Audio

When you find nobody-ness then all doubt disappears, all tension disappears, all goals disappear, and instead of being just you, you are everything else around you. So you woke up as you did after the last session, some of you, as I did too, went to the precipice and looked out at the space, at the sea, at the island over there, at the beautiful plants on the edge of the precipice there, and then what happened for me, which happened also in the session, is that I was what I was looking at. I mean not as a perceiver – ...

But I was saying recently that somehow we will never know really about ourselves because we can never get outside ourselves to know what we actually are as human beings. Whatever way we look we are only seeing what we can see, and we can’t see the whole picture because to see the whole picture you would have to be inhuman, you would have to be beyond humanity and yet able to communicate with humanity, and that’s not possible.

A very few people actually get to know their neighbour, and all attempts on this side of the fence to find a way to meet this universal neighbour are mostly futile because the way to meet that neighbour is not in the curriculum of ordinary life. In the first place, I think, to find it you have to trust or have a feeling that it’s there, and next you have to open to the possibility of connecting with it, and then you have to find a way to establish at least, if only momentarily, a connection with it, and the best way to make that connection become a partnership is through finding a way to learn the language that is spoken in that universal realm.

You are that person, but that person is not all you are, please appreciate that, you’re nobody too. You’re not only nobody, you’re also somebody, that’s my view, if not the view of all teachers. To me it’s important also to be the one you are on Earth with your families and your friends and your jobs and your interests. That’s all a beautiful part of life but that’s not all you are, you’re universal, you’re complete, you’re whole, you’re..

Fear is bound to be there, and the only way to get out of the fear is to feel that you have nothing to lose, and part of that fear that you all feel comes from a judgment about what is good and what is bad. What is good you don't fear, what is bad you do fear, but you're making that division between good and bad, and if you don't make that division then good and bad sort of disappear - or as a great teacher said, "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so."

So the programme which spiritual people have of letting the ego dissolve into a unified reality is a constant struggle, and having met a number of spiritual people all over the world in my life I can say it’s a real struggle, in a way it can never be successful because they don’t go together. Because the ego is a form and the universal energy has no form, it includes on some level all forms, or behind each form there’s a place that comes from that formless place, but moment by moment.

We recognize as spiritual people, that love doesn’t necessarily have to look like what what other people call love. When you’re fighting like mad with your partner, that can be love. When somebody has really hurt you, that can be love. The mind says no. The head on top of the head says no. Let’s see what happens out of that. Maybe it was the gift. Maybe I can’t see it right now, what a gift it was, but I can see maybe give it time and realize that what was painful, which I objected to, which I resisted, which I said no to was a great gift because I allowed it in and I see by allowing it in what has happened inside me. That it was a great gift. Some great gifts aren’t always recognized as such, as they’re felt to be the opposite. But then if you don’t put that in a box you can see later that Ah… that hit the nail right on the head.

What is the solution to the situation of living a life in a spider’s web and rushing from one part to another, waiting for something to happen, some new food, a new attraction, a new situation, new offer, new possibility, and dealing with it, rushing to the area that’s been touched and trying to solve, complete, or understand what’s going on?

One of the wonderful statements which come from Zen, of which I seem to have picked up very many, is, “Don’t add anything to life.” Now, that is a very strong and comprehensive statement because all the time almost everybody is trying to do that, to add something, to gain something, to get somewhere, to achieve something, to grow, to develop, to acquire, but when Zen says don’t add anything to life it doesn’t mean that you should be naked in whatever way you can interpret that English word.