WEBVTT

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Thanks very much.

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I'm not going to beat Gregory with his
saxophone for sure, but bear with me.

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This might be - no, it won't be remotely
as interesting, as good or entertaining.

NOTE Paragraph

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Is there a real you?

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This might seem to you
like a very odd question.

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Because, you might ask,

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how do we find the real you,

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how do you know what the real you is?

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And so forth.

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But the idea
that there must be a real you,

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surely that's obvious.

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If there's anything real in the world,
it's you.

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Well, I'm not quite sure.

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At least we have to understand
a bit better what that means.

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Now certainly, I think there are
lots of things in our culture around us

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which sort of reinforce the idea

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that for each one of us,
we have a kind of a core, an essence.

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There is something about what it means
to be you which defines you,

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and it's kind of permanent and unchanging.

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The most kind of crude way
in which we have it,

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are things like horoscopes.

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You know, people are very wedded
to these, actually.

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People put them on their Facebook profile

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as though they are meaningul,

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you even know
your Chinese horoscope as well.

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There are also more scientific
versions of this,

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all sorts of ways of profiling
personality type,

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such as the Myers-Briggs tests,
for example.

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I don't know if you've done those.

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A lot of companies
use these for recruitment.

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You answer a lot of questions,

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and this is supposed to reveal
something about your core personality.

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And of course, the popular fascination
with this is enormous.

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In magazines like this, you'll see,

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in the bottom left corner,
they'll advertise in virtually every issue

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some kind of personality thing.

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And if you pick up one of those magazines,

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it's hard to resist, isn't it?

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Doing the test to find
what is your learning style,

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what is your loving style,
or what is your working style?

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Are you this kind of person or that?

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So I think that we have
a common-sense idea

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that there is a kind of core
or essence of ourselves

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to be discovered.

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And that this is kind of a permanent truth
about ourselves,

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something that's the same throughout life.

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Well, that's the idea I want to challenge.

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And I have to say now,
I'll say it a bit later,

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but I'm not challenging this
just because I'm weird,

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the challenge actually has a very,
very long and distinguished history.

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Here's the common-sense idea.

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There is you.

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You are the individuals you are,
and you have this kind of core.

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Now in your life, what happens
is that you, of course,

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accumulate different experiences
and so forth.

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So you have memories,

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and these memories
help to create what you are.

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You have desires, maybe for a cookie,

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maybe for something
that we don't want to talk about

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at 11 o'clock in the morning in a school.

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You will have beliefs.

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This is a number plate
from someone in America.

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I don't know whether this number plate,
which says "messiah 1,"

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indicates that the driver
believes in the messiah,

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or that they are the messiah.

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Either way,
they have beliefs about messiahs.

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We have knowledge.

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We have sensations
and experiences as well.

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It's not just intellectual things.

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So this is kind of the common-sense model,
I think,

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of what a person is.

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There is a person who has all the things
that make up our life experiences.

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But the suggestion
I want to put to you today

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is that there's something
fundamentally wrong with this model.

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And I can show you what's wrong
with one click.

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Which is there isn't actually a "you"
at the heart of all these experiences.

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Strange thought?
Well, maybe not.

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What is there, then?

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Well, clearly there are memories,
desires, intentions, sensations,

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and so forth.

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But what happens is
these things exist,

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and they're kind of all integrated,

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they're overlapped, they're connected
in various different ways.

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They're connecting partly,
and perhaps even mainly,

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because they all belong
to one body and one brain.

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But there's also a narrative,
a story we tell about ourselves,

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the experiences we have
when we remember past things.

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We do things because of other things.

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So what we desire is partly
a result of what we believe,

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and what we remember is also
informing us what we know.

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And so really, there are all these things,

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like beliefs, desires,
sensations, experiences,

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they're all related to each other,

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and that just is you.

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In some ways, it's a small difference
from the common-sense understanding.

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In some ways, it's a massive one.

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It's the shift between
thinking of yourself

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as a thing which has
all the experiences of life,

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and thinking of yourself
as simply that collection

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of all experiences in life.

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You are the sum of your parts.

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Now those parts are also physical parts,
of course,

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brains, bodies and legs and things,

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but they aren't so important, actually.

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If you have a heart transplant,
you're still the same person.

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If you have a memory transplant,
are you the same person?

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If you have a belief transplant,
would you be the same person?

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Now this idea, that what we are,
the way to understand ourselves,

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is as not of some permanent being,
which has experiences,

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but is kind of a collection
of experiences,

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might strike you as kind of weird.

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But actually,
I don't think it should be weird.

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In a way, it's common sense.

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Because I just invite you to think about,
by comparison,

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think about pretty much anything else
in the universe,

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maybe apart from the very
most fundamental forces or powers.

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Let's take something like water.

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Now my science isn't very good.

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We might say something
like water has two parts hydrogen

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and one parts oxygen, right?

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We all know that.

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I hope no one in this room
thinks that what that means

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is there is a thing called water,
and attached to it

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are hydrogen and oxygen atoms,

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and that's what water is.

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Of course we don't.

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We understand, very easily,
very straightforwardly,

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that water is nothing more

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than the hydrogen and oxygen molecules
suitably arranged.

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Everything else in the universe
is the same.

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There's no mystery about my watch,
for example.

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We say the watch has a face, and hands,

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and a mechanism and a battery,

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But what we really mean is,

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we don't think there is a thing
called the watch

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to which we then attach all these bits.

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We understand very clearly
that you get the parts of the watch,

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you put them together,
and you create a watch.

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Now if everything else
in the universe is like this,

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why are we different?

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Why think of ourselves

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as somehow not just being
a collection of all our parts,

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but somehow being a separate,
permanent entity which has those parts?

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Now this view is not particularly new,
actually.

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It has quite a long lineage.

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You find it in Buddhism,

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you find it in 17th,
18th-century philosophy

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going through to the current day,
people like Locke and Hume.

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But interestingly, it's also a view

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increasingly being heard
reinforced by neuroscience.

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This is Paul Broks,
he's a clinical neuropsychologist,

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and he says this:

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"We have a deep intuition
that there is a core,

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an essence there,
and it's hard to shake off,

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probably impossible to shake off,
I suspect.

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But it's true that neuroscience shows
that there is no centre in the brain

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where things do all come together."

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So when you look at the brain,

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and you look at how the brain
makes possible a sense of self,

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you find that there isn't
a central control spot in the brain.

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There is no kind of center
where everything happens.

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There are lots of different processes
in the brain,

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all of which operate, in a way,
quite independently.

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But it's because of the way
that they relate

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that we get this sense of self.

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The term I use in the book,
I call it the ego trick.

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It's like a mechanical trick.

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It's not that we don't exist,

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it's just that the trick is
to make us feel that inside of us

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is something more unified
than is really there.

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Now you might think
this is a worrying idea.

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You might think that if it's true,

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that for each one of us
there is no abiding core of self,

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no permanent essence,

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does that mean that really,
the self is an illusion?

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Does it mean that we really don't exist?

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There is no real you.

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Well, a lot of people actually
do use this talk of illusion and so forth.

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These are three psychologists,
Thomas Metzinger, Bruce Hood,

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Susan Blackmore,

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a lot of these people
do talk the language of illusion,

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the self is an illusion, it's a fiction.

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But I don't think this is
a very helpful way of looking at it.

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Go back to the watch.

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The watch isn't an illusion,
because there is nothing to the watch

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other than a collection of its parts.

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In the same way,
we're not illusions either.

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The fact that we are, in some ways,
just this very, very complex collection,

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ordered collection of things,

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does not mean we're not real.

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I can give you a very
sort of rough metaphor for this.

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Let's take something like a waterfall.

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These are the Iguazu Falls, in Argentina.

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Now if you take something like this,

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you can appreciate the fact
that in lots of ways,

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there's nothing permanent about this.

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For one thing, it's always changing.

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The waters are always
carving new channels.

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with changes in tides and the weather,

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some things dry up,
new things are created.

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Of course the water
that flows through the waterfall

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is different at every single instance.

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But it doesn't mean
that the Iguazu Falls are an illusion.

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It doesn't mean it's not real.

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What it means is
we have to understand what it is

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as something which has a history,

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has certain things that keep it together,

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but it's a process, it's fluid,
it's forever changing.

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Now that, I think, is a model
for understanding ourselves,

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and I think it's a liberating model.

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Because if you think that you have
this fixed, permanent essence,

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which is always the same,
throughout your life, no matter what,

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in a sense you're kind of trapped.

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You're born with an essence,

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that's what you are until you die,

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if you believe in an afterlife,
maybe you continue.

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But if you think of yourself
as being, in a way,

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not a thing as such,
but a kind of a process,

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something that is changing,

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then I think that's quite liberating.

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Because unlike the the waterfalls,

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we actually have the capacity to channel

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the direction of our development
for ourselves to a certain degree.

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Now we've got to be careful here, right?

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If you watch the X-Factor too much,
you might buy into this idea

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that we can all be whatever we want to be.

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That's not true.

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I've heard some fantastic musicians
this morning,

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and I am very confident
that I could in no way be as good as them.

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I could practice hard and maybe be good,

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but I don't have
that really natural ability.

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There are limits to what we can achieve.

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There are limits to
what we can make of ourselves.

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But nevertheless, we do have this capacity

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to, in a sense, shape ourselves.

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The true self, as it were then,

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is not something that is just there
for you to discover,

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you don't sort of look into your soul
and find your true self.

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What you are partly doing, at least,

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is actually creating your true self.

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And this, I think, is very,
very significant,

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particularly
at this stage of life you're at.

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You'll be aware of the fact

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how much of you changed over recent years.

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If you have any videos of yourself,
three or four years ago,

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you probably feel embarrassed
because you don't recognize yourself.

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So I want to get that message over,
that what we need to do

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is think about ourselves as things
that we can shape,

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and channel and change.

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This is the Buddha, again:

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"Well-makers lead the water,

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fletchers bend the arrow,

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carpenters bend a log of wood,

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wise people fashion themselves."

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And that's the idea
I want to leave you with,

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that your true self is not something
that you will have to go searching for,

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as a mystery, and maybe never ever find.

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To the extent you have a true self,

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it's something that you in part discover,

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but in part create.

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and that, I think,
is a liberating and exciting prospect.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)