Awakening

is the next natural stage
of human development.

So awakening is simply to recognize
the nature of our essential being.

Is not some weird,
mystical religious experience

that's only available to the few.

It's available to everyone.

What we essentially are
is already fully awake, fully aware.

And it's totally unlimited.

Your true nature is closer

than the you that you think you are.

Consciousness
is the ultimate reality of the universe.

The next step in science is to say
that consciousness is fundamental.

What is awakening anyway?

Somebody explain that to me.

What is awakening?

Whether you call it the true self,
the imminent self or "no self",

or Buddha
nature, Tao or Christ Consciousness,

it really doesn't matter.

In this film,
we're going to refer to it as awareness.

Awareness

is not the property of any religion.

Awakening or realizing awareness

is like waking from a dream.

The dream of your character

in the play of life.

Through our characters,

we experience the world

in all of its beauty and its ugliness.

We can call this experience of life
and death duality.

Around and around
we go, fixated on the characters,

thoughts and sensations.

Good and bad.

War and peace.

Light and darkness.

Birth and death.

Until we wake up and find out

we are not the character.

In this film,
we are extending an invitation

for you to directly experience
your true nature.

To find out directly, not intellectually...

Who are you?

We will repeat this

invitation in different ways.

When inquiring into who you are,

let everything be exactly as it is.

Don't
move the mind to make something happen

or to find some answer
on the level of mind.

And yet, don't try to push away the mind.

Simply intend to directly experience
who you are.

Letting the mind be a 
"don't know mind"

Awakening is the answer to all of 
the world's problems on every level.

All of the world's
problems stem from a delusion.

The fundamental delusion of the mind.

And that delusion is that
I am this limited character.

When we're living from a 
small, separate self,

there's always some kind
of perpetual dissatisfaction.

So this can be big dissatisfaction
like trauma,

or it can be just this 
background feeling...

"something's not right.

Something's wrong. I'm missing something."

Even when I have some pleasure,
even when I achieve something in world,

even when I have a good relationship,

if I just have a pause or a moment,

there's this dissatisfied feeling like

I'm isolated or cut off from something.

So this feeling, which it seems like

most people have, can motivate us

to awaken from that small, separate self

whose nature is a kind of separation
anxiety.

This limited character has a tendency
to grasp for what it wants.

It's just a collection
of conditioned patterns

of of craving what it wants or
trying to push away what it doesn't want.

It's this endless process of
you can say a pleasure

principle, you know,
going after pleasure, avoiding pain.

And if we believe we are this

character, this conditioned pattern,

then we suffer
and we create suffering in the world.

The world becomes a reflection
of that egoic consciousness.

The benefit of awakening

is that you suffer less

and the people around you suffer less.

There's no doubt in my mind that 
my initial connection with

my understanding of God
was an awakening

for me in my life, the biggest awakening
that I've ever experienced.

It was very much as if I had been asleep
really for 50 years.

Walking around like a robot, just doing
the things that I was taught to do

from the time I was a young man,
you know, I had a formula down,

get the girl, get the car, get a job,
get the house, get a spouse.

A formula that I thought was 
how Iife was supposed to work

until I got to be around 53 years old.

And I realized that while I had done
most of those things and had become

professionally successful to a degree,
then I realized that none of

that matters. I who woke up somewhere
around the age of 53, realizing

none of this matters,

none of this means anything.

I was shocked to find
how this literally meant,

how pointless it all was.

When you stop following the script

that has been laid out for your character.

The one inherited from parents, society

and biological conditioning,

then new dimensions open up
within the game.

The path opens up,

but it is not a path
to reach some destination.

It is a pathless path,

a stripping away of illusion to arrive

exactly where you are in the now.

My name is Rupert Spira.

I speak about the essential

non-dual understanding that underlies

all the great religious
and spiritual traditions.

And I write and lead guided meditations

and have conversations
whose purpose is to lead

to an experiential recognition

of this understanding.

Understand that

the peace and the happiness

for which we all long

above all else, can never,

by definition
be found in objective experience.

It can never be provided
by objects, substances,

activities and relationships.

I would suggest

understanding that

clearly and not spending 
the rest of one's life

seeking fulfillment
where it cannot be found.

Anyone who is watching this movie is doing
so precisely because they have

either understood or at least intuited

that the peace and happiness
for which they long cannot be found

in objective experience and have begun

this investigation into their true nature.

That is the most important investigation

one can make,
and it is the investigation upon

which the depends our happiness.

The biggest question of my life,
of course,

which I believe is the question
most people look at sooner or later, is

"What is the point, actually?"

"What is the point of life?"

That, much to my surprise,
I was told that the point of life

had nothing to do
with anything that I was doing.

It wasn't about my job.

It wasn't about my career.

It wasn't about hardly anything
in my physical life.

Those were aspects of my life
were not the point of life.

The point of my life,
as I have come to understand

it was for me to experience,

express, demonstrate and fulfill

my true identity, who I really am.

I think that the biggest question

that most people face is a question
that hardly

anyone ever asks themselves
or ever answers.

The biggest question of life,

in my understanding, is "who am I?"

Who am I?

Am I simply a physical entity

like a bird in the sky or fish in the sea?

You know, perhaps more sophisticated,
but just a physical entity.

I'm born, I live, I die.

That's the beginning and the end of it.

Or is it possible, just possible

that I'm more than that?

Is it possible that I'm a spiritual entity

simply having a physical experience?

Every experience in your life

has brought you to this one
universal question.

Who are you?

Don't look for an answer with the mind.

Let everything be exactly as it is.

Who is aware of the mind?

Feel everything that comes up.

Who is aware of those feelings?

Have a complete experience
of everything that comes up

as a result of your inquiry.

I'm Donald Hoffman and I'm a professor

emeritus of cognitive sciences
at the University of California at Irvine.

My work has been teaching students,
although now I'm emeritus for

I don't teach. And now I do research.

I do research right now
on consciousness, mathematical models

of consciousness,
and how physics and spacetime might arise

from a theory of consciousness
that's completely mathematically precise.

My own journey has been

both from the spiritual side
and from the science side.

So my my father was a minister,
fundamentalist Christian minister.

So I got that on Sundays

and I got science at school
and they conflicted, right?

The stories I was getting were,
contradictory.

And so as a teenager, I realized
I needed to figure things out for myself.

And I decided the question I

wanted to answer was,
are we machines?

Are people just machines or not?

I mean, from the physical point of view,
are we just be machines

From a spiritual point of view,
we wouldn't be machines.

It wasn't precise enough
to say what we would be.

And so so I decided to ask the question

scientifically, are we just machines?

And the best way I thought to do that
would be to study artificial intelligence.

And so so I went to MIT

and was in the artificial intelligence
lab studying artificial intelligence

and also in what's now the brain
and cognitive science department, studying

the human side of things.
Because I wanted to do both.

I wanted to see what can machines do
and what is special, if anything,

about humans and human neuroscience.
To answer that,

that very question
ar the spiritual traditions right?

Or are we more than just machines

or is the physical, scientific
point of view right?

And we are just machines,

and consciousness is just an artifact

of brain activity.

The scientific materialist paradigm that
has been predominant in the last century

denies the existence of
anything beyond the physical,

anything that cannot be

verified by the scientific method.

Science is an impasse.

It cannot move beyond the paradox
that is fundamental to quantum physics,

which brought it face to face
with the observer,

with consciousness itself.

Likewise, religions are,
for the most part, functioning

only on the level of belief.

They've lost their original purpose,
which was to lead to direct experience,

to the truth of who and what we are.

The split between science and spirituality

has rendered both impoverished.

Religions and spiritual systems
desperately need rigorous methods,

which can be shown to create conditions
for awakening to happen.

And science desperately needs an openness

to the possibility
of something beyond the physical.

It is not about giving up religion
or science,

but about going deeper,
being willing to change ourselves

so that we become a better tool
for investigation.

We are the ones doing the experiment,

and the experiment itself.

Religion has been the language
and the container

of these traditions
of meditation, spirituality

that have been written down and passed

on through the generations.

Certainly there is some language
that is very literal,

which divides religions and divides

cultures when things are taken literally.

But if you feel the spirit of religion,

you can follow the

thread back to authentic awakening.

Anyone has the potential,
whether they have belief or no belief,

because awakening is inherent

within our human consciousness,
just by our human birth.

So whatever you call it,
and whenever language is used,

there's certain principles
that seem to be the same

throughout these different religions

and spiritualities
and meditation traditions.

When I was younger, this understanding

was mainly available
in the Eastern spiritual traditions.

It was available in the Western

traditions,
but it was so disguised and codified

in those traditions
as to be almost inaccessible.

So many people of my generation
went physically

or at least intellectually,
to the East to find this understanding

and Eastern culture by comparison with

Western culture is exotic.

And so this understanding
acquired a flavor of the exotic

from the cultures
in which it was expressed.

And many people, myself included

thought as a result of this

that there was something exotic
about the non dual

understanding; that it required
some extra ordinary way of life,

that you had to give up family life

or grow your hair
or get a special name or subscribe

to some kind of teacher or or tradition
or engage in strange practices.

All these kind of things
which had nothing to do

with the core understanding.
They were to do with the culture

in which the understanding
was expressed at a particular time.

So now the understanding
has been completely divested

of the traditional cultural packaging
in which many of us first heard about it.

And now just the essential
understanding is available

in a way that enables us to carry
on leading our lives

exactly as they are. Family life, work
life...

it's not necessary to make
any external changes in one's life.

The challenge we have on this planet

is that we think there's more than one

essence.

So we live in a

world of what I would call duality.

There's male and female, black and white,

big and small, fast and slow, up
and down, here and there, before

and after,
but in fact, there's only one thing.

All things are one thing.

There is only one thing.

So it turns out that when 
we look deeply at everything

we see that here and there, big and small, 
fast and slow, up and down, left and right,

male and female, are all the same thing,
simply expressing

different characteristics
but in no way separate from each other.

I believe that all of us

are individuations

of God.

I believe that God exists in, as, and

through every human being
and for that matter, every sentient

being in the cosmos.

So I see then that
I am in relationship to God

as a wave is to the ocean.

A wave is no different
from the ocean; it's

simply an arising of the ocean
in individual form.

And when that individuation is complete,

the wave recedes back into the ocean
whence it came.

To arise again on another day.

So I believe that
we are all individuations of divinity,

and when we see everything as divine,

we change our relationship with everything.

And everything becomes

different in our experience.

That's how the world changes.

Consciousness
is the ultimate reality of the universe,

so we might well ask if consciousness
is the ultimate reality of the universe

and everything, and everyone
is obviously that, then how come

the world appears to us as a multiplicity
and diversity

of discrete and independently 
existing people

and animals and things
all made out of stuff called matter.

How can we reconcile this statement
that consciousness

is the ultimate reality of the universe
when it appears

as a multiplicity and diversity of objects
made out of matter?

So the the evidence that I'm using
to suggest that consciousness

is fundamental has many aspects to it.

One is that physics itself

says that space time isn't fundamental

and evolutionary theory
also agrees that spacetime

and physical objects
are not fundamental reality.

Now, both of those theories tell us only
that, that spacetime is not fundamental.

They don't tell us
what is beyond spacetime.

And so my argument
is that what the physicists are finding

beyond spacetime, they're finding
mathematical structures,

but what those are about

is not really clear. What is this
realm beyond space time about?

And so I'm proposing that the realm
beyond space time is about consciousness.

And I would suggest that
infinite consciousness has the ability

to localize itself as numerous separate
subjects of experience,

that is, all sentient beings, all people
or animals.

Each of us are localizations
of infinite consciousness,

in infinite consciousness
made only of infinite consciousness

from whose perspective it views

its own activity as the outside world.

So what appears to us as
a world made out of matter

from our localized perspectives,
is from the point of view of reality,

simply the activity of the one
infinite consciousness.

In other words, in the ultimate analysis,
there are no discrete

or independently existing things
or people.

There is one infinite, indivisible, whole.

The unity of being that is only refracted

into an apparent multiplicity
and diversity of objects and things.

When The One looks at its own activity

through the perceiving faculties

of the finite mind.

If we are awake,

we realize that there's one awareness

that is disguised as all of these
different beings on the planet,

one awareness
shining through everyone's eyes.

Then we literally see ourselves in others.

And that tendency to operate as an ego,

the tendency to take for oneself

falls away
because we directly realize the truth.

The truth is
that we're all one consciousness.

The experience of my spiritual self

was only possible in the realm

of the physical for a very good reason,

because only in the realm of the physical
was the opposite available.

In other words, just use a simple example,

if I wanted to experience myself,
if I could speak

metaphorically, as the light,

I couldn't experience being the light
if I was amidst the light,

nothing else around me but the light,

which is a perfect definition
of the realm of the spiritual.

So I would come to a realm
which I call the realm of the physical,

where there is something
other than the light.

Because if I want to experience myself
as the light,

not just know myself as that,
but experience it,

I could only do that where there was

the opposite of the light,
in this case, the darkness.

So I brought

this opportunity to the physical realm
where the light and the dark exist

simultaneously, and then in that outward

expression of myself as the light,
I could be who I really am.

And this understanding suggests

that behind our differences
we are all the same being,

not a similar being, but we are all
literally one... the same being.

And love is the felt experience

of this oneness or shared being.

It's a theorem of our theory that
there is ultimately one consciousness.

So we have this dynamics of many,
many conscious agents.

But the theory tells us
that ultimately all those conscious agents

are really just projections
of a single one consciousness.

The current paradigm in science

has, and it has been for for centuries,

is that space and time
are the fundamental nature of reality.

They're irreducible
and they are the foundation of everything.

And prior to Einstein, space
and time were viewed as separate.

Now, space and time together,
a unified into spacetime are viewed

as the fundamental nature of reality.

And science has then assumed that

spacetime and objects in spacetime
are the foundational reality.

And so, for example,
when we talk about consciousness,

consciousness itself then must be somehow
a product of objects in space and time.

In that physicalist framework
space and time and physical objects

without any consciousness
are the fundamental reality.

And consciousness comes later on
in the evolution of the universe, right?

So that the big bang, there was 
no consciousness,

there was just spacetime and energy.

The energy coalesced
into massive particles

and eventually life emerged after
who knows how many millions

or hundreds of millions 
or billions of years.

Then after that consciousness came,
even later.

From that point of view, when you die, 
the physical complexity that gave

rise to consciousness dissolves
and so your consciousness dissolves.

And so the physicalist framework
really does eliminate consciousness

as a fundamental thing,
altogether and says that

when your body dies,
your consciousness goes with it.

From this other point of view...

what I've done with my colleagues,
we have we used evolutionary theory

to point out that it's an implication

of evolutionary theory, that space 
and time is not fundamental,

so the physicalist interpretation
of evolution is wrong.

The idea that that space
and time and particles

somehow have evolved 
due to human organisms

is is the wrong framework, because 
spacetime itself is not fundamental.

We're positing a dynamics beyond 
spacetime that's much richer.

The dynamics of consciousness.

What we do not do is throw away
our old theories.

When physicists say spacetime is doomed,

that doesn't mean we no longer 
pay attention to Einstein.

Absolutely not.
We pay attention to Einstein.

Any new theory beyond spacetime that
the physicists come up with better project

into space time and give us back Einstein
and it better give us back quantum theory

or you're wrong.

All of our old theories

are wonderful, wonderful friends
and we're going to keep them

as special cases of a deeper theory.

So in our theory of consciousness,
we have to do the same thing.

We can't just propose anything we want.

We have to have a theory 
of consciousness that projects

and gives us back space time,

and gives us back quantum theory,
and gives us back special and general

relativity, and gives us back
evolution by natural selection.

If we cannot do that in precise
mathematical detail, then there's

no reason for scientists to take our
theory of consciousness seriously.

It's as if infinite consciousness puts
on a virtual reality headset. Infinite

consciousness puts on a a VR headset
made of thinking and perceiving.

And in doing so,
the moment it puts on the VR headset,

it localizes itself
within its own activity.

And through that headset
it looks out through the perceiving

faculties of a finite mind; seeing,
hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

And it fragments
the unity of its own being

and makes it appear as 10,000 things.

What I'm suggesting is that

there is very much more to to the universe
than the finite mind.

I'm not suggesting that the universe
only appears in each of our finite minds.

The universe exists outside of our finite
mind, but inside consciousness.

But it is the limitations
of our finite mind

that give the universe its appearance.

So when we look out at the universe,
we're seeing the reality

that exists prior to its being perceived.

But we are seeing it through the lens
of our perceiving faculties,

which gives it its appearance.

So the idea of awakening in many spiritual
traditions has been the idea

that what we have taken is reality

objects in space
and time, our physical bodies and so forth

is not the final reality,
that there is a much deeper reality,

a reality of consciousness that transcends
space and time and physical objects,

and that we're not divorced
from that reality.

That reality is, in some sense,
the essence of what we are.

And so awakening is awakening
from the illusion

that I'm just a little body in space
and time to the fact that I am

in fact the author of everything
I see inside of space and time.

I create it on the fly
as I look and perceive.

One becomes awakened by recognizing that

what we essentially are is already

fully awake, fully aware,

complete, whole, fulfilled at peace.

It's like asking how does the

sun become illuminated?

Its nature is light.

It is already fully illuminated.

The nature of our essential
being is already peace and happiness.

It's not clear to us all,
because our essential being is so

thoroughly mixed with the content
of experience that its innate

Peace and happiness is 
dimmed by experience.

And for that reason we think that our
essential being needs to be enlightened.

No, our essential being
doesn't need to be enlightened

any more than the sun
needs to be lit up in the early morning.

The sun's always shining 
with the same brightness.

Our essential being is always shining
with the same peace and joy.

But that peace and joy are dimmed
by the agitation

and lack that characterizes
our thoughts and feelings.

There's no person that awakens.

So the I that awakened

I awakened from this Dan

structure at a meditation center.

It was a Zen center.

We were doing a Zen sesshin

which is a long period
of intensive practice.

So Zen is amazing
for creating this container

where there are
these conditions of no escape.

So the Dan character
that had learned meditation,

the Dan character had been doing
all this meditation,

this doer of meditation,

realized that it couldn't awaken.

It's like all the meditation tricks,

all the practices that had been learned
were of no use.

It got to the point where that character

who was trying to awaken, failed

to awaken and had to fail.

That the character that I had been living,
the character that I've been playing

all my life, had to let go or die and

what was left?

What was left 
when there was no doer

when there was no meditator

meditating or doing something 
called, meditation,

what was left was my true nature

or me... just me.

When we awaken from this small, separate
sense of self, it's

not that we're killing the ego

or we're fighting it.

It's actually we're allowing it
to semi retire

from its job of ego identity

and then relax to be part

of our team, part of our consciousness.

And this gives us a sense 
of freedom immediately

that we're not looking at the world
through a small lens,

that we're we're open
hearted and open minded in a way that's

expansive and yet at the same time,
more intimately connected.

Enlightenment is not about 
becoming awakened.

Nobody becomes awakened 
or enlightened.

It's a recognition of the light,
the light of pure knowing

whose nature is peace and happiness

that we always and already are.

My name is Lisa Natoli,
and I'm known as a spiritual teacher.

I teach about healing and awakening
and transformation.

Awakening
is the recognition of your true nature,

and it's the realization of what
you really are, which is consciousness.

And consciousness is just one word
for many words that people use

for awareness, life, love, God,

light.

So waking up to the recognition
that I'm not this body

that I am, that which never dies
and that which is never born,

and that was a very difficult idea for me.

I've been on a spiritual path since 1992.

I started with A Course in Miracles.

I always studied it religiously.

I mean, I was someone who was 
so committed to knowing the

Self, knowing God, waking up.
... I couldn't get it,

because I was under the belief

that awakening was something mystical,

that something would happen,
that something would occur,

and it would be like Jesus

or Buddha
or all of these enlightened masters

and it wasn't happening for me.

I couldn't understand why.

Why am I so committed

and I'm having deep moments of peace and
happiness and joy... and still struggling.

I started to realize the simplicity

of our true nature, which is awareness.

So for someone who's listening to me
right now,

the awareness that's hearing this voice,
that's what we are.

And it doesn't have a location,
it doesn't have a gender,

it doesn't have a color,
it doesn't have a body,

and it's totally unlimited.

So awakening is where we wake up

to our true nature.

We wake up to the realization
that I am the awareness

of this experience right now
as I'm here.

And it's so ordinary

we miss it.

We think it can't be that simple.

The recognition of our true nature,

it doesn't lead to happiness.

It is happiness... the nature of being

is happiness itself.

So the recognition of our true
nature is the experience of happiness.

Who is aware in this moment?

The mind will

look for something,
or try to complicate it.

You already are

that which the mind is looking for.

The mind will always miss it.

So don't look to the mind for an answer.

Don't push away your thoughts

and don't get caught in the thoughts.

Simply let go of the interest
or attachment to thoughts, ideas

and beliefs.

Intend to directly experience

who you are.

Don't try to negate the mind
or to achieve some state.

All doing, all manipulation,

all movement is more controlling
by the mind.

Allow the mind to be as it is.

Sometimes people can awaken
just in day to day life.

They don't necessarily need practice.

So sometimes things will happen in life
where there's an interrupt

in the pattern of you.
And there can be a spontaneous awakening.

But if someone's life is just going on
in a kind of robotic pattern

or repetitive pattern, then

some sort of intervention is necessary.

if one is called to awakening
and that interrupt in the pattern of you

is sometimes called sadhana
or spiritual practice.

And these practices are always

conditioned.

Thet are something that we learn
with the conditioned mind.

So they can make it more likely
for awakening to happen,

sort of by loosening the bonds
within the self structure.

Sometimes they say
that awakening happens by accident,

but the practice makes you more accident
prone.

The techniques,
the practices can be very useful

to make you more accident prone.

But then at a certain point
have to be let go.

Because if the mind
is continuously doing some practice

or some thing, then the mind has

the reins, mind is in the driver's seat.

So the practices are useful, very useful

as steppingstones
for making the self structure,

you can say less dense
or enlightening up the self structure

so that it becomes more permeable

to our true nature.

The paradox with practice
is that when you finally awaken,

you realize that all of the practices

were being done by the false self,

the character in the VR game,
and that YOU,

the true self, was never bound.

All you have to do
is give up the preferences of the ego,

to give up the fixation on things.

Anything within the field of changing
phenomena is not the true self,

the you that you think you are, the you
that you've always been

identified with will never awaken

you awaken from that character.

You awaken from the delusion
that you were this conditioned character.

So when people come to these
retreats, they think this

"I" this little "me" is going to awaken,
some great thing is going to happen.

But at a certain point,
that little me will never do it.

It has to give up, it has to fail.

And it's only in that failure

we realize who we are, that we've always
been aware, we've always been present.

We just got hooked into this character
and we believed

we were that.

I started my spiritual search
in the classical Advaita Vedanta

tradition, which was a devotional path

that involved mantra meditation,

which I practiced
very diligently for 20 years.

And mantra meditation involves

focusing your attention on a sound

and then gradually the sound fades.

However, it was really when 
I came in touch

with the direct path that

my spiritual search
really reached its culmination.

Because in this direct approach,

we don't give our attention to any object,
however subtle,

for instance, a mantra, a sound, 
the breath,

we allow our attention to sink inwards

or backwards into its source.

Let's use an analogy.

Imagine that you are watching your life
on a television screen.

You are identified with the character
on the screen.

Day after day,

year after year you are involved
with the story of the character

when suddenly you wake up out of the story

to notice the screen
on which the character appears

and you realize you are not the character
you've been watching.

Objects can come and go on the screen.

Characters come and go,

but the screen remains unchanged.

The character can get wet,

but the screen does not get wet.
The character can be disturbed,

but the screen is not disturbed.

Without the screen,
the characters would not exist,

yet screen goes unnoticed.

The characters go about their scripted
lives.

Awareness is like the screen.

It is like the space
in which all thoughts,

motions, all states of consciousness
come and go.

Thoughts, sensations

and the entire outside world
appear on the screen, constantly changing.

But the screen does not change.

It's the mind that changes states
through the human experience.

But there's something, that what you are,
that remains.

Something that is ever present,

that is aware of those changing states

and that is consciousness
or our true nature.

As long as there is attachment
to a character on the screen,

a sense that I am that character,
then there will be suffering;

maya the illusion of the self.

Nothing you can do as the dream

character will help to free you.
Whether you follow the script

in the drama of your life
or rebel against the script,

if you act from the point of view
of the character,

then you're caught in the illusion.

To awaken,

stop identifying
with what appears on the screen.

Recognize that it is all impermanent.

Stop reacting to thoughts
and treating the program as real.

If I withdraw attention from the screen,
turning awareness

towards itself,
an unfathomable thing happens.

Awareness itself wakes up.

This is not a happening.

Happening is what happens on the screen.

Awakening is just recognizing the screen

that was always already there.

Do not believe your next thought

instead, turn awareness 
towards awareness itself.

I have always been myself.

My sense of my self runs
throughout my life.

It remains
consistently present throughout my life.

What is present in me now,

that was present yesterday,
last year, ten years ago,

and when I was a two year old child?

What is this essential "I" or self

to whom all my experience happens?

The recognition

of the nature of that one
is the great secret to life.

It is the direct path to peace

and happiness. It is not something
that a person initiates.

It's something that a person recognizes.

To re-cognize.

That is to know, again.

What we've known from the beginning

but is simply forgotten, or denied
or failed to believe.

So we cannot initiate closeness to God.

We can simply recognize,
to recognize that it's always been there

and will always be there.

It was only this direct pointing
to awakening,

this opening to what's already
here that allowed me to find

a new way of

being- a new stage of development.

Many people think it's
a very impossible or out of reach goal

to know the self, and my own

sort of purpose as a teacher,
just because of my own awakening,

has really been wanting to make it
very practical, very down to Earth.

I love to teach people, it's
available to everyone.

If we believe and feel

that we are a temporary,
finite, separate self,

we are, whether we know it or not,

searching for peace and happiness.

In other words,
it's not possible to be a separate self,

to feel oneself as a separate self
and not be in search of happiness.

So what is required

in this case is to reorientate
one's search for happiness,

instead of seeking for happiness
in the objective content of experience,

to seek happiness in oneself.

So the spiritual practice that is required

is to direct one's attention
or more accurately,

to relax one's attention into its source,

pure awareness, rather than directed
towards

an object substance
activity or relationship, and so on.

So the spiritual practice,
if we can call it a practice,

would be this relaxing

of the attention,
this subsidence of the attention

into the heart of awareness,

resting in being as being.

Love.

Pure love is my true self.

It's my true nature.

Pure love for everyone and everything,

for every aspect of life.

Even those things with which I disagree.

For one who has recognized the nature
of their being, they know their being

as the the source of the peace

and happiness for which they long.

So the world no longer becomes the place

in which they seek
happiness, seek fulfillment.

Doesn't mean to say that such a person
no longer has desires,

but the desires are not there
to fulfill the sense of lack

that is characteristic of the separate
self.

As such,
a person has found the source of happiness

within themselves and their desires
come from that sense of happiness.

They do not go towards it.

For instance,
in the realm of relationship,

it makes a big difference
to our relationships.

We no longer seek an other

to fulfill the needs of our self.

We seek another to share

the experience of happiness
that we already have.

And this relieves our
our friends of the impossible burden

of providing happiness for a voracious,

unsatisfied self.

Nothing occurs in my life

that is has not brought me
benefit or will not bring me benefit

in the sense that every moment,
every activity, every outcome

moves me forward

in the process
of the evolution of my soul.

And that's why I came here
to the physical realm,

to evolve.

Remain open.

Feel your inner aliveness,

letting energy circulate freely.

Don't try to make anything happen.

Who is aware of that energy,

that inner aliveness?

Notice the mind's tendency to control
and manipulate,

to get involved.

Without the use
of your memory or language,

Who are you?

Beyond the mind and senses,

who are you?

Who is aware?

Many people who are hearing these ideas
for the first time,

they've never even heard this idea
of the self.

In my mind,
there's two different camps of people.

There are those who are on a spiritual
path and they have heard this idea.

They're trying to reach the self,
they're trying to be the self.

They're seeking, they're searching.

And then there's other people
who have just been living their life.

They've never heard of these ideas before.

They've never heard of Know Thyself.

Many people think
know thyself means know the body,

know yourself, be yourself,
be authentic.

What it really means, to know
thyself is to know what you are,

to know what you are in truth
and to really know your true nature.

The words know thySelf were carved

on the entrance of the Temple of
Apollo in Delphi, and as such

stand as an invitation that the dawn
of Western civilization to humanity,

suggesting that to Know Thyself
is really the foundation

of all civilization. Why?

Because our Self stands at the center
of all our experience.

Whatever we are experiencing,
it is we who are experiencing it.

Whatever we think and feel, our thoughts

and feelings arise on behalf of our Self.

Whatever activities and relationships
we are engaged

in, we engage those activities
and relationships in service of our Self.

So our Self stands
at the center of our experience.

So what could be more important
than to know the nature of our Self,

and would it be possible

to know the nature of anything else

if we do not first know the nature of that
which knows it?

I think awakening is

about ending the nightmare

and stepping into the dream.

By that I mean

we desert or
finally abandon the nightmare of what

we've been told about life, about God,
and about ourselves.

And we step into the dream
of our grandest notion.

I often ask,
What do you think your life would be like

if you found yourself
stepping into the highest

grandest, most wonderful thought
you ever had about God, and about life

and about yourself.

So this recognition of our true nature
is not only the recognition

that brings our desire
for happiness in the world to an end.

It is also the recognition that enables us

to live in a way
that is consistent with the understanding

that at the deepest level,
everything and everyone, are one.

This understanding would bring

kindness, compassion, justice,

tolerance, understanding into our society.

Our society would be revolutionized

by this understanding.

As humanity lets go of ego
based approaches,

then science, religion, politics

and economics
start to reflect the perennial wisdom.

Whether it is the native traditions
who realize

Great Spirit in all things,

or the Egyptian/Kemetic traditions
who describe the human

evolutionary journey from the lowly scarab

to the one source,

or when we hear the words

of the mystics of the Christian, Hindu,

Muslim, or Buddhist traditions,

or the teachings of Plato and Plotinus
we find that

those who have realized their true nature
speak of groupings of conscious agents.

Of course,
they used the language of their culture

and times
to express the one perennial truth.

Science is now starting to see
not a world of unconscious particles

and fields, but a universe made of

conscious agents.

Something new is emerging
in the world of science.

As Nikola Tesla said,

the day science begins to study
nonphysical phenomena,

it will make more progress in one decade

than in all the previous centuries
of its existence.

That day is today.

Every time that we've had
a mathematically precise advance

in science,
it has opened up new technologies

that look like magic compared
to what we had before.

So my feeling is that this theory
of conscious agents beyond spacetime

will give us technologies

that will be truly mind boggling.

For example, right now,
most of the galaxies that we see,

I think 97% of the galaxies that we see,

we can never go to. They are receding 
from us faster than the speed of light.

So they're not moving through space
faster than the speed of light.

Space itself is expanding, so quickly
that their speed

moving away from us is greater 
than the speed of light.

So we could never travel through space

to go to 97% of the galaxies
that we can see.

So there's all this real estate out there
that's waving at us and saying, hi,

we're out here
and you can never come to us.

That's if you go through spacetime.

But what if you realize that spacetime
is just your headset?

It's just the format of a game

and you're not stuck inside the headset.

You can play with the software
that's running the game.

So it's like someone who's like in Grand
Theft Auto, you're a

Wizard of Grand Theft Auto,

so you know how to use the car

and drive the roads and you can 
beat everybody in the game.

But suppose you actually know the software
that runs Grand Theft Auto.

So you step outside of the Grand Theft
Auto headset

and you can play with the software.

Well, you can take the gasoline
out of the tank of the wizard.

You can give them a flat tire.

You can change the geometry of the roads.

You can do whatever you want to.

So once we understand
our space time headset,

we won't have to travel
to the Andromeda Galaxy

through space time,
which would take us 2.4 million years.

We can just go around space time.

I see the world around me as stepping into

a quieter expression and experience
of what it means to be human

and what it means
to be an aspect of divinity.

But I don't think that we have
an endless amount of time.

I get a sense that time is

running out, that it's now or never time.

I think we're on the right path.

I have a sense of optimism
that because of the kinds of opportunities

that we see today in the world
to communicate

powerful and important ideas

ways that we didn't have even
a few years ago

are creating the possibility
that we can get to that place of critical

mass, that we can reach critical mass

before our time runs out.

But we would be mistaken if we think
we have an endless amount of time

on this planet.

When each individual

disidentifies
from their conditioned character,

then they're no longer
acting as an egoic entity.

And that brings
about a transformation on the planet.

This brings a new Earth.

Life as we know it right now
on this planet,

I think we need to make some changes
and make them quickly,

dramatically and radically

if we want to see the tomorrow
for which we've all dreamt.

So, could this understanding
become mainstream in our lifetime?

Why not? Yes.

The challenge we have right now is
nothing is working,

and the time has come for us
to stand up and say that's true.

Surely we can do better than this.

Surely,

We can expand our understanding
of who we are

and our expression of our true nature.

We need to pay attention

to our environment,

to our politics, to our economics,

and to our spiritual process
on this planet.

Because the problem in the world
today is not a political problem.

It's not an economic problem.

It's not a social problem.

It's a spiritual problem.

It has to do with how committed we are

with stepping into the highest
spiritual truths.

This is not New Age philosophy.

These ideas have been around

for thousands of years.

The perennial wisdom has been expressed
through

countless traditions and cultures
and like awareness

itself, has always been hidden
in plain view.

In Christianity,

the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas contains

direct pointers to our true nature.

The disciples asked Jesus,
When will the kingdom come?

Jesus said,
It will not come by waiting for it.

It will not be a matter of saying,
Here it is, or there it is.

Rather, the kingdom of 
the father is spread out

upon the earth and people do not see it.

The Kingdom is not here or there. 
Awareness is not here or there.

It is not fixed in time and space.

If you are waiting for something to happen

for some outward event or some state,
some ascension,

some healing or some energy, then

your conditioned mind is still seeking.

It is still mediating your experience

of the now.

in Buddhism they say samsara,

the world of suffering and nirvana,

the world of liberation
are not two separate worlds.

They are one and the same.

We don't manipulate or change things

to arrive at some mystical reality.

When we awaken,
the perfection of the world is revealed

directly, as it is.

Is it possible to simply be here
and now in this moment,

unmediated by that seeking mind?

Is it possible to be okay
with this moment as it is?

To simply be.