This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
That's why we say that you are that. And that's the great, the maha-vakya, the great word that's been passed down through the visions. I am that. Thou art that. This is that. That's that. Everything is that. You know that in our language. You can say that's a chair, that's a carpet, that's Andrew, that's a camera. Take away the label we've put on it. We've acquired these labels. We weren't born with those labels. We've acquired them all alone. Take away the chair, carpet, the label chair, carpet, Andrew or whatever label we've put on it. And separate, try and separate it without the label. It's all that.
These are just ways to get the glimpse of what you really are. What's happened is the little child doesn't know he's separate. He's got no idea he's separate when he's born. Doesn't know that he's separate for the first 12, 18 months or so, maybe two years. Getting around, he's seeing, he's hearing, he's functioning. And that reasoning, that reasoning didn't start on him until he was about two or two and a half or something. He passed it at reasoning. And when he started reasoning, he's hearing words from his parents. I'm little Johnny, they call him little Johnny. I'm this, I'm that. And he learns words like I or me.
And he starts to reason on this. And as I say, see the mind vibrating in the pairs of opposite. What is the opposite of me or I? Isn't it right or I or not me? And for the first time when he's looking out there, he's seeing everything just as it is up till then. He's not seeing one homogenous blob. He's seeing things as different, but he hasn't got any labels from it. He's not realising that they're separate and apart from him or different from him because he hasn't discriminated that. He starts to reason, now that's not me or that's not I. And immediately he does that, that's when the sense of separation comes upon us.
And with separation comes insecurity and vulnerability. That's when the search actually starts. Because that's when then on we start searching to become whole or complete. Because we believe we are separate. And that separation is there, there's insecurity and vulnerability. And we're geared and taught to... look out there instead of looking within and seeing whether we are questioning it and blaming it. Our whole society, our schools, our nations and everything else is geared to look out there, to acquire, to amass, to gather, to accumulate as much as we can. Gathering all these things will make us feel secure, make us feel less vulnerable, make us feel whole.
And then when these things don't seem to happen, what do we do? We invent a god then, who is somewhere out there. If we pray to him or meditate on him, or try and reach him, we will become whole or complete. But you see we've moved away from what the ancients have told us. We've moved away from omnipresence. Omnipresence means total here and now. It's only this. It doesn't mean any future time. But as soon as we're in the becoming stage, rather than be, we've moved into that concept of time. We've lived that invention, you know, we've... When we die we go to a place called heaven.
We've conceptualized another place called heaven. And we'll sit on his right hand side if we're in question, and resurrect at some future time, down the track, again, all in the future time. Or we belong to some eastern region where we incarnate. And you see there's always this idea or concept that there is a separate entity that will be able to come back at some future time. Not realizing that you were never born in the first place, and if you were never born you could never die. You are that. Eternal, now moment, if you like. Always have been and always will be. So what happens to that little child, as I say?
When this I thought comes upon him, you can't do much with I thought really. What does he do? He adds to this I thought, and this is what we all do, events and experiences and conditioning. All mental concepts will happen to me. I'm a good bloke, or I'm a bad bloke, I've got low self-esteem, or people don't like me, they're resentful, or I'm fearful, or I'm abusive. I'm a good child. All these concepts are out of this I thought, and believed in. And we form this mental concept or mental picture of what we believe ourselves to be. We've got a mental image made of ourselves.
And that was what we call the self-center or the ego. And that becomes a reference point from which everything is evaluated from. And all problems are problems of relationship. It's not just the male-female relationship that we're all concerned with, it's all relative to relationship. It's relative to my work, my house, my job, my partner, or whatever. It's judged from this reference point against what I see them to be, what they're relative to. And that's the cause of all our problems. But what happens if I investigate and see that there's no entity here with any substance or any independent nature? What happens when I look at this thing we call the ego and see it's a fiction?
It never had any existence at any time. It never could have. It's just a made-up mental picture. What can I be relative to then without that reference point? Where's it going to lodge if somebody calls me a nasty name or anything? And immediately hits that reference point and I get fearful or resentful or angry? Somebody does that and it's not hitting home here. Where's it going to lodge then? Doesn't it just pass through? Nowhere for it to stay? We call it unfixated awareness. It's not, the thoughts are not being fixated on or taking, being taken delivery of anywhere. They just come and go. And activities go on from there.
And that could be the release from all the psychological suffering that's gone on. It's only a me that can be fearful. It's only a me that can be resentful and full of self-pity or anger. So I see from that that me has been the cause of all my problems, of all my suffering. And the effects are my anger, my fear, my self-pity. That's all that karma is, the so-called karma is. There's cause and effect. So if I see, what happens if you see that the cause is a fiction? And ask yourself the simple question, can there be an effect without a cause? What must happen to the effects then if they've got nowhere to lodge?
No need to fight them, no need to try and force them out or analyze them and go into therapy for years and years and years trying to work it out. Because as soon as we do that, the answer is not in the mind. The mind will continue to bind and take you down another track. And another track and another track continually. And always got something better to bring up than some other thought. I see that the answer is not in the mind. And know whichever way I look in the mind will be in the mind. What way is there out of the mind? Isn't it just full stop?
And what happens if you pause a thought? And anyone can pause a thought right now and then just stop. Even if it's only for a second. And notice what is there when that thought is paused before another thought happens. Have you stopped seeing? Have you stopped hearing? Have you stopped feeling, sensing, tasting, touching, smelling? All these things are happening quite evidently, quite by themselves. All that's happened is the conceptualizing has stopped. When the thought is full, before another thought has started. And the Dao Chen teachers will tell you that the great perfection, that's what Dao Chen means when it's translated, is great perfection. I'll give it in one sentence.
The great perfection is non-conceptual awareness.