WEBVTT 00:00:09.134 --> 00:00:11.479 Awakening 00:00:11.479 --> 00:00:15.265 is the next natural stage of human development. 00:00:15.497 --> 00:00:20.471 So awakening is simply to recognize the nature of our essential being. 00:00:20.564 --> 00:00:26.530 Is not some weird, mystical religious experience 00:00:26.530 --> 00:00:28.282 that's only available to the few. 00:00:28.282 --> 00:00:30.650 It's available to everyone. 00:00:30.165 --> 00:00:35.911 What we essentially are is already fully awake, fully aware. 00:00:35.911 --> 00:00:38.289 And it's totally unlimited. 00:00:38.289 --> 00:00:41.247 Your true nature is closer 00:00:41.416 --> 00:00:44.538 than the you that you think you are. 00:00:45.214 --> 00:00:48.840 Consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe. 00:00:48.895 --> 00:00:53.544 The next step in science is to say that consciousness is fundamental. 00:00:53.792 --> 00:00:55.658 What is awakening anyway? 00:00:55.658 --> 00:01:00.954 Somebody explain that to me. 00:01:23.742 --> 00:01:26.211 What is awakening? 00:01:26.628 --> 00:01:32.196 Whether you call it the true self, the imminent self or "no self", 00:01:32.405 --> 00:01:37.225 or Buddha nature, Tao or Christ Consciousness, 00:01:37.406 --> 00:01:40.422 it really doesn't matter. 00:01:40.422 --> 00:01:45.098 In this film, we're going to refer to it as awareness. 00:01:45.230 --> 00:01:46.622 Awareness 00:01:46.622 --> 00:01:49.750 is not the property of any religion. 00:01:49.750 --> 00:01:53.163 Awakening or realizing awareness 00:01:53.175 --> 00:01:55.599 is like waking from a dream. 00:01:56.190 --> 00:01:58.440 The dream of your character 00:01:58.440 --> 00:02:00.907 in the play of life. 00:02:01.440 --> 00:02:03.423 Through our characters, 00:02:03.423 --> 00:02:05.834 we experience the world 00:02:05.834 --> 00:02:10.130 in all of its beauty and its ugliness. 00:02:10.444 --> 00:02:14.467 We can call this experience of life and death duality. 00:02:15.197 --> 00:02:19.885 Around and around we go, fixated on the characters, 00:02:19.885 --> 00:02:22.498 thoughts and sensations. 00:02:22.618 --> 00:02:24.123 Good and bad. 00:02:24.123 --> 00:02:25.553 War and peace. 00:02:25.553 --> 00:02:27.397 Light and darkness. 00:02:27.397 --> 00:02:29.546 Birth and death. 00:02:30.016 --> 00:02:31.818 Until we wake up and find out 00:02:31.818 --> 00:02:34.904 we are not the character. 00:03:03.970 --> 00:03:06.458 In this film, we are extending an invitation 00:03:06.458 --> 00:03:10.068 for you to directly experience your true nature. 00:03:10.568 --> 00:03:14.652 To find out directly, not intellectually... 00:03:15.122 --> 00:03:16.791 Who are you? 00:03:17.530 --> 00:03:19.373 We will repeat this 00:03:19.373 --> 00:03:21.814 invitation in different ways. 00:03:22.535 --> 00:03:25.502 When inquiring into who you are, 00:03:25.983 --> 00:03:29.632 let everything be exactly as it is. 00:03:30.251 --> 00:03:34.319 Don't move the mind to make something happen 00:03:34.740 --> 00:03:38.211 or to find some answer on the level of mind. 00:03:38.681 --> 00:03:41.939 And yet, don't try to push away the mind. 00:03:42.616 --> 00:03:46.315 Simply intend to directly experience who you are. 00:03:47.399 --> 00:03:52.785 Letting the mind be a "don't know mind" 00:04:02.085 --> 00:04:08.806 Awakening is the answer to all of the world's problems on every level. 00:04:08.806 --> 00:04:13.569 All of the world's problems stem from a delusion. 00:04:13.696 --> 00:04:17.645 The fundamental delusion of the mind. 00:04:18.045 --> 00:04:21.965 And that delusion is that I am this limited character. 00:04:22.770 --> 00:04:25.702 When we're living from a small, separate self, 00:04:25.841 --> 00:04:29.917 there's always some kind of perpetual dissatisfaction. 00:04:30.122 --> 00:04:34.118 So this can be big dissatisfaction like trauma, 00:04:34.190 --> 00:04:38.081 or it can be just this background feeling... 00:04:38.085 --> 00:04:39.745 "something's not right. 00:04:39.745 --> 00:04:42.420 Something's wrong. I'm missing something." 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:47.875 Even when I have some pleasure, even when I achieve something in world, 00:04:47.875 --> 00:04:51.070 even when I have a good relationship, 00:04:51.070 --> 00:04:54.274 if I just have a pause or a moment, 00:04:54.929 --> 00:04:58.058 there's this dissatisfied feeling like 00:04:58.589 --> 00:05:02.233 I'm isolated or cut off from something. 00:05:02.251 --> 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 --> 00:05:18.521 whose nature is a kind of separation anxiety. 00:05:18.681 --> 00:05:24.532 This limited character has a tendency to grasp for what it wants. 00:05:24.532 --> 00:05:28.058 It's just a collection of conditioned patterns 00:05:28.232 --> 00:05:33.265 of of craving what it wants or trying to push away what it doesn't want. 00:05:33.490 --> 00:05:37.628 It's this endless process of you can say a pleasure 00:05:37.628 --> 00:05:42.221 principle, you know, going after pleasure, avoiding pain. 00:05:42.450 --> 00:05:44.635 And if we believe we are this 00:05:44.927 --> 00:05:48.976 character, this conditioned pattern, 00:05:49.296 --> 00:05:52.935 then we suffer and we create suffering in the world. 00:05:53.275 --> 00:05:59.258 The world becomes a reflection of that egoic consciousness. 00:05:59.690 --> 00:06:02.215 The benefit of awakening 00:06:02.372 --> 00:06:05.232 is that you suffer less 00:06:05.232 --> 00:06:07.978 and the people around you suffer less. 00:06:08.076 --> 00:06:13.067 There's no doubt in my mind that my initial connection with 00:06:13.129 --> 00:06:18.527 my understanding of God was an awakening 00:06:18.527 --> 00:06:22.625 for me in my life, the biggest awakening that I've ever experienced. 00:06:22.735 --> 00:06:27.599 It was very much as if I had been asleep really for 50 years. 00:06:27.988 --> 00:06:32.690 Walking around like a robot, just doing the things that I was taught to do 00:06:32.980 --> 00:06:36.396 from the time I was a young man, you know, I had a formula down, 00:06:36.396 --> 00:06:42.157 get the girl, get the car, get a job, get the house, get a spouse. 00:06:42.157 --> 00:06:46.624 A formula that I thought was how Iife was supposed to work 00:06:46.685 --> 00:06:48.582 until I got to be around 53 years old. 00:06:48.582 --> 00:06:53.166 And I realized that while I had done most of those things and had become 00:06:53.496 --> 00:06:59.200 professionally successful to a degree, then I realized that none of 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.543 that matters. I who woke up somewhere around the age of 53, realizing 00:07:03.956 --> 00:07:06.620 none of this matters, 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:08.668 none of this means anything. 00:07:08.668 --> 00:07:12.144 I was shocked to find how this literally meant, 00:07:12.306 --> 00:07:16.246 how pointless it all was. 00:07:18.963 --> 00:07:28.863 Who are you? 00:07:29.840 --> 00:07:32.279 When you stop following the script 00:07:32.279 --> 00:07:34.493 that has been laid out for your character. 00:07:35.225 --> 00:07:37.860 The one inherited from parents, society 00:07:37.917 --> 00:07:40.543 and biological conditioning, 00:07:40.903 --> 00:07:44.560 then new dimensions open up within the game. 00:07:45.377 --> 00:07:47.467 The path opens up, 00:07:47.957 --> 00:07:51.499 but it is not a path to reach some destination. 00:07:52.185 --> 00:07:54.917 It is a pathless path, 00:07:54.917 --> 00:07:57.727 a stripping away of illusion to arrive 00:07:57.727 --> 00:08:02.851 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 --> 00:08:22.835 all the great religious and spiritual traditions. 00:08:23.365 --> 00:08:28.277 And I write and lead guided meditations 00:08:28.277 --> 00:08:33.179 and have conversations whose purpose is to lead 00:08:33.513 --> 00:08:38.151 to an experiential recognition 00:08:38.267 --> 00:08:41.605 of this understanding. 00:08:42.396 --> 00:08:44.306 Understand that 00:08:44.306 --> 00:08:46.984 the peace and the happiness 00:08:46.984 --> 00:08:49.471 for which we all long 00:08:49.471 --> 00:08:52.856 above all else, can never, 00:08:52.856 --> 00:08:57.286 by definition be found in objective experience. 00:08:57.854 --> 00:09:00.718 It can never be provided by objects, substances, 00:09:00.718 --> 00:09:04.161 activities and relationships. 00:09:04.377 --> 00:09:06.235 I would suggest 00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:09.234 understanding that 00:09:09.234 --> 00:09:12.116 clearly and not spending the rest of one's life 00:09:12.116 --> 00:09:16.660 seeking fulfillment where it cannot be found. 00:09:16.810 --> 00:09:22.478 Anyone who is watching this movie is doing so precisely because they have 00:09:22.478 --> 00:09:27.049 either understood or at least intuited 00:09:27.049 --> 00:09:31.375 that the peace and happiness for which they long cannot be found 00:09:31.515 --> 00:09:35.116 in objective experience and have begun 00:09:35.226 --> 00:09:38.588 this investigation into their true nature. 00:09:38.977 --> 00:09:42.312 That is the most important investigation 00:09:42.749 --> 00:09:46.708 one can make, and it is the investigation upon 00:09:46.708 --> 00:09:51.733 which the depends our happiness. 00:09:52.040 --> 00:09:54.883 The biggest question of my life, of course, 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:59.882 which I believe is the question most people look at sooner or later, is 00:10:00.382 --> 00:10:02.995 "What is the point, actually?" 00:10:02.995 --> 00:10:05.579 "What is the point of life?" 00:10:05.731 --> 00:10:09.984 That, much to my surprise, I was told that the point of life 00:10:09.984 --> 00:10:14.907 had nothing to do with anything that I was doing. 00:10:15.448 --> 00:10:17.914 It wasn't about my job. 00:10:17.914 --> 00:10:20.439 It wasn't about my career. 00:10:20.439 --> 00:10:24.558 It wasn't about hardly anything in my physical life. 00:10:25.119 --> 00:10:28.419 Those were aspects of my life were not the point of life. 00:10:29.378 --> 00:10:32.640 The point of my life, as I have come to understand 00:10:32.640 --> 00:10:35.717 it was for me to experience, 00:10:35.717 --> 00:10:39.023 express, demonstrate and fulfill 00:10:39.525 --> 00:10:42.836 my true identity, who I really am. 00:10:43.689 --> 00:10:45.811 I think that the biggest question 00:10:45.811 --> 00:10:49.353 that most people face is a question that hardly 00:10:49.353 --> 00:10:53.037 anyone ever asks themselves or ever answers. 00:10:53.810 --> 00:10:56.543 The biggest question of life, 00:10:56.543 --> 00:10:59.616 in my understanding, is "who am I?" 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:03.120 Who am I? 00:11:04.997 --> 00:11:08.165 Am I simply a physical entity 00:11:08.265 --> 00:11:11.222 like a bird in the sky or fish in the sea? 00:11:11.313 --> 00:11:15.936 You know, perhaps more sophisticated, but just a physical entity. 00:11:16.276 --> 00:11:18.855 I'm born, I live, I die. 00:11:18.862 --> 00:11:21.715 That's the beginning and the end of it. 00:11:21.715 --> 00:11:24.821 Or is it possible, just possible 00:11:25.059 --> 00:11:27.228 that I'm more than that? 00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:30.388 Is it possible that I'm a spiritual entity 00:11:30.978 --> 00:11:33.780 simply having a physical experience? 00:11:39.209 --> 00:11:41.975 Every experience in your life 00:11:41.975 --> 00:11:45.650 has brought you to this one universal question. 00:11:46.249 --> 00:11:48.416 Who are you? 00:11:50.418 --> 00:11:55.614 Don't look for an answer with the mind. 00:11:56.930 --> 00:12:01.845 Let everything be exactly as it is. 00:12:04.793 --> 00:12:08.655 Who is aware of the mind? 00:12:11.496 --> 00:12:15.725 Feel everything that comes up. 00:12:17.317 --> 00:12:21.431 Who is aware of those feelings? 00:12:23.036 --> 00:12:26.900 Have a complete experience of everything that comes up 00:12:26.900 --> 00:12:31.146 as a result of your inquiry. 00:12:42.450 --> 00:12:44.699 I'm Donald Hoffman and I'm a professor 00:12:44.701 --> 00:12:48.418 emeritus of cognitive sciences at the University of California at Irvine. 00:12:48.618 --> 00:12:51.642 My work has been teaching students, although now I'm emeritus for 00:12:51.648 --> 00:12:54.199 I don't teach. And now I do research. 00:12:54.199 --> 00:12:58.613 I do research right now on consciousness, mathematical models 00:12:58.613 --> 00:13:02.655 of consciousness, and how physics and spacetime might arise 00:13:02.655 --> 00:13:07.978 from a theory of consciousness that's completely mathematically precise. 00:13:08.570 --> 00:13:11.094 My own journey has been 00:13:11.129 --> 00:13:14.469 both from the spiritual side and from the science side. 00:13:14.469 --> 00:13:19.792 So my my father was a minister, fundamentalist Christian minister. 00:13:19.921 --> 00:13:22.727 So I got that on Sundays 00:13:22.812 --> 00:13:26.436 and I got science at school and they conflicted, right? 00:13:26.486 --> 00:13:30.260 The stories I was getting were, contradictory. 00:13:30.260 --> 00:13:35.112 And so as a teenager, I realized I needed to figure things out for myself. 00:13:35.112 --> 00:13:37.843 And I decided the question I 00:13:37.843 --> 00:13:41.445 wanted to answer was, are we machines? 00:13:41.445 --> 00:13:43.624 Are people just machines or not? 00:13:43.624 --> 00:13:48.473 I mean, from the physical point of view, are we just be machines 00:13:48.494 --> 00:13:52.610 From a spiritual point of view, we wouldn't be machines. 00:13:52.155 --> 00:13:54.773 It wasn't precise enough to say what we would be. 00:13:54.773 --> 00:13:58.357 And so so I decided to ask the question 00:13:58.420 --> 00:14:00.929 scientifically, are we just machines? 00:14:00.929 --> 00:14:04.743 And the best way I thought to do that would be to study artificial intelligence. 00:14:04.743 --> 00:14:07.542 And so so I went to MIT 00:14:07.542 --> 00:14:12.041 and was in the artificial intelligence lab studying artificial intelligence 00:14:12.139 --> 00:14:15.605 and also in what's now the brain and cognitive science department, studying 00:14:15.605 --> 00:14:17.814 the human side of things. Because I wanted to do both. 00:14:17.814 --> 00:14:20.929 I wanted to see what can machines do and what is special, if anything, 00:14:20.929 --> 00:14:25.800 about humans and human neuroscience. To answer that, 00:14:25.800 --> 00:14:28.827 that very question ar the spiritual traditions right? 00:14:28.827 --> 00:14:31.190 Or are we more than just machines 00:14:31.190 --> 00:14:34.714 or is the physical, scientific point of view right? 00:14:34.714 --> 00:14:36.491 And we are just machines, 00:14:36.491 --> 00:14:38.335 and consciousness is just an artifact 00:14:38.335 --> 00:14:41.136 of brain activity. 00:14:43.456 --> 00:14:49.009 The scientific materialist paradigm that has been predominant in the last century 00:14:49.499 --> 00:14:53.021 denies the existence of anything beyond the physical, 00:14:53.875 --> 00:14:55.378 anything that cannot be 00:14:55.378 --> 00:14:57.519 verified by the scientific method. 00:14:58.797 --> 00:15:00.954 Science is an impasse. 00:15:01.384 --> 00:15:06.005 It cannot move beyond the paradox that is fundamental to quantum physics, 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:09.042 which brought it face to face with the observer, 00:15:09.764 --> 00:15:12.589 with consciousness itself. 00:15:12.859 --> 00:15:15.581 Likewise, religions are, for the most part, functioning 00:15:15.581 --> 00:15:18.892 only on the level of belief. 00:15:19.332 --> 00:15:24.457 They've lost their original purpose, which was to lead to direct experience, 00:15:24.457 --> 00:15:27.487 to the truth of who and what we are. 00:15:28.190 --> 00:15:31.278 The split between science and spirituality 00:15:31.470 --> 00:15:33.968 has rendered both impoverished. 00:15:34.801 --> 00:15:39.451 Religions and spiritual systems desperately need rigorous methods, 00:15:39.586 --> 00:15:43.308 which can be shown to create conditions for awakening to happen. 00:15:43.939 --> 00:15:46.788 And science desperately needs an openness 00:15:46.788 --> 00:15:49.907 to the possibility of something beyond the physical. 00:15:50.537 --> 00:15:53.758 It is not about giving up religion or science, 00:15:53.890 --> 00:15:58.569 but about going deeper, being willing to change ourselves 00:15:58.925 --> 00:16:02.253 so that we become a better tool for investigation. 00:16:03.188 --> 00:16:05.937 We are the ones doing the experiment, 00:16:06.066 --> 00:16:09.462 and the experiment itself. 00:16:10.862 --> 00:16:15.181 Religion has been the language and the container 00:16:15.475 --> 00:16:20.554 of these traditions of meditation, spirituality 00:16:20.837 --> 00:16:24.108 that have been written down and passed 00:16:24.108 --> 00:16:27.630 on through the generations. 00:16:27.786 --> 00:16:32.861 Certainly there is some language that is very literal, 00:16:32.861 --> 00:16:35.587 which divides religions and divides 00:16:35.714 --> 00:16:38.711 cultures when things are taken literally. 00:16:39.004 --> 00:16:43.663 But if you feel the spirit of religion, 00:16:44.044 --> 00:16:45.860 you can follow the 00:16:45.860 --> 00:16:49.875 thread back to authentic awakening. 00:16:50.165 --> 00:16:55.380 Anyone has the potential, whether they have belief or no belief, 00:16:55.187 --> 00:16:57.975 because awakening is inherent 00:16:57.975 --> 00:17:02.662 within our human consciousness, just by our human birth. 00:17:02.894 --> 00:17:06.237 So whatever you call it, and whenever language is used, 00:17:06.680 --> 00:17:10.203 there's certain principles that seem to be the same 00:17:10.465 --> 00:17:13.765 throughout these different religions 00:17:13.765 --> 00:17:16.705 and spiritualities and meditation traditions. 00:17:17.036 --> 00:17:19.872 When I was younger, this understanding 00:17:19.872 --> 00:17:25.033 was mainly available in the Eastern spiritual traditions. 00:17:25.033 --> 00:17:27.046 It was available in the Western 00:17:27.046 --> 00:17:31.855 traditions, but it was so disguised and codified 00:17:31.968 --> 00:17:35.505 in those traditions as to be almost inaccessible. 00:17:35.679 --> 00:17:39.764 So many people of my generation went physically 00:17:39.892 --> 00:17:45.467 or at least intellectually, to the East to find this understanding 00:17:45.597 --> 00:17:49.639 and Eastern culture by comparison with 00:17:49.898 --> 00:17:53.001 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 --> 00:18:02.951 from the cultures in which it was expressed. 00:18:03.561 --> 00:18:06.197 And many people, myself included 00:18:07.002 --> 00:18:09.481 thought as a result of this 00:18:09.481 --> 00:18:13.110 that there was something exotic about the non dual 00:18:13.110 --> 00:18:17.846 understanding; that it required some extra ordinary way of life, 00:18:17.846 --> 00:18:21.171 that you had to give up family life 00:18:21.229 --> 00:18:25.415 or grow your hair or get a special name or subscribe 00:18:25.415 --> 00:18:31.678 to some kind of teacher or or tradition or engage in strange practices. 00:18:31.678 --> 00:18:35.286 All these kind of things which had nothing to do 00:18:35.286 --> 00:18:38.918 with the core understanding. They were to do with the culture 00:18:38.918 --> 00:18:43.326 in which the understanding was expressed at a particular time. 00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:47.796 So now the understanding has been completely divested 00:18:47.914 --> 00:18:54.455 of the traditional cultural packaging in which many of us first heard about it. 00:18:54.572 --> 00:18:59.768 And now just the essential understanding is available 00:18:59.768 --> 00:19:03.388 in a way that enables us to carry on leading our lives 00:19:03.426 --> 00:19:07.812 exactly as they are. Family life, work life... 00:19:07.903 --> 00:19:13.384 it's not necessary to make any external changes in one's life. 00:19:13.560 --> 00:19:16.155 The challenge we have on this planet 00:19:16.155 --> 00:19:19.197 is that we think there's more than one 00:19:19.366 --> 00:19:20.791 essence. 00:19:21.501 --> 00:19:22.536 So we live in a 00:19:22.995 --> 00:19:26.123 world of what I would call duality. 00:19:26.683 --> 00:19:29.104 There's male and female, black and white, 00:19:29.634 --> 00:19:34.006 big and small, fast and slow, up and down, here and there, before 00:19:34.006 --> 00:19:37.477 and after, but in fact, there's only one thing. 00:19:38.997 --> 00:19:41.629 All things are one thing. 00:19:42.389 --> 00:19:45.173 There is only one thing. 00:19:45.643 --> 00:19:48.352 So it turns out that when we look deeply at everything 00:19:48.352 --> 00:19:53.146 we see that here and there, big and small, fast and slow, up and down, left and right, 00:19:53.146 --> 00:19:58.342 male and female, are all the same thing, simply expressing 00:19:58.482 --> 00:20:02.782 different characteristics but in no way separate from each other. 00:20:03.421 --> 00:20:05.980 I believe that all of us 00:20:05.980 --> 00:20:07.915 are individuations 00:20:07.915 --> 00:20:09.374 of God. 00:20:10.620 --> 00:20:12.461 I believe that God exists in, as, and 00:20:12.461 --> 00:20:18.650 through every human being and for that matter, every sentient 00:20:18.650 --> 00:20:21.094 being in the cosmos. 00:20:21.094 --> 00:20:25.173 So I see then that I am in relationship to God 00:20:26.380 --> 00:20:28.393 as a wave is to the ocean. 00:20:28.953 --> 00:20:31.293 A wave is no different from the ocean; it's 00:20:31.293 --> 00:20:36.097 simply an arising of the ocean in individual form. 00:20:36.631 --> 00:20:39.309 And when that individuation is complete, 00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:43.025 the wave recedes back into the ocean whence it came. 00:20:43.025 --> 00:20:46.160 To arise again on another day. 00:20:47.320 --> 00:20:51.705 So I believe that we are all individuations of divinity, 00:20:52.005 --> 00:20:54.809 and when we see everything as divine, 00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:58.087 we change our relationship with everything. 00:20:58.765 --> 00:21:00.948 And everything becomes 00:21:00.948 --> 00:21:03.274 different in our experience. 00:21:04.255 --> 00:21:09.535 That's how the world changes. 00:21:17.275 --> 00:21:21.328 Consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe, 00:21:21.888 --> 00:21:27.196 so we might well ask if consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe 00:21:27.196 --> 00:21:31.231 and everything, and everyone is obviously that, then how come 00:21:33.643 --> 00:21:38.189 the world appears to us as a multiplicity and diversity 00:21:38.213 --> 00:21:43.568 of discrete and independently existing people 00:21:43.568 --> 00:21:47.582 and animals and things all made out of stuff called matter. 00:21:47.582 --> 00:21:52.330 How can we reconcile this statement that consciousness 00:21:52.330 --> 00:21:54.757 is the ultimate reality of the universe when it appears 00:21:54.858 --> 00:21:58.640 as a multiplicity and diversity of objects made out of matter? 00:21:58.676 --> 00:22:02.362 So the the evidence that I'm using to suggest that consciousness 00:22:02.362 --> 00:22:06.908 is fundamental has many aspects to it. 00:22:07.788 --> 00:22:10.101 One is that physics itself 00:22:10.101 --> 00:22:13.021 says that space time isn't fundamental 00:22:13.021 --> 00:22:16.465 and evolutionary theory also agrees that spacetime 00:22:16.465 --> 00:22:19.048 and physical objects are not fundamental reality. 00:22:19.192 --> 00:22:23.800 Now, both of those theories tell us only that, that spacetime is not fundamental. 00:22:23.800 --> 00:22:26.757 They don't tell us what is beyond spacetime. 00:22:27.345 --> 00:22:31.853 And so my argument is that what the physicists are finding 00:22:31.903 --> 00:22:34.929 beyond spacetime, they're finding mathematical structures, 00:22:35.134 --> 00:22:37.572 but what those are about 00:22:37.650 --> 00:22:41.421 is not really clear. What is this realm beyond space time about? 00:22:41.671 --> 00:22:46.148 And so I'm proposing that the realm beyond space time is about consciousness. 00:22:46.481 --> 00:22:49.492 And I would suggest that infinite consciousness has the ability 00:22:49.492 --> 00:22:54.655 to localize itself as numerous separate subjects of experience, 00:22:55.039 --> 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 --> 00:23:08.124 in infinite consciousness made only of infinite consciousness 00:23:08.339 --> 00:23:11.055 from whose perspective it views 00:23:11.055 --> 00:23:14.960 its own activity as the outside world. 00:23:15.451 --> 00:23:18.845 So what appears to us as a world made out of matter 00:23:18.920 --> 00:23:24.060 from our localized perspectives, is from the point of view of reality, 00:23:24.178 --> 00:23:28.703 simply the activity of the one infinite consciousness. 00:23:28.821 --> 00:23:33.614 In other words, in the ultimate analysis, there are no discrete 00:23:33.614 --> 00:23:37.668 or independently existing things or people. 00:23:38.007 --> 00:23:41.059 There is one infinite, indivisible, whole. 00:23:41.211 --> 00:23:45.604 The unity of being that is only refracted 00:23:46.305 --> 00:23:49.824 into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and things, 00:23:49.983 --> 00:23:54.116 when The One looks at its own activity 00:23:54.331 --> 00:23:56.524 through the perceiving faculties 00:23:56.651 --> 00:23:58.728 of the finite mind. 00:23:59.931 --> 00:24:01.560 If we are awake, 00:24:01.560 --> 00:24:05.343 we realize that there's one awareness 00:24:05.665 --> 00:24:09.802 that is disguised as all of these different beings on the planet, 00:24:10.078 --> 00:24:13.869 one awareness shining through everyone's eyes. 00:24:13.992 --> 00:24:18.577 Then we literally see ourselves in others. 00:24:18.691 --> 00:24:22.169 And that tendency to operate as an ego, 00:24:22.169 --> 00:24:26.796 the tendency to take for oneself 00:24:26.961 --> 00:24:30.677 falls away because we directly realize the truth. 00:24:31.261 --> 00:24:35.431 The truth is that we're all one consciousness. 00:24:35.765 --> 00:24:39.008 The experience of my spiritual self 00:24:39.989 --> 00:24:42.186 was only possible in the realm 00:24:42.186 --> 00:24:44.869 of the physical for a very good reason, 00:24:45.419 --> 00:24:49.530 because only in the realm of the physical was the opposite available. 00:24:50.388 --> 00:24:53.035 In other words, just use a simple example, 00:24:53.316 --> 00:24:56.279 if I wanted to experience myself, if I could speak 00:24:56.279 --> 00:24:58.889 metaphorically, as the light, 00:24:59.522 --> 00:25:03.345 I couldn't experience being the light if I was amidst the light, 00:25:03.548 --> 00:25:06.011 nothing else around me but the light, 00:25:06.130 --> 00:25:10.256 which is a perfect definition of the realm of the spiritual. 00:25:10.576 --> 00:25:14.312 So I would come to a realm which I call the realm of the physical, 00:25:14.459 --> 00:25:17.128 where there is something other than the light. 00:25:17.453 --> 00:25:20.102 Because if I want to experience myself as the light, 00:25:20.102 --> 00:25:23.659 not just know myself as that, but experience it, 00:25:23.890 --> 00:25:25.950 I could only do that where there was 00:25:25.950 --> 00:25:29.311 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 --> 00:25:36.721 this opportunity to the physical realm where the light and the dark exist 00:25:36.721 --> 00:25:40.658 simultaneously, and then in that outward 00:25:40.658 --> 00:25:45.383 expression of myself as the light, I could be who I really am. 00:25:46.085 --> 00:25:48.511 And this understanding suggests 00:25:48.511 --> 00:25:53.936 that behind our differences we are all the same being, 00:25:54.160 --> 00:25:59.954 not a similar being, but we are all literally one... the same being. 00:25:59.954 --> 00:26:05.386 And love is the felt experience 00:26:05.883 --> 00:26:09.420 of this oneness or shared being. 00:26:09.413 --> 00:26:15.241 It's a theorem of our theory that there is ultimately one consciousness. 00:26:15.699 --> 00:26:19.850 So we have this dynamics of many, many conscious agents. 00:26:19.850 --> 00:26:22.953 But the theory tells us that ultimately all those conscious agents 00:26:22.953 --> 00:26:26.814 are really just projections of a single one consciousness. 00:26:26.814 --> 00:26:30.181 The current paradigm in science 00:26:30.583 --> 00:26:33.260 has, and it has been for for centuries, 00:26:33.369 --> 00:26:37.580 is that space and time are the fundamental nature of reality. 00:26:37.580 --> 00:26:40.831 They're irreducible and they are the foundation of everything. 00:26:40.995 --> 00:26:44.443 And prior to Einstein, space and time were viewed as separate. 00:26:44.495 --> 00:26:48.347 Now, space and time together, a unified into spacetime are viewed 00:26:48.347 --> 00:26:50.204 as the fundamental nature of reality. 00:26:50.204 --> 00:26:52.698 And science has then assumed that 00:26:53.562 --> 00:26:57.510 spacetime and objects in spacetime are the foundational reality. 00:26:58.196 --> 00:27:01.243 And so, for example, when we talk about consciousness, 00:27:01.870 --> 00:27:06.682 consciousness itself then must be somehow a product of objects in space and time. 00:27:06.914 --> 00:27:11.457 In that physicalist framework space and time and physical objects 00:27:11.713 --> 00:27:15.828 without any consciousness are the fundamental reality. 00:27:15.828 --> 00:27:20.584 And consciousness comes later on in the evolution of the universe, right? 00:27:20.646 --> 00:27:23.214 So that the big bang, there was no consciousness, 00:27:23.214 --> 00:27:25.289 there was just spacetime and energy. 00:27:25.458 --> 00:27:27.818 The energy coalesced into massive particles 00:27:28.087 --> 00:27:31.072 and eventually life emerged after who knows how many millions 00:27:31.072 --> 00:27:33.239 or hundreds of millions or billions of years. 00:27:33.239 --> 00:27:36.584 Then after that consciousness came, even later. 00:27:37.857 --> 00:27:41.705 From that point of view, when you die, the physical complexity that gave 00:27:41.705 --> 00:27:45.169 rise to consciousness dissolves and so your consciousness dissolves. 00:27:45.169 --> 00:27:49.408 And so the physicalist framework really does eliminate consciousness 00:27:49.762 --> 00:27:52.577 as a fundamental thing, altogether and says that 00:27:52.577 --> 00:27:55.251 when your body dies, your consciousness goes with it. 00:27:56.946 --> 00:27:58.694 From this other point of view... 00:27:58.694 --> 00:28:02.358 what I've done with my colleagues, we have we used evolutionary theory 00:28:02.358 --> 00:28:05.228 to point out that it's an implication 00:28:05.228 --> 00:28:08.627 of evolutionary theory, that space and time is not fundamental, 00:28:08.627 --> 00:28:11.891 so the physicalist interpretation of evolution is wrong. 00:28:12.320 --> 00:28:15.424 The idea that that space and time and particles 00:28:15.424 --> 00:28:21.437 somehow have evolved due to human organisms 00:28:21.504 --> 00:28:25.299 is is the wrong framework, because spacetime itself is not fundamental. 00:28:25.397 --> 00:28:28.457 We're positing a dynamics beyond spacetime that's much richer. 00:28:28.457 --> 00:28:30.313 The dynamics of consciousness. 00:28:30.313 --> 00:28:32.933 What we do not do is throw away our old theories. 00:28:32.933 --> 00:28:35.237 When physicists say spacetime is doomed, 00:28:35.237 --> 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 --> 00:28:45.508 Any new theory beyond spacetime that the physicists come up with better project 00:28:45.508 --> 00:28:49.632 into space time and give us back Einstein and it better give us back quantum theory 00:28:49.632 --> 00:28:50.643 or you're wrong. 00:28:50.643 --> 00:28:52.706 All of our old theories 00:28:52.706 --> 00:28:56.979 are wonderful, wonderful friends and we're going to keep them 00:28:57.068 --> 00:29:00.160 as special cases of a deeper theory. 00:29:00.373 --> 00:29:03.749 So in our theory of consciousness, we have to do the same thing. 00:29:03.749 --> 00:29:05.786 We can't just propose anything we want. 00:29:05.786 --> 00:29:08.210 We have to have a theory of consciousness that projects 00:29:08.210 --> 00:29:10.090 and gives us back space time, 00:29:10.090 --> 00:29:13.507 and gives us back quantum theory, and gives us back special and general 00:29:13.507 --> 00:29:16.747 relativity, and gives us back evolution by natural selection. 00:29:16.917 --> 00:29:20.132 If we cannot do that in precise mathematical detail, then there's 00:29:20.264 --> 00:29:24.073 no reason for scientists to take our theory of consciousness seriously. 00:29:24.907 --> 00:29:29.020 It's as if infinite consciousness puts on a virtual reality headset. Infinite 00:29:29.070 --> 00:29:32.932 consciousness puts on a a VR headset made of thinking and perceiving. 00:29:33.105 --> 00:29:37.633 And in doing so, the moment it puts on the VR headset, 00:29:37.903 --> 00:29:41.932 it localizes itself within its own activity. 00:29:42.249 --> 00:29:46.743 And through that headset it looks out through the perceiving 00:29:46.743 --> 00:29:51.539 faculties of a finite mind; seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. 00:29:51.740 --> 00:29:56.328 And it fragments the unity of its own being 00:29:56.503 --> 00:30:00.289 and makes it appear as 10,000 things. 00:30:01.103 --> 00:30:03.109 What I'm suggesting is that 00:30:03.609 --> 00:30:08.856 there is very much more to to the universe than the finite mind. 00:30:08.856 --> 00:30:14.550 I'm not suggesting that the universe only appears in each of our finite minds. 00:30:14.880 --> 00:30:19.833 The universe exists outside of our finite mind, but inside consciousness. 00:30:20.007 --> 00:30:23.420 But it is the limitations of our finite mind 00:30:23.687 --> 00:30:27.459 that give the universe its appearance. 00:30:28.417 --> 00:30:32.645 So when we look out at the universe, we're seeing the reality 00:30:32.645 --> 00:30:37.510 that exists prior to its being perceived. 00:30:37.136 --> 00:30:41.551 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. 00:30:46.363 --> 00:30:51.273 So the idea of awakening in many spiritual traditions has been the idea 00:30:51.273 --> 00:30:54.535 that what we have taken as reality 00:30:54.644 --> 00:30:58.595 objects in space and time, our physical bodies and so forth 00:30:58.898 --> 00:31:03.369 is not the final reality, that there is a much deeper reality, 00:31:03.399 --> 00:31:07.955 a reality of consciousness that transcends space and time and physical objects, 00:31:08.075 --> 00:31:10.830 and that we're not divorced from that reality. 00:31:10.830 --> 00:31:14.615 That reality is, in some sense, the essence of what we are. 00:31:14.698 --> 00:31:17.953 And so awakening is awakening from the illusion 00:31:17.953 --> 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 --> 00:31:25.696 in fact the author of everything I see inside of space and time. 00:31:25.696 --> 00:31:29.678 I create it on the fly as I look and perceive. 00:31:30.243 --> 00:31:36.533 How do I awaken? 00:31:37.088 --> 00:31:42.161 One becomes awakened by recognizing that 00:31:42.932 --> 00:31:45.945 what we essentially are is already 00:31:45.945 --> 00:31:49.032 fully awake, fully aware, 00:31:49.622 --> 00:31:53.158 complete, whole, fulfilled at peace. 00:31:53.328 --> 00:31:56.010 It's like asking how does the 00:31:56.043 --> 00:31:59.900 sun become illuminated? 00:31:59.926 --> 00:32:01.961 Its nature is light. 00:32:01.961 --> 00:32:04.039 It is already fully illuminated. 00:32:04.039 --> 00:32:08.747 The nature of our essential being is already peace and happiness. 00:32:08.824 --> 00:32:12.456 It's not clear to us all, because our essential being is so 00:32:12.456 --> 00:32:16.465 thoroughly mixed with the content of experience that its innate 00:32:16.601 --> 00:32:20.658 Peace and happiness is dimmed by experience. 00:32:20.903 --> 00:32:25.528 And for that reason we think that our essential being needs to be enlightened. 00:32:25.528 --> 00:32:28.327 No, our essential being doesn't need to be enlightened 00:32:28.327 --> 00:32:32.136 any more than the sun needs to be lit up in the early morning. 00:32:32.533 --> 00:32:35.993 The sun's always shining with the same brightness. 00:32:35.993 --> 00:32:39.995 Our essential being is always shining with the same peace and joy. 00:32:40.139 --> 00:32:43.682 But that peace and joy are dimmed by the agitation 00:32:43.682 --> 00:32:46.957 and lack that characterizes our thoughts and feelings. 00:32:47.548 --> 00:32:51.511 There's no person that awakens. 00:32:51.817 --> 00:32:55.313 So the I that awakened 00:32:55.598 --> 00:32:57.642 I awakened from this Dan 00:32:57.642 --> 00:33:01.381 structure at a meditation center. 00:33:01.489 --> 00:33:03.314 It was a Zen center. 00:33:03.314 --> 00:33:06.374 We were doing a Zen sesshin 00:33:06.374 --> 00:33:10.730 which is a long period of intensive practice. 00:33:10.238 --> 00:33:15.748 So Zen is amazing for creating this container 00:33:15.913 --> 00:33:18.786 where there are these conditions of no escape. 00:33:19.183 --> 00:33:24.603 So the Dan character that had learned meditation, 00:33:24.603 --> 00:33:27.853 the Dan character had been doing all this meditation, 00:33:28.027 --> 00:33:30.431 this doer of meditation, 00:33:30.675 --> 00:33:33.830 realized that it couldn't awaken. 00:33:34.109 --> 00:33:37.211 It's like all the meditation tricks, 00:33:37.211 --> 00:33:42.534 all the practices that had been learned were of no use. 00:33:42.786 --> 00:33:46.085 It got to the point where that character 00:33:46.203 --> 00:33:49.179 who was trying to awaken, failed 00:33:49.497 --> 00:33:52.084 to awaken and had to fail. 00:33:52.287 --> 00:33:57.217 That the character that I had been living, the character that I've been playing 00:33:57.424 --> 00:34:01.840 all my life, had to let go or die and 00:34:02.927 --> 00:34:04.681 what was left? 00:34:04.681 --> 00:34:07.951 What was left when there was no doer 00:34:07.951 --> 00:34:10.874 when there was no meditator 00:34:10.874 --> 00:34:15.142 meditating or doing something called, meditation, 00:34:15.261 --> 00:34:19.623 what was left was my true nature 00:34:19.623 --> 00:34:21.442 or me... just me. 00:34:21.442 --> 00:34:25.980 When we awaken from this small, separate sense of self, it's 00:34:25.980 --> 00:34:29.165 not that we're killing the ego 00:34:29.266 --> 00:34:32.293 or we're fighting it. 00:34:32.513 --> 00:34:36.720 It's actually we're allowing it to semi retire 00:34:36.885 --> 00:34:39.885 from its job of ego identity 00:34:40.012 --> 00:34:42.861 and then relax to be part 00:34:42.861 --> 00:34:46.381 of our team, part of our consciousness. 00:34:47.097 --> 00:34:50.447 And this gives us a sense of freedom immediately 00:34:50.447 --> 00:34:54.233 that we're not looking at the world through a small lens, 00:34:54.233 --> 00:34:58.983 that we're we're open hearted and open minded in a way that's 00:35:00.711 --> 00:35:06.403 expansive and yet at the same time, more intimately connected. 00:35:06.728 --> 00:35:10.430 Enlightenment is not about becoming awakened. 00:35:10.430 --> 00:35:12.632 Nobody becomes awakened or enlightened. 00:35:12.632 --> 00:35:17.102 It's a recognition of the light, the light of pure knowing 00:35:17.281 --> 00:35:19.365 whose nature is peace and happiness 00:35:19.365 --> 00:35:21.927 that we always and already are. 00:35:26.624 --> 00:35:31.114 My name is Lisa Natoli, and I'm known as a spiritual teacher. 00:35:31.239 --> 00:35:34.928 I teach about healing and awakening and transformation. 00:35:34.928 --> 00:35:39.042 Awakening is the recognition of your true nature, 00:35:39.413 --> 00:35:44.982 and it's the realization of what you really are, which is consciousness. 00:35:45.207 --> 00:35:49.915 And consciousness is just one word for many words that people use 00:35:50.148 --> 00:35:55.927 for awareness, life, love, God, 00:35:56.529 --> 00:35:58.114 light. 00:35:59.133 --> 00:36:04.519 So waking up to the recognition that I'm not this body 00:36:04.863 --> 00:36:09.166 that I am, that which never dies and that which is never born, 00:36:13.107 --> 00:36:16.256 and that was a very difficult idea for me. 00:36:16.256 --> 00:36:19.549 I've been on a spiritual path since 1992. 00:36:19.677 --> 00:36:22.295 I started with A Course in Miracles. 00:36:22.295 --> 00:36:24.918 I always studied it religiously. 00:36:24.918 --> 00:36:28.603 I mean, I was someone who was so committed to knowing the 00:36:28.603 --> 00:36:35.118 Self, knowing God, waking up. ... I couldn't get it, 00:36:35.524 --> 00:36:37.509 because I was under the belief 00:36:37.509 --> 00:36:40.701 that awakening was something mystical, 00:36:40.996 --> 00:36:45.257 that something would happen, that something would occur, 00:36:45.703 --> 00:36:48.616 and it would be like Jesus 00:36:48.616 --> 00:36:51.950 or Buddha or all of these enlightened masters 00:36:52.460 --> 00:36:54.670 and it wasn't happening for me. 00:36:54.670 --> 00:36:56.339 I couldn't understand why. 00:36:56.505 --> 00:37:00.309 Why am I so committed 00:37:01.029 --> 00:37:06.696 and I'm having deep moments of peace and happiness and joy... and still struggling. 00:37:06.959 --> 00:37:09.988 I started to realize the simplicity 00:37:10.061 --> 00:37:13.213 of our true nature, which is awareness. 00:37:13.932 --> 00:37:18.932 So for someone who's listening to me right now, 00:37:19.495 --> 00:37:24.720 the awareness that's hearing this voice, that's what we are. 00:37:25.484 --> 00:37:29.375 And it doesn't have a location, it doesn't have a gender, 00:37:29.583 --> 00:37:32.608 it doesn't have a color, it doesn't have a body, 00:37:33.042 --> 00:37:36.141 and it's totally unlimited. 00:37:36.587 --> 00:37:40.490 So awakening is where we wake up 00:37:40.841 --> 00:37:43.585 to our true nature. 00:37:43.605 --> 00:37:47.598 We wake up to the realization that I am the awareness 00:37:47.974 --> 00:37:52.586 of this experience right now as I'm here. 00:37:53.020 --> 00:37:54.965 And it's so ordinary 00:37:54.965 --> 00:37:56.790 we miss it. 00:37:56.357 --> 00:37:59.251 We think it can't be that simple. 00:37:59.661 --> 00:38:01.657 The recognition of our true nature, 00:38:01.917 --> 00:38:04.029 it doesn't lead to happiness. 00:38:04.144 --> 00:38:07.576 It is happiness... the nature of being 00:38:07.876 --> 00:38:10.121 is happiness itself. 00:38:10.731 --> 00:38:15.032 So the recognition of our true nature is the experience of happiness. 00:38:21.121 --> 00:38:23.769 Who is aware in this moment? 00:38:24.635 --> 00:38:26.301 The mind will 00:38:26.301 --> 00:38:29.244 look for something, or try to complicate it. 00:38:30.255 --> 00:38:32.449 You already are 00:38:32.449 --> 00:38:37.331 that which the mind is looking for. 00:38:37.331 --> 00:38:39.528 The mind will always miss it. 00:38:40.340 --> 00:38:43.046 So don't look to the mind for an answer. 00:38:43.815 --> 00:38:46.001 Don't push away your thoughts 00:38:46.001 --> 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. 00:38:58.283 --> 00:39:01.315 Intend to directly experience 00:39:01.315 --> 00:39:04.125 who you are. 00:39:05.075 --> 00:39:09.793 Don't try to negate the mind or to achieve some state. 00:39:10.889 --> 00:39:13.874 All doing, all manipulation, 00:39:13.874 --> 00:39:17.812 all movement is more controlling by the mind. 00:39:18.645 --> 00:39:24.463 Allow the mind to be as it is. 00:39:28.493 --> 00:39:32.569 Sometimes people can awaken just in day to day life. 00:39:32.569 --> 00:39:35.549 They don't necessarily need practice. 00:39:35.677 --> 00:39:40.222 So sometimes things will happen in life where there's an interrupt 00:39:40.222 --> 00:39:45.345 in the pattern of you. And there can be a spontaneous awakening. 00:39:45.575 --> 00:39:50.054 But if someone's life is just going on in a kind of robotic pattern 00:39:50.054 --> 00:39:52.971 or repetitive pattern, then 00:39:53.140 --> 00:39:56.756 some sort of intervention is necessary. 00:39:56.756 --> 00:40:03.613 if one is called to awakening and that interrupt in the pattern of you 00:40:03.661 --> 00:40:07.428 is sometimes called sadhana or spiritual practice. 00:40:07.571 --> 00:40:10.812 And these practices are always 00:40:10.991 --> 00:40:12.801 conditioned. 00:40:12.801 --> 00:40:15.954 Thet are something that we learn with the conditioned mind. 00:40:16.041 --> 00:40:20.191 So they can make it more likely for awakening to happen, 00:40:20.302 --> 00:40:24.080 sort of by loosening the bonds within the self structure. 00:40:24.159 --> 00:40:29.110 Sometimes they say that awakening happens by accident, 00:40:29.269 --> 00:40:32.172 but the practice makes you more accident prone. 00:40:32.964 --> 00:40:36.546 The techniques, the practices can be very useful 00:40:36.838 --> 00:40:39.321 to make you more accident prone. 00:40:39.321 --> 00:40:43.316 But then at a certain point have to be let go. 00:40:43.524 --> 00:40:48.490 Because if the mind is continuously doing some practice 00:40:48.490 --> 00:40:51.386 or some thing, then the mind has 00:40:51.386 --> 00:40:55.041 the reins, mind is in the driver's seat. 00:40:55.207 --> 00:40:59.146 So the practices are useful, very useful 00:40:59.146 --> 00:41:03.855 as steppingstones for making the self structure, 00:41:03.855 --> 00:41:08.441 you can say less dense or enlightening up the self structure 00:41:08.582 --> 00:41:11.863 so that it becomes more permeable 00:41:11.913 --> 00:41:14.279 to our true nature. 00:41:16.419 --> 00:41:20.935 The paradox with practice is that when you finally awaken, 00:41:21.041 --> 00:41:23.982 you realize that all of the practices 00:41:24.510 --> 00:41:26.797 were being done by the false self, 00:41:27.216 --> 00:41:30.769 the character in the VR game, and that YOU, 00:41:30.769 --> 00:41:34.515 the true self, was never bound. 00:41:35.905 --> 00:41:39.481 All you have to do is give up the preferences of the ego, 00:41:40.340 --> 00:41:43.704 to give up the fixation on things. 00:41:44.366 --> 00:41:49.644 Anything within the field of changing phenomena is not the true self, 00:41:50.352 --> 00:41:54.349 the you that you think you are, the you that you've always been 00:41:54.349 --> 00:41:57.178 identified with will never awaken 00:41:57.477 --> 00:42:00.195 you awaken from that character. 00:42:00.632 --> 00:42:04.844 You awaken from the delusion that you were this conditioned character. 00:42:04.956 --> 00:42:08.597 So when people come to these retreats, they think this 00:42:08.597 --> 00:42:13.106 "I" this little "me" is going to awaken, some great thing is going to happen. 00:42:13.178 --> 00:42:16.283 But at a certain point, that little me will never do it. 00:42:16.283 --> 00:42:18.743 It has to give up, it has to fail. 00:42:18.805 --> 00:42:20.849 And it's only in that failure 00:42:20.901 --> 00:42:27.208 we realize who we are, that we've always been aware, we've always been present. 00:42:27.340 --> 00:42:30.991 We just got hooked into this character and we believed 00:42:30.991 --> 00:42:33.181 we were that. 00:42:43.501 --> 00:42:49.714 I started my spiritual search in the classical Advaita Vedanta 00:42:50.425 --> 00:42:52.947 tradition, which was a devotional path 00:42:53.236 --> 00:42:56.938 that involved mantra meditation, 00:42:56.938 --> 00:43:00.780 which I practiced very diligently for 20 years. 00:43:00.878 --> 00:43:04.123 And mantra meditation involves 00:43:04.789 --> 00:43:07.969 focusing your attention on a sound 00:43:09.084 --> 00:43:11.338 and then gradually the sound fades. 00:43:11.818 --> 00:43:16.310 However, it was really when I came in touch 00:43:16.509 --> 00:43:18.909 with the direct path that 00:43:19.177 --> 00:43:25.662 my spiritual search really reached its culmination. 00:43:25.957 --> 00:43:29.356 Because in this direct approach, 00:43:29.356 --> 00:43:34.303 we don't give our attention to any object, however subtle, 00:43:34.352 --> 00:43:38.057 for instance, a mantra, a sound, the breath, 00:43:38.346 --> 00:43:42.120 we allow our attention to sink inwards 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:44.696 or backwards into its source. 00:43:45.894 --> 00:43:47.976 Let's use an analogy. 00:43:48.786 --> 00:43:52.368 Imagine that you are watching your life on a television screen. 00:43:52.606 --> 00:43:55.775 You are identified with the character on the screen. 00:43:56.728 --> 00:43:58.303 Day after day, 00:43:58.303 --> 00:44:02.522 year after year you are involved with the story of the character 00:44:02.724 --> 00:44:06.214 when suddenly you wake up out of the story 00:44:06.469 --> 00:44:09.744 to notice the screen on which the character appears 00:44:10.053 --> 00:44:14.045 and you realize you are not the character you've been watching. 00:44:14.789 --> 00:44:17.565 Objects can come and go on the screen. 00:44:18.046 --> 00:44:20.248 Characters come and go, 00:44:20.248 --> 00:44:22.765 but the screen remains unchanged. 00:44:23.345 --> 00:44:25.525 The character can get wet, 00:44:25.525 --> 00:44:30.672 but the screen does not get wet. The character can be disturbed, 00:44:30.672 --> 00:44:33.045 but the screen is not disturbed. 00:44:33.695 --> 00:44:36.932 Without the screen, the characters would not exist, 00:44:37.851 --> 00:44:40.184 yet screen goes unnoticed. 00:44:40.273 --> 00:44:43.414 The characters go about their scripted lives. 00:44:44.654 --> 00:44:47.020 Awareness is like the screen. 00:44:47.437 --> 00:44:50.176 It is like the space in which all thoughts, 00:44:50.300 --> 00:44:54.329 motions, all states of consciousness come and go. 00:44:55.542 --> 00:44:57.673 Thoughts, sensations 00:44:57.673 --> 00:45:03.017 and the entire outside world appear on the screen, constantly changing. 00:45:03.268 --> 00:45:06.075 But the screen does not change. 00:45:07.505 --> 00:45:13.918 It's the mind that changes states through the human experience. 00:45:14.043 --> 00:45:18.563 But there's something, that what you are, that remains. 00:45:18.697 --> 00:45:21.576 Something that is ever present, 00:45:21.638 --> 00:45:25.092 that is aware of those changing states 00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:28.878 and that is consciousness or our true nature. 00:45:29.212 --> 00:45:32.914 As long as there is attachment to a character on the screen, 00:45:33.178 --> 00:45:37.319 a sense that I am that character, then there will be suffering; 00:45:37.430 --> 00:45:40.695 maya the illusion of the self. 00:45:41.983 --> 00:45:44.320 Nothing you can do as the dream 00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:49.048 character will help to free you. Whether you follow the script 00:45:49.048 --> 00:45:52.275 in the drama of your life or rebel against the script, 00:45:52.340 --> 00:45:55.546 if you act from the point of view of the character, 00:45:55.617 --> 00:45:57.937 then you're caught in the illusion. 00:45:58.855 --> 00:46:00.378 To awaken, 00:46:00.378 --> 00:46:04.835 stop identifying with what appears on the screen. 00:46:05.955 --> 00:46:08.806 Recognize that it is all impermanent. 00:46:09.115 --> 00:46:13.976 Stop reacting to thoughts and treating the program as real. 00:46:14.317 --> 00:46:17.733 If I withdraw attention from the screen, turning awareness 00:46:17.733 --> 00:46:22.130 towards itself, an unfathomable thing happens. 00:46:22.924 --> 00:46:26.635 Awareness itself wakes up. 00:46:27.785 --> 00:46:30.037 This is not a happening. 00:46:30.697 --> 00:46:33.496 Happening is what happens on the screen. 00:46:34.461 --> 00:46:37.320 Awakening is just recognizing the screen 00:46:37.320 --> 00:46:39.812 that was always already there. 00:46:41.396 --> 00:46:43.785 Do not believe your next thought 00:46:44.934 --> 00:46:49.615 instead, turn awareness towards awareness itself. 00:47:00.982 --> 00:47:03.646 I have always been myself. 00:47:03.646 --> 00:47:07.410 My sense of my self runs throughout my life. 00:47:07.410 --> 00:47:10.915 It remains consistently present throughout my life. 00:47:11.688 --> 00:47:13.548 What is present in me now, 00:47:13.548 --> 00:47:16.819 that was present yesterday, last year, ten years ago, 00:47:16.819 --> 00:47:20.017 and when I was a two year old child? 00:47:21.227 --> 00:47:23.997 What is this essential "I" or self 00:47:24.934 --> 00:47:27.802 to whom all my experience happens? 00:47:28.715 --> 00:47:31.115 The recognition 00:47:31.115 --> 00:47:35.473 of the nature of that one is the great secret to life. 00:47:35.473 --> 00:47:37.857 It is the direct path to peace 00:47:37.857 --> 00:47:42.655 and happiness. It is not something that a person initiates. 00:47:43.941 --> 00:47:47.288 It's something that a person recognizes. 00:47:48.419 --> 00:47:50.239 To re-cognize. 00:47:50.239 --> 00:47:52.744 That is to know, again. 00:47:53.653 --> 00:47:55.829 What we've known from the beginning 00:47:55.829 --> 00:48:00.570 but is simply forgotten, or denied or failed to believe. 00:48:00.669 --> 00:48:03.925 So we cannot initiate closeness to God. 00:48:03.964 --> 00:48:09.809 We can simply recognize, to recognize that it's always been there 00:48:10.095 --> 00:48:12.687 and will always be there. 00:48:12.687 --> 00:48:17.403 It was only this direct pointing to awakening, 00:48:17.403 --> 00:48:22.126 this opening to what's already here that allowed me to find 00:48:22.858 --> 00:48:24.295 a new way of 00:48:24.295 --> 00:48:27.231 being- a new stage of development. 00:48:27.372 --> 00:48:33.821 Many people think it's a very impossible or out of reach goal 00:48:33.821 --> 00:48:38.620 to know the self, and my own 00:48:38.815 --> 00:48:42.887 sort of purpose as a teacher, just because of my own awakening, 00:48:42.887 --> 00:48:48.256 has really been wanting to make it very practical, very down to Earth. 00:48:48.256 --> 00:48:52.276 I love to teach people, it's available to everyone. 00:48:52.441 --> 00:48:56.595 If we believe and feel 00:48:56.728 --> 00:49:00.483 that we are a temporary, finite, separate self, 00:49:00.604 --> 00:49:03.673 we are, whether we know it or not, 00:49:04.110 --> 00:49:06.669 searching for peace and happiness. 00:49:06.669 --> 00:49:10.059 In other words, it's not possible to be a separate self, 00:49:10.079 --> 00:49:14.907 to feel oneself as a separate self and not be in search of happiness. 00:49:15.463 --> 00:49:17.693 So what is required 00:49:17.693 --> 00:49:21.836 in this case is to reorientate one's search for happiness, 00:49:21.836 --> 00:49:25.426 instead of seeking for happiness in the objective content of experience, 00:49:25.823 --> 00:49:27.771 to seek happiness in oneself. 00:49:28.421 --> 00:49:31.576 So the spiritual practice that is required 00:49:32.270 --> 00:49:36.614 is to direct one's attention or more accurately, 00:49:36.614 --> 00:49:41.058 to relax one's attention into its source, 00:49:42.303 --> 00:49:45.536 pure awareness, rather than directed towards 00:49:45.605 --> 00:49:49.208 an object substance activity or relationship, and so on. 00:49:49.936 --> 00:49:53.995 So the spiritual practice, if we can call it a practice, 00:49:54.255 --> 00:49:57.145 would be this relaxing 00:49:57.208 --> 00:50:00.914 of the attention, this subsidence of the attention 00:50:01.504 --> 00:50:04.126 into the heart of awareness, 00:50:05.056 --> 00:50:07.666 resting in being as being. 00:50:08.633 --> 00:50:10.160 Love. 00:50:10.621 --> 00:50:12.718 Pure love is my true self. 00:50:13.298 --> 00:50:15.095 It's my true nature. 00:50:15.725 --> 00:50:18.252 Pure love for everyone and everything, 00:50:18.473 --> 00:50:20.892 for every aspect of life. 00:50:20.892 --> 00:50:24.745 Even those things with which I disagree. 00:50:25.361 --> 00:50:29.545 For one who has recognized the nature of their being, they know their being 00:50:29.837 --> 00:50:33.404 as the the source of the peace 00:50:33.404 --> 00:50:36.385 and happiness for which they long. 00:50:37.316 --> 00:50:41.614 So the world no longer becomes the place 00:50:41.614 --> 00:50:45.695 in which they seek happiness, seek fulfillment. 00:50:45.695 --> 00:50:49.095 Doesn't mean to say that such a person no longer has desires, 00:50:49.337 --> 00:50:53.691 but the desires are not there to fulfill the sense of lack 00:50:54.410 --> 00:50:57.971 that is characteristic of the separate self. 00:50:58.693 --> 00:51:02.111 As such, a person has found the source of happiness 00:51:02.111 --> 00:51:07.433 within themselves and their desires come from that sense of happiness. 00:51:07.554 --> 00:51:09.832 They do not go towards it. 00:51:09.832 --> 00:51:12.580 For instance, in the realm of relationship, 00:51:12.580 --> 00:51:15.433 it makes a big difference to our relationships. 00:51:15.433 --> 00:51:17.730 We no longer seek an other 00:51:18.556 --> 00:51:22.260 to fulfill the needs of our self. 00:51:23.069 --> 00:51:25.321 We seek another to share 00:51:25.540 --> 00:51:28.327 the experience of happiness that we already have. 00:51:28.327 --> 00:51:32.118 And this relieves our our friends of the impossible burden 00:51:32.265 --> 00:51:36.229 of providing happiness for a voracious, 00:51:36.760 --> 00:51:39.855 unsatisfied self. 00:51:40.234 --> 00:51:42.484 Nothing occurs in my life 00:51:43.214 --> 00:51:47.339 that is has not brought me benefit or will not bring me benefit 00:51:47.425 --> 00:51:51.902 in the sense that every moment, every activity, every outcome 00:51:52.275 --> 00:51:55.028 moves me forward 00:51:55.028 --> 00:51:57.830 in the process of the evolution of my soul. 00:51:57.922 --> 00:52:01.118 And that's why I came here to the physical realm, 00:52:01.118 --> 00:52:04.873 to evolve. 00:52:11.037 --> 00:52:13.963 Remain open. 00:52:13.963 --> 00:52:16.522 Feel your inner aliveness, 00:52:16.522 --> 00:52:20.011 letting energy circulate freely. 00:52:20.671 --> 00:52:24.388 Don't try to make anything happen. 00:52:25.638 --> 00:52:28.562 Who is aware of that energy, 00:52:29.103 --> 00:52:32.109 that inner aliveness? 00:52:36.269 --> 00:52:40.693 Notice the mind's tendency to control and manipulate, 00:52:41.208 --> 00:52:43.229 to get involved. 00:52:44.349 --> 00:52:47.930 Without the use of your memory or language, 00:52:48.699 --> 00:52:51.266 Who are you? 00:52:52.189 --> 00:52:54.777 Beyond the mind and senses, 00:52:55.005 --> 00:52:57.382 who are you? 00:52:57.549 --> 00:53:03.994 Who is aware? 00:53:18.124 --> 00:53:21.605 Many people who are hearing these ideas for the first time, 00:53:21.605 --> 00:53:25.419 they've never even heard this idea of the self. 00:53:25.838 --> 00:53:28.847 In my mind, there's two different camps of people. 00:53:28.847 --> 00:53:32.864 There are those who are on a spiritual path and they have heard this idea. 00:53:32.864 --> 00:53:36.321 They're trying to reach the self, they're trying to be the self. 00:53:36.321 --> 00:53:38.663 They're seeking, they're searching. 00:53:38.915 --> 00:53:42.450 And then there's other people who have just been living their life. 00:53:42.450 --> 00:53:44.938 They've never heard of these ideas before. 00:53:45.017 --> 00:53:47.154 They've never heard of Know Thyself. 00:53:47.154 --> 00:53:51.245 Many people think know thyself means know the body, 00:53:51.245 --> 00:53:54.043 know yourself, be yourself, be authentic. 00:53:54.208 --> 00:53:59.927 What it really means, to know thyself is to know what you are, 00:53:59.927 --> 00:54:03.768 to know what you are in truth and to really know your true nature. 00:54:03.831 --> 00:54:07.366 The words know thySelf were carved 00:54:07.535 --> 00:54:11.789 on the entrance of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, and as such 00:54:12.740 --> 00:54:18.248 stand as an invitation that the dawn of Western civilization to humanity, 00:54:18.456 --> 00:54:23.023 suggesting that to Know Thyself is really the foundation 00:54:23.354 --> 00:54:26.319 of all civilization. Why? 00:54:26.734 --> 00:54:31.972 Because our Self stands at the center of all our experience. 00:54:32.126 --> 00:54:37.240 Whatever we are experiencing, it is we who are experiencing it. 00:54:37.495 --> 00:54:40.444 Whatever we think and feel, our thoughts 00:54:40.444 --> 00:54:43.498 and feelings arise on behalf of our Self. 00:54:43.721 --> 00:54:48.593 Whatever activities and relationships we are engaged 00:54:48.593 --> 00:54:54.380 in, we engage those activities and relationships in service of our Self. 00:54:54.541 --> 00:54:59.667 So our Self stands at the center of our experience. 00:54:59.840 --> 00:55:05.329 So what could be more important than to know the nature of our Self, 00:55:06.052 --> 00:55:09.036 and would it be possible 00:55:09.616 --> 00:55:12.189 to know the nature of anything else 00:55:12.189 --> 00:55:16.747 if we do not first know the nature of that which knows it? 00:55:17.029 --> 00:55:19.680 I think awakening is 00:55:20.519 --> 00:55:23.382 about ending the nightmare 00:55:23.854 --> 00:55:26.740 and stepping into the dream. 00:55:27.490 --> 00:55:29.500 By that I mean 00:55:30.122 --> 00:55:33.431 we desert or finally abandon the nightmare of what 00:55:33.431 --> 00:55:38.649 we've been told about life, about God, and about ourselves. 00:55:38.649 --> 00:55:41.622 And we step into the dream of our grandest notion. 00:55:42.479 --> 00:55:46.458 I often ask, What do you think your life would be like 00:55:46.791 --> 00:55:50.259 if you found yourself stepping into the highest 00:55:50.259 --> 00:55:54.845 grandest, most wonderful thought you ever had about God, and about life 00:55:55.060 --> 00:55:57.536 and about yourself. 00:55:57.536 --> 00:56:02.804 So this recognition of our true nature is not only the recognition 00:56:02.804 --> 00:56:07.724 that brings our desire for happiness in the world to an end. 00:56:07.985 --> 00:56:11.278 It is also the recognition that enables us 00:56:11.278 --> 00:56:16.493 to live in a way that is consistent with the understanding 00:56:16.493 --> 00:56:21.954 that at the deepest level, everything and everyone, are one. 00:56:22.962 --> 00:56:25.175 This understanding would bring 00:56:25.175 --> 00:56:28.344 kindness, compassion, justice, 00:56:28.447 --> 00:56:32.952 tolerance, understanding into our society. 00:56:33.828 --> 00:56:35.976 Our society would be revolutionized 00:56:35.976 --> 00:56:37.747 by this understanding. 00:56:39.488 --> 00:56:42.564 As humanity lets go of ego based approaches, 00:56:42.715 --> 00:56:45.792 then science, religion, politics 00:56:45.792 --> 00:56:50.198 and economics start to reflect the perennial wisdom. 00:56:50.758 --> 00:56:53.838 Whether it is the native traditions who realize 00:56:53.838 --> 00:56:56.418 Great Spirit in all things, 00:56:56.691 --> 00:57:00.333 or the Egyptian/Kemetic traditions who describe the human 00:57:00.333 --> 00:57:04.535 evolutionary journey from the lowly scarab 00:57:04.535 --> 00:57:06.981 to the one source, 00:57:07.481 --> 00:57:09.273 or when we hear the words 00:57:09.273 --> 00:57:12.094 of the mystics of the Christian, Hindu, 00:57:12.094 --> 00:57:14.647 Muslim, or Buddhist traditions, 00:57:15.181 --> 00:57:19.608 or the teachings of Plato and Plotinus we find that 00:57:19.608 --> 00:57:25.786 those who have realized their true nature speak of groupings of conscious agents. 00:57:26.080 --> 00:57:29.181 Of course, they used the language of their culture 00:57:29.181 --> 00:57:33.217 and times to express the one perennial truth. 00:57:34.149 --> 00:57:39.640 Science is now starting to see not a world of unconscious particles 00:57:39.640 --> 00:57:42.416 and fields, but a universe made of 00:57:42.416 --> 00:57:44.711 conscious agents. 00:57:44.919 --> 00:57:49.341 Something new is emerging in the world of science. 00:57:49.674 --> 00:57:52.594 As Nikola Tesla said, 00:57:52.594 --> 00:57:57.140 the day science begins to study nonphysical phenomena, 00:57:57.140 --> 00:58:01.026 it will make more progress in one decade 00:58:01.310 --> 00:58:04.997 than in all the previous centuries of its existence. 00:58:06.024 --> 00:58:10.518 That day is today. 00:58:15.668 --> 00:58:18.823 Every time that we've had a mathematically precise advance 00:58:18.823 --> 00:58:22.533 in science, it has opened up new technologies 00:58:22.783 --> 00:58:26.528 that look like magic compared to what we had before. 00:58:26.649 --> 00:58:30.983 So my feeling is that this theory of conscious agents beyond spacetime 00:58:31.665 --> 00:58:34.006 will give us technologies 00:58:34.006 --> 00:58:36.343 that will be truly mind boggling. 00:58:36.782 --> 00:58:42.476 For example, right now, most of the galaxies that we see, 00:58:42.609 --> 00:58:45.105 I think 97% of the galaxies that we see, 00:58:45.257 --> 00:58:50.247 we can never go to. They are receding from us faster than the speed of light. 00:58:50.247 --> 00:58:53.515 So they're not moving through space faster than the speed of light. 00:58:53.515 --> 00:58:56.952 Space itself is expanding, so quickly that their speed 00:58:56.952 --> 00:58:59.675 moving away from us is greater than the speed of light. 00:58:59.675 --> 00:59:01.804 So we could never travel through space 00:59:01.804 --> 00:59:04.389 to go to 97% of the galaxies that we can see. 00:59:04.389 --> 00:59:08.015 So there's all this real estate out there that's waving at us and saying, hi, 00:59:08.015 --> 00:59:10.182 we're out here and you can never come to us. 00:59:10.182 --> 00:59:12.399 That's if you go through spacetime. 00:59:12.399 --> 00:59:15.301 But what if you realize that spacetime is just your headset? 00:59:15.801 --> 00:59:18.326 It's just the format of a game 00:59:18.983 --> 00:59:21.620 and you're not stuck inside the headset. 00:59:21.620 --> 00:59:25.604 You can play with the software that's running the game. 00:59:26.654 --> 00:59:30.993 So it's like someone who's like in Grand Theft Auto, you're a 00:59:30.993 --> 00:59:32.454 Wizard of Grand Theft Auto, 00:59:32.652 --> 00:59:34.443 so you know how to use the car 00:59:34.443 --> 00:59:37.866 and drive the roads and you can beat everybody in the game. 00:59:37.866 --> 00:59:41.497 But suppose you actually know the software that runs Grand Theft Auto. 00:59:41.497 --> 00:59:43.874 So you step outside of the Grand Theft Auto headset 00:59:44.131 --> 00:59:45.894 and you can play with the software. 00:59:45.894 --> 00:59:48.864 Well, you can take the gasoline out of the tank of the wizard. 00:59:48.864 --> 00:59:50.678 You can give them a flat tire. 00:59:50.678 --> 00:59:52.666 You can change the geometry of the roads. 00:59:52.666 --> 00:59:54.502 You can do whatever you want to. 00:59:54.502 --> 00:59:57.359 So once we understand our space time headset, 00:59:57.534 --> 01:00:00.985 we won't have to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy 01:00:00.985 --> 01:00:04.278 through space time, which would take us 2.4 million years. 01:00:04.473 --> 01:00:08.861 We can just go around space time. 01:00:11.191 --> 01:00:14.782 I see the world around me as stepping into 01:00:15.820 --> 01:00:20.469 a quieter expression and experience of what it means to be human 01:00:20.826 --> 01:00:23.729 and what it means to be an aspect of divinity. 01:00:24.338 --> 01:00:27.510 But I don't think that we have an endless amount of time. 01:00:28.100 --> 01:00:30.001 I get a sense that time is 01:00:30.001 --> 01:00:34.188 running out, that it's now or never time. 01:00:34.296 --> 01:00:36.885 I think we're on the right path. 01:00:36.885 --> 01:00:41.872 I have a sense of optimism that because of the kinds of opportunities 01:00:41.872 --> 01:00:44.515 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 --> 01:00:50.639 ways that we didn't have even a few years ago 01:00:51.047 --> 01:00:55.166 are creating the possibility that we can get to that place of critical 01:00:55.166 --> 01:00:58.390 mass, that we can reach critical mass 01:00:59.048 --> 01:01:01.240 before our time runs out. 01:01:01.840 --> 01:01:06.476 But we would be mistaken if we think we have an endless amount of time 01:01:07.528 --> 01:01:09.145 on this planet. 01:01:09.385 --> 01:01:11.898 When each individual 01:01:11.898 --> 01:01:15.347 disidentifies from their conditioned character, 01:01:15.561 --> 01:01:19.221 then they're no longer acting as an egoic entity. 01:01:19.673 --> 01:01:23.595 And that brings about a transformation on the planet. 01:01:23.856 --> 01:01:26.162 This brings a new Earth. 01:01:26.312 --> 01:01:29.047 Life as we know it right now on this planet, 01:01:29.636 --> 01:01:32.873 I think we need to make some changes and make them quickly, 01:01:33.013 --> 01:01:35.066 dramatically and radically 01:01:35.676 --> 01:01:38.714 if we want to see the tomorrow for which we've all dreamt. 01:01:38.804 --> 01:01:43.353 So, could this understanding become mainstream in our lifetime? 01:01:43.353 --> 01:01:45.469 Why not? Yes. 01:01:46.389 --> 01:01:49.384 The challenge we have right now is nothing is working, 01:01:49.454 --> 01:01:54.042 and the time has come for us to stand up and say that's true. 01:01:54.832 --> 01:01:57.327 Surely we can do better than this. 01:01:57.798 --> 01:01:59.489 Surely, 01:01:59.841 --> 01:02:03.250 We can expand our understanding of who we are 01:02:03.369 --> 01:02:07.306 and our expression of our true nature. 01:02:07.836 --> 01:02:09.434 We need to pay attention 01:02:09.914 --> 01:02:11.400 to our environment, 01:02:11.400 --> 01:02:14.132 to our politics, to our economics, 01:02:14.643 --> 01:02:18.385 and to our spiritual process on this planet. 01:02:19.800 --> 01:02:23.605 Because the problem in the world today is not a political problem. 01:02:23.922 --> 01:02:26.187 It's not an economic problem. 01:02:26.697 --> 01:02:28.995 It's not a social problem. 01:02:29.595 --> 01:02:33.116 It's a spiritual problem. 01:02:33.884 --> 01:02:36.568 It has to do with how committed we are 01:02:36.568 --> 01:02:41.215 with stepping into the highest spiritual truths. 01:02:42.081 --> 01:02:45.046 This is not New Age philosophy. 01:02:45.556 --> 01:02:47.979 These ideas have been around 01:02:47.979 --> 01:02:50.975 for thousands of years. 01:02:54.785 --> 01:02:58.168 The perennial wisdom has been expressed through 01:02:58.168 --> 01:03:02.481 countless traditions and cultures and like awareness 01:03:02.481 --> 01:03:06.366 itself, has always been hidden in plain view. 01:03:07.786 --> 01:03:09.646 In Christianity, 01:03:09.646 --> 01:03:12.497 the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas contains 01:03:12.497 --> 01:03:15.524 direct pointers to our true nature. 01:03:16.498 --> 01:03:21.326 The disciples asked Jesus, When will the kingdom come? 01:03:21.326 --> 01:03:25.373 Jesus said, It will not come by waiting for it. 01:03:25.911 --> 01:03:30.223 It will not be a matter of saying, Here it is, or there it is. 01:03:30.223 --> 01:03:34.232 Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out 01:03:34.232 --> 01:03:37.646 upon the earth and people do not see it. 01:03:38.875 --> 01:03:45.579 The Kingdom is not here or there. Awareness is not here or there. 01:03:45.988 --> 01:03:49.800 It is not fixed in time and space. 01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:52.544 If you are waiting for something to happen 01:03:52.716 --> 01:03:57.596 for some outward event or some state, some ascension, 01:03:57.733 --> 01:04:00.254 some healing or some energy, then 01:04:00.254 --> 01:04:03.589 your conditioned mind is still seeking. 01:04:03.776 --> 01:04:07.050 It is still mediating your experience 01:04:07.050 --> 01:04:08.499 of the now. 01:04:10.187 --> 01:04:12.265 in Buddhism they say samsara, 01:04:12.265 --> 01:04:15.847 the world of suffering and nirvana, 01:04:15.847 --> 01:04:21.065 the world of liberation are not two separate worlds. 01:04:21.655 --> 01:04:24.146 They are one and the same. 01:04:24.756 --> 01:04:27.414 We don't manipulate or change things 01:04:27.463 --> 01:04:30.510 to arrive at some mystical reality. 01:04:31.190 --> 01:04:36.227 When we awaken, the perfection of the world is revealed 01:04:36.227 --> 01:04:40.867 directly, as it is. 01:04:43.843 --> 01:04:49.425 Is it possible to simply be here and now in this moment, 01:04:49.425 --> 01:04:54.226 unmediated by that seeking mind? 01:04:54.376 --> 01:05:01.064 Is it possible to be okay with this moment as it is? 01:05:01.439 --> 01:05:10.537 To simply be.