Introductory Talks

 Two Types Of Maturity

Summary: An energetically very powerful introductory talk. Michael speaks about the beauty and depth which it is possible to reach within the ordinary ‘movie’ of life, and about the other dimensions of energy and reality which are available to us as human beings but which lie outside the movie. He describes his own experience of these dimensions of serenity, bliss, love, etc., and describes how he attempts to communicate, convey, and share his familiarity with these dimensions through the process of resonance.

I want to talk to you all about certain dimensions of energy and reality, and it’s best that I spend a few moments here accessing those dimensions, so that when I speak of them it’s more authentic than if I just start off from the ordinary daily space.

(silence)

Mostly in our experience of life we see what is there around us in terms of subject and object. You have a certain standpoint, which is yourself, you have certain things that you are interested in or that you like and you don’t like, you look around and then you see things that are attractive or unattractive, that you feel interested in or not interested in, and so there is always this sense of there being you and also the ‘not-you’ that is everything else.

Now, it is perfectly normal that we try, within this self that we experience life from and look out at the world from, to find a kind of equilibrium within us - a balance. And maybe not consciously, but instinctively, we look for ways to maintain that balance and to be drawn and open to things that are harmonious with that balance so that we are not disturbed. But as we all know, this plan is often upset, because even if we try to connect only with that which is harmonious to us wherever we can - when we pick our friends, our connections, our work, where we live, the shops that we go to, and so on - we try and maintain this sense of harmony or balance in ourselves, but as we all know, the world brings us things which we haven’t asked for, which come and which somehow don’t fit into the way that we have arranged ourselves, and so we get disturbed and maybe have to seek a new equilibrium if we can. And I think that if you are intelligent and you see that your demands that the world conform to what you feel you need to maintain your balance do not work, then you begin to see that one cannot change what comes to oneself. We cannot change even other people who disturb us, although we often spend some years trying to do that, but we soon learn, hopefully, if we’re intelligent, that we can’t do that, so then we see that the only way to deal with that kind of upsetting series of situations is to somehow arrange our inner world and our own inner reality rather differently, so that it can withstand these shocks to our system. And when people manage to do this, I think that other people who know them regard them as mature.

The ability to do that is, I think, surely a sign of maturity. And of course, the more we learn how to allow in that which we once rejected, or pushed away, or tried to manipulate into change, the more we let it in and see what we can do inside ourselves to allow it to exist and to be there for us, the more wide and spacious we become, because we are then open to much more, we are not afraid so much any more of just being open, and we regain the confidence and the strength and the courage to face more and more that comes into us.

So when we set out, usually, most people when they’re young, to explore the world and find that which is agreeable to us, then in a way we become a bit like a socialite. We’re looking around and saying, “Ah, there’s a nice person,” or, “There’s a nice place to be,” and, “There’s a nice movie to see,” and, “I like to do this kind of activity,” and we fix on things we feel comfortable with and at home with. But when we learn how to allow things in and how to deal with them inside, then we’re not somehow so selective in what we’re willing to experience and open to, so then clearly we create a lot more space in us, we become more open, and instead of being focused, we are more expansive, more wide, and we can, in a way, connect with eventually more or less everything that comes to us, including illness and real disasters and catastrophes in our lives, and even, when death comes, we feel maybe we can deal with that, too.

And I think just mentioning death is a very spectacular example of what I mean, because if you are really identified only with your balance and what you like and what you want in life, then I don’t think, from that point of view, you can ever welcome death or accept death, because death is certainly not going to be harmonious with your established self-reality as being this person with these desires and these likes and these hopes, and so on. Death means the death of those, so death always, in a way, will be kept as far away as possible, or dreaded, or pushed away, or to some extent not even thought about, because it threatens everything that we are attached to. But the more one opens to in one’s life as one matures, then the more one can accept, for example, the death of one’s family or friends, and really awful things and difficult things happening in one’s life, and the more, in a way, you are approaching such width and openness that even the idea or the prospect of dying is something about which you feel, “Aha, well, I can deal with that.” So that’s why someone like Socrates, who now comes to mind, was able to face death with such equanimity.

Socrates was doing precisely what I’ve been talking about, as you all know. He was going around and he was disturbing people. He was in fact getting them to question this particular position that they had taken, and their point of view, and their ideas, and how they saw life. And at the same time, he was questioning, really, the whole state and their approach about what a good citizen was and how people should behave, and because he was such a trouble-maker for the state, he was tried and he was condemned to die and asked to take poison, to get him out of the way. And when he was asked how he felt about dying, whether he was afraid of dying, Socrates is reputed to have answered, “Not at all. My life has been absolutely fascinating, and I expect dying and death to be equally fascinating.”

And I am reminded of another statement. I don’t remember who said it, but this is the quotation: “In my life I thought that I was learning how to live, but I now realise that I was learning how to die.”

Now, the man who said this was not dying, he was not so old, it was not that he was faced with death and then he could say this, he simply saw, I guess, in the way that I am speaking of, that he was learning how to be open to everything that could happen, even something as overwhelming as leaving his familiar life.

So that is, you might say, the normal development that can happen to an intelligent, open person who is really wanting to taste what life is and get to the bottom of life. They can develop in this way to be open more and more in the way I have described, from maybe an initial focusing and selecting, to being more open and allowing whatever happens to come in, and then being open to the final peak of experience, which is surely dying. Anybody can take that path in ordinary life. So when you meet people who have made those steps into maturity, I think one becomes very touched by them and very impressed by them, and one feels that one has met a real person who has taken the whole of their life in their hands and not just followed a certain easy line, and has now somehow become very rounded.

And that path, of course, is very personal, and nobody can really teach you very much about that. They can point the way, as maybe I am doing a little bit this evening, but those steps to reach that roundedness and openness to all, that whole journey, each individual has to make alone. And this progression that I am talking about is something that in fact life itself teaches us.

If you really look and see intelligently what is possible in life, what the human being can do with this life - which is not to change life, because that’s impossible - you will see that the only way to really live life fully is to be open to the fullness of life that is there, and not try and bring the world into your small fullness that you may have developed so that it fits. One knows, really, that this is the only thing one can do. And therefore I’m saying here that life actually teaches us to do that if we really listen and if we really open to what is there before us. I’m saying that there is no alternative, really, to taking these kinds of steps to develop ourselves in this way and to open to everything that confronts us in our life.

Now, since I’m saying, everybody, that life teaches us this, then in a way nothing more is required to make that journey I’ve described than to really look deeply at every moment and each situation that you’re confronted with and see what is the optimum way of dealing with this situation, what is possible, what is impossible, letting go the tendency to try and make things the way you want them, and turning back and letting things happen. Life itself teaches this, and you really don’t have to do anything else except to live life each moment in this perceptive and intelligent way, in this open way. And really, seeing what is the way to go, this you can do just day by day, without doing any meditation, without taking any courses or anything, because life itself will teach you how to do this.

Now so far I haven’t talked about what I said I was going to talk about, and that is other dimensions of reality. I talked about how just by living each moment with intelligence and sensitivity you can become a completely rounded person and be able to face everything that life can throw at you, including the final thing it throws at you which is your own death. But the whole thing that I’ve described as the movement of a person from immaturity to maturity, from being a focused, self-centred individual making demands on the world to a person who is open to everything, this whole thing, in a way, is a movie. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the movie is capable not just of moving from beginning, to middle, to end, but can grow wider and wider and wider, until the completion is not just at a point, but has a kind of openness that includes everything that is there. And this movie that I’ve outlined, I think it’s a beautiful movie.

I’ve never talked so much about this movie before. (chuckles) I’m surprised that I’ve spent so much time talking about this movie - because I didn’t plan to talk about this movie, I thought I’d speak for one minute about this movie and then I would tell you about these other dimensions of reality, but instead it has happened otherwise. I mean, I totally fell in love with this movie. And I’m remembering people I’ve met in my life who I feel have really more or less fulfilled that movie, and I think they were beautiful people, and very impressive. Maybe it could have been my movie. And in a way, maybe partly, a little bit, it was my movie. But it isn’t actually the movie that I’ve been in, because I got touched halfway through my life - maybe before - by something which is not in the movie at all. It wasn’t in my movie, and it wasn’t in anybody else’s movie either. I was touched by a dimension of reality which seemed to already be perfect. I don’t mean that through it everything became perfect, but that it in itself was perfect. That this dimension seemed to precede all movies, and be there at the end of the movie, and also be always present during the movie.

Now, the reason why it isn’t in the movie is that nothing happens there. (chuckles) If you go and see a movie and nothing happens, you won’t stay very long, so the whole point of a movie is that there are dramas, and things happen, excitement happens, and it puts you through various emotions and experiences, whereas in this other dimension I’m talking about, really nothing is happening. But the thing is that when you are in it, you don’t mind that nothing is happening. You don’t demand that anything happen, it is absolutely unnecessary for anything to happen, because in this dimension you feel to be completely at rest, totally relaxed, and really at one with life itself - with the very essence of life itself. It is kind of empty and yet full - as if nothing is in it and yet everything is in it, but everything is in it in such a completely balanced and connected way that there is nothing that breaks out for you to actually remark about. The wholeness of everything is such that everything disappears into the wholeness.

An example. Maybe you go to a party or a disco, or you’re with a group of people, and you see somebody, a man or a woman - maybe this happened with your present partner - you just looked at somebody, and it was: wham! Just wham! Now, I want you to understand that when I say wham! I really mean wham! I don’t mean (sounding half-hearted) wham, or mmm, I mean wham! (laughter) Now, if you get that wham!, if you were to immediately close your eyes and say, “Well, I’ve just seen this guy or this girl - what colour is her hair?” your answer would be, “I can’t remember.” “How tall was he?” - “Well, I can’t really remember.” “What was he wearing?” - “I don’t remember.” “What colour were his or her eyes?” - “I’m not sure. But it was wham!” And then afterwards you look and say, “Yeah, I like the colour of her eyes, and I like the colour of her hair, and I like that she’s just the right height for me, and I like the way she dresses,” and so on. Then the detail comes. But at first, the detail disappears into the whole. So that’s what I mean about this dimension I’m talking about when I say that nothing is there and yet everything is there, and everything disappears into the wholeness of everything.

Now, when you access that dimension or when you become included in that dimension, at least the way that I came to see it when this happened for me, it was that I experienced this wholeness, this oneness, this universality, this almost a disappearance of myself into it, and yet I’m still there, but I can’t feel myself as really separate from it; I feel myself as part of it and yet at the same time I have my own response to it which is individual. And it came to me that apart from seeing or experiencing what it was, because I work with energy, and always had done for many, many years even before this, there was a feeling that at this moment when I feel at one with everything - this is just an interpretation, really - that my system is vibrating in the same way as everything around me and so I feel at one with everything.

And the most powerful flavour in being in that space, that dimension, was one of serenity. The strongest feeling was one of serenity. But this serenity, which one can feel many times in one’s life when one feels in balance, a particular feature of this serenity was that it was completely relaxed, as if it was lying on some ultimate base or ultimate foundation of existence. So to spend time in that space was very beautiful - is very beautiful. When you’re in it, you seem to want for nothing. You’re not even looking for sharing that experience by telling people about it. It is complete in itself.

But then what comes - or what came to me, and I guess it can come to anybody - is that from this dimension which I have called a serenity level, there were strata, levels, as though it was a band of dimensions of energy, not just a single level of serenity - like in a waveband on a radio where you can move between different stations. And I found that it was possible to move from this level which rang with serenity within, to something which seemed to be nearby - because you could move into it or you could be drawn into it - and on that level the experience was bliss. And it seemed to me when I went to experience that, that it wasn’t so much that this person here was in a state of bliss, but that I had connected with a dimension of energy which in itself is bliss, and that if you access that, whoever accesses it will immediately, inevitably, feel bliss. For no reason whatsoever, you will feel bliss. And you could then move from the serenity level and bliss level, and suddenly you could find yourself in another dimension where you experienced nothing but love. You could find yourself to be in a state of love. Not even love for this person or for that person, or for nature, or for life, but love would just be going in ripples out of you in all directions. So it seemed to me that by working with energy, which I was already beginning to do when I began to have these experiences, by changing the level of energy upon which we operate, or what I call ‘where the centre of gravity is’, by which I mean your centre of operations, by shifting that essentially to another level, then these experiences, which in an ordinary level of life we achieve, or we reach a peak and we feel love, or we reach a peak and we feel happiness and bliss, by changing the level of energy one could fall into these states without there being any background, without there being any cause apart from that shift, without there being something and then the result of that something is that you feel tremendously happy or full of love, or whatever. That just simply by being in these levels of reality, you have no choice but to feel these things.

And then later on there was suddenly a new state of being, or a new dimension - and that surprised me, because it involves very much the body, which is part of the ordinary world. What then came was a dimension or a state of pure pleasure. Where every breath felt pleasure, where if you scratched yourself you felt pleasure, where you looked out of the window and it was pure pleasure. Not just even bliss or delight, but a physical rush of celebration of the body energy.

I mean, there are many things we find in life which can bring us great pleasure - doing something that we are totally absorbed in, that we love to do, for example. Some people can get it from taking a walk, or seeing a sunset, or even from something simple like playing cards. Or even… I mean, for me, it’s a pleasure to watch my football team (chuckles) - especially when they win. So there are many things which can bring pleasure. Sexuality can bring many people a tremendously powerful pleasure. But then this is cause and effect. And what I am talking about is falling into dimensions where there is no apparent cause, and it doesn’t really go, you just stay in a state where these things that you’ve experienced through the movie of your life, that you’ve hit upon sometimes and said, “This is fantastic! - I feel completely serene,” or, “I feel full of love,” or, “I feel so happy,” or, “I feel full of pleasure,” are just there. They can happen in this movie that I talked about when I began speaking, but what I’m saying is that suddenly, in a way, you are reaching these things, and it’s not part of the movie, it is somehow outside the movie - as if these dimensions are always there and we are missing them all the time because we are busy, maybe, with our movies, and then if we let go of the movie and sort of open, then we can be seized by these dimensions. They can come and they can touch us and hold us and bring us into themselves, and we can actually experience what is possible for a human being in these states.

So these dimensions are accessible to all human beings. How to access them, I’ll leave for the moment, but everybody can access them.

Now, you can access them, and you can be in them - sometimes I have been in such a state for some hours at a time - but then the rest of the life around you is not in that state. But strangely enough, if you’re in one of those states, on one of those levels, and you’re in life, and there are people all around you, and this state is really strong, then despite other people coming from ordinary, normal levels of reality, the power of the holding in this dimension is so strong that you can stay in it. But the level of movies that are going on in everybody, including your own movie, which has been suspended for a while - it has not disappeared, it has been suspended for a while - that is also an energy dimension, and so sooner or later you will be drawn towards it, into it, in your involvement with other people. And of course, many people get a short taste of these dimensions, especially of serenity - many people who work with me, for example, taste the serenity level often, and maybe also some of the other ones I’ve talked about - but then when you’re back in the world where people are in the movie dimensions, sooner or later you’ll get pulled back into them and you’ll probably lose contact with, and not even know how to re-access, those other dimensions.

But it is possible for them to co-exist. It is possible to have yourself still vibrating in these levels of energy I talked about, these other dimensions, and at the same time involve yourself in life - because the dimensions of all the movies, anybody’s movie, are, in a way, a variation on the basic dimensions that I talked about.

So, finally, how to access these dimensions?

(Boaz, who is translating) Good. So now we’re going to look at how to access these dimensions.

(to Boaz) That’s good?

(Boaz) I think that’s what they want to know. (laughter)

Well, that’s too bad - because I don’t really know. (chuckles) I don’t know, for example - and the only person I can really know about is myself - I don’t really know what I did to access these dimensions in the first place, or whether for some reason they decided to access me.

I mean, clearly if you have space in you, clearly if you’re not tremendously attached to the details of your life, and your desires, and what you want out of life, and all your energy is not getting lost in the pursuit of your goals - which anyway, by itself, as I said, is perfectly okay if you live in the movie dimension - if you want to find these other dimensions, then there has to be a relaxation of that commitment and that involvement with the details of life, daily life, and there has to be some space in you where these energies, which I am convinced are everywhere all the time, can find a way in. There must be some space in you for them to come into you. But I don’t really know how it happens to a person out of the blue. Of course not - because it’s out of the blue. (chuckles) I can only say something about the way I try and communicate that to my fellow beings.

For years now, for twenty-five or thirty years, I’ve been doing maybe thirty or forty seminars a year all over the world - mostly in Europe, but all over the world - and always this is what I am attempting to communicate to other people, these precious dimensions, so that they can take them in and benefit from them, and connect with them, and relate to them how they want to. I don’t point to how they should do that, I just give them the choice or the possibility of accessing these dimensions. So, how do I do it? How do I attempt it?

Well, I’ll begin by telling you about an experience I had when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, when I was still at school. Once a week we had a lesson in music - but there were no musical instruments, just some teacher came and talked a little about music. Now, although I love music - as everybody who knows me knows, since I use it a lot in my seminars - this one lesson each week was for every single person in my class the most boring lesson of the week. And the teacher himself was the most boring teacher. So everybody knew that this was a good hour or forty-five minutes in which you could have a good sleep and nobody would mind. (laughter) Even the teacher would not mind. So one day this teacher came in, we were all sitting there in the classroom, and he had something in his hand, and he stood in front of his desk here, and what he had in his hand were about six or seven tuning forks. So he walks over to one boy here and he puts a tuning fork in his pocket, and he goes to a cupboard and he puts one of the tuning forks on one of the shelves, and then he goes to the window and he lays one on the window ledge, and he puts one on his desk. All these tuning forks, he puts them all around the room. And then he takes the last one, and he hits the one on his desk, and it rings. And then what happens? Crikey! All these other tuning forks started to ring as well.

Well, my mouth fell open, sweat was pouring off me. My hair, which I had a great deal of at the time, stood up on end. (laughter) This was the most shattering experience of my entire life. But I didn’t know why. Twenty-five, thirty years later, I realised why.

So that’s what I use. Resonance. I go into the space which I have been talking about, and I send out that vibration of energy. And since we’re all built in the same way, the potential to vibrate at that level of energy is present in all people. And so by using my arms and my hands, by pointing, by making sounds, by singing sometimes, by moving around, by taking up certain positions in the room where I can feel the energy flow between people, where I can feel there is a current of energy, and sending energy into that current, people pick it up.

So in these various ways, and also by contact, as some people here know… There are quite some people here in the room who have done seminars with me, so they know how I work. Sometimes there’s a contact, a physical contact. It’s not a random contact, it’s where there’s an energy line contact, where there’s a feeling that there’s an openness there. And it’s possible - maybe not immediately, but it happens often quite quickly - that people get a taste of being in states similar to the ones I’ve been describing, of feeling at peace, relaxed, open, in a let-go, serene. And once that place has opened and becomes accessible and you become conscious of it, maybe for some people it is possible to find ways themselves to reconnect with it, to renew it, to return to that state of being and gain the beauties of it without necessarily feeling that this is the life and the movie is not the life, but that this is something that is always there, something that, in a way, underpins life, that is in fact the ground of everything, and that all the movies that I’ve talked about are actually all the time anyway coming from these deeper dimensions.

It is as if I tune into that dimension, and then I can feel an energy here that is similar to that dimension (beginning to demonstrate), and then by moving my finger along like this I can send a ray of that energy towards somebody, or into the room, and it’s possible that people will pick that up, and then that part of them that corresponds to the part of me that sent it can then start to vibrate, and then maybe they can get a taste. Or even from just a look in the eyes. I can look at somebody and feel the energy moving out of the eyes… (pauses)

I’m not really looking at them in the normal way of studying them or examining them or analysing them, it’s more that I’m letting my eyes open and my third eye open and sending rays of energy, and if people are open they will pick it up, and then something will transpire in their energy spaces and they may begin to get certain of these kinds of experiences I’m talking about. And once this access has happened for people, then I can just, which I often do during the seminars, sit quietly for maybe even half an hour without appearing to do anything whatsoever, and yet the whole room can be vibrating with these special energies and people can be receiving that energy and being touched by it and by the resonance in them happening.

So, as the second part of our evening, I would like to put that into practice and see if I can give you an actual experience of what I’ve been saying. So we’re going to have a break now, and then we’ll come back together again if you feel you’d like to experience it. And then maybe what I’ve been saying will become a reality to some extent for you.

Talk given at Frankfurter Ring on 10th May 2005. 30th in the series, ‘True Happiness’.