Eckhart Tolle Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer Insightful Conversation

good to be here in this moment if you're not fully here yet I invite you to enter the present moment with your tension instead of being absorbed in your thinking and that simple thing is a shift in consciousness how do I enter the present moment somebody is thinking right now I can't get out of my head an easy way is to direct your attention to sense perceptions whatever you see and hear at this moment and become a little bit more alert and go there's an alertness that arises and that heightens your senses perceptions auditory visual you suddenly become conscious of your surroundings and you might notice that you once usual state well not yours because you're all advanced spiritual practitioners but other people's the usual state is they're hardly here they're only present enough not to bump into furniture whatever is happening around them is peripheral to their tension and a huge amount of their tension is continuously absorbed by thinking and a lot of that is actually not terribly relevant to anything but it pretends to be extremely important every thought has this seductive quality to it it wants to draw you in it has a pull like a magnet and if you follow each thought it'll take you you're at the mercy of whatever rises in your mind and you live like that what a terrible existence and you go and drawn this way in that way and then after a few years you can see it in your face your face becomes very tense and there's no longer a light shining through your eyes if there because there's not all the content is being devoured by the mind and that's a dreadful state it's been like this for a long long time many thousands of years and that really your entire sense of who you are which is the most vital thing to to know who you are this is why the ancient dictum at the Oracle and Delfy says know yourself and one of a very important meditation recommended by for example Ramana Maharshi and other teachers is the question Who am I so your sense of who you are when you are completely identified with every thought that comes into your head a lot of it negative by the way because negative thoughts are more seductive than positive thoughts you can think about an an unpleasant person that who did something to you yesterday or said something or failed to say something or failed to do something or should have done something you can think about that for a long time but you can't think that much about a beautiful sunset so all the things that make life worth living actually involve less thinking for joy to come into your life a moment of joy you got and you might not realize that in that moment there is a space that opens up inside you when you are not thinking but not falling asleep either your act is just a space of alertness and that is a that is really already a glimpse that is what in Zen they call Satori which is a flesh of enlightenment if a flesh a momentary realization beauty to recognize beauty anywhere for a moment the thinking mind needs to subside and a little bit of space opens up and you go until you truly look and you might not notice it but for a few seconds you're not thinking if you're thinking you're not really seeing you can say oh that's a lovely flower I wish I have that in my garden but you're not really seeing it to really see it there needs to be a moment of alert presence in which thinking subsides up there it is and that's how beauty reveals itself to you and that's how joy arises and that's how any feeling that is empathy with another human being you cannot arrive at empathy or compassion through the judgmental mind there needs to be an space within you that opens up and you can look at another human being without any conceptualization in your head you look at them and they you sense something in them that is deeper than their psychological makeup but there is a presence it can only be realized through the presence within you so that is a dimension within you without which your life you only are not really truly alive or as Confucius would say you're not fully human yet if that dimension has not yet arisen in you has not revealed itself to you you are just or yes of course you are on your way everybody's on their way to becoming fully human but you're not that not quite there yet and some people are so deeply trapped in their minds that they live in a total could completely conceptualized universe where every human they meet they immediately judge and they take entire groups of humans and judge them and so they D humanize them and this is how violence and can happen total loss of empathy you no longer know what you're doing you no longer know what you're doing to other humans we all know from recent events last week people ask how is it possible that humans can to perpetrate such atrocities well they are possessed by certain thoughts in your head they have taken over their minds they're called religious thoughts nothing to do with anything is not it's not true religion it's it's an ideology it is a viral infection so to speak of your mind thoughts thoughts can act like viruses if you're not careful they can take over completely so a few groups of thoughts possess your entire mind and control everything everything is seen through that that viral infection in your mind to use that analogy and it's an amazing thing so these are extreme ways but millions are suffering from that not bad as in extreme way as the terrorists but millions are experiencing symptoms of that kind of mine lesser symptoms of the same disease so to know yourself for most people means it's an identification with certain images in their mind first of all there's the image I am this physical body and then what is it that people derive their sense of identity from this lessons of who they are usually it's with their physical appearance and then the inner world of their thoughts accompanied by emotions and lots of emotions are lots of very heavy emotions are created by dysfunctional thinking we all know that and in the past before you spiritually awakened you experienced that also so hard there is a vast dimension in yourself that is now let's call it the transcendent dimension of who you are there there where the person or the personality that you usually identify which that usually gives you a sense of self which consists of self talk basically the material self talk in the head explains to you who you are and it takes to abort what others tell you who you are starts with what your mother might have told you who you are your siblings and parents and your environment and your culture tells you who you are and this is absorbed by the mind and then it becomes your story and then that becomes the foundation for your sense of identity this is where you derive your sense of self from so it's a conceptualize because thoughts are concepts a conceptualized sense of self it's not and then it it attempts to feel make it fit make itself feel a little better by adding more concepts to their mind you there might be possessions maybe if I get further more possessions I can feel better about myself maybe if I find the right person who is going to make me happy then my life will be fine but these are all really concepts even though even the big house or the big car gets translated into a concept in your mind and then you you identify with it and it becomes part of the sense of me but always an easy and never in enough and never satisfied for very long and always things seem to go wrong the Buddha already recognized that he said wherever you go and whatever you do you'll find dukkha which is translated traditionally as suffering but in order to be translated as misery or unhappiness or unsatisfactoriness on that level you can never be satisfied for very long if you don't know who you are but you're trying to enhance that mind made sense of self so the the most important dimension one could say you only know one half of yourself and that half is who you are on the level of form physical form and the psychological form of me and that's how most people live their lives and they don't know what they are missing now spiritual people they have the idea that there is such a thing as a state of enlightenment that can be reached at some point many Buddhists believe that a few more incarnations are definitely need but then perhaps I will eventually get there so it's it is made into a some idea in the head that I need to reach and not realizing that that I mentioned which we could call the spiritual dimension which we could call the transcendent dimension or which we could call who you really are that is always already there that is already present here and now and why do some people not know it because they are continuously or completely overlooking it because the movement of thought plus the emotions that go with it has enormous seductive quality that it hypnotizes you into continuously identifying with form that arrived and every thought is a thought form and every emotion that arises is an emotional for it's not a physical format it's an energy formation every thought is an energy formation every motion is an energy formation you cannot see it but you can feel it and it has certain it effects the body in certain ways so those things continuously absorb your attention and there's something very vital that you overlooked and that is something deeper without which you couldn't even think there would be no thought there would be no sense perception so what what you then overlooked is the presence the formless presence of consciousness itself which is always there if you stop thinking for three seconds there it is well because if you look for it as if you could say there it is you'll never find it so if you look for enlightenment as if it could be something that that arises and you can say ah there it is and now I have it then you will never find it because you would it's not that's not how you you cannot grasp it can you now let's bring this to them what really matters right now can you sense that apart from any thoughts that may be going through your head right now hopefully not many maybe none there is also in you the dimension of simple formless presence to get you there I could ask you the question what does it really feel like to be you right now what is that feeling of what does it is what is it since what it what does it feel like to be you now when I say you I don't mean your personal history you don't have to remember that for this practice what does it something deeper has never left you that has always been there and always will be there what does it feel like can you sense the presence that you are that is nothing to do with your personal history at all there is simply the light of presence and meditation of course is supposed to get you there but you can at any moment you can be aware of it how not by making it an object of your attention that doesn't work because that awareness or that consciousness that is the essence of who you are if when you are looking for it and you go okay I'm looking for that great experience the alertness behind the looking is it so if you are looking if you are looking for yourself if you're looking for the enlightened version of yourself in its some future moment you are missing that the very consciousness that becomes the looking if you could catch it at a slightly earlier stage where it's just fewer consciousness is it already so if you can know yourself as consciousness as the presence then you realize the hidden dimension of life or the transcendent I mentioned I sometimes call that the other half it's not only a way of speaking it's not you can till you can't avoid life into two halves but temporarily just to help us approach this see for a moment that your life consists of the life of form physical form mental form but also of inner presence in the same way if you could I could use an analogy of this room if you wanted to investigate what is the essence of this room here and you start looking at the people in it let's maybe in this analogy the people are the thoughts in your mind and then you're looking at the furniture in the walls and the ceiling and everything okay whoa okay I'm trying to get to the essence of this room and then you can you can even analyze with microscopes maybe it's hidden in the carpet but maybe it's maybe with a telescope maybe look like great my binoculars maybe it's on that wall somewhere they wait and you miss the one thing that is pervades the entire room which is the space of this room so if you could pay attention to the space of this room you would get the essence without the space the room means nothing it couldn't even exist and they were using an analogy here that there is a spaciousness within you that is continuously missed because you're so interested in the furniture in your head and for many people their mind is crammed full with furniture you can't even move anymore Angie here comes another thought and then here comes this no space and the loss of spaciousness is the most terrible loss in life because then joy real joy cannot arise anymore laughs which is a sense of connect true connectedness with another that all arises from a little bit of spaciousness inside you sometimes people come spacious for three seconds when they see a dog that's why I have this book about dogs and cats you see a dog and you look at the eyes into the eyes of a dog and you go it feels good people love dogs except people who don't but most people most people seem to love dogs and they are drawn to them because for a moment it frees you from your mind because you know that the dog has no judgments about you it doesn't say it is not that good it just looks at you and the tail wags and for a moment it can free you of your mind for a few seconds and that's why it feels so good to look at the doctor Oh lovely to her and for a moment is just the connectedness with humans much more difficult because the moment you meet another human these judgments and you can sense that except those humans who are no longer dominated by their mind and they can meet you in that openness of presence and they just look and you know they're not judging you but this means those humans who don't judge you they haven't fallen back to the level of conscience of the dog the dog in a way is in that beautiful state of connectedness with being because the dog has not yet been totally seduced by thinking but for us we cannot go back we have to go forward we have to rise above thinking not for below thing so here the arising of presence is an evolutionary leap that humanity is now we are beginning to enter this evolutionary shift where humans reach a new stage in evolution which is a complete inner change we're thinking still operate it's transcended which means it isn't left behind completely it is transcended so that you are no longer a thought based entity you are a present spaced entity so you're no longer dominated by thought and it's only then that you thinking can actually be used in a powerful and constructive way it's a wonderful tool to use your mind positively to create this an instrument a miraculous instrument it only becomes insane when it takes you over and there's no space of awareness anymore so when if you then derive your sense of identity from the presence within you and more and more you become comfortable with spaces of not thinking you can walk from one building to another or from the building to your car and just be in that state of alert presence it's beautiful you see beauty everywhere you don't need to label everything anymore that compulsion to label everything is the egoic mind you don't it doesn't operate anymore that's an enormous burden falls away when you can go through life not you don't need to judge everything there's a deeper knowing there that is not conceptual so one of the great spiritual practices is a very simple one and that is practice not labeling or interpreting what you are perceiving it's a and that you can practice anywhere wherever you are I always recommend to it when you are waiting for something somewhere because you'll be amazed how how but much time we spent waiting for things waiting at the traffic light waiting at the checkout counter waiting at the airport waiting waiting waiting many people are waiting the entire life because their wages are not living and then they reach 70 and they was that it I was still waiting I haven't started living yet awful so use waiting instead of waiting just bring an alertness enter that state of it invite that state of alertness in you go my there's nothing wrong with waiting because you always either stand sit or lie somewhere does it really matter where you stand sit or lie but but the mind says I shouldn't be waiting at least a cow can Tobias this person so inefficient why is he talking to my see talking to this class he shouldn't be talking him says you'll be doing a job and you can discover that in yourself and suddenly say I choose something different he's pretty discovery of your mind what your mind is acting good to you is an enormous step forward in evolutionary terms yes that is the discovery of how your mind function oh I thought they'd shut me off [Laughter] they will in a minute it it implies there is already that awareness arising in you where you become aware of what your mind is doing it's an enormous thing so the this if then you can you can use waiting periods instead of complaining just being present interval you feel the presence that you are the alertness and at that moment you become a spiritual master because all that differentiates a person who is not yet awake from a spiritual master is that the spiritual master can be in the state of presence which is complete alignment with the present moment without complaining about anything just is that's the same master Gospels this is what is what you're complaining about and this is why there was the same master would never answer any questions all he would ever do when people asked him questions about the meaning of sin was he would raise his finger and look at you can you explain the meaning of Zen please did you hear what I said did you hear my question he's simply teaching presence a large presence let's then nothing else and this people spend years in Zen monasteries and they still don't get it because they think I need to understand something the Course in Miracles says your understanding is not a powerful contribution to the truth now the miracle is when you give up the need to understand yourself my life I need to figure out my life what is your life it's a mental construct so you're trying to figure out a mental construct that you call my life and it's very complex I need to figure out what it's all about where am I going what am i doing why not give up the need to understand and just invite presence in and then it looks for a moment from the point of view of the mind as if you didn't know anything anymore and you don't not conceptually so you voluntarily enter that state of not knowing and then you realize out of that state of not knowing a deeper knowing arises and a deeper sense of connectedness with life and a deeper content of connectedness with other humans and all life forms and that is the awakening of a shift in consciousness and now I'm handing this chair over to Deepak [Applause] only me thank God for you guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so right this moment as as you're about to listen to me just turn your attention to who is listening so as you're looking at me turn your attention to who's looking that's you that you has always existed I was there when you were a baby is there a different body different mind was there when you were a teenager different body different mind stare now and actually if you stay with it without anyone explaining to you you realize that it's that timeless being in which time is born time is just a movement of thought time is the movement of thought that creates a subject object split me the park a cart in all of you that's a thought that's a thought and it is the movement of thought is not in observer in the midst of time-bound observation just as a card said you know you can you can spend your whole life studying scripture and spend your whole life and various practices and it does help you know it takes time for a fruit to ripen but then one day it falls and the falling can be quite sudden as in your case it was transcendence is simply going beyond the subject object split which is artificial it's not real nature and the universe is a single process so the subject object split is is an artificial split and it is the cause of every single problem that we know so I come from a tradition which is called Vedanta which you referred to when you mentioned Sri Ramana Maharshi and Buddha came many years later and actually did refine in his own language the teachings of Vedanta but in the Vedanta there are what are called the five glaciers the glaciers the Sanskrit word which means the cause of suffering so the five clashes are number one not knowing who you are number two the addiction and the craving for permanence in a world that is inherently impermanent number three is the fear of impermanence number four is identifying with your self-image instead of yourself what I cart was saying all the labels so all the labels all the definitions all the evaluations all the judgments all the ideas all the concepts that have come from conditioning parents chill you know your parents your siblings your culture religion history economic conditions all these things are collected and then identified with and that becomes the self-image the conditioned mind so that's the fourth glacier and the fifth glaciers the fear of death is the fear of the unknown fear that actually is the basis of all religion at least institutionalized religion capitalizes on the fear of death and in a way all fear is the fear of death in disguise because what is the fear of death it's as I said the fear of the unknown but it's also the fear of I'm trying to hold on to something that's not going to be there in the next moment because in the real world we do not have objects in the real world objects do not exist that's a perceptual artifact there's only process only process a simple way of saying this is that there are no nouns only verbs the universe is a verb it's an activity and being an activity it never stops okay so when even as you're looking at me or yourself your body or your mind your body is constantly changing you actually even scientifically the body that you have right now is not the body that you've walked in with a little while ago because you're breathing you're thinking you're taking in information from the world you have relationships you eat you eliminate all these processes are constantly the flux of your physical body so as I said the body walked in with it's not the body that you have right now and of course in less than a year every single atom in your body has been replaced recycled you don't have the same body you had as a kid as the baby as a teenager so if you think your your body you have a little bit of a dilemma which one are you talking about and if you think your your mind you also have a dilemma because the mind is changing all the time and so here we go bamboozled by the idea that things exist things don't exist only process exists nouns are conventions of language they're not facts of reality it's a language convention there's no no not even this microphone is not a noun it has a little longer shelf-life throat and the body and the mind but there are no nouns so all the suffering comes from nouns things which don't exist so we go over those five flesh as not knowing who you are trying to fix the flux which won't be fixed afraid of the flux identifying with ideas instead of who you are ideas about yourself as you said and the fear of death and the great teaching of the Vedanta is that all these five causes of suffering are contained in the first cause and that is not knowing you who you are confusing yourself with a socially induced hallucination that actually doesn't exist and the key therefore is Who am I am in shri rama nam re she spent 20 years in silence and if people asked him a question no matter what the question was he would say who's asking the question and sometimes you would say not only who's asking the question but who is the who that is asking the question and you know when you say Who am I then you could also ask yourself who's asking Who am I and if you go a little bit deeply into that you'll come to the place that I cart was talking about that who is asking the question is a transcendent being that is neither the subject of experience not the object of experience so very frequently we say I'm the observer but even that is not correct okay the observer and the observed me and the other simultaneously COO arise as the movement of thought the real you is neither the observer nor the observed but in which both the observer the subject and the object of experience simultaneously arise and simultaneously subside and they're doing so in every moment that's the flux it's a it's a flux that is constantly creating a subject and object but real being is neither the subject or the object it's where the subject and object arise like waves on the ocean and subside so before a wave arises its water as a wave its water and when it subsides its water it doesn't lose its wateriness and that's being you are the being in which thought arises and subsides now that thought can have many qualities ok these qualities of thought are referred to and in the consciousness literature they referred to as qualia now everybody has heard these is thanks partly to my obsession with quanta ok quanta what is quanta it means quantity so quantum physics is the study of quantities of units of mass and energy it's the smallest indivisible unit of information and energy is a pointer but remember quanta units of measurement qualia on the other hand units of thought or qualities of consciousness and they're usually just four of them anytime you have any experience anytime you have any experience you're either experiencing a sensation somewhere are you experiencing image or a feeling emotion or at heart the Dan Siegel who's a great friend of ours is a neuropsychiatrist at UCLA he says he uses an acronym sift si FD every experience that you have is either a sensation or an image or a feeling or a thought all of perceptual experience all the perceptual experience all of cognitive experience or any experience is actually just consciousness and its qualities okay so right now I'm experiencing you as image and sensation in my body in my consciousness the experience my own body like that I experience you like that sensations images feelings and thoughts are occurrences in consciousness of consciousness so even though I see this as mine and your body is different than mine actually what I'm experiencing as you and what I'm experiencing as my body are just sensations images feelings and thoughts and the whole universe is nothing other than that consciousness experiencing itself as the subject and the object but both the subject the individual subject and the individual object are movements of consciousness within consciousness okay so that's why the great things of great wishes is they I'm not in the world the world isn't me I'm not in the body the body is in me I'm not in the mind the mind is in me in the bhagavad-gita lord krishna when he's talking to Arjuna he says Proctor Tim SWA watched by wish Raja me Pune Pune curving back within myself I create again and again it's the mechanics of how we create our experience of the body we create our experience of the mind and we create our experience of the world if we totally understand that and come back to what Hart was saying that you can't find this presence by looking for it because it's the one that's looking ok you can't find consciousness by looking for it because consciousness is the one that's looking you know in my field as a person who's trained in neuroscience biology endocrinology today there's a lot of lot of interest in consciousness as a brain phenomenon because that's how we're trained we think a consciousness is a perceptual object but where is where is the brain experience when you think about the brain where's that experience in consciousness when you look at a brain as a perception logic that's also in consciousness the consciousness is prior to brain ok even the experience of the brain is the perceptual experience of the brain is a qualia it's a quality of consciousness within consciousness so coming back to what he was saying is all this neuroscience that we're doing which is fun a lot too fun to do it's very inferential but we will never understand consciousness by looking at a brain or through neuroscience why because only consciousness can no consciousness only consciousness can understand consciousness only consciousness can experience consciousness any neuroscience validation of consciousness is inferential it's not direct direct is the presence this moment so when I started I said as listening to me turn your attention to his listening or as you're looking at me just just turn your attention to the space between you and me presence is always there it gets overshadowed as God was saying but the furniture in a room he has a very beautiful poem he says Who am I in the middle of all this thought traffic because there's the center of being in which all the traffic is happening and we are obviously identifying ourselves with the furniture and the traffic instead of this presence around which the traffic is being jagged and generated as a result of self interaction the internal dialogue yes I thought was saying speaking to yourself and that that never stops because we're so influenced by the quality of awareness which is always looking out there for ultimately what is called happiness or fulfillment ok get the right job I'll be happy get the right person I'll be happy get part of money when the lottery I'll be happy get good health but realize what a guard said earlier all that is thought all that is thought if I do this so before the thought arises you are already happy and after the thought subsides you're exactly where he started from ok before the thought arises you were at peace then the torture rose then you did everything to fulfill that outcome of that thought which we call desire and at the end you were back where you started from just like before the wave arises it's the ocean and after the way of subsides it's back into the ocean so that makes it very obvious that happiness or joy is the starting point it's also the ending point you know what's that poem TS Eliot we shall not cease from exploration and the end of our exploring is to arrive where we started form at the end of our exploring is to arrive where we started from and know the place for the first time so what I got to a thing is you know instead of searching just actually go back to where you started from so journey without distance and when you realize that that there's a journey without distance you turn the quality of your awareness to being present now it's very interesting we can say this many times and you know you can hear this and you can go out and then you get distracted you get distracted and then something happens at some point where you realize that you don't need to be distracted you can be the timeless being in the midst of time-bound activity you can be the hub around which the whole universe arises and subsides because the whole universe by the way is nothing but sensations images feelings and thoughts within consciousness okay so there's a very important maha vaakya maha vaakya means big idea and it's still an idea till you experience it in sanskrit ah hum um asked me how means I have brahmasmi the universe is that's the only identity we have we are the totality of the universe the totality of the universe as the continuum of space-time events now but that space-time events the continuum is just a flux it's coming and going coming anyway so we go back to the fifth cliche the fear of death people say where do I go when I die okay let me ask you a question just now what did you have for lunch today what do you have for lunch salad where did you have lunch now as I'm asking a question the memory is coming right and you can experience it as a sensation image feeling or thought right where was that before I asked you the question where was that experience before I asked you the question now you know traditional neuroscientists will say it was in my brain but I work with the best neuroscientists my colleague collaborators Rudy tansy at Harvard the chief neuroscientist and geneticist at Mass General Hospital I said Rudy next time you have a conference in he had 150 of the best scientists and I said ask them where is memory stored in a cellular level guess what not one of them could answer we know that when I asked you that question and before you said salad that there was a memory somewhere but we can't find it in the brain can't find it in the brain do you remember the house he lived in when you were a teenager can you see it now so what do you think you're experiencing sensations images feelings thoughts because those memories are associated with other memories if I go inside your brain do you think I'll find a picture of your house what do you think there's some neural network where there is salad so what happened when I asked you the question a sensation image feeling thought arose from consciousness and then it's subsided in consciousness and that consciousness is transcendent it doesn't exist in space-time so where do we go when we die where that salad was before I asked you the question we don't we don't go anywhere because we are there all the time okay in fact every thought comes from there every memory comes from there every desire comes from there every bit of imagination comes from their insights intuition imagination creativity choice all comes from there and we have to be there in order to retrieve it you retrieved it from your transcendent self and being transcendent it's not a spacetime event but as you actualized it then there was a little space-time okay Robyn imaishi when he was dying people said we are gonna miss you he said but where am I going what we call the physical world is a quality of awareness within awareness what we call the mental world is a quality of awareness within awareness what we call the universe is the quality of awareness within awareness and if you can just anchor yourself in that little space the openness that I got was saying it's your ticket to freedom it's the ticket to freedom why because it's the you that never dies in the bhagavad-gita lord krishna says water cannot read it wind cannot write weapons cannot shatter it fire cannot burn it it's eternal it's unborn because but is a spacetime event it doesn't die because death is a spacetime event a space-time event is part of the flux so I think that's all I really want to say okay no that's why do you know we do these retreats we do these retreats because sometimes people haven't sat down or been quiet for a long time and it's almost impossible for them to be present so the retreat helps in taking you there in fact I do retreats myself in silence so about two years ago I took the opportunity to go to a monastery in Thailand in the north of Thailand and we had a very interesting routine over there okay and the routine was that first of all which shaved our head and our eyebrows and we were barefoot and so it was you know everybody looked the same and there was no social masks secondly we had to go begging it wasn't called begging it was called the arms round to find our food everyday and then you know people were so generous that we came back as if we had gone shopping to Whole Foods and and then we shared our meal and one meal a day and the rest of the time was spent in silence and observing impermanence because you know you soon realized that everything you're looking at is this flux that it's impermanent and it had a very dramatic effect on all of us because it threw us in the present moment in a very interesting way and so when we were leaving and the abbot the senior abbot who was head of the monasteries what half my age you know and we were in silence most of the time but you know in the evenings we had like two hours where we could talk to him and he would ask me questions about quantum physics and I realized he do everything there was nothing I couldn't tell him he had never read it both he'd never learned mathematics or anything but he had the experience that it wasn't difficult to explain to him what I knew intellectually and one the day we were living here we were all in his presence and he had a very gracious presence just like a cart has and he left us with two things and I want to leave you with those two things okay the first is and this is both scientific insight and real insight okay there are no boundaries in the universe every boundary is conceptual in reality there are no boundaries we create them just like we create latitude and longitude for purposes of convenience so if I say you know meet me on 56th and Broadway on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. now we've created an agreement for a boundary but in reality there are no boundaries at all and the second thing which you already know is the present moment is the only moment that never ends okay the situations and circumstances around the present moment will change but the moment won't change because it's timeless its transcendent its eternal so I'll leave you with what my habit said to me is it the most important time in your life is now the most important person in your life is the one you're with now the most important activity in your life is the one you're involved with now and if you do that the unknown will become known to you the unknown is actually known only in the present moment and that ultimately will lead to the conquest of death because death happens in time only that which can is born dies but that which is never born cannot die okay thank you I'm gonna invite a cat please welcome [Applause] thank you by the way you know in in the spiritual literature and in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali they talked about super normal powers they're called CDs have you heard the word CD see these are dormant potentials the ability to see in the future the ability to experience the past no previous lifetimes remote viewing remote healing and I'm experiencing a CD right now and it says that Wayne Dyer is in this room there he is and you thought I wasn't psychic so I'm going to first have a conversation with a cut and then perhaps you can join us for a few moments okay so I got these questions have come through Facebook and picked up the ones that have come most frequently when you were just before we you were talking about in the Buddhist monastery in Thailand and there's this Buddhist scripture that came to mind that is one of my favorite sutras like don't remember what it's called it's a famous Sutra the Buddha is supposed to have set it but of course you never know but it says so the Buddha is speaking to the monks so he says there is o monks the unborn the uncreated the unmanifested if there were not the unborn the uncreated and the unmanifested there would be no escape from the born the created and the manifested the idea of video is an idea so I actually think I know the answer to this but this is for you it says can you describe can you describe your daily spiritual practices have they changed over the years well I don't as you probably know I don't have a practice as such not a formal practice as a separate activity from ordinary daily living but what naturally arises a lot of the time is spacious awareness so I sometimes say it's a humorous meant to be taken humorously it's my greatest achievement in life is that I don't need to think all the time anymore and that makes life into a much more pleasant experience if you can be there as just as the presence and so it's the the intensity as I experience it may sometimes varies sometimes presents candy certain occasions almost obliterate everything else and at other times it's it's always there's that space in the background so it's hard to describe but I'm sure you all know you've already almost all of you have experienced it if you're not yet permanently in presence that's fine but it is arising so actually alignment with the present moment is you could say it's my practice but it's become second nature so I can't call it practice anymore say what my practice is because I actually was a disciple of my regime a yogi for many many years and he did in fact initiate me into the practice that we all do here and after a while I did realize that the practice was like a tool and for me I still do it because I'm so used to it and besides that sometimes even though I ignore the thoughts they give me great ideas and I and and I make a living by selling words so I still practice oh god how would you define happiness is being happiness is being happy a realistic goal is it a realistic goal well the it's partly a question of semantics by which I mean how what do we mean when we say happy I personally don't use that very much but I know that for example ramana maharshi said you know true nature is happiness happiness is your true nature so he uses the term in a particular way I don't use the word I wouldn't use about that much because for most people the common in common usage happiness is a high you experience a high and usually a temporary high I'm soft right yeah and so it's you can't really you cannot be on a permanent high so if you have a high you also experience the low oh I thought that was going to be it but it wasn't it so the term that I would use is spaciousness joy perhaps it's that which makes the Buddha smile when you look at a statues the good ones of the Buddha in the the bad ones he looks miserable but in the good ones there's a very there's just a hint of a smile on his lips and why why is the Buddha smiling if you approach Buddhism from a purely intellectual viewpoint in some universities they'll tell you that Buddhism is a life denying religion because they don't really understand it they only understand the statements and Buddha said emptiness is the ultimate the answer which of course is true but you cannot if you've never had even a glimpse of emptiness you will think its life denying so the Buddha has a slight smile because no matter what the Buddha experiences he experiences everything against the background of emptiness another word for which would be spaciousness or another word for which would be stillness there's always that stillness and the Buddha is the stillness the Buddha is rooted in the stillness which is when we use words we created reality but the Buddha is the stillness so that is really I think when ramana maharshi used the term happiness and I don't know what what that whether it's even a correct translation from what he who knows in his native language that is I believe what he pointed - I personally would not use the term happiness I don't know about you well in the Buddha's teaching there are four qualities of consciousness that he calls divine so the first is loving-kindness the second is joy which is not happiness happiness is the thought okay joy is without thought the third is compassion and the fourth is equanimity and if you really think of these qualities of consciousness they're actually at a very primordial level they are not thought okay none of them is thought all these are very subtle ways of communion which means me and the other is one so when their card said you know happiness is high in louis yeah happiness is a melodrama you know where joy is not Joy's essentially this question on facebook I'm an artist and drew inspiration from my work from the simple and genuine love that existed between me and my husband until I found out that he betrayed me now I feel like my core is empty and my creativity is dead how do I inspire myself to dream and imagine again well that's a sad story but it it comes from it is of course it's a story but as long as that is very real to you it's there suffering in it and there's a way out I'd like to point the way beyond that for this person your husband betrayed you okay your husband is a human being I assume now I love that human being because they were we have two words here we have human and we have being now that which the love in you when you were in the presence of your husband that that which you laughed in the husband was the same in you it was the the being quality of that human and the human is the form as which that he assumes that form in that form is imperfect so when you don't know when you bring them together you think that the that that laugh was an illusion but it was not you just haven't recognized that that out there is the dimension of being in him and in you and that's from that recognition love arose but the mind mixes it up with the form and the form is imperfect and so because of that now because you have the thought what you're telling yourself in your head is now blocking that deeper awareness the story that you believe in in your head that you are telling self is blocking the deeper awareness of being and that is once you recognize that you can feel that laugh again because that love is who you essentially are and so and then then the possibility of forgiveness also arises your husband you forgive the human and whatever unconsciousness the human manifested but the real forgiveness cannot cannot arise until you know yourself as the formless not don't no longer identify with what arises in the world of form and then you can look through that and forgiveness arises naturally yes what is the best possible outcome over life that one could hope for what should we strive to create for ourselves strive strive well the own the best and the one single worst boil truly worthwhile thing is to encounter to realize to discover transcendence in your life so that you're no longer trapped in that narrow personalized form identified thought identified sense of self if there's nothing to you but that the person then life is a very frustrating business and this is what the Buddha referred to when he used the term sufferings inside whatever you do wherever you go you will encounter that but he also pointed the way beyond so there is the possibility of realizing your formless true nature and that begins with it with a gap between two thoughts it begins this moment when you attention most fully into this moment not just awareness of sense perceptions but also in this sounds a little strange but it's key awareness of awareness so if you can be aware at this moment not only of that which arises in your immediate sense experience or thoughts or emotional field but if you can be aware we're in a language we always of course language always creates duality so you have to make allowances for that if you can be aware right now you have to so can only be realized now if you can be aware that you are aware right now in addition to things that you perceive there is a space of awareness that is what makes life worthwhile and then when that arises and then becomes a living realization in you that is really the one thing as Jesus said there's only there's only one thing that truly matters and then you have chosen that one thing that's the Mary and Martha story in the Gospels where Jesus says to Mary you have chosen the one thing that really matters where's Martha of us running around oh I have to think about this do this get this ready there's only there's one thing that truly matters and then the rest of your life what form it takes is secondary it will unfold beautifully with of course comes nothing is impermanent and even do you want me to cling to two things anymore and be afraid that they leave you and very important you won't have expectations that the world is going to make you happy and this is a very fundamental thing that many it's an error in their mind they believe that the world somehow has the ability if they could only engineer things in such a way that everything would just fit neatly into place and at some point they can arrive at a place where the world is going to provide them with fulfillment and and of course advertising knows that and so it advertising is built on that to foster that believe that the world can do that so once you know yourself as awareness which is a joyous thing too there's a there's a deep joy and satisfaction in knowing yourself as awareness then you don't expect anymore that situations conditions or people should make you happy and the paradox is when you don't have the expectation that people situation or people should make you happy and satisfy you they are actually quite satisfied [Music] so that's that's what's you know it stresses the universe is not behaving the way I think it should our culture seems to foster the desire to judge ourselves honing in on what is wrong with our body where we have fallen short how we are not measuring us up many of us have a harsh inner critic and we say things to ourselves that we would never say to a friend or loved one how do we learn to turn off this inner judge when it has been harping at us for many decades the inner critic the force some people have that very strongly other people experience it from time to time sometimes the mind is do you feel happy with yourself and then the next day something else but it manifests in different ways for different people for some it's mainly the inner critic criticizing myself for others others are very critical about other people others are very critical about situations they find themselves in they're always complaining you may remember from before you awaken spiritually that you always a lot of the time there was this compulsive mind activity a lot of that was actually complaining about things and people into where one is and why they should have why didn't they they should countless stories that come and so people are are trapped in this torture of their own minds and the question is how to step out anything we say about how to go beyond that presupposes that there's already a minimum of awareness in you from where you can realize what your mind is doing so that needs to be there and that is there in all of you and much more of course there are still millions of people on the planet they are also on the way they don't have yet minimum awareness teller terrorists or any fundamentalist to be aware of their own thoughts and or question them they would get very angry and so I don't recommend that yeah they are they are not ready for it so but but you can recognize what your mind is doing to yourself and you can then if there is an awareness there and then you can choose to direct your attention somewhere else you don't have to follow everything you don't have to believe everything you think somebody even made that into a bumper sticker I loved it you don't have to believe everything you think and that is an enormous you can decide enta fie from your mind and see what the mind is doing and you can then also by choice place your attention on a flower or the sky or anything natural and fun and you stepped out I also recommend for people of very much burdened by the mind place your attention into the inner energy field of your body feel the aliveness that pervades the entire body and then you can't think that much anymore you can't feel both the aliveness within your body and think a lot so that takes your attention into wake up in this I don't know if anybody still experiences that he awake you wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and you're thinking and it's not pleasant it's about my problems and if you then suddenly you discover the futility of it and then you also have excite that moment you have its eyes and then you can say I choose to place my attention on the inner energy field of the body and from one moment from one minute to the next you're suddenly you enjoy being awake at night and feel the intense aliveness in every cell of the body that's one simple way it's a kind of meditation practice it's one simple way of taking attention away from thinking when it you realize it is not only futile it's also destructive so that's a and that needs to be then practiced in a day if you have a meditation period that's wonderful of course daily meditation period but in addition I always recommend many many meditations throughout the day which could be a simple thing as taking two or three conscious breaths while you're waiting for the elevator or do something consciously with full attention that usually you to unconsciously something to anything that is usually a means to an end make it into an end in itself washing your hands be totally present you're getting out of your mind walking down a few a few steps be totally present rather than needing to get to the bottom be there in every step so little mini meditations gradually help you to decide enta Phi from the movement of thought so that's I would this is what I would recommend to our questioner and to anybody else who is still burdened by their minds or tortured by their minds so for those of you who like formulas here's one stop okay it's an acronym S stands for stop T stands for take three deep breaths as a cart just told us to and while you're taking those three deep breaths smile everywhere in your body from head to toe o stands for observe observe your body as you said and P stands for proceed with love and kindness we break that break the response okay so it's it's nine o'clock and our live stream is ending so I want to bring rain we don't want to lose this opportunity at least I just have to stay so you know I've known Wayne now for 25 years we've grown up together he just looks a little older but we are brothers [Applause] what am I doing here it was at the very last observation you made Deepak that the word love finally came in and it's been my journey to learn to come to a new kind of love in my life I have been reading a great teacher from Bulgaria whose name was Peter do not who of whom Einstein said at the height of his popularity back in the 30s that the whole world bows before me and I bow before Peter do not Peter do Knopf was a man who talked about a different kind of love he said they're basically three kinds of love one is human love and human love is a love that changes and barriers so this is a love that I love you but you came home late and you forgot Valentine's Day so I don't love you so much and it's constantly changing I loved you I hate you and all on and on it goes and then there's a love that he called spiritual love which is a love that never changes but it does marry this is the love that I can only define as the love I have for my children I have eight of them and it really doesn't matter what they do or how they behave how they conduct themselves the love is just there I'm sure that people who've committed some of these atrocities that we've been experiencing the last few months here in America the mothers of these people still love them having eight children I know that it varies sometimes it's a little stronger than others but it's always there when I'm sure you know that with your children and I see Rita there once we were talking about her children your children and then there's a love that that Peter do now spoke about which is a love that he calls divine love and this is a love that never changes when this is a love that never varies and this is a love I aspire to and the only way I can describe it it's in the Gospel of Thomas in the in the not kamati Scrolls that were found in 1945 Jesus is quoted as saying that when you when you make the two one then you can enter the kingdom when the opening line of the daodejing the books that I studied and lived and wrote a whole series of essays about the opening line of the DAO says the Dow's that can be named is not the DAO and so I try to imagine a love that Jesus spoke about when you take the two and make it one so this is a love that has no opposites so if I were to ask you the word I said what is joy and I said what is the opposite of joy most of you would probably say something like despair or sadness and so on and if I ask you to imagine a joy that has no opposite it's just joy or if I were to ask you what's the opposite of love we could come up with many antonyms to love try to imagine a love that has no opposite that's all there is nothing else can come up it's i was thinking when a cart was speaking about what is it in us that you're talking about happiness and i was thinking i don't use the word happy either shakespeare in one of his plays said i think he said it this way my crown is in my heart not on my head decked with diamonds nor indian stones nor to be seen my crown is called content a crown it is that seldom kings and joy and that kind of love is the love I aspire to contentment a love that knows no opposite now we're talking up here about being human and of course what you know we're all in human bodies and and making the two one is almost impossible for us there's a woman here in the audience who had I didn't even know yesterday that I was gonna be here today I just happened to be staying at a hotel nearby I'm going to see my publisher tomorrow to do some recording and then I'm going to Denver to do a workshop on the weekend the writers works and sitting next to me on the table is Eckhart Tolle my friend man and wiped out a program with recently called the importance of being extraordinary and of course to my left is a man who who we call each other brothers we've loved each other very very much since since the early 1990s like I think it was 1990 so the idea that I was gonna be here I didn't even know this was going on and and Eckhart said why don't you come and Here I am and when I walked in someone else walked up to me and said Wayne what are you doing here and her name is Anita Moorjani stand up Bonita where are you dear and Anita I have written a foreword to a book that first called the dying to be me and she I think she's speaking here are you speaking here tomorrow on Friday here at the Chopra Center right right so Anita has described what it was like I mean she had end-stage lymphoma cancer for five years was down to 82 pounds had tumors the size of lemons throughout her entire body and only had a few hours left to live and became an observer and watched this whole process and I saw something about her experience on the Internet and located her in in Hong Kong she happened to be in Dubai when I found her and I asked her if she would write her story and she wrote her story and sent it to me to see if we could publish it and I sent her back to her and said it isn't good enough I want you to go back to the state that you were in when you experience the kind of love I'm speaking about here right now a love that has no opposites the words awareness have been tossed around up here higher awareness but in that state that state where there is only one there is no opposite whatever you place your attention on you become and the only thing that you can feel is a kind of unconditional love so for me as I aspire it is to live a love that has no judgment no criticism no condemnation towards any of God's creations and if we can get to that place and while we are human they will still always be the two that dichotomy will always be there there will always be the opposite but in the world that Eckhart describes so beautifully in the power now we can do this inside here in here we don't have to have those judgements those criticisms those condom nations and when we get to that place because as many of you know I was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago and I had an experience of having a remote healing from John of God down in Brazil many of you probably everyone in this room knows who that is and what I thought happened is that these entities entered into my body and they just healed me of leukemia but that isn't what happened what happened is that these entities entered my body and they took out fear the word leukemia is loaded with fear it isn't about fear of dying it's just it's such a word it's just cancer of the blood you know every word going through your body it's all of the things all of the things about cancer the cancer that Anita spoke about so brilliantly in her revised edition of which was done so beautifully and so it is I woke up the morning after I had had this remote healing from John of God and my two of my children were there with me on Maui one of them was my daughter and I looked at her and I just I had never seen her the way I had seen her that morning and I put my arms around her and I just said I just can't describe to you how much I love you and I looked at my son and I put my arms around him and I looked outside I live on the ocean the ocean looked different it's never it never I just had never seen it before the palm trees just looked different the birds the grass every stranger that I encountered in the course it says there are two ways of reacting there's love and there's fear and everything that is love cannot be fear and everything that is fear cannot be loved so what I would ask you to do is to ask yourself how much of my life and the decisions that I make are based upon fear do you eat the foods that you eat because you're afraid that if you don't you'll get sick or do you do it out of love this is my body this is the temple I live in and I want to treat it that way you drive the speed limit because you love everyone around you and you want them to be safe or do you drive the speed limit because you're afraid that if you don't you're gonna get a ticket so you have a radar detector and on and on and on it goes and I could go on with these kinds of it you can almost look at almost every single thing that we do in our life and so many of them are based on fear and what Anita's experience was when she was in the other realm is that there is no such thing as fear and cancer Deepak and I have done many programs on this in fact I remember in London at the Palladium you and I standing up there one time asking that question why so much cancer in our world why so much illness why so much disease because you know you used to always say it's perfect health you know that that we don't our bodies do not have to there's nothing physically in there that says these bodies have to get older and they have to deteriorate and they even have to die and if we could get the fear out of our hearts and just come up from a place of no judgement no criticism no condemnation towards any of God's children we could live what Shakespeare was speaking about we could just be content and that's all I have to say [Music] [Music] Thank You Kayla and the the fear of course perpetuates itself through judgments in the mind and judgments are thoughts that we identify with that possess us so the key then needs to decide enta fie from the judgments and to invite the place of no thought into our lives ramana maharshi was asked by a disciple or a visitor in his ashram how can we know that we are making progress on the spiritual path how to how do we know that and Ramana Maharshi said the degree of absence of thinking is the criterion for progress on the spiritual path so now you know whether you're making progress the degree of absence of thinking is the criterion for progress on the spiritual path there simple as that I one of their observation I've just spent the last six months or so in a secluded state of writing every single day and I've written something called I can see clearly now and it's just a look back at all of the things that just like yeah so there's look back I lived 10 years in an orphanage and what what did that result in and and all the way up right through just recently and I think about how I happen to be here on this stage tonight with two people I admire so much and love so much and well it was synchronistic event brought you here because you were sitting behind at the table behind I was last night it was just amazing yes so let's look at this is just fascinating to me because of having just written about all of this like that we're talking about you were talking about time both of you were talking about time earlier and so I'd like to think that there's this this thing called horizontal time and just imagine a line going across here that represents time and this is this is called chronological time or passing time or cause and effect time so what got me here I made a decision to go down to that restaurant last night to meet with my friend Mark and his daughter I didn't even want to do that I was going to have normally I don't go down into restaurants because I run into people an order room service but something said go down there so there's cause and effect so Marc called me I said okay I'm not sure I don't know and and on how did I happen to get here to even to San Diego that's a whole other story about why I'm even here and you think that you're making all of these choices and cause and effect so I did this and that caused this and that caused this and then we showed up in the lobby and then some some young woman from Russia recognized me and wanted me to be on her TV show that she's doing she's cooking raw foods and I said no no no I can't do that and then we went into the restaurant and then came over and I meet Stephen Gould hair who was the brother of someone that I was in love with for several years years back who I haven't seen in a long time and I see Greg who worked at the Omega Institute and who might know and all of these people are showing up and Eckhart comes over and we just had a program that just come out and all of this stuff is gonna so this cause this cause this cause this and then he said well we're having this program tomorrow would you like to come over I said okay but I'll go in the back you know because I don't really want to spotlight to be on me I want it to be on these two guys this is you know this is their program so I'll just come in no no no we want you to be in the front we'd like to have so here I am in the front so then add just a peak experience and then defy so so we've got this whole horizontal thing just cause this caused this and I could sit down and write them all out all the reasons how I got here tonight I'd have to go back to when I was born in 1940 and when my mother was born in 1916 and her mother and you know we could just go I'll cause all the way up to this moment and Here I am right and then there's another kind of time and this is a time that isn't represented by a horizontal line but is represented by a vertical line and this is a vertical line that goes right up to God all right and this line is called eternal time in which there is no time there is no there's nothing but one there's only one this okay so everything in eternal time has already been taken care of Carl Jung said at the same moment that you are protagonist in your own life and you're making choices at the very same moment you're also the spear carrier or the extra in a much larger drama you are all he said doomed to make choices you know you want to talk about a paradox all right so you're doomed that means it's all taken care of and within that sense of being doomed you're making choices so now we've got this line going straight up representing eternal time so my being here right now was already handled it was handled the moment of my conception and but the point where this line crosses this line and that cross is made at that very point is where you can see both times operating at the same moment you can literally see that you are making choices and they're already taken care of everything is taken care of for you and so what Deepak and Eckhart have been saying is there is no need to worry about anything it's all just taken care of and even your worry is a part of the eternal time thing here and here was the conclusion this was from a book called to know we are loved by Rashad filled you know Rashad filled you know that man he's still alive to know we are loved he said and this this is the one I want you to walk out of here with and really think about your conception and your death are happening at the exactly the same time it's the same experience when you get that you can get back and you can see yourself making all of these decisions but you can also see that it's all handled for you and an eternal time there's no opposite which means there's no past and there's no future there's only okay I'm going to conclude now this evening with just three simple observations out of this whole experience the first is every event is a conspiracy of the total universe so go with the flow okay second is that love actually does heal and there's a biological reason to it here it's what is called limbic resonance in your brain and it starts self repair mechanisms what in medicine we call homeostasis takes you back to your original state which is well-being and the third is the love he was speaking for is really so well articulated in the teaching of nisargadatta maharaj whom you introduced me to and you see my teacher absolutely he says my love radiates from me like light from a bonfire focused on none and denied to none so with good night and thank you [Applause]

Channel: ODF

Views: 77,068

Keywords: spiritual, deepak chopra, eckhart tolle, wayne dyer, eckhart tolle inspiration, deepak chopra life question, eckhart tolle anxiety, wayne dyer change your thoughts change your life, wayne dyer and deepak chopra, wayne dyer (author), deepak chopra (author), eckhart tolle (author), spiritual journey, spiritual awakening, spirituality, inspirational video, inspiration, happiness, life purpose, eckhart tolle and deepak chopra 2017, eckhart tolle and deepak chopra, wisdom, carlsbad

Id: qknb4dMlOjo

Length: 109min 3sec (6543 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020