This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
When you come into this space, leave your concepts behind. Come empty. Listen with your heart, not with the head. Chapter S. S like Sailor Bob. S for Start. Bob. Start from the fact, whether you recognise it at the moment or not, that you are already There won't be any need to seek to become something or someone. If you accept for now that you are that already, then you only need to notice what is seemingly obscuring it. It is nonduality we are talking about here. One. Nondual. Not two. Everything is that one. Not even one, to be more precise. But this we will leave for later.
Now, everything is that. Nothing is excluded. You are not excluded. Bob Not convinced? Please try a little experiment now. Try to not be. Try with all your might. How are you going? Bob We know it innately in our language when we say, that is the chair, that is a carpet, that is Bill, that is a cat. Take the labels off things and that is all there is. Everything is that. And that is everything. That appears as everything. You are not exempt. S for the story of Sara. Example. Bob told her. You are already that. You are already that. Start here. There is no entity anywhere running the show.
Life is functioning the universe. You are that life. Start here. S like screen. Bob When you go to the movies and see all the cowboys and Indians shooting at each other, is the screen ever affected? When the movie ends, is there any blood on the screen or bullet holes in it? S for stay. Bob Stay with that basic screen. Stay with the I am-ness. Nisargadatta calls it a diamond of good fortune to stay with that I am to the exclusion of everything else. It took him three years to realize his true nature, and he had no prior seeking experience nor any knowledge about Advaita. So stay with that sense of presence.
Stay as that. Some of you might have guessed, this is a little gift for those, for you guys who are still following Bob's YouTube channel, with Bob's part of my book Sailor Bob Bugs of Pointers to Nonduality. Bops parts read in Bob's voice. It is only a fragment. It is only S, 4 and all the keywords, all the anchors from S. I did not include any of my parts. I did not even record that. The audiobook is now available on Amazon. Oh no, Audible, but it is read by AI voice, British sounding voice. It's not too bad. But here you got read Bob's parts in Bob's voice and I hope you're going to enjoy it.
Together with the little snippets of our beautiful, beautiful dream that we shared. Bob Some people are told to stay in the now. They ask me how to do that. I tell them try and get out of the now and see if you can. You'll see that you can't leave this immediacy. You can't leave this present moment now. S like senseless presence. Bob The sense of presence is the knowing that you are. You are aware of your being. You have a sense of existence. But it isn't a sense like other senses. It really is a pre-sense, prior to, prior to senses. But life is spontaneously happening.
Have a look at that essence that you are. With all the dramas and traumas and things that have happened in your life, has that sense of presence been contaminated in any way by any of those things? No. S Like Story B Story requires time. Every fairy tale starts with, Once upon a time. Can you see how quickly it moves out of the immediacy of this moment to imagine time? Of course it doesn't leave this moment. It happens only conceptually. Time is a concept, a mental construct only. There is no future unless you take a thought. There is no past without thought. Try it now. Is there a past unless you think about it?
There is not. An even thought about the future or past is happening presently. So there is no time. Time is only in the mind. Time is mind. What is wrong with right now without the story? What is wrong with this timeless present moment if you pause the thought? S like Shiva Shakti. Bob The dynamic aspect is the energy Shakti dances and the world appears But Shiva and Shakti are not two things but two aspects of the One Everything is that. Space vibrates into things, emptiness vibrates into forms. Everything is that one essence vibrating into different shapes and forms and patterns. Nothing is separate or apart from that.
All of it are just vibrating patterns of energy. They also call it sky-like awareness. S like sky. Bob They call it sky-like awareness because the sky is empty. There is vast nothingness in every direction. Do you think there is some blue canopy out there? Did you ever see blueness pouring through the windows of an airplane? It only appears blue, but it is a clear emptiness. Sometimes there are clouds covering it, but are they stitched to the sky? No, they are free to move on. You are that sky-like awareness, and clouds of thoughts are not stitched anywhere in your head so they cannot really touch you.
The answer is not in the mind. How long have you been searching in the thinking? Some of you have been seeking for 20, 30 years. You would have found the answer by now, or somebody else would have found it if it were there. But it cannot be grasped by thought, mind. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth will be set infinitely apart, says the Shin-Shin Ming. But can the planet be separated from the sky it floats in? What is heaven? Isn't it sky? Isn't it empty space all the way, as far as you can see or imagine? So, earth can never be separate from heaven , only seemingly so, only conceptually, by mental divisions.
It all appears in space, in stillness. S like space, stillness, silence. Bob Everything is content of space. Space is no-thing. Can anything come from no-thing? No. So the content must be that space too. All manifestation is just an appearance, an illusion, the no-thing. They call it Maya. Space or emptiness is vibrating into forms, shapes and patterns, appearing as things. Bob For things to appear, they have to appear dualistically. They cannot be sound without silence, darkness without light. There is no one-ended stick. Every stick has two ends, yet it is one stick. Without the duality, there is no appearance. But when you look closer, is the darkness anything other than the absence of light?
Is light anything other than the absence of darkness? There is only one, one essence vibrating into multitude of forms. Bob Space is not obscured or contaminated by its content. When content is overlooked, the background shines forth. When attention is on the screen or space itself, subtle joy, subtle love of being is experienced. Bob What is the first thing you see right now? What is the closest to your eyeballs? Isn't that space? But we don't notice it. We focus on things instead of relaxing into the space. S like space out exercise. Bob. How many eyes do you have? Do you experience two eyes doing the looking?
Or just one open window of seeing? S like senses. Bob. The very first thing you see, but overlook, is space. Space contains everything But nothing can contain space. Bop Silence is always there underlying sounds and gaps. Space is never obscured by any objects appearing in it. Stillness, or the static screen, is no-thing. It is and it isn't at the same time. It cannot be grasped as an object because it is your essential nature. Knowing, no I in G. It is pure subjectivity. S for subjectivity. Objectivity Bop Can you postulate anything outside the space? Where would it appear? Nothing could be outside this space or stillness.
It is a basic screen on which and off which everything comes and to which it dissolves. Bop In Buddhism they call it cognizing emptiness. It is not that you or I are cognizing or knowing it, but it is the emptiness itself suffused with the capacity of cognizing. It is self-knowing, self-aware, self-shining. It shines of itself with this innate intelligence or cognizing capacity. It is not a subject knowing the object. It is pure subjectivity. It is closer than your breath. It is who you are. Bob Can you negate your beingness right now Even to say I am not there has to be something there enabling you to say it You have to be there to say I don exist This I am is pure subjectivity without conceptual imagined boundaries of shape and form Bob Dzogchen also calls it the great perfection.
It says that the great perfection is non-conceptual awareness. Knowing. Knowing without concepts, without a thought. This is your essential nature. S for split. Seeing into seer and seem. Bob. Knowing is happening just like digestion is happening. Thought arises, I know. But could there be a knower without the knowing? Could there be anything to be known without the knowing? The know ing? There couldn't be. Bob Everybody is seeing right now. Did you set out to do this? Did you switch it on somehow when you woke up in the morning? Or was it readily available as soon as you opened your eyes? So the seeing is happening right now.
It is the same seeing you had yesterday but the content has changed. Does your eye tell you I see? My eye doesn't tell me, look at this Bob, look at that. Does yours? My eye doesn't say anything at all. Seeing is happening through the eye and the thought comes up and translates it into I see. But can that thought I see actually see anything? Close your eyes and see how much you can see in the room with the thought I. Come on, do it now. Bob The thought I see cannot see, but now when we say I see, we don't mean pure seeing anymore. Now this I has been introduced and believed into being.
Now we related to the conceptual image we created around this I thought and we consider ourselves to be it. So now I, me, Bob the Australian, the good guy, claims the capacity of seeing. Bob Can there be a seer without seeing? No, there cannot. Can there be a scene without seeing? No. So there are not two. Only the mind divides them conceptually. All there is here is the seeing. C-I-N-G. The I-N-G on it signifies the immediacy of this moment. Seeing is an immediate activity. S for spontaneity or S like spontaneity. Bob Do you know what your next thought is going to be? Have a look now.
Wait for that next thought to come. Or tell me what you are going to be thinking in two minutes from now. You don't know, right? You do not know what your next thought is going to be. Bob Nisargadatta told me, and I'm telling you, there is only life. There is nobody who lives life. Watch yourself through the day and see how true it is. You are being lived. See it for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Bob The multitude of causes Nisargadatta simplified to stating that things are uncaused. Uncaused meaning spontaneous. Bob So it has no duration. There is no time in this immediacy.
Timeless means spontaneous. S for Speaking, Bob. People often ask me if Nisargadatta told me to speak. No, he didn't tell me anything like that. But even if he told me to not speak, he couldn't have stopped me. S for Sat Chit Ananda, Bob. In Hinduism they call it Sat Chit Ananda. These are not three things but three aspects of the one. Sat means existence, Chit consciousness and Ananda is bliss, loving to be or stillness. Awareness of being is bliss or being, knowing and loving to be or existing, knowing stillness. Are you not existing right now? You are existing. Are you unaware? You are not unaware, so you must be aware or conscious.
Aren't you happy to be? Would you be dead for quids? You would defend yourself or run if somebody was trying to shoot you right now. So you must be that Sat Chittananda already Bok There is only this moment now always and ever now timeless eternal This is the only unchanging truth. What is not here now is not eternal but transient. What can come will also go, so it is not worthy of chasing. Bliss as an ecstatic event is just another passing experience. Bok You will never find peace of mind. Peace is when the mind is not. That's why they call it peace that passeth all understanding.
And this is your natural state. This is Ananda. We have five factors in Hinduism. Three of Satchit Ananda, that is what's real, and the other two, Nama Rupa, the name and form, the illusion or Maya. You are the awareness of bliss in being, Satchitananda. This is reality. You are not what you think you are. You are not the name or form, they are limitations we put on ourselves. They are illusions. As for saints, sages, saviours and seers. Bob All this has been pointed throughout the ages by many sages, saints and seers, but they are merely messengers. They are just patterns through which this intelligence energy expresses itself.
And what really matters is the message. Bop Somebody asked me once if I was a sage. I told him I was parsley, rosemary and thyme. Bop There wouldn't be a manifestation if it didn't appear dualistically. There couldn't be a dawn without the dusk, pleasure without pain. If not for interrelated pairs of opposites, there would be nothing at all. Bop What you need to understand is that Bob You may want to watch the next video, read the next book, go to the next satsang in hope to get something. But it is all the matter of discarding. Investigate, see the falseness of this so-called ego, and you won't need any saviors, sages or seers.
That light will shine bright out of your own eyes, undimmed by false belief. Instead of you chasing saints or messengers, others will come to you, attracted by that peace. Bop Everything is one in essence, but not in the way it appears or expresses. We worship the messenger and ignore the message. We put them on high thrones and worship them. We call them saints, sages, saviours and seers and hope that they will give us what we don't have. There is a story about Jesus hanging on the cross, still alive. People at his feet are fighting over his robe instead of asking him the ultimate truth. So, understand, it is about the message, not about the messenger.
The messenger is just a mouthpiece. Do you think somebody else can save you? Or that somebody else can save the world? How well did Jesus or Buddha do? Suffering still thrives as ever. S for Sun, self-shining. Bob Buddhists call it self-shining, ever-fresh presence-awareness. Just this, nothing else. They mean it shines of itself, like the sun. Nobody lit up the sun. Its nature is to shine. From sun's standpoint, what can ever obscure it? Bob Nisargadatta pointed out that you can only put it in negative terms. Nothing is wrong anymore. This is the natural state. Bob The sun is formed by the clouds and through shining and warmth it evaporates water.
Evaporated water forms the cloud and difference in atmospheric pressure forms the wind that blows away the clouds or causes them to fall down as rain. So, as the sun forms the clouds, the same way the life essence itself forms thoughts or expresses itself as thoughts. And like clouds, they are not attached anywhere. They move on.