Speaker 1: You know, there's a most extraordinary paradox that occurs when
Speaker 1: one begins to awaken to the fundamental nature of existence.
Speaker 1: And that paradox is this the very moment you see
Speaker 1: through the cosmic game, the moment you penetrate the veil
Speaker 1: of illusion, there are certain things that become absolutely impossible
Speaker 1: for you to see in the way you once did.
Speaker 1: It's rather like trying to believe in Santa Claus after
Speaker 1: you've discovered your father putting presents under the tree. The innocence,
Speaker 1: once lost cannot be recovered by an act of will.
Speaker 1: Now let me say at the outset that when I
Speaker 1: speak of awakened people, I'm not referring to some special
Speaker 1: class of superhuman beings who walk around with halos and
Speaker 1: speak in hushed, reverent tones. No, no, no. An awakened
Speaker 1: person is simply someone who has seen through the game
Speaker 1: of separation, who has recognized that the individual self, the ego,
Speaker 1: this little island of consciousness that we think we are
Speaker 1: is a magnificent hoax. Not a bad hoax, mind you,
Speaker 1: but a hoax. Nonetheless, The first thing that an awakened
Speaker 1: person cannot see anymore is the reality of problems. Now
Speaker 1: I don't mean that difficulties ceased to exist. Rain still falls,
Speaker 1: bodies still experience pain, bills still arrive in the post.
Speaker 1: But what disappears is the psychological reality of the problem.
Speaker 1: Has a problem, you see, a problem only exists when
Speaker 1: there's a separate self who stands in opposition to what
Speaker 1: is the moment you truly realize that you are not
Speaker 1: a separate entity fighting against the universe. Problems dissolve into
Speaker 1: pure situations that require appropriate response. Let me put it
Speaker 1: this way. When you have a stomach ache, does your
Speaker 1: stomach believe it has a problem. Of course not. It
Speaker 1: simply is what it is doing, what it's doing. The
Speaker 1: problem only arises when the ego, this phantom sense of
Speaker 1: a separate self, comes along and says, this shouldn't be
Speaker 1: happening to me. But when you see through that illusion
Speaker 1: of separation, when you recognize that you are not something
Speaker 1: inside your body looking out at the world, but rather
Speaker 1: the whole process itself, the very concept of having problems
Speaker 1: becomes absurd. It's rather like the ocean developing a neurosis
Speaker 1: about its waves. Can you imagine the Pacific Ocean lying
Speaker 1: on a psychiatrist's couch saying doctor, I have this terrible
Speaker 1: problem with my waves. They keep rising and falling, and
Speaker 1: I just can't seem to control them. The very idea
Speaker 1: is laughable because the ocean doesn't separate itself from its waves.
Speaker 1: The waves are what the ocean is doing, and in
Speaker 1: precisely the same way, an awakened person cannot see their
Speaker 1: experiences as problems separate from themselves because they recognize that
Speaker 1: they are not separate from the experiencing now. The second
Speaker 1: thing that becomes invisible to the awakened person is the
Speaker 1: importance of the past and future. This is a rather
Speaker 1: difficult thing for people to grasp because we've been conditioned
Speaker 1: to believe that our entire lives are about moving from
Speaker 1: the past toward the future. We think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: creatures with a history heading toward a goal. But this
Speaker 1: is just another aspect of the great illusion. The awakened
Speaker 1: person lives in what I call the eternal now, not
Speaker 1: because they've adopted some philosophical position about time, but because
Speaker 1: they've directly perceived that the past and future are nothing
Speaker 1: but abstractions. The past is a memory occurring now, the
Speaker 1: future is an anticipation occurring now. There is literally no
Speaker 1: time except this present moment. When you really understand this,
Speaker 1: not just intellectually but in your bones, the whole anxiety
Speaker 1: about the future and the whole burden of the past
Speaker 1: simply evaporate. This doesn't mean you become impractical or fail
Speaker 1: to plan. On the contrary, you become far more efficient
Speaker 1: because you are not wasting energy worrying about abstractions. You
Speaker 1: plan when planning is called for, You remember when remembering
Speaker 1: is useful. But you don't confuse these mental actives. It
Speaker 1: is with some kind of reality that exists outside of
Speaker 1: this present moment. The third thing that awakened people cannot
Speaker 1: see anymore is the division between themselves and others. This
Speaker 1: is perhaps the most profound shift of all. You see.
Speaker 1: The ordinary person lives in a state of what we
Speaker 1: might call chronic paranoia. They feel fundamentally separate from the world,
Speaker 1: and therefore they experience other people as threats or as
Speaker 1: instruments to be used for their own benefit. The world
Speaker 1: is divided into me and not me, us in them,
Speaker 1: friends and enemies. But the awakened person has seen through
Speaker 1: this division. They've recognized that the boundary between self and
Speaker 1: other is entirely imaginary, just as your right hand doesn't
Speaker 1: see your left hand as an enemy, just as your
Speaker 1: heart doesn't regard your lungs as foreign objects. The awakened
Speaker 1: person doesn't experience other people as fundamentally separate from themselves.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean they lose the ability to distinguish between individuals.
Speaker 1: They can still tell the difference between you and me
Speaker 1: at the level of appearance, but at a deeper level,
Speaker 1: they recognize that we are all processes within one field
Speaker 1: of existence, all waves in the same ocean, all notes
Speaker 1: in the same symphony. And once you see this, truly
Speaker 1: see it, you cannot go back to the old paranoid perspective.
Speaker 1: It becomes as impossible as trying to see the world
Speaker 1: through the eyes of a new born infant once you've
Speaker 1: learned to speak. Now, another thing that disappears from view
Speaker 1: is the notion of control. The ego thrives on the
Speaker 1: fantasy that it's in control, that it's the author of
Speaker 1: its actions, the thinker of its thoughts, the decider of
Speaker 1: its decisions. But when you awaken, you see that this
Speaker 1: is pure mythology. Thoughts arise spontaneously, decisions happen, actions occur,
Speaker 1: but there's no little man inside pulling the levers. This
Speaker 1: is a terrifying realization for the ego because it means
Speaker 1: the death of the illusion of personal agency. But it's
Speaker 1: also the most liberating discovery you can make, because it
Speaker 1: means you can stop trying to control what was never
Speaker 1: under your control in the first place. You can relax
Speaker 1: into the spontaneous functioning of the universe, of which you
Speaker 1: are an inseparable part. Think about it this way. When
Speaker 1: you speak, do you consciously arrange each word, carefully planning
Speaker 1: the syntax and grammar, Of course not. The words simply
Speaker 1: flow out of you, and if you try to control
Speaker 1: them too carefully, you become tongue tied. Life is exactly
Speaker 1: like this. The awakened person has discovered that living happens
Speaker 1: by itself, just as breathing happens by itself, just as
Speaker 1: your heart beats by itself. And once you've seen this,
Speaker 1: the illusion of the controlling ego cannot be maintained. The
Speaker 1: awakened person also cannot see the world as solid and
Speaker 1: static any more. The ordinary perception is that the universe
Speaker 1: consists of things, of objects that persist through time, of
Speaker 1: solid entities bumping against each other like billiard balls, but
Speaker 1: awakening reveals that the universe is not made of things
Speaker 1: at all. It's made of processes, of verbs rather than nouns,
Speaker 1: of dancing patterns rather than fixed forms. You see when
Speaker 1: you look at a mountain or a tree or another
Speaker 1: human being, what you're actually seeing is an incredibly complex process,
Speaker 1: a whirlpool in the stream of existence. The mountain is
Speaker 1: mountains ing, the tree is treesing, the person is persons ing.
Speaker 1: Everything is a verb, a happening, an event, And once
Speaker 1: you see the world this way, you cannot go back
Speaker 1: to seeing it as a collection of static objects. This
Speaker 1: is what the Buddhists mean when they speak of emptiness
Speaker 1: or void. They don't mean that nothing exists. They mean
Speaker 1: that no thing exists in the way we habitually imagine.
Speaker 1: Everything is empty of permanent, independent existence. Everything is a
Speaker 1: temporary configuration in the endless flux of existence. Another thing
Speaker 1: that becomes impossible to see is the seriousness of it all.
Speaker 1: Now this is often misunderstood. People think that awakened persons
Speaker 1: must be grim and solemn, that they've seen through the
Speaker 1: illusion and now walk around in a state of detached melancholy.
Speaker 1: But it's exactly the opposite. The awakened person is the
Speaker 1: one who finally gets the cosmic joke, who realizes that
Speaker 1: the whole drama of existence is a kind of divine
Speaker 1: play what the Hindus call leela. You cannot take yourself
Speaker 1: seriously when you've realized that you're not a separate self
Speaker 1: at all. You cannot take your problem seriously when you've
Speaker 1: seen that they're just ripples on the surface of consciousness.
Speaker 1: You cannot take the world seriously when you've recognized that
Speaker 1: it's all a spontaneous happening with no purpose beyond itself.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean the awakened person becomes irresponsible or callous.
Speaker 1: Quite the contrary. When you stop taking yourself seriously, you
Speaker 1: can finally take life seriously in the right way. You
Speaker 1: can play the game with full intensity while knowing that
Speaker 1: it's a game. You can care deeply about things without
Speaker 1: the burden of believing that your separate self is going
Speaker 1: to be enhanced or diminished by the outcome. The awakened
Speaker 1: person also loses the ability to see meaning as something
Speaker 1: separate from the experience itself. The ordinary person is always
Speaker 1: asking what does this mean? What is the purpose of
Speaker 1: my life? Why is this happening. They're looking for some
Speaker 1: significance that exists apart from the immediate experience. But the
Speaker 1: awakened person has discovered that meaning is not something that
Speaker 1: can be found or extracted from life. Life itself is
Speaker 1: the meaning. When you watch a dance, you don't ask
Speaker 1: what it means. The dance is not about something else.
Speaker 1: It is what it is, and its meaning is inseparable
Speaker 1: from its form, in the same way life doesn't mean something.
Speaker 1: Life is Meaning is significance, is value. And when you
Speaker 1: realize this, you stop searching for some hidden purpose behind existence,
Speaker 1: and you start celebrating the sheer, thearness of it all.
Speaker 1: Here's another fascinating thing. The awakened person cannot see their
Speaker 1: thoughts as personal property any more. In the ordinary state
Speaker 1: of consciousness, we are absolutely convinced that thoughts are ours.
Speaker 1: We say my thoughts, my opinions, my beliefs, as if
Speaker 1: we own them, as if we generated them from some
Speaker 1: inner factory. But awakening reveals that thoughts are just events
Speaker 1: that arise in consciousness, like clouds appearing in the sky.
Speaker 1: You don't create your thoughts any more than you create
Speaker 1: the weather. They simply appear, stay for a while, and
Speaker 1: dissolve back into silence. And once you've seen this clearly,
Speaker 1: you can no longer identify with your thoughts in the
Speaker 1: old way. You might still have thoughts, indeed, you may
Speaker 1: have more interesting and creative thoughts than ever before, but
Speaker 1: you don't confuse yourself with them. You recognize yourself as
Speaker 1: the space in which thoughts appear, not as the thoughts themselves.
Speaker 1: This brings to another point. The awakened person cannot see
Speaker 1: suffering as something that should not be Now, this is
Speaker 1: a very subtle and easily misunderstood point. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that the awakened person enjoys suffering or seeks it out.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that they don't add to suffering
Speaker 1: the additional layer of resistance that says this should not
Speaker 1: be happening. You see, pain is inevitable. If you have
Speaker 1: a body, you will experience pain, But suffering is optional.
Speaker 1: Suffering is pain plus resistance, pain plus the egos protest
Speaker 1: against what is. When you fully accept the present moment
Speaker 1: as it is without demanding that it be different, pain
Speaker 1: may still be there, but the psychological suffering dissolves. It's
Speaker 1: rather like the difference between a tensed muscle and a
Speaker 1: relaxed one both can experience sensation, but the tensed muscle
Speaker 1: adds an extra layer of discomfort through its very resistance.
Speaker 1: The awakened person has learned to relax into life, even
Speaker 1: into its painful aspects, and this relaxation transforms the whole
Speaker 1: quality of experience. The awakened person also loses the capacity
Speaker 1: to see death as the opposite of life. In the
Speaker 1: ordinary view, life and death are enemies, opposing forces in
Speaker 1: an eternal battle. We cling to life and fear death,
Speaker 1: imagining that when death comes we will cease to exist.
Speaker 1: But awakening reveals that this whole framework is mistaken. Death
Speaker 1: is not the opposite of life. Birth is the opposite
Speaker 1: of death. Life has no opposite. Life is the ground,
Speaker 1: the field, the eternal now, in which birth and death
Speaker 1: appear as waves appear in the ocean. You are not
Speaker 1: born into life and then at some point ejected from it.
Speaker 1: You are life itself, expressing itself through this particular form
Speaker 1: for a time, and then withdrawing back into itself, only
Speaker 1: to express itself again in countless other form. When you
Speaker 1: realize this, death becomes no more frightening than going to
Speaker 1: sleep at night, you don't fear sleep because you know
Speaker 1: you'll wake up even if you don't remember who you
Speaker 1: are while you're sleeping. And in the same way, the
Speaker 1: awakened person knows that death is simply a return to
Speaker 1: the source, a dropping of the particular form, but not
Speaker 1: an annihilation of the essence. Another thing that becomes invisible
Speaker 1: is the idea of spiritual progress. This may seem paradoxical,
Speaker 1: but the awakened person realizes that there is nowhere to go,
Speaker 1: nothing to achieve, no better state to arrive at. Awakening
Speaker 1: is not a destination at the end of a spiritual path.
Speaker 1: It's the realization that you never left home in the
Speaker 1: first place. The spiritual seeker is like a person who
Speaker 1: has lost their glasses and searches everywhere for them, not
Speaker 1: realizing their sitting on top of their head. The moment
Speaker 1: you find them, you realize that the search itself was
Speaker 1: based on a false premise. You were never separate from
Speaker 1: what you were seeking. You are it, You always have
Speaker 1: been it, and you always will be it. This doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that life becomes static or boring after awakening. On
Speaker 1: the contrary, it becomes far more interesting because you're no
Speaker 1: longer trapped in the narrow perspective of the ego. But
Speaker 1: there's no more sense of trying to get somewhere spiritually,
Speaker 1: no more feeling that you're not quite there yet. You're
Speaker 1: already here. You've always been here, and here is all there,
Speaker 1: ever is. The awakened person also cannot see enemies anymore. Oh.
Speaker 1: They may recognize that certain actions are harmful and need
Speaker 1: to be opposed. They may work to prevent cruelty and injustice,
Speaker 1: but they don't see evildoers as fundamentally other, as alien
Speaker 1: beings that need to be destroyed. They recognize that ignorance
Speaker 1: and unconsciousness are the only real enemies, and these cannot
Speaker 1: be destroyed. They can only be illuminated. When you truly
Speaker 1: understand that you are not a separate self, you recognize
Speaker 1: that the person causing harm is also not a separate self.
Speaker 1: They are the universe expressing itself through a particularly deluded configuration.
Speaker 1: But the essence is the same. This doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: condone harmful actions. It means you respond to them with
Speaker 1: wisdom rather than hatred, with understanding rather than condemnation. Here's
Speaker 1: something else that disappears, the notion of ownership. The ordinary
Speaker 1: person goes through life accumulating things and claiming them as mine,
Speaker 1: my house, my car, my family, my country, my opinions,
Speaker 1: my life. But the awakened person has seen through this
Speaker 1: game of possession, you don't really own anything. You're the
Speaker 1: temporary custodian of certain objects and experiences. But you came
Speaker 1: into this world with nothing, and you'll leave it with nothing.
Speaker 1: Even your body isn't yours in any ultimate sense. It's
Speaker 1: a pattern that the universe is forming for a while,
Speaker 1: and then it will dissolve back into other patterns. And
Speaker 1: once you've realized this, you stop clutching at things, stop
Speaker 1: trying to possess and control. This doesn't mean you become
Speaker 1: a pauper or refuse to use objects. It means you
Speaker 1: relate to things differently. You enjoy them while they're here,
Speaker 1: you take care of them, but you don't confuse them
Speaker 1: with yourself. You travel light through life. The awakened person
Speaker 1: also loses the ability to see events as random or meaningless,
Speaker 1: not because they've adopted some philosophy that says everything happens
Speaker 1: for a reason, but because they've directly perceived that the
Speaker 1: universe is a unified whole, a single event unfolding. In
Speaker 1: a unified system, nothing is random. Every event is intimately
Speaker 1: connected to every other event, not through a chain of
Speaker 1: mechanical causation, but through a kind of cosmic resonance. It's
Speaker 1: not that everything happens for a specific purpose that can
Speaker 1: be deciphered, but rather that everything belongs, everything fits, everything
Speaker 1: is necessary for the pattern to be what it is.
Speaker 1: When you see this, even the most apparently absurd or
Speaker 1: tragic events reveal themselves as part of the grand choreography
Speaker 1: of existence. This doesn't make painful events less painful, but
Speaker 1: it removes the additional suffering that comes from feeling that
Speaker 1: life is chaotic and meaningless. Now. Another thing the awakened
Speaker 1: person cannot see anymore is the need for comparison. The
Speaker 1: ego constantly measures itself against others, asking am I as
Speaker 1: good as? Am I better than? How do I rank?
Speaker 1: But awakening reveals that this whole game of comparison is
Speaker 1: based on the illusion of separation. When you realize that
Speaker 1: you are not a separate individual competing against other separate individuals,
Speaker 1: the whole basis for comparison collapses. You're not better or
Speaker 1: worse than anyone else, because there is no separate you
Speaker 1: to be better or worse. You're simply a unique expression
Speaker 1: of the one life, just as every wave in the
Speaker 1: ocean is unique, but not separate from the ocean. This
Speaker 1: brings tremendous freedom because you can finally stop competing, stop measuring,
Speaker 1: stop judging yourself against imaginary standards. You can simply be
Speaker 1: what you are, fully and completely, without apology or pride.
Speaker 1: The awakened person also cannot see the future as a
Speaker 1: place where happiness will finally be found. The ego is
Speaker 1: always postponing contentment, always saying I'll be happy when when
Speaker 1: I get the job, when I find the relationship, when
Speaker 1: I retire, when I achieve enlightenment. But the awakened person
Speaker 1: is discovered that happiness is not a future state to
Speaker 1: be attained. It's the natural condition that emerges when you
Speaker 1: stop resisting the present moment. You see, happiness is not
Speaker 1: something that happens to you. It's what you are when
Speaker 1: you remove all the obstacles to recognizing what you are.
Speaker 1: And those obstacles are all variations on the theme of
Speaker 1: wanting things to be other than they are. When that
Speaker 1: wanting ceases, not through suppression, but through understanding what remains
Speaker 1: is a natural state of well being, of contentment, of peace. Finally,
Speaker 1: and perhaps most importantly, the awakened person cannot see themselves
Speaker 1: as a victim anymore. The victim mentality is based on
Speaker 1: the belief that you are a separate self at the
Speaker 1: mercy of forces beyond your control. And while it's certainly
Speaker 1: true that you can't control external events, awakening reveals that
Speaker 1: you are not actually a separate entity to whom things happen.
Speaker 1: You are the happening itself. When a wave crashes on
Speaker 1: the shore, we don't say the ocean is being victimized
Speaker 1: by the shore. The ocean is the wave and the
Speaker 1: shore and the crashing. In the same way, you are
Speaker 1: not separate from the events of your life. You are
Speaker 1: the life, living itself, and nothing is happening to you.
Speaker 1: It's all happening as you. This is the ultimate liberation,
Speaker 1: not the liberation from difficult circumstances, but liberation from the
Speaker 1: illusion that you are a separate self who is at
Speaker 1: the mercy of those circumstances. When that illusion dissolves, what
Speaker 1: remains is the recognition that you are the entire process,
Speaker 1: both the waves and the ocean, both the dancer and
Speaker 1: the dance. And this, my friends, is what the awakened
Speaker 1: person cannot see any more, all the elaborate structures that
Speaker 1: the ego creates to maintain the illusion of separation. Once
Speaker 1: those structures have been seen through, once the game has
Speaker 1: been recognized as a game, you can't go back to
Speaker 1: the old way of seeing. You can pretend, you can
Speaker 1: play along, but the innocence is gone forever and yet,
Speaker 1: and this is the final paradox. In losing that innocence,
Speaker 1: you gain a far more profound innocence, the innocence of
Speaker 1: simply being what you are, without pretense, without defense, without
Speaker 1: the need to be anything other than this present moment,
Speaker 1: eternally unfolding. Thank you,