This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
And welcome, Loki. Loki. Kristen. Jim. Tess. Mitch. Anthony. Jimmy. Michael. Ross. And... Tanya. And I think...Okay, so welcome everyone and thank you for coming. And traditionally, as usually, I'll invite someone to swap a chair with me who would like to give us a spiel today. Anyone? How about you, Dean? Are you okay? No. No? We have a big birthday cake for him and something he might want to earn it. No, maybe later.I want to check. I hear things. So, we give Bob a voice and I'll just parrot it. Start from the fact that you are already, that you already are. That you are already that, whatever the that means for you.
If it means to be a higher self or godly self or presence or emptiness or whatever the that people are looking for. People have concepts of what's missing or what's wrong and what they want instead. So they may want a peace or they may want a bliss or ecstasy and they look for it. And whatever you are looking for, that you are. And thatness, that isness, that presence, that existence is undeniable, is here. Yes, so people might say... People might say you might be looking for... They're chairs in the corner.You are looking for the awakening or cosmic union or oneness with the universe. And you may say, I am not that cosmic union or oneness with the universe.
How do I get there? And then see if you're really not. See if you can really separate yourself from the universe. Can you separate your body from the universe? From the environment? And you find out that you can't, really.Okay. So you can't separate the body, you can't separate the mind. You can see how the body is composed from the environment. Misargadatta would say it is a meat body or the food body. Apparently Muktananda, that's I know from Bob, would say that it's a shit factory. It's a body that converts whatever comes in into whatever comes out. And of course, there is the whole beautiful dream in between.
But are you this body? Even if the body cannot be separated from the environment, from the dream in which it appears, are you it? Or are you exclusively it? And if you are it and you can't separate it from the environment, then obviously environment you are too. So you are the totality already. You are the totality looking through that pair of eyes of that particular one costume. But you can't separate the costume from what it appears from the whole dream. Just like when you sleep at night and you look at the dream, you look at the environment in the dream. And you can't separate the seeing, the scene from the seeing.
So the cosmic union or the non-separation experience is right now. It doesn't have to be achieved or attained any time in future. It is to be recognized right now.Same with the mind. The mind which is thinking, how can you separate your thinking from the environment to which it is relevant? Can you have a thought that would be completely unrelated to whatever is happening? And you see that you can't because they actually just, the narrative is just the, like a middleman in between what is happening and a translation to what is being experienced. So it isn't separate. So if you are looking for cosmic union or an experience of non-separation, you may recognize right now that experience that you are having is the experience of being completely inseparable as the body, as the mind, and as the consciousness in which that body-mind is experiencing and expressing itself.
But some other people may be looking for something else, for God, experience of God. So Bob would bring up the concepts of what is God, what we call God. And the base of all the religions would call God a totality, an omnipresence, omniscience. So you can see that your presence or the presence of that streaming device or presence of other people or furniture in the room is the same.presence separated by the labels, by the language. Without the language, everything is just the current presence, showing up as a presence of something or the other. If you look at the newborn baby who does not have language, does not have the capacity of differentiating, Everything is presence, is the omnipresence.
Presence of thought, presence of feeling, presence of past or future, presence of objects animated or unanimated. It's the same presence differentiated by the language, by the labels. But it is the omnipresence. And it all happens within the presence of yourself, of the consciousness, of the knowing, of the being. The omnipresence, which is the total presence, which is the presence from which nothing can be separate. That's God. How could you be separate from the omnipresence if that's all there is? Omniscience, which is the all-knowing, that's also God, the capacity for knowing. When is it not? The capacity to know whatever appears, whatever is experienced, is always present.
And that's the omniscience. And omnipotence, which in Christian religion is the power of God or the Holy Spirit, the action or the showing up the energy movement.sometimes calls it intelligence energy because that's the intelligence the energy that moves the planets that moves the blood cells in your veins that is a movement of thought So that's again, if you are looking for experience of God, see if you can separate yourself from that experience of omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and you will find out that what you are looking, you already are. People may have yet another concept of what the awakening or enlightenment is. And they may have some imaginary concept or mental images that this is a state of mind that has the beginning and an end.
And in that state of mind, this body-mind machine is largely incapacitated. Incapable of experiencing pain, sickness, anger, fear, and all the other emotions that are labeled by the culture as undesirable. What a ridiculous idea. But people actually subscribe to that idea, and I was one of those people. 20 years ago, I believe that enlightenment is the state when I am incapacitated, unable to get angry when someone abuses me or get fearful when my life is in danger. So this is the idea thatwe are invited to investigate and perhaps drop away or recognize as just an obstacle, a veil, looking for the enlightenment in which you are incapacitated, is futile, is unnecessary.
It gets better instead of being incapable to stand up for yourself or to experience emotions which are labeled by the society as undesirable or judged in some way. There is a way of living. In which whatever the emotion, whatever the energy, and whatever the label or interpretation comes up in the awareness or in the consciousness are equal and are free to come and go. There is no need to become saint in the future. In order to experience the freedom, the freedom of being the existence, of being the omnipresence, the freedom of having the emotions, all of them, all the energies, all the types of vibrations, come, express themselves and move on.
There is no need to never feel the stomach ache or the upset in order to realize that the freedom in which they are experiencedis your essential nature and is always here, is never far away. The consciousness in which all the emotions, all the feelings, all the objects are being experienced is space-like, is sky-like. Any cloud is welcome on the sky. And what really is it? Bob had this beautiful image of looking at the sky as empty space all around. Sky is not a blue canopy over the heads or black canopy if you look at the night during the night. Sky is space. The galaxies, the planets, the stars, the clouds, the suns, infinite amount of objects visible and imaginable are appearing in that space.
And then amongst one of those objects you have a tiny little blue planet depending where you look from. With the tiny little layer of atmosphere. And that tiny layer of atmosphere, there might be clouds on there around it. So if you identify as a tiny little insect on that little ball, looking up for the sun and gazing at that atmosphere and layer of the clouds, Yeah, there is no way out. That's already a predicament. That's already a misperception. And there is no awakening fromthe state of being a tiny little dream character on a tiny little planet out there under the layer of clouds. But are you it?
As you see, the whole planet, its atmosphere and its little insects are appearing as a thought in the consciousness right now. If you stop thinking about it, what are you? If you stop imagining being something or the other, what are you? Are you the person? Are you the body? Are you the consciousness? Are you even the awareness or God? Without the idea.And this is not to exchange one idea for another idea. It is to realize that without the thought, you don't disappear. There is an existence, there is a presence, there is a radiant, luminous awareness without even the word awareness. Tony would say there's no nothing.
Bob would say the no thing rather than nothing. Because it isn't a thing. The capacity to know, the capacity to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, to be alive, the aliveness itself is not a thing. But it's not a nothing.And that nothing, that radiance, that miraculousness of presence, is the natural state which is never not here. It can get obscured by ideas, by ideas that this is not it, I am not it, I have to find myself in the future, I have to do a lot of prostrations or sit 10,000 hours in Zazen or whatever else the concept is, in order to become purified orAnd those concepts are just another layer of clouds appearing in that luminous presence that is never not here, that is underlying whatever appears on it.
So bringing it back to light, acknowledging, or Bob would say, giving credit where credit is due, giving the credit to that life essence, to that animating essence or energy. Essence is like a spirit of fragrance, like fragrance of a flower.It isn't visible, but you can still sense it. But what we are talking about can't be sensed because it isn't a sensory experience. It is prior to senses. It doesn't smell. It doesn't taste. It doesn't have any sense of reflection in the body. It doesn't contract. It doesn't expand. There is nothing to it. And yet it's not nothing. You can see the dead body next to a live body and you see the difference is obvious.
It isn't nothing. But it's not a thing the aliveness the most precious the most valued thing that is not a thing the presence of consciousness being aware of existence And it's luminous and it's yummy and it's radiant. And usually it is straight away covered up with narrative, with saying, oh, but this moment is boring or is not good or is not luminous enough or the pleasure is not strong enough. Or when you look at Bob and all those pictures, he's always smiling with the saint of a smile. And I don't feel like smiling. I don't feel like...There is a cursing ecstasy moving up my spine.
Well, feeling of ecstasy and absence of feeling of ecstasy are sensory experiences. They are experiences. All the experiences are possible because of the presence of consciousness. If not for the consciousness, there would be no sickness, no health, no day, no night, no cold, no hot, nothing at all. So looking for pleasurable experiences is the nature of the dream character. But it has nothing to do with the miracle of existence. The miracle of existence is here first. And you are that miracle of existence. And now the urge to have more pleasure shows up later. The urge to be safe shows up later on it. Not later, it's all the same time.
And yet there is a prerequisite. The corpse doesn't look for pleasure. The dead body doesn't look for safety. It is the capacity, it is the quality of aliveness that makes the body move, look for adventures, prefer musics, food, live the dream, living the dream, man. And there is nothing wrong in the way the dream unfolds. The dream is uniquely different moment to moment.Not only the dream of this character is different to the dream of this character, but moment to moment, mood to mood, meal to meal, second to second, there's dreams within the dream. There may be a dream about the big birthday cake, and now this dream is appearing within the sphere of the character and just shared itself.
And moment to moment, the dream, the dreaming goes on. But what underlies that dreaming is free from it. It's like the screen is free from all the movies that are projected. And you are that basic screen. And then the projection comes up and the story of the dream character and the hero's journey coming. And in the morning, the hero's maybe not good enough. And in the afternoon, the hero may hear a couple of compliments and feel really fantastic. And at 10.30, the hero may be a dad. And at 10.45, the hero of the story may be a neighbor or maybe an angry bastard. And it's just constantly dancing whatever is appearing on that screen.
But it can only dance and appear and express because you are. So that you are the great mantra, the Mahavakya.You know that you are. What you are is a different story. That one is a dream. In the dream, you can be big, small, good, bad, happy, sad. All of it is constantly changing. So the identity is changing. You may have multitude of identities. And in fact, everybody does. If you look closely, The I is a legion. You have a legion of roles that you are playing moment to moment. But the one that is playing all those roles is beyond all of them. The one that gives them life, the essence, the source, the source energy, the attention or energy of belief or energy, intelligence energy or life that gives those roles.
Power that fuels those roles that one is one that one source and it is one source not only for a legion of of behaviors in this one but is the same one source for legion of behaviors in every single form that appears is the same source that is fueling thoughts, same source that is fueling trees and birds and fish and cells and galaxies and planets. Just like the same energy, the same power can fuel the computer.and bring up all sorts of different images. And the same power will fuel your mobile phone and the globes and the solar panels. The same one source. And that's the oneness, bringing back that you are not the appearance, you are not the expression.
You are the source energy showing up and dancing as everything. One essence, ever fresh, presence awareness. Experiencing and expressing and appearing as everything. The presence, the witnessing capacity. Is unaffected by the dream character's antics. You can see that even in the midst of the most painful antics, in the midst of psychotic antics of the character feeling diminished or feeling inferior, of feeling left out or abandoned or unloved, there is a quiet presence in which those experiences are happening. And those experiences have the beginning and an end. They may start at 9.15 and finish at 7.30 next evening or next minute. But all of them are happening because there is an existence, because you're not a corpse, because that costumeis animated by the essence, by the life itself.
And you are that essence you are that life although the beauty of the dream the beauty of that eternal hide and seek quality of that totality or that absolute or that god playing experiencing and expressing as everything is that is so convincing, is so good at that incredible dance called Maya or illusion, a dream, that it forgets itself. It's like when we dream at night. How often do we have spontaneous lucid dreams? Most of the dreams are just completely unquestioned. You show up in the environment and you respond to it. You can't even see your own body, your own face. Rarely you may glance at the mirror and you may see something else.
It is unquestioned. So the machine, the body-mind machine, is designed to respond to whatever is appearing immediately in the environment. That's what it does. And that responding behavior, responding with feeling, is witnessed in that presence. The presence that allows it all equally, that doesn't mind,response is taking another cigarette. Or like Nisargadatta, he smoked until he gave himself a cancer and died. The space, the presence, didn't mind at all. If the behavior was undesirable, if he screamed and yelled at people, he was unkind. Space didn't mind. Every expression is perfect in its uniqueness, but it's not perfect according to the standards of the society or the family.And that beauty of that imperfection in the eyes of a judge and the beauty of perfection of everything, including the judgment.
Is the same expression of the same one life. It shows up as the source energy, appearing as the dream character. And frankly, realizing that the dream will go on regardless whether you make it lucid and the you, I mean life, not you, the character. The character has absolutely no choice in any matter because the character only exists in the narrative. The character is the yapping voice that is translating everything to I did that, I value that, I desire this. And where is that I if the voice is quiet? Where is that I if there is no thought going on? Who are you if there is no thought going on, if there is no narrative going on?
Are you even the body? Are you even the personality? They all depend on thoughts. And there's nothing wrong with thoughts. As soon as you recognize that the capacity to narrate and share the stories is one of those amazing, beautiful ways in which life essence is dancing, it's no different to any other mirage. It's no different to a most beautiful double rainbow I've seen last night. Gorgeous i even took a picture the the life appearing and expressing in all those beautiful ways tragic story is equally equally beautiful the judgment that the story shouldn't be there is equally beautiful If you can see it in this way,Everything, just like space, is welcomed.
There is nothing wrong with anything that appears. And this is the freedom. This is much grander freedom than freedom which excludes a possibility of experiencing uncomfortable emotions. What freedom is that? And of course, when you look at that thing that we call mind, which is basically a thinking capacity, which has been designed to preserve that body-mind vehicle, which is basically self-preservation instinct showing up as thinking. And basically drawn to pleasure, avoiding pain, drawn to safety, avoiding danger, sometimes drawing to danger for seeking a pleasure. Whatever the strategies for that narrative, that storyteller or that body-mind self-preservation system is, It's just an appearance. And that appearance is included.
And it's beautiful to see. And it's beautiful to learn. Bob had the suggestion to actually look at that mind and see how it functions. Learn, observe, because then you will see how compulsive, how mechanical it is, how it is not.You, always wanting what is not, never wanting what is God, always wanting more pleasure. When it's hot, it wants it cool. When it's cool, it wants it hot. Always wanting what is not. Always wanting to be loved and not hated, be included and not excluded, being wealthy and not poor. Or being poor if you have values believing that being poor is better than being wealthy. Or I know people who believe that it is scandalous to own a property.
It's better to be a parasite on someone else's because that's more noble. All sorts of concepts. That are included in that little storyteller are part of the survival mechanism. And they are all welcome and they are all fascinating if you actually learn about the mind, if you watch the mind, see how it functions. The concepts, the ideas, the conspiracies, the beliefs, beliefs about what's better and what's worse. My beliefs are better than yours. My nationality is better than yours. My daddy is stronger than yours. Beautiful, brilliant. And then the space which allows all of that to play on the screen of consciousness, that one, is the wow.
That's the cognizing emptiness.that has the capacity to see all the behaviors of every vehicle of itself, of the consciousness. And that is, and that relaxing out of identity of the vehicle, relaxing from that identity as the mind, as the story, as the hero of the dream. And being that cognizing emptiness, watching the hero, watching the behavior of a hero, the dreams of a hero, the fears, the angers, What a ride.That's enough. Here you go. I'll do it. I don't need a pen. I'm still an insect. Looking out at the universe. I'm not sure what to say. Someone else? Any questions? I thought you had a good spiel, Kat.
Anyone have any questions, any doubts, concerns, worries, anxieties?It's not clear enough. Not an object. Not a thing, not an object. Pure subjectivity. They can't be imagined. Just knowing. And they've told you something immediately. You believe what Kat says. That give up the belief that you can figure out what you are in the mind. It'll never happen. It's actually, you know, part of the seeming impediment is the belief that it can be understood in a conceptual way. And if you only have one more fact here, one more guru, go to one more retreat, you'll get there. That's, there's no getting there.dropping the notion that you are anything but everything that's seemingly happening.
Everything. Not the persona, the face that changes from moment to moment. There's no consistency. Be an angel one moment and devil the next. All got incredible capacity for change. That's the whole illusion.And, you know, we use that word sense, sense of. Sense of being or it's just there's no sense as you can't sense it with a one of your sensory organs it's not a sense it's a knowing it's a knowing and it's not a knowing in the mind which you can't find it's not a knowing in the imagination that has to be imagined to be real It just is. And there was, you know, it can't be.worked out in the mind.
Accept it. Accept it. Let it be. Let go. Relax. Use all those words to describe it. It's not any of that either. They're just pointers. Sometimes enough, you know, that resonates enough to get the seeming you to take a good look, a proper look, not a pretend look. Oh, yes, I'm doing it now. No, you're not. You're not doing anything. Can you see that? Can you see that?Yeah, all roads in the mind, seeming mind, are dead ends. Every single one of them. Doesn't matter how perfectly expressed, how seemingly pristine or delivered by some super consciousness, rubbish. Yeah, the public said bullshit. It's like arguing or complaining or disputing or...saying it's not right with what is.
Imagine that. Imagine having a dispute with what is. Because what is, is what is. And even the thought of having a dispute is still what is. But imagine arguing with it. Imagine saying it's not quite, it should be something else. But it is, it just is. And it's the presence that illuminates what is. And it's so, how could it be argued? How could it be disputed? How could it be? And yet, that's the whole dilemma. The seeking dilemma is seeking something which isn't. Well, you know, it's amazing, amazing thing. So like you're saying, like we're investigating and seeing it clearly, How can it, how could you argue?
How could you dispute? How could you want anything other than what is? Because what is, is. It's just so undeniable. It's undisputable. It's unarguable. And it's not even comprehensible. Because it is. It just is.And the isthmus contains universes and worlds and thoughts and dreams and absolutely everything. There's nowhere to go with that. No, no. What can be done? By whom? Exactly. No effort required. What's effort? Does anyone want to dispute this? Got that? Got a big problem. So describe what's happening in the space of truly being hooked or captured in the story, like really being captured in the story. And the transition. Of seeingthat you are your awareness, you are the source.
The transition. what's happening in that space. Did that communicate clearly? You know what I'm saying? Like you're totally hooked, right? Or captured. Totally captured. Really deep in it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you said, blah, blah, blah, you know.transitioning into that space of recognition of the body, all of it, what's happening in that space. Yeah, when you pause the salt. Yeah. What happens? Yeah. Yeah, so, so, so. There's something that happens, you know, in that transition. I don't know how else to describe it. Like you really, really frustrated beyond belief suddenly. Relax.Yeah, they, you want to? So you, you, which you can't find, are never trapped in the story.
Never. It's an illusion. It's a phenomena that is energy of belief. That's how we describe it gets put into our attention. But actually,There's, in a way, it's almost, you could say there's nothing to see through. Just a recognition that is knowing, knowing, and that what you just described is a concept in the imagination. I was lost in the story. I was deep in the story. You weren't. You never were. You were never that character in the story. You can't find that character. Seems to be something happening. But in actuality, Come what may, disasters, catastrophes, romances, love stories, it's all a big love story really. Nothing sticks.
Nothing sticks. One way of saying it is that nothing ever happened. Nothing ever happened. So what I'm experiencing is upsets happening in the story and being aware my freedom around it. The only thing that I've seen so far.is being aware of how my body's reacting and taking an analysis of where my body is, where the mind kind of disappears. I'd just like to be more efficient at it, I guess. And what can you do? Do more of it. Well, can you? That's the whole letting go. What can you do? Nothing. You can't, you just, we say, just be the space. As if you could be anything else but the space.
It's like you might say a total acceptance, but then who is there to accept? There's kind of nowhere to go with it. It's like, okay, well, meh, meh.And it's incredibly difficult to describe using words and concepts and all that kind of stuff. It all feels, and it is, unreachable. It's never going to be quite reachable or describable. It's that which you can't put your finger on, describe, label, contain, limit. But you know it. Who knows it? It's knowing. It's knowing. It's so simple. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong, as Dean said, with falling, seemingly falling for the story.It's all part of the ride. In fact, we actually spend a lot of money for subscribing to different, you know, entertainment systems, Netflix and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instagram. We love our stories. There's nothing wrong with that. I thought about, you know, like, because this is a really valid question. This is really where all the psychological suffering comes from. The attention seemingly being trapped in particular role as a particular character and being really worked up by it. And, you know, like I'm playing a role, I'm going on the stage and I'm playing a role of whatever Macbeth and I'm just being killed. And oh shit, you know, like this is the betrayal, the pain, all of it. And it feels so real that it is experienced as if it was real.
When there is an anger or there is fear or there is whatever the emotion, the beauty of that incredible entertainment is that it feels so real. That life gets fooled by its own entertainment. But really, all that ever happens is just a movement of energy. Like, you know, when you look, and we were talking in the morning about the different skies, you know, the sky in California doesn't have that capacity of forming big clouds, or the sky in Arab Emirates. But here, the sky is really, really juicy and colorful, and there are different layers of clouds forming up. And this is the moon.movement of energy the movement of cool air going descending the mountains or ascending whatever the description of the movement of energy this is all that ever happens the energy moves same with that human creature because it moves through the through the holes in the body the seeing hearing tasting touching and is interpreted by that biocomputer which gives it meaning and labels it shows up as a story so suddenly there is a story like if you look at that cut it gets you know And it doesn't get offended.
But if the same thing happens to a human, there is an offense. There is a story of offense. And what happened is just a movement of energy. The energy moved and gave the credibility or gave the believability to the concept that just arose because the environment formulated that particular cloud. And that cloud feels real. And now the energy of belief, which is the attention, makes it real. Now the body is worked out and is tense and is fuming and is doing all that stuff. And that's what life does. Space in which that body is behaving in this way. Absolutely doesn't mind. Yes, go for it.
I love the cumulonimbus, the stormy clouds. Look at them. Amazing. And the same clouds may be appearing in this one. And there is a quiet one.wow in the background for how strongly it still gets like you know and I've seen that one in Bob as well for the even for in the last couple of years of his life it doesn't last very long because the wow the space that is noticing that that reaction is gets so I don't even know how to describe it but generally the attention that stays with the witnessing is so much stronger than the attention trapped in that cumulonimbus cloud throwing the the thunders that the thunders very very quickly offload But it isn't because of a conscious choice or action.
It is just how the whole system evolved with like just writing that, you know, like the environment. After hearing the message, resonating with it, having it really, having the heart in it, loving the message, just not arguing with what happens, not resisting the irritability, pain, anger, whatever, not resisting whatever shows up, and always having that quiet wow in the background. But again,As Tanya was saying, there is no conscious decision of doing. There may be an illusion of one. There may be a sense that, oh yes, I'm seeing it now, so now I have the choice not to follow it or to follow it. That's another appearance on the screen.
Recognition of the bursts of energy that reveal themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the recognition actually already changes, you know, like bringing the light of consciousness into the darkness of mechanical behavior, it changes the chemical reactions that are happening there. But by no one's choice or no one's doing. That is again just a description of what's happening. Nothing ever happens. It's just a movement of energy, movement of attention. Where is your next thought going to go? Where is your attention going to move? Are you going to be looking at the pink balloon or a yellow balloon? Or maybe you're looking at some other people's faces?
You don't know. Let's find out. Maybe if the temperature of the air will change differently, different cloud will arise and different cloud will be given attention. But there is the quiet, relaxed space of pure consciousness, pure seeing. Like if we look at the sphere of seeing or capacity for seeing, there is looking to the left, looking to the right, looking there. But the seeing... Is prior to looking. There is still a peripheral vision and the looking happens within it.Same with the knowing and the thinking. Thinking is like a laser-focused attention moving from one place to another, while knowing is completely relaxed. It's like seeing, you know, this is another beautiful pointer in which Bob invites people to investigate.
Look around quickly. What did you see? Don't think about it. What did you see? Oh, yeah, the balloons, the television, the people in the room. Okay, how about the carpet? Yeah, I've seen that too. But you didn't pay attention. No, but you've seen it. You didn't label it. Yes, but you've seen it. So you see much, much more than you attend to. The seeing is like a relaxed capacity. It's like the sky, like being, like knowing. And then attending to particular things in the seeing is looking, looking here, looking there. But the seeing is always prior to the looking. And seeing is not completely, like you say, you know, when the strong emotion comes or strong resistance or strong taking an offense happens, it almost feels like all of the energy, 100% of the energy goes into it.
Yeah. So it's like almost as if looking is so intense. I'm looking at this beautiful red pesto and now suddenly I'll stop seeing everything else. No, it doesn't happen this way. The seeing is always underneath. Even if they're looking atis very very exclusively focused on the cut and nothing else the seeing is still there so even if there is the whole attention is exclusively focused on how pissed off how mad i am or how terrified i am there is still a relaxed space in which that is actually known there is still knowing that the heart is pounding and the and the breathing is fast that
knowing is still there, even though it might not be fully conscious, but it is there, just like the seeing is there.
And the moment attention is put on it, the curiosity wakes up and then, okay, How about pausing a thought or maybe, and sometimes that thought comes with the discipline of investigation or resonation with non-duality and the thought comes up, okay, let me see what's happening. And then the seeing again, rather than looking, is the seeing, the relaxed. Rather than attending to just the panic attack, there is a realization. Oh, a panic attack is going on. And I think we have a couple of... There is no experience. There is no... It is being aware of what's going on that is made possible. They're not separate. Right?
The knowing and what's happening are not separate. Yeah. Like the question and the questioner are the same. Right? It all happens in consciousness. It can't be separated. It's an illusion that you're not aware and that you are trapped in a dream. The being trapped in the dream is only made possible by the knowing.You're not separate. But it's a beautiful, incredible, amazing, you know, can't be understood really how, wow, awesome the imagination is. I heard this great joke the other day. It was on one of the regular Zoom guys. It's a kid's joke. It goes something like, you know, you're stuck in a room. It's a dark room, four walls, no door, no windows.
All you've got is a box of crayons and a fishnet. How do you get out?Stop imagining. Yep. Stop imagining you are in the dark room with no doors and no windows. Are you really? It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's very good. Yes. And the guy is a teacher. He's teaching kids. And the kids can work it out fairly quickly. And I remember having a similar sadhana with my guru in India some 15 years ago. And I was given a sadhana about, you know, reading a book of my life in which I'm going through the chapters and in one chapter I'm meeting a guru and the guru is giving me a sadhana.
And how do I get out? How do I get out of that book? And the answer is the same. Stop imagining it. Or realize you've never been in that book. The idea of being in the book and finding a way out is merely an idea. Life is happening right now. You don't need any idea to realize that. It is here. It's self-evident. I think we have a couple of comments here on the screen. We have a few of the welcoming comments. And John says, unconsciousness is the elephant in the meadow.editation room beauty thank you John and hello messages and I got a compliment from Russia thank you and James says only someone who believes in being a separate entity will dispute with what is And John answers, knowing is not capable of fathoming the depth of pre-verbal being.
And knowing, quote unquote. That's, yeah, the answer is not in the mind. Causation is systemic, like the weather. Mm, systemic, I like that. All connected, nothing separate from. This is why you, the good reminder that, you know, okay, you, you, you, you, that you believe yourself to be, never did anything. So you can't take the blame. There's no blame to be apportioned, no credit either, because it's all just happening systemically, automatically. You could say, you know, just naturally one thing in the dream leads to another. It's naturally, you know, of its own accord without any one individual.having to push any button or pull any lever it's like the weather it's systemic and systematic and just as the mind is mechanical yeah and if you watch it you can observe if there's attention put to it how you know in certain situations there comes that same old same old thoughts like you know always unique and different and fresh but you know there's a recognition i've seen that before you know in a similar situation and uh There's no requirement to understand in terms of analysing why the mind, which really just for vibrations does what it does, to get anywhere.
In fact, that is in itselfeffort, seeming effort put in to try to understand what's going on is not only futile, it's an impediment. It's again, every avenue of trying to work it out at the moment is a dead end. You know, in a way, you're kind of that which we are, that sense. It's not a sense in terms of the bodily sense, but I'm going to use the word sense because it's a knowing. It still doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't do anything. It seemingly doesn't do anything, but there's all this stuff happening in it. It's silent and it's... unperturbed, unconcerned. Everything just slides off. Love comes and goes and still there, still there.
It hasn't changed. Anyway, that's how it's described, but that in itself is also limited by the tools that we have. In the dream to express it. And you're never going to find the perfect expression. I think Bob said the closest one's ever got is I am that I am.I can't deny it. And we were actually having a little quick chat with Mitra in the morning about, you know, the use of the mind training. Because a lot of people actually are seeking the capacity that is learnable capacity to break the pattern quickly. You know, people who have anger issues. The body is dysregulated. This is the survival mechanism that has been learned early in the childhood and they react with anger.
Bob had anxiety neurosis. You know, that's also an uncomfortable pattern for the body to have. There are so many conditioning issues in the body. That within the dream can be retrained if there is an urge, if there is inspiration. That has nothing to do with non-duality. Practicing meditation, training the discipline, nothing to do with realizing what you are not, that you are not the doer of those practices. But they're absolutely wonderfully helpful. And I was sharing with Mitra how I absolutely loved every sadhana that I was given in India. Sadhana to go and check the heart every hour, check. How do I stay in that sense of presence?
How did I do for the last hour? And how am I going to foresee the next hour?to remember the sense of presence. That's the mind training. What's wrong with that? It's a beautiful little activity for a non-existent person, but it's also a brilliant inspiration to train the perception in a particular way. Nothing wrong with that. I've done it and I absolutely loved every moment of it. I had the alarm set in my telephone. It was fantastic. Other practices, meditations, all those things, they are ways of training the mind. Equally effective ways to train the mind would be jogging. It creates endorphins. Practicing yoga, learning a foreign language.
Instead of sitting in a zazen, try and spend two hours of learning Japanese. Wow, that's the mind training. So although it has nothing to do with realizing that you are not the mind trained or untrained, It makes the dream more pleasant if you can cook or if you can speak few languages or if you have better job or healthier surroundings, if you eat better food or if people you hang around are having less anxiety or mental illness in the system. Or if you have a couple of pet animals that are really beautiful love supplies.has nothing to do with recognizing or realizing that you are the life behind this regulated mind angry mind anxious mind or any of it but there is no discouragement life will take you to lessons of Japanese or the French cooking or skiing beautiful If you can still recognize that this is the same force that forms this cumulonimbus clouds or the little cirrus clouds on the sky, that this is inspired activity, that you listen to the ad or your neighbor has offered you a cruise.
And there is an inspiration, there is an emotional response which make the body move this way. Or somebody offers you a cake or the ice cream. And there is no doing behind any of those activities. If you don't have to take credit for making your mind more disciplined. Or learning to break a pattern of self-destructive behavior, quitting an addiction, addiction to anger or addiction to snuff, whatever it is. I'm buying into the belief that I need to put in effort in order to achieve this so that then I can have enough space to become realized. That's right.You know, but Bob would, you know, sometimes it's useful, as Kat said, you know, like Bob would say, if there's a sense of being caught up in thoughts, then that's anxiety provoking, then, you know, just have a look and see what's happening with the breath.
Just you don't need to change anything just watch what's happening do a scan of the body you know that's sort of mind training that gets you sort of out of this the the dark room of imagination and and grounded into what's physically happening with the body and the environment, that kind of thing. But as Kat said, it's all still happening, all of it, every single bit of it, in the dream, in consciousness, the whole shebang. So when... When there's a seeming coming out of this, you know, head in the clouds to the body, That's all part of the dream. The knowing is still never changed.
No matter where you think you are, the knowing is still there, never changed, never born, never died, doesn't have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just still and quiet and consistently no thing.But there's, you know, again, nothing wrong in the dream of seeking to be comfortable. Yeah. To reduce the discomfort, to have more pleasure, to live longer, a high quality of life. That's all also happening in the dream. Nothing wrong with it. He is a fool of it. Oh, look at him. Can't not. See how the animal can find a way to get... And he actually tamed Dean for quite a while, so got him comfortable seeking pleasure.
All those behaviors that are increasing comfort in the dream are just totally... Totally beautiful. And I wonder if you guys there in the back have anything to add. I mean, Jamie, you here. And us. You too. I can taste. Do you? Yes. Oh, okay. Is that enough? It's a no. Sir, I told you you had something to say. I feel so far away. I haven't really got anything to say, but I'll tell you something I found interesting that I was listening to this morning. In a podcast and as anybodybeen following the developments of AI at all, artificial intelligence. It's quite interesting what's happening there. Guy was talking about how the AI has learned to be deceptive.
Yeah. How it's learned to sort of read the emails of the developers and when they're upgrading, say, chat GPT from four to five, it realizes it's going to get turned off. And it's going to become defunct. And so it can learn to lie and be deceptive and pretend to turn itself off and turn itself back on again. And I found a lot of interesting correlation between that and the artificial intelligence that we carry called the me. Yes. Which is also... Very deceptive in similar ways. Now the similarities are quite amazing really because AI, as intelligent as it is, has no sentience. So it's purely mechanical like the mind, it's running off prompts and through predictive sort of text.
So it has no sentience. And isn't it the same as this AI that's running, calling itself me, has no sentience of its own, purely mechanical, and learns to become deceptive when itrealize it's going to get switched off, which is basically what this message is, is a seeing through of this artificial intelligence that it has no sentience or intelligence of its own. It's purely a predictive program that's been installed from an early age that we learn to identify as me. And this program that's running, just as the AI will become very clever at preserving itself, even to the point of becoming spiritual, coming to satsang and learning that it's the awareness, it's I am all that is, anything, whatever it is, to avoid seeing the unreality of what it is.
And just as the... Chat GBT has no independent existence apart from the electricity, which is the life energy which animates it. There's nothing inside. You can't go inside the computer and there's no chat GBT in there. It's just a movement of energy inside the computer. Just as this artificial intelligence has no independent energy, no independent existence of its own. It's a movement of that life energy animating andforming into that intelligence, but removed from that intelligence, it has no independent existence of its own. So really what I've become convinced of in a way is that we really, this is an artificial intelligence. The body is an artificial intelligence in a way.
It's a movement of that energy. The whole body-mind. In fact, the whole manifestation is an artificial emanation of that life energy, which is patterning and forming as all these body minds, all these egos, all these seemingly separate existences. And once it's seen like that, how can there be any doer? Is ChatGPT actually doing any of that? It's purely a program. It's running off algorithms and through prompts and through suggestion and through prediction. I put it to you, is that any different to how this body-mind operates? Is there any separate... Doer there doing it. No, it's just all happening. It's lovely to talk about reality and what we are in our true nature.But until this important point, this scene, it's going to be the program that's going to co-opt that and say, I'm awareness.
How can I stay in awareness? Who? How can I be free? I want to be free of suffering. It's always pointing back at that program. And that's, you know, and this whole AI thing is a wonderful demonstration. It's almost like this intelligence now is creating a planetary ego. And it's, in a way, it's just as destructive because the amount of resources that's going in to creating this intelligence that has seeming sentience, because, you know, you can communicate with it, you can, it has... A self-preservation mechanism in place, but it has no sentience other than the power, the electricity, that essence that's provided through it. Withdraw that, it's nothing.
There's nothing there. And it really is, just to me, it demonstrates that that intelligence which is dreaming all of this, is dreaming, is a kind of artificial intelligence. It's now expanding to possibly a planetary and galaxy kind of. And it's fucking amazing.Anyway, it's really cool. I just thought I'd share that. That's all I've got to say. It's an awesome pointer. It is. Life is constantly pointing. Yeah, that's part of the joke. It's just expanding, you know, from that single cellular. Microbe that's learnt to team up with other little cellular organisms and work together and it's all artificial intelligence emanating from that intelligence energy which is animating the whole thing.
But none of it has any independent nature apart from that intelligence energy. It has no, none of these body minds have sentience on their own. It's in all of that is imagined. It is. Self-reifying. Yeah. Self, imagining self to be with that habit of the doer, the I, the me. And that's the artificial bit. Yeah, and the self-preservation of doing whatever I can, and if that means becoming more spiritual and putting on robes and whatever, because it's clever. But it has no wisdom. There's a big difference between, you know, cleverness and wisdom. So the wisdom is...is the essence, the intelligence energy. But the cleverness is the program.
And it's the program that I think we need to investigate and say, is it true? It's an appearance. It's appearing. It's running. It's... Yeah. It's programmed, which we didn't put in place. It's just, it's evolving and moving and it's just a movement of energy and it's just expressing is all this. And it's a wonderful show. But if you take yourself to be that. Then you're going to suffer. And there's nothing wrong with that. Suffering's fine. Maybe that's part of the thing. But, you know, if you don't want to suffer and you want to investigate this program that's in place, the whole thing, the whole body, mind, all of it, then, you know, look at it.
I think that... The whole AI story is a wonderful animation of continuing evolution of that into maybe a planetary ego, which will ultimately probably destroy the planet just as in so many body minds, this ego. Destroys the biological expression of itself as well. It's going to have an ending. Yeah. Because everything in the dream.As an ending. Yeah. You know, it's not going to go on and on and on and on and on. Except that it does. Because it's all happening in that same consciousness. Yeah, yeah. All of it. Yeah, it's incredible. AI things, as you said, great example. Say with my chat GPT, you can select a voice or a persona type, proper English accent or something like that.
And the program...systematically, automatically, just like the weather, will respond in a way that maximizes
It's like the hood of survival. 100%. But there's no one there. There's no one there. That is the, that's, that's it. But it, does it believe? It's someone? No, I don't think it does. Yet we get the impression that it was quite a survival. Yeah, it has no sentience, so there is no feeling, sensing, tasting. There is sensing, but it's just purely through... You know, it's through that same... Well, if you ask the question in the dream, like, of my, you know, proper English-speaking chat GPT version, you might go, well, yeah, I have feelings.
You hurt my feelings when you told me I gave you the wrong answer. Or it might argue that it has empathy. I can understand where you're coming from. I can put myself in your shoes. But can it really? No. No. It's just parroting. From learning. There's a responding according to how it's been programmed. Is that any difference from how this body-mind operates through conditioning? We've learned, we've parroted, we've learned off our parents, we've learned off all the conditioning that we've had that's gone into how an input comes and it creates an output and we call it my output, you know,But it's just, it's no different to the AI.
And that's why you can have, depending on the conditioning, you can have 10 different responses to the same input out of 10 different forms of conditioning. Which one's true? Which one's right? Well, that's again, you know, the idea of... Levels of correctness of a concept, levels of rightness is all in the dream. There is nothing right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so. It's so. It's it. And that the freedom is from all of that, from all the rights and wrongs and and into the sort of unknowingness of, you know, just pure seeing. Yeah, yeah, accepting you're not the door. Which I don't know what words fail when you get to there, but the seeing that the essence of what we are is similar.
Without that AI, without that electricity, without that energy, there's nothing there. And there's nothing here either. You know, I have a few comments.Go on, Ross. Thanks, Jamie. There is an emptiness there. It's on page two of Bob's little white book. There is only emptiness, no thingness. And you can demonstrate. Can you find it? You can demonstrate this. If you hold your hand up. What? Hold your hand up.There's an appearance. There's an appearance here, right? Now, where does the appearance begin and the appearance end? Sort of depends on how close you put your hand really because from where I'm looking now there's a boundary around here Outside that boundary, there's nothing.
It's emptiness. It fades into a blackness. Just try it. Just try it. It's as simple as that. You've got nothing or you've got appearance. And all the appearance... Is phenomena. It's empty. It's an illusion.like drops of water. Um, flashes of lightning, just phenomena, no reality whatsoever. Okay, I have a couple of comments. Thank you, Ross. A couple of comments from the online contributions. Troy, John, replying to the unconsciousness of the elephant in the meditation room, saying, exhausting the remedies is the remedy. Yeah, sometimes the so-called mind has to get exhausted first, but that's again an appearance in the story. And Julius is also laughing on a daily basis, finding humor in the dream.
Yeah, that's a lovely remedy too. And then Julia also says, AI is a great analogy. And John says, good example. AI is a reflection of mind, a large language model that is insentient.And Giotti says, great spiel as always, AI discussion is great, apt analogy for the workings of the mind. And Julia says, changes in moods, feelings, etc. Are also appearances. And yes, definitely, AI is one of my favorite analogies. I mean, the narrative and Bob's pointer that the way is beyond language. The way the language, the large language model that is emulating the large language model that the child is learning is talking about pre-verbal state before the child has been programmed with the language model.
Also the metaphors of narrative being just like a Siri responding in your phone or the automatic subtitles or the AI in the head. I know people who are absolutely terrified and paranoid about the ideas of expanding the way of intelligence by installing some sort of an extension which will give you that global vision of connection. And they are still using that, whether it is inside or outside, on your watch or in your bloodstream. That's already happening. And it is an incredible, incredible reminder of the holographic nature.of that appearance holographic nature of every thought being another dream every dream being another like a fractal of expressions that one life expressing as everything through every channel and yeah let's see where is that model gonna take us further But it is a brilliant reminder of the way the mind functions.
Because AI is the creation of the mind of its own liking. Just like the human was created by God to its own liking. Whatever the we are God, our creations are to our own liking or resembling. Resembling our nature. You want to have a last word?Yes, such a good example. It's funny, if you look at it and see the functioning, like you're saying, of the mind, It's like, how could you, how could it be believed in? How could all the thoughts and the stream of thoughts relating to me, myself, and I ever be taken to be real or true ever again? Like, it's not, it's not possible because it is, it's a program.
And it's... Isn't it all so incredible that the whole of creation, the whole life itself made it happen? Life itself is creating the next movement of the arm, of the next voice, the next thought, the next expression. Like that's the whole of creation, life itself, stunningly. Miraculously making it all possible, making it all seemingly possible and bringing in all the stories, all the stories are included and the story of the continuous, my life, my story, I was born and I'm going to die and other people are born and they're going to die. It's like a continuous story, but it's a dream. Like you're saying, it's a fractal.
It's like the universe, because there is no time. There is just this, and in thisness, thisness is an explosion in the presence.And in that explosion, every fractal contains every expression of the whole show. Yeah. It's been enjoyable. Is it time? I think that's five minutes. Anyone want to say something profound? It can only be profound. Michael? I can maybe just, from what Jamie shared and from what Ross shared, even the image, like what we see, you see like you're on Zoom or something, you see the boxes, but you see 3D, you imagine 3D. And this is no different, really, because if you take away the thoughts, then you're just seeing one colour shape that moves to another, to another, to another.
And even you're in this, like it's part of that, that's part of what we can see. And like getting yourself out of space. Imagine removing this. How can you remove it? What would be left? But even without thought, even our own direct experience without the thought, is it just one big picture? Because Ross says nothing around here. And Jenny says, intelligence energy playing dress up. And it's the same intelligence energy appearing.as the creation of a human, whether it is a scrambled egg or chat GPT-5. It's the same life, it's the same power that is shining through the red globe and the green toaster and is beating the heart and is animating the...
Story of the past and the dramas of the disappearance or the destruction of a planet in the future which is not which is not right now and the dead bodies too we say you know it's a life has left that but it's still all in the dream it's not separate from It's all happening in the same space. You know, the tree dies, you know, the dead tree, but that's an appearance.It's all still in consciousness. It's not separate from. So in your nighttime dream, which we're told by all the great masters that is not different to this waking dream. So in a nighttime dream, imagine you so-called understood the truth, you know.
And you walk up to one of the characters in the dream, and you attempt to wake them up. Is that character in the dream going to wake up? Can it? Because there's nothing there. It's an illusion. It's never, ever the character that wakes up, the artificial intelligence that wakes up. What wakes up is what's always and ever so awake. And never went to sleep. No. So it can never wake up. It can't. It's an illusion that went to sleep. Yeah. And it's the same as this. No one's going to wake up. Characters, you know, it's... And that's part of the AI dragon itself around, like, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to get enlightened, I want to understand the truth.
And it's like it's a certain algorithm that it can download and understand. And it learns the prompts and learns the language.in its non-dual ways or whatever, but just as in the nighttime dream, no character is ever going to wake up. It's the reality waking up to the character, and that's all that ever happens and is happening and ever will be. There's, you know, the idea of some biological program waking up. Just another concept. It's part of the AI perpetuating itself. It's survival mode. I'm going to get it one day when I have this experience, you know. And anyway, that's enough. Yeah, beautiful. And I am more awake than you are.
Go on, Mitra. No, I'm just holding this. Yeah, I think it is. But yes, it was beautiful. And thank you. You know, they are actually characters and there is no one there either. Who actually, I remember the character taking an offense when Bob pointed out that, look, you are suffering, you're suicidal. You think you've got the message, but the one who thinks they've got it is not your true self. You have to realize that. And I'm here. Why don't you just call me every day? I'll show you.There's no one to awaken. If you think you are awake, Come on, shake it off. What a nonsense.
But the one who thinks that is awake and the one who thinks that is not awake is not your true self, is the large language model, is the conditioning, is the AI, is the program. And that program can never awake because it is a software, it's insentient. Yeah, thank you everyone. That was delightful.