- There was a question somebody submitted, I don't have it here, but I remember it probably
asked by a young man or woman, I'm not sure. And he said, this is
somebody who was watching us. Hi. So, (audience laughs) (clears throat) so he said, when I listened to you, I have this strong compulsion
to become a spiritual teacher also. But when I listened to a
big, a great business leader, suddenly I have the compulsion
to become a great business leader. (audience laughs) What to do? (audience laughs) And my recommendation to you is to try the business leader first. (audience laughs) I also recommend Tony Robbins seminars, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's one aspect of life. It's I can do it, yeah! Do it! (audience laughs) Build up your energy. (audience laughs) And it's quite enlivening so it's not a bad place to
go to and try things out. There is a, if you say it, let's say
that he represents doing and I represent being,
but there is, as you know, the symbol of Yin Yang,
the intertwining, the two and in the, in the middle
of the one polarity, the Yin, there's a little dot and that's
what represents the other. And in the middle of the other, there's a little dot
that represents the Yang And so I have a little bit
of the other in me too, as you can see. (audience laughs) And I found to my amazement that Tony Robbins, I don't know when he started doing that, he has introduced short
periods of meditation into his seminars,
usually towards the end. And then he goes, and now
let's just be very quiet. Oh, so that's the other, the other one, the Yin is coming into the Yang. Well, that's good. Of course, ideally, in a human life, a human being, human
being, you remember how, what that word means. Those two words mean
you put them together. Human is the form that you are. And human is the doing
whatever you, the form does. The being is who you are in
your essence. So you are both, you are the being, the
consciousness, and you are the form that that consciousness takes. And the form that that
consciousness takes, will do things and think, and do, and act upon the world and be acted upon. So there's hardly any human... There may be some human beings
who are completely balanced between the human and the being who are in the being and the doing the human and the being, their core right in the middle. Most people are go a little bit that way, or a little bit more that way. Our civilization, as a whole, of course, has gone into the doing mode
very, very far to one extreme. So this, the civilization itself
is actually mentally ill because of that. And the, the connectedness with being
has been almost entirely lost. So it's a very fragile civilization, despite its many achievements. It's a little bit like when
you go into a supermarket where they sell fruit, you'd look at the oranges and they're, they're all, they look
so shiny and polished, and the tomatoes, they
look so shiny and polished, but often when you cut them open, they're completely dry
inside and tasteless. So that's a little bit our civilization, the surface appearance
is nice, nice and shiny. But if you look deeper,
you can say there is a, there's something that
is something fundamental that's not... That is missing there. And therefore the civilization, unless it returns to back to some kind of balance
between being and doing, cannot survive for that much longer. And that's why we are here. And, so predominantly
what we focus on here is the being side, because that's, we need to redress the balance
within the collective and in your personal life too, because every individual
conditioned by this society tends to live... It even starts
with little young children. They already chose to be
in the "just do and think and let's get going!" Okay. All the tension goes out and then they start to
have video games and stuff. And can't focus on anything for very long. That's a huge disability. Many, many young people
have that these days because of the influence
of many, many factors and especially video stuff and devices that they have, cannot focus on anything
for very long anymore, cannot give attention to
anything for very long, because the mind goes because that's what, when they watch video games
or even many movies, the scene changes every few seconds. And so if you cannot give
attention to something for a certain period of time, there's
never a flow of creativity. You cannot, because
creativity, you have to... Your attention needs
to rest upon something, and you need to give it
time and look and be with it and it becomes true. And then creativity flows. If a whole generation grows
up, that is unable to do that, then the civilization
cannot produce anything new. And it cannot even cope
with its problems anymore. Because even to cope with
problems in a good way, you need to be able to look
at a problem and be with it and then allow the greater intelligence to inspire you and then come up with a solution. So humans as I call it, they are lost in doing, lost in the mind. They're lost in thinking. And because thinking
is a kind of doing too, you're doing, you're thinking, what you are not. The thinking is doing stuff to you. You are, you're not even thinking. Thinking happens to you. Human say, "I think". They don't think. Thinking isn't autonomous
activity in their minds, or a reflection of the collective mind. They are not thinking, they
are being used by a thought, and their personal
thoughts are just an aspect of the collective thoughts. And they don't know that. So you are being thought, you don't think. (scattered audience laughter) And all that is doing, it's the doing mode. Those who are naturally more drawn towards being, they don't really fit
into our society at all. In older cultures, there
was some room for them. They could go, there were many
monasteries they could go to. And there were many jobs that actually did not require you to do a lot of doing. You could just be, there were simple jobs that you could do. And nowadays it's harder for the humans who have this natural
inclination towards being to fit into this world. Some of them are here now, but even those who are
very effective at doing eventually become frustrated and unhappy because they realize the emptiness of their doing. So, even those who have
become very successful doers encounter frustration and emptiness. Not the Buddhist emptiness, a
different kind of emptiness. And so society is... our civilization is
longing, without knowing it, is longing to return to the roots, to the being dimension. And that's why things like the strange videos on YouTube are becoming so popular, because this is one way of
getting a little bit of, of being and getting out of doing. And so you watch half an hour,
somebody handling an object. So lovely! (audience laughs) (water splashing)
