the test and see if they'll stand up to it. Because the false can't stand up to an investigation. Are you this body? You say, my body, my karma, my house. What's this body made up of, if you think you are? You realize this body is made up of elements, made up of earth, fire, water, space. Just the same as the elements around you. Well, if you think you're separate, separate yourself from the elements. Stop breathing. See how long you'd last without that air. Take the water out of your mouth. Take the air out of your body. Your body's 80% water. Your lungs, you soon die of thirst.

Take the body temperature, the fire, as the body temperature, as the temperature. You're sitting at hypothermia without that body temperature. Get off the earth if you can. Get out of space. When you look at it, you're not separate from all these things at all. It only appears to be so. It only takes without question. So how can you say, I am the body? The same with the mind. The mind is nothing but thought, concepts, ideas. And if you were a thought or a concept, which particular concept would you be? Would you be this concept, I or me? I or me is just another word or a label.

You couldn't be that concept, I or me. So you've got to realize that this me is a fiction. Everything is relative to this me. It's all related to me. And as I say, the little child when he's born hasn't got any words. How did you come about then? How did you begin? We'll go back as far as your father and your mother and look into that. That manifestation you call your father, animatic life essence or intelligence energy, it's pattern shaping forming your father. Patterning, passing through the food he's eating and the prana, the air he's breathing, it nails a little microscopic particle to form called a sperm.

You can't see it with your naked eye. And that sperm is the fuser, the... It's intelligence. And that intelligence knew what to do. And the same with the mother. That animating life essence that formed that pattern you call your mother enabled in that pattern another microscopic particle called an egg or an ovum to form. That ovum attached itself to the wall of the uterus. Again, it was a fuser that made intelligence. It knew what to do. And the sperm swam to the home and had the capacity of swimming. And when those two came together, that cell doubled, again through the prana and the food eaten, and the genes, they doubled that cell, they redoubled, the little embryo, the little fetus began to form.

What were you doing about it then? What could you say? You could just say, I'm going to grow an arm or a leg or a heart. You didn't know anything about it at all because you had no words. But the innate intelligence knew what to do. It's the same intelligence that's living here today. But we've lost sight of that. We've taken it to be the persona, the persona, the mask, the conceptual image, the ego, the self-centered or the referee's voice. The same with the mind. If you didn't have that concept of a thought, what can you say without a thought? And that's what you need to look at too.

If you ask yourself what's wrong with right now if I don't think about it, you need to go beyond the thought for a moment and see what's there. And you realize there's no concept going on without the thought. But the breathing is there. But the breathing hasn't stopped. The heart beating hasn't stopped. The hearing of fingernails and the food that was induced. The livingness hasn't stopped without the thought, without the word. If you were that thought, you wouldn't lose sight of it. Were that thought IME, but you'd gladly give it up every night when you go to sleep. Gladly. If you were that thought, you wouldn't want to give it away, would you?

Wouldn't want to hang onto it. So innately, you already know these things, but we've lost sight of it. That's the only problem. And we learnt the word. And we learnt the words. And you learn words about capacity of reasoning starts on you at about two, two and a half. And that's the capacity that the humans have that's more developed than what it is in a lot of other animals, birds and insects. The capacity of reasoning. But they have other capacities that are more developed than our capacity of reasoning is. Like a bird has a capacity of eyesight that's more than yours and mine will ever be.

It has the capacity of flying. We can't do that naturally. But through the capacity of reasoning, we've learnt to build ourselves eyeglasses, binoculars, telescopes, telescopes. And through the capacity of reasoning, we've learnt to build ourselves. Oh God, my mind's gone this morning. Balloons. Telescopes. Balloons. Planes, helicopters and things like that that's enabled us to fly. A dog has the capacity of smelling much better than yours or mine. Rough. It's so good. Makes you laugh. Yeah. Chameleons, insects or animals, little things like that can change colour. We can't do that. They have the capacity of doing that sort of thing. Moths and butterflies and that will lay eggs or little grubs, build a cocoon around themselves, eventually hatch out and all the beautiful colours that are in that butterfly or moth are there in that intelligence entity that's functioning.

Came through nothing but a grub. Yeah. So that innate intelligence which is functioning, living, and pattern shaping this universe and living everything in it. And that is what you are. There is only that. It's the one essence, pattern shaping, forming and expressing and everything. And it vibrates in these mirrored pattern shapes and forms. Now this capacity of reasoning started about the age of two, two and a half. Some might have been a bit older, some a bit younger when we started to learn words. Our parents were fussing around us telling you little Johnny or your little Billy don't do this or do that. And you learn words when they're speaking, learn words like I or me.

And little Johnny starts to reason through this capacity. I am this little Johnny they're talking about. And he looks out there and he sees that's not little Johnny. That doesn't fit me. That's not me. And that's when he comes, feels separate from it. He sees something that's not me. He feels separate. And a sense of insecurity because he doesn't know what it is. Naturally there's a sense of insecurity whether something he doesn't believe is me or not me. So that's when, on that sense of insecurity, that's when all our concepts start coming about. We start labelling all these other things. And we put the labels on ourselves.

I'm Bob. And I'm Australian. I'm a good fella. Or I've had a bad childhood or I'm unhappy or things are not going too well or I'm depressed or I'm anxious or something. Add all these other concepts onto the table. And we use this eye form to give us some substance and seemingly independent nature. Before that it was non-conceptual. There was just a lot of thoughts going on. But now we've put it on this thing and labelled ourselves as this conceptual image which becomes the reference point. Everything is referred to it. The self-centre or the ego. And then from then on we're suffering from this reference point, self-centre or the ego.

And that's when our problem starts. Because we've taken this reference point, self-centre, to be the actuality of what I am. And everything becomes relative to this ego. So all our problems are problems of relativity or relationship. And relationship is duality. And when we're talking about non-duality, they're pointing out there's no such thing as duality or non-duality. There's neither one nor the other. It's just the one. It's always been that one essence. So that's why we say you'll never find the answer in the mind. Because it's the nature of the mind to vibrate. It's always vibrating. And what's the way your mind functions? It's always functioning dualistically.

It's either past or future, pleasant, painful, happy, sad, loving, hating, positive, negative. Or whichever way you like. It's always functioning in duality, dualism. So you're never going to find the answer there. And the ancients tell you that. They'll tell you you'll never ever get peace of mind. So it's pointless looking there trying to get peace of mind. Because the mind is when the peace is not. The peace is when the mind is not. That's why they call it the peace that passes all understanding. It can't be understood or grasped with a concept. And that's what the Buddhists tell you. The great perfection is non-conceptual awareness.

Give it in one sentence. Non-conceptual awareness. Awareness without any concepts. Pause a thought and see. Without any thoughts, there's no conceptualizing going on. But that awareness is still there. Or it's the great perfection. Or this absolute. So now we've got this. We're relating to this reference point, me. And everything comes up. I believe it's happening to this me. Or this individual, this person. See how it works. Something comes up. And I like it. How do you know? Well, I've experienced this before. And it's good. I like it. And we want to keep the good things there. Not realizing it. This manifestation, this transient, as I pointed out.

And see that for yourself. When you look at that, you realize that body you walked into the room with is not the same body. There are thousands of cells dying in it right now and being replaced. It's constantly transient. It's constantly changing. So something comes up and I like it. Not realizing being transient, everything's going to change. No matter how much you love them, how much you want to keep them there, how much you want to hang on to it. It's going to change. And we don't want it to go. We want to keep the good things there. We don't want to leave them there.

So what do we do? We resist it. We try and stop it from changing. We have resistance. And any resistance you are in, you are in conflict. Fighting to keep it there, that's conflict. And any conflict you are in makes you uneasy, unhappy, depressed, guilty, where all your psychological problems come about. From that constant conflict. Resistance. Another way of putting that anxiety fear is uneasiness or another label, disease. So there's resistance, conflict and disease going on. Something comes up and I don't like. Well the same thing happens. I don't like this one. We want to get rid of the things we don't like. We don't want to hang on to this.

We don't want to hang on to the fears, the unhappiness, the depression. So what do we do? We resist them again. Again conflict and disease. That's what's constantly going on in this patterning all the time. That's where all our psychological problems come from. Fear, the sensations of fear, anger, depression, guilt and all these things are labelled. Instead of seeing this ever fresh and ever new sensation, what's the sensation? We label it with the past. This one is anger. This one is fear. This one is depression or unhappiness. This one is guilt or anxiety or stress. Instead of seeing everything fresh and new, which it is, we label it with the old.

And that's the cause of all our psychological problems. The constant conflict and resistance going on. And you realise that me, this idea, this conceptual image I've got about myself, me, is the cause of all my problems. All my psychological problems. And the anxiety, the fear, the guilt, the shame, the depression, everything. All the effects of that cause. And isn't that what so-called karma is? We talk about karma, cause and effect. But what happens if I ask myself the simple question, can there be effect if I'm not relating to the cause? Well you don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to work that out. If you're not relating anything to the cause, there's nowhere that any effect can arise or be related there.

And if every sensation is related to the cause, then there's no effect. If every sensation is seen as fresh and new, not related with the old, what's going to happen? There's going to be a certain change going on. When all these things, all these fears and anxieties and stresses lose their hold, when they can no longer put the energy of belief into them, as you've seen through them, there's going to be more peace there, there's going to be more happiness. Just like clouds appearing on the sun. Go outside on a cloudy day, would you say the sun is not in the sky? You know damn well you've investigated and you see the sun never leaves the sky.

But we seemingly lose sight of it and say it's a dull cloudy day. But when you investigate that and see what forms the cloud, and you realise the sun itself forms a cloud, the sun doesn't know anything about the cloud. The vastness of the sun is so great, a little cloud that's seemingly covered in part of it, wouldn't have a clue it was there. And looking a little bit further, investigating a little further, what happens? Well the radiance of the sun, the heat of the sun, evaporates water. The water rises and condenses and forms a cloud which seemingly obscures the sun. And the sun keeps on shining and this radiance might cause a wind to stir or cool things down and bring the cloud down as rain.

And so it goes on. So that's all that's happening in the same thing. The energy, the functioning in this body forms a thought or a feeling or an emotion to come up and seemingly obscures the innate essence, innate intelligence. And we get lost in the clouds or the thoughts. But there's no cloud attached to the sky. There's no cloud fixated in the sky at all. It moves on. Is there any thought fixated in your head anywhere? Have a look at that and see if there's any thought fixated in your head. No, thoughts are constantly changing. Because we put the energy of belief in, some will hang around a lot longer than others do.

But if that energy of belief, you look through and see that belief is not the fact, where are they going to lodge then? So there's going to be much more, when there's no clouds in the sky, there's much more clarity, much more warmth and heat. The same with this, there's no more thoughts racing around in your head. There's going to be much more clarity there, much more peace, much more warmth. Love, compassion. These are the things we need to look at. While we believe in some concept about this and this, we beat ourselves up with the word. And the word's never the real. There was something that's happening that doesn't have to happen.

And words, words can be very useful when they're utilised. But they're self-destructive when we allow them to utilise us and tell us, I'm not good enough or I'm unhappy. And the worst when we put it with ourselves is, after all, I'm only human. We call ourselves human beings and if you believe in this thing called God, you'll call God the supreme being. What if you take that label supreme off, take the label human off, try and separate the beingness in this room if you don't put any labels in it. You look around, you'll see the room, there's nothing but beingness in this room. That's being the cat, that's being the carpet, that's being the chair, being the mirror, that's being the wall.

Being the fire. It's being everything which we put labels on. Look outside and do the same thing. It's being the tree, being the flower, being the sky, being this. Everything is just that pure being. And that's the Satyatinandragam. Being, knowing and loving to be. So you've never really moved away from it. So we've taken all these false concepts or ideas on and we've labelled ourselves in the sense of separation. What we need to look at, so you've got this, something comes up, I like it, a resistance to conflict and disease. So have a look and see if this ego is real. We say the ego is a fiction.

You don't have to, you're told in the scriptures you've got to kill the ego, you've got to sublimate it, stamp it, put it down the road. But we say here, and a lot of the scriptures really tell you the truth, they'll say it's a fiction. It never ever existed. It couldn't exist. It's impossible. It's just made up of concepts. Like they tell you in the Bible, in the beginning was the word, I said that before tonight, and I said, hmm. Well have a look at it. The question is itself. You're seeing right now and that's the way we look at it. And you're hearing right now.

Isn't that a fact? Yeah, I'm seeing, I'm hearing. Ask yourself this, does my eye tell me I see? Well my eye is not saying, my physical eye is not saying, look at this Bob, look at that, that's good or that's bad. My eye can't say anything at all. But the seeing is happening through the eye. It comes up. It's translated. It's translated by the thought. I see. A thought. A concept of thought, I see, is translated. And the same with the hearing. Hearing is happening through the ears. The ear is not saying listen to this, listen to that, that's good. But it's translated by the thought, I hear.

Now when you say I see, it's not a pure seeing anymore. Because what we've done to this seeing, when we started the reason, we've added on to this me. It's me, Bob, the Australian, who thinks it has the capacity of seeing. The same with the hearing. Me, Bob, the Australian, the good fellow, the egoic image, thinks it has the capacity of hearing. Well have a look at that. Go into this, go and have a look at it a bit further. Can this concept of thought, I see, actually see? Shut your eyes and look around. Look around the room and see what you can see with a thought.

The things in the room which you can see with your eyes closed. You realise you can't see any of the things in the room with your eyes closed. So the thought, I see, cannot see. You need the eyes to see with, not the thought. Same with your ears. Put your hands over your ears. Block your ears off and see what sounds you can hear with the thought, I hear. So you see, you can't hear anything with the thought, I see, or I see anything with the thought, I see, or the thought, I hear. So the thought, I am aware. Is that your awareness? Anybody unaware right now?

No, if you're not unaware, you must be aware. You don't have to look for any concept of awareness to say, I'm aware. You must know immediately you are that aware. And the thought, I choose, we think we choose our thoughts. Why would you have an unhappy or miserable or anxious thought if you could choose it? You don't want to be that way. So you recognise that the thought, I see, can't see. The thought, I hear, can't hear. The thought, I'm aware, is not your awareness. The thought, I choose, is not the choice maker. So this thought up, egoic image you've got of yourself can't do any of those things.

Can't do any of those things at all. And could it do any of those things if that life essence wasn't in the body? If you've got the life essence out of the body, you've got a corpse. It's got all the organs in it. It's got the eyes, the ears, the heart, the lungs, the hair, the fingernails, all these things before they're rotted away. But without that life essence, can't see, can't hear, can't be aware, can't do anything at all. So what is this of doing it? Is it me, the egoic image that thinks it's doing all these things, but can't do anything at all without that life essence?

Or is it the life essence that's doing the lot? You realise it must be the life essence. Well, what must you be? You must be that life essence itself. And that's what Christ told you. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. People thought he was talking about himself. He wasn't talking about himself at all. He was talking about that sense of presence that translates through the mind. The thought, I am, that's the way to go. That's the life. That's the truth. That's the being. That's the truth. It's just like your computer's a good analogy, but a pretty poor one. Because the computer's got all that information in it.

What a wonderful man you are. What a wondrous amount of information. What information can you get out of it if the power's not on? You can punch those keys as much as you like and run the mouse over it. You won't get anything at all out of it without the power. It's the same with this body-mind entity. Without that one intelligence in it, the one power that's functioning in this universe, not only the cosmos, not only you, but everything in it. If that's not there, you are that corpse. You're useless. And even that corpse, when it's broken down, there's more life appearing in that that forms millions of enzymes.

And those enzymes start to rot it and break it down. So life is continually living on life. Out of life, more life comes. There's been no room for death in it whatsoever. And that's what Nisargadatta will tell you. There's only life, but there's nobody who lives a life. Life lives on life. And out of life, more life comes. And as Shakespeare told you years ago, life is not bad, but thinking makes it so. And Nisargadatta will tell you the same thing. Nothing can trouble you except your own imagination. Break that word imagination down to image in. And that's all we're doing. We're creating conceptual or mental images, taken to be real, and we're bound by this imagination.

But nothing can trouble you except... That's the only trouble you'll ever get, what we are imaging in. We just pointed it out. Did I point out the Mies of Fiction? Good. Well, that'll do. I'll have a rest now. You heard it there. Some of you have heard it before. I'll be able to point it out a bit clearer. But if you've got any questions or any doubts, bring them up. Because it's the only way you can find out through investigation. Investigation is some of these concepts or ideas we've had and taken belief in and reinforced them day in and day out all our life. All our life without questioning.

And so many of you might put it in different words, it'll open up a little bit more. But the resonation with it, innately there's an innate resonation, a sort of a cognising or recognising. The words hit home somewhere. And that's why another thing I pointed out was the word. The art of listening. There is an art to listening. If we listen with the mind and our head, we're not communicating. Because you'll have your concept about me and you'll have the concept about yourself. And you relate to these concepts you won't hear. But when you're listening from the heart, and we're not talking about the physical heart, but the heart as the core of your being or the symbol of spirit.

And you know what heart to heart is. Because somebody's been telling you that story and you've been empathising with them and you relate to somebody else who said, my heart went out of them. You felt that natural compassion or warmth go out of them. So you know what it is to heart to heart. And you've had that quite often. But mainly we try to relate it to the head. We're going to work it out with the mind. But you'll never find the answer in the mind. And you've probably been on this search, so-called search for years and years and years. Why haven't you found the answer?

Intelligent people who might not have just dawned on you after all this time. Maybe I've been looking in the wrong direction. And what direction have I been looking in? I've always been looking in the mind. Maybe the answer's not in the mind. And if you've come to that realisation, you'd have to ask yourself, which way can I look which is outside of the mind? And you realise whatever direction I look has always been in the mind. And the only way out of the mind is full stop. Don't go there. And then the answer will come. It'll be recognised and realised. It'll come up in that spontaneous, immediacy of this.

So away you go, get into it. Mind's in a pretty bad way today, yeah. Nights ago at 8.30 I got a message that my mum had died. And it was perfectly orchestrated because the kids had a sleepover. And it was interesting because when I got them and my sister said it's hit and miss, brace yourself, mum can die, that was the text. We were all at the hospital. And it was like, I was really surprised that this huge burst happened, you know, sobbing. But it wasn't personal, it was just this big outburst. Through the heart, actually, it was through the heart. And then I thought, OK, I'd better get the passports.

I'm going to have to take the kids and me to New Zealand to be with mum, you know. Or maybe she's dead already, I don't know. And I got a message from my sister saying, the doctors think it's a miracle, they tried some new thing and she's alive. So I went through a rollercoaster in that evening, two nights ago. Yeah. And then I guess I think I'm, and so I'm not rushing to New Zealand. There's enough family around and I'll come when there's less. So I'll lap over. But I guess, you know, I've been thinking about, you know, what's the purpose of this life? Maybe the purpose of this life is just to break you open fully to love.

That's what I've been feeling, you know, since that happening. It's like I felt like maybe everything that happens is just to break you open fully. And it's very painful. Well, right now I'm not in pain, I'm actually feeling quite at peace. But it's like just the recognition of that. I know that's also another concept. And maybe I'm just identifying with that concept. But at the moment it just feels like every event that's ever happened has been there for me to open and to be loved fully. And yet it seems to be incredibly painful, that cracking. You know, and it's out of your control. Because there's been other times when Mum nearly died and I didn't have, you know, I felt love for her.

But I didn't have that big crack, you know. And I don't know if you want to share something on that. I see. Yes. But all those things happen in the mind too. If you hadn't known about her death, or when you thought you were dying, a lot of it disappeared again. But a big burst of thoughts, feelings, emotions, you go on. They're part of the functioning also. But as you say, you're not going to be a dummy or a stupid, you know, a dead, unfeeling. You're going to go through them all. They're all our expressed life. Sometimes I feel with Advaita, there seems to be, there can be a disconnect with the, so identified with the concept of non-duality, that they disconnect from the heart.

It's almost like there's a subtle shift over top of it. And what I'm noticing is it's actually pushing me the opposite. But I think I got, I realised that I was, I was protected somehow using the concept of some protection in some capacity that it would keep me away from experiencing that life force totally. Does that make sense? Well, I could see that in this system. You know, that makes me a bit sad. But it's also the truth of just seeing, wow, I've been really protecting too. And that's the truth. You know, because that's what we do as humans. We don't want to go to that heartbreak.

It's working when you're making a look at things, you know, they're just taken for granted before and let you into a state of, there you start investigating more and more. As you say, opening up. It does its thing. It's not to do with me. It does whatever it does. It's not even me taking it for granted or me doing anything. There's nowhere for me to go. It's just the lila is doing it. It's doing whatever it's doing. Let it sit back and let it happen. That's kind of the truth. Rather than there's something for me to get or taking for granted. That's another concept. When we don't understand it, we do take it for granted.

Take it as real and take it all in. Yeah. And that's why they call it in the scriptures ignorance. Not that we're dull or stupid, but meaning we are ignoring our true nature and focusing the conceptual beliefs we've got. Yeah. And the start of recognisers, you're no longer ignoring your natural state. And it becomes more expressed more and more. The clouds get thinner and thinner. That's the answer. And there's these beautiful clouds moving. Amazing. Like, wow! And I woke up this morning and my son said, look, mum, and there was a hot air balloon above. And the clouds are incredible at the moment. Stunning. I know.

I used that yesterday, didn't I? Go on. I love it, love it. Yes, they did. And very thin clouds, it's true, aren't they? Yeah, until the dark storm cloud came in. Yeah, but I love that dark storm cloud. They're beautiful. Yes, they're gorgeous. They're amazing. Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. Because this is an important aspect that is often neglected. And as you mentioned, people go and focus on emptiness and on nothingness and completely forget about that transformational power of love, which really cracks you open, which breaks the defenses. Because of course, we don't want a displeasure of heartbreak. But it really completely exposes you and transforms you in a way that nothing else does.

I don't know if you remember the quote, because you quoted Bible a few times today. Jesus had a beautiful saying about the Sermon on the Mount that if you have whatever you want to have, but you don't have love, you are like death or whatever sound. Don't remember. I know it in Polish, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to remember that. It says it all. It says it all. Because even if you realize that everything is nothing, absolutely everything has no independent nature, is constructed out of plain field of possibility, constructed conceptually, and yeah, life becomes kind of dead and meaningless. It becomes dry.

It's like, yeah, all right. Okay, so what? Unless that surge of love comes when you actually, realize that the nothingness of everything is the nothingness of yourself, and then it means that you are that everything, and you actually love yourself in everything. This is where the right really becomes beautiful. This is where the bliss of being comes. And this is very often, I think since in Ming says, or one of them, that attachment to the emptiness is missing the nature of reality. Being attached to the nothingness or emptiness is still being attached, and is dry and dead. And thank you so much. But it's not dead.

There's something in me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not dead, but it's not quite, but it's, yeah, it's not quite, it's not quite, satisfying. It's not quite loving. But see the way the Nisargadatta was telling it, when I'm nothing, this is wisdom. Yes, wisdom is wonderful, it's satisfying. To who? But when I'm everything, this is love. And that flow of love is just such a different quality of experience. I forget the sermon on the month. What is it? Sermon on the Mount. What was the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus was speaking to all his disciples, and I can't remember it exactly, but there's so much. Oh, I remember it.

Holy shit. There's so much. Take no thought for your life. Watch as you eat, watch as you drink, watch as you all hear. Your Father knoweth you have need of these things, and your Father's good pleasure to give it to you. Look at the birds in the air. They don't sow crops or gather into barns. And the lilies in the field, even Solomon in his glory could, was not arrayed like one of these. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Can't make yourself an inch taller by thought. No, but there was something else about the, gosh, I really know it in Polish, but I will translate it wrongly, that if you don't have love in your life, you are like a brass, like a...

That's St. Paul. Oh, okay. Brass or a tree with no roots. You remember? You remember that one? Or part of it. Yeah. Sounding brass or a tickling cymbal or something like that. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Oh. Oh, we can Google it any other time. It's just to highlight the beauty of what you pointed. Really. Yeah, okay. So any of that, that re-cognizing, that comes from the awareness, doesn't it? Sometimes when I'm talking about the self-inquiry, it's still coming from the mind, but the... It comes up into the mind. It comes up into the mind, yeah. Okay. Yeah, because sometimes it feels like the head's still involved trying to do the self-inquiry, but it's just what I'm trying to say.

It's like the awareness, it has to come from the heart or the awareness, that recognizing. Is that right? Well, the life actually forms that way. And it's got the organs in it, the brain and the heart and all this, and the words come in or whatever it is. Everything comes from the space-like awareness, you know? And it goes through that, the sound or the vibration or the energy goes through that and breaks it down into thoughts or words or whatever. Yeah, so it's all right for the thoughts to be involved. It's not like that's necessarily the ego. Yeah, well, thought. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thought will translate, you know, when it comes up sometimes.

I say when it's utilized, it's all right, but when it uses you, like, I'm not good enough or I'm fearful or I'm a human or I'm this, that's when it becomes self-destructive. Sorry. Sorry. We're looking at, we're also putting the conceptual label on it. The recognizing is actually seeing it without the concept attached. Yeah. Leaving everything as it is. And on the... And on the... And on the surface. And on the surface. And on the surface. And on the surface. And on the surface. And on the surface. And on the surface. And the inside. And the outside. The outside. Yeah. The inside. Yeah. And what we're looking at now, what we're looking at now, we're looking at the object we're actually looking at it and we're also going back into memory about that object and whatever that object may have meant for us.

Sometimes you've got to search, have to find a label, remember what it was. Yeah. Yeah. I read yesterday something Bob's friend left a draft of the book that he's putting together. It's a Zen book, nine pieces of Zen. And we just... He promised he'll look through it He was talking about Vasubandhu, who was, I don't know, probably 1500 years ago, some of the Zen, one of the first Buddhist Zen teachers. He was talking about just what you say, the reality having three aspects, being interdependent, which means that arises interdependently, nothing arises by itself, everything is dependent on the environment, this has no independent nature. The next one is being constructed, is being labeled out of existence, but just what you explained, the process of actually recognizing, going to the memory, comparing with what you have written, yeah, that is a chair or that is whatever.

And the third reality is the real reality when the duality of observer and observed collapse. This is when whatever arises, it has absolutely no conceptual labeling out or constructing, it's just the ocean waving. Yeah, it was quite beautiful, the pieces, the Zen pieces that he put together. I hope that book will ever see the light and we can recommend for people to buy because it's quite incredible. Yeah, because I'm reading a Zen book at the moment. The teachings, I think it's Huang Po, who's a Chinese, and the whole book is just hammering conceptual thought. There's your problem, conceptual thought. And it's not like where people who become like Zen Buddhists are thinking about, it's about the meditation, it's about the posture, it's about this, that, but it's just conceptual, it's seeing through that.

Absolutely. And that's where Satori and the enlightenment, or so-called enlightenment, comes. Absolutely. That you already are enlightened, you just don't realize it. Because you talk through it, you overlay it with thinking. Yeah, you put the... Conceptual map on top of it. Yes. Yeah, this friend of Bob mentioned Huang Po also, and his way of putting it. Quite beautiful. So many different languages in which the same message is being transmitted. Exactly, yeah. So anyone who's interested can resonate with anything. Because ancient China... It is, yes. Yeah, so that's what Bob says, all the ancients say it. They've been saying it for thousands of years. Yes, it's just extracting out the language and the conceptual overlay that we put on top of the arising.

Most of it is the relationship, like Bob mentioned, because it is a consequence of the language, of separating, segregating, putting things into different drawers, different segments. Compartmentalization, I think one of the Zen guys used. That's all the knowledge. Yes, yes, yes. So there is... And Nisargadatta was also saying about the universe. People were asking him if he's living in the same universe. He says, your private universe is completely yours. Nobody has access to it. And we can know how personal it is, the universe, that we superimpose on the reality, which is totally unknowable and unexpressible. But everything is related to me, not only physically by distance, but also by interpretation, meaning that I give to things.

I have different orders. I have different values than anybody else. That makes it a personal universe. And that's the Maya. It makes it amazing also how many ways, in how many different ways, that one essence or that one life can express and experience itself through so many different private universes that are changing constantly, moment to moment. If we assume that there is a time and a change, because if there is no... mind, there is no time. If there is no thinking, there was no universe prior to this moment. I had no universe yesterday or ten years ago. I can only think it into existence, and then it becomes apparent reality, part of the Maya.

But without thinking about the past, there is no past. I had no childhood. I wasn't born. I only have to think that I had childhood to actually experience having a childhood. Without the mind, there is just this moment. So it wants to experience itself, does it? Is it what keeps trying to push through? It feels like it wants to break through and take over. Yes. Exactly. That's it. It wants to take over. Get out of the way. Yeah. So it is. It wants to create. It wants to create. It wants to create and expand and do all this stuff, does it? And it's... Yeah, it does it.

It's like a bit of a plan. Not a plan, but a certain path it wants to go on. Yeah, it does it. It does exactly what it wants. It waves. It does. That's it. Just as with every thought, feeling, emotion, form, sensation, everything. It's doing it all the time. That's why they call God Creator, because it's so creative. It's creating all the time. The trouble is we want to work it out. And yet nothing has been created. No creation, no creature, no creator. That's right. And also, even though when we say there's no creation, no creature, one could say, okay, now the attachment to emptiness, again, nothing.

There is nothing. Of course there is nothing. But how much loving to be in that nothing. There's so many forms coming into being. There's so much nothing. And all of them have experiencing of the being, the experiencing of being without putting a label of what I am. It's just a being. It's a being on which I can have mental image of the body, then I'm the body. Or I can have mental image of nationality, then I have a story. But really, it's just a being. And it's the same being all over. It's just that here there are some sensory information attached and out there there are not.

But that's the loving to be. The sat chit ananda, being, being aware of the being or knowing, consciousness, and loving to be. And the proof for loving to be is the being because it's there. Yes. Go on, take on that. Nothing. Nothing's a vacuum or a void. But break it down to the knower thing. Everything in this room are things. You and I are things. The carbon and everything out there are things. All appearing in that empty space and silence. And that's the thing. And silence, stillness. That's the basic screen which doesn't change. Now, all of those things are appearing in that basic stillness. But can something come from nothing?

It can't. So all these things, though they're appearing, patterning, shaping, forming, are really no thing. So it's never changed its nature from being the one essence, patterning, shaping, forming, and experiencing. Experiencing as everything. Instead of dividing it up into things, it's still only the one. And you can't be anything other than that. Never have been, never will be, and never could be. Appearing as a thing. Just like the water in the Mirage. Appears as water in the Mirage, some thing. Or the sea appears to be blue. Water appears to be blue in the ocean. And there's no thing, not blue, and it doesn't appear. There's no water in the Mirage.

Appearance only. Seemingly so. A phenomenal manifestation. Like a dream. Go to sleep at night and you dream a dream. You can be in the city, you can be in the country, you can be anywhere at all in that dream doing all sorts of things. Your body hasn't moved off the bed and there's no words coming out of your mouth. When you wake up in the morning, what happens to it? It disappears. There might be some parts remembered for a little while. But you don't realise. What we wake up, we wake up into this dream. This is a waking dream. The only difference between the two, this waking dream seems a continuity.

It seems to continue every night from where it left off, every morning from where it left off last night. The dream comes and goes. The other dream, the sleep dream, they're the same thing. Vibrating into different patterns, shapes and forms. Things. So it's the everything and the no thing. It's all one and the same. The sense is invalid there for me. Because these things are so non-existent. Well that's the way that we shape and form. We can display and express as everything at all. They call it Shiva Shakti. Shiva, the static aspect. Shakti vibrates or dances. The female acts and the world appears. And everything appears and the dancers, the energy.

And Bob also often says everything's valid in the appearance. When people ask questions about, you know, questions about clairvoyance or whatever the, you know, special supernatural powers, do they exist or they don't? Well, you know, everything's valid in the appearance. Even in the dream is valid. Like if someone is chasing you in the dream, it's quite important to manage to escape at this moment because it feels real. It's valid to actually just put, yeah, it's always valid. I mean the values are valid. They, in the appearance. But ultimate value, I mean ultimate truth is beyond what appears and disappears. Some values will make no sense and rather will make sense.

True. But values never make much sense. But you would probably express some preference to kindness over bullying, would you? The value of kindness doesn't make sense. Selfishness never really meant anything. It was, it was just something people called someone else when they weren't doing what they wanted. As far as I could see. And, um, yeah, respect is just something that people make up because they're angry or something and they want something, want people to do something. I don't know, they just, they just seem to be a bunch of rules that people make up and try to get people to fit. And they just never really meant much to me.

Like sometimes I sit there with one of them and try to figure it out, you know, because, you know, I don't even get it. Sometimes it would be I get what's meant by it, but it just doesn't, I don't know, I can't wrap my head around it. Yeah, I know what you mean. There are natural rules. Like, of course, the society makes rules. And if you look at the society of wolves or monkeys, you can see which wolf is most respected in the, in their society, in the group, because of the behavior of others. But they don't make a story about it. It's a natural, natural happening.

It's unraveling. Unraveling, yeah. And that's the story that, yeah. Yeah, just, I don't know, they just never really make sense. Yeah, but society needs them. Not at all. I don't know, you said that doesn't make sense either. Well, society has them, so it means. Yeah, it doesn't mean I don't see them being invented all the time and seen as an actual real thing. Yeah. I definitely see that people do that. But the problem is in the identification of the value and the fixating of the value. And I'm just believing it. Everyone in this room will have preferences. Everyone in this room. Everyone has values, different values.

Yeah. But the problem isn't the value, actually. It's the identification of the thought. Totally right. Totally right. But when you were speaking, I thought, that's amazing. I love that. Yeah, I've heard that. That you have that experience. But then I think, you have preference. I've heard that to Curry Scramble Burger. Yeah. To Curry Scramble Burger? Curry Scramble Burger. Oh, Curry Scramble Burger. Curry Burger, yeah. I've heard that. Yeah. That's not value. Right. Yeah, and it, and it, I see it. And it, and it, I see the difference, Tony, because, you know, the preference over, over, preference over value. You know, for values, people go and die.

They go and let themselves be nailed on the cross or go to the war, yes, and, and kill everyone else who doesn't agree with the value. Preference is okay. I mean, you kind of don't care what other people preferences are, you know, yours. You don't have to superimpose it on anyone else. But values get so much stronger, so much more importance. They're much heavier as a thought form. They're more rigid and defined. Yes, rigid and defined, yeah. Like, if you look at spirodynamics, it would be like kind of in the blue area. I can see that. That is not typical of those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Like, the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. The reaction here, if somebody is kind of from a non-dual space touting a value, there'll be a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you Like the smallest distinction however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

The reaction here if somebody is kind of from a non-dual space touting a value, there'll be a, you know, that's just an automatic reaction like, um, that person's not been consistent to me. So there's like a, that doesn't feel safe for some, you know, unravelling reasons. Some unravellingness here feels unsafe if somebody's been non-dual, non-dual, non-dual, value non-dual, non-dual. That, you know, that's just a block here. But yeah, well, we're rolling. Less and less, obviously. Yeah. But also there is a problem of languaging because, you know, Mm. you may, you may hear value, as value something that is not a value. Yeah, they might be thinking that in their head.

They might be coming from another space and they're just... Yeah. Like, see, Bob was saying now when love and hate is both, are both absent, so everything is clear and undisguised. This is from the Sins in Ming. And at the same time, he does highlight the be warm to yourself, the loving to be aspect. So it would feel like there is an inconsistence, but there is not because the definition of love is so vastly different to everyone who actually uttered the word. Mm. So it is, it is a value and it isn't a value because... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say that it's a value.

I'd just say... Oh, yeah. But then there's a translation here that goes to what he's saying is relevant here. He's saying that there's a resistance to a block. Ah. And then release the block as a warmth arises. So... Beauty. That's, yeah, that's a... When I say the word love, I just see there's a whole lot of definitions of love happening. I don't see it as one of those fixed societal values, I guess. Mm. Yeah, I love the way you explained it. You know, I can feel the block going away. Yeah, and then warmth comes when... Yeah, and the warmth. ...when it's so empty that, that sort of stuff can come up.

Mm, yeah. That's, that's really nice. You could actually feel your body as a feedback mechanism. You can actually see how it reacts to certain pointers and follow the, follow the gut instinct. Yeah. That's what always intrigued me, but, because I was, I got ages ago that I was misinterpreted. I was misinterpreting the nothing, or interpreting it differently to you, the nothing versus everything. Mm. And I've realised here there's a, there's a high strength that's in NLP for looking for distinction and not sameness. Uh-huh. So when somebody says nothing, I'm thinking, I'm not thinking probably what everyone else is thinking, which is that, oh, you're just pulling in the head and you just, what's it like to not feel?

So it's repression. Uh-huh. Um, and that might do it not. And that might do it not. As in, as I don't know. Um, instead, I'm going, that's too obvious. So I'm looking for the distinctions within the everything. Mm-hmm. So I'm thinking, oh, what am I missing? What's not being understood here? What's not being felt, experienced? Um, so I'm looking around for what's been missed. Uh-huh. Um, so probably I just get, whenever I get a surge of warmth, like, there's often, there's a memory that there was absolutely nothing before that. Uh-huh. And the moment before it was so empty, there was no concept whatsoever that I was allowed to erase.

Mm-hmm. So I'm looking around for what's been missed. Uh-huh. So I'm thinking, oh, what am I missing? What's not being understood here? What's not being understood here? And then, when I think you guys were having your discussion, you were talking about degrees of warmth, degrees of love, peace, love. Mm-hmm. So you're both really talking about the something, not the nothing. Mm-hmm. Maybe you two were also talking about nothing, but at one point your discussions seem to be that degrees of the, of the things that you talked about. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You were talking about peace and you were talking about more the surge of love. Yeah, that's definitely something.

That's an experience that has a beginning and an end. It's not a constant. And that's fine though, it's just a bunch of sensory stuff coming up where no concept occurred in the moment before. I see. Yeah, well said. More juicy, more still. Yeah, I really like the way you're making really clear distinction. It's like we're kind of roaming around the vocabulary more focusing on the energy because the words can't really express it properly. But you have such a way of distinguishing. Which brings clarity, definitely. She's getting something. The cat is getting surge of love now. But the cat doesn't have a concept that there is something over nothing.

For the cat it's just that moment and whatever the content of the moment is, is part of it. It's undistinguishable. She's smiling. We really are. The only difference between us and the cat is the story that overlays the experience. That's right. Doesn't know it. Hasn't learned any words to this room, actually. It hasn't lost it, so it can't gain it. It can't really appreciate it to the way, you know, when the consciousness loses itself and it identifies as a form and it feels limited and it feels confined and it feels unworthy and yucky. It feels dissatisfied constantly trying to escape from the trap, from the suffering.

And then suddenly it actually realizes, oh my God, the trap is only conceptual. It's only a belief. It's only made of past memories and experiences. And it experiences its fullness in its freedom. That's the thing that cats are taking for granted. They don't experience that. I mean, on a certain level, of course, you can put the cat to the cage or look at it in the room and they will be quite happy to get out. But on the ultimate level, the same happening with the identification, with this thing that feels the closest to us, as close as it can possibly be, the sense of presence that I am.

And that I am is being locked into this cage of concept, body-mind, instead of just being absolute free, limitless, unbound. And with the cage of concepts comes this contraction, this satisfaction, unpleasantness, the something-sure-thing. The need to escape, the need to seek the answer, the need to try and get something bigger and better. Everything but not this, not this confined feeling. Whilst the freedom of the I am having no limits, not ending with the body-mind, not ending with the room or concepts or anything, is just... And most of it, not having any sense of anything's wrong, not having any idea that... that should be any other way than it is.

Not having any sense of void or vacuum or dissatisfaction or discontentment anymore. Because all that feelings of contraction of the I, they come only from identification with the form. Without that, there is no sense of anything being wrong. Everything is perfect. It doesn't mean that they would stop helping people, as you see Bob is doing it three times a week for over five years. He's doing it for over 40 years. So the compassion and the love and the action, that's still the story. He's just doing whatever life puts him to do. But the sense of dissatisfaction, the sense of needing to find anything or achieve anything or get anything or change anything is gone.

There's the actuality and there's the mind's thought of what it should be like, but it's not. And the suffering is caused from these... The difference between those two. Yes. Is that what you're saying? Totally, yeah. Any idea that things should be any different than they are. Like Bob was presenting it, he says, something comes up and I like it and I want to keep it here. And then something comes up and I don't like it, I want to push it away. There is always a me having a preference and either desire or aversion and doing all that actions of trying to relate to the world in one...

In some way. In some very personal way. If there is no pull or push and there is no relating to the world, you're like a cat. Yeah. There's nothing to be... Nothing to have a problem with or about. All conflict arises when there's an identification with the me. And the me is the memory. And then there's the other person, place or thing, which is again a constant... A concept in the memory. That's when the conflict arises. All conflict arises from me and the other. So if you're in the past, you're wrong. If you're in the... Not that there's anyone to be wrong, but if you're in the past, you're wrong.

If you're in the future, you're wrong. As in, you're in the mind. You know? Because you have to have a me, which is a memory of you, because you're not your memory. You're just what is right here, right now, being. So you've got the me, which is the memory of you. It isn't you. It's just a memory of you. And then the me, the memory of you, has a preference to a person, place or thing. And that person, place or thing, that's okay if you like it, but if you don't like it, it creates disease or conflict with you. So it's all the mind. It's all the me.

So when you see through that, you know, if you start to resist what is, you go, oh, there it is. Bang. There it is. Bang. You know? And you don't do it. You just cognize it. You just recognize it. You know? And that just happens more and more and more. You've never done anything. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to do it, you know? But there's been the exposure to the truth of your own being. You've been pointed. It's been pointed. It's been pointed. And you go, oh, there it is. There it is. Yeah. Black Bob says the habit will go on for some time because it's formed.

And then as you say, it's sort of like the door is a jar and it's opened to a new mind. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's that seeing the selfing, seeing the selfing, seeing the, you know, how that me just wants to take ownership of everything, naming and claiming, naming and claiming. And what are you watching that from? The beingness. So, yeah, it's just, wow. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. And not kaleidoscopy. And not acceptance of what is. Yeah, that's it. Bottom line. In a nutshell. So we're being lived, everything's just happening and then a me steps in there, just a thought, a me steps in there and he goes, and behaves like a three-year-old child chucking a hissy fit.

As adults we do that. And we decide we don't like the way things are. But, which is absurd because things, are the way they are. Yes. So if thinking aligned itself with the actual and your preferences never went outside what actually is, you'd never suffer. Exactly. That's exactly right. Well, see, the thing with it is that the livingness is happening anyway. But we think we're the livingness. Like it's my livingness, it's my awareness, it's my presence, it's my, my, my, my. And then what we try and do is control the life, control how I'm going to be lived. And that livingness that the cat experiences, that's just kind of happening but there's no thought in the cat going, I'd rather be upstairs under a blanket.

Like that's just what is. Then we've got this... dialogue, this story or these thoughts that just go round and round and round. And the worst one of all those stories is I am. I'm here. There is a me here. That's the worst one because then everything gets piled on top of that. And then preference comes into it, which is again the non-acceptance of what is. We're being lived anyway. We just never take the time to get the fuck out of the way seriously to get the fuck out of the way to see that. We're totally being lived. Even the thoughts that come through our mind, I'm not doing any of that shit.

Like none of it. It all just happens. It's like a car, the driving instructor, and the other person's got controls, but only the driving instructor's controls are actually going. But they're still reacting to everything the car's doing as if their controls are working. Yeah, good analogy. Yeah, great analogy. The I am is really I am driving this. My controls are turned on right now. Yeah, beautiful. And everything else is, look how every single complaint you can ever have is the complaint about the body. Who is that now? A bit late, she called. Anyway, it's always the complaint, whatever is happening, is the body. It's I am called.

This is me, the body. Yeah, two minutes to the end of the meeting. Yes. One minute, one second. Yes. Yeah, you can watch it later on on YouTube. Yeah, we were just talking about the same thing. We always talk about just that one same thing, that identification as a form is a fiction. There is no... That's actually the reason for the suffering because all that suffers is the me, the entity. The body may experience pain, physical pain, but the physical pain is just an information that the healing process is going on, so be careful, don't touch it, or do something about it if it's broken.

So body is just giving a feedback. But there is a mind which constantly say, oh, it shouldn't be like this, I want it that way, I prefer it that way. That mind assumes the identification with the body, and it has the story that reality is wrong as it is, it should be the way I dictate it to be, whilst it is as it is. And all the problems we can ever have are the problems of the body. My body is too small or too high or too tall or too slim or too fat. My job is too bad. Everything is relating to the me. And what we are pointing is that me, that everything is rolling around, is not real.

It's a fiction. But Bob has a nice saying about thought, feelings and emotions. Do you want to remind that, Bob? Yeah, thought, feeling and emotion are one and the same thing. Just like steam, water and ice, the same is happening out there in nature. First steam, you can't see it much, but it's very subtly there. Then it condenses a bit, becomes water, which is more fluid, and then the water becomes solid as ice. So... Yes. So you can't first get into tears right now. First of all, there'll be a subtle thought come up. You might not even recognise it. Then it'll get a bit worse, and then bring it with the feeling, and then the tears will come.

The anger, the fear, they all come up based on a subtle thought. Everything is based on a thought. So... They're all sensations, but we don't see the sensation that's fresh in you. As soon as the sensation comes on, instead of looking, oh, what's this? We say, well, this is fear. We don't even have to say it, but it immediately comes, well, this one's anger. And doing that, we're loading ourselves down with all the previous fears or angers or hurts we've had, and it becomes overwhelming. Right. But do we? We just jumped to an associated conclusion. Yes. So it's fresh in you. You might find it totally different to what you labelled it in the past.

Thinking about that car thing too, like the... So the driver's got the controls and the student thinks they've got the controls, and they turn left and the car goes right, they're just like, well, I know I'm doing this, but it totally didn't do what I wanted it to do. I'm confused. LAUGHTER You can have a tantrum. Yes. This is just wrong. LAUGHTER And that's basically where everybody stops. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful. So the student is just taking credit for the actions that the driver's instructor is doing. God did it. I don't think God did it. Oh, God did it, yeah. LAUGHTER And even the suffering is based on the idea that there's a me here.

So suffering is all related to a me. Yes. And if there isn't one, there's actually no such thing as suffering. It's all imagined. Yes. It's literally all imagined suffering. And nothing can trigger your... your own imagination. If there was no language, would there be... LAUGHTER If there was no language, would there be an I thought? Yeah. I thought's dependent on language. Yeah, but what I mean is not... there wouldn't be the word I, but a feeling or something that would substitute it. Sense of presence. But a thought can be an image. Yeah. Like, I don't doubt the cat knows it is. Existence, yes. And that's it.

But that's it. A sense of presence is the reality. It is the same regardless of the language. Like, if there are nations around the world that don't have this particular expression, they still know they exist. Existence is undeniable. You can't try and not to be. That's... yeah, because that's the language. That's a childhood question. Quoted Hensing Ming, the great way is not difficult for those who have no breath, blah, blah, blah. And it finishes... words. The way is beyond language. There's no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today. There's no tomorrow, no today. It's all beyond language. The way is beyond language. We put it on Bob's website as the banner because it really is.

That is beyond language, which means beyond concepts, which means non-conceptual awareness, which means... what was the other one? Uncontrived singularity. I love that. Yeah. Mm. Or that. That. Or suchness. Suchness is another one. Zen calls it sometimes. Yes. Mm. Anyway, Colin's caught up on it. Hi, Tess. Hi, Tess. Hi, Tess. Hi, Tess. He's watching. Yeah. No, he's watching. Happy birthday. And Janine. Janine will be there too. Oh, mwah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.