This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
Okay, so welcome everyone. We have six people here with us and there is another one coming. And this is how is the Sunday gathering going to look like today, because we have a couple of young boys. Young men, I'd say, they're not boys anymore, with some flu, COVID-like symptoms, and we frankly don't want to share it. We can share every other things, not necessarily the germs and bugs and diseases. We're going to spread joy.So the joy of recognition that there is nothing to get, there is nothing wrong, there is no one who needs to improve or find themselves or follow the soul journey or do the right thing or seek or achieve or become or learn.
None of that is necessary or required in any way. It is just a joy of recognition that this moment as it shows up, as it is, is the reflection of that emptiness in the form. That is the emptiness showing up as this moment, as this form. And it constantly does it. It never stops. Anytime you look, there is a presence. And it shows up like this. It shows up as the content of this dream, as these walls, as these people or whatever, or these stories in the mind or these resentments and fears. That's how that... Life essence plays out and shows up today. But I got a little bit of a feedback recently from someone who joined us for the first time at some point.that Initially, when people come across this message, they try to fit it into their belief systems.
They try to follow it up with the mind. And after following it up for 5, 10, 15 minutes, they get exhausted. And they can't take in anymore because it's just so much to take in. It's so overloading. When you try to follow up, the emptiness is formed. Oh, my God, how am I going to grapple with that? You are not. You are not going to be grappled with anything. So Bob sometimes would start the call or early in the call would say that listening has to be from that empty space of the heart. Don't use your cognitive capacity to listen. Don't try to understand it intellectually.
Don't try to make it to an... It fitted into the language, the symbolic language. He would also say, like Nisargadatta often pointed out, that people talk about the awareness. So what is the awareness? It isn't it. You can't grasp it. You can't put the boundaries around it. You can't define it in any way. What is presence? What is space? It isn't anit. So trying to understand it in this typical sort of intellectual cognitive way is going to fail. It's impossible. And the only thing that is to be understood in this regular mind based way. Is that it can't be understood by the mind. So if you understand that, this is an invitation for the mind to just relax, just relax, get out of the way.
Quit trying. Quit trying to comprehend the intricacies of the pointing because That's not the point. The point is to resonate on the level of the core or the essence or the heart. Resonate in a way of really verifying what is being said with your own experience. It might, you know, there will be many, many different ways of describing the natural state. Not every pointer, not every way of describing will sit right. You may have different preferences for vocabulary. It may sit better when... For example, you know, Nisargadatta had some of those very, very colorful pointers, which caused more confusion than clarity in people. I had countless phone calls with people who said, look, you know, it is obvious.
It is just this.I thought that was just as clear and as transparent as anything. But then I read Nisargadatta saying this. And shit, no, that's not my experience. And the mind started grappling with it, grappling with some metaphor, with some colorful metaphor. And that's not the point again. The pointer isn't supposed to invite the mind to work it out. The pointer is supposed to either resonate or just be discarded. Not every pointer has to resonate. Pointers are often contradictory. Some pointer will just completely, oh yeah, I could easily say that. And other pointer, no, no, this just doesn't really make sense. doesn't make, doesn't call for the resonance.
So listening to pointers is in this way, not trying to work them out, understand them, learn them, and then preach them later. That's again the crucial difference between pointing and teaching. There's nothing to learn here. It's absolutely nothing to teach here. Bringing up that resonation with that which is already here, already present, kind of bringing the attention back to the source of attention and realizing, yes, of course, there is an attention, there is amovement of attention. There is the aliveness. Yes. How can you learn that? You don't have to. It's already there. So nothing really needs to be learned or understood. It is just a recognition of that which is already present.
So I have, again, a list of questions. And I wonder, there is seven of us here, if anyone would like to take up a challenge and answer one of those questions just for fun, just remembering that predicament that... It is already clear and certain and already present and already beating your heart and already looking out of your eyes. It already is your natural state. It already is. So how those questions would bring you back to that realization? That is nothing that needs to be overcome or retrained. It just needs the basic recognition. And I have those questions that I got from Mark West's visits to Nisargadatta.
And just one stood out right now from November 22nd, 1976. How to turn away from longing and desire. Anyone up for this one?It's just an idea. How to turn away from longing and desire. You can straight away see how the ideas, the Buddhist ideas mainly, that desires and aversions are the source of all suffering. Again, in a different ways, in a different language, and mainly in Bob's language, it would probably sound that not the desires and aversions are the problem, but the attachment to the desires and aversions, the idea that they are mine, that they're personal. So how do I turn away from my desires?You can see already by deconstructing the question, where is the problem?
The I, I as a doer with the mighty power to choose what I focus on, I decide to turn away from desire and from aversion or from longing. And how do I do it? Well, if I can, I wouldn't be asking why. So if I'm, or how, so if I'm asking how, I might have already realized that, hmm, it's not so easy. It doesn't really work. I'm not really doing it. The attention follows the longing. The attention follows the desire. The attention floods that longing. I want freedom. I want bliss. I want cosmic union. Oh, yes, I want it. I really do. I want it so much.
I want it with all my heart. How do I turn away from that? It's too late. It's too late. Life, this ever-fresh present moment, has taken shape of this longing right now. Right now, all you can do is just be present with that. And nothing else you can do. And you cannot not do it. That's already here. It's too late. Now, okay, how do I turn away from that?later because now is too late in the future i have to construct the whole idea of the future believe it into reality and now perhaps there is a hope for me so now we have the me constructed we have the future constructed and we look for the way for that me to achieve the goal in the future or turning away from the longing which is already present Wow, what an impossible task.
And that's actually, that's the nature of questions. All the questions.That's why the questions exist. The questions are coming up from the point of view of a perception of the individual self called the me wanting something else. If not now, then at least in the future, in the next satsang or maybe next lifetime. Or maybe after the next retreat. And that me wants to be there to see that change and that achievement of that future goal. So this is when we see actually how the whole doubting, how the whole longing is constructed, that it requires the whole suffering. It requires the me construct and it requires time and it requires a capacity to imagine something else than what is already present.
And all of them, they are absolutely wonderful capacities. They're amazing in themselves. But the moment the identity seeps in and I am now that person, I am the one who is trapped in that suffering of longing or suffering of desire. Again, too late. This moment is already lost. This moment, life has already taken that shape. And there is no other moment. There's onlySo now there is a pointer called surrender. You're going to join me? Oh, we have one more coming to the party. Okay, so I'm going to just change the name. You keep going now, and I'll just change the name. You're talking about the pointers.
Yes. Give us a couple. No, no. Keep going. So I wasn't really, I was just deconstructing the question. Here is the question, how to turn away from longing and desire? So now you have a question from the seeker asking you how to turn away from desire and longing. How would you answer? Well, you have to see, don't you? Like you have to see what longing and desire actually is. Heck, the idea of turning away is enforcing, there's a me doing the turning away. And there's a me that's longing and there's a me that's desiring and there's a me that's going to change and fix and improve a certain circumstance.
So longing and the idea of longing and desire really is just descriptions of a certain energy that's appearing in the appearance. And the appearance includes everything. So in an appearance,everything appears and a fixation on a longing or a desire is a description of an energy that's described as longing or desire. If you take away the description, is there longing and desire? What does a longing feel like? What has anyone felt a longing? Is there a such thing as a longing? But there could be this urge, there could be this existential angst, this deep, you know, unsatisfactoriness that's sort of, you know, you could argue that it's a visceral thing that's, you know, it's in my body, there's something that feels uncomfortable, unresolved, incomplete.
Yeah. And if we call that longing and desire, okay, there's something missing. And the thing that's longing and really, if you want to really look at longing and desire, it's that separation, that sense of separation, that sense that I'm a me in a world that was born and is going to die and is going to make the most of it in that phase in between and work it all out and have some fulfillment, some satisfaction, some love, some... acceptance, some, you know, achievement, whatever it is. And all this is nothing. I mean, we know that nothing can be gained in that realm or whatever can be is absolutely temporary.
And so there's a, so.What I'm describing is a number of different ways of viewing this longing and desire. Firstly, the idea of longing and desire is an idea, a description. Secondly, if you want to really say that it's real and you're convinced, no, that I have this longing and desire, okay, there's a visceral sense of incompleteness. And what is that? What is that? That's the sense that I am separate, that I am a me in a body who's born to die. And that incompleteness, that is another idea, it's another label, it's another description. But what is, is the completeness, the unboundness, the freedom of longing, of all ideas, not just longing and desiring, but every idea, every belief, every concept, the freedom of knowing or not finding any answer in the mind.
In a description of just the recognition of what is, is what is, undeniably, always there, always. And what that is, what we're talking about is the presence, is the constant presence, because everything's always appearing in this state of presence in this nowness, in this immediacy, and nothing can appear outside that. So the very first memory that you may recallalways has to appear in this same immediate presence. So the longing and desire idea is appearing in this immediate presence. Everything is appearing in the immediate presence. So the fixation on any concept, any belief, any idea, any identity is appearing in this now. And eventually the now becomes more.
I mean, this whole message is, these pointers are all about recognising and remembering the absolute obviousness of aliveness itself, the immediate presence and the attention sort of basking in that rather than all the details and the stories and everything else that it comes up with, which is endless.What was the question? No, that was lovely. That was actually a brilliant way of deconstructing, you see, deconstructing the whole illusion, deconstructing illusion of labels that you put on this desire and longing, showing up that this moment is showing up as the intensity of this type. And to actually even call it as such, of course, there was some processing going on, some comparison with the past.
How would you know to call it desire? How would you know to call it longing? If you didn't have it before, if it wasn't preconditioned, if it didn't... It uses the conceptual mind, it uses the language to even give itself a definition. And as it is already defined as it, and of course the me is also defined as me, and the separation between the two. Now we lose sight of this immediate happening. Of the immediacy of the surge of energy, surge of sensations happening in the presence. If the mind is put aside for just a moment, then that is what we are present with. And it is precious.And it is intense and it is beautiful.
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with desire. There's nothing wrong with longing. Until the process comes, until the thought process comes and calls it wrong. Nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so, like Bob used to quote Shakespeare all the time. Any sensation, any perception, any story, any appearance is just what is, is just the way this ever fresh omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience shows itself to itself in the moment. Now the story that comes and says, this is me and this is my. This is my suffering and I don't want it. I have to get rid of it. How do I do it?
See, those are all superimpositions on the surge of energy in the moment. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, sensing, vibrating. And now the story has been imposed on it. This is I. This is mine. This is not I, this is not mine. And amongst that imposition, Within that story comes the suffering. See how the suffering was completely absent when the mind was absent. If you just push gently aside all the definitions, definition of me, definition of thee,feelings, definitions of world, and just you are completely present with that vibration sensation. There is an openness, there is a curiosity, there is nothing wrong, it's quite yummy. Of course, some of the sensations and perceptions might be quite challenging or uncomfortable for the body.
Like various range of sensations that we qualify as pain. But this is not what the non-duality is addressing. Although it might also be quite interesting and helpful to look at physical pain in the same way, we do understand that physical pain has a different function. It's a survival function in the body. Is the call for attention where it is required for that vehicle to survive. I think we have a comment here from Haman. Yeah, he is wishing us a beautiful day and seeing us next time. And Tanya says, immediate presence. Yeah, Tanya, would you give us a few words on that? I just really liked that phrase when it came out of Dino's mouth.
Good to see you, Dean.Knowing is knowing. Is. Always is. Like, say, am knowing. I am knowing, but there's no one to know. Just is-ing. Ising. And from there, really, there's not really a lot more that can be said, but there is kind of like. As you're saying, thoughts have no... There's nothing in them. Empty. Empty.empty, can't be grasped. It's like Kat said, the desire, what appeared, what's labelled as desire, needing, wanting, There's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with any of this. It's just being, being. There's nothing wrong with that until there's attention paid to a so-called thought, which is God knows what. I have no clue.
Some kind of something that attention is given to focus. And then all of a sudden it appears as if, oh, I've stopped easing. Never stop easing. It just appears to be a... lost, distracted by, caught up in, but nothing ever changes. Still just is knowing, immediate presence, always as it is, nothing else.What can you do with that? You can't be labelled. I don't know. I have no clue what I am. There's just, gosh, could I be sitting, could I be saying I don't exist? If I didn't exist. Can you deny, can, can ising be denied?It seems not. Logically, it seems not. I can't say for sure.
What can you say for sure? How can you stop desiring? Please give me an instruction how I can stop desiring. Can't even plan your next thought. There's no one there planning. There's no one there to stop desiring. These so-called things that we call desires will come and they will go. They'll come and they will go. Just like the sense of I am a me, a mini me, an individual entity comes and goes. Comes and goes.Somebody asks you, who are you? Oh, I am such and such. It comes up spontaneously. Spontaneously. Something is made up on the spot. And that what I am in the dream changes all the time.
It is constant in its changing. Essentially the same thing. There's nothing in the dream that is, that,stays. It's all empty in that way. It's all empty. But then again, it appears full. This cat, I, um, Now here and nowhere. Nowhere, nowhere, now here. Breaks down to now here. I love that. There, nowhere and now here. That's just, it's brilliant. It's immediate presence. Is knowing, is in, being.We've run out of descriptive words. That's it for now. No. Yeah. Right. I'm going to call. Okay, sorry. Sorry. I don't know. And try and get out of now here. Try and not be now here. Like you said, try and...
Yeah. The whole crazy idea of trying. What a lovely movement. Labeled as an impossible situation because to, you know, trying may be happening, but that's also an interpretation.Because trying any movement, if you call it coming or you call it going or you call it moving away or moving towards, it's all interpretation. It's all from the reference point. And that's beautiful. I love when, Tanya, when you said, you know, and everything is just appearing. There's nothing there. And literally, this is really a funny way English language functions. Nothing there. You know, in Polish language, you can't say there is nothing. You would say there isn't anything.
But in English, nothing is something that exists. And yet it really doesn't because it's nothing. So the funny conundrum of the language even pointed within those funny words. And by the way, the nowhere broken to now here, that was Bob's play. And probably 10,000 other people discovered it because it's very obvious. But even that nothing is there, everything is just an appearance. So it's not really nothing because it appears as something. But it is no thing that appears as something. And that's the funny little play of the pointer that comes from Hindu religion of Shiva Shakti. Or Tao, the yin and yang, or shamanism, the five.other sky and the mother earth they always point towards duality they always talk about duality good bad pleasant painful but how else and what else can you ever say if you are communicating within the dream where everything appears dualistically because there is no other way for things to appear Things have to appear.
You wouldn't know joy if you didn't know no joy. There has to be an absence as a background for anything to stand out. The warmth, the cold, the winter, the summer, the good, the bad, the pleasure, the pain, all of it. Only exists because it has the opposite. So the pointing naturally has to also embrace the, well, by using language, has to embrace the limitations of the language. So the dualistic pointers of Shiva Shakti being one, not two, just two aspects. And the good way to actually point it is, again, the programming, the computer. You know, you have 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1. Seems like two things, 0 and 1.
1 is 0 and 2 is 1. No, not really. This is presence, absence, presence, absence, presence, absence. 0 means no current. 1 means current. So there's flow of energy, no flow of energy. But when there is no flow of energy, there is a potential for the flow.of energy so it kind of collapses the whole semi duality into one one movement of energy energy is present energy is potentially present but this is energy nonetheless so if we look at the whole thing called appearance or god or omnipresence or brahman atman whatever buddha nature big mind whatever you want to call it the emptiness, the space, is just absence or presence of particular wavelengths.
One wavelength is the whole seeing. And within the seeing, again, you have different wavelengths showing up as colors, as shapes. And same with the sound, same with the sensations. It's all movement of energy showing up as every particular aspect of the appearance. What a show! Just like when you watch a movie and you see one light projected out through that film with different shades and showing the moving pictures of the screen. Or better yet, you put your VR goggles and you look around and the whole world is projected everywhere with the depth, with the movement. Brilliant. Presence or absence of particular wavelengths. That's what it is.
And on top goes the story. The story, the making sense.But for the same situation, you can have 10 people having 10 incredible, incredible, elaborated, colorful stories that they could say about it. You know, going to buy the bread rolls in a shop and sleeping over the banana peel. Oh, you know, but what happened? There was, I had an inkling in the past. And then my grandmother, she was a psychic. And she saw that I will have the accident at that age. And I had a dream last night and Pleiadians were whispering to my ear that this is going to happen. And also my attention has been distracted because I didn't take the vaccine, but someone was breathing on me and I got the spikes.
Thousands, thousands of stories of the complete meaningless event, moment in time. And this is what these incredible projectors are capable of. The dreaming machines being a reflection and extension of God, the omnipotence. The omnipotence experiencing itself through dreaming machine like this. As it looks around, it projects the world. As it imagines the overlay of that projection, it has 10,000 stories potentially to say and maybe one or two to say. And seeing it as in this way,from that, not really even the touch observer, because there is no need for an observer. There's no need to imagine an observer watching the whole show, including the body in it, because it is registered without the imagined agency there.
It is registered. Like when you wake up in the morning, you knew you had a good night's sleep. How did you know? You remember nothing of it. And yet it is being registered.The heartbeat, it isn't really focused, there is no attention in it, but it is registered. The temperature in the room, you notice it when the attention calls for it. Oh, it's freezing, oh, it's hot. But without any attention attending to it, it is still registered. By who? There is, you know, the whole machine is already programmed to function and to project and to dream and to experience, to be that extension of God who can see, think to your eyes, feel, hear, taste, touch and smell for nothing.
Just for the, just because.Isn't that brilliant? Isn't that fantastic? Yeah. So who am I? Am I the zero or the one? Am I the everything or the nothing? Yeah. Yeah. The infinite potentialities? Yeah, the good question is, do you want to assert who you are? Do you want to choose I am this and not that? Because that is a seeming choice of separation, which is not a choice anyway. Am I nothing? Am I everything? Or am I maybe this? Or maybe I'm just a person? Or maybe I'm... As Tanya was saying, you don't even know that that thought would come. Where did that thought come?
Yeah, it just shows up. And again, it has been registered. You see how assuming a position of separate entity is also just the appearance. Registered by that cognizing emptiness, which isn't a thing, by that pure potentiality, which isn't a thing. It isn't exactly zero, but it is no thing. Fruit fly. It's a fruit fly. Appearing.And Jane, would you like to unmute? Can you hear me? Yes. Hey. Yeah, I struggle. This is all really good stuff, but I struggle a bit about the projection. So it's all an appearance. I'll just say a whole lot of things and see if it makes sense at the other side, all right?
Yeah. So it's all a projection. And what you're saying is this. What I understand is that every mind-body machine sees the world in a particular way. There's no reality. It's just the individual body-mind. Projects the appearance.Is that right? You could call it this way. You know, when you're dreaming at night, you project a different appearance, right? And you may project 10 different appearances throughout the whole night. And you are not doing it. Yeah. You're a projector doing it on autopilot. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So I get that. But, you know, we all live together, you know, all the body minds live together and it sort of makes sense.
We all label something so we can get on and... Live our lives, you know, so for the sake of convenience, we call a car a car, so that we can kind of operate together. So what you say is there's no objective reality or no objective appearance, that we all have our own perception or our own dreaming. But there is, it just seems to me to be, there must be something out there objective because there's a kind of consensus in order that the world operates. Do you get the point I'm trying to make? Yeah, I totally get it.Within the appearance, you know, let's say you do the lucid dreaming training and within the appearance you agree to together to dream with your partner or your group of lucid dreamers to dream that you meet on the desert in the oasis.
So you collectively dream the same desert and the same oasis. You describe it with details and within that dream, that is where you interact with that lucid dreaming. It's nothing wrong. Within that dream, this is the consensus reality. It is an objective reality. And within that dream that we are here, This is the consensus reality. We don't walk through the walls. If we jump off the buildings, the bodies will smash. We don't eat poison. We don't eat, you know, it is within that dream. And now if you want to really speculate of what is real and what isn't real, you may want to chat with the quantum physicists.
They will mess up with your brain even further. Yeah. Yeah. Because we can't say the way this projector is actually tuned, it already, as it sees things, it on automatic already recognizes things. And when you look at the animals, the way animals function, they also don't walk through the wall. They also recognize the shapes and forms. They don't have this.stories of those shapes and forms. They don't give them meaning. They don't have the history of those buildings, just like you don't have a history of the buildings you see in your dream. And yet, within that dream, there are certain kind of boundaries, like in the game, like in the computer game.
You can have five lives or you can have 10 lives. But as you enter the game, that is what is agreed. In this one, you breathe air, you don't breathe water. And yet, if you really want to see how that overlay of projection happens, what is underneath that layer of projection, the easy way is to look on when you get up in the morning. And before the download happens, actually, I remember we had that very often and we had a good laugh with Bob when he would wake up and we wouldn't really even know what the day of a week it was until, oh, yeah, what is it, Monday?
Oh, shit, I have to go to work. And Bob says, and what's on for me? Oh, yeah, you have one Skype call at 10 o'clock, another one at 12. I'll be home by 2. And, oh, you could cook some lunch. So before that information are downloaded from the cloud of memory, before that cloud of memory. Is accessed, there is just presence in the morning. Also, another wayto actually look at it. It's like you are sitting on your sofa or in your comfortable chair and you can see around the room and even without closing your eyes, you can picture your favorite pet who died a decade ago.
And you can smell it and you hear its sounds or you can picture your mother's voice. Even the thought of it and it will already appear in the cognitive capacity. The sound of the voice of your mother. And there it is. What is it? How is it projected? How did it overlay that present reality of sofa or chair or table or whatever? And suddenly this new element has appeared and is so sensory rich. Or the smell of, I don't know, Chanel 5. And then, wow, it is there, but it isn't. Well, but it is. So is it or it isn't? What's real? The capacity of this projector to use the memory, to use the fantasy, to imagine yourself on Copacabana Beach or imagine yourself interacting.
See how often we even rehearse conversations, you know, when, oh, I have to talk with my employees and I have to tell them to get this done or that.And you kind of, the autopilot rehearses the whole conversation before it even happens. And it seems real, it appears real, it may even spike the cortisol, the whole chemical cocktail in that projected vehicle. And trying to understand it or put the boundary, you know, what's real, what's not real, isn't necessary. Yeah, no, that was, I think in just, in one sense you've clarified and in another way it's even more. Yes. Nearly, it's almost. More astounding when you think about it in that way, layer upon layer upon layer.
It is. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Kat. I haven't finished with this issue, rest assured. I'll come back to it. It's really good. Thanks. Ah, looking forward to it. You want to add something? No, I think it's an amazing thing. There's a sense that there's a me or that there's something projecting a me in the world and there's a distant and it's sort of that's reality. And it really comes, it's a magnificent thing when that becomes When it deconstructs, not deconstructs in a hallucination, because you could take a chemical and it can deconstruct.But when you can see that it's whimsical, it hasn't got the same solidity that you always thought it did.
And that can be like, it can be, can just be exposed in many different ways. I know that when I, like when you're describing the waking up in the morning, there's been so many experiences where you can see the way everything comes online slowly from nothing to, oh, there's a sense of a body. Oh, there's a bed that the body's sitting on. Oh, there's a window. So there's a room. And, oh, there's a day of the week. And, oh, there's hands and everything. Just if you could break it, if you could see it under a magnifying glass almost and watch how it just comes online, it's all these little fragments, like these little packets of energy coming together, formulating this complete picture that, you know, when you're fully awake and lucid and up, it's solid.
It's not solid. It never was solid. So continually seeing that it's broken down into these fragments. I mean, I was walking in the forest the other day and there was a massive tree. There was massive trees everywhere. And is the tree really big? I mean, All of a sudden it's an image and the image appears to have distance andand size, but size relative, big has to be relative to small and distance has to be relative to itself. And all these things can collapse. And someone else was describing to me the other day, oh, so you've got to hold these two things at the same time.
No, who would be holding and juggling? You're the great divine juggler, juggling different forms of reality and seeing everything all together. No, that's not true either. It's just sort of all I'm doing is highlighting the whimsical nature of what was once something that you really, you know, spent many, many years believing to be solid is not as solid as all. And the solidity is even designed as part of the whole show. If it wasn't appearing solid, then we would be walking through walls and banging into, you know, like it just wouldn't function. I don't know why it functions. I don't have any explanation as to why it functions and how it functions.
Yet all I know is that the reality, all the consensual reality. That people claim is far more fluid and it's not solid. It's not a solid. It's not a solid. Well, we take the complexity for granted when you describe that waking up in the morning and how, you know, things come online. I think that's a...a good way of describing it, but, you know, I certainly take that for granted, but it is amazingly complex really, isn't it? Incredible, layer upon layer. And amazingly simple because in the end all the complexity sort of collapses too and all there is is this, back to the is-ness again. Vibration, yeah, just all vibration, yeah.
Yeah, and that's actually a great way to put it. You know, the complexity, the great complexity is in the mind trying to grasp it and trying to work it out and dissect it and divide it. And mind is a division instrument. It is the instrument of duality. That's what it does. It, you know, there's a singular seeing. And anything that appears within that seeing is part of it. It is content of it. And the mind comes and it says, no, this is I here. And this is the coffee cup. And this is chair. And this is another chair. And this is a window. This is wall.
This is you. This is Jane. This is Tanya. Suddenly you have 10,000 things. But in the direct experience, when we step down, we relax the mind a little bit and just... Take it all in. Wow. That's all there is. There is this singularity. In the heart of hearts, in the essence, in this direct, immediate experiencing, there is no division. There is no complexity.credible simplicity is mind-blowing when there is no mind it's like wow but there is nothing to say
Without the mind, there is no words. Beyond mind, beyond words. Just this. Ooh, wow. And this, again, the capacity, the quality of that cognizing emptiness, the aliveness, the movement of that makes every appearance very fleeting, very impermanent.
It shows up and now it's different, now it's different. Like Bob would say, you know, the 10,000 cells have died and been replaced in your body without even registering. The conscious sort of awareness of it. How many air particles have been exchanged by that machine in the meantime? There is no meantime. Meantime is also in the mind. The whole time, the whole time, the whole timeline, the projection, the past, the future, the comparison, all exist in that incredible cognitive capacity, the capacity to imagine, image in, make mental images. But the immediacy of the direct experience, and this is really what the non-duality pointing is, you know, if you actually relax the thinking, relax the mind and get this intuitive grasp, yes, there is is-ness.
Existing being yeah even if i say i am not well obviouslyIt has been said because I'm here. It's like the old example of the writing on the glass. You know, there is a glass right in front of us, the big, big glass doors. And in the middle of those glass doors, there are little squares there. So you don't bump into the glass as you walk because the glass is clean and you might miss out. So the little squares show that there is a glass. But if there was no square, or if there was a little sign, there is no glass here. Sign on the glass saying there is no glass.
It still proves the existence of the glass. So if I'm saying I'm not there, that still proves the existence. Not of I, but existence itself. Existence of the glass, which is just completely transparent, translucent.But it's just a metaphor. Every metaphor is, again, is the constraint of the mind, therefore is limited. Because there is something outside the glass that could bump into it. I think we have people on Facebook saying, Jyoti says, a video game analogy may work here. All the players have the common background and rules, but different parts to play. Yeah, yeah, isn't it brilliant? Oh, she said, Kat just said the same thing.
Yeah, okay, yeah, isn't it sweet? The synchronicities when it happens. You know, like it's notorious when the mind is relaxed. It's notorious if there is not that much thinking happening. Suddenly the thought comes up of, yeah, yesterday the thought came up, oh, you're going to call the guy. And at the exact same second, the phone is vibrating. How many times? I don't really even have any other phone calls. It's always happening this way. The little synchronicity is just winking. The life essence just winking at you. This is a dream. Remember, what's the odds? No odds. Remember, it's a dream. And we have answers here. And immediate presence says, Tania, 0.5.
Yeah, cool. That was on 0101. Answer 0.5. Yes, andHe also says the world building of this life essence is unmatched. Laughing out loud. Love. Yeah, amazing, isn't it? That's why it's just flicking, you know, it's just this million worlds, the potentiality is infinite. Perfect harmony of the biomachine extends to everything. It's quite easy to harmonize if everything is expressed through the one. Yeah, yeah, just take the sense of separation out of the equation and see it is really just the same energy appearing as seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling, the visual wave, the electromagnetic wave, the sound wave, any wave. And then, yeah, where is the place now for any me, any controller?
And immediately in this moment, when that mind is pushed, parked aside, what is wrong? What needs to be grasped? What needs to be followed or turned away from? What desires are the problem? Are there desires? If everything in this immediacy is just the ink, the experiencing, and it's only now, it's only a...fleeting momentary experiencing. The content is flowing and changing all the time. So that calls for For a while, really. She just thinks that's too late. Oh, okay. Sure. Okay. So anyone else would like to contribute to the question or should I bring another one? They're all the same, really. Every question ever asked is the variant of a question, how to get rid of all questions.
You know, how to find the peace and the serenity, which is my birthright, which is the natural state. You know, nobody was born with questions. Nobody was born with sense of agency. How do I do it? How do I get there? What should I do to become in the future? All those questions are the same sort of longing for respite, from suffering.And respite from suffering is not in the future. There is no future. Respite from suffering is now or never. And how do I do it? See the eye for what it is. See how the eye does suffering. And see that that registering. Is completely beyond the I and the suffering and the doing, is completely free from any suffering already, right now.
The experiencing, the pure capacity for aliveness, for knowing.sees the I arising, the desire arising, the movement of the whole, you know, you are that screen of presence and the identity, the self-center, together with its story, together with its drama. Its sense of separation, its sense of luck, existential angst. I'm lacking, I'm missing, there is something wrong with me. I have to only hope that in the future this will be fixed because I hate the way this present moment is appearing right now. This is all coming from that imagined agency, that hallucinated sense of self that only appears momentarily and disappears. There's nothing solid about it.
An hour ago it wasn't there. Two hours ago it won't be there. It will be something different appearing and saying I. See how the same I, one moment tells you, Bob had this example, I love you, I love you, I'll do anything for you. And the next moment the same I says, I hate you, I'm going to kill you. The same seemingly because there is no I really there's no one there. It's just that just the sense of presence, the thought borrowing or hijacking that life energy and present.itself as the entity that entity which is you know one one day it is a child another day as a teenager one day it has good self-esteem another day it is full of self-pity or another moment that emotional core that self-center that eye of a cyclone, whirlpool, what is it?
What is it made of? And doesn't it appear in you, in that which you are prior to it? Didn't you exist a moment before the suffering sit in a scene? Didn't you exist?Always, really. Forever. In the timelessness of now. I think we have one more. A heartfelt question. Looked at needs. No answer. Looked at needs no answer. It leads to just this. Yeah. Heartfelt question needs no answer. Just really feel it to the fullest. Feel the question and marvel. Because when you actually get into the core of the energy that spring up as this translation, whatever it is, oh, I remember having those, you know, this seeking spree where the identity of a seeker was the predominant or prevalent identity amongst 10,000 others that were just fleeting, dancing.
And the desire or the longing for the truth for oneness for cosmic union from respite respite from suffering and i also remember just amplifying the longing to the point of melting completely melting in that energy of Love, just pure love. Longing for love? How could you possibly long for love if you didn't know what you're longing for? That love is on the bottom of the longing.just staying with, just like Ant says, dissolves any sense of separation. And in that vibration, it settles. It's quite a beautiful process to just stay present to whatever shows up without labeling it, without running away, distracting from it. Or even stay present with need to run away and distract from it.
Just that open curiosity. See how life, what life is going to bring to the table right in this moment. How is it going to look right in this moment?Because necessarily in this dream, there will be pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, joy, sadness, joy, sadness, day, night, day, night, winter, summer, winter, summer. So? That's the joy of it. Anyone next question? Or anyone wants to hop in? Just find the next question of Mark. January 6, 77. How do you escape from all this turmoil? Isn't it the same question?There is another one that is a little bit different. Did Maharaj not have any Kundalini experiences because of his sadhana?
And if he did, these experiences must have some value. Lovely. Value of the experiences. What a wonderful, wonderful topic. The order of value is what makes a difference. If there is no order in value, if every experience, every breath, is precious what does it matter whether you have kundalini experience or whether you have multi orgasm or whether you have good chocolate kink or whether you've been tortured or raped if there is no order of value and who or what brings the order of value my experience is better than yours or bob had this experience and i didn't so unless i have the same experience i'm not there yet or i want to try this or i want to experience that because if i do something will change Well, of course, every experience is precious in a way.
Every dream, because they are all they are ultimately, are dreams.And there is often a mistaken idea. People come to find pleasant experience lasting forever. And they call it enlightenment. Oh, I had it, you know, I had it for two years. I had it for a whole week. I was in ecstasy for... Whatever. My mind was quiet. There was no thoughts for that long. And this was pleasant experience. And I want that pleasure back. Or I heard that someone somewhere had no thoughts or was sitting in samadhi. And I want that too.Again, you can see how the mind establishes itself, the mind, the division tool. There is no mind, it's just the algorithm, running algorithm, algorithm that simulates the self in time, algorithm that puts up the commentary, constantly commenting, interpreting, comparing, judging.
If you see the algorithm for what it is, and you see the desire for experiences, desire for pleasure, desire for safety, desire for cosmic union or any other description that one could have, it's... It's just a vibration. It's just a movement of energy. It's just a sensation that appears in the body and circumstantially interpreted by the mind. You know, the same energy may show up in the Biley dancer who never heard of Kundalini experiences. And that will be interpreted maybe as a call for fame. I want to be the best Biley dancer in the world. Or the same vibration appears in a 25-year-old boy, and it will be desire for having three girls at once.
That interpretation, circumstantial, according to the conditioning, according to available concepts. In the spiritualseekers that may be desire for Kundalini. Ultimately, it is just the mind optimizing the experience, optimizing the safety, the survival and the pleasure of the machine. Dreaming. And often that can be like such an interesting sort of paradoxical trap in itself as these experiences get more heightened and more glimpses and more, you know, you become the witness and then you become the divine witness and then you become the divine, divine witness. And all these things seem to, you know, in a subtle way, they just perpetuate the idea that I'm doing it or I'm having it.
I'm having the experience. Therefore, I am getting closer to the pinnacle, to the final state, to the complete realization, to the ultimate truth. And I do distinctly remember that there was such a trap in this progressive sort of ideal of chasing higher and higher. And, you know, I was convinced that I was on the path. I was following directions of Nisargadatta and following some of the descriptions that I've heard of others.these experiences were so profound that they were confirming that, yes, I am on the right path. I am progressing. I am getting closer. And it was such an amazing trap to realize that each experience was actually, in the end, as blissful and as wonderful as they were.
They were always reinforcing and perpetuating the self, the idea that I exist, that I am a separate entity who's having this experience and who's progressing and who's ultimately getting to these, you know, final states, these complete states, the complete. End state. So it was wonderful to, you know, meet someone like Bob who just look at you and just say, that's good, good on you, Dean. Oh, you had that experience. Oh, yeah, well done. He wouldn't say much about it. And I was so proud, perhaps, even at the time, you know, but I've had this. And I know of others, many stories of these kind of things, these kind of experiences.
But the glimpses themselves can be, you know, beneficial. And I think Ant addresses something here. He said, if you have lived in suffering your whole life, a glimpse of freedom stands out. That's all it is, I feel like. Yeah.And even the idea of living in suffering all your life doesn't happen. Even those, and I have a couple of fairly close friends who committed suicide. They did not live in suffering all their lives. They lived in suffering for maybe 15 minutes in an hour. They didn't live in suffering. But I hear you. I get what you say. And it is a very, very valid point. Yes, the glimpses of respite from suffering are little tastes of what's possible.Respite from the mind, the moments of silence, absolutely, they are invaluable.
It's like filling in your CV with spiritual experiences to get the job of enlightenment. Exactly. Yeah. And would you be considering unmute and let us hear your voice or not today? It's just an invitation. It's not.Yeah, I do understand some people are, you know, camera shy, people may be. Okay. It's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Thank you for getting up and then joining us, even though it's late. Thank you and have a best one. See you next time. Yeah, good to see you, Heyman. Thank you. Thank you. I wonder if John would like to throw something in.Oh, yeah. Sometimes there's several Johns, so I wait for another one.
Yeah. On anything in particular or just? I really like the other day when we were having a chat, you told me just that your experience of living with those folks in the jungle. Right, right, right, right, right, yeah. And how, you know, They think we're all, all of those of, those of us who believe in yesterday and tomorrow and, but crazy. It's a madness. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I spent a few years living on and off in the Amazon. And, yeah. With this indigenous group there. And it's just a very different way of living and seeing the world, including a very different language. And I was mentioning that Tanya, they don't have a word for yesterday or tomorrow.
They have just one word, which is something like bakesh. I always forget it, but it means anything that isn't now. So I was thinking about this and discussing this and the idea came up.Well, no, I mean, there's the past and the future and, you know, one has happened. They said, no, there's this now and there's you thinking about things that aren't happening. And that's it. And it really helped clarify that to me. And also the idea came up that I kind of pointed behind me when I said the past and pointed ahead of me. And they said, no, that's space. That's not time. And I just realized, yeah, that was just a projection.
It really went to the core of it. But what was most interesting is when I was with them, I started being in the moment. You know, you couldn't help it. A lot of the worries and stuff faded away. Maybe some were still there, but it was about when I go back to the States. It wasn't about this place I was living. And that recognition gave me understanding a lot of things I felt were real, were purely conceptual. But it didn't help me in the sense of going back home, I'd reenter the madness. But yeah, what I was saying as well, Tanya was how I asked them over the course of several years, you know, what do you think of us?
What do you tell me? It was more than they're a little, you know, maybe you need a little help or they'd always say you're a little dirty. You need some cleaning. That was kind of how they put it in shamanic language. And then eventually they said, yeah, we think.People are mentally ill. We think the West has a real mental illness. And what that came down to essentially was living in the head and not living in the heart. That it led to a constant sense of being incomplete and a constant sense of searching. And, you know, since then, I've come to see that when you identify with that problem solver, everything is a problem.
And we are trained to see that as our identity.You know, and the starting point of this work is truly kind of like Bob's, what's wrong if you don't think about it? What's wrong with right now if you don't think about it? Well, what's here now if there's no problem to solve? And if you don't start from that place,
You'll just reenter a current of thought. You have to just round yourself in a place where there is no problem to solve. And then it's like inviting those thoughts or whatever back into that space. So it's a real paradigm shift. You don't follow it. You stay here and be the person for it.
It's going to come to you. And then you cease to be that worry or that thought or whatever. You're the one who's aware of it. And it just has all of what you're looking for already.And I really feel that the key of that, you know, is sitting with asking the question, what can you really know beyond a shred of doubt? And to me, it's just that anything is happening, that there is there's a sense of knowing. And then the more I rest in that, the less I think, the simpler it becomes.It's like that very starting point that the most obvious and simple thing is what we're looking for.
Beautiful. That was beautiful. That was beautiful what you just said. I like the hearts. Yeah. Yeah, it deserved it. Thanks, John. Yeah, that was really good. I was just yesterday or the day before I was discussing this particular tribe that you spent time with, with a friend. And it was interesting. We were having the same sort of conversation about them only seeing that there's now and not now. There is no forward or back, future and past. That's right. What is not now. Yeah. So cool. You were having that conversation. What a rare one to have. Yes, a few days ago, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect, man.
Yeah, I'm stunned that you spent three years with these people. It would have been amazing. Yeah. Yeah, that was really well described too, the way you described. Everything. Yeah, and I think it shows you as well, these are very natural ways of being that we just have entered into a cultural mindset. And that to be able to feel that back again.You start seeing it so much in indigenous cultures, you know, and then in their witnessing of white people, such common descriptions of like the kind of white man's disease or something like that. And when you also said, you know, about being in the now or being in the moment, and I remember Bob, you know, would say, you know, try and get out of the moment.
And because there was this effort to try and remain present, to try and do this and that, and that always perpetuates the idea of a self trying to do a kind of practice or a methodology. And when Bob, you know, looked at me once and said, I mean, he used this a few times, try and get out of the moment. Oh, it's like, oh, what relief. All there is, is this moment. So there's no need to get in or out of it because you can't. There's no, that's an idea that always exists in this moment. Always this ever fresh, ever present moment of now. And yeah, so he, Bob helped to put an end to all notions of trying to move any way out of or in it.
And, you know, all he's really doing is describing this culture, this nowness, this presence that we started the whole meeting with. The simplicity of it. Yeah. And I love the way also you put that, you know, they would describe people asgenerally the achievement, the hustle, rat race culture, as culture people mentally ill because they just live from the head. They completely come out over the thick overcast of that natural nowness, that natural presence right here, which you can't escape, which is still and everything comes and moves through it. Because being in that mental space, in that imagination, there is constant chase and constant attempt to get somewhere else than here.
Well, it is possible. So it is absolutely a madness. It is an appropriate word. Living in the heart, in the core, in that relaxed essence, natural state versus living in the clouds, head in the clouds of imagination of how to get out of this, which is already here and find something better. Because this one, according to the standards of the mental capacity to imagine, is never good enough because this is the fixer. If I am the fixer, yep. What is there not to fix? If I am the hammer, everything's a nail. But am I really? Yeah, exactly. And it's the last place you think to look because these problems are perceived as real and they feel they need to be solved, but not simply dropped or out.Yeah.
And I think that's back to this idea of the desire. In a somewhat arbitrary sense, we're identifying with part of the whole. You're always going to want the other part. You know, there's something in you. It's a constant process of attempting to become whole. Or attempting to balance yourself out, either through less or more, some form of craving and aversion, as opposed to realizing that you're home. And that's an impossible errand. Yeah, that's so perfect. And that realisation is the dropping away of the idea of a central reference point that's running the show. And all of a sudden, there is a completeness and wholeness. So you are every perspective, you are every voice, you are all of it.
It's just that and nothing other than that. So there's no need to fix. How can you fix what it is? No place to fix. There's no idea to fix because everything is appearing as as as you and not you, because it's yeah, it's one. It's only one thought away. It's not even a way. It's only obscured by one thought, that mad idea of separation, of I, reference. That's it. You know, but it doesn't matter if it's a mountain or like a she.the paper, you can't see what's on the other side, you know, and it can be that thin, that little, but you'll never see it.
Yeah. Yeah. Looking from, from through the lens of separation. No, it's impossible. They say, oh, yeah, you know, sometimes I hear this is so hard, you know, I had a glimpse, but it is so difficult, you know, how do I get there? Well, you won't. Because that fragmented, imagined avatar, it belongs on that mountain on the paper. It does not exist in reality. It is an appearance. How can appearance ever get anything at all? It isn't even sentient. It is just a projection. It's like fighting a shadow against the wall. Yeah, shadow. Exactly. How can the shadow on the wall get anything, comprehend anything? Yeah, I think that with the idea of projection, that's another element of it.
You know, Ramana Maharshi talking about the snake versus the rope. You're deathly afraid of the snake. How do I kill the snake? Well, there isn't one. It's just a rope. So yeah, it's just another level of that. Yeah, yeah. And as I said on the beginning, not every metaphor and not every pointer have to strike home. One is enough. It's enough to...actually resonate with Because it always points to the direct experience. Isn't the direct experience to be alive? Yes, it is. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Isn't the direct experience that past and future has no existence right now, apart from the imagination? It only exists in the mental projection.
The past isn't real. It's remembered. It's projected. The future. Yes. So, okay. There is an existence. There is no time. Okay, so that is fairly easy. For some people it is impossible. No, no, no, there is, of course, it's real. I can prove it to you. I prove it to you. And then it comes again, vacating the direct experience and going to the madness of the cognitive capacity and using it to prove what? To prove separation? To defend the suffering? That's smartness. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And like Ant says now, it's just with a comment, every problem has one root and it's that which perceives a problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beautifully put, yeah.There is nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so. And nothing wrong with right now, unless I think about it. So it's always the I that is thinking, even though thinking and I are not two things. The thinking eye is the projection, is the part of the thinking. But yeah. Where is the problem? What is the problem? Yeah, and I think that for me too, even originally with the pointers, I was attempting to assimilate them as a form of meditation to shift my experience into what they were saying, as opposed to having them to recognize that that's already what's occurring.
And I mean, that's a huge, because it's like everything goes into that problem solver. You know, it's just, it's so identified with the fact that this needs to change. And I mean, that makes good sense when you're suffering, something needs to change. But, you know, it's your understanding. Yeah. Yeah, it's absolute complete innocence. The fact that we were since early childhood conditioned, hypnotized by imitating everyone around us, that sort of a mind-based behavior and mind-based interpretation and problem solving, completely innocent. But now, if we happen to find ourselves...with this message that's the way out to see that there is another way more direct more immediate way of experiencing rather than experiencing directly rather than experiencing the imaginary interpretation of that which is happening so directly right now this moment shows up as that that's it wow rather than go to the mind and say yes but you know i don't quite feel the way they describe i don't quite feel the way i heard or i read here i have to do something to become like this and i have to i know that i will get pissed off tomorrow and i have to do something not to and all that narrative all that interpretation instead of just who this innocently the mind the dysregulated way of using the whole of almost a whole of attention into processing it or being it hijacking by the attention by by the cognitive capacity that's just the way the machine has been tuned But recognizing that this is automatic, automatic function, that this is autopilot setting of that projector and seeing how it runs by itself, of itself, without feeding it with.extra attention oh this is me this is important this is i this is true this is real but just rest and see how that next thought arises by itself how that next desire arises by itself and fades by itself all in this ever fresh, ever present right now, without any me doing anything, Amen.
Thank you. Yay. Thank you. I hope, John, you will take up the challenge and give us a proper spiel one day because I'd love to hear more about that. Even the same thing once more. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. That was lovely. Appreciate it. Yeah. And thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Of course.