- Well, this line is so long. I'm going to be here for
at least another two hours. That's a thought. It's future, not now. There's no two hours now. (bell dings) The body gains in strength because you made life
difficult for your body. Don't go so far as to make
life so difficult for your body that it collapses completely. That's another story. (audience laughing) You find the middle way, the
middle way in everything. So, but again, there was a famous
orator in ancient Greece, the one they called Demosthenes. I don't remember the name. He had a speech defect. He could not talk well as a young man. And in Greece, to be a
great speaker was one of the most highly regarded
things to be an orator. And he wanted to go
beyond his speech defect. And they say, in order to get beyond it, he put little pebbles in his mouth and started delivering
speeches to the ocean, the sea. And he was there with pebbles, "Rah, roo," and was shouting and talking to the ocean, to the sea, for several years. And in the end, the
speech defect disappeared and he became one of the greatest
orators in ancient Greece. And again, there was a demand for it. So if the obstacle hadn't been there... There was a philosopher,
probably it was Nietzsche, who said, "Everything
important happens in spite of. Everything important happens in spite of." Don't add anything, in spite
of something, whatever. In other words, something
was holding it back. And then it had to... The energy was... So when you face tribulation in this life, then there's an opportunity for generating more consciousness in when you encounter life's difficulties. There's an opportunity for
developing more consciousness. And as you rise in consciousness,
the transcendent dimension of awakened consciousness comes in. You begin to transcend these very problems that before seemed unsurmountable. You transcend them or you live with them and they're no longer that important. So you can transcend them internally. Let's say you have a body that is disabled in one way or another. And the problem then, as
you awaken spiritually, sometimes it happens that
the body gets healed. And at other times, it happens that the transcendent consciousness arises and the disability of the
body is no longer a source of suffering for you. But it was a source of suffering probably for quite a long time until a
very deep surrender happened. And in this deep surrender, you transcended this source of suffering. And then you still have the same body, and yet you're no longer
psychologically suffering because you have transcended. So many things in this
life, they can be... You can overcome an obstacle or you can transcend an obstacle. If you overcome an obstacle
with external things, you do external things in
order to remove the obstacle to get beyond it. If that is not possible, then
internally, you transcend, so it no longer, the obstacle, the so-called obstacle, is still there, but it doesn't matter anymore to you. It is no longer. So in fact, you may be grateful for it. I describe in, I believe in "A New Earth," when I was a student, I learned something from observing the famous
scientist, Stephen Hawking, who happened to be at the
same college as me in England. And every time, in lunchtime,
I would see him next to the table that I was at with friends. He was not famous at the time. It was a long time ago. He was in a wheelchair, unable
to move his arms already, unable to put food in his mouth, unable to speak except
make croaking sounds. Later, he had the machine that he could use for communication. At that time, he just
could make croakings. He was already a professor. And at first, I didn't know who he was. I asked, "Who is this person?" He was being fed by his... His graduate students would feed him food and he would sit there and
go, (imitates croaking). What a horrible fate. If you're unhappy, think
of a fate like that to be burdened with a body like that. I can't imagine anything worse. And then a great lesson was
when I saw him once or twice, especially a first occasion,
I opened the door for him. He came in. At the same time, he came
in with his wheelchair. I opened the door and
I looked into his eyes and he looked up at me. And then I saw he was not
suffering anymore. (chuckles) There wasn't a psychological
suffering entity. There was just an acceptance. So although he may not have gone deep into spiritual awakening, there was an enhanced
ability to use his mind. And I believe he had
some spiritual awakening. But he used his mind a lot in a... His mind was still active. If he had reacted against his condition, he would not have had achieved anything. His ability to think
creatively would've diminished. But through his
acceptance, he was in touch with that deep power out of
which intelligence arises. And so he was free of... There was not a suffering
personality there. And he would've been totally justified in being very unhappy and miserable. So that, again, is an
example of transcendence, transcending something that before was a seemingly impossible obstacle. I believe that the entire, all this is contained in the story of, which can be appreciated even
if you're not a Christian, or perhaps you can
appreciate it more actually if you're not a Christian,
that there's a deep truth that is hidden in the image
of Jesus on the cross. It's an image that's very strange. I think if somebody from an outer planet, an alien from another planet came here, and they saw that humans
are worshiping a man nailed to a cross, they might think,
what is that all about? (audience laughing) And if you look more deeply,
there's a teaching in there. Whether you regard it as a historical fact or a mythological, deep
mythological truth, it's up to you. But there's a deep teaching there that the cross is a torture instrument. And this man, who I would regard perhaps
the archetypal human, is suffering. He is nailed to the cross. He is indeed suffering. There's a torture instrument. The cross then leads to death,
and then is Resurrection. And then the cross itself, you often see it without
the suffering human, and it's a symbol of the Divine. The torture instrument is
also a symbol of the Divine. And that is contained in the story of... The torture instrument and
the symbol of the Divine, the cross is both. (chuckles) And then there's a very
deep truth embedded in there that perhaps humans would not
have been able to understand if one had explained it conceptually. But they can see that this archetypal
human surrenders to the... And the suffering brings about the rebirth and the transcendent state. And so torture instrument and the symbol of the
Divine are merged into one. That's a very deep, very deep teaching. So when things happen in your life, you face it, and you look
at it, and you become... The alertness is required
when you're faced with a difficult person or situation. You become alert so that you don't react out
of the conditioned mind. Even little things, when
people could get irritated. Airports these days. Airports these days are wonderful places for spiritual practice. (audience laughing) They've always been places
for spiritual practice, but much more so now
because there's many... And this is a small scale thing, but if you don't practice
with small scale, you will not practice with big things. Relatively small things. Yes, your flight is canceled again, nobody can give you any information, and the luggage is lost long ago. And there you are. You can either react out
of the conditioned mind or can say, this is what is. That's what is. And if you have been irritated, and you can use any situation, so when irritated or angry, I said I recommend this spiritual practice and you do it like this. How would I experience this situation if I didn't add any thought to it? Now you can't answer that
unless you actually do it. So how would I experience
this irritating moment and these awful people who
are working for the airline and they're completely
uninterested in their job anymore and so on, and so on, and so on, how would I experience this moment if I didn't add any thought to it? Well, I'm just standing here in this line. And any thought would be, for example, well, this line is so long. I'm going to be here for
at least another two hours. That's a thought. It's future, not now. There's no two hours now. There's just the, how would
I experience this moment if I didn't add any thought to it? Okay, let's try it. We might as well. Nothing else to do. (audience laughing) So there you are. And here you are. Okay, I'm not adding any thought to it. In other words, I'm not interpreting it neither favorably or unfavorably. I'm not trying to convince
myself this is really good. (audience laughing) That's another thought. And it would be not really true in here. It just don't let any, and there you are. And you look around. And here we come back
to sensory perception. It's the first thing you
notice is, hmm, oh, lights. There are lights. There's people everywhere. Oh, movement of people standing. But you don't even call it that. You just, artificial lights, lamps. All right. And you're breathing, oh, yes. Yes, I'm breathing, breathing, (sighs) breathing. And if you become aware
that you're breathing, it's part of this moment. When you don't add thought to it, you may suddenly become aware that you're actually breathing. And then when you become
aware that you're breathing, you might also sense that
there is an aliveness that pervades your entire
body as you stand there. (waterfalls cascading)
