This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
I look into some of these ancient texts and scriptures and traditions. I call it realizations, I call it enlightenment, I call it mivana. I've got many, many different names. And most of them will relate some ecstatic or exotic experience to it. And like all experiences, because that state doesn't stay around, it moves on, they think, well, I glimpsed it, but then I lost it. Have a look to see if you've had any wonderful experience or any escape. What it appeared on, what was there before it appeared, what did it appear on and what was there after it left. And isn't that basic, knowing that you are?
Is there anybody sitting in a room who doesn't know that they are? What you are or what you were or what you will be. What you are. But right in the immediacy of this moment, just that plain ordinary knowingness, which will easily translate as I am, but that thought I am is not it. That's the way it's translating. It's translating into a world or a thought. Realizing that simple, basic knowingness is constantly and ever there. And then it'll come along, look, that doesn't sit right. There's more to it, or there's something else, or I don't understand or I don't understand. understand or I do understand.
Or but this and but that. All these sort of things will come up. But again what are they taking place of? Aren't the buts, the ifs, the whys, the wheres and the experiences and sensations constantly changing? Where's it all appearing? What's it all happening? On, or in, or whatever like? Go on. Isn't it basically that sense of presence, the awareness of presence, the presence of awareness, the knowing that you are? Try and grasp that if you can with a concept. Try and describe it to me. Try and pinpoint it in your body or in your mind. And you see you can't because it is no thing to the mind.
No thing has been grasped or touched or discriminated or taken hold of anywhere. Why is that? Because they tell you in the Gita, when they're trying to describe it, they say the sword can't cut it. The fire can't burn it. The wind can't dry it. The water can't drown it. None of these things can ever go near it. Because it contains all of those things. All those things appear in it and not in it. So do you think a thought can grasp it? They didn't put that one in actually. A thought can't grasp it. So you think a thought can grasp it. A thought can grasp it.
Because how many thoughts can you have if that sense of presence is not there? Think of a single thought, a feeling, or emotion. Or take a breath or do anything. But that living life essence is not there. So what must you be? Mustn't you be that life essence itself?