We all come from a certain energy that is living and alive and everywhere, and that energy expresses itself through feelings, through thoughts, through actions, through sexuality. This universal energy is, in a way, indifferent to all forms, it is independent of all your forms – it is a potentiality. You all have individual potentialities but they’ve not yet been realized, and you can’t just say ‘Okay potentialities, express yourselves.’ You can’t just sit there and say “I’ve awoken forty-five percent of my potentiality so now I’m talking to the other fifty-five percent, ‘Please, tomorrow at midday, come and join me!’ ” But if you live an open life and allow yourself to be drawn into existence as it is for us on this planet, then something will guide you to situations, people, realities and events that will call up from within you your potentialities.
So for the Universal Energy to take some kind of form, to move into play, it needs you and me, otherwise it is anonymous, neutral; it is a presence, a possibility, a potential, it is an offering – but without the games that we and other creatures play, nothing is happening, nothing will happen. Now it is possible for all of us human beings to be with that energy and also taste what it is like when you are with this state of Universal Energy where nothing is happening, and that is a very, very beautiful space, that is ecstatic space – but that is not a human life. It is a joy, it is perfect, it is supreme, it is complete, it is absolute, it is everything that we desire – but it is not a life.
Well there are lots of stories and scenarios from different cultures and traditions about how the world started, and one is that God got really bored just sitting in that space that I’ve just described, all on his own, and decided, instead of putting on the televison, or playing Game Boy, or whatever our kids are now doing to create their own worlds, he created a situation so he could be entertained – so we are God’s entertainment. I’m not exactly saying that I agree with that! – but you get the idea. Unless there are things going on then there is no time, there is no anything; there is bliss if you are a part of it – and you can become part of it – and there is joy, there is a feeling when you are in that space that ‘I do not need anything more than this’ – but then you get hungry! (Laughter) Or something else disturbs you, and then the energy moves.
So it’s the two together – the Zero and the One, and when they come together then you get the X. The X is the one that can stand in you behind all possibilities; tasting the One and going back to it, and tasting the Zero and saying ‘Very nice, great space!’; it’s not losing yourself in the Oneness, but out of that situation comes an exodus project – the availability of Oneness and also the offer of life on earth with other people. Without that there is nothing, and in that nothing, of course, there is everything, because there is that potentiality, and we are constantly drawing on that potentiality – as it applies to you and me.
Do you all here not acknowledge your mothers? When your mother is ill do you not take care of her? When your mother gets old and needs help you give your mother help and on the whole you are happy to do that, as a payback, as an expression of gratitude for your mother having carried you in her womb for nine months and given birth to you, and given up much of her own life so you can have a life. There are a few people who take no notice of that, but probably no such person here. Mothers give everything, we cannot help but give back, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’ is also one of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, but we don’t need to be educated by them to do that. I was with my mother when she died, I was at her bedside, and took care of her, with my wife at the time, for some time before that. One doesn’t feel one is doing a duty, because you are honouring the person who gave you life. You’re sure of your body, you are sure of your genes; your nurture and upbringing and guidance, many things our mothers help to give us, but the whole story is not included in that arrangement, there is also that energy that is everywhere in space and is the source of everything – that is your mother too. So why not acknowledge that mother too and say ‘yes’ and open your arms to her? Then you will find that she is every bit as nourishing as the best mother on earth. She will give you everything that it is possible for a human being to have, and then your life is a life of celebration.
Finally a little story, there was an English actor; he was famous in his time, making a lot of movies in America playing the typical Englishman; his name was David Niven. He travelled around a lot and one day he was interviewed and they asked, ‘Do you like the Americans?’ – as he’d lived in America a long time – and he said ‘No, not particularly’ He’d also lived in France, ‘What about the French?’ the interviewer asked. ‘No, not really,’ he replied. 'Then the Italians?’ and again he said ‘No.’ ‘What about the Russians?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well you’re English, what about the English?’ And still he said ‘No, really not so much.’ ‘So who do you like?’ the interviewer asked, and he replied, ‘I like my friends.’
Beautiful. And when somebody asks me, ‘Michael, you love everybody, who do you like?’ I say, ‘I like my Wild Geese.’ Because with them, when they come and join in, I have a line of energy with them which is love, which is acceptance, which is warmth, which is embrace, which is flow, which is cosmic. And with all the people who are not in that field, that is missing and I feel this loss. So every seminar that I go to, when I open the door and see the people I say, ‘Ah these are my friends. These people are with me where I believe it is important to be and right to be and beautiful to be.
From The Summer Festival 2011
