2006

 October: Transformation Of This World

After all the amazing things that have happened to you, only one person was able to put pen to paper and write me a question. Sometimes – in places like Kiev and Prague – I get twenty questions, and sometimes I get one, but it always takes me exactly the same length of time to answer. Even if I get no questions at all – which is not infrequent, and happened last week in Austria – I still talk for the same length of time, whether it’s about the weather, the football results, or anything else.

I’m not necessarily going to spend an hour answering your letter, Mishra, but I will use it as a springboard into all sorts of other things.

Mishra writes, “How to maintain this inspired resolved to focus on the work, build my healing practice and spread your energy work? How to make time for this, and not waste time on old habits?”

Mister Mishra – who lives in Santa Fe in America – has been involved in what he calls ‘the work’ for a long time. He was in Energy World in France, and since then he’s done quite a few things in Europe. He also does his own work in America, so he’s a pro, not a beginner. Yet after fifteen years he’s still asking me how to keep the resolve and commitment to the work. It seems as if it’s not so easy.

Not only do I get asked this question a lot, but I get asked this question a lot by the same people. Sometimes people ask me the same question over a period of ten or fifteen years; I don’t see them for a while, they come to a seminar and ask me a question, then they go away for few years, come back, and ask it again. This is one such question, so the answer is obviously elusive.

A key to the solution is in the second part of his question: “How to make time for this and not waste time on old habits?”

When you’re not here and you’re back in the world, you get caught up in all the things that you were involved with before you came. Your energy goes straight back into the same ruts that it was in before.

All your projects are self created – this applies to everybody, not only to Mishra. Whatever goals you set up in life are all created by you, and once you’ve done that you tell yourself to do the best you can to complete them. Most people in the world would say, “Yes, that’s right, so what? Isn’t that the right way to live?” It can be, and for most people it is, but maybe there’s something more important than that? If you never ask that question, then this is a natural way to live your life; to get a feeling of what you want to do and where you want to go, then to use your energy, skills and intelligence to get there. This is a very common way to live, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But there are some people – and Mishra is an example – who say, “Well, isn’t there something more important than that? I have a feeling that there is.”

People who have this suspicion usually begin along what is known as the Path, and hope that through following this they will be led into a deeper understanding of what living a human life is all about. They set off, begin to have experiences, and say, “Ah, this seems to be beyond ordinary life, and promises attainments which are greater than the usual ones of just being comfortable, content and successful. It feels like something more beautiful is possible through this exploration I am doing.” But unless they go into a monastery or an ashram, the power of the projects that they – and everyone around them – are involved in are so strong that they are constantly caught back up in them again, even after a strong experience of some other dimension of reality. This happens to many thousands of people.

When you are in a seminar you feel that that is ‘you’ and that is your reality, then when you are in the world you feel that that is ‘you’ and that is your reality. This can happen in many other ways; you are in a certain kind of environment, certain things seem clear and you make certain decisions, then a day or two later you wake up and find that those choices don’t feel true for you anymore.

I was talking about this in an interview back in nineteen-eight-one which is now in print in the first of my spiritual books, ‘Energy And Transformation’. I said that it’s as if we have inside us all these rooms, and each room seems to be cut off from the other ones. We go to sleep in one room, wake up in another, and wonder why we decided to do what we did when we were in the previous room. Then the next day we wake up in another room again and the same thing occurs. But unbeknown to most people, all these rooms only have three walls; the fourth wall is open and looks out onto a garden. If you know about the garden then you can go into any room and do whatever you want in there, but you’re not captured by it. Then the fragmentation no longer exists, and the rooms just become alternative spaces to live and play in.

Last week I was in Linz having lunch with an old friend who had attended the seminar I had just done. He said to me, “Half an hour ago, in the seminar, I didn’t know where I was. I can’t describe the space I was in, it was completely new for me. I would never have thought in that moment that I would now be sitting down here at dinner having a four-course meal. When I was in that space – which seemed to be beyond any attachments – it was unimaginable that I could do something as ordinary and material as this.”

On another occasion we had to move the group. There was a mix up with the venue – it was already booked for something else – so we had to find a new room very quickly for two afternoon sessions. When the sessions were over and we left the new place there were a lot of people outside, sitting around, drinking beer and talking in loud voices. Many of the participants said that it was a big shock to come out of the seminar – where we had this great space – into to this worldly situation which had a completely different energy.

For me there was absolutely no shock when we came out of the group room and saw these people drinking beer. In the same way, there was no clash for me between being in the seminar and eating dinner. That’s the difference that I’m speaking about; I go into this room, then I’m back in the garden; I’m in the seminar, and then in a place where a lot of people are chatting. There is no clash, they are just different; now this, now that.

Behind this question of Mishra’s there’s an even more common issue that always arises: how to bring the experience of the way you are in the seminar into your daily life. The answer is, they are already together; they are together in you. You had that experience, and now you are having a different experience. If you’re not in touch with the place where this is the case then you are in either one experience or the other, and the experiences seem far apart, but if you are right here then they are together. The different experiences are just part of the variety of life, and they are always together, only you are not always in the place in which there is no conflict between them. But to get to that essential place in yourself – when things are simply the way they are – is not easy, I know.

To get back to what I was saying earlier, all your projects are self-created. If you see deeply that this is so then in an instant all the projects can disappear. That is not to say that they will not go on happening in your life, but the instant that you see that they are self-created, they disappear.

Right now you all have many projects in life, and this weekend – unless you’ve been troubling yourself with some plans that you may have – these worldly projects have not been present. You could say that they disappeared, but they didn’t; they were just ready to re-appear. You’re not in the project right now, but they’re in readiness to return, so your energy is not free.

When you’re in the world you’re in your projects, then when you’re here your energy is in waiting to continue with your projects. Underneath that the energy is quiet, so you can still have great experiences, but your projects are just waiting, and as soon as you go back to your familiar environment the energy goes into them again. If you deeply see that this is so then you can let go of all your projects in an instant, and then they no longer represent what is you in your life. When you do that you are simply left with your natural self – a natural being – and not only can you be still and silent, but all the energy that was ‘waiting’ floods back into you. You become completely dynamically charged, and without you making any decisions, inventing any projects, or believing in any direction, a movement comes from that space into the world; an involvement, interaction and action. The energy creates expressions of itself in each moment.

To transcend the separation you experience between different spaces – especially spiritually and materially – it is necessary to find that in you which is independent of what you are doing. Only then can you do what Mishra’s asking, which is to cease getting lost in old habits. Another word I use for projects is ‘habits’, since our projects become our habits and our habits become our projects. As long as they are there they will suck you in, but by seeing that they are not you – that they’re just a way you can be in the world – allows you to stay with that in you which is neither this nor that.

What they say in India is, “Neti neti,” which means, “Not this, not that.” You have to work with this non-identification until you get to your true base. Then you can say, “Iti iti” which means, “Now this, now this.” But if you are saying, “Now this, now this,” before you reach your base line then you are identifying, and there will be separations between the different things that you identify with.

You have to let go of all the projects, but that doesn’t mean you have to drop out of life; it means that the projects are not who you are and what your life is all about, or that the meaning of your life is to succeed in them. When you have let all of that go then you arrive at the base line, and then whatever you do is no longer in conflict. Then you exist independently of anything whatsoever – such as a project, intention, job or family – that can be identified as belonging to you or something that you are involved in. You simply exists, and then you are at rest and at home.

That level of absolutely originality – that real space inside of you – is the vibration of existence itself. That basic space is the same for everybody, yet you’re not only that, you are all your faculties, your genetic make-up, and the influences from being a human being in your culture. All these things are part of your reality, so when you move from this universal place each one of you will express that space in a different way.

In dropping all your projects and involvements you become a nobody, but only when you become a nobody do you actually become somebody. You become somebody because you are settled in to who you really are, instead of being – as most people are – a hundred different people at different times. There’s nothing cosmic about that at all, and when you wonder who you are it’s hard to pin it down; sometimes you’re this and sometimes you’re that. But it’s possible to get a sense that you are anchored in the universe; that your very roots are connected to life. To find that you have to let go of everything else that you normally identify with which is other than the root self.

It’s a process of letting go, and letting go, until you get to the floor. From there you can move in any direction, but you have the sense that your base is always with you. There is something truly and genuinely what you are in everything you do and say.

The purpose of the energy work that I’ve been doing with you – and that I go on doing around the world practically every week – is to bring you to a space inside where you can start to resonate with this basic place; to awaken that place in you, and to help you to let go of the identifications that stop that place from being awake in you. The moment you identify with something you cannot reach the true depths of yourself, because you’re saying, “This is me.” You have to let go of all that so that you don’t know who you are, what you are, or where you are, and suddenly that becomes a basis for knowing who you truly are.

Does anybody want to ask anything about what I’ve said, or anything else?

A participant: You wrote to me many years ago saying that one can say, “Stop,” at any moment when something doesn’t feel right. I’ve practiced that for a long time and I was wondering whether it could be possible that I’ve changed so much that I don’t need to do it anymore. I feel that situations hardly ever arise when I need to say, “Stop,” now.

Oh dear! I hope that when you read that you didn’t start saying, “Stop,” to yourself regularly every one or two minutes! I assume – and I think you meant this – that the moment you feel that whatever you are doing is not your true direction then you stop, collect yourself, be still, and go in another direction. If there’s something in you that senses that what you are doing is not right and you say, “Stop,” then that’s good, and if you’re feeling that you’ve got yourself on the right tracks by doing that, and whatever you do feels true for you, then who’s going to say, “Stop?”

The best ‘stop’ you have is when you can say, “Stop,” to your mind and it stops. That’s a long practice, and it’s never ending until the ‘stop’ always works. Not just that the mind stops – though that can happen – but that whenever you find yourself listening to it and you don’t want to, you can say, “Stop,” and you are free.

As a great Indian master said, “Mind moving is man. Mind moving fast is mad. Mind moving slow is saint. Man stopped, mind stopped, is God.”

When mind stops, the world appears as it is. Until then you are seeing the world through the mind, even if you’re not thinking. The mind is full of all your past thoughts, prejudices, preferences, views and opinions. When it is stopped all that isn’t there anymore, but your intelligence is there, because that has nothing to do with the thinking mind. Then you just see things as they are, without prejudice, without opinion, and without weighing up good and bad.

All the ways that we react – which are a derivative of the way we think – stop you from seeing things as they are, because you only see things through your own views, opinions and prejudices. When you become a nobody you lose all that, and you see things as they are. That’s why the master said, “The mind stopped is God,” because then you are not in any way interfering with the simplicity of reality, and what’s left is ‘just this’.

I’m not saying that you don’t respond to life, but you no longer respond with an attitude. You respond according to the relationship you have with whatever is in front of you, but it has no special personal aspect about it, it’s just a universal response. You respond as the universe – or God – would respond.

When you find a sense of the oneness of things and join with it, then when you come to a person, you come from the universal to that person, whereas normally we come from the personal to the person. When you come from the universal to the person then there’s nothing personal about it, because the universe already includes them. It’s not a reaction; you will approach them in a sensitive and harmonious way, feeling their simple truth. This has a whole different feeling from coming from your prejudices towards somebody, because then they respond to you according to their prejudices, and this is how all the conflicts happen.

In my view, this work – to unite with the one cosmic energy and feel that it is the dynamo of your life – is the next evolutionary step of the human race. Up until now evolution has always been through physical change, but now we have a species on Earth that has been given a connection to consciousness that is so strong – at least for the more advanced members – that it is the most important thing in our lives. The consciousness we have is capable of making this next step.

When you have that cosmic energy connection – as I have a lot of the time – then it would be totally impossible to act in the violent ways that many people in the world are acting at the moment. Not that you wouldn’t allow yourself to behave like that – as many of us would say at this level – it’s that it simply wouldn’t happen. If enough people make this connection then we would see a transformation of the world we live in, and of life itself.

Now we will travel from the beautiful seminar spaces to airports, stations, and the noise and bustle of the world. But I am not afraid; I still know who I am.

On a worldly level, I say goodbye to you all, but on the energy level, nobody’s going anywhere.

Questions & Answers, Hamburg, 1st October 2006