Episode 75: Colet House (Episode 1)

Good morning and welcome everyone. Lovely to see so many of you here on this beautiful freezing cold morning.

if we were to distill the essential understanding. Of all the world's great religious and spiritual traditions over the last Three thousand years. It might sound something like this. Peace and happiness are the nature of our being. And we share our being. with everyone and everything. If we were to do it. Distill the uh methods or practices. Of all the great religious and spiritual traditions over the last 3,000 years, the methods or practices that lead to This understanding.

It might sound something like this. Simply be. In fact, simply being is the practice if we can call it a practice. for which all other practices are a preparation. Sooner or later. All the practices. or practices of meditation or prayer. Culminate. in simply being.

Having said that, simply being cannot really be said. To be a practice. It is not something we do. It is what we are. It's why Ramana Mahashi said that the purpose of all practices is to bring practice to an end. It's why Meister Eckhart Prayed to God. to rid him of God. In other words, he prayed. To God, to rid him. of the belief that God was anything other anything other than his own being.

Although we are always only Essentially simply being. We forget or overlook this. How do we forget or overlook this? by allowing ourselves to become entangled in the content of experience. By content of experience I mean thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities, relationships, and so on. when we allow ourselves to become entangled in or identified with the content of experience.

We overlook or forget our essential being and as a result lose touch with its innate peace and happiness. The purpose of all the methods and practices in all the traditions is one way or another. Sooner or later. to return us to our essential being. to bring about this. Remembrance or recognition of ourself. Our essential self. simply being. Yeah. Thank you.

So in order to bring about this uh self remembrance or recognition of our uh essential nature I'd like to suggest an experiment. Imagine that you have just been born. You have not yet opened your eyes. So you know nothing of the world. The room is quiet, there are no sounds. There are a few sensations present, but they are neither particularly pleasant nor unpleasant, so they do not draw your attention. You have no knowledge of either being a body or having a body. There are no thoughts.

And no memories. You have no idea that you have just been born. You have no sense of being either a girl or a boy or an infant or a person. You do not even know that you are a human being. And yet You have the experience of being. not of being this or that Not of being a an infant, a person, a body, You know nothing of such things. But you do have the experience of being. Without without anything added to it. simply the awareness of being. The awareness of being is our

primary experience. There is nothing strange or extraordinary about it. In fact, all subsequent experiences. will be strange and extraordinary. Compared to the This simplicity. the familiarity, the intimacy, of simply being. Even to say that simply being is intimate is not quite right. We are not a person who has the experience of being. We are essentially being. Simply being is what they refer to in the Zen tradition as our original face.

what we essentially are prior to the arising of experience. Amen.

Now fast forward a couple of weeks. You're two weeks old. Your eyes are open. You experience sights, sounds, tastes, textures, smells, sensations of the body, some pleasant, some unpleasant. And as a result of this the simple awareness of being. is obscured. By the awareness of experience. What we essentially are, simply being, becomes entangled in experience. We lose touch with ourselves as simply being. and become exclusively involved with the content of experience.

And as we lose touch with our essential being, we lose touch with its innate peace. Now, fast forward eighty years. You're on your desk bed. You have a couple of minutes to live. It's two o'clock in the morning, it's dark, there are no sounds. You have long since lost your memory. There are no thoughts. Your body is comfortable so there are no pleasant or unpleasant sensations to attract your attention. All there is. is the experience of simply being.

and the experience of simply being, or the awareness of being. Two minutes before we die. It's exactly the same experience. That's the awareness of being two minutes after we were born. Nothing that has happened in the intervening years, in the eighty intervening years, has changed. Hurt, harmed, modified, tarnished, our being in any way. On our deathbed our being is still in the same pristine. luminous, innocent, peaceful condition that it was in two minutes after our birth.

Nothing ever happened to being. That is, nothing ever happens to ourself. Mm. Mm-hmm. Thank you.

Yeah. Now now come to your current experience. in the foreground of experience. There are perceptions, that is the sound of the traffic or the sound of my voice. The sight of this room, if your eyes are open. Sensations of the body, the tingling of your hands or face or feet. emotions. If any feelings are present. Images, memories, thoughts. and in the background of experience. Simply being. The same being. That we were.

Two minutes after we were born, the same being that we will be two minutes before we die. the same being, in the same condition. Pristine. Luminous, silent, still. addressed. Amen. Thank you. Okay. We never cease being this being. And therefore we never become this being through effort or practice or discipline. We simply forget ourselves and remember ourselves. We overlook our being. We recognize our being. When I say We overlook our being and

We recognize our being. I don't mean to imply that we are one thing. and we overlook and recognize our being. We are essentially being or aware being. It is we, our being, that loses itself in the content of experience. And then returns to itself. This losing ourself in the content of experience is the forgetting or overlooking of ourself. This return. to our being. Being's return to itself. is the remembering. Or the recognizing of ourself, its recognition of itself.

It loses itself. It comes back to itself. without ever actually ceasing to be itself.

Amen. Amen. Prior to the arising of experience, our being is unqualified. And as such unlimited. unlimited or infinite being. And being infinite. Our being cannot really be said to be our being. In other words, being doesn't belong to us as a person. As a person, we derive our existence from being. But being doesn't derive its presence from us as a person. Our being is not our being. It is simply being. utterly innermost or intimate. but impersonal and infinite. God's being.

The only being there is. Perfect.

and therefore to abide in being as being. is not only the highest form of meditation. It is the ultimate prayer. In the Christian tradition it's referred to as the practice of the presence of God. Amen. Uh Amen. Amen. Amen.

For some time. It is natural to go back and forth. between the foreground of experience and the background of being. These may seem to begin with to be two mutually exclusive possibilities. But in time. we begin to remain as being. in the midst of experience, not just in its absence. This is what they refer to in the Orthodox tradition as praying without ceasing. Praying without ceasing does not mean repeating Words to oneself incessantly. It means to remain as being.

in the midst of experience, irrespective of its content. to remain as being in the midst of experience. is to remain with the presence of God. Under all circumstances, at all times. Amen. Thank you.

To begin with, we go back and forth between the awareness of experience and the awareness of being. But in time, experience begins to lose its capacity. to veil our being. and the awareness of being shines through. The awareness of experience. In the Christian tradition this is referred to as the transfiguration, the outshining of ex the outshining of experience with the light of being. with God's presence.

Amen. For those of you familiar with the Vedantic tradition, it's referred to as Sahaja Samadhi. with a multiplicity and where the multiplicity and diversity of things lose their concealing power. and shine in and as the one reality. infinite aware being. Yeah. This whole understanding is beautifully expressed by the poet Shelley, The one remains, the many change and pass. Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly.

Life. Like a dome of many coloured Like a dome of many coloured glass stains the white radiance of eternity. Until death doth trample it to fragments. Die if thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek.

Yeah. So let's let's pause there and begin our conversation. Please feel free t please feel free to ask about anything you like. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Perhaps there's nothing else to discuss after that. Okay, yes at the back. Okay, we'll come to you in a minute. These are working, yeah. So in my life I haven't found happiness. And I'd say I did this whole enlightenment thing or like come to these meetings or non duality and self inquiry. Um and I've also tried self help.

also seeking experiences in the world. Um Yeah, and I don't feel like well you you're quite adamant with your teachings. Uh this is um well apparently adamant that um happiness is our being and maybe it is, I don't know. Um I uh yeah, I just don't I'm just not happy. Um I say I'm suffering a lot. Okay. And yeah, I'm very depressed and I have a lot of mental health issues that I've had a lot of my life. Um

Yeah, and I feel like I I will suffer from these mental health issues for the rest of my life. Okay. So therefore I'll suffer or not be happy. Um and I guess there's small things which help which I found in within myself which help me with my life. And I I I'm pretty sure you can't help me, but I just came anyway today. Um I was quite resistant to coming today, but I just came anyway. You know, it's a fun day out.

So'cause it's a different experience, right? Um better than staying at home or something. Um And you're quite intr you you seem quite introspective. Um so I I guess um I'd like to hear your thoughts on that and I asked this question as someone who like say you met someone on the street. So let's say you we just started talking on the street rather than coming to this meeting.

What would you say to me? What's your thoughts? In the last couple of minutes, you used the word I about twenty times. Well tell us about I. Um it's hard to say anything about it, so well d you you're absolutely right it is, but do your best. Well, I'll say I is a human being. Sorry? I say when I say I, I refer to myself as a human being rather than I as an experience of being aware.

Thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities, relationships, all of that constitutes being a human being. But that's all what you experience. I I tried to show earlier on that We all experience being. before we have any knowledge of being a human being. In other words, the experience of being is more fundamental to us than the experience of being a human being. So tell us about the experience of being, which is your innermost experience. Tell us about that experience.

Well nothing really comes up to mind. Okay, that that's perfect. You're absolutely right. But just do your best. Y you're you're right, you're you're quite right. We shouldn't say anything about it. But as a concession to well, as a concession to your question And you're requiring a a verbal answer from me. Let let's try to describe it. Describe the qualities of simply being. Your being.

Yeah, I have the same thing coming up like you you're asking the same question. Like to me it doesn't mean anything. Well you say it doesn't mean anything, but you did use the word I twenty times. So I think the word I does Yeah, I was wasn't was when I said I I was not referring to being. I was f referring to me as a human being rather than the being. Well so we're talking about two different eyes or

No no there aren't two different eyes in the I'm referring to something different to I than to you. I guess that's the difference. No no we're both referring to the same thing. When you say And I say I, we're referring to the same thing, except for you, you're not seeing yourself clearly. We're both referring to the same being, the experience of being, but you have allowed your being to become entangled in your feelings. And therefore you say things like, I am depressed.

In which case you're mistaking yourself for a feeling. I want to know about the I am. before it is colored by depression. The pure eye, the experience of being. If you can be depressed one day. neither depression nor being in love can be inherent in you. They come and go. Your depression is not always with you. It cannot be what you are.

I'm not always depressed, but I always am. I'm not always in love, but I always am. I'm not always lonely, but I always am. I'm not always tired, but I always always twenty two or forty four or sixty-five years old, but I always am. What are you always? What is this being that you always are? When you were a five year old boy you used to say I. When you were ten years old you used to say I fifteen, twenty, twenty five. Always I

coloured or qualified temporarily by thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships. But what is that pure I? Tell us about it. Well, I'll say I is open. Perfect. What else? That's perfect. Open, yeah. That is without resistance, just open without resistance, yes. Mm. Yeah, I can't think of anything else or nothing comes up right now. Uh it's open, it's um Is it agitated?

Uh no. It's hard to say that'cause I'm I'd say well you said I'm getting tangled in experience. Uh it's not agitated, I guess. Perfect. What what's the common name for the absence of agitation? Well peace. Peace, yeah. Is there any sorrow in it? No. What's the common name for the absence of sorrow? That's it. You're being now. Not how it might become when you stop being depressed, but you're being right now. Just behind your depression.

The reason why you haven't found happiness yet is because you're still looking for it in the content of your experience. It's not there. You'll never find it there. It it it's hard for my mind or for me to understand that I'm looking for it in in experience, right? Because it's like I wake up and that's how life is. Just look back at your life. You'll see that your life has been one long search for happiness.

In the objective content of your experience objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. And the reason you're here today is precisely because that search for happiness. the objective content of experience has failed you. And you have some intuition that the happiness for which you long Mm may not reside in objective experience. That's what brought that's what's brought you here today.

Because you have this intuition. In fact, you have more than an intuition. You you understand. I can tell from our conversation that you already understand. that your being is free of agitation and sorrow. In other words, its nature is peace and happiness. But your mind is such a strict gatekeeper that it won't let you go there.

You keep arguing with me. In fact, you're not really arguing with me. You're arguing with yourself. Your mind is refusing to let you just take one step back from your feelings to your being. And that's all you have to do.

So uh my general response is you you might say my mind's saying it, okay. Maybe it is. My general response is I would say I. I'm open to experience, therefore I can I can suffer. It's open it's so open that it's possible to suffer. And therefore it'cause it you m uh you might say I I'll say it's open and therefore it's open to suffering rather than it's also open to peace. So it's also open to happiness. This is my genuine experience. So

That's why that's why I'm suffering, right? That's why suffering exists,'cause it's open. I is open to suffering. And I know it might seem like I'm arguing a lot, but I still have to live life. Like I'm not gonna stop seeking I'm not gonna like drop my all my needs, my psychological needs, all my physical needs. It's just not gonna go away. Like I I think you take for granted that you might have a brain which is Well you might take for granted like your current experience. So like say

a b like a brick was on your leg right now, like it's a lot like something really ha bad happened to you which caused a lot of suffering. It's like you can't just say, Oh, I am at peace or maybe you can, I'm not sure. You see all these all these arguments you're using Th they're they're all a a defence in you. Uh uh uh you're you're justifying to yourself. You're justifying to yourself the reason for not going back to your being. That's the one thing you're really afraid of.

Remember, Shelley, die if thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek. What do you seek? Happiness. what is necessary to find that happiness, to die, to die as a separate individual, a separate self, a finite being. And that's what you're afraid of doing. And you're justifying your fear with all sorts of intelligent arguments. And I don't want to argue with you. I just want to point out that. You are doing your suffering to yourself. Nobody's doing it to you.

You're doing it to yourself and you're justifying your this refusal to go back to your being with all sorts of very um articulate, intelligent arguments. carry on doing that, but you'll carry on being miserable. It's your choice. I I I don't want to persuade you of anything. I just want to point out over and over again in the clearest possible terms that if you want happiness, if you want to be free of your depression, you have to go to your being.

Don't spend the rest of your life looking for it in objective experience. It's just not Waste of a life. You're already here. You've already come to this understanding. Why not take advantage of it?

With a with a hat on yes, just here. Did you have a question? Could you keep your hand up so that we the person that's it, per we can see where you can. Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Hi, yes. Okay. Hi Rupert. Hi. Thank you for your teaching. Um my question is Would it be fair to say that you are an expression of this shining of essential being? And if so, how does that sort of manifest in your daily life? So how how how does that how does that sort of manifest itself in the middle of the year?

Lapsang Sushong. I heat heat the milk up in the microwave slightly because I like it to stay very hot when I take it back to bed and read Meister Eckhart in bed and I supp I suppose I mean in your more difficult moments. Uh do you not experience difficult moments? Yes. Yes th yes, there are challenging moments in life. And uh I deal with them as best I can. Almost all experiences. uh have lost their capacity to take me away.

I say almost all experiences because we we have to be humble. We we never know what experience might turn up that would temporarily take us away. I'm not immune to that. I'm not perfect. But let me say this, that what I've noticed over the years is that fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to take me away from myself. And when they do, it lasts for less and less time. Thank you.

Right. Hello Rupert. Hello. You might remember me. I remember your face. Chris. Remember me at uh Alternative? Oh yes, you had had the diagnosis the day before. I remember you very well. Yes. But it was dark in the church, so I didn't see it. Um starting the radio key. Monday. Monday. So for six weeks. So I wanted to tell you something, Chris, about that conversation. Thank you. Well did anyone hear at Alternatives a few weeks ago?

So many of you will remember the conversation I had with Chris. It was a very touching conversation. And um my son, Matthew, he's twenty three, that was the first meet meeting of mine he had ever attended. And I was a little nervous before the meeting as to how he might considerate. Anyway, we went out for dinner up together after the m meeting and and he said to me he said that was Really interesting. He said I un I didn't understand all of it but I I really

The thing that moved me most was the conversation you had with that man about his cancer diagnosis the day before. He said, That's what finally made me understand what you're doing. Thank you. It was a joint effort. eight different major life events hit me one after the other. It's been awful. It's been absolutely awful. Including parents with dementia, losing my job, uh house falling down.

abusive brother, um highly abusive brother and his um what his wife who are attacking me now that after knowing I've got cancer, they're still attacking me relentlessly. And I obviously that's pulling me away from this essence I'm I am,'cause it's relentless. I think it's the best word. And I don't understand where it's coming from. I don't want to understand it, but it's very hard to keep in this space.

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Care issues and joint issues, so I cannot walk away from him, which I would do at a moment's notice because he extremely abusive. So I wonder if you can give any kind of help apart from maybe a machine gun where I can shoot in. But sorry, that was not that was not peaceful. No. Sorry.

distilled all the great religious and spiritual traditions into a s single statement, it might Sounds like this. Peace and happiness are the nature of our being. That's the we focused on that. this morning, but then the second aspect and we share our being with everyone and everything. That that means that you share your being, your essential self, with your brother. Your brother's being is your being. Oh that's what you have to feel when you're relating with your brother.

Irrespective of how people behave, what they think, what they believe, what their political persuasion is. Irrespective of that, behind all of that, and behind behind our own thoughts. We are not a similar being, we're the same being. And that recognition So that's that's the challenge for you, just as the challenge of your cancer diet. was to explore the first part of the statement. Peace is the nature of your being, irrespective

you have the opportunity to explore the second part of this statement. You share your being with everyone, including and especially your abusive brother. So Don't allow it. I don't mean that you have to smile sweetly at your brother all the time. That may not be appropriate. But even when you're facing him in conversation, a difficult conversation about how to deal with your parents. Make sure that your conversation, your interaction with him is informed by your love

And by love I don't mean a warm, cozy feeling. You don't have to have a warm, cozy feeling towards him, but you do have to love him, which means you do have to feel that you share your being with him.

And I suspect that if you do that it will change something in the dynamic of the relationship. But even if it does But that's the... just as i if I can use religious language, God just as God has sent you very stringent your cancer diagnosis in order to recognise that peace is the nature of your being under all circumstances, you have now also been sent a very toxic relationship to give you the opportunity to feel

Thank you. Next time you see your brother, thank God for appearing to you in this form. Don't tell yourself a story about it being hard.

I wish you the best. Just briefly, I have suffered from depression a lot, so that that gentleman who's fighting this I can understand where he's coming from, but I don't have that fight anymore. But I don't know. Thank you. That's me. Thank you. Es ist Simon. Hi Rupert. Hi Simon. Something it's an understanding that's increasingly uh pervading I used to have this uh sort of um night terrors and um it was it was around the uh I didn't realize it at the time, but around the I think Greek story

condemned for all eternity to roll the rock up the mountain and then came down. And and I would really sort of viscerally experience this and it was hugely overwhelming. you know, shares your take, uh in in in the main. And um they were talking about the depth of consciousness and and they spoke

you know, th some of the existential terror that can be as well part of this understanding. And I think of something Bernardo said of um, you know, life doesn't care story of me and he he took spoke about this kind of existential uh dread coming up and taking over his life. Um and uh So what in the Upanishads and I'm lift this last list, I promise, it talks about walking the razor's edge of in the background still there lurking if you like. So you know we talk of

the the the peace and the happiness of being and and completely get that. But this This razor's edge, this existential dread that is also part of the path. Yes. Simon, the the razor's e remaining on the razor's edge is Remaining with being a little bit more than a little bit.

You don't fall off the edge, you don't Collapse inside. into you don't lose yourself in thoughts and feelings on the inside. That's one side of the razor's edge. fall into toxic relationships and circumstances on the outside. You stay on the razor's edge between the two. You remain with being. when when Doctor Rose first met the Shankarcharyam

He said that he saw him walking at a distance before he ever met him. He saw him walking at a distance. The image that came to him was like a a a man guarding a candle in the wind. That's a beautiful image of the razor's edge, remaining with being, guarding the candle, not letting the candle go out, not letting it be blown out by the by the winds of experience. Staying on the razor's edge is is like guarding the candle in the wind. Remaining as a being under all circumstances.

I used to have a a a dream as a as a boy as well, like you, a repetitive dream. For i it it stopped when I was about nine or ten, but for for several years before that I used to go up to the top of a very tall apartment. On the top floor of the apartment block, there were lots of cubicles, like a like a swimming pool cubicles all the way round. And in each cubicle there was a wolf. And I had to keep them all at bay all the time.

Well, how do you do that? So I had a piece of string with a stone on the end, and I would whirl it round my head, in the middle of this room. And as long as I kept whirling it, I'd keep all the wolves at bay at the same time. So that was my existential fear. the the walls and I kept it at bay by doing this one activity. And years later I realized what this one activ what is it what was it symbolic of this turning the The string with the stone on it round it's the practice of the presentation.

Remaining as being, under all circumstances, praying without ceasing. That's what kept the wolves at bay. That's what kept the existential fear at bay.

So would the rolling up the hill be equivalent to the other thing? Well the rolling up the hill is y is you is the um gr Greek's version of the existential More importantly, Simon, what's your prediction for this evening? Simon's an ex-BBC sports correspondent. My wife's got more of an opinion on it than me, but I'll say England just to keep her happy on penalties. I think I'd go along with you all. I'd go along with you, yeah. Yes, Timo.

Hi Robert. Hi Tim. Um I'm not really sure where to begin because my mind there's a lot of things that have been in my mind. Sorry, I didn't mean to put an end to your flow. I well, the essential question I think is Or how do I keep? Curling the stone.

How how do you keep what does that mean in practice? What whatever you're doing, Timo, you you feel or say Um, I'm having a conversation with Rupert, I'm attending a meeting, I'm having a shower, I'm eating breakfast, I'm walking down the street, I'm writing an essay, I'm meeting a friend. It's always So this this twirling the stone, staying on the razor's edge is just not allowing the I am because when we say I am, we we refer directly to being. That's what

Refers to its the subjective experience of being. It refers to the subjective awareness of being. That is being's experience of itself. If we were to say to if we were to ask being, what's the first thing you know about yourself? It would say I am. Or if we were to ask being what is your name, it would say I. If we were to ask it, what is the first thing you can say about yourself? It would say, I am. So when we say I am.

And we say this all the time. I'm having a conversation, I'm walking down the street, I'm eating breakfast, always the I am, but we neglect the I am. in favor of the activity or the feeling or the All that's necessary is to emphasize the I am, emphasize the fact of being. Are you not being now? ترجمة نانسي قنقر That's it. That's good. That's good. No, don't spoil it. Yeah. That was good.

Your question was, How do I twirl a stone? That was it. That's my answer. But it's the experiential answer, right? I don't want to tell you the answer. I want to take you to the answer in your own experience. That's it. But unlike the twirling of the stone, which is something you have to do all the time, so it requires effort. Remaining as being doesn't require effort. It's the effortless way. Because being is what you are. It's not what you do.

And that's why it's not incompatible with any other activity in life. You can remain as being and still engage in all your activities. It's not either thinking.

And I've had the just the the deepest Devotion to be that. Remain there, yet it feels like But your longing has to come to an end, Timo. And it feels like God has been testing the strength of my resolve and I feel like I've passed about thirty percent of the tests and The other seventy percent have made my life just miserable over the last few months. Timo, don't be infatuated with your longing. Sooner or later your longing has been.

It's true that this devotion to God is the highest state of the individual. But if we are devoted to God, we maintain ourselves as the devotee. So our devotion in the uh ultimately our devotion to God maintained ourself as the devotee as a separate self. That's why Meister Eckhart prayed to God to rid him of God, because he recognized that as long as he was devoted to God, he was standing as a devotee apart from God.

He was asserting his own being in addition to God's being, and that's blasphemy to assert that there is another being apart. So our devotion is beautiful. devoted. And this is the most difficult thing for the devotee to realize that sooner or later their devotion to God has to come to an end. They find that God's presence at the source not at its destiny. In other words, the separate self has to has to come to an end. It is maintained by devotion, the true devotion.

Recognize yourself as unlimited being. That's true devotion to God. That's why Raman Mahashi said the ultimate devotion is to abide as being. That's the ultimate devotion to God. Abide as being. I guess the seventy percent were meant to make the devotee so miserable that he would just come to an end through No, the devotee doesn't come to an end through misery. The devotee comes to an end through love and understanding.

And and there there's a part in my mind that so feels so stubborn. You keep going back to your misery, to your stubbornness, to your Don't be infatuated with your suffering. Don't keep going your your mind there's this gravitational pull in your mind. You keep going back to the misery, the 70%, the stubborn. Don't go there. You're reinforcing the separate self in yourself. Go back to your being, not to the stubbornness, not to the 70%, not to the misery. Go back to your being.

As long as you're involved with your stubbornness and your misery and your devotion and your seventy percent, it gives the separate self something to do. And that's why the separate self is so ten. interested in all these things. It keeps it keeps it going. Your stubbornness, your misery. It keeps the separate self going. Yeah, you perpetuate the separate self by keeping going back to these aspects of your experience. Go back to yourself. It feels like a death.

Which thou dost seek. Yes, it feels like a kind of death to the separate it is. That's why there's so much resistance. That's why we prefer to talk about our misery and our suffering. Because it maintains the separate self. This is one of those instances when there's Intuition in me, exactly what you just said, like don't don't go there, don't even mention it. Yet I mention it.

Anyway. It's just it's just an old habit. But you couldn't you couldn't resist. So okay, you've you've given it one last mention. Now drop.

Philip, yes. Hi Rupert. Can you hear me? Yes, I feel like I'm not sure. It's very nice. Very beautiful to have you here again. Lovely too. Say that a few weeks ago we had a talk here from a man called Billy Doyle. I don't know whether you know him Yes, he's a friend of mine. And it really made a huge impression on me because what really made the huge impression on me was the hi his the j and I've been looking at Jean Klein's talks on Very interested, or not interested.

He advocated h uh the thing is that being this is not a mental activity. To be in being this is not a mental activity at all. Yes. So when the mind tries to become being this, then it's just a waste of time. For me anyway.

And what he was saying was that when that when Being this is embodied. That's the most important thing of all. That we can know you have a beautiful there's a beautiful logic about everything you're saying. Но если... And what I think Jean Klein was very interested in doing was to embody this sense of beingness and the embodiment of beingness is when for me when the whole body is involved in that experience, not just the mind. Because the mind is very fickle as we say.

Betty Dor was talking about transcendence through embodiment and I wondered if you could Yeah. Because when the body is deeply, deeply relaxed Uh there's a sense of stillness. And I remember I think John Klein I actually read it last night, I think, she said that transformation of this of this personal self can only come through resting in stillness. Out of stillness, transformation can occur. But n transformation can't occur through the m through the mind trying to transform itself. It can't.

The first step is to recognize our essential nature of simply being, that's transcendence. In other words, our being transcends or is prior to and independent of the content of experience. first aspect. And then the second aspect is when we return to the content of experience. The fact of being or simply being shines through our experience and informs our experience. That's immature.

like Billy referred to it as transcendence through embodiment. That's that's immanence. So first we discover our being behind experience. first step and in order to do that we have to discriminate what is essential to us. And what is superfluous to us, thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships. That's the first step. We recognize our being which lies prior to That's not a mental recognition.

I my mind is now formulating the experience. But is that is that an embodied experience? No, it's it's n it's not it's neither in the body nor Let me let me g give you an example. Um imagine the actor, John Smith, who plays the part of King Leah. John Smith represents infinite being. King Leah represents limitation, a temporary limitation of that being, in other words, the the personal self. And he comes back.

This coming back to himself is what I call the recognition of being. Does d does John Smith's recognition, I am John Smith, does it take place in King Lear's body or in King Lear's mind? No. It's got nothing to do with King Lear. So no, the recognition of being is not an embodied experience. It's not an experience in the mind or the body. It's an experience in being. It's an experience in consciousness. It's not embodied.

However, when we then return to embodied experience, thinking, feeling, sensing, acting, perceiving, relating If we have recognized the essential nature of our being, then that recognition then informs our embodied experience. And so our embodied experience becomes saturated, progressively saturated, with the quality qualities that are inherent in being namely peace and joy.

A meditation process when that brings you into a deep, deep relaxation set and the body itself becomes totally still. Yes, so that is that is the after effect in the body. So as we return to being, the the the the tension in the body and the agitation in the mind relax as a response to side effect of our returning to our being. So yes, there is an effect, an effect in the mind and the body of this returning Yeah. I mean th memory is an activity of mind, so we don't

When we w when when the body becomes completely still, there's a diff there's no memory involved, there's no mind involved, there's nothing involved. There's just a sense of absolute stillness. And that that sense of absolute stillness. I remember Having that sense of absolute stillness when I was trapped under a wave and I was surfing and I thought I was going to die. That's one experience. And then I had that sense of this absolute stillness, of this presence.

No, it was no fear. And it was you were at peace. No, I was terrified because I thought I was gonna die, but

That behind that terror. Behind that terror, excuse me, sorry to interrupt. Behind that terror was the Exactly. It took you to your being. Yeah. Fear took you to your being. And and again I've had reason recently I've had quite a lot of lucid dreams when I approach the transition from life to death. There's always a s there's always a a sense, not just a sense of moving into darkness. There's that there's definitely a sense of moving into d a very, very deep darkness.

But behind the darkness there's a a slight sense of a of a light behind the darkness. And there's always a moment when I come to say to myself in my dream, Okay, I'm going to die now. And I can And it's not so much a sense of terror, but moving into an an unknown sense, an un an unseen reality, which I don't know my my normal mind doesn't know about at all. Unknown for the mind, yes. Yes. But known by your being. Yes, the you're right. The mind has no action.

King Lear does not have the experience of being John Smith. King Lear knows nothing of John Smith, although John Smith is his essential nature. John Smith is the actor who's playing King Smith. So King Lear doesn't know John Smith because he's a limitation of John Smith. John Smith in the form of King Lear. And yet John Smith is his real nature. So you're right, the mind has no access to being.

Because the mind imposes its own limitations on everything that it knows, and yet the essential nature of the mind is But infinite being is known by itself. It's not known by the mind. John Smith can only be known by John Smith. He can't be known by King Lear. Yes. So in other words, our our being is is uh sometimes said to be self loop. It is aware of itself. It's not known by the mind. Everything in the world is known through the mind.

Through thinking or perceiving. But there's one unique experience that doesn't take place through the mind, through the thinking-perceiving faculties, and that is the awareness of being, our knowledge. It's a unique experience, not really an experience, it's a non objective, a a colourless, empty, transparent experience.

We s there's no doubt about it that we are born as a kind of package where with our our nervous systems have a genetic inheritance from our ancestors, we carry structures. and psychological structures from our ancestors. And it seems that our nervous systems in this world we are at the moment, where it we are manifesting at the moment, is deeply self oriented. It has It has a belief in its own self, in its own...

And it's anchored there. It seems to be it's anchored in self orientation. And the feed. we are the self, the personal self, is just a collection of is not really but so How do we move how do we get this how we're so anchored in this self orientation, how do we transform that self orientation into Like we did this morning. A recognition. Like we did this morning. Or an another another way, it's even easier and quicker. You just take the thought I am. And you allow yourself to be drawn into that.

which the thought refers. That just takes you directly to being. It takes you out of this inherited structure of thinking and it just takes you straight back to your being. It's so simple. It's so easy. I wish it was that easy. Let's come. In the front here. We'll come back to you l uh afterwards in the front, George.

Hi Ripet. I thank you so much for your beautiful teachings and for everything you do. God has put this beautiful desire in me uh to be a software engineer. It just came out And an avalanche of miracles fell on me and brought me so close to this goal. And I'm just wondering what the hell is going on in my life? How is this even possible? How can anything be so beautiful? Yeah. The mind can can only stand in awe and disbelief on the threshold of being.

wondering how it is possible that being could be so beautiful, so joyful, so peaceful that yes, I I I I share your awe and and disbelief and I can't explain it. Thank you.

Would you say that saying the words I am is also an experience in itself? Absolutely. Th th the words I am uh take place in the mind. But they are unique. And they are unique in this sense that every other thought you have, let's say you have the thought about lunch, or the thought about the England game this evening, or the thought about the weather, or the thought about your children, or every other thought you have. It it it's it's an abstract symbol, but it refers to something objective.

But the thought I am is a unique thought. It the thought is an I am, is an object like all thoughts, but it refers to something unique, something that is not an object. In other words, it refers to being. So yes, you're right. Uh the words I am are are in the mind. But unlike all other thoughts, they refer to something that is prior to the mind and does not share the limitations of the mind. So y it's just a way of getting to that place then, using using those words.

Yes. Uh f Philip asked about the way to to get to recognise this being. It it what we did this morning was uh it it took an Suggesting that you take the thought I am and allow yourself to be drawn into its referent takes about ten seconds. It's just a a a a shortcut. So yes, the thought I am is in the mind. But it refers to something it is prior to and independent of and does not share the limitations of the mind.

When King Lear thinks of John Smith, has a thought John Smith, that thought takes place in his mind. But John Smith is not limited to his mind, it's prior to his mind. So it The thought I am is like a um a doorway in the back of the mind. through which the mind passes out of its limitations and stands revealed as infinite being. We've made that much more clear now, thanks. And this is why for for the the devotees and mystics amongst you, this is why I am is said to be God's name.

A name is a something in the mind. So the name I am, each of our names signifies who we are. So the name I am is a is is a uh it's the name is in the mind, but it signifies God's presence, infinite being, that lies prior to the mind. It's the divine name. Yeah.