The Power Of Now (Eckhart Tolle)
Worldwide acclaim for
THE POWER OF NOW
INDIA
“It delights me to discover that friends in India and abroad, touched deeply by The Power of Now, are each touched differently. In that sense this immensely wise and helpful book is diagnostic- the paragraphs which most affect you also tell you who you are. Eckhart Tolle is in close touch with something quite beyond his own flesh, blood and neural circuitry.”
-Fr. Lancy Pereira S.J., Author of The Enchanted Darkness and
former Principal (St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai)
“I can neatly divide my life into two phases – B.E.T. and A.E.T. Before Eckhart Tolle and After Eckhart Tolle. Being from a highly spiritual Aryasamaji family and brought up in a French Convent school, I poured over spiritual texts. listened to gurus and priests, spent weeks in spiritual camps, but it is in E.T. that I find the amazing ability to distill ancient spiritual truths into contemporary. usable and practical guidelines.”
-Rashmi Uday Singh, Author, Food and Health Columnist
“This book has an extraordinary ability to bring hope and light to those people who think that they have reached the end of their tether. I find myself repeatedly recommending it and the feedback is inevitably glowing; in over 13 years of experience as a Tarot Counselor no other book has come close to having such an impact on people who desperately need help.” -Rohit Arya, Author of The Money Tarot Book
“This is a most extraordinary book to emerge in modern times one that may well augur an evolutionary change in human consciousness. Read it, but not with your mind. Allow its mystic aroma to touch your innermost being.”
-Devdas Menon, Author of Stop Sleepwalking Through Life”
“Of all the spiritual texts I have read, this book has had the most powerful impact on me. If I have a spiritual guide, it is probably this book…. Read it. It just might change your life.”
-Surma Varughese, Managing Editor, Life Positive magazine
“In his teaching. Eckhart conveys a single profound message with timeless clarity of the ancient spiritual Masters – There is a way out of human suffering by ‘opening ourselves to the transforming experience of The Power of Now’.”
-Meena Kapur, Practicing Psychotherapist and producer of spiritual music albums
“In The Power of Now, author-sage Eckhart Tolle uses words to guide readers beyond words. Pointing to the portals of the eternal present, this practical mystic’s modern gospel offers transcendent truths that set us free.”
-Dan Millman, Author of Everyday Enlightenment and The Lairs of Spire
“This manuscript is like a collection of ‘Daily Bread in that the gleanings of knowledge that are made available by Eckhart are in a spiritually digestible form of question and answer. These conscious awareness triggers are a must read in this present age of truth seekers.”
-David L. Jones. Author of A Warrior in the Land of Disease
“I heartily recommend this profoundly inspiring book to all seekers today”
-Lama Surya Das, Author of Awakening the Buddha Within
“There is a power behind his words found only in the most celebrated of spiritual teachers. By living from the depths of this Greater Reality, Eckhart clears an energetic pathway for others to join him.” -Russell E. DiCarlo Author of Towards a New World View: Conversations at the Leading Edge
“The Power of Now was introduced to me by a customer. I read only one page and agreed that it rang true. It is a jewel of clarity and insight. The book has become a word-of-mouth bestseller here at East West.” -Norman Snitkin, Co-manager, East West Bookshop of Seattle
“I have no hesitation in recommending Eckhart Tolle’s wonderful book. Everyone I know who has picked up a copy has ended up taking it home. The Power of Now sells on its own merit and by word of mouth.” -Stephen Gawtry, Manager, Watkins Books Ltd., London
“The most important book in a spiritual life written in the last decade.”
-Thunderbird Bookshop, Carmel, California
“The Power of Now appeared at Banyen’s with almost no publicity, and immediately became a bestseller. This seems to be the ‘right book’ for many people at this point in time. The writing is clear as a bell; the words ring true. Truly an exceptional book that promises to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
-Tom Oakley, Banyen Books, Vancouver, British Columbia
“…a guide to spiritual awakening from a man who is emerging as one of this generation’s clearest, most inspiring teachers on the subject.” -Transitions Bookplace, Chicage
“Fresh, revealing, current, new inspiration. Out of the many spiritual books that cross my desk this one stands out from the flock…. If you are considering getting back in touch with your soul, this book is a great companion.”
-Joseph Roberts, Common Ground, Vancouver, British Columbia
“Tolle has succeeded on two fronts: synthesizing the teachings of masters such as Jesus and the Buddha into an easily accessible guide to achieving spiritual consciousness and making a strong case that the inability of humans to free themselves from dominance by the mind and live in the present is the root cause for misery in the world…. He makes enlightenment seem attainable and necessary for both individual peace and the health of the planet.” -ForeWord magazine
“With intense and compelling clarity, Tolle’s guidance holds the promise of leading us to our own best and highest place within, to resonate with and reflect the energy of true transformation.” -Spirit of Change magazine
“With Eckhart Tolle’s growing presence on bestseller shelves usually reserved for much lighter-weight fare, it will be interesting to see what time has in store for this unusual modern mystic.” -What is Enlightenment? magazine
“The book gave me comfort and inspired me no end and gave me insight after insight regarding my own personal journey. It was a revelation and a joy to read.”
-Albert Koopman, Business Executive
“This book offers us a wonderful gift, but we must have the courage to seize it. I encourage you to accept this gift. I believe our very survival on this planet is dependent on the inner journey that Eckhart Tolle is urging us to take.”
-Bill Carpenter, Businessman and Fellow Spiritual Seeker
“I found this book to be a wonderful perspective for people like me who wish to integrate the message delivered so eloquently by A Course in Miracles and Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Every time I return to a segment of the book, I am surprised to find a new deeper meaning than the previous read.”
-Jean-Pierre LeBlanc, CEO, SAJE (manufacturer and retail chain of natural health products)
“I have searched for meaning, well-being, health and life, but unfortunately I was searching outside myself. The Power of Now has shown me how to find life’s elusive treasures within.”
-John Kuchenthal, Organizational Development Consultans
“If I were allotted only one book, I would choose Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Why? Because this book emanates a spirit of love, not only through its words, but in the spaces between the words. No book has touched me, nor embraced me as this one has.”
-Patricia Gordon, Calgary, Alberta
THE POWER OF NOW
A GUIDE TO SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT
Eckhart Tolle
You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are! -Eckhart Tolle
CONTENTS
Foreword xili
Author’s Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction 1
The Origin of This Book 1
The Truth That Is Within You 3
CHAPTER ONE: You Are Not Your Mind 9
The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment 9
Freeing Yourself from Your Mind 14
Enlightenment: Rising above Thought 18
Emotion: The Body’s Reaction to Your Mind 20
CHAPTER TWO: Consciousness: The Way Out of Pain 27
Create No More Pain in the Present 27
Past Pain: Dissolving the Pain-Body 29
Ego Identification with the Pain-Body
The Origin of Fear 3534
The Ego’s Search for Wholeness 37
CHAPTER THREE: Moving Deeply into the Now39
Don’t Seek Your Self in the Mind 39
End the Delusion of Time 40
Nothing Exists Outside the Now 41
The Key to the Spiritual Dimension
Accessing the Power of the Now 4442
Letting Go of Psychological Time 46
The Insanity of Psychological Time 48
Negativity and Suffering Have Their Roots in Tane 49
Finding the Life Underneath Your Life Situation51
All Problems Are Illusions of the Mind 53
A Quantum Leap in the Evolution of Consciousness55
The Joy of Being 56
CHAPTER FOUR Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now 59
Loss of Now: The Core Delusion 59
Ordinary Unconsciousness and Deep Unconsciousness60
What Are They Seeking? 62
Dissolving Ordinary Unconsciousness 63
Freedom from Unhappiness 64
Wherever You Are, Be There Totally68
The Inner Purpose of Your Life’s Journey73
The Past Cannot Survive in Your Presence74
CHAPTER FIVE: The State of Presence77
It’s Not What You Think It Is 77
The Esoteric Meaning of “Waiting”78
Beauty Arises in the Stillness of Your Presence79
Realizing Pure Consciousness 81
Christ: The Reality of Your Divine Presence06
CHAPTER SIX: The Inner Body 89
Being Is Your Deepest Self 89
Look beyond the Words 90
Finding Your Invisible and Indestructible Reality91
Connecting with the Inner Body 93
Transformation through the Body 94
Sermon on the Body 96
Have Deep Roots Within 97
Before You Enter the Body, Forgive 99
Your Link with the Unmanifested100
Slowing Down the Aging Process 102
Strengthening the Immune System102
Let the Breath Take You into the Body104
Creative Use of Mind 105
The Art of Listening 105
CHAPTER SEVEN: Portals into the Unmanifested107
Going Deeply into the Body107
The Source of Chi 108
Dreamless Sleep 110
Other Portals110
Silence 112
Space 113
The True Nature of Space and Time 116
Conscious Death 118
CHAPTER EIGHT: Enlightened Relationships121
Enter the Now from Wherever You Are 121
Love/Hate Relationships 123
Addiction and the Search for Wholeness125
From Addictive to Enlightened Relationships128
Relationships as Spiritual Practice 130
Why Women Are Closer to Enlightenment136
Dissolving the Collective Female Pain-Body138
Give Up the Relationship with Yourself 143
CHAPTER NINE: Beyond Happiness and Unhappiness There Is Peace 147
The Higher Good beyond Good and Bad 147
The End of Your Life Drama 150
Impermanence and the Cycles of Life151
Using and Relinquishing Negativity156
The Nature of Compassion 161
Toward a Different Order of Reality164
CHAPTER TEN: The Meaning of Surrender171
Acceptance of the Now 171
From Mind Energy to Spiritual Energy175
Surrender in Personal Relationships177
Transforming Illness into Enlightenment 180
When Disaster Strikes 182
Transforming Suffering into Peace183
The Way of the Cross 186
The Power to Choose 188
FOREWORD
INDIAN EDITION
I had the good fortune of attending Eckhart’s retreat at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, just outside Vancouver, Canada, in September 2000 About 120 people from various parts of the globe converged there, after reading the book which you hold in your hands. The book impacted them so much, they traversed many miles across continents just to listen to and be in the presence of this great spiritual teacher.
If I were to sum up the essence of Eckhart’s teaching in one phrase, it would be ‘Present Moment Awareness’. This is the core of The Power of Now, and this is what you feel deep within yourself, in his presence. He shows us the way to focus on the present, instead of living in the past or worrying about the future state of consciousness, free of the burden of time. As Eckhart puts it: “Nothing ever happened in the past, it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future, it will happen in the Now.”
In this book Eckhart uses a simple question and answer format, to reveal to us our true nature. It makes the book simple to read and easy to comprehend. The book is best read perhaps a few pages a day, to enable one to reflect upon the words, and experience the truth of what has been read. Eckhart holds your hand like a guardian angel, and takes you step-by-step towards leading a life free of suffering and angst. It explains how we create our own pain and constantly make the mistake of identifying with our minds thinking that is who we are. And the true beauty lies in grasping a new meaning each time you read the answer to a particular question or life situation.
The magical quality of this book is that Eckhart uses words to take us to a place beyond words, where silence resides. And this silence, this inner stillness, we access the Now. In this Now, the Present Moment, problems do not exist, for the Now is all there is.
Indeed, silence has been recognized as the key to the spiritual dimension, perhaps with different words, by Masters of many traditions and in particular Indian philosophy reflection of the timeless value of this wisdom. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar while giving a talk on the Buddha, said: “Words cannot capture existence but silence can.” Ramesh S. Balsekar, a well-known contemporary Master of Advaita, has this to say about silence: “The whole point is that the potency of silence lies in the very interval between thoughts… Thus, all that is needed is for the perpetual movement of thought to be arrested, for us to be awakened.”
Eckhart is like a breath of fresh air, as he is not aligned to any particular teaching or guru. And what is truly remarkable is how he has touched so many lives with the first book he has written. Its message is universal in appeal. Since it was first published in Canada, The Power of Now has sold over two million copies, and has been translated into thirty languages. I have personally met many people who claim this book has transformed their lives, as well as their relationship with themselves and others. It is my sincere hope this book does the same for you.
What is truly fascinating is how blessed we are to receive this book at the turn of the millennium, as humanity enters a higher level of consciousness. There is an upsurge in the number of people on the spiritual path who seek to improve the quality of their lives, and who are striving to make the world a better place. We are all indeed spiritual, and this book helps us realize the same.
In Eckhart’s own words, “I cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within, you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten.”
On the last day of the retreat, as we were busy packing our bags to leave. Eckhart’s parting words were, “Remember, you’re not going anywhere. All things come and go. But you are not what happens. You are the silent space in which all things happen.” And that is what The Power of Now is about. It’s the truth spelt out the truth about life as it is Now! It’s more than just a book. It’s a companion for a lifetime.
In happiness and peace.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Six years after it was first published, The Power of Now continues to play its part in the urgent task of the transformation of human consciousness. Although I was privileged to give birth to it, I feel that the book has taken on a life and momentum of its own. It has reached several million readers worldwide, many of whom have written to me to tell of the life-changing effect it has had on them. Due to the extremely high volume of correspondence I receive, I am regretfully no longer able to send personal replies, but I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have written to me to share their experiences. I am moved and deeply touched by many of those accounts, and they leave no doubt in my mind that an unprecedented shift in consciousness is indeed happening on our planet.
Nobody could have predicted the rapid growth of the book when Namaste Publishing in Vancouver published the first edition of three thousand copies in 1997. During its first year of publication, the book found its readers almost exclusively through word of mouth. That was the time when I would personally deliver a few copies every week to some small bookstores in Vancouver, some-thing I found enormously satisfying, knowing that every book that I handed over had the potential of changing someone’s life. Friends helped by placing copies of the book in spiritual bookstores farther afield: Calgary, Seattle, California, London. Stephen Gawtry, the manager of Watkins, the world’s oldest metaphysical bookstore in London, England, wrote at the time. “I foresee great things for this book.” He was right: by the second year The Power of Now had developed into an “underground bestseller.” as one reviewer later called it. Then, after the book received a number of favorable reviews in various journals and magazines, its growth accelerated and finally became explosive when Oprah Winfrey, who had been deeply affected by the book, proceeded to tell the world about it. Five years after it was first published, it reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and it is now available in thirty languages. It has been very well received and become a bestseller even in India, a country considered by many to be the birthplace of humanity’s quest for spiritual enlightenment.
Most of the thousands of letters and emails that have been sent to me from all over the world are from ordinary men and women, but there are also letters from Buddhist monks and Christian nuns, from people in prison or facing a life-threatening illness or imminent death. Psychotherapists have written to say that they recommend the book to their patients or incorporate the teachings in their practice. Many of those letters and emails mention a lessening or even a complete disappearance of suffering and problem-making in people’s lives as a result of reading The Power of Now and putting the teachings into practice in everyday life. There is frequent mention of the amazing and beneficial effects of inner body awareness, the sense of freedom that comes from letting go of self-identification with one’s personal history and life-situation, and a newfound inner peace that arises as one learns to relinquish mental/emotional resistance to the “suchness” of the present moment. Many people have read the book more than once and they comment that the text loses none of its freshness upon subsequent readings, indeed that the book’s transformative power remains not only undiminished, but actually becomes intensified.
The more the dysfunction of the human mind plays itself out on the world stage, clearly visible to everyone in the daily television news reports, the greater the number of people who realize the urgent need for a radical change in human consciousness if humanity is not to destroy both itself and the planet. This need. as well as readiness in millions of people for the arising of a new consciousness, is, the context within which the “success” of The Power of Now must be seen and understood.
This does not mean, of course, that everyone responds favorably to the book. In many people, as well as in most of the political and economic structures and the greater part of the media, the old consciousness is still deeply entrenched. Anyone who is still totally identified with the voice in their head the stream voluntary and incessant thinking – will inevitably fail to see what The Power of Now is all about. Some enthusiastic readers gave a copy of the book to a friend or relative and were surprised and disappointed when the recipient found it quite meaningless and could not get beyond the first few pages. “Mumbo jumbo” was all that Time magazine could see in a book that countless people around the globe found life-changing. Furthermore, any teaching that puts the spotlight of attention on the workings of the ego will necessarily provoke egoic reaction, resistance, and attack.
However, despite a certain amount of misunderstanding and critical dissent, the response to the book around the globe has been overwhelmingly positive. I feel confident that in the years to come millions more will be drawn to it, and that The Power of Now will continue to make a vital contribution to the arising of a new consciousness and a more enlightened humanity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply thankful to Connie Kellough for her loving support and her vital part in transforming the manuscript into this book and bringing it out into the world. It is a joy to work with her.
I extend my gratitude to Corea Ladner and those wonderful people who have contributed to this book by giving me space, that most precious of gifts space to write and space to be. Thank you to Adrienne Bradley in Vancouver, to Margaret Miller in London and Angie Francesco in Glastonbury. England, Richard in Menlo Park and Rennie Frumkin in Sausalito, California.
I am also thankful to Shirley Spaxman and Howard Kellough for their early review of the manuscript and helpful feedback as well as to those individuals who were kind enough to review the manuscript at a later stage and provide additional input. Thank you to Rose Dendewich for word-processing the manuscript in her unique cheer-ful and professional manner.
Finally, I would like to express my love and gratitude to my mother and father, without whom this book would not have come into existence, to my spiritual teachers, and to the greatest guru of all: life.
THE POWER OF NOW
INTRODUCTION
THE ORIGIN OF THIS BOOK
I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now at if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else’s life.
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.
“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words “resist nothing.” as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought. I felt. I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately col lapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true nature as the ever-present I am consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. Later i also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant melody.
Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say: “I want what you have. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?” And I would say: “You have it already. You just can’t feel it because your mind is making too much noise.” That answer later grew into the book that you are holding in your hands.
Before I knew it, I had an external identity again. I had become a spiritual teacner.
THE TRUTH THAT IS WITHIN YOU
This book represents the essence of my work, as far as it can be conveyed in words, with individuals and small groups of spiritual seekers during the past ten years, in Europe and in North America. In deep love and appreciation, I would like to thank those exceptional people for their courage, their willingness to embrace inner change, their challenging questions, and their readiness to listen. This book would not have come into existence without them. They belong to what is as yet a small but fortunately growing minority of spiritual pioneers people who are reaching a point where they become capable of breaking out of inherited collective mind-patterns that have kept humans in bondage to suffering for eons.
I trust that this book will find its way to those who are ready for such radical inner transformation and so act as a catalyst for it. I also hope that it will reach many others who will find its content worthy of consideration, although they may not be ready to fully live or practice it. It is possible that at a later time, the seed that was sown when reading this book will merge with the seed of enlightenment that each human being carries within, and suddenly that seed will sprout and come alive within them.
The book in its present form originated, often spontaneously, in response to questions asked by individuals in seminars, meditation classes and private counseling sessions, and so I have kept the question-and-answer format. I learned and received as much in those classes and sessions as the questioners. Some of the questions and answers I wrote down almost verbatim. Others are generic, which is to say I combined certain types of questions that were frequently asked into one, and extracted the essence from different answers to form one generic answer. Sometimes, in the process of writing, an entirely new answer came that was more profound or insightful than anything I had ever uttered. Some additional questions were asked by the editor so as to pro-vide further clarification of certain points.
You will find that from the first to the last page, the dialogues continuously alternate between two different levels.
On one level. I draw your attention to what is false in you. I speak of the nature of human unconsciousness and dysfunction as well as its most common behavioral manifestations, from conflict in relationships to warfare between tribes or nations. Such knowledge is vital, for unless you learn to recognize the false as false as not you there can be no lasting transformation and you would always end up being drawn back into illusion and into some form of pain. On this level, I also show you how not to make that which is false in you into a self and into a personal problem, for that is how the false perpetuates itself.
On another level, I speak of a profound transformation of human consciousness not as a distant future possibility, but available now no matter who or where you are. You are shown how to free your self from enslavement to the mind, enter into this enlightened state of consciousness and sustain it in everyday life.
On this level of the book, the words are not always concerned with information, but often designed to draw you into this new consciousness as you read. Again and again, I endeavor to take you mu me into that timeless state of intense conscious presence in the Now, so as to give you a taste of enlightenment. Until you are able to experience what I speak of, you may find those passages somewhat repetitive. As soon as you do, however, I believe you will realize that they contain a great deal of spiritual power, and they may become for you the most rewarding parts of the book. Moreover, since every person carries the seed of enlightenment within, I often address myself to the knower in you who dwells behind the thinker, the deeper self that immediately recognizes spiritual truth, resonates with it, and gains strength from it.
The pause symbols after certain passages is a suggestion that you may want to stop reading for a moment, become still, and feel and experience the truth of what has just been said. There may be other places in the text where you will do this naturally and spontaneous.
As you begin reading the book, the meaning of certain words, such as “Being” or “presence,” may not be entirely clear to you at first. Just read on. Questions or objections may occasionally come into your mind as you read. They will probably be answered later in the book, or they may turn out to be irrelevant as you go more deeply into the teaching and into yourself.
Don’t read with the mind milk Watch out facing response” as you read and a sense of Deep cannot tell you any spiritual truth that deep within you don’t know already. All I can do is remind you of what you have forgotten knowledge, ancient and yet ever new, is then activated and released from within every cell of your body.
The mind always wants to categorize and compare, but this book will work better for you if you do not attempt to compare its terminology with that of other teachings, otherwise, you will probably become confused. I use words such as “mind,” “happiness,” an consciousness” in ways that do not necessarily correlate with other teachings. Don’t get attached to any words. They are only stepping stones, to be left behind as quickly as possible.
When I occasionally quote the words of Jesus or the Buddha From A Course in Miracles or from other teachings. I do so not in order to compare, but to draw your attention to the fact that in essence there is and always has been only one spiritual teaching, although it comes in many forms. Some of these forms, such as the ancient religions have become so overlaid with extraneous matter that their spiritual essence has become almost completely obscured by it. To a large extent, therefore, their deeper meaning is no longer recognized and their transformative power lost. When I quote from the ancient religions or other teachings, it is to reveal their deeper meaning and thereby restore their transformative power-particularly for those readers who are followers of these religions or teachings. I say to them there is no need to go elsewhere for the truth. Let me show you how to go more deeply into what you already have.
Mostly, however, I have endeavored to use terminology that is as neutral as possible in order to reach a wide range of people. This book can be seen as a restatement for our time of that one timeless spiritual teaching, the essence of all religions. It is not derived from external sources, but from the one true Source within, so it contains no theory or speculation. I speak from inner experience, and if at times I speak forcefully, it is to cut through heavy layers of mental resistance and to reach that place within you where you already know, just as I know, and where the truth is recognized when it is heard. There is then a feeling of exaltation and heightened aliveness, as something within you says: “Yes. I know this is true.”
YOU ARE NOT YOUR MINDTHE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO ENLIGHTENMENTEnlightenment what is that?A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have noth-ing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.” “Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbe lief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but some where even closer. inside yourself.”But I am not a beggar,” I can hear you say.Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking out side for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.
The wond nutcome up the idea of some supes plant and he goes to keep that way out in i nets with Being It is a state of co simply your natural state of Jes and indestructible, so rectedness with something innanurable and thing that paradoxically sexmally you and is much e nature beyond name and greater than you in finding your true nat tom. The ability to feel thus connected gres rise to the un ourself and from the world around you You then perorive yoursell, consciously or of unconsciously, as an isolated tog ment Frurates and onflict within and without becomes the norm love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “I end of suffering There is nothing superhuman in that is there? Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlight enment is not no suffering. But what’s left when there is no more suffering The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you’ll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain Despite this precaution, the majority of Buddhists still believe that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this lifetime theYou used the word Being. Can you explain what you mean by that?Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be under stood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in tha state of “feeling-realization” is enlightenment.10SWhen you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don’t you say it?The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse. I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly. By misuse I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great con viction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. This mas use gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as “My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false.” or Nietzsche’s famous statement “God is dead”The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of sorteone of something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or somethingNeither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to expe rience That toward which it points. Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?The word Bring explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept. It does not reduce the infi nite invisible to a finite entity. It is impossible to form a mental image of it. Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being. It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to I am this or I am that. So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of
What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality?Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become.com. pulsive. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but wedor’t realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it. so it is considered normal. This incessant mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and suffering. We will look at all that in more detail later.The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think therefore I am. He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error. to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing frag-mentation of the mind. Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being “at one” and therefore at peace. At one with life in its mani-fested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is youand a totally separate “other.” You then forget12
the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances and separate forins, you are one with all that is. By “forget.” I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. A belief may be com forting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become lib erahngThinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process contin ues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease.Note: The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accu-rately, it is not so much ally don’t use it at all you use your mind wrongly you usu This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is le delusion. The instrument has taken you over.I don’t quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accom plish things, and I do that all the time.Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn’t mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That’s why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs. You have no inter-est in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind when-ever you want to? Have you found the “off” button?You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can’t, except maybe for a moment or two.Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it. so you don’t even know that you are its slave. It’s almost as if you were
possessed without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity- the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter peace beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MINDWhat exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”?Then someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my nead,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous mono-logues or dialogues.You have probably come across “mad” people in the street inces. santly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much dif-ferent from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t nec-essarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagin-ing possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.”14
Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your con ditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and Judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally dis torted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a persoris own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head be there as the witnessing presence.When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize there is the voice, and here I am lis-tening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A cew dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence – your deeper self-behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses
power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the begin. ning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental streama gap of “no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short. a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you, This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.It is not a trancelike state. Not at all. There is no loss of conscious. ness here. The opposite is the case. If the price of peace were a lower-ing of your consciousness, and the price of stillness a lack of vitality and alertness, then they would not be worth having. In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibra tional frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, as it is some times called in the East, you realize the state of pure consciousness.In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in compari-son to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.” That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you. What I am trying to convey here may sound paradoxical or even contradictory, but there is no other way that I can express it
Instead of “watching the thinker, you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example. every time you walk up and down the stairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every step, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present. Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the sense perceptions associated with the activity the sound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the scent of the soap, and so on. Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few seconds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a silent but powerful sense of presence. There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your success in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.
ENLIGHTENMENT: RISING ABOVE THOUGHTIsn’t thinking essential in order to survive in this world?Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed. you lay it down. As it is, I would Say about 80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repet itive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this. you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a Galse sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.Why should we be addicted to thinking?Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if you stopped thinking. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your per sonal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by uncon-scious identification with the mind.To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunc-donal. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: “One day, when this, that, or the other hap-pens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.” Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it
sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind projected future. Observe your mind and you’ll see that this is how it works.The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.I don’t want to lose my ability to analyze and discriminate. I wouldn’t mind learning to think more clearly, in a more focused way, but I don’t want to lose my mind. The gift of thought is the most precious thing we have. Without it, we would just be another species of animal.The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency, otherwise, we will be destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster. I will talk about this in more detail later. Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without con sciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlight-ened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dia-logue, and there is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no conger connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes bar-ren, insane, destructive.The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists,
whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse of might. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative reakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nation-wide inquiry among America’s most eminent muthesmaticians, including Einstein, to find out their working meth was that thinking “plays only a subordinate part in the brief Oncisive phase of the creative act itself. So I would say that the sim. ole reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don’t know how to think but because they don’t know how to stop thinking!It wasn’t through the mind, through thinking, that the miracle that is life on earth or your body were created and are being sus tined There is clearly an intelligence at work that is far greater than e mind. How can a single human cell measuring 1/1,000 of an anch across contain instructions within its DNA that would fill 1.000 boilies of 600 pages each? The more we learn about the workings of the body, the more we realize just how vast is the intelligence at work within it and how little we know. When the mind reconnects with shat, it becomes a most wonderful tool. It then serves something greater than itself.EMOTION: THE BODY’S REACTION TO YOUR MINDWhat about emotions? I get caught up in my emotions more than I do in my mind.Mind, in the way I use the word, is not just thought. It includes your motions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive pat-s. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body. For example, an attack thought or a hostile sought will create a build-up of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight. The thought that you are
threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract. and this is the physical side of what we call fear. Research has shown that strong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and interpretations, which is to say the lespre sent you are as the watching consciousness, the stronger the emo tional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not. If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom. A great deal has been written about this in recent years, so we don’t need to go into it here. A strong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example, I have observed that peo-ple who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and with out expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger.If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions. We will explore this in more detail later.You say that an emotion is the mind’s reflection in the body. But some times there is a conflict between the two: the mind says “no” while the emotion says “yes,” or the other way around.
If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of wi you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time.Conflict between surface thoughts and unconscious mental processes is certainly common. You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it w always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you con become aware. To watch an emotion in this way is basically the same as listening to or watching a thought, which I described earlier. The only difference is that, while a thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and so is primarily felt in the body You can then allow the emotion to be there without being controlled by it. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observ. ing presence. If you practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of consciousness.So observing our emotions is as important as observing our thoughts?Yes. Make it a habit to ask yourself. What’s going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don’t analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into BeingAn emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds unless there is enough presence in you. If you are pulled into unconscious identification22
with the emotion through lack of presene, which is normal, the emotion temporarily becomes “you.” Often a vitious circle builds up between your thinking and the emotion: they feed each other. The thought pattern creates a magnified reflection of itself in the form of an emotion, and the vibrational frequency of the emotion keeps feed-ing the original thought pattern. By dwelling mentally on the situa thon, event, or person that is the perceived cause of the emotion, the thought feeds energy to the emotion, which in turn energizes the thought pattern, and so on.Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undif ferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Because of its undiffere nature, it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this emotion “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be best to use a term that is as undifferentiated as that basic emotion and simply call it “pain.” One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem.” Imagine a chief of police trying to find an arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. You will not be free of that parmi until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind, which is to say from ego. The mind is then toppled from its place of power and Being reveals itself as your true nature.Yes, I know what you are going to ask.I was going to ask: What about positive emotions such as love and joy?They are inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being. Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most23
people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered “speechless,” sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger Suddens, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.Usually such moments are short-lived, as the mind quickly resumes its noise-making activity that we call thinking. Love, joy, an peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dom nance. But they are not what I would call emotions. They lie beyond u emotions, on a much deeper level. So you need to become fully con scious of your emotions and be able to feel them before you can feel that which bes beyond them. Emotion literally means “disturbance.” The word comes from the Latin emovere, meaning “to disturb.”Love, joy, and peace are deep states of Being or rather three aspects of the state of inner connectedness with Being. As such, they have no opposite. This is because they arise from beyond the mind Famotions, on the other hand, being part of the dualistic mind, are subject to the law of opposites. This simply means that you cannot have good without bad. So in the unenlightened, mind-identified condition, what is sometimes wrongly called joy is the usually short lived pleasure side of the continuously alternating pain/pleasure cycle. Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you plea sure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the fuck of a switch. Many “love” relationships, after the initial euphoria has passed, actually oscillate between “love” and hate, attraction and attack.Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t sud denly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened – before you have freed yourself from your mind you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep24
inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind. Even within a “nor mal” addictive relationship, there can be moments when the pres ence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt. But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It may then seem that you had some thing very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasrft an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.The Buddha says that pain or suffering arises through desire or crav. ing and that to be free of pain we need to cut the bonds of desire.All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attach-ments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no “I” except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted. In that state, even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be “the awakened one,” which is what the word buddha means.Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being. At that point, they started to perceive them-selves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other.Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking.
THE POWER OF NOWI am talking here primarily of emotional pain, which is also the main cause of physical pain and physical disease. Resentment, hatred, self. pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even the slightest irritation, are all forms of pain. And every pleasure or emotional high contains within itself the seed of pain: its inseparable opposite, which will manifest in time.Anybody who has ever taken drugs to get “high” will know that the high eventually turns into a low, that the pleasure turns into some form of pain. Many people also know from their own experience how easily and quickly an intimate relationship can turn from a source of pleasure to a source of pain. Seen from a higher perspective, both the negative and the positive polarities are faces of the same coin, are both part of the underlying pain that is inseparable from the mind. identified egoic state of consciousness.There are two levels to your pain the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body. Ceasing to create pain in the present and dissolving past pain is what I want to talk about now. this
CONSCIOUSNESS: THE WAY OUT OF PAINCREATE NO MORE PAIN IN THE PRESENTNobody’s life is entirely free of pain and sorrow. Isn’t it a question of learning to live with them rather than trying to avoid them?The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.The pain that you create now is always some form of nonaccep tance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emo tional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.Imagine the Earth devoid of human life, inhabited only by plants and animals. Would it still have a past and a future? Could we still27
THE POWER OF NOWspeak of time in any meaningful way? The question ” What time is it?or “What’s the date today?” – if anybody were there to ask it would be quite meaningless. The oak tree or the eagle would be bemused by such a question, “What time?” they would ask. “Well, of course, its now. The time is now. What else is there?”Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world but there comes a point where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continu ously to cover up the present moment with past and future, and so, 3g the vitality and infinite creative potential of Being, which is insepara ble from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature becomes obscured by the mind. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating in the human mind. All individuals are suf fering under this burden, but they also keep adding to it every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it to a means of getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in actuality. The accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds a vast amount of residual pain from the past.If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least no more than is nec essary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop cre ating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that alreadis? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awfulIt is as it is Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhap-piness. By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be This will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary or possible.Accept then act. Whatever the present moment contains. accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.PAST PAIN: DISSOLVING THE PAIN-BODYAs long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emo-tional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. It merges with the pain from the past, which was already there, and becomes lodged in your mind and body. This, of course, includes the pain you suffered as a child, caused by the unconsciousness of the world into which you were born.This accumulated pain is a negative energy field that occupies your body and mind. If you look on it as an Invisible entity in its own right, you are getting quite close to the truth. It’s the emotional pain-
body. It has two modes of being: dormant and active. A pain-body mas be dormant go percent of the time, in a deeply unhappy person though, it may be active up to 100 percent of the time. Some people live almost entirely through their pain body, while others may expers ence it only in certain situations, such as intimate relationships, situations linked with past loss or abandonment, physical or emo tional hurt, and so on. Anything can trigger it, particularly if it res onates with a pain pattern from your past. When it is ready to awakes from its dormant stage, even a thought or an innocent remark made by someone close to you can activate it.Some pain-bodies are obnoxious but relatively harmless, for example like a child who won’t stop whining. Others are vicious and destructive monsters, true demons. Some are physically violent many more are emotionally violent. Some will attack people arouné you or close to you, while others may attack you, their host. Thoughts and feelings you have about your life then become deeply negative and self-destructive. Illnesses and accidents are often created in this way. Some pain-bodies drive their hosts to suicide.When you thought you knew a person and then you are suddenly cornfronted with this alien, nasty creature for the first time, you are in for quite a shock. However, it’s more important to observe it in your self than in someone else. Watch out for any sign of unhappiness in yourself, in whatever form it may be the awakening pain-body This can take the form of irritation, impatience, a somber mood, a desire to hurt, anger, rage, depression, a need to have some drama in your relationship, and so on. Catch it the moment it awakens from its dormant state.The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously iden tify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, “become you,” and live through you. It needs to get its “food” through you. It will feed on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy, anything that creates further pain in whatever form: anger, destructiveness hatred, grief, emotional drama, violence, and even illness. So the pain-body, when it has taken you over, will create a situation in your30
CONSCIOUSNESS THE WAY OUT OF PAINylife that reflects back its own energy frequency for it to feed on. Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indi-gestible.Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn’t really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going. for yourself and others. If youwere truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve, for to want more pain is insanity, and nobody is con-sciously insane.The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actu ally afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don’t face it, if you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pair-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence.Some spiritual teachings state that all pain is ultimately an illu-sion, and this is true. The question is: Is it true for you? A mere belief doesn’t make it true. Do you want to experience pain for the rest of your life and keep saying that it is an illusion? Does that free you from the pain? What we are concerned with here is how you can real-ize this truth that is, make it real in your own experience.So the pain-body doesn’t want you to observe it directly and see it for what it is. The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence You are now the witness or the watcher of the pain-body. This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own inner-most strength. You have accessed the power of Now.
What happens to the pain-baly when we become conscious enough to break our identification with it?Unconsciousness creates it consciousness transmutes it into itsell St. Paul expressed this universal principle beautifully: “Everything is shown up by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed t the light itself becomes light.” Just as you cannot fight the darkness you cannot fight the pain-body. Trying to do so would create inne conflict and thus further pain. Watching it is enough. Watching implies accepting it as part of what is at that moment.The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split of from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification. It has turned in on itself and become anti-life, like an animal trying to devour its own tail. Why do you think our civilization has become so life-destructive But even the life-destructive forces are still life-energy.When you start to disidentify and become the watcher, the pais body will continue to operate for a while and will try to trick you into identifying with it again. Although you are no longer energizing through your identification, it has a certain momentum, just like a spinning wheel that will keep turning for a while even when it is no longer being propelled. At this stage, it may also create physical aches and pains in different parts of the body, but they won’t last. Stay pre sent, stay conscious. Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space You need to be present enough to be able to watch the pain-body directly and feel its energy. It then cannot control your thinking. The moment your thinking is aligned with the energy field of the pain body, you are identified with it and again feeding it with your thoughts.For example, if anger is the predominant energy vibration of the pain-body and you think angry thoughts, dwelling on what someone diad so you car what you are going to do to him or her, then you have become unconscious, and the pain-body has become “you.” Wherr there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood
comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body’s attack. “Unconscious,” the way that 1 use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emis tional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watchesSustained conscious attention severs the link between the pain body and your thought processes and brings about the process of transmutation. It is as if the pain becomes fuel for the flame of your consciousness, which then burns more brightly as a result. This is the esoteric meaning of the ancient art of alchemy, the transmutation of base metal into gold, of suffering into consciousness. The split within is healed, and you become whole again. Your responsibility then is not to create further pain.off ous in wn ve?Let me summarize the process. Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.in to it 10 22 e. y e TFor many women, the pain-body awakens particularly at the time pre-ceding the menstrual flow. I will talk about this and the reason for it in more detail later. Right now, let me just say it you are able to stay alert and present at that time and watch whatever you feel within. rather than be taken over by it, it affords an opportunity for the most powerful spiritual practice, and a rapid transmutation of all past pain becomes possible.
EGO IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PAIN-BODYThe process that I have just described is profoundly powerful yersi ple. It could be taught to a child, and hopefully one day it will be one of the first things children learn in school. Once you have undercont the basic principle of being present as the watcher of what happy inside you and you “understand it by experiencing it you have at your disposal the most potent transformational tool.This is not to deny that you may encounter intense inner resis tance to disidentifying from your pain. This will be the case particu larly if you have lived closely identified with your emotional pain-bo for most of your life and the whole or a large part of your sense of sell is invested in it. What this means is that you have made an unhappy self out of your pain-body and believe that this mind-made fiction who you are. In that case, unconscious fear of losing your identity will create strong resistance to any disidentification. In other words, you would rather be in pain-be the pain-body than take a leap in the unknown and risk losing the familiar unhappy self.If this applies to you, observe the resistance within yourself Observe the attachment to your pain. Be very alert. Observe the pecs liar pleasure you derive from being unhappy. Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it. The resistance will cease if you make it con scious. You can then take your attention into the pain-body, stay pre sent as the witness, and so initiate its transmutation.Only you can do this. Nobody can do it for you. But if you are for tunate enough to find someone who is intensely conscious, if you can be with them and join them in the state of presence, that can be help ful and will accelerate things. In this way, your own light will quickly grow stronger. When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are sepa rated again, the first log will be burning with much greater intensity After all, it is the same fire. To be such a fire is one of the functions of a spiritual teacher. Some therapists may also be able to fulfill that function, provided that they have gone beyond the level of mind and34
can create and sustain a state of intense conscious presence while they are working with you.THE ORIGIN OF FEARYou mentioned fear as being part of our basic underlying emoti pain. How does fear arise, and why is there so much of it in people’s lives? And isn’t a certain amount of fear just healthy self-protection? If I didn’t have a fear of fire, I might put my hand in it and get burned.The reason why you don’t put your hand in the fire is not because of fear, it’s because you know that you’ll get burned. You don’t need fear to avoid unnecessary danger just a minimum of intelligence and common sense. For such practical matters, it is useful to apply the lessons learned in the past. Now if someone threatened you with fire or with physical violence, you might experience something like feat This is an instinctive shrinking back from danger, but not the psy chological condition of fear that we are talking about here. The psy chological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psycho-logical fear is always of something that might happen, not of some-thing that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are iden-tified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and sim-plicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection with the future. you cannot copeMoreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life, as I pointed out earlier. Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident. Now
remember that an emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind. Whe message is the body receiving continuously from the ego, the false mind-made self? Danger, I am under threat. And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? Fear, of course.Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss. fear of failure, fea (being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s feat of eath of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the cos ner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong-defending the mental position with which you have identified is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong. your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego can not afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.Once you have disidentified from your mind, whether you are right or wrong makes no difference to your sense of self at all, so the forcefully compulsive and deeply unconscious need to be right, which is a form of violence, will no longer be there. You can state clearly and firmly how you feel or what you think, but there will be no aggres siveness or defensiveness about it. Your sense of self is then derived from a deeper and truer place within yourself, not from the mind. Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictitious entity. By making this pattern conscious, by witnessing it, you disidentify from it. In the light of your consciousness, the uncon-scious pattern will then quickly dissolve. This is the end of all argu ments and power games, which are so corrosive to relationships Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.So anyone who is identified with their mind and, therefore, dis connected from their true power, their deeper self rooted in Being will have fear as their constant companion. The number of people36
who have gone beyond mind is as yet extremely small, so you can assume that virtually everyone you meet or know lives in a state of fear. Only the intensity of it varies. It fluctuates between anxiety and dread at one end of the scale and a vague unease and distant sense of threat at the other. Most people become conscious of it only when it takes on one of its more acute forms.THE EGO’S SEARCH FOR WHOLENESSAnother aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. Itconscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be feit indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case. people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it gets more difficult.As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and edu-cation, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalis-tic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.37
THE POWER OF NOWDo you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest hen you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” there is no death. and find that
MOVING DEEPLY INTO THE NOWDON’T SEEK YOUR SELF IN THE MINDI feel that there is still a great deal I need to learn about the works of my mind before I can get anywhere near full consciousness or spiri tual enlightenment.No, you don’t. The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction. there isn’t really much else that you need to learn or understand. Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psy-chologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity. You have already understood the basic mechanics of the unconscious state: identifica-tion with the mind, which creates a false self, the ego, as a substitute for your true self rooted in Being. You become as a “branch cut off from the vine,” as Jesus puts it.The ego’s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened and so lives in a state of fear and want. Once you know how the basic dys function operates, there is no need to explore all its countless mani-festations, no need to make it into a complex personal problem. The ego, of course, loves that. It is always seeking for something to attach itself to in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self, and it will readily attach itself to your problems. This is why, for so many people, a large part of their sense of self is intimately connected with their problems. Once this has happened, the last thing they want is to
become free of them that would mean loss of self. There can bea great deal of unconscious ego investment in pain and sufferingSo once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identific tion with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You becomepresent. When you are present, you can allow ne mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind self is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It the becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life.END THE DELUSION OF TIMEIt seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly?Here is the key End the delusion of time. Time and mind are insep arable. Remove time from the mind and it stops- unless you choose to use it.To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the com pulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.But without a sense of time, how would we function in this world? There would be no goals to strive toward anymore. I wouldn’t even know who I am, because my past makes me who I am today. I think time is something very precious, and we need to learn to use it wisely rather than waste it.Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time past and40
future the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it is the only thing. It’s all there is. The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be. Secondly, the Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being.SNOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THE NOWAren’t past and future just as real, sometimes even more real, than the present? After all, the past determines who we are, as well as how we perceive and behave in the present. And our future goals determine which actions we take in the present.You haven’t yet grasped the essence of what I am saying because you are trying to understand it mentally. The mind cannot understand this. Only you can. Please just listen.Have you ever experienced, done thought, or felt anything out-side the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not?Nothing ever happened in the past, it happened in the Now.Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past
THE POWERand future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is “borrowed” from the Now The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood bythe mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates BeingSTHE KEY TO THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONIn life-threatening emergency situations, the shift in consciousness from time to presence sometimes happens naturally. The personality that has a past and a future momentarily recedes and is replaced by an interise conscious presence, very still but very alert at the same ume. Whatever response is needed then arises out of that state of con sciousnessThe reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activ ties, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of think ing, free of the burden of the personality. Slipping away from the pre sent moment even for a second may mean death. Unfortunately, they come to depend on a particular activity to be in that state. But you dorft need to climb the north face of the Eiger. You can enter that state nowMOVING SEKPSince ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this. it seems to have remained a secret. It is certainly not taught in churches and temples. If you go to a church, you may heat readings from the Gospels such as Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” or “Nobody who puts his hands to the plow andlooks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Or you might hear the passage about the beautiful flowers that are not anxious about tomorrow but live with ease in the timeless Now and are provided for abundantly by God. The depth and radical nature of these teachings are not recognized. No one seems to realize that they are meant to be lived and so bring about a profound inner transformationSThe whole essence of Zen consists in walking along the razor’s edge of Now-to be so utterly, so completely present that no problem, no suffering, nothing that is notwho you are in your essence, can sur vive in you. In the Now, in the absence of time, all your problems dis solve. Suffering needs time, it cannot survive in the NowThe great Zen master Rinzai, in order to take his students anen non away from time, would often raise his finger and slowly ask “What, at this moment, is lacking? A powerful question that does not require an answer on the level of the mind. It is designed to take your attention deeply into the Now. A similar question in the Zen tra dition is this: “If not now, when?”S
THE POWERThe Now is also central to the teaching of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. Sufis have a saying “The Sufi is the son of time presem And Rumi, the great poet and teacher of Sufism, declares: “Past and future veil God from our sight burn up both of them with fire.”Meister Fickhart, the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, runomes it all up beautfully “Time is what keeps the light from reaching s There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”SACCESSING THE POWER OF THE NOWA moment ago, when you talked about the eternal present and the unreality of past and future, I found myself looking at that tree outside the window. I had looked at it a few times before, but this time it W different. The external perception had not changed much, except thai the colors seemed brighter and more vibrant but there was now added dimension to it. This is hard to explain. I don’t know how, but was aware of something invisible that I felt was the essence of that tree. its inner spirit, if you like. And somehow I was part of that. I realizz now that I hadn’t truly seen the tree before, just a flat and dead image of it. When I look at the tree now, some of that awareness is th present, but I can feel it slipping away. You see, the experience already receding into the past. Can something like this ever be mon than a fleeting glimpse?You were free of time for a moment. You moved into the Now and therefore perceived the tree without the screen of mind. The aware ness of Being became part of your perception. With the timeless dimension comes a different kind of knowing, one that does not “kill” the spirit that lives within every creature and every thing. A knowing that does not destroy the sacredness and mystery of life but contains44MOTING DEEPLT INTO THE HOMa deep love and reverence for all that is. A knowing of which the mind knows nothing The mind cannot know the tree. It can only know facts or information about the tree. My mind cannot knowyou, only labels, judg ments, facts, and opinions about you. Being alone knows directly There is a place for mind and mind knowledge. It is in the prac tical realm of day-to-day living. However. ver when it takes over all aspects of your life. including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, un checked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.You have had a glimpse of how the timeless can transform your perceptions. But an experience is not enough, no matter how beauti ful or profound. What is needed and what we are concerned with is a permanent shift in consciousnessSo break the old pattern of present-moment denial and present moment resistance. Make it your practice to withdraw anention from past and future whenever they are not needed. Step out of the time dimension as much as possible in everyday life. If you find it hard to enter the Now directly, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the Now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable antic ipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory. Through self-observation, morepresence comes into your life automatically. The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.Be present as the watcher of your mind of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don’t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought,45
remobon, observe the traction Dory make a personales em out of them. You will then feel something more powerf any of those things that you observe the still, observing itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watchesSIntense presence in needed when certain situation trigger в пасте with a strong emotional charge such as when your self-image w threatened challenge comes to your life that triggers feat things go wrong or an emotional complex from the past brought up in those Instances the tendency is for you to become unconscious wer you “become” it. You act The reaction or emotion takes you over mat. You justify, make wrong, attack, defend except that it is you ifs the reactive pattern, the mind in its habitual survival modeIdentification with the mind gives it more energy, observation of the mind withdrawe energy from it. Identification with the mind cre ates more time, observation of the mind opens up the dimension of the timeless. The energy that is withdrawn from the mind turns inte presence. Once you can feel what it means to be present, it becomes much easier to simply choose to step out of the time dimension whenever time it not needed for practical purposes and move more deeply into the Now. This does not impair your ability to use time-past or future when you need to refer to it for practical matters Not does it impair your ability to use your mind. In fact, it enhances it. When you do use your mind, it will be sharper, more focused.LETTING GO OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIMELearn to use ume in the practical aspects of your life we may call this “clock time but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with. In this46way there will be no build up of “psychological time which is dem ufication with the past and continuous computerve projection dhe futureClock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip includes learning from the past so that we dortt repeat the same mistakes over and over. Setting goals and working toward them. Predicting the future by means of patterns and laws, physical, math ematical and so on, learned from the past and taking appropriate action on the basis of our predictionsBut even here, within the sphere of practical living, where we can nas do without reference to past and future, the present marment remains the essential factor. Any lesson from the past becomes rele vant and is appliedhow. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now. The enlightened persons main focus of attention is always theNow, but they are still peripherally aware of time. In other words. thry continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time Be alert as you practice this so that you do not unwittingly trans form clock time into psychological time. For example, if you made a mistake in the past and learn from it now, you are using clock time On the other hand, if you dwell on it mentally, and self-criticism remorse, or guilt come up, then you are making the mistake into “me” and “mine”: you make it part of your sense of self, and it has become psychological time, which is always linked to a false sense of identity. Nonforgiveness necessarily implies a heavy burden of psy chological timeIf you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it. the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intric value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an
adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain to make it o no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor arth aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the NowSI can see the supreme importance of the Now, but I cannot quite along with you when you say that time is a complete illusion.When I say time is an illusion, my intention is not to make a phil sophical statement. I am just reminding you of a simple facta fao so obvious that you may find it hard 10 grasp and may even find meaningless but once fully realized, it can cut like a sword through all the mind-created layers of complexity and “problems. Let me sy it again the present moment is all you ever have. There is never a time when your life is not “this moment.” Is this not a fact)THE INSANITY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIMEYou will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental dis ease if you look at its collective manifestations. They occur, for exam ple, in the form of ideologies such as communism, national socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief systems, which operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies in the future and that therefore the end justifies the means. The end is an idea, a point in the mind projected future, when salvation in whatever form happiness, fulfillment, equality, liberation, and so on- will be attained. Not infrequently, the means of getting there are the enslave ment, torture, and murder of people in the present.For example, it is estimated that as many as so million people were murdered to further the cause of communism, to bring about abetter world in Russia, China, and other countries. This is a chil ing example of how belief in a future heaven creates a present hell Can there be any doubt that peychological time is a seus and dan gerous mental illness! How does this mind pattern operate in your life? Are youυ ότιtrying to get somewhere other than where you are doing just a means to an end? is fulfillment always just around the corner or confined to short-lived pleasures, such as sex food, drink drugs, or thrills and excitement? Are you always focused on becom ing, achieving, and attaining, or alternatively chasing some new thrill or pleasure? Do you believe that if you acquire more things you will become more fulfilled, good enough. or psychologically complete Are you waiting for a man or woman to give meaning to your life? In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of con sciousness, the power and infinite creative potential that lie co cealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time Your life then loses its vibrancy, its freshness, its sense of wondes The old patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, reaction, and desi are acted out in endless repeat performances, a script in your mindthat gives you an identity of sorts but distorts or covers up the realityof the Now The mind then creates an obsession with the future as anescape from the unsatisfactory present.NEGATIVITY AND SUFFERING HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN TIMEBut the belief that the future will be better than the present is not always an illusion. The present can be dreadful, and things can get better in the future, and often they do.Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Supal changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now. What you perceive as future is an intrinsic part of
optou will experience more of the same The past perpes Hell through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness Dus memewhat shapes the future which, of course can le esperanced ed as the NowYou may were milion but that kind of change istore tha deeply to cut the same condom in more lusurious surroundings Humans have learned spot the atensmad of killingen of twenty people with a woodes clat une person can now kill a million jucat by pushing a botten that real change!Do the quality of your consciousness at this momentu petermines the future then what is it that determines the quali PONT COLcus Your degree of presence. So the only place hure true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is NowSAll negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear are caused by too much future, and not enough pres ence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presenceMost people find it difficult to believe that a state of consciournes sotally free of all negativity is possible. And yet this is the liberated to which all spiritual teachings point. It is the promise of salva annot in an illusory future but right here and nowYou may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems. You believe that they are caused by spe cific situations in your life, and seen from a conventional viewpoint. This is mue. But until you have dealt with the basic problem-makingdefunction of the mind its attachment and future and Jenial of the Now-problems are actually hang miraculously move you today, but ad happines present, more conscious your with art of problems or causes of effering, like a shadow he wherever you go. Ultimately, there is only one problems the time bound mind itselfI cannot believe that I could ever reach a point where I am completely fres of my problems.You are right. You can neverreach that point because you are at thatpoint now There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the futu Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free nowFINDING THE LIFE UNDERNEATH YOUR LIFE SITUATIONI don’t see how I can be free now. As it happens, I am extremely unhappy with my life at the moment. This is a fact, and I would be deluding myself if I tried to convince myself that all is well when it definitely isn’t. To me the present moment is very unhappy it is not liberating at all. What keeps me going is the hope or possibility of some improvement in the future.You think that your attention is in the present moment when it’s actu ally taken up completely by time. You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the NowWhat you refer to as your “life” should more curately be called your “life situation.” It is psychological time: past and future. Certain things in the past didn’t go the way you wanted them to go. You are still resisting what happened in the past, and now you are resisting what is. Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused
the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of Now and therefore your unhappiness.true that my present life situation is the result of things that hap that is still my present situation, and being stockin is what maka mr unhappyForget about your life situation for a while and pay attention to yourWhat is the difference?Your life situation exists in timeYour life is nowYour life situation is mind-stuff.Your life is real.Find the narrow gate that leads to life. It is called the Now Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems-most life situations are but find out if you have any problem at this moment. Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but nowDo you have a problem now? When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your lifesituationUse your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just lookdon’t interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware of thesilent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows every. thing to be Listen to the sounds, dor’t judge them. Listen to the sence underneath the sounds. Touch something – anything-and ci and acknowledge its Being. Observe the rhythm of your breath ing feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and without. Allow the “isness” of all things. Move deeply into the Now.You are leaving behind the deadening world of mental abstraction,57of time. You are getting out of the insane meshut is draining you of life energy just as it is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth. You are awakening out of the dream of time into the presentSALL PROBLEMS ARE ILLUSIONS OF THE MING11 feelt as if a heavy burden has been lifted. A sense of lighanem. I fiel clear but my problems are still there waiting for me, aren’t They haven’t been solved. Am I not just temporarily evading themIf you found yourself in paradise, it wouldn’t be long before your mind would say “yes, but..” Ultimately, this is not about solving your problems. It’s about realizing that there are no problems. Only situations to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the “isness” of the present moment until they change of can be dealt with. Problems are mind made and need time to survivεThey cannot survive in the actuality of the Now Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.SI am not getting any answer because it is impossible to have a prob lem when your attention is fully in the Now. A situation that needs to be either dealt with or accepted yes. Why make it into a problem? Why make anything into a problem? Isn’t life challenging enough as it is? What do you need problems for? The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts. This is normal,53
and Pub that you are welling-mentally without there being a true now and that you are us nue intention or prof Daly making party sme of sell. Youwbed by your lifestation The you love you mase of life of Being On you are carrying on yo une burden of a hundredthing but you will or may have the future of focusing your attention on the one thing theWhen problem, you стазе раn Allian lechucemple decision no matter what happens. I will crevle panel will create no more problems. Although simple choices also very radical You won’t make that hack with suffering unless you have truly had unless you are truly fed up with enough And you won’t be able to go through with it unless you the power of the Now. If you creste no more pain for yourself, thes you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate the beautiful Earth your inner space and the collective human pry the with the negativity of problem-makingSIf you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you wi know that it wasn’t a problem. The mind didn’t have time to fel around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops you become totally present in the Now, and something inf. nitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people suddenly becoming capable of incredibly cours geous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don’t. Eitherway, it is not a problem. Some people get angry when they hear me say that problems are illusions. I am threatening to take away their sense of who they are They have invested much time in a false sense of self. For many54years have unconsciously define whole identity in terms of their problems we their suffering. Who would they be withA great deal of what people say, think, er du is actually movaind by feat, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no prob Seems in the Now there is no fear eitherShould a situation arise that you need to deal with now your action will be clear and incirive if it antes out of presens-mament awareness. It is also more likely to be effective It will not be a reac tion coming from the past conditioning of your mind but an introve response to the situation. In other instances when the time-b mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do noth ing-just stay centered in the NowA QUANTUM LEAP IN THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESSI have had glimpses of this state of freedom from mind and time that you describe, but past and future are so overwhelmingly strong that I cannot keep them out for longThe time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound trans formation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond the awakening of consciousness from the dream of matter. form, and separation. The ending of time. We are breaking mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons. Mind pat terns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale. I am not using the word evil. It is more helpful to call it unconsciousness of insanity.This breaking up of the old mode of consciousness or rather uncon sciousness is it something we have to do or will it happen anyway?
That’s a question of perspective. The doing and the happening is fact a single process, because you are one with the totality of cos sciousness, you cannot separate the two. But there is no absokie guarantee that humans will make it. The process isn’t inevitable automatic. Your cooperation is an essential part of it. However you ok at it, it is a quantum leap in the evolution of consciousness.ell as our only chance of survival as a race.THE JOY OF BEINGTo alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by pay chological time, you can use a simple criterion. Ask yourself: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn’t, then time a covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden a struggleIf there is no joy, ease of lightness in what you are doing in does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you arং doing. It may be sufficient to change the how. “How is always more important than “what” See if you can give much more atten tion to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it. Give your fullest atiention to whatever the moment presents This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love even the most sim ple actionSSe do not be concerned with the fruit of yout action just give atten son to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. Thusis a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, non attachment to the fruit fecute denon is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of “consecrated action.”When the compulsive striving away from the Now crases, the The moment your atten non turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace You no longer depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction-you don’t look to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results. Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from Being, not from your personal past. Therefore, the prycholog cal need to become anything other than who you are already is no longer there. In the world, on the level of your life situation, you may indeed become wealthy, knowledgeable, successful, free of this or chat, but in the deeper dimension of Being you are complete and whole now.In that state of wholeness, would we still be able or willing to pursue external goals?Of course, but you will not have illusory expectations that anything or anybody in the future will save you or make you happy. As far as your life situation is concerned, there may be things to be attained or acquired. That’s the world of form, of gain and loss. Yet on a deeper level you are already complete, and when you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do. Being free of psychologi cal time, you no longer pursue your goals with grim determination. driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure, which to the ego
is loss of self. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being when you are free of “becoming as a psychological need, neither you happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and there is freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it cas not be found in the world of form of gain a and loss, birth and death You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people shoul make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to you expectationsEverything is honored, but nothing matters Forms are born an die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You knothat “nothing real can be threatened.”) When this is your state of Being, how can you not succeed? Yo have succeeded already.MIND STRATEGIES FOR AVOIDING THE NOWLOSS OF NOW THE CORE DELUSIONEven if I completely accept that ultimately time is an illusion, what difference is that going to make in my life? I still have to live in a world that is completely dominated by time.Intellectual agreement is just another besef and worst make much difference to your life. To realize this truth, you need to live it. When every cell of your body is so present that it feels vibrant with life, and when you can feel that life every moment as the joy of Being, then it can be said that you are free of time.But I still have to pay the bills tomorrow, and I am still going to grow old and die just like everybody else. So how can I ever say that I am free of time?Tomorrow’s bills are not the problem. The dissolution of the physical body is not a problem. Loss of Now is the problem, or rather the core delusion that turns a mere situation, event, or emotion into a per sonal problem and into suffering. Loss of Now is loss of BeingTo be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of past for your identity and future for your fulfillment. It represents the most profound transformation of consciousness that you can imag ine. In some rare cases, this shift in consciousness happens dramat ically and radically, once and for all. When it does, it usually comes59
about through total surrender in the midst of intense suttering people, however, have to work at it When you have had your first few glimpses of the timelesconsoousness, you begin to move back and forth between the sions of time and presence First you become aware of your attention is truly in the Now. But to know that you are not pre is a great success that knowing presence even if initially lasts for a couple of seconds of clock time before it is lost again. The with increasing frequеnсу усни сhoose to have the focus of yout sciousness in the present moment rather than in the past or fu and whenever you realize that you had lost the Now, you are se stay in it not just for a couple of seconds, but for longer periods as pe ceived from the external perspective of clock time. So before you firmly established in the state of presence, which is to say before you are fully conscious, you shift back and forth for a while between cos scousness and unconsciousness, between the state of presence and the state of mind identification. You lose the Now, and you return to again and again. Eventually, presence becomes your predominas stateFor most people, presence is experienced either never at all only accidentally and briefly on rare occasions without being rec ognized for what it is. Most humans alternate not between cos sciousness and unconsciousness but only between different levels of unconsciousness.ORDINARY UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND DEEP UNCONSCIOUSNESSWhat do you mean by different levels of unconsciousness?As you probably know, in sleep you constantly move between the phases of dreamless sleep and the dream state. Similarly, in wakeful ness most people only shift between ordinary unconsciousness and deep unconsciousness. What I call ordinary unconsciousness means being identified with your thought processes and emotions, yournormai state. In that state you are run by the guk mind so you are unaware of Being. It is a state not of acte pass or unhappiest of an continuous low level of unesse, discontent borders and of background state. You may not realise thus ecause it ismich a part of “normal living, just as you are not aware of sc unumus low background noise, such as the hum of an air conditioner until it stops. When it suddenly does stop, there is of Many people use alcohal, drugs, sex, food, work, television, or even relief shopping as anesthetics in an uпелкаския attempt to remove the enjoyable if used in moderation becomes imbued with compulsive or addictive quality, and all that is ever achieved through uis extremely short-lived symptom reliefThe unease of ordinary unconsciousness turns into the pain of drep unconsciousness a state of more acute and more obvious suf fering or unhappiness when things go wrong” when the ego is threatened or there is a major challenge, threat, or loss, real or imag ined, in your life situation or conflict in a relationship. It is an inten sified version of ordinary unconsciousness, different from it not in kind but in degree.In ordinary unconsciousness, habitual resistance to or denial of what is creates the unease and discontent that most people accept as normal living. When this resistance becomes intensified through some challenge or threat to the ego, it brings up intense negativity such as anger, acute fear, aggression, depression, and so on. Deep unconsciousness often means that the pain-body has been triggered and that you have become identified with it. Physical violence would be impossible without deep unconsciousness. It can also occur nasily whenever and wherever a crowd of people os even an entier nation generates a negative collective energy field.The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life’s challenges when they come. Thugh those challenges, en already unconscious person tends to become more deeply uncen
scious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you so deeper sleep. The dream of ordinary unconsciousness then forma a nightmare.If you cannot be present even in normal circumstancerk when you are sitting alone in a room, walking in the woods sening to someone, then you certainly won’t be able to stay coписи when something goes wrong or you are faced with difficult of situations, with loss or the threat of loss You will be taken a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and p into deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your tests. Onl way in which you deal with them will show you and others where are at as far as your state of consciousness is concerned, not how l you can sit with your eyes closed or what visions you seeSo it is essential to bring more consciousness into your life ordinary situations when everything is going relatively smoothly this way, you grow in presence power. It generates an energy feld you and around you of a high vibrational frequency. No unconsciou ness, no negativity, no discord or violence can enter that field and vive, just as darkness cannot survive in the presence of light.When you learn to be the witness of your thoughts and emotions which is an essential part of being present, you may be surprise when you first become aware of the background “static” of ordinary unconsciousness and realize how rarely, if ever, you are truly at eau within yourself. On the level of your thinking, you will find a grea deal of resistance in the form of judgment, discontent, and menu projection away from the Now. On the emotional level, there will b an undercurrent of unease, tension, boredom, or nervousness. Bo are aspects of the mind in its habitual resistance mode.WHAT ARE THEY SEEKING?Carl Jung tells in one of his books of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that in his perception most62white people have tense faces, staring eyes and cruel demисалос Не said “They are always seeking something What are they seeking! The wines always want something Thrashery and restess We dont know what they want. We think they are madThe undercurrent of constant unas started long before the re of Western industrialization of course, but in Western clic tion which now covers almost the entire globe, including most of the East, manifests in an unprecedentedly acute form. It was already there at the time of Jesus, and was there Goo years before Chalat the time of Buddha, and long before that. Why are you always aft jous? Jesus asked his disciples “Can anxious thought add a single day 10 your life And the Buddha taught that the soot of suffering is 10 be found in our constant wanting and cravingResistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically connected to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of out dehumanized industrial civilization Freud, by the way also recog nized the existence of this undercurrent of unease and wrote about in his book Civilization and lis Discantenis, but he did not recognize the true root of the incase and failed to realize that freedom from t is possible. This collective dysfunction has created a very unhappy and extraordinarily violent civilization that has become a threat not only to itself but also to all life on the planet.DISSOLVING ORDINARY UNCONSCIOUSNESSSo how can we be free of this affliction?Make it conscious. Observe the many ways in which unease, discon tent, and tension arise within you through unnecessary judgment, resistance to what is, and denial of the Now. Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of consciousness on it. Once you know how to dissolve ordinary unconsciousness, the light of your presence will shine brightly, and it will be much easier to deal with deep unconsciousness whenever you feel its gravitational pulli.63
However, ondanary unconsciousness may not be eat todetect -because it is so normal. Make it a habit to monitor your mental-emononal stateself-observation. “Am I at ease at this moment is a good queson ask yourself frequently Or you can ask “What’s going on inside at this moment Be at least as interested in what goes on inng as what happens outside. If you get the inside right the outside fall into place. Primary reality is within secondary reality without don’t answer these questions immediately Direct you t inward. Have a look inside yourself. What kind of thoughts is The mind producing? What do you feel? Direct your attention into body is there any tension? Once you detect that there is a low lev uncase, the background static, see in what way you are avoiding resisting or denying life by denying the Now. There are many way in which proge unconsciously resist the present moment. I will ge you a few examples. With practice, your power of self-observation, monitoring your inner state, will become sharpened.FREEDOM FROM UNHAPPINESSDo you resent doing what you are doing? It may be your job, or you may have agreed to do something and are doing it, but part of you resents and resists it. Are you carrying unspoken resentment towand a person close to you? Do you realize that the energy you tha emanate is so harmful in its effects that you are in fact contaminating yourself as well as those around you? Have a good look inside. Is there even the slightest trace of resentment, unwillingness? If there is observe it on both the mental and the emotional levels. What thoughts is your mind creating around this situation? Then look a the emotion, which is the body’s reaction to those thoughts. Feel the emotion. Does it feel pleasant or unpleasant? Is it an energy that youwould actually choose to have inside you? Do you have a choice? Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you’s dishonest,thoughts and emotions about this simuatiem are pustified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are rexisting what is ing the pific betentan ness, conflict between the polluting not only your own inner being and t also the collective human perche of which you are part. The pollution of the plan is only an outward reflection o inner prychise pollution millions of uncmscious individuals ing responsibility for their inner space athaEither stop doing what you are doing speak to the person con cerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpene whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognizing futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of deali with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it. block ing real change. Anything that is done with negative energ become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, m unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagion Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. The the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others.unless they are immune that is, highly conscious Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space, nobody else is, pust as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without if humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.How can we drop negativity, as you suggest?By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of los at you are hold ing in your hand? How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.Deep unconsciousness, such as the pain-body, or other deep pain.
such as the loss of a loved one usually needs to be transmuted the acceptance combined with the light of your presence your anention. Many patterns in ordinary unconsciousness, on the hand can simply be dropped once you know that you don’t want and dont need them anytore, once you realize that you have a bundle of conditioned reflexes. All this that you are able to access the power of Now Without it, you have choiceIf you call some emotions negative, aren’t you creating a mental pla sty of good and had, as you explained earlier?No. The polarity was created at an earlier stage when your te judged the present moment as bad this judgment then created the negative emotion.But if you call some emotions negative, aren’t you really saying the they shouldn’t be there, that it’s not okay to have those emotions? M understanding is that we should give ourselves permission to whatever feelings come up, rather than judge them as bad or say tha we shouldn’t have them. It’s okay to feel resentful; it’s okay to be angry irritated, moody, or whatever otherwise we get into repression, innb conflict, or denial. Everything is okay as it isOf course. Once a mind pattern, an emotion or a reaction is there accept it. You were not conscious enough to have a choice in the mas ter. That’s not a judgment, just a fact. If you had a choice, or realized that you do have a choice, would you choose suffering or joy, ease or uninase, peace or conflict? Would you choose a thought or feeling th cuts you off from your natural state of well-being, the joy of life within? Any such feeling I call negative, which simply means bad.Not in the sense that “You shouldn’t have done that but just plain fac tual bad, like feeling sick in the stomach.How is it possible that humans killed in excess of 100 millionWINGJellow humans in the wentieth century Humans inticong pain of such magnitude one and is beyond anything can Imagine And thatsagiin account de mesalotel and physical violence, Usurpan and our inflict on each otherthersee basisare in touch with the al state, the joy of Ide within Of course not only people who are in a deeply negate state, who feel very ball indeed would create such a reality as a reflection of how they feel. Now they are engaged in destroying nature and the planet that sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Humans are a dangerously insane and very sick species That’s not a judgment. It’s a fact, It is also a fact that the sanity ther underneath the madness. Healing and redemption are availablenowComing back specifically to what you said it is certaine t that, when you accept your resentment, moodiness. ess, anger and so you are no longer forced to act them out blindly, and you likely to project them onto others. But I wonder if you are not dec ing yourself. When you have been practicing acceptance for a whil as you have, there comes a point when you need to go on to the nee stage, where those negative emotions are not created anymore. If you don’t, your “acceptance” just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen its sense of separation from other people, your surroundings, your here and now. As you know, separation is the basis for the ego’s sense of identity. True acceptance would transmute those feelings at once. And if you really knew deeply that everything is “okay,” as you put a and which of course is true, then would you hose negative feel ings in the first place? Without judgment, withos resistance to what is, they would not arise. You have an idea in your mind that “every thing is okay,” but deep down you don’t really believe it, and so the old mental-emotional patterns of resistance are still in place. That’s what makes you feel bad.67
POWER OF NOWThat’s okay, teeAre you defending your right to be unconscious, your right to su Don’t worry nobody is going to take that away from you. Once realbe that a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry song that food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sickWHEREVER YOU ARE, BE THERE TOTALLYCan you give some more examples of ordinary unconsciousness?See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech thought about a situation you find yourself in, what other people nr say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably cames unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yoursel into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by raking action or by speaking out if necessary or pos sible, leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situ ation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No Segativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.If you take any action leaving or changing your situation -drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of neg ativity.MING STRATEGIES OAny action is often better than no con especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for tong of it is miнтажи. at least you learn something in which case it’s no longer a mistake If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your atention inte it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the роже of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your her and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is n weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.Or is there something that you “should be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativityAre you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that every one else is doing it doesn’t make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you move, work, run -do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer splitting yourself
two. Just moving, running working and posit drop the whole thing and it on a park bench. But when you dow your mind. It may say “You should be working Your time. Observe the mind. Smile at itDoes the past take up a great deal of your attention o ently talk and think about it either positively orgatively The Chat things that you have achieved your adventures of experience your victim story and the dreadful things that were done to you aybe what you did to someone else? Are your thought prосеев ing guilt, pride resentment, anger, regret, or sell-pity! Thes you only reinforcing a false sense of self but also helping to accelera your body’s aging process by creating an accumulation of past in psyche. Verify this for yourself by observing those around you w have a strong tendency to hold on to the past.Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.SAre you worried? Do you have many “what if thoughts? You are ides. tified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom You can stop this health and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the present moment. Become aware of your breath ing. Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy field. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life -as opposed to imaginary mind projections is this moment. Askyourself what “problem” you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment? You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future-out do you have to The antheon urer will be there when you need to beli theamentem that you reduce the present moment to 11 you develop such a mind pattern, no mah no matter what you actorve te pre the present will never be good rough the fewi seem benet. A perfect recipe for permanent faction and ton fulfillment, don’t you agree? “One day 111 make at Is your goal taking stomach of your wanting toAre you a habitual water? How much of your life do you waiting? What I call “small-scale waiting is waiting in line at the pos office in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for somente to ar to finish work, and so on. “Large-scale waiting is watting for the nen vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be impor cant, to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future, you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got. and you want what you haven’t got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now where you don’t want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you love the presentThere is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. You can improve your life situation, but you cannot tengerve your life Life is primary. Life is your deepest inrer Being, It is already wake.com plese, perfect. Your life situation consists of your circumstances and your experiences. There is nothing wrong with setting goals and striving to achieve things. The mistake lies in using it as a substitute for the feeling of life. for Being. The only point of access for that is the Host. You are then like an architect who pays no attention to the foundation of a building but spends a lot of time working on the supentructure. For example, many people are waiting for prosperity. It cannon71
come in the future. When you honor, acknowledge, and fully in – where you are, who you are, what you your present reality-doing right now when you fully accept what you have got you grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Bang Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is th sperity. It cannot come in the future. Then, in time, that prospesmanifests for you in various ways.If you are dissatisfied with what you have got, or even frustrate angry about your present lack, that may motivate you to becomach, but even if you do make millions, you will continue to expers ace the inner condition of lack, and deep down you will continue to feel unfulfilled. You may have many exciting experiences that money can buy but they will come and go and always leave you with an empty feeling and the need for further physical or psychological grat ification. You won’t abide in Being and so feel the fullness of life nos that alone is true prosperity.So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slip ping into waiting…snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Jum be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says, “Sorry to have kept you waiting.” you can reply, “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself in joy in my self.”These are just a few of the habitual mind strategies for denying the present moment that are part of ordinary unconsciousness. They are easy to overlook because they are so much a part of normal living the background static of perpetual discontent. But the more you prac tice monitoring your inner mental-emotional state, the easier it will be to know when you have been trapped in past or future, which is to say unconscious, and to awaken out of the dream of time into the pre sent. But beware: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identifica tion, lives on time. It knows that the present moment is its own death and so feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.
THE INNER PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE’S JOURNEYI can see the truth of what you are song but I still think that must have purpose on our life’s journey there just drift and purpose means future doesn’t it? How do we reconcile that with listing in the present?When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving but don’t forget the only thing that is ultimately real about your your ney is the step that you are taking at this momesit. That’s all there ever isan inner purpose The outer purpose is to arrive at your goal of destination to accom plish what you set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course implies future. But if your destination, or the steps you are going to become more important to you than the step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’s inner purpose, which has nothing to do with where you are going or what you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with future but everything to do with the quality of your consciousness at this moment. The outer purpose belongs to the honzontal dimension of space and time the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the vertical dimension of the timeless Now. Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one the step you are tak ing right now. As you become more deeply aware of this one step. you realize that it already contains within itself all the other steps as well as the destination. This one step then becomes transformed into an expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality. It will have taken you into Being, and the light of Being will shine through it. This is both the purpose and the
Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we suc ceed or fail in the world?It will matter to you as long as you haven’t realized your inner pur pose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may con tinue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fa completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succee in your inner purpose. Or the other way around, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to “gain the world and lose your soul,” as Jesus puts it. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to “fail” sooner or later, simply because it is sub ject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose.THE PAST CANNOT SURVIVE IN YOUR PRESENCEYou mentioned that thinking or talking about the past unnecessarily is one of the ways in which we avoid the present. But apart from the pass that we remember and perhaps identify with, isn’t there another level of past within us that is much more deep-seated? I am talking about the unconscious past that conditions our lives, especially through early childhood experiences, perhaps even past-life experiences. And then there is our cultural conditioning, which has to do with where we live geographically and the historical time period in which we live. All thest things determine how we see the world, how we react, what we think what kind of relationships we have, how we live our lives. How could74
we ever become conscious of all that or get rid of it? How long would that take? And even if we did, what would there be left?What is left when illusion ends?There is no need to investigate the unconscious past in you except as it manifests at this moment as a thought, an emotion, a desire, a reaction, or an external event that happens to you. Whatever you need to know about the unconscious past in you, the challenges of the present will bring it out. If you delve into the past, it will become a bottomless pit: There is always more. You may think that you need more time to understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future will eventually free you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present can free you of the past. More time cannot free you of time. Access the power of Now. That is the key.What is the power of Now?None other than the power of your presence, your consciousness lib-erated from thought forms.So deal with the past on the level of the present. The more atten tion you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a “self” out of it. Don’t misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emo-tions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There’s the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not criti cally or analytically but nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.Isn’t it helpful to understand the past and so understand why we do certain things, react in certain ways, or why we unconsciously create our particular kind of drama, patterns in relationships, and so on?
As you become more conscious of your present reality, you may sud denly get certain insights as to why your conditioning functions in those particular ways; for example, why your relationships follow cer. tain patterns, and you may remember things that happened in the past or see them more clearly. That is fine and can be help il, but it is not essential. What is essential is your conscious presence. That dissolves the past. That is the transformative agent. So don’t seek to understand the past, but be as present as you can. The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.TIT’S
THE STATE OF PRESENCEIT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT ISYou keep talking about the state of presence as the key. I think I under-stand it intellectually, but I don’t know if I have ever truly experienced it. wonder is it what I think it is, or is it something entirely different?It’s not what you think it is! You can’t think about presence, and the mind can’t understand it. Understanding presence is being present.Try a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “I wonder what my next thought is going to be.” Then become very alertand wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. What thought is going to come out of the mouse hole? Try it now.Well?I had to wait for quite a long time before a thought came in.Exactly. As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you are free of thought. You are still, yet highly alert. The instant your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in. The mental noise returns; the stillness is lost. You are back in time.77
To test their degree of presence, some Zen masters have been known to creep up on their students from behind and suddenly his them with a stick. Quite a shock! If the student had been fully present and in a state of alertness, if he had “kept his loin girded and his lamp burning,” which is one of the analogies that Jesus uses for presence he would have noticed the master coming up from behind and stopped him or stepped aside. But if he were hit that would mean he was immersed in thought, which is to say absent, unconscious.To stay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply rooted with. in yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag you along like a wild river.What do you mean by “rooted within yourself”?It means to inhabit your body fully. To always have some of your atten tion in the inner energy field of your body. To feel the body from with in, so to speak. Body awareness keeps you present. It anchors you in the Now (see Chapter 6).THE ESOTERIC MEANING OF “WAITING”In a sense, the state of presence could be compared to waiting. Jesus used the analogy of waiting in some of his parables. This is not the usual bored or restless kind of waiting that is a denial of the present and that I spoke about already. It is not a waiting in which your atten tion is focused on some point in the future and the present is per ceived as an undesirable obstacle that prevents you from having what you want. There is a qualitatively different kind of waiting, one that requires your total alertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not absolutely awake, absolutely still, you will miss it. This is the kind of waiting Jesus talks about. ‘In that state, all your attention is in the Now. There is none left for daydreaming. thinking, remembering, anticipating. There is no tension in it, no fear, just alert presence. You are present with your whole Being, with
every cell of your body. In that state, the “you that has a past and a future, the personality if you like, is hardly there anymore. And yet nothing of value is lost. You are still essentially yourself. In fact, you are more fully yourself than you ever were before, or rather it is only now that you are truly yourself.”Be like a servant waiting for the return of the master,” says Jesus. The servant does not know at what hour the master is going to come. So he stays awake, alert, poised, still, lest he miss the mas-ter’s arrival. In another parable, Jesus speaks of the five careless (unconscious) women who do not have enough oil (consciousness) to keep their lamps burning (stay present) and so miss the bride-groom (the Now) and don’t get to the wedding feast (enlightenment). These five stand in contrast to the five wise women who have enough oil (stay conscious).atten with you inEven the men who wrote the Gospels did not understand the meaning of these parables, so the first misinterpretations and distor tions crept in as they were written down. With subsequent erroneous interpretations, the real meaning was completely lost. These are para-bles not about the end of the world but about the end of psychologi cal time. They point to the transcendence of the egoic mind and the possibility of living in an entirely new state of consciousness.BEAUTY ARISES IN THE STILLNESS OF YOUR PRESENCEWhat you have just described is something that I occasionally experi-ence for brief moments when I am alone and surrounded by nature.Yes. Zen masters use the word satori to describe a flash of insight, a moment of no-mind and total presence. Although satori is not a lasting transformation, be grateful when it comes, for it gives you a taste of enlightenment. You may, indeed, have experienced it many times with-out knowing what it is and realizing its importance. Presence is need-ed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature. Have you ever gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night,
awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of Have you listened, truly listened to the sound of a mountain stream is the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of prob lems of past and future, as well as all your knowledge, otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear. Your total presence is required.Beyond the beauty of the external forms, there is more hete something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep inner holy essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, thia inner essence shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are present. Could it be that this nameless essence and your presence are one and the same? Would it be there without yout presence? Go deeply into it. Find out for yourself.SWhen you experienced those moments of presence, you likely didn’t realize that you were briefly in a state of no-mind. This is because the gap between that state and the influx of thought was too narrow. Your satori may only have lasted for a few seconds before the mind came in, but it was there: otherwise, you would not have experienced the beauty. Mind can neither recognize nor create beauty. Only for a few seconds, while you were completely present, was that beauty or that sacredness there. Because of the narrowness of that gap and a lack of vigilance and alertness on your part, you were probably unable to see the fundamental difference between the perception, the thought-less awareness of beauty, and the naming and interpreting of it as thought: The time gap was so small that it seemed to be a single process. The truth is, however, that the moment thought came in, all you had was a memory of it.The wider the time gap between perception and thought, theTHE STATE OF PASSENLEmore depth there is to you as a human being which is to say the more conscious you areMany people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really catst for them. They might say “What a pretty flower, but that’s just a mechanical mental labeling Because they s not still, not present, they don’t truly see the love fo essence, its holiness just as they don’t know themselves, don’t feel their own essence, their own holinessBecause we live in such a mind-dominated culture, most modern art, architecture, music, and literature are devoid of beauty, of inner essence, with very few exceptions. The reason is that the people who create those things cannot even for a moment-free themselves from their mind. So they are never in touch with that place within where true creativity and beauty arise. The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban land scapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced much ugliness.REALIZING PURE CONSCIOUSNESSpresence the same as Being?When you become conscious of Being, what is really happening is that Being becomes conscious of itself. When Being becomes con scious of itself that’s presence. Since Being, consciousness, and life are synonymous, we could say that presence means conscious ness becoming conscious of itself, or life attaining self-conscious ness. But don’t get attached to the words, and don’t make an effort to understand this. There is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present.I do understand what you just said, but it seems to imply that Being, the ultimate transcendental reality, is not yet complete, that it is undergoing a process of development. Does God need time for personal growth?01
Yes faut only as seen from the limited perspective of the maste universe. In the Bible God declares: “I am the Alpha and the beginning and the end, the Alpя на and I am the living One in the timeless realm where Gol which also your home, the the Omega sre one and the essence of everything that everberally peremrin an anmanifested state nex and perfection sotally beyond anything the human wind ever imagine or comprehend. In our world of seemingly separa Forma, however timeless perfection is an inconceivable c Here even consciousness, which is the light emanating from the te nal Source, seems to be subject to a process of development, bra is due to our limited perception. It is not so in absolute sme Nevertheless, let me continue to speak for a moment about the en tution of consciousness in this worldEverything that existe has Being, has God-essence, has so argree of consciousness. Even a stone has rudimentary conscious ness, otherwise it would not be, and its atoms and molecules would disperse. Everything is alive. The sun, the earth, plants, animali humans all are expressions of consciousness in varying degrees consciousness manifesting as formThe world arises when consciousness takes on shapes and forme thought forms and material forms. Look at the millions of life forma on this planet alone. In the sea, on land, in the air and then each life form is replicated millions of times. To what end? is someone or something playing a game, a game with form! This is what the ancient seers of India asked themselves. They saw the world as lila. a kind of divine game that God is playing. The individual life forms areobviously not very important in this game. In the sea, most life forma don’t survive for more than a few minutes after being born. The human form turns to dust pretty quickly too, and when it is gone it is as if it had never been. Is that tragic or cruel? Only if you create a sep arate identity for each form, if you forget that its consciousness is God-essence expressing itself in form. But you don’t truly know that until you realize your own God-essence as pure consciousness.R2If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call it Join write out birth certificate tell him about his family history and two muutes aire he gets raten by another fish that’s tragicut en tragic because yon priected separate self where there was none tou go hold of a fraction of aбутистик process molecular dance and ma a separate entity out oConsciousness takes on the disguise of forma until they reach such complexity that it completely loses itself in them. In present-day humans, consciousness is completely identified with its disguise. It only knows itself as form and therefore lives in fear of the annihila tion of its physical or psychological form. This is the egoic mind, and this is where considerable dysfunction sets in. It now looks as if something had gone very wrong somewhere along the line of evolu non. But even this is part of lila, the divine game. Finally, the pres sure of suffering created by this apparent dysfunction forces com sciousness to disidentify from form and awakens it from its dream form. It regains self-consciousness, but it is at a far deeper level tham when it lost it.This process is explained by Jesus in his parable of the lost son who leaves his father’s home, squanders his wealth, becomes desn tute, and is then forced by his suffering to return home. When he does, his father loves him more than before. The sor’s state is the same as it was before, yet not the same. It has an added dimension of depths. The parable describes a journey from unconscious perfection. through apparent imperfection and “evil” to conscious perfection. Can you now see the deeper and wider significance of becomingpresent as the watcher of your mind? Whenever you watch the mind. you withdraw consciousness from mind forms, which then becomes what we call the watcher or the witness. Conser the watcher-pure consciousness beyond form becomes stiger, and the men tal formations become weaker. When we talk about watching the mind we are personalizing an event that is truly of cosmic significance through you, consciousness is awakening out of its dream of identifi cation with form and withdrawing from form. This foreshadows, but
almady part of an event that is probably still in the distant funk far as chronological time is concerned. The event is ca of the world.SWhen consciousness frees itself from its identification with physical and mental forms, it becomes what we may call pure or enlightened consciousness, or presence. This has already happened in a few ind viduals, and it seems destined to happen soon on a much larger scale although there is no absolute guarantee that it will happen. Mon humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: iden nied with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free them elves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, modness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don’t get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insatie and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen on this planet if human conscious ness remains unchanged?Already for most humans, the only respite they find from their own minds is to occasionally revert to a level of consciousness below thought. Everyone does that every night during sleep. But this also happens to some extent through sex, alcohol, and other drugs that suppresa excessive mind activity. If it weren’t for alcohol, tranquiliz ers antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all con-sumed in vast quantities, the insanity of the human mind would otme even more glaringly obvious than it is already. I believe that, u deprived of their drugs, a large part of the population would become a danger to themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you stuck in dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old mind structures and the emergenceFAX STATE Oof higher consciousness. While indones from the daily torture inflicted on them by the mind they are pre vented from generating enough conscontosove thought and so find true liberationFalling back to a level of consciousness below mind which is the ner thinking level of our distant anorstors and of animals and plaITE is not an option for us. There is no way back if the human race US survive it will have to go on to the next stage Consooщателях কি ing throughout the universe in billions of forms of wed make it, this wouldn’t matter on a cosmic scale. No gainin sciousness is ever lost, so it would simply express itself through other form. But the very fact that I am speaking here and yo listening or reading this is a clear sign that the new consciousness gaining a foothold on the planet.There is nothing personal in this: I am not teaching you. You are consciousness, and you are listening to yourself. There is an Eastern saying “The teacher and the taught together create the teaching” in any case, the words in themselves are not important. They are not the Truth, they only point to it. I speak from presence, and as speak, you may be able to join me in that state. Although every word that I use has a history, of course, and comes from the past, as all language does, the words that I speak to you now are carriers of the high energy frequency of presence, quite apart from the meaning they convey as words.Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence, so when you read this or listen to me speak, be aware of the silence between and underneath the words. Be aware of the gaps. To listen to the sil wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present Even if there is noise, there is always some silence underneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you. Only the stillness in you can perceive the silence outside. And what is stillness other than presence, consciousness freed from thought about
THE POWER OF NOWCHRIST: THE REALITY OF YOUR DIVINE PRESENCEDon’t get attached to any one word. You can substitute “Chrisť” fo presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God essence or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only dit ference between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your indwelling divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas presence means your awakened divinity or God-essence Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clearif you realize that there is no past or future in Christ. To say that Christ was or will be is a contradiction in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived two thousand years ago and realized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: “Before Abraham was, I am.” He did not say: “I already existed before Abraham was born.” That would have meant that he was still within the dimension of time and form identity. The words I am used in a sentence that starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a discontinuity in the temporal dimen sion. It is a Zen-like statement of great profundity. Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through discursive thought, the meaning of pres ence, of self-realization. He had gone beyond the consciousness dimension governed by time, into the realm of the timeless. The dimension of eternity had come into this world. Eternity, of course, does not mean endless time, but no time. Thus, the man Jesus became Christ, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God’s self-definition in the Bible? Did God say “I have always been, and I always will be?” Of course not. That would have given reality to pastand future. God said: “I AM THAT I AM.” No time here, just presence. The “second coming of Christ is a transformation of human consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure
consciousness, not the arrival of some man or woman. If “Christ were to return tomorrow in some externalized form, what could he or she possibly say to you other than this: “I am the Truth. I am divine presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now.”yo PA کیNever personalize Christ. Don’t make Christ into a form identity. Avatars, divine mothers, enlightened masters, the very few that are real, are not special as persons. Without a false self to uphold, deferat. and feed, they are more simple, more ordinary than the ordinary man or woman. Anyone with a strong ego would regard them as insignif-icant or, more likely, not see them at all.the pIf you are drawn to an enlightened teacher, it is because there is already enough presence in you to recognize presence in another. There were many people who did not recognize Jesus or the Buddha. as there are and always have been many people who are drawn to false teachers. Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot rec-ognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don’t believe that the light is outside you or that it can only come through one particular form. If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised.Use the master’s presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no “mine” or “yours” in presence. Presence is one.Group work can also be helpful for intensifying the light of your presence. A group of people coming together in a state of presence generates a collective energy field of great intensity. It not only raises the degree of presence of each member of the group but also helps to free the collective human consciousness from its current state of
mind dominance. This will make the state of presence increasingh more accessible to individuals. However, unless at least one membe of the group is already firmly established in it and thus can hold the energy frequency of that state, the egoic mind can easily reassert itsel and sabotage the group’s endeavors. Although group work is inval ble, it is not enough, and you must not come to depend on it. N nust you come to depend on a teacher or a master, except during transitional period, when you are learning the meaning and practice presence.
THE INNER BODYBEING IS YOUR DEEPEST SELFYou spoke earlier about the importance of having deep roots within or inhabiting the body. Can you explain what you meant by that?The body can become a point of access into the realm of Being. Let’s go into that more deeply now.I am still not quite sure if I fully understand what you mean by Being.Water? What do you mean by that? I don’t understand it.” This is what a fish would say if it had a human mind.Please stop trying to understand Being. You have already had sig nificant glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little box and then put a label on it. It cannot be done. It can-not become an object of knowledge. In Being, subject and object merge into one.Being can befelt as the ever-present! am that is beyond name and form. To feel and thus to know that you are and to abide in that deeply rooted state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free.Free from what? 89