WEBVTT 00:00:09.134 --> 00:00:10.719 Awakening 00:00:10.719 --> 00:00:14.305 is the next natural stage of human development. 00:00:14.597 --> 00:00:19.561 So awakening is simply to recognize the nature of our essential being. 00:00:19.894 --> 00:00:25.358 Is not some weird, mystical religious experience 00:00:25.358 --> 00:00:27.402 that's only available to the few. 00:00:27.402 --> 00:00:29.404 It's available to everyone. 00:00:29.404 --> 00:00:35.201 What we essentially are is already fully awake, fully aware. 00:00:35.201 --> 00:00:37.370 And it's totally unlimited. 00:00:37.579 --> 00:00:40.665 Your true nature is closer 00:00:41.416 --> 00:00:43.835 than the you that you think you are. 00:00:44.544 --> 00:00:48.423 Consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe. 00:00:48.465 --> 00:00:52.844 The next step in science is to say that consciousness is fundamental. 00:00:53.553 --> 00:00:55.388 What is awakening anyway? 00:00:55.388 --> 00:01:22.624 Somebody explain that to me. 00:01:22.832 --> 00:01:26.211 What is awakening? 00:01:26.628 --> 00:01:31.716 Whether you call it the true self, the imminent self or "no self", 00:01:32.175 --> 00:01:36.387 or Buddha nature, Tao or Christ Consciousness, 00:01:36.846 --> 00:01:39.682 it really doesn't matter. 00:01:39.682 --> 00:01:43.978 In this film, we're going to refer to it as awareness. 00:01:45.230 --> 00:01:46.022 Awareness 00:01:46.022 --> 00:01:48.525 is not the property of any religion. 00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:52.403 Awakening or realizing awareness 00:01:52.445 --> 00:01:54.489 is like waking from a dream. 00:01:55.740 --> 00:01:57.700 The dream of your character 00:01:57.700 --> 00:02:00.537 in the play of life. 00:02:00.870 --> 00:02:02.413 Through our characters, 00:02:02.413 --> 00:02:05.834 we experience the world 00:02:05.834 --> 00:02:08.920 in all of its beauty and its ugliness. 00:02:09.504 --> 00:02:13.299 We can call this experience of life and death duality. 00:02:14.467 --> 00:02:19.055 Around and around we go, fixated on the characters, 00:02:19.055 --> 00:02:22.308 thoughts and sensations. 00:02:22.308 --> 00:02:23.643 Good and bad. 00:02:23.643 --> 00:02:25.103 War and peace. 00:02:25.103 --> 00:02:27.397 Light and darkness. 00:02:27.397 --> 00:02:29.566 Birth and death. 00:02:29.566 --> 00:02:31.818 Until we wake up and find out 00:02:31.818 --> 00:02:34.904 we are not the character. 00:03:02.348 --> 00:03:05.518 In this film, we are extending an invitation 00:03:05.518 --> 00:03:09.147 for you to directly experience your true nature. 00:03:09.898 --> 00:03:13.902 To find out directly, not intellectually... 00:03:14.652 --> 00:03:16.571 Who are you? 00:03:17.530 --> 00:03:18.823 We will repeat this 00:03:18.823 --> 00:03:21.034 invitation in different ways. 00:03:22.535 --> 00:03:24.996 When inquiring into who you are, 00:03:25.663 --> 00:03:28.875 let everything be exactly as it is. 00:03:30.251 --> 00:03:33.713 Don't move the mind to make something happen 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:37.592 or to find some answer on the level of mind. 00:03:38.051 --> 00:03:41.179 And yet, don't try to push away the mind. 00:03:41.846 --> 00:03:45.725 Simply intend to directly experience who you are. 00:03:46.809 --> 00:03:49.145 Letting the mind be a "don't know" 00:03:49.145 --> 00:03:57.403 mind. 00:04:01.241 --> 00:04:02.325 Awakening 00:04:02.325 --> 00:04:07.956 is the answer to all of the world's problems on every level. 00:04:07.956 --> 00:04:12.669 All of the world's problems stem from a delusion. 00:04:13.336 --> 00:04:17.215 The fundamental delusion of the mind. 00:04:17.215 --> 00:04:21.135 And that delusion is that I am this limited character. 00:04:21.970 --> 00:04:24.222 When we're living from a small, separate self, 00:04:25.181 --> 00:04:29.227 there's always some kind of perpetual dissatisfaction. 00:04:29.602 --> 00:04:33.398 So this can be big dissatisfaction like trauma, 00:04:34.190 --> 00:04:37.151 or it can be just this background feeling... 00:04:37.485 --> 00:04:39.195 "something's not right. 00:04:39.195 --> 00:04:41.322 Something's wrong. I'm missing something." 00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:47.495 Even when I have some pleasure, even when I achieve something in world, 00:04:47.495 --> 00:04:50.081 even when I have a good relationship, 00:04:50.790 --> 00:04:53.584 if I just have a pause or a moment, 00:04:54.419 --> 00:04:57.588 there's this dissatisfied feeling like 00:04:58.089 --> 00:05:01.551 I'm isolated or cut off from something. 00:05:01.801 --> 00:05:05.680 So this feeling, which it seems like 00:05:05.680 --> 00:05:09.434 most people have, can motivate us 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:13.479 to awaken from that small, separate self 00:05:13.479 --> 00:05:17.650 whose nature is a kind of separation anxiety. 00:05:18.401 --> 00:05:24.532 This limited character has a tendency to grasp for what it wants. 00:05:24.532 --> 00:05:27.368 It's just a collection of conditioned patterns 00:05:27.702 --> 00:05:32.415 of of craving what it wants or trying to push away what it doesn't want. 00:05:32.790 --> 00:05:37.628 It's this endless process of you can say a pleasure 00:05:37.628 --> 00:05:41.591 principle, you know, going after pleasure, avoiding pain. 00:05:42.050 --> 00:05:44.635 And if we believe we are this 00:05:44.927 --> 00:05:48.306 character, this conditioned pattern, 00:05:48.556 --> 00:05:52.185 then we suffer and we create suffering in the world. 00:05:52.685 --> 00:05:58.358 The world becomes a reflection of that egoic consciousness. 00:05:58.900 --> 00:06:01.402 The benefit of awakening 00:06:01.652 --> 00:06:04.572 is that you suffer less 00:06:04.572 --> 00:06:07.158 and the people around you suffer less. 00:06:08.076 --> 00:06:14.707 There's no doubt in my mind that my initial connection with my understanding of God 00:06:15.875 --> 00:06:17.877 was an awakening 00:06:17.877 --> 00:06:21.547 for me in my life, the biggest awakening that I've ever experienced. 00:06:22.465 --> 00:06:26.719 It was very much as if I had been asleep really for 50 years. 00:06:27.428 --> 00:06:31.516 Walking around like a robot, just doing the things that I was taught to do 00:06:32.100 --> 00:06:36.396 from the time I was a young man, you know, I had a formula down, 00:06:36.396 --> 00:06:41.442 get the girl, get the car, get a job, get the house, get a spouse. 00:06:41.567 --> 00:06:45.571 A formula that I thought was how I was supposed to work 00:06:45.905 --> 00:06:48.032 until I got to be around 53 years old. 00:06:48.032 --> 00:06:52.286 And I realized that while I had done most of those things and had become 00:06:53.496 --> 00:06:58.167 professionally successful to a degree, then I realized that 00:06:58.167 --> 00:07:02.463 no matter who woke up somewhere around the age of 53, realizing 00:07:03.756 --> 00:07:05.800 none of this matters, 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:07.718 none of this means anything. 00:07:07.718 --> 00:07:11.222 I was shocked to find how this literally meant, 00:07:12.306 --> 00:07:15.226 how pointless it all was. 00:07:28.990 --> 00:07:31.409 When you stop following the script 00:07:31.492 --> 00:07:33.703 that has been laid out for your character. 00:07:34.495 --> 00:07:37.540 The one inherited from parents, society 00:07:37.707 --> 00:07:40.543 and biological conditioning, 00:07:40.543 --> 00:07:43.880 then new dimensions open up within the game. 00:07:44.797 --> 00:07:47.467 The path opens up, 00:07:47.467 --> 00:07:50.803 but it is not a path to reach some destination. 00:07:51.637 --> 00:07:54.307 It is a pathless path, 00:07:54.307 --> 00:07:57.727 a stripping away of illusion to arrive 00:07:57.727 --> 00:08:08.821 exactly where you are in the now. 00:08:10.198 --> 00:08:12.658 My name is Rupert Spira. 00:08:12.658 --> 00:08:15.161 I speak about the essential 00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:18.664 non-dual understanding that underlies 00:08:18.706 --> 00:08:22.210 all the great religious and spiritual traditions. 00:08:22.835 --> 00:08:27.757 And I write and lead guided meditations 00:08:27.757 --> 00:08:33.179 and have conversations whose purpose is to lead 00:08:33.513 --> 00:08:37.391 to an experiential recognition 00:08:38.267 --> 00:08:40.645 of this understanding. 00:08:41.646 --> 00:08:43.606 Understand that 00:08:43.606 --> 00:08:45.858 the peace and the happiness 00:08:46.484 --> 00:08:48.861 for which we all long 00:08:48.861 --> 00:08:51.572 above all else, can never, 00:08:52.156 --> 00:08:56.619 by definition be found in objective experience. 00:08:56.994 --> 00:09:00.498 It can never be provided by objects, substances, 00:09:00.498 --> 00:09:03.251 activities and relationships. 00:09:04.377 --> 00:09:06.045 I would suggest 00:09:06.837 --> 00:09:08.214 understanding that 00:09:08.214 --> 00:09:11.425 clearly and not spending the rest of one's life 00:09:11.676 --> 00:09:15.930 seeking fulfillment where it cannot be found. 00:09:16.180 --> 00:09:22.478 Anyone who is watching this movie is doing so precisely because they have 00:09:22.478 --> 00:09:25.940 either understood or at least intuited 00:09:26.649 --> 00:09:30.945 that the peace and happiness for which they long cannot be found 00:09:30.945 --> 00:09:34.574 in objective experience and have begun 00:09:35.116 --> 00:09:37.868 this investigation into their true nature. 00:09:38.327 --> 00:09:41.372 That is the most important investigation 00:09:42.039 --> 00:09:45.918 one can make, and it is the investigation upon 00:09:45.918 --> 00:09:49.463 which the depends our 00:09:49.714 --> 00:09:51.007 happiness. 00:09:51.340 --> 00:09:53.593 The biggest question of my life, of course, 00:09:54.552 --> 00:09:59.223 which I believe is the question most people look at sooner or later, is 00:10:00.182 --> 00:10:02.935 "What is the point, actually?" 00:10:02.935 --> 00:10:05.229 "What is the point of life?" 00:10:05.271 --> 00:10:09.984 That, much to my surprise, I was told that the point of life 00:10:09.984 --> 00:10:14.113 had nothing to do with anything that I was doing. 00:10:15.448 --> 00:10:17.408 It wasn't about my job. 00:10:17.408 --> 00:10:19.619 It wasn't about my career. 00:10:19.619 --> 00:10:23.748 It wasn't about hardly anything in my physical life. 00:10:24.749 --> 00:10:28.419 Those four aspects of my life were not the point of life. 00:10:29.378 --> 00:10:31.756 The point of my life, as I have come to understand 00:10:31.756 --> 00:10:35.217 it was for me to experience, 00:10:35.217 --> 00:10:37.553 express, demonstrate and fulfill 00:10:39.055 --> 00:10:41.766 my true identity, who I really am. 00:10:43.059 --> 00:10:45.811 I think that the biggest question 00:10:45.811 --> 00:10:48.773 that most people face is a question that hardly 00:10:48.773 --> 00:10:51.817 anyone ever asks themselves or ever answers. 00:10:53.110 --> 00:10:55.863 The biggest question of life, 00:10:55.863 --> 00:10:58.366 in my understanding, is "who am I?" 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:03.120 Who am I? 00:11:04.997 --> 00:11:07.625 Am I simply a physical entity 00:11:07.625 --> 00:11:10.002 like a bird in the sky or fish in the sea? 00:11:10.753 --> 00:11:15.466 You know, perhaps more sophisticated, but just a physical entity. 00:11:15.716 --> 00:11:18.135 I'm born, I live, I die. 00:11:18.219 --> 00:11:20.596 That's the beginning and the end of it. 00:11:20.805 --> 00:11:23.891 Or is it possible, just possible 00:11:25.059 --> 00:11:27.228 that I'm more than that? 00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:29.438 Is it possible that I'm a spiritual entity 00:11:30.398 --> 00:11:32.650 simply having a physical experience? 00:11:38.280 --> 00:11:40.741 Every experience in your life 00:11:41.075 --> 00:11:44.370 has brought you to this one universal question. 00:11:45.579 --> 00:11:48.416 Who are you? 00:11:50.418 --> 00:11:54.714 Don't look for an answer with the mind. 00:11:56.340 --> 00:12:01.595 Let everything be exactly as it is. 00:12:04.223 --> 00:12:07.935 Who is aware of the mind? 00:12:10.646 --> 00:12:14.525 Feel everything that comes up. 00:12:16.527 --> 00:12:20.531 Who is aware of those feelings? 00:12:22.366 --> 00:12:25.870 Have a complete experience of everything that comes up 00:12:26.120 --> 00:12:35.796 as a result of your inquiry. 00:12:41.510 --> 00:12:43.679 I'm Donald Hoffman and I'm a professor 00:12:43.721 --> 00:12:47.308 emeritus of cognitive sciences at the University of California at Irvine. 00:12:47.808 --> 00:12:51.312 My work has been teaching students, although now I'm emeritus for 00:12:51.312 --> 00:12:52.188 I don't teach. 00:12:52.188 --> 00:12:53.439 And now I do research. 00:12:53.439 --> 00:12:57.693 I do research right now on consciousness, mathematical models 00:12:57.693 --> 00:13:01.906 of consciousness, and how physics and spacetime might arise 00:13:01.906 --> 00:13:07.328 from a theory of consciousness that's completely mathematically precise. 00:13:07.620 --> 00:13:10.414 My own journey has been 00:13:10.539 --> 00:13:13.709 both from the spiritual side and from the science side. 00:13:13.709 --> 00:13:18.964 So my my father was a minister, fundamentalist Christian minister. 00:13:19.381 --> 00:13:21.717 So I got that on Sundays 00:13:22.092 --> 00:13:25.596 and I got science at school and they conflicted, 00:13:25.596 --> 00:13:25.846 right? 00:13:25.846 --> 00:13:29.350 The stories I was getting were, contradictory. 00:13:29.350 --> 00:13:34.313 And so as a teenager, I realized I needed to figure things out for myself. 00:13:34.605 --> 00:13:35.564 And I decided 00:13:36.941 --> 00:13:37.483 the question I 00:13:37.483 --> 00:13:41.445 wanted to answer was, are we machines? Are people 00:13:41.445 --> 00:13:42.404 just machines or not? 00:13:42.404 --> 00:13:47.993 I mean, from the physical point of view, are we just big machines? 00:13:48.494 --> 00:13:51.205 From a spiritual point of view, we wouldn't be machines. 00:13:51.455 --> 00:13:53.833 It wasn't precise enough to say what we would be. 00:13:53.833 --> 00:13:57.127 And so so I decided to ask the question 00:13:58.420 --> 00:14:00.339 scientifically, are we just machines? 00:14:00.339 --> 00:14:03.676 And the best way I thought to do that would be to study artificial intelligence. 00:14:03.968 --> 00:14:06.762 And so so I went to MIT 00:14:06.762 --> 00:14:11.141 and was in the artificial intelligence lab studying artificial intelligence 00:14:11.559 --> 00:14:14.895 and also in what's now the brain and cognitive science department, studying 00:14:14.895 --> 00:14:16.814 the human side of things. Because I wanted to do both. 00:14:16.814 --> 00:14:20.609 I wanted to see what can machines do and what is special, if anything, 00:14:20.609 --> 00:14:24.280 about humans and human neuroscience. To answer that, 00:14:24.405 --> 00:14:28.367 that very question ar the spiritual traditions right? 00:14:28.367 --> 00:14:30.536 Or are we more than just machines 00:14:30.536 --> 00:14:33.914 or is the physical, scientific point of view right? 00:14:33.914 --> 00:14:35.291 And we are just machines. 00:14:35.291 --> 00:14:38.335 And consciousness is just an artifact 00:14:38.335 --> 00:14:42.756 of brain activity. 00:14:42.756 --> 00:14:48.095 The scientific materialist paradigm that has been predominant in the last century 00:14:48.679 --> 00:14:52.141 denies the existence of anything beyond the physical, 00:14:53.225 --> 00:14:54.476 anything that cannot be 00:14:54.476 --> 00:14:56.729 verified by the scientific method. 00:14:58.397 --> 00:15:00.774 Science is an impasse. 00:15:00.774 --> 00:15:05.195 It cannot move beyond the paradox that is fundamental to quantum physics, 00:15:05.529 --> 00:15:08.282 which brought it face to face with the observer, 00:15:09.074 --> 00:15:12.119 with consciousness itself. 00:15:12.119 --> 00:15:15.581 Likewise, religions are, for the most part, functioning 00:15:15.581 --> 00:15:18.792 only on the level of belief. 00:15:18.792 --> 00:15:23.714 They've lost their original purpose, which was to lead to direct experience, 00:15:23.923 --> 00:15:26.467 to the truth of who and what we are. 00:15:27.760 --> 00:15:30.638 The split between science and spirituality 00:15:30.930 --> 00:15:33.098 has rendered both impoverished. 00:15:34.141 --> 00:15:38.604 Religions and spiritual systems desperately need rigorous methods, 00:15:38.896 --> 00:15:42.608 which can be shown to create conditions for awakening to happen. 00:15:43.359 --> 00:15:46.028 And science desperately needs an openness 00:15:46.028 --> 00:15:49.156 to the possibility of something beyond the physical. 00:15:49.782 --> 00:15:52.993 It is not about giving up religion or science, 00:15:53.410 --> 00:15:57.831 but about going deeper, being willing to change ourselves 00:15:58.165 --> 00:16:01.585 so that we become a better tool for investigation. 00:16:02.378 --> 00:16:05.047 We are the ones doing the experiment, 00:16:05.506 --> 00:16:10.052 and the experiment itself. 00:16:10.052 --> 00:16:14.556 Religion has been the language and the container 00:16:14.765 --> 00:16:19.895 of these traditions of meditation, spirituality 00:16:20.437 --> 00:16:24.108 that have been written down and passed 00:16:24.108 --> 00:16:26.860 on through the generations. 00:16:27.236 --> 00:16:32.241 Certainly there is some language that is very literal, 00:16:32.241 --> 00:16:35.077 which divides religions and divides 00:16:35.494 --> 00:16:37.871 cultures when things are taken literally. 00:16:38.414 --> 00:16:42.793 But if you feel the spirit of religion, 00:16:44.044 --> 00:16:45.170 you can follow the 00:16:45.170 --> 00:16:49.425 thread back to authentic awakening. 00:16:49.425 --> 00:16:54.430 Anyone has the potential, whether they have belief or no belief, 00:16:54.847 --> 00:16:57.975 because awakening is inherent 00:16:57.975 --> 00:17:01.812 within our human consciousness, just by our human birth. 00:17:02.354 --> 00:17:05.607 So whatever you call it, and whenever language is used, 00:17:06.150 --> 00:17:09.611 there's certain principles that seem to be the same 00:17:09.945 --> 00:17:13.365 throughout these different religions 00:17:13.365 --> 00:17:16.035 and spiritualities and meditation traditions. 00:17:17.036 --> 00:17:19.872 When I was younger, this understanding 00:17:19.872 --> 00:17:24.543 was mainly available in the Eastern spiritual traditions. 00:17:24.543 --> 00:17:27.046 It was available in the Western 00:17:27.046 --> 00:17:31.300 traditions, but it was so disguised and codified 00:17:31.508 --> 00:17:34.845 in those traditions as to be almost inaccessible. 00:17:35.179 --> 00:17:38.974 So many people of my generation went physically 00:17:39.892 --> 00:17:44.563 or at least intellectually, to the East to find this understanding 00:17:44.897 --> 00:17:48.817 and Eastern culture by comparison with 00:17:49.318 --> 00:17:52.321 Western culture is exotic. 00:17:53.322 --> 00:17:58.452 And so this understanding acquired a flavor of the exotic 00:17:58.619 --> 00:18:02.331 from the cultures in which it was expressed. 00:18:02.831 --> 00:18:05.667 And many people, myself included 00:18:07.002 --> 00:18:08.921 thought as a result of this 00:18:08.921 --> 00:18:12.758 that there was something exotic about the non dual 00:18:12.758 --> 00:18:17.846 understanding; that it required some extra ordinary way of life, 00:18:17.846 --> 00:18:20.641 that you had to give up family life 00:18:20.849 --> 00:18:24.895 or grow your hair or get a special name or subscribe 00:18:24.895 --> 00:18:31.068 to some kind of teacher or or tradition or engage in strange practices. 00:18:31.068 --> 00:18:34.696 All these kind of things which had nothing to do 00:18:34.696 --> 00:18:38.158 with the core understanding. They were to do with the culture 00:18:38.158 --> 00:18:42.496 in which the understanding was expressed at a particular time. 00:18:43.080 --> 00:18:47.126 So now the understanding has been completely divested 00:18:47.334 --> 00:18:53.715 of the traditional cultural packaging in which many of us first heard about it. 00:18:53.882 --> 00:18:59.138 And now just the essential understanding is available 00:18:59.138 --> 00:19:02.808 in a way that enables us to carry on leading our lives 00:19:03.016 --> 00:19:07.062 exactly as they are. Family life, work life... 00:19:07.563 --> 00:19:12.734 it's not necessary to make any external changes in one's life. 00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:16.155 The challenge we have on this planet 00:19:16.155 --> 00:19:18.407 is that we think there's more than one 00:19:19.366 --> 00:19:20.701 essence. 00:19:20.951 --> 00:19:22.536 So we live in a 00:19:22.995 --> 00:19:26.123 world of what I would call duality. 00:19:26.123 --> 00:19:28.333 There's male and female, black and white, 00:19:29.084 --> 00:19:34.006 big and small, fast and slow, up and down, here and there, before 00:19:34.006 --> 00:19:36.717 and after, but in fact, there's only one thing. 00:19:38.177 --> 00:19:42.389 All things are one thing. 00:19:42.389 --> 00:19:44.433 There is only one thing. 00:19:44.766 --> 00:19:47.686 So it turns out that when we look deeply at everything 00:19:47.686 --> 00:19:51.857 we see that here and there, big and small, fast and slow, up and down, left and right, 00:19:52.566 --> 00:19:57.696 male and female, are all the same thing, simply expressing 00:19:57.946 --> 00:20:01.992 different characteristics but in no way separate from each other. 00:20:02.701 --> 00:20:05.120 I believe that all of us 00:20:05.120 --> 00:20:07.915 are individuations 00:20:07.915 --> 00:20:09.374 of God. 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:12.461 I believe that God exists in, as, and 00:20:12.461 --> 00:20:18.050 through every human being and for that matter, every sentient 00:20:18.050 --> 00:20:21.094 being in the cosmos. 00:20:21.094 --> 00:20:24.473 So I see then that I am in relationship to God 00:20:25.515 --> 00:20:28.393 as a wave is to the ocean. 00:20:28.393 --> 00:20:31.063 A wave is no different from the ocean; it's 00:20:31.063 --> 00:20:35.317 simply an arising of the ocean in individual form. 00:20:36.151 --> 00:20:38.570 And when that individuation is complete, 00:20:39.279 --> 00:20:41.865 the wave recedes back into the ocean whence it came. 00:20:41.865 --> 00:20:45.160 To arise again on another day. 00:20:46.662 --> 00:20:51.375 So I believe that we are all individuations of divinity, 00:20:51.375 --> 00:20:53.669 and when we see everything as divine, 00:20:54.419 --> 00:20:57.047 we change our relationship with everything. 00:20:58.215 --> 00:21:00.425 And everything becomes 00:21:00.509 --> 00:21:02.594 different in our experience. 00:21:03.595 --> 00:21:16.525 That's how the world changes. 00:21:16.525 --> 00:21:20.404 Consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe, 00:21:21.238 --> 00:21:26.368 so we might well ask if consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe 00:21:26.368 --> 00:21:30.455 and everything, and everyone is obviously that, then how come 00:21:31.623 --> 00:21:33.583 00:21:33.583 --> 00:21:37.629 the world appears to us as a multiplicity and diversity 00:21:38.213 --> 00:21:42.968 of discrete and independently existing people 00:21:42.968 --> 00:21:46.972 and animals and things all made out of stuff called matter. 00:21:46.972 --> 00:21:51.268 How can we reconcile this statement that consciousness 00:21:51.268 --> 00:21:54.187 is the ultimate reality of the universe when it appears 00:21:54.438 --> 00:21:57.941 as a multiplicity and diversity of objects made out of matter? 00:21:58.066 --> 00:22:02.362 So the the evidence that I'm using to suggest that consciousness 00:22:02.362 --> 00:22:03.196 is fundamental 00:22:04.656 --> 00:22:06.908 has many aspects to it. 00:22:06.908 --> 00:22:09.411 One is that physics itself 00:22:09.411 --> 00:22:12.581 says that space time isn't fundamental 00:22:12.581 --> 00:22:15.375 and evolutionary theory also agrees that spacetime 00:22:15.375 --> 00:22:17.878 and physical objects are not fundamental reality. 00:22:18.462 --> 00:22:23.800 Now, both of those theories tell us only that that spacetime is not fundamental. 00:22:23.800 --> 00:22:25.927 They don't tell us what is beyond spacetime. 00:22:26.595 --> 00:22:31.183 And so my argument is that what the physicists are finding 00:22:31.183 --> 00:22:34.019 beyond spacetime, they're finding mathematical structures, 00:22:34.644 --> 00:22:37.022 but what those are about 00:22:37.230 --> 00:22:40.901 is not really clear. What is this realm beyond space time about? 00:22:41.151 --> 00:22:45.238 And so I'm proposing that the realm beyond space time is about consciousness. 00:22:45.781 --> 00:22:48.742 And I would suggest that infinite consciousness has the ability 00:22:48.742 --> 00:22:53.955 to localize itself as numerous separate subjects of experience, 00:22:54.289 --> 00:22:58.627 that is, all sentient beings, all people or animals. 00:22:58.919 --> 00:23:03.423 Each of us are localizations of infinite consciousness, 00:23:03.423 --> 00:23:07.094 in infinite consciousness made only of infinite consciousness 00:23:07.719 --> 00:23:10.305 from whose perspective it views 00:23:10.305 --> 00:23:13.850 its own activity as the outside world. 00:23:14.851 --> 00:23:15.185 So what 00:23:15.185 --> 00:23:18.021 appears to us as a world made out of matter 00:23:18.480 --> 00:23:23.360 from our localized perspectives, is from the point of view of reality, 00:23:23.568 --> 00:23:27.823 simply the activity of the one infinite consciousness. 00:23:28.031 --> 00:23:33.161 In other words, in the ultimate analysis, there are no discrete 00:23:33.161 --> 00:23:36.998 or independently existing things or people. 00:23:37.457 --> 00:23:40.419 There is one infinite, indivisible, whole. 00:23:41.211 --> 00:23:44.714 The unity of being that is only refracted 00:23:45.715 --> 00:23:49.094 into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and things. 00:23:49.553 --> 00:23:53.306 When the one looks at its own activity 00:23:53.640 --> 00:23:55.934 through the perceiving faculties 00:23:56.351 --> 00:23:58.728 of the finite mind. 00:23:59.271 --> 00:24:00.856 If we are awake, 00:24:00.856 --> 00:24:04.693 we realize that there's one awareness 00:24:05.235 --> 00:24:09.072 that is disguised as all of these different beings on the planet, 00:24:09.698 --> 00:24:13.410 one awareness shining through everyone's eyes. 00:24:13.452 --> 00:24:17.747 Then we literally see ourselves in others. 00:24:18.081 --> 00:24:22.169 And that tendency to operate as an ego, 00:24:22.169 --> 00:24:26.006 the tendency to take for oneself 00:24:26.381 --> 00:24:30.677 falls away because we directly realize the truth. 00:24:31.261 --> 00:24:34.431 The truth is that we're all one consciousness. 00:24:35.765 --> 00:24:38.268 The experience of my spiritual self 00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:41.646 was only possible in the realm 00:24:41.646 --> 00:24:43.899 of the physical for a very good reason, 00:24:44.649 --> 00:24:48.820 because only in the realm of the physical was the opposite available. 00:24:49.738 --> 00:24:52.115 In other words, just use a simple example, 00:24:52.866 --> 00:24:55.619 if I wanted to experience myself, if I could speak 00:24:55.619 --> 00:24:57.829 metaphorically, as the light, 00:24:58.872 --> 00:25:02.375 I couldn't experience being the light if I was amidst the light, 00:25:02.918 --> 00:25:04.961 nothing else around me but the light, 00:25:05.420 --> 00:25:09.466 which is a perfect definition of the realm of the spiritual. 00:25:09.966 --> 00:25:13.762 So I would come to a realm which I call the realm of the physical, 00:25:13.929 --> 00:25:16.348 where there is something other than the light. 00:25:16.973 --> 00:25:19.601 Because if I want to experience myself as the light, 00:25:19.601 --> 00:25:22.979 not just know myself as that, but experience it, 00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:24.731 I could only do that 00:25:24.731 --> 00:25:28.401 where there was the opposite of the light, in this case, the darkness. 00:25:29.528 --> 00:25:30.904 So I brought 00:25:30.904 --> 00:25:36.201 this opportunity to the physical realm where the light and the dark exist 00:25:36.201 --> 00:25:40.288 simultaneously, and then in that outward 00:25:40.288 --> 00:25:44.543 expression of myself as the light, I could be who I really am. 00:25:45.335 --> 00:25:47.671 And this understanding suggests 00:25:47.671 --> 00:25:53.426 that behind our differences we are all the same, 00:25:53.593 --> 00:25:59.724 being not a similar being, but we are all literally one... the same being. 00:25:59.724 --> 00:26:04.646 And love is the felt experience 00:26:05.313 --> 00:26:08.316 of this oneness or shared being. 00:26:08.733 --> 00:26:14.281 It's a theorem of our theory that there is ultimately one consciousness. 00:26:15.198 --> 00:26:15.699 00:26:15.699 --> 00:26:18.910 So we have this dynamics of many, many conscious agents. 00:26:18.910 --> 00:26:22.163 But the theory tells us that ultimately all those conscious agents 00:26:22.163 --> 00:26:26.084 are really just projections of a single one consciousness. 00:26:26.084 --> 00:26:27.711 The current 00:26:28.169 --> 00:26:29.963 paradigm in science 00:26:29.963 --> 00:26:32.549 has, and it has been for for centuries, 00:26:32.799 --> 00:26:36.386 is that space and time are the fundamental nature of reality. 00:26:36.428 --> 00:26:39.931 They're irreducible and they are the foundation of everything. 00:26:40.515 --> 00:26:43.643 And prior to Einstein, space and time were viewed as separate. 00:26:43.935 --> 00:26:47.647 Now, space and time together, a unified into spacetime are viewed 00:26:47.647 --> 00:26:49.524 as the fundamental nature of reality. 00:26:49.524 --> 00:26:51.818 And science has then assumed that 00:26:53.153 --> 00:26:53.862 spacetime 00:26:53.862 --> 00:26:56.990 and objects in spacetime are the foundational reality. 00:26:57.616 --> 00:27:00.243 And so, for example, when we talk about consciousness, 00:27:00.910 --> 00:27:06.082 consciousness itself then must be somehow a product of objects in space and time. 00:27:06.374 --> 00:27:10.837 In that physicalist framework space and time and physical objects 00:27:11.713 --> 00:27:15.008 without any consciousness are the fundamental reality. 00:27:15.008 --> 00:27:19.804 And consciousness comes later on in the evolution of the universe, right? 00:27:19.846 --> 00:27:21.514 So that the big bang, 00:27:21.514 --> 00:27:24.559 there was no consciousness, there was just spacetime and energy. 00:27:24.768 --> 00:27:26.978 The energy coalesced into massive particles 00:27:27.187 --> 00:27:30.982 and eventually life emerged after who knows how many millions or hundreds 00:27:30.982 --> 00:27:32.525 of millions or billions of years. 00:27:32.525 --> 00:27:35.987 Then after that consciousness came, even later. 00:27:37.197 --> 00:27:40.867 From that point of view, when you die, the physical complexity 00:27:40.867 --> 00:27:44.329 that gave rise to consciousness dissolves and so your consciousness dissolves. 00:27:44.329 --> 00:27:48.708 And so the physicalist framework really does eliminate consciousness 00:27:49.042 --> 00:27:51.127 as a fundamental thing, altogether 00:27:51.127 --> 00:27:54.381 and says that when your body dies, your consciousness goes with it. 00:27:56.216 --> 00:27:58.134 From this other point of view... 00:27:58.134 --> 00:28:01.638 what I've done with my colleagues, we have we used evolutionary theory 00:28:01.638 --> 00:28:03.139 to point out 00:28:03.139 --> 00:28:04.015 that it's 00:28:04.015 --> 00:28:07.811 an implication of evolutionary theory, that space and time is not fundamental, 00:28:07.811 --> 00:28:10.980 so the physicalist interpretation of evolution is wrong. 00:28:11.690 --> 00:28:14.734 The idea that that space and time and particles 00:28:14.734 --> 00:28:20.657 somehow have evolved due to human organisms 00:28:21.074 --> 00:28:24.369 is is the wrong framework or because space time itself is not fundamental. 00:28:24.577 --> 00:28:27.747 We're positing a dynamics beyond spacetime that's much richer. 00:28:27.747 --> 00:28:29.833 The dynamics of consciousness. 00:28:29.833 --> 00:28:32.168 What we do not do is throw away our old theories. 00:28:32.293 --> 00:28:34.337 When physicists say spacetime is doomed, 00:28:34.337 --> 00:28:38.133 that doesn't mean we no longer pay attention to Einstein. 00:28:38.133 --> 00:28:40.593 Absolutely not. We pay attention to Einstein. 00:28:40.802 --> 00:28:45.098 Any new theory beyond spacetime that the physicists come up with better project 00:28:45.098 --> 00:28:48.810 into space time and give us back Einstein and it better give us back quantum theory 00:28:48.852 --> 00:28:50.353 or you're wrong. 00:28:50.353 --> 00:28:52.313 All of our old theories 00:28:52.313 --> 00:28:56.109 are wonderful, wonderful friends and we're going to keep them 00:28:57.068 --> 00:28:59.320 as special cases of a deeper theory. 00:28:59.863 --> 00:29:02.323 So in our theory of consciousness, we have to do the same thing. 00:29:02.949 --> 00:29:05.076 We can't just propose anything we want. 00:29:05.076 --> 00:29:07.954 We have to have a theory of consciousness that projects and gives us back 00:29:07.954 --> 00:29:08.830 space time, 00:29:08.830 --> 00:29:12.417 and gives us back quantum theory, and gives us back special and general 00:29:12.417 --> 00:29:15.545 relativity, and gives us back evolution by natural selection. 00:29:15.837 --> 00:29:19.632 If we cannot do that in precise mathematical detail, 00:29:19.924 --> 00:29:21.593 then there's no reason for scientists 00:29:21.593 --> 00:29:24.137 to take our theory of consciousness seriously. 00:29:24.137 --> 00:29:28.600 It's as if infinite consciousness puts on a virtual reality headset. Infinite 00:29:28.600 --> 00:29:32.312 consciousness puts on a a VR headset made of thinking and perceiving. 00:29:32.645 --> 00:29:36.983 And in doing so, the moment it puts on the VR headset, 00:29:37.233 --> 00:29:41.112 it localizes itself within its own activity. 00:29:41.529 --> 00:29:46.743 And through that headset it looks out through the perceiving 00:29:46.743 --> 00:29:50.789 faculties of a finite mind; seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. 00:29:51.080 --> 00:29:55.418 And it fragments the unity of its own being 00:29:56.503 --> 00:29:59.339 and makes it appear as 10,000 things. 00:30:00.423 --> 00:30:02.467 What I'm suggesting is that 00:30:03.009 --> 00:30:07.806 there is very much more to to the universe than the finite mind. 00:30:07.806 --> 00:30:13.520 I'm not suggesting that the universe only appears in each of our finite minds. 00:30:14.020 --> 00:30:18.733 The universe exists outside of our finite mind, but inside consciousness. 00:30:19.067 --> 00:30:22.570 But it is the limitations of our finite mind 00:30:22.987 --> 00:30:26.199 that give the universe its appearance. 00:30:27.617 --> 00:30:31.955 So when we look out at the universe, we're seeing the reality 00:30:31.955 --> 00:30:35.667 that exists prior to its being perceived. 00:30:36.376 --> 00:30:40.421 But we are seeing it through the lens of our perceiving faculties, 00:30:41.881 --> 00:30:45.593 which gives it its appearance. 00:30:45.593 --> 00:30:50.640 So the idea of awakening in many spiritual traditions has been the idea 00:30:50.640 --> 00:30:53.685 that what we have taken is reality 00:30:54.644 --> 00:30:57.605 objects in space and time, our physical bodies and so forth 00:30:58.898 --> 00:30:59.649 is not the 00:30:59.649 --> 00:31:02.527 final reality, that there is a much deeper reality, 00:31:02.819 --> 00:31:06.865 a reality of consciousness that transcends space and time and physical objects, 00:31:07.365 --> 00:31:10.034 and that we're not divorced from that reality. 00:31:10.034 --> 00:31:13.705 That reality is, in some sense, the essence of what we are. 00:31:14.038 --> 00:31:17.083 And so awakening is awakening from the illusion 00:31:17.083 --> 00:31:21.671 that I'm just a little body in space and time to the fact that I am 00:31:21.671 --> 00:31:24.966 in fact the author of everything I see inside of space and time. 00:31:24.966 --> 00:31:36.728 I create it on the fly as I look and perceive. 00:31:36.728 --> 00:31:41.441 One becomes awakened by recognizing that 00:31:42.483 --> 00:31:45.486 what we essentially are is already 00:31:45.945 --> 00:31:49.032 fully awake, fully aware, 00:31:49.032 --> 00:31:52.368 complete, whole, fulfilled at peace. 00:31:53.328 --> 00:31:55.330 It's like asking how does the 00:31:55.663 --> 00:31:59.000 sun become illuminated? 00:31:59.626 --> 00:32:01.377 Its nature is light. 00:32:01.377 --> 00:32:03.129 It is already fully illuminated. 00:32:03.129 --> 00:32:07.967 The nature of our essential being is already peace and happiness. 00:32:08.384 --> 00:32:11.846 It's not clear to us all, because our essential being is so 00:32:11.846 --> 00:32:15.975 thoroughly mixed with the content of experience that its innate 00:32:16.601 --> 00:32:19.938 Peace and happiness is dimmed by experience. 00:32:20.563 --> 00:32:25.193 And for that reason we think that our essential being needs to be enlightened. 00:32:25.193 --> 00:32:27.487 No essential being doesn't need to be enlightened 00:32:27.487 --> 00:32:31.366 any more than the sun needs to be lit up in the early morning. 00:32:32.533 --> 00:32:35.203 The sun's always shining with the same brightness. 00:32:35.203 --> 00:32:39.415 Our essential being is always shining with the same peace and joy. 00:32:39.749 --> 00:32:43.086 But that peace and joy are dimmed by the agitation 00:32:43.086 --> 00:32:45.797 and lack that characterizes our thoughts and feelings. 00:32:47.548 --> 00:32:50.551 There's no person that awakens. 00:32:51.177 --> 00:32:54.597 So the I that awakened 00:32:55.598 --> 00:32:57.642 I awakened from this Dan 00:32:57.642 --> 00:33:00.812 structure at a meditation center. 00:33:01.229 --> 00:33:03.314 It was a Zen center. 00:33:03.314 --> 00:33:05.984 We were doing a Zen sesshin 00:33:05.984 --> 00:33:09.529 which is a long period of intensive practice. 00:33:10.238 --> 00:33:15.118 So Zen is amazing for creating this container 00:33:15.493 --> 00:33:18.246 where there are these conditions of no escape. 00:33:18.663 --> 00:33:24.252 So the Dan character that had learned meditation, 00:33:24.252 --> 00:33:27.338 the Dan character had been doing all this meditation, 00:33:27.547 --> 00:33:29.841 this doer of meditation, 00:33:30.675 --> 00:33:33.094 realized that it couldn't awaken. 00:33:33.469 --> 00:33:36.597 It's like all the meditation tricks, 00:33:36.597 --> 00:33:41.894 all the practices that had been learned were of no use. 00:33:42.186 --> 00:33:45.565 It got to the point where that character 00:33:45.773 --> 00:33:48.359 who was trying to awaken, failed 00:33:49.027 --> 00:33:51.154 to awaken and had to fail. 00:33:51.487 --> 00:33:56.367 That the character that I had been living, the character that I've been playing 00:33:56.534 --> 00:34:01.330 all my life, had to let go or die and 00:34:02.457 --> 00:34:03.791 what was left? 00:34:03.791 --> 00:34:06.961 What was left when there was no doer 00:34:06.961 --> 00:34:10.214 when there was no meditator 00:34:10.214 --> 00:34:14.510 meditating or doing something called, meditation, 00:34:15.261 --> 00:34:18.723 what was left was my true nature 00:34:18.723 --> 00:34:21.059 or me... just me. 00:34:21.059 --> 00:34:25.480 When we awaken from this small, separate sense of self, it's 00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:28.775 not that we're killing the ego 00:34:28.816 --> 00:34:31.694 or we're fighting it. 00:34:32.153 --> 00:34:35.990 It's actually we're allowing it to semi retire 00:34:36.365 --> 00:34:39.035 from its job of ego identity 00:34:39.702 --> 00:34:42.455 and then relax to be part 00:34:42.455 --> 00:34:45.541 of our team, part of our consciousness. 00:34:46.417 --> 00:34:49.837 And this gives us a sense of freedom immediately 00:34:49.837 --> 00:34:53.633 that we're not looking at the world through a small lens, 00:34:53.633 --> 00:34:58.513 that we're we're open hearted and open minded in a way that's 00:34:59.931 --> 00:35:01.933 expansive and yet 00:35:02.683 --> 00:35:05.853 at the same time, more intimately connected. 00:35:05.978 --> 00:35:08.898 Enlightenment is not about becoming awakened. 00:35:09.565 --> 00:35:11.818 Nobody becomes awakened or enlightened. 00:35:11.818 --> 00:35:16.322 It's a recognition of the light, the light of pure knowing 00:35:17.281 --> 00:35:19.075 whose nature is peace and happiness 00:35:19.075 --> 00:35:21.327 that we always and already are. 00:35:25.873 --> 00:35:26.624 My name is Lisa 00:35:26.624 --> 00:35:30.044 Natoli, and I'm known as a spiritual teacher. 00:35:30.169 --> 00:35:34.298 I teach about healing and awakening and transformation. 00:35:34.298 --> 00:35:38.302 Awakening is the recognition of your true nature, 00:35:38.803 --> 00:35:44.142 and it's the realization of what you really are, which is consciousness. 00:35:44.517 --> 00:35:49.355 And consciousness is just one word for many words that people use 00:35:50.148 --> 00:35:55.027 for awareness, life, love, God, 00:35:56.529 --> 00:35:58.114 light. 00:35:58.573 --> 00:36:03.786 So waking up to the recognition that I'm not this body 00:36:04.203 --> 00:36:07.832 that I am, that which never dies and that which is never born, 00:36:08.666 --> 00:36:11.627 and the 00:36:11.627 --> 00:36:15.673 easiest way for me, that was a very difficult idea for me. 00:36:15.673 --> 00:36:18.759 I've been on a spiritual path since 1992. 00:36:19.677 --> 00:36:21.971 I started with A Course in Miracles. 00:36:21.971 --> 00:36:24.348 I always studied it religiously. 00:36:24.348 --> 00:36:28.603 I mean, I was someone who was so committed to knowing the 00:36:28.603 --> 00:36:33.858 Self, knowing God, waking up. I couldn't get it, 00:36:34.734 --> 00:36:37.069 because I was under the belief 00:36:37.069 --> 00:36:40.031 that awakening was something mystical, 00:36:40.406 --> 00:36:44.827 that something would happen, that something would occur, 00:36:45.703 --> 00:36:47.830 and it would be like Jesus 00:36:47.830 --> 00:36:51.250 or Buddha or all of these enlightened masters 00:36:52.460 --> 00:36:53.920 and it wasn't happening for me. 00:36:53.920 --> 00:36:56.339 I couldn't understand why. 00:36:56.505 --> 00:37:00.259 Why am I so committed 00:37:00.259 --> 00:37:05.806 and I'm having deep moments of peace and happiness and joy... and still struggling. 00:37:06.349 --> 00:37:09.518 I started to realize the simplicity 00:37:10.061 --> 00:37:12.313 of our true nature, which is awareness. 00:37:13.272 --> 00:37:18.402 So for someone who's listening to me right now, 00:37:18.945 --> 00:37:23.950 the awareness that's hearing this voice, that's what we are. 00:37:24.784 --> 00:37:28.955 And it doesn't have a location, it doesn't have a gender, 00:37:29.163 --> 00:37:31.958 it doesn't have a color, it doesn't have a body, 00:37:33.042 --> 00:37:35.211 and it's totally unlimited. 00:37:36.587 --> 00:37:39.840 So awakening is where we wake up 00:37:40.841 --> 00:37:42.635 to our true nature. 00:37:42.635 --> 00:37:47.598 We wake up to the realization that I am the awareness 00:37:47.974 --> 00:37:51.936 of this experience right now as I'm here. 00:37:53.020 --> 00:37:54.355 And it's so ordinary 00:37:54.355 --> 00:37:55.564 we miss it. 00:37:55.690 --> 00:37:56.357 00:37:56.357 --> 00:37:59.151 We think it can't be that simple. 00:37:59.151 --> 00:38:00.987 The recognition of our true nature, 00:38:00.987 --> 00:38:03.239 it doesn't lead to happiness. 00:38:03.864 --> 00:38:07.118 It is happiness... the nature of being 00:38:07.576 --> 00:38:10.121 is happiness itself. 00:38:10.121 --> 00:38:13.582 So the recognition of our true nature is the experience 00:38:13.582 --> 00:38:20.381 of happiness. 00:38:20.381 --> 00:38:22.717 Who is aware in this moment? 00:38:24.635 --> 00:38:25.511 The mind will 00:38:25.511 --> 00:38:28.514 look for something, or try to complicate it. 00:38:29.765 --> 00:38:31.809 You already are 00:38:31.809 --> 00:38:36.731 that which the mind is looking for. 00:38:36.731 --> 00:38:38.858 The mind will always miss it. 00:38:39.650 --> 00:38:42.236 So don't look to the mind for an answer. 00:38:43.195 --> 00:38:45.281 Don't push away your thoughts 00:38:45.281 --> 00:38:49.535 and don't get caught in the thoughts. 00:38:49.535 --> 00:38:54.665 Simply let go of the interest or attachment to thoughts, ideas 00:38:55.124 --> 00:38:57.084 and beliefs. 00:38:57.793 --> 00:39:00.755 Intend to directly experience 00:39:00.755 --> 00:39:04.425 who you are. 00:39:04.425 --> 00:39:09.013 Don't try to negate the mind or to achieve some state. 00:39:10.139 --> 00:39:13.184 All doing, all manipulation, 00:39:13.184 --> 00:39:17.188 all movement is more controlling by the mind. 00:39:17.855 --> 00:39:27.823 Allow the mind to be as it is. 00:39:27.823 --> 00:39:31.869 Sometimes people can awaken just in day to day life. 00:39:31.869 --> 00:39:34.789 They don't necessarily need practice. 00:39:34.997 --> 00:39:39.752 So sometimes things will happen in life where there's an interrupt 00:39:39.752 --> 00:39:44.465 in the pattern of you. And there can be a spontaneous awakening. 00:39:44.965 --> 00:39:50.054 But if someone's life is just going on in a kind of robotic pattern 00:39:50.054 --> 00:39:52.431 or repetitive pattern, then 00:39:53.140 --> 00:39:55.976 some sort of intervention is necessary. 00:39:55.976 --> 00:40:02.483 if one is called to awakening and that interrupt in the pattern of you 00:40:02.691 --> 00:40:06.821 is sometimes called sadhana or spiritual practice. 00:40:07.071 --> 00:40:10.032 And these practices are always 00:40:10.991 --> 00:40:11.951 conditioned. 00:40:11.951 --> 00:40:14.954 Thet are something that we learn with the conditioned mind. 00:40:15.371 --> 00:40:19.291 So they can make it more likely for awakening to happen, 00:40:19.542 --> 00:40:23.170 sort of by loosening the bonds within the self structure. 00:40:23.629 --> 00:40:28.300 Sometimes they say that awakening happens by accident, 00:40:28.509 --> 00:40:31.512 but the practice makes you more accident prone. 00:40:32.304 --> 00:40:35.766 The techniques, the practices can be very useful 00:40:36.058 --> 00:40:38.561 to make you more accident prone. 00:40:38.561 --> 00:40:42.606 But then at a certain point have to be let go. 00:40:43.524 --> 00:40:47.736 Because if the mind is continuously doing some practice 00:40:47.736 --> 00:40:50.906 or some thing, then the mind has 00:40:50.906 --> 00:40:54.201 the reins, mind is in the driver's seat. 00:40:54.577 --> 00:40:58.456 So the practices are useful, very useful 00:40:58.456 --> 00:41:03.335 as steppingstones for making the self structure, 00:41:03.335 --> 00:41:07.631 you can say less dense or enlightening up the self structure 00:41:07.882 --> 00:41:11.093 so that it becomes more permeable 00:41:11.343 --> 00:41:15.639 to our true nature. 00:41:15.639 --> 00:41:19.935 The paradox with practice is that when you finally awaken, 00:41:20.311 --> 00:41:23.022 you realize that all of the practices 00:41:23.189 --> 00:41:25.566 were being done by the false self, 00:41:26.317 --> 00:41:30.237 the character in the VR game, and that YOU, 00:41:30.446 --> 00:41:35.075 the true self, was never bound. 00:41:35.075 --> 00:41:38.871 All you have to do is give up the preferences of the ego, 00:41:39.580 --> 00:41:43.834 to give up the fixation on things. 00:41:43.834 --> 00:41:48.714 Anything within the field of changing phenomena is not the true self, 00:41:49.632 --> 00:41:53.719 the you that you think you are, the you that you've always been 00:41:53.719 --> 00:41:56.388 identified with will never awaken 00:41:56.847 --> 00:41:59.475 you awaken from that character. 00:41:59.892 --> 00:42:04.104 You awaken from the delusion that you were this conditioned character. 00:42:04.396 --> 00:42:08.317 So when people come to these retreats, they think this 00:42:08.317 --> 00:42:12.196 "I" this little "me" is going to awaken, some great thing is going to happen. 00:42:12.488 --> 00:42:15.699 But at a certain point, that little me will never do it. 00:42:15.699 --> 00:42:17.743 It has to give up, it has to fail. 00:42:18.035 --> 00:42:20.079 And it's only in that failure 00:42:20.371 --> 00:42:26.418 we realize who we are, that we've always been aware, we've always been present. 00:42:26.710 --> 00:42:30.381 We just got hooked into this character and we believed 00:42:30.381 --> 00:42:42.851 we were that. 00:42:42.851 --> 00:42:48.774 I started my spiritual search in the classical Advaita Vedanta 00:42:49.775 --> 00:42:51.777 tradition, which was a devotional path 00:42:52.486 --> 00:42:56.198 that involved mantra meditation, 00:42:56.198 --> 00:43:00.160 which I practiced very diligently for 20 years. 00:43:00.578 --> 00:43:02.913 And mantra meditation involves 00:43:03.789 --> 00:43:07.209 focusing your attention on a sound 00:43:08.294 --> 00:43:10.546 and then gradually the sound fades. 00:43:11.088 --> 00:43:12.673 However, it was 00:43:12.923 --> 00:43:15.759 four really when I came in touch 00:43:15.759 --> 00:43:18.429 with the direct path that 00:43:19.597 --> 00:43:24.852 my spiritual searcg really reached its culmination. 00:43:25.227 --> 00:43:28.856 Because in this direct approach, 00:43:28.856 --> 00:43:32.943 we don't give our attention to any object, however 00:43:33.152 --> 00:43:37.197 subtle, for instance, a mantra, a sound, the breath, 00:43:37.656 --> 00:43:41.201 we allow our attention to sink inwards 00:43:41.201 --> 00:43:43.746 or backwards into its source. 00:43:45.164 --> 00:43:47.916 Let's use an analogy. 00:43:47.916 --> 00:43:51.670 Imagine that you are watching your life on a television screen. 00:43:52.046 --> 00:43:54.965 You are identified with the character on the screen. 00:43:56.258 --> 00:43:57.593 Day after day, 00:43:57.593 --> 00:44:01.722 year after year you are involved with the story of the character 00:44:02.264 --> 00:44:05.434 when suddenly you wake up out of the story 00:44:05.809 --> 00:44:09.104 to notice the screen on which the character appears 00:44:09.563 --> 00:44:13.275 and you realize you are not the character you've been watching. 00:44:14.109 --> 00:44:16.445 Objects can come and go on the screen. 00:44:17.446 --> 00:44:19.448 Characters come and go, 00:44:19.448 --> 00:44:21.825 but the screen remains unchanged. 00:44:22.785 --> 00:44:24.995 The character can get wet, 00:44:24.995 --> 00:44:29.500 but the screen does not get wet. The character can be disturbed, 00:44:30.042 --> 00:44:33.045 but the screen is not disturbed. 00:44:33.045 --> 00:44:36.382 Without the screen, the characters would not exist, 00:44:37.091 --> 00:44:39.134 yet screen goes unnoticed. 00:44:39.593 --> 00:44:42.554 The characters go about their scripted lives. 00:44:44.014 --> 00:44:46.016 Awareness is like the screen. 00:44:46.767 --> 00:44:49.603 It is like the space in which all thoughts, 00:44:49.770 --> 00:44:53.649 motions, all states of consciousness come and go. 00:44:54.942 --> 00:44:57.069 Thoughts, sensations 00:44:57.069 --> 00:45:02.157 and the entire outside world appear on the screen, constantly changing. 00:45:02.658 --> 00:45:06.995 But the screen does not change. 00:45:06.995 --> 00:45:12.918 It's the mind that changes states through the human experience. 00:45:13.293 --> 00:45:17.840 But there's something, that what you are, that remains. 00:45:18.257 --> 00:45:20.426 Something that is ever present, 00:45:20.968 --> 00:45:24.012 that is aware of those changing states 00:45:24.430 --> 00:45:28.058 and that is consciousness or our true nature. 00:45:28.642 --> 00:45:31.854 As long as there is attachment to a character on the screen, 00:45:32.438 --> 00:45:36.483 a sense that I am that character, then there will be suffering; 00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:39.486 maya the illusion of the self. 00:45:41.113 --> 00:45:43.282 Nothing you can do as the dream 00:45:43.282 --> 00:45:47.953 character will help to free you. Whether you follow the script 00:45:48.078 --> 00:45:51.665 in the drama of your life or rebel against the script, 00:45:51.790 --> 00:45:54.626 if you act from the point of view of the character, 00:45:54.877 --> 00:45:58.255 then you're caught in the illusion. 00:45:58.255 --> 00:45:59.798 To awaken, 00:45:59.798 --> 00:46:05.345 stop identifying with what appears on the screen. 00:46:05.345 --> 00:46:07.806 Recognize that it is all impermanent. 00:46:08.515 --> 00:46:12.936 Stop reacting to thoughts and treating the program as real. 00:46:13.687 --> 00:46:17.733 If I withdraw attention from the screen, turning awareness 00:46:17.733 --> 00:46:21.320 towards itself, an unfathomable thing happens. 00:46:22.154 --> 00:46:27.785 Awareness itself wakes up. 00:46:27.785 --> 00:46:30.037 This is not a happening. 00:46:30.037 --> 00:46:32.456 Happening is what happens on the screen. 00:46:33.791 --> 00:46:36.960 Awakening is just recognizing the screen 00:46:36.960 --> 00:46:38.962 that was always already there. 00:46:40.756 --> 00:46:42.925 Do not believe your next thought 00:46:44.134 --> 00:46:45.385 instead, 00:46:45.385 --> 00:47:00.192 turn awareness towards awareness itself. 00:47:00.192 --> 00:47:02.986 I have always been myself. 00:47:02.986 --> 00:47:06.740 My sense of my self runs throughout my life. 00:47:06.740 --> 00:47:09.785 It remains consistently present throughout my life. 00:47:11.078 --> 00:47:13.038 What is present in me now, 00:47:13.038 --> 00:47:15.999 that was present yesterday, last year, ten years ago, 00:47:15.999 --> 00:47:20.587 and when I was a two year old child? 00:47:20.587 --> 00:47:23.257 What is this essential "I" or self 00:47:24.174 --> 00:47:26.802 to whom all my experience happens? 00:47:28.095 --> 00:47:30.305 The recognition 00:47:30.305 --> 00:47:34.643 of the nature of that one is the great secret to life. 00:47:34.643 --> 00:47:37.187 It is the direct path to peace 00:47:37.187 --> 00:47:41.525 and happiness. It is not something that a person initiates. 00:47:43.151 --> 00:47:46.488 It's something that a person recognizes. 00:47:47.739 --> 00:47:49.449 To re-cognize. 00:47:49.449 --> 00:47:52.744 That is to know, again. 00:47:52.953 --> 00:47:55.539 What we've known from the beginning 00:47:55.539 --> 00:47:59.960 but is simply forgotten, or denied or failed to believe. 00:48:00.669 --> 00:48:03.255 So we cannot initiate closeness to God. 00:48:03.964 --> 00:48:08.969 We can simply recognize, to recognize that it's always been there 00:48:10.095 --> 00:48:12.347 and will always be there. 00:48:12.347 --> 00:48:16.643 It was only this direct pointing to awakening, 00:48:16.643 --> 00:48:21.356 this opening to what's already here that allowed me to find 00:48:22.858 --> 00:48:23.775 a new way of 00:48:23.775 --> 00:48:26.528 being- a new stage of development. 00:48:26.862 --> 00:48:33.201 Many people think it's a very impossible or out of reach goal 00:48:33.201 --> 00:48:38.040 to know the self, and my own 00:48:38.415 --> 00:48:42.127 sort of purpose as a teacher, just because of my own awakening, 00:48:42.127 --> 00:48:47.466 has really been wanting to make it very practical, very down to Earth. 00:48:47.466 --> 00:48:51.386 I love to teach people, it's available to everyone. 00:48:52.137 --> 00:48:55.891 If we believe and feel 00:48:56.058 --> 00:48:59.603 that we are a temporary, finite, separate self, 00:49:00.604 --> 00:49:02.773 we are, whether we know it or not, 00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:05.859 searching for peace and happiness. 00:49:05.859 --> 00:49:09.279 In other words, it's not possible to be a separate self, 00:49:09.529 --> 00:49:13.867 to feel oneself as a separate self and not be in search of happiness. 00:49:14.743 --> 00:49:16.954 So what is required 00:49:16.954 --> 00:49:21.083 in this case is to reorientate one's search for happiness, 00:49:21.083 --> 00:49:24.586 instead of seeking for happiness in the objective content of experience, 00:49:25.003 --> 00:49:27.631 to seek happiness in oneself. 00:49:27.631 --> 00:49:30.926 So the spiritual practice that is required 00:49:31.510 --> 00:49:36.014 is to direct one's attention or more accurately, 00:49:36.014 --> 00:49:40.268 to relax one's attention into its source, 00:49:41.603 --> 00:49:44.856 pure awareness, rather than directed towards 00:49:45.065 --> 00:49:48.568 an object substance activity or relationship, and so on. 00:49:49.236 --> 00:49:53.323 So the spiritual practice, if we can call it a practice, 00:49:53.615 --> 00:49:56.535 would be this relaxing 00:49:56.618 --> 00:50:00.247 of the attention, this subsidence of the attention 00:50:00.914 --> 00:50:04.126 into the heart of awareness, 00:50:04.376 --> 00:50:06.586 resting in being as being. 00:50:07.963 --> 00:50:08.880 Love. 00:50:09.881 --> 00:50:12.718 Pure love is my true self. 00:50:12.718 --> 00:50:15.095 It's my true nature. 00:50:15.095 --> 00:50:17.472 Pure love for everyone and everything, 00:50:18.473 --> 00:50:20.892 for every aspect of life. 00:50:20.892 --> 00:50:23.895 Even those things with which I disagree. 00:50:24.521 --> 00:50:28.775 For one who has recognized the nature of their being, they know their being 00:50:29.067 --> 00:50:32.654 as the the source of the peace 00:50:32.654 --> 00:50:35.115 and happiness for which they long. 00:50:36.616 --> 00:50:40.704 So the world no longer becomes the place 00:50:40.704 --> 00:50:45.375 in which they seek happiness, seek fulfillment. 00:50:45.375 --> 00:50:48.295 Doesn't mean to say that such a person no longer has desires, 00:50:48.837 --> 00:50:53.091 but the desires are not there to fulfill the sense of lack 00:50:53.800 --> 00:50:57.220 that is characteristic of the separate self. 00:50:57.971 --> 00:51:01.099 As such, a person has found the source of happiness 00:51:01.391 --> 00:51:06.563 within themselves and their desires come from that sense of happiness. 00:51:07.064 --> 00:51:09.232 They do not go towards it. 00:51:09.232 --> 00:51:11.860 For instance, in the realm of relationship, 00:51:11.860 --> 00:51:14.863 it makes a big difference to our relationships. 00:51:14.863 --> 00:51:16.740 We no longer seek an other 00:51:17.866 --> 00:51:21.620 to fulfill the needs of our self. 00:51:22.329 --> 00:51:24.581 We seek another to share 00:51:24.790 --> 00:51:27.667 the experience of happiness that we already have. 00:51:27.667 --> 00:51:31.338 And this relieves our our friends of the impossible burden 00:51:31.755 --> 00:51:35.759 of providing happiness for a voracious, 00:51:36.760 --> 00:51:38.845 unsatisfied self. 00:51:39.304 --> 00:51:42.474 Nothing occurs in my life 00:51:42.474 --> 00:51:46.269 that is has not brought me benefit or will not bring me benefit 00:51:46.645 --> 00:51:50.982 in the sense that every moment, every activity, every outcome 00:51:52.275 --> 00:51:54.528 moves me forward 00:51:54.528 --> 00:51:57.030 in the process of the evolution of my soul. 00:51:57.405 --> 00:52:00.200 And that's why I came here to the physical realm, 00:52:01.118 --> 00:52:09.793 to evolve. 00:52:10.377 --> 00:52:13.213 Remain open. 00:52:13.213 --> 00:52:15.757 Feel your inner aliveness, 00:52:15.757 --> 00:52:20.011 letting energy circulate freely. 00:52:20.011 --> 00:52:25.058 Don't try to make anything happen. 00:52:25.058 --> 00:52:27.602 Who is aware of that energy, 00:52:28.353 --> 00:52:35.569 that inner aliveness? 00:52:35.569 --> 00:52:39.823 Notice the mind's tendency to control and manipulate, 00:52:40.448 --> 00:52:42.909 to get involved. 00:52:43.869 --> 00:52:47.080 Without the use of your memory or language, 00:52:48.039 --> 00:52:50.876 Who are you? 00:52:51.459 --> 00:52:53.837 Beyond the mind and senses, 00:52:55.005 --> 00:52:57.382 who are you? 00:52:57.549 --> 00:53:17.444 Who is aware? 00:53:17.444 --> 00:53:20.739 Many people who are hearing these ideas for the first time, 00:53:20.739 --> 00:53:24.659 they've never even heard this idea of the self. 00:53:25.118 --> 00:53:28.121 In my mind, there's two different camps of people. 00:53:28.121 --> 00:53:32.334 There are those who are on a spiritual path and they have heard this idea. 00:53:32.334 --> 00:53:35.921 They're trying to reach the self, they're trying to be the self. 00:53:35.921 --> 00:53:37.923 They're seeking, they're searching. 00:53:38.215 --> 00:53:42.010 And then there's other people who have just been living their life. 00:53:42.010 --> 00:53:44.346 They've never heard of these ideas before. 00:53:44.387 --> 00:53:46.514 They've never heard of Know Thyself. 00:53:46.514 --> 00:53:50.435 Many people think know thyself means know the body, 00:53:50.435 --> 00:53:53.313 know yourself, be yourself, be authentic. 00:53:53.438 --> 00:53:59.027 What it really means, to know thyself is to know what you are, 00:53:59.027 --> 00:54:02.948 to know what you are in truth and to really know your true nature. 00:54:03.281 --> 00:54:06.576 The words know thySelf were carved 00:54:07.035 --> 00:54:11.039 on the entrance of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, and as such 00:54:12.040 --> 00:54:13.208 stand as an 00:54:13.208 --> 00:54:17.462 invitation that the dawn of Western civilization to humanity, 00:54:17.796 --> 00:54:22.133 suggesting that to know thySelf is really the foundation 00:54:22.634 --> 00:54:25.679 of all civilization. Why? 00:54:26.054 --> 00:54:31.142 Because our Self stands at the center of all our experience. 00:54:31.476 --> 00:54:36.398 Whatever we are experiencing, it is we who are experiencing it. 00:54:36.815 --> 00:54:39.734 Whatever we think and feel, our thoughts 00:54:39.734 --> 00:54:42.988 and feelings arise on behalf of our Self. 00:54:43.571 --> 00:54:47.993 Whatever activities and relationships we are engaged 00:54:47.993 --> 00:54:53.790 in, we engage those activities and relationships in service of our Self. 00:54:54.541 --> 00:54:58.837 So our Self stands at the center of our experience. 00:54:59.170 --> 00:55:04.509 So what could be more important than to know the nature of our Self, 00:55:05.302 --> 00:55:08.346 and would it be possible 00:55:08.596 --> 00:55:11.016 to know the nature of anything else 00:55:11.599 --> 00:55:15.937 if we do not first know the nature of that which knows it? 00:55:16.479 --> 00:55:18.940 I think awakening is 00:55:19.899 --> 00:55:22.402 about ending the nightmare 00:55:23.194 --> 00:55:26.740 and stepping into the dream. 00:55:26.740 --> 00:55:28.950 By that I mean 00:55:29.492 --> 00:55:32.871 we desert or finally abandon the nightmare of what 00:55:32.871 --> 00:55:37.959 we've been told about life, about God, and about ourselves. 00:55:37.959 --> 00:55:40.712 And we step into the dream of our grandest notion. 00:55:41.629 --> 00:55:45.258 I often ask, What do you think your life would be like 00:55:46.301 --> 00:55:49.679 if you found yourself stepping into the highest 00:55:49.679 --> 00:55:53.975 grandest, most wonderful thought you ever had about God, and about life 00:55:55.060 --> 00:55:56.686 and about yourself. 00:55:56.686 --> 00:56:02.233 So this recognition of our true nature is not only the recognition 00:56:02.233 --> 00:56:07.155 that brings our desire for happiness in the world to an end. 00:56:07.655 --> 00:56:10.658 It is also the recognition that enables us 00:56:10.658 --> 00:56:15.663 to live in a way that is consistent with the understanding 00:56:15.663 --> 00:56:20.794 that at the deepest level, everything and everyone, are one. 00:56:22.337 --> 00:56:23.505 This understanding would 00:56:23.505 --> 00:56:27.634 bring kindness, compassion, justice, 00:56:27.967 --> 00:56:32.222 tolerance, understanding into our society. 00:56:33.098 --> 00:56:35.266 Our society would be revolutionized 00:56:35.266 --> 00:56:37.477 by this understanding. 00:56:38.478 --> 00:56:41.689 As humanity lets go of ego based approaches, 00:56:42.065 --> 00:56:45.276 then science, religion, politics 00:56:45.527 --> 00:56:49.489 and economics start to reflect the perennial wisdom. 00:56:50.198 --> 00:56:53.118 Whether it is the native traditions who realize 00:56:53.118 --> 00:56:55.328 Great Spirit in all things, 00:56:56.121 --> 00:57:00.333 or the Egyptian/Kemetic traditions who describe the human 00:57:00.333 --> 00:57:03.711 evolutionary journey from the lowly scarab 00:57:04.045 --> 00:57:06.631 to the one source, 00:57:06.881 --> 00:57:08.383 or when we hear the words 00:57:08.383 --> 00:57:11.261 of the mystics of the Christian, Hindu, 00:57:11.594 --> 00:57:13.847 Muslim, or Buddhist traditions, 00:57:14.681 --> 00:57:19.060 or the teachings of Plato and Plotinus we find that 00:57:19.060 --> 00:57:24.816 those who have realized their true nature speak of groupings of conscious agents. 00:57:25.400 --> 00:57:28.611 Of course, they used the language of their culture 00:57:28.611 --> 00:57:32.407 and times to express the one perennial truth. 00:57:33.491 --> 00:57:34.659 Science is now 00:57:34.659 --> 00:57:38.830 starting to see not a world of unconscious particles 00:57:38.830 --> 00:57:41.916 and fields, but a universe made of 00:57:41.916 --> 00:57:44.711 conscious agents. 00:57:44.919 --> 00:57:48.631 Something new is emerging in the world of science. 00:57:49.674 --> 00:57:52.302 As Nikola Tesla said, 00:57:52.302 --> 00:57:57.140 the day science begins to study nonphysical phenomena, 00:57:57.140 --> 00:57:59.976 it will make more progress in one decade 00:58:00.560 --> 00:58:04.147 than in all the previous centuries of its existence. 00:58:06.024 --> 00:58:14.908 That day is today. 00:58:14.908 --> 00:58:18.161 Every time that we've had a mathematically precise advance 00:58:18.161 --> 00:58:21.623 in science, it has opened up new technologies 00:58:22.123 --> 00:58:25.668 that look like magic compared to what we had before. 00:58:25.919 --> 00:58:29.923 So my feeling is that this theory of conscious agents beyond spacetime 00:58:30.965 --> 00:58:33.426 will give us technologies 00:58:33.426 --> 00:58:35.553 that will be truly mind boggling. 00:58:36.012 --> 00:58:37.263 For example, 00:58:37.722 --> 00:58:41.476 right now, most of the galaxies that we see, 00:58:41.809 --> 00:58:44.145 I think 97% of the galaxies that we see, 00:58:44.437 --> 00:58:49.317 we can never go to. They are receding from us faster than the speed of light. 00:58:50.026 --> 00:58:52.403 So they're not moving through space faster than the speed of light. 00:58:52.403 --> 00:58:55.657 Space itself is expanding so quickly that they're 00:58:56.282 --> 00:58:58.785 moving away from us is greater than the speed of light. 00:58:58.785 --> 00:59:00.954 So we could never travel through space 00:59:00.954 --> 00:59:03.915 to go to 97% of the galaxies that we can see. 00:59:04.249 --> 00:59:07.085 So there's all this real estate out there that's waving at us and saying, hi, 00:59:07.085 --> 00:59:09.462 we're out here and you can never come to us. 00:59:09.462 --> 00:59:11.589 That's if you go through spacetime. 00:59:11.589 --> 00:59:14.717 But what if you realize that spacetime is just your headset? 00:59:15.301 --> 00:59:17.595 It's just the format of a game 00:59:18.513 --> 00:59:20.890 and you're not stuck inside the headset. 00:59:20.890 --> 00:59:26.104 You can play with the software that's running the game. 00:59:26.104 --> 00:59:30.191 So it's like someone who's like in Grand Theft Auto, you're a 00:59:30.191 --> 00:59:31.484 Wizard of Grand Theft Auto, 00:59:32.652 --> 00:59:33.403 so you know how to use the 00:59:33.403 --> 00:59:36.281 car and drive the roads and you can beat everybody in the game. 00:59:37.282 --> 00:59:40.577 But suppose you actually know the software that runs Grand Theft Auto. 00:59:40.577 --> 00:59:42.704 So you step outside of the Grand Theft Auto headset 00:59:43.121 --> 00:59:44.414 and you can play with the software. 00:59:44.414 --> 00:59:48.084 Well, you can take the gasoline out of the tank of the wizard. 00:59:48.084 --> 00:59:49.877 You can give them a flat tire. 00:59:49.877 --> 00:59:51.546 You can change the geometry of the roads. 00:59:51.546 --> 00:59:53.172 You can do whatever you want to. 00:59:53.172 --> 00:59:56.259 So once we understand our space time headset, 00:59:56.718 --> 00:59:59.679 we won't have to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy 01:00:00.555 --> 01:00:03.308 through space time, which would take us 2.4 million years. 01:00:03.683 --> 01:00:10.481 We can just go around space time. 01:00:10.481 --> 01:00:14.152 I see the world around me as stepping into 01:00:15.194 --> 01:00:15.820 a quieter 01:00:15.820 --> 01:00:19.699 expression and experience of what it means to be human 01:00:20.116 --> 01:00:22.619 and what it means to be an aspect of divinity. 01:00:23.578 --> 01:00:27.290 But I don't think that we have an endless amount of time. 01:00:27.290 --> 01:00:30.001 I get a sense that time is 01:00:30.001 --> 01:00:33.338 running out, that it's now or never time. 01:00:33.796 --> 01:00:35.965 I think we're on the right path. 01:00:35.965 --> 01:00:41.262 I have a sense of optimism that because of the kinds of opportunities 01:00:41.262 --> 01:00:43.389 that we see today in the world to communicate 01:00:44.515 --> 01:00:46.934 powerful and important ideas 01:00:46.934 --> 01:00:49.729 ways that we didn't have even a few years ago 01:00:50.897 --> 01:00:54.734 are creating the possibility that we can get to that place of critical 01:00:54.734 --> 01:00:57.820 mass, that we can reach critical mass 01:00:58.738 --> 01:01:01.240 before our time runs out. 01:01:01.240 --> 01:01:05.286 But we would be mistaken if we think we have an endless amount of time 01:01:06.788 --> 01:01:08.623 on this planet. 01:01:08.665 --> 01:01:10.958 When each individual 01:01:10.958 --> 01:01:14.337 disidentifies from their conditioned character, 01:01:14.921 --> 01:01:18.341 then they're no longer acting as an egoic entity. 01:01:18.883 --> 01:01:22.845 And that brings about a transformation on the planet. 01:01:23.346 --> 01:01:24.722 This brings a new Earth. 01:01:24.722 --> 01:01:28.017 Life as we know it right now on this planet, 01:01:28.976 --> 01:01:31.813 I think we need to make some changes and make them quickly, 01:01:32.563 --> 01:01:35.066 dramatically and radically 01:01:35.066 --> 01:01:37.694 if we want to see the tomorrow for which we've all dreamt. 01:01:38.194 --> 01:01:42.573 So, could this understanding become mainstream in our lifetime? 01:01:42.573 --> 01:01:43.866 Why not? 01:01:43.866 --> 01:01:48.371 Yes. The challenge we have right now is nothing is working, 01:01:49.163 --> 01:01:54.252 and the time has come for us to stand up and say that's true. 01:01:54.252 --> 01:01:56.337 Surely we can do better than this. 01:01:57.088 --> 01:01:58.339 Surely, 01:01:59.841 --> 01:02:02.260 we can expand our understanding of who we are 01:02:02.719 --> 01:02:07.306 and our expression of our true nature. 01:02:07.306 --> 01:02:08.433 We need to pay attention 01:02:09.434 --> 01:02:10.810 to our environment, 01:02:10.810 --> 01:02:13.312 to our politics, to our economics, 01:02:14.313 --> 01:02:17.525 and to our spiritual process on this planet. 01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:22.405 Because the problem in the world today is not a political problem. 01:02:23.322 --> 01:02:25.867 It's not an economic problem. 01:02:25.867 --> 01:02:28.995 It's not a social problem. 01:02:28.995 --> 01:02:33.166 It's a spiritual problem. 01:02:33.166 --> 01:02:35.168 It has to do with how committed we are 01:02:35.168 --> 01:02:41.215 with stepping into the highest spiritual truths. 01:02:41.215 --> 01:02:44.886 This is not New Age philosophy. 01:02:44.886 --> 01:02:47.096 These ideas have been around 01:02:47.096 --> 01:02:54.145 for thousands of years. 01:02:54.145 --> 01:02:57.398 The perennial wisdom has been expressed through 01:02:57.398 --> 01:03:01.861 countless traditions and cultures and like awareness 01:03:01.861 --> 01:03:05.656 itself, has always been hidden in plain view. 01:03:07.116 --> 01:03:08.743 In Christianity, 01:03:08.743 --> 01:03:12.038 the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas contains 01:03:12.038 --> 01:03:14.874 direct pointers to our true nature. 01:03:15.958 --> 01:03:20.838 The disciples asked Jesus, When will the kingdom come? 01:03:20.838 --> 01:03:24.383 Jesus said, It will not come by waiting for it. 01:03:25.051 --> 01:03:30.223 It will not be a matter of saying, Here it is, or there it is. 01:03:30.223 --> 01:03:33.559 Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out 01:03:33.559 --> 01:03:36.646 upon the earth and people do not see it. 01:03:38.397 --> 01:03:39.649 The Kingdom 01:03:39.649 --> 01:03:44.529 is not here or there. Awareness is not here or there. 01:03:45.238 --> 01:03:48.950 It is not fixed in time and space. 01:03:48.950 --> 01:03:51.494 If you are waiting for something to happen 01:03:52.036 --> 01:03:56.666 for some outward event or some state, some ascension, 01:03:57.083 --> 01:03:59.794 some healing or some energy, then 01:03:59.794 --> 01:04:02.839 your conditioned mind is still seeking. 01:04:03.256 --> 01:04:06.300 It is still mediating your experience 01:04:06.300 --> 01:04:07.969 of the now. 01:04:09.387 --> 01:04:11.973 in Buddhism they say samsara, 01:04:12.265 --> 01:04:15.309 the world of suffering and nirvana, 01:04:15.768 --> 01:04:20.231 the world of liberation are not two separate worlds. 01:04:21.065 --> 01:04:24.026 They are one and the same. 01:04:24.026 --> 01:04:26.654 We don't manipulate or change things 01:04:26.863 --> 01:04:29.740 to arrive at some mystical reality. 01:04:30.700 --> 01:04:35.413 When we awaken, the perfection of the world is revealed 01:04:35.872 --> 01:04:43.087 directly, as it is. 01:04:43.087 --> 01:04:48.551 Is it possible to simply be here and now in this moment, 01:04:48.551 --> 01:04:53.556 unmediated by that seeking mind? 01:04:53.556 --> 01:04:58.394 Is it possible to be okay with this moment as it is? 01:05:01.439 --> 01:05:02.899 To simply be.