(bell chimes) - "You and Krishnamurti both talk "about the importance
of choiceless awareness, "directly confronting
what is without judgment. "You also talk about
the primacy of presence "as a way to transcend thought, "the improper use of which is
the cause of our suffering. "Another teaching respected by many "celebrates thought and desire "as being responsible for our evolution "and the expansion of the universe. "While both teachings have much in common, "this appears to be an
important point of departure "that I cannot reconcile. "Can you help clarify?" Is that the same Jeff who
asked the previous question? Anyway, it doesn't matter It's the only one consciousness, so. (audience laughs) So there seems to be basically
two teachings, he says, and many people have
asked similar questions. One is, accept what is,
choiceless awareness, presence. The other one is using thought to create, to manifest, to transform. Are they separate? Can they be reconciled? As I mentioned the other day, the two represent the two
movements of the universe. One is into creation, multiplicity, increasing complexity of lifeforms. It experience itself as
that, (mimics whooshes) it loves to create. That's for sure, because
if you look around, even on this planet alone
how many lifeforms there are, all perceiving the universe
in a different way, or saying the universe, one consciousness, perceiving itself through
all these different forms in different ways. You could call it a dream,
you could call it reality. It doesn't matter, these are just words. And so, and then the
universe also wants to know its own source, and that's
the return movement. First there's the outward movement, and then there's the return movement. This might correspond to the
big bang, what scientists call, which the universe came out of nothing. Nobody knows what that is. It started from nothing and suddenly it expanded
and went into creativity and lifeforms began to multiply
over billions of years. And then the story goes,
some scientists say, and even on in ancient
Hindu mythology and others, there's a story that eventually it will come together again
and return to the one. In that case, that would
be like the in-breath and the out-breath of God, the entire universe. God breathes out and it, (exhales) and then it all returns back
to the source for some reason that we could not even fathom, and even if we even just
start thinking about it, what might the reason be,
you would never find it with a conceptual mind. Bt that seems to correspond to what we do because we have a heart that
also goes. (mimics whooshes) And we also breathe in and breathe out. And we also wake up in the morning and do all our activities, and at nighttime we go. (moans) (audience laughs) And then we go, oh. Now everything is
reflected on every level. You are a microcosm of
the entire universe. So if you observe yourself, if you observe how the heart works, how the breathing operates, how the sleep and wakefulness, dreamless sleep, dream state, the so-called wakeful state, which is not that wakeful for most people. But here we have similar, there may be that certainly is
a similar pattern everywhere. So I'm talking about
this because this is how the two movements are reconciled. The universe needs both. It needs the creativity. It needs also the stillness. And for humans, it's not enough to go unconsciously to the source. It's our destiny because it's
a destiny of the universe to consciously unite with
source, source consciousness. And that's why we are here. So, your life needs to be a balance, a dance between creating and not getting lost in your creations. What is the motivation for creation if you're already accepting
of the present moment, if you feel completely at one with the is-ness of the present moment? There are two reasons
why you take action here. One may be as the response to a situation that requires action. So a certain situation,
somebody may need help. You can sit at ease, contemplating nature, and suddenly there's a
human being who says, "Ah, help me." Do you sit there and say, "No, I'm too at ease
in the present moment." (audience laughs) So a situation, you'll respond
to whatever the situation, the present moment, requires you to do. You respond from within. I was in the lucky position
when I was a teenager, we lived in, I lived with my
dad in Spain for a few years, and he had gone to Spain to drop out and lead an alternative life,
and then he ran out of money. And then when I was there,
we had so little money, we had not even a fridge. I mean, almost everybody had a fridge. But there in the hot summer in Spain, no fridge, no radio, no
television, of course. He wouldn't even think of it. So basically just the minimum. And I wasn't dreadfully
unhappy because of that. To some extent I accepted it because I was still young enough. Children find it perhaps easier to accept situations that they go into. But normally if I lived
in a place like that now, I have no fridge, I have only basic things to live with, things get, I can't buy
anything in advance, I have to go shopping every day because everything goes
off immediately. (chuckles) I'd rather move than be here. You can be, you can accept that this is where I am right now. It can still be fine, but
you would start looking or I'd like to live somewhere else. You see, this situation has certain, it can have a preference,
and why not have, everybody has a preference. Some Buddhists might talk to you about or some masters say, "I have
no preference whatsoever," but they live in an ashram, so they'd rather be in an ashram than be on Wall Street and work there, so there must be some
preference. (audience laughs) So this is one thing is dealing with, responding to a situation
and having preferences and then taking action. Another one is bringing about something entirely new into this world. And that comes when you are able to become still enough so that you know what the universe or the one
consciousness wants you to do, if it wants you to do something. It may take a while before you know that. I lived for years doing relatively little except doing occasional
counseling sessions, sometimes only two a
week, and the years passed and I was just continuously
just in presence, on my bicycle, chopping
wood, carrying water, and the years passed. And I spent hours in
thoughtless awareness in London, sitting on the Hampstead Heath. (moans) Three hours later I go
home, having a little salad, and then having a
counseling session at five. Could live on one person a day, one counseling session a day. (chuckles) And I wondered, my mind
wondered sometimes, there must be something else
that I'm supposed to do. (audience laughs) And there was even slight moments of, what am I doing here? But there was nothing else
to do than be present, just be going back to Hampstead
Heath, sit there again. But there were long periods also of incredibly blissful states
of, that people noticed, even people who are not
tuned into spirituality particularly say, I can feel
something, what is that? They were great states,
emanation of peace, but I wasn't doing anything. It was just that, sometimes
waiters or waitresses, occasionally I went to little restaurants later if I found something, but still nothing. The universe still wasn't telling me what I was supposed to
do. (audience chuckles) And I believe the decisive change came, perhaps I should have
thought of that earlier, there was a, (audience laughs) I had moved out of London to Somerset and lived in Glastonbury,
the spiritual mecca that attracts all kinds of
weird people, including myself. (audience laughs) And just outside there's a village, just a few miles out of this
and I would sometimes go there, and there's an ancient,
like, the English villages that have their ancient church, sometimes a 1000 years old
and a few houses around it. There was an oak tree. I would go to an ancient oak tree in the middle of the field, magnificent, and I had a wonderful
relationship with that tree. (audience laughs) But that church that was always empty, I went into that church, and one day I went in, and
suddenly I had this impulse to say, I want acceleration now. I want, I knew there was
something for me to do. I clearly demanded acceleration
of my life purpose. And then I went home again. And for maybe three months, two or three months nothing happened, I had forgotten about it already, and then one day it came. It came when I woke up, and suddenly I knew as a
thought and a deeper knowing, I have to move to the west
coast of North America. Why? (audience laughs) I don't know. It wasn't just one day it stayed. The next day it was still there, the next week it was still
there, a week was still there. And then finally I had to leave. Couldn't not leave. If I had not left, I would have died. So that was the first step in
writing "The Power of Now", because I needed to be in the
energy field of the west coast for some reason to write it. And that's how the book
started, when a few weeks after arriving on the
west coast, it started. And then the acceleration,
it came more and more. After "The Power of Now" came out more, and then it became so much that I almost wanted to put the brake on, but it was, the power just grew and grew. But it came because for
years I went so deep within that eventually the outer
movement into creation, the outward creation, reflected the depths of years of going within,
into just into stillness and deep into stillness, so the outward creation
reflected the inward movement. It was just, it was as powerful out there as it was the power that
was in the inward movement. So you too will find that the more you align
yourself with the essence, the stillness within, the
unconditioned consciousness, the more the power will,
there might be a time gap, but hopefully not as
many years as in my case, there may be a time gap, but the power that is
within you that you sense when you become aware of yourself as the consciousness
then flows through you, and that is what creates through you, not the little ego anymore. So you don't create because you think, when I achieve this or that I'm going to be happy and fulfilled. No, the happiness and
the, well, happiness, something deeper than happiness, the fulfillment is already here now. The true creation cannot
come out of a neediness. That's egoic creation. That doesn't make you happy,
it'll make you unhappy. Whatever you create eventually
either will not satisfy you or make you unhappy. That comes out of a neediness. The egoic creation believes, I need to attract something to me. I need to attract this or I need to attract that into my life. The non-ego creation that consciousness uses
you as an instrument, uses this form as an instrument, comes out of the inner fullness. So the creation comes
from within to without. It creates the outward from within, rather than needing to attract
something from the outside or in language you might
sometimes express it that way. You might say, I attracted this
or that person into my life, but really, it's the other way around. You can only create after this fullness that you sense when you
are in touch with presence. (instrumental music) So if you discover within
yourself that a lot of the time, you are in a state of
lack, of insufficiency, of not enough, and you
feel that the answer to, the remedy is to be active in this world and achieve
and do as much as possible, then you will probably
find that ultimately that is not the answer
to your state of lack. In order to transcend, to go beyond your state of lack, of neediness, of not enough, spiritual practice and spiritual
realization is necessary. Focus on the realization of being. It's only there that you can go beyond that state of lack, which is ego. Go within and discover who or what you are beyond the person. (waterfall rushes)
