Mr Nothing

[Music] well we're in my flat in Bakke whoa there's a surprisingly for 29th of November it's a blue sky lovely sunny day out that lovely hillsides clear silhouetted against the blue sky everyone's smiling today for a change after truth after earth cold wet rest of the month as a father Christmas always meant another 100 hungry days until the spring you thought of the animals and the stock of hay getting nest nest day my day now you couldn't afford to run out of winter fodder for the grass grew in the spring for me Jesus has always been such a a a constant presence I suppose yes of course this was a growth of grass in the spring and then dying down in the autumn has always been for me they're sort of the yes the natural cycles have always been more significant to me than those then those of man I got these little window boxes outside my window and I've cut down the last year's flowers now but look just there's a little tiny little sort of pale bud popping up through the earth now that little spring bulb is already pushing his head up towards the light there we are that's Advent no sooner does winter settle in that the signs of spring appear new life so when I look at this world you know people get upset about this world as it all coming to an end and it's all terrible but but you see there's always signs of hope there's always rebirth in the end is my beginning it's all cycles it's all happened before it comes round and round my life succeeds another the cycle of birth and birth and death I've never related it so much for the church calendar but it's as old as it's as old as human experience gave us isn't it yes the days as they soon start but what do we never be the twenty-ninth you see in another three weeks a days we'll start lengthening again when they miss extraordinary isn't it takes a long time doesn't it for the new life to emerge get the first signs and before December's finished and yet we've got a wait till April May before the spring really gets great the first swallows up here cuckoo we don't get many cuckoos out with these to come about middle of April doesn't Lee one of the things I write about in Africa I was thrilled once I was in a part of Namibia in a very in a very very far far away when you have anything so remember there was a lot of elephant droppings there where I stopped and looked all around I not a sign of anything just a few animals and then that's my soul I heard a cuckoo this is where our little fred comes to spend the winter I wonder if the same cuckoo covers and sings near my farm at home marvelous isn't it I don't know any cuckoos you see this follows they're sitting on the wires just like me do here seems well as I suppose I know where they go now in the winter you may know that I published a book on Russia I called it Oh Russia which I personally I like that title very much but I felt it didn't really convey fully what I wanted to convey and as I'm using a common theme mystic as the title for my books there will exact be another nine books I hope all with the sort of title mystic something mystic beginnings mystic approaches mystic apprentice mystic expansion mystic burning mystic love mystic union and another one that's why I really changed the name of Russia to mystic for Berens I like the word forbearance because one of the great problems that beset anybody who ventures on to the spiritual path is how on earth you cope with the world as you feel yourself being drawn out of the world you will find that the world clings to you and you can't just get in the balloon and sail away I'm afraid we still have our bodies we still have our human life to live so forbearance is very very very relevant theme how do we cope with it is particularly the less pleasant sides of life and that's really why I've called this I've changed the title of a Russia to mystic for Berens in Russia and firstly I I think this is a this is a very important and valuable book I and probably one of my well one of my I don't call it the best but I hope they're all good but said he want to buy very valuable books because Russia's are much misunderstood country in the West but it's an intensely interesting country it had the first really full-scale socialist revolution so it knows better than anyone the consequences of socialism for better and worse for better for worse and really for the century in the Russian Revolution broke just over a hundred years ago so for over a century the Russian society has been grappling with the consequences of of it which varied from you could say the the wonderful to the absolutely terrible if my mother was was in the middle of it because she was born she was enough she was at school and she was looking out of the classroom window when the old Russian Imperial flag which was flying over the College where she was at school was hauled down was replaced by the red flag of communism and she remembers the teacher said to the children we've got to look out of the window children watch what's happening this is a moment of history and my god it was anyway mum a few years later a family displaced and and in the process of being destroyed was was sent out a little refugee to the west where she eventually produced me I went back to Russia and lived there for several years which was a very very very eye-opening experience for me not only to discover where my own personality came from but to learn about learning depths about Russia and in particular this great great lesson of for a bear which we're in the west tential we're so sure that we can govern the world as we want we have democracy we have freed and we have all sorts of of scope to express ourselves our individuality but in Russia it was not so at war common the communist revolution became I'm horrific ly oppressive to the vast majority of the people in Russia it's another world really from the West and and yet Russia is a deeply spiritual country it's probably the most spiritual country I've ever been in they call it holy Russia Holy Mother Russia and you may recall in the Gospels how when the Angels announced to Mary that she was to be she was to be the mother of a child Jesus Mary gave the answer behold the handmaid of the Lord be it unto me according to thy word and and this has been taken very deeply into the Russian heart so there's a certain submissiveness in the Russian character towards the horrors that authority often unleashes upon it a sort of humility of forbearance and do you know one of the the keys to spiritual development is less me more God not my will but thine O Lord be it unto me according to not my will but your will that is the way to holiness certainly as demonstrated by Holy Mother Russia forbearance forbearance also means absence of criticism of judgment of your neighbor it means acceptance it's really the forerunner of well in one word spirituality this book I wrote it's um this was sort of my nature of new is not twenty years ago between 20 and 25 years ago and and when I was in and Russian Christianity also Russia has the Orthodox Church as compared to the Western churches which again is rather different to the West it has a different a different approach it's a more contemporary or more meditative approach to God a less humanistic the individual isn't counted for so much as it is in the West in the West it's all about human rights isn't it in my rights what do you want to do with your life what do you think of the politics or this that and the other every child is encouraged to think for themselves in Russia it's the opposite of that the individual is not counted for much at least he's given his it's not true right but it's the community who sees that country or the village or the school over its the group this is more important than the meat or the family is more important than the individual so there's a an unselfishness about the country sharing which of course was was a natural naturally was a winning opened their arms to socialism when they came because the two seem to seem to seem to go together course until it all goes wrong I think I made about 16 times I went to Russia and all I lived there five and a half years I well to begin with in there which as a there's a mature student but just because I spoke English when they were and they didn't have any English went around at that time but I got drawn into teaching English which I've never done before but it wasn't very difficult I just tell them about my children about my farm and all the animals I've died which which amused Evan kept me happy we had some lovely times together and then I became very interested in the Russian Church and and I learned it was almost like learning Christianity again from a different perspective and I immediately found that my own practice of meditation naturally started in with Christianity I discovered a the contemplative side of Christianity listened I don't found in the West and that of course I loved all that so I greatly deepened my understanding of what the faith is all about and significance of Jesus in fact of significance of almost everything goods that's what's got rather skated over now in our you know sort of politically corrected humanistic West in the new edition there's a new Ford actually as always happens when one publishes a book least when I publish a books papers and things that you've forgotten that should have been included and let's say you see the man who who prints my books has learned his lesson he knows not to print too many to start with I've got a chance to do to look through the double riptides I beat through this book but with 600 pages it's it's it's quite a job to go through not surprisingly there a few typos and a few odd mistakes in it but hopefully they get less and less and they're not too many left now anyway there is another 19 pages in this new edition and there's a foreword and there's some other interesting things included now I've got another pal who comes to meditate with me Hoosier was a university professor surprisingly but he kindly wrote the foreword so I hope anyways it'll be a not not only as historical and a social book but I hope it will really help people grappling with this world this problematic world how they can at least how one person how my my experience was how I'm deals with it really how one how spirit may strengthen to bear an unbearable world yes that's how I've you'll see that phrase out some adverts on the website how spirit may strengthen to bear an unbearable world yes I like that it puts it in a nutshell not only in Russia but in our own lives here in the West which can be pretty unbearable at times how can spirit strengthen about an unbearable world I still feel compelled to participate in the world of words not any when people come to see me but in producing these books most of which I should point out were written quite a long time ago and more active times of my life and most of them have just sat in the cupboard for 30 odd years I'm thinking well that was it really not that I wrote them as books in the first place because they were really just extended letters to my mother and father my wife at that time when I was abroad written with the intention of being a book but but they they're actually really made books particularly valuable I think because there is from firsthand experience from the unfolding events of the life I was living at that time so it isn't a matter of me sitting down and thinking what I'm going to say which would always be a warning sign to me I don't trust my thoughts but right from the unfolding of everyday experience is a different matter altogether when one's in the present moment and you just noting down what's there so I have produced or two new books this year and there's another well there's another four in the pipeline wasn't nearly done I'm getting some help now there's a woman that's help they were two women actually who help doing some of the typing but because these books were of course written by longhand the pen and ink and are they good we put on the computer and I'm so slow doing that there's a decent women think and fortunately her helping with it this book was the first book I had published long time ago now the first book I actually wrote was when I was the 47 which is how many years ago 35 35 odd years ago when I went through our crisis time in my life was over a woman of course and which really turned turned my life upside down and endeavoring to understand what has happened to me I started writing and this that is the foundation of what I've eventually got around to publishing this book which I call mystic beginnings and which I go back to the very beginnings of my life talking a little about but my childhood my school days my days in the army when I went out to Australia to see what the world looked like before men messed it up going back to be a student going farming injuring myself injuring my back having to spend a few years in business and breaking out to golf again to South America to make the world a better place I didn't go in for forbearance in those days I thought I was young good strong I thought I could make the world a better place with us strength in my arm with my axe in my plow I'd get a grow more food to feed the hungry so I was I was going out to take a grant of virgin land in the Bolivian jungle and develop it but that didn't quite work out as things happen I met a Peruvian girl whose father persuaded me to go to Peru instead so I went out there anyway I had a year in Peru and that shows me up in the Andes where I was going to reforest the Andes I had to go at that and then a little voice said to me one day to make hole be whole and i wrist saw myself as an immature young man trying to teach life to two people older and wiser than myself so I came home and I learn to meditate and I went by farm the end and this farming really took me over then yeah of course was one of those one of the first organic farmers was married and then at 47 another woman appeared and it wasn't really what most of you were probably thinking is it a secret speak because this woman also meditated we'd been to a meeting and after the meeting we didn't know each other particularly well we were sitting in the car together before going her would be just pause like this like we did in meditation toast our eyes and I saw our two souls rise from our bodies and merge as one and you imagine that well that changed my life nothing like this has ever happened to me before but I saw that it were beyond the person beyond the physical mental personality into what one could call himself the true self the divine self and I realized that there's two souls both of our soldiers both of our divine cells where they were lifted out of our separate bodies into one spiritual unity well talk about forbearance how having taken that on board do you come back into ordinary life I stopped like that at all is it we were all very very separate so that's really what I've been trying to do ever since anyway in this world Oh snotty developed from it evil birth marriage but nice essay that turned my life upside down this book is really my first attempt to understand it threw me into it for many years I wanted to run the terrible depression but this is really what happened up to the age of 47 and then we go on to my other books which sort of take the story onwards right up to the present day still evolving there we opted but what I really want to tell you is that um essentially like a gift from heaven not so long ago probably a year ago somebody I suppose he was a young man called Jackson Miller I don't know where he came from in America we're on our You Tube channel on the video called the cycle of life he put a comment but now just read you this comment John please write for us an autobiography and your personal timeline of life events what made you move from here to there to do this or do that begin this and end that include all the lessons you see fit to impart so many of us search for what you have found I think it would be more meaningful to people than you can possibly imagine kind regards for your willingness to assist others in the search for stillness Jackson Miller well Jackson Miller there you are printed the first paragraph of the introduction and thank you very much my dear for giving me a boost and this is the axe exactly what this book is so if only I knew your postal address I'd send you a copy but I hope you'll see this video and remember your posting on YouTube and smile and contact us I'll send you a free copy well the good woman who is typing for me is on page 200 and will should be a few more now but last lot I received over hours took us up to page 274 of what I'm calling mystic expansion in Africa as part of my adventures after this great event which broke my life in pieces I went out to to Africa South Africa actually an old girlfriend of mine had a farm out there and she invited me out and that didn't work out as planned so I found myself just I used to hire a little broken-down old car and I just wandered off for a long time I just wandered through the desert areas of Africa I had many experiences they were mostly sort of of the desert kind but they were also some one so some also got involved in some of the social issues that were that were current in Africa at that time and of course made many comments about it from my developing spiritual point of view which again I hope will be a very interesting read and there's another one in terrible because when I came back from Africa again I was faced with this dilemma of not knowing what to do and I then had another vision of love not in a woman this time but from a young man who was sort of spiritual teacher I went out followed him out to America USA there had another long series of adventures which I which I'm calling mystic burning because what this chap said to the people that followed him don't come too near to me unless you're prepared to be burnt well cause fool that I was I went near that's why I'm calling the book mystic burning rectum it was a salutary burning I had regretted painful at the time terrible actually absolutely terrible really getting out of my mind at that time really seriously to save my sanity I took a job as a as a cook in a little broken-down motel in the Mojave Desert so I cooked pancakes and fried eggs for several months which was bit of a change for me anyway so that really what makes this another book which I hope will be a good read a jolly good read as well as spiritually enlightening read cause mystic burning and then there are there's another two or three books sort of in the process as a companion book to this mystic beginnings from 1972 to 1989 when I was farming I I wrote quite a number of articles letters and there were various early interviews made of me I was a bit of an oddity at that time I was my second farm the first one was hearing baked all mostly sheep and animals but my second farm was on a place called the Lincolnshire fence rather like Holland flat really fertile country where I grew vegetables and I only had three acres which we know farmers were just laughs at it you wouldn't be able to turn the tractor around on it but after the last war there was a very you know between the two world wars the first there was a it was a movement then I'll get some people back to the land because they had the cultural production have before him so much lemon machinery have like it is now they were still not work for people and and the slogan was three acres in a cow which was considered enough so for a man to live on well I had three acres and a cow just that and I made my living from it for 20 odd years which I'm very proud when the great achievements of mine ocular and I didn't have a tractor use any chemicals I had two strong arms and this is my shaker I love to what I had I was one of the first people to sell organic vegetables I wouldn't call myself another kind people say that I was a bit of a pioneer I smile I think maybe I was anyway all these articles and various letters and things that are here I wrote at that time I've now collected and it is being they're being printed in this brother Lord it's a sort of scrapbook really but of course I've got four scrapbooks in the corner there were all these things are stuck in but this is their being taken out now and and reproduced in this book which is the sort of than an anthology you could say of my early writing after the time of the photographs taken of taken up my wife Shirley and myself I think there was a TV program when this photograph was taken Amy we look rather like like to sort of socialist workers from the Soviet Union don't we are in a cup of bleach and a sweet picture okay but I really like that once that is really a sort of companion volume to to this mystic approaches and I'd like to think that it'll have a wide circulation no I think we don't quite know what it will cost him a I don't know it it's quite a difficult printing job so the printer tells me I don't understand these things oh yes well what we have done this is Phil's really who's done this but that when was it a long time ago they the the BBC made a film of me well they made two or three films actually but the best and the longest one was very very sweet film made in when is it 1975 John Barker and his wife Shirley made a living from three acres and the Lincolnshire fens working by hand out of love for the soil they were genuine pioneers of what is now called organic farming but to them it was simply natural it stars John age 38 surely and the essential Pig Oh My Darling Pig the mobile compost heap and then then there were a few more recent programs have three more other videos that were made of me look at me I was got a long a beard again I was an old man then there are the sweet films I look at it and well tear comes to my eyes really for good good times and that's oh I hope that'll give a lot of pleasure and maybe a bit of serious instruction to those that are interested anyway this is this is available now you can order it on the website not so much for the money but because of that sharing of Hearts which is what it's all about we haven't been idle considering the number of really videos that were amazing and posted on YouTube but number of retreats we've had with new friends coming and from Hongkong lost from Europe all over Europe with you from England one of the regular visitors here puts it beautifully she says but I asked her that question what have you come for she says nothing when she calls me mister nothing I like that very much as I'd say it's just the nail on the head it's exactly right isn't it this is what we were trying to talk about in our last video the nothingness of God so to have reach supported by life where people describe me as mr. nothing means I'm moving in the right direction doesn't it we got if we really count all the people with whom we're connected now now what I might venture to call the spiritual family grows beyond all bounds there's this there all these retreat and one can say the ones we've was closely connected with but but hungry how many is a huge number on YouTube number of subscribers is amazing and as for the number of views it's it's beyond belief well into the millions now unbelievable some of these comments now come from people that we actually have made contact with we know them personally and it's it's a wonderful way of sharing the way I've written all these books now but I wouldn't say the books are redundant they have their place don't they but these videos have certainly opened up a new way of communication which is wonderful especially when it's a two-way process we get feedback we do by the way greatly value your comments we both of us read read them all so they are notice we don't answer them all but they're all read I have a thought of at least putting thank you on each of them but it would get a bit repetitive wouldn't it you must take it for granted there's the sign we read them all in the dress titude appreciation well I I used to ask Phil what do they come forward and maybe this woman who described me as nothing puts her finger on it what do they come for I I just find it hard to believe really that somehow I don't quite know I can't I find I feel embarrassed even just saying it readiness there's something that people find useful well of course it is heart to heart because it's instant love and and it's it's a wonderful meeting really I I never prepare anything I just sit there in front of them and well we meditate together I could always do that cuz I just made a change many people want to come and meditate with me well god bless them the doors open more the merrier well then we have various sessions where I'm with them and we just don't talk about them something seems to happen some magic seems to flow and they go away well III get uplifted and we all end up as though we've known each other forever and and then des soluble bond well we go up on the hills or we do something nice outside are there lots of lovely things to do but even when the when it was raining week we can we've got a few options we can do something in the church well my old farms just down the road there so we don't look at my old farm now home it's a carpark a bit of a lesson in mystic forbearance isn't it but you're a bit beyond that and the lovely valleys did what is it always wars with sheep and sheep and a buzzard overhead and it's lovely so they have become really very important things these retreats not only for us fulfilling me but um but hopefully for the people that come and from what they say it's it's so something very powerful seems to happen something of deep significance it's difficult to put into words really but we're having them every month now and details are on the website and more we have the better we are getting at organising them and we got a string of various combinations that we can draw on so hopefully each one's getting better and we love to have you really genuinely deeply it's a privilege for us and I hope it is for you two to meet I know what it is you see we're meeting you know I keep talking and in the videos I you must get sick of it I keep on talking about this invisible one it's stillness this presence because when we meet people face to face in these retreats when people just come and see me one-to-one that's really what happens we meet in that oneness that spiritual oneness that transcends the separate you and me and find what all of us in our hearts long for is that perfect unity the ultimate completion that we all long for it's not just theory it's not just work it's it's a realizable fact and it can be found in experience even if we just touch the hem of this blessed state it's something that you never forget yeah now my dears feet on the floor feet on the floor [Music] total effortless love unfailing and forever [Music] you

Channel: Spiritual Unfoldment with John Butler

Views: 284,729

Rating: 4.8892889 out of 5

Keywords: asmr, awakening, bakewell, bob ross, christ, christian mystic, farmer, freedom, gentle, jesus, john butler, meditation, mr rogers, mystic, organic farmer, peace, relaxing, self realisation, sleep, soothing, spiritual awakening, spiritual healing, spiritual unfoldment, unintentional asmr, whispering

Id: VsK4QyGJJQI

Length: 45min 22sec (2722 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019