- That's habitual thought patterns that you identified
with, and that is karma, creates, in the external, confirmation that it is correct. So if you think the world
is full of evil people, you will meet many evil people. (bell dinging) Now, of course, everybody is born into a certain external environment, and also is born with
certain predispositions. They may be partly genetic, they may be other things, that a person is born
with certain patterns, in other words. We don't need to examine
where they come from, but as to see the fact
that the human being is first of all born into
a certain environment, which may be violent or it may be relatively peaceful, and the person is born
with inner patterns. You inherit certain, even
pain body is partly inherited. Some babies cry a lot, they have a relatively heavy pain body already in this world, doesn't mean they're
spiritually less advanced. The opposite may be the case,
which there's no knowing, other babies are relatively peaceful. And so there's a whole set
of conditioning then happens. You come into the environment
with certain predispositions, then the environment
conditions you further. And in all that, there's
no choice involved. There's just influences. And so you find yourself in this world with certain unconscious patterns that have become the conditioning
of who the person is, the unconscious conditioning. So karma, as I see it, is the unconscious conditioning
that runs your life, and that still applies to many humans. And karma is partly collective, you've been born into it, and partly personal, they come together. So really you can only understand karma not as an abstract subject
external to yourself, because then you get into
belief systems and philosophy. We are not going that way. You can only understand karma by observing yourself, and by observing, and then you will know many other things. But really if what you
want to understand karma, you need to look at yourself. And so I began to understand what karma is when something arose that was not part of karma at all. And really here we come to the key. The arising of consciousness, or presence, or spiritual awakening, is not part of karma. It is another dimension that breaks into the karmic realm. So you do not become awakened by accumulating, as they sometimes say
in the East, good karma. That's fine on this level. You can make the walls or the furniture in your present a little
bit more comfortable. But there is something
totally from beyond karma that can come into your life at any point within the wheel of karma and rebirth. Rebirth is across part of karma. The deeper meaning of rebirth
is identification with form. We don't need to even believe in transmigration, or whatever. You can look at rebirth in your own life every time you identify
with a thought that arises, which is form, you are
born into that thought, because identify, your
sense of self is in it. That's karma, you are reborn. Karma then is unconscious
identification with these patterns that you have inherited, the conditioned, complete identification of consciousness with the conditioned patterns. So consciousness is
dreaming one could say. This is why we use the word awakening in many spiritual traditions. Consciousness is awakening. Consciousness is in a dream-like state when you identified with
the unconscious patterns, and then you are condemned to rebirth. In fact, many times, every day you are reborn into a reaction, an emotional-mental reaction. No presence at all, just
rebirth into some form. Or you're reborn into thoughts that arise and you completely
believe in every thought, and then you act from those
thoughts and emotions, and the action creates further reactions, and the actions confirm to
you that you were right. If you have certain mind
patterns about, for example, that other people are basically dishonest, just one example of people, "People are so dishonest, they're all trying to
get something from me," that tends to confirm itself
in your life experience. You can try it out or you
may have experienced it before you became more conscious. That's habitual thought patterns
that you identified with, and that is karma, creates, in the external, confirmation that it is correct. So if you think the world
is full of evil people, you will meet many evil people, in other words, unconscious people. And even people who are on the brink or who are halfway between
unconscious and unconscious when you come together with them, your belief will pull
them into unconsciousness, and that's karma. So karma is the complete absence of conscious presence, and so it's automatic. It plays itself out. And time does not free you of karma, that is a misperception, that if you only spend enough time, eventually, you can become free of karma. Karma renews itself and repeats itself. It's a wheel. And so the only thing
that can free you of karma is the arising of presence. And how is it that for some person presence... I cannot tell you why. I only know that, at any point, in the wheel of karma
presence can come in. It can happen to a criminal
in prison, condemned to death. It can happen to somebody
who has never heard of anything spiritual. It can happen to somebody who has been meditating for 30 years, or not happen to some person who has been meditating for 30 years. So, in your own life, I can see from what you're saying, that presence has
already, I can sense that, presence has already come into your life. And presence frees you from
karma, not all at once. Karma has an enormous momentum, meaning the patterns in yourself, the thought patterns, the emotional patterns,
the reactive patterns, there's enormous momentum behind that. But as presence arises, gradually karma diminishes, and the energy behind it diminishes. And gradually you experience a fading out of those patterns. They become weaker. You are no longer completely
in the grip of those patterns. So as presence arises, there's a gradual fading out of karma. Not that it matters that much anymore, because once you are present, you can, as the previous
questionnaire said, when we were talking about
certain thoughts still arising, certain negative thoughts, that's still part of the karma. The old patterns, the unconscious
habit patterns inherited, they still arise. But it's no longer problematic and they no longer cause the suffering that they would've caused before, because they are seen in
the light of awareness. So the light of awareness arises, and in the light of awareness, the patterns no longer dominate your life. They no longer run your life. And if occasionally it
happens that the patterns do take over, then after a little while, your presence returns and to say, "Ah, well, there it was again." Pain body is part of karma, which may be strong in some people, not so strong in others. And so as presence arises, you are freed from karma. and then you have another completely different factor coming into your life. And so, for example, for a person to become free of collective karma, you need a considerable amount of presence for that to come in to remove, and it then will remove
you in one way or another, either internally, you find
yourself completely free, you might still live in a violent society, but internally you would be free. There is a possibility
you can have a holy man or woman living surrounded
by violence, it's possible. It's rare, but possible. Or very often it happens
that life removes you out of there and you find
yourself somewhere else. So let's say vast collective karma, for example, in the case of let's say
you have the Taliban there, you have all kinds of
unconscious movements. You had Soviet communism, you had national socialism in Germany. And for a person being born into that, and not being drawn into
that unconsciousness requires considerable presence. So not that many people, for example, in Germany when Hitler came to power, not many people were able to
remove themselves somewhere. Some artists, some writers, they left. They could see what was happening and they were strong enough not to be identified with the collective when there had been a
tradition of obedience to authority for hundreds of years, a tradition of following
your leader and so on. To take yourself out of
that collective karma requires considerable presence, but some people had it. So it is our destiny then to go beyond karma by being the receptacles for presence. All you can do to be helpful
in this world and help others is those people that you
come into contact with, everybody in this who is awakening will find that, sooner or later, they become a kind of teacher to others. And what a spiritual teacher does, the teacher points out the
possibility of awakening out of identification
with unconscious patterns, which means the spiritual teacher teaches you to go beyond karma. And so that is your function and will become increasingly
you will find in your life, whether you become a formal
teacher or an informal teacher. Formal meaning that you say,
"Okay, I'm giving a talk," or somebody invites you, and you give a talk, that
becomes formal teaching. For many years before this,
I became a formal teacher, I mean, it's not my identity,
it's just a functional thing. It would be terrible if I
saw myself as a teacher, it's not, any identity is an illusion, any form identity is an illusion. But as a functional thing,
I'm saying you become it. I for several years, the
teaching happened informally, on park benches at first, then in people's living rooms, then in little groups. And so gradually it grows, and some people will
continue to teach informally. So people you come into contact with, more and more people are
ready for spiritual awakening, which means spiritual awakening and stepping out of
karma is the same thing, and so many people will be drawn to you. Anybody who is going through
the awakening process is already a teacher. And the more you teach, teaching means you find yourself listening from spaciousness when somebody speaks, or asks a question, or tells
you about their problems, and then you may find yourself an answer comes out of that stillness
in which you listen, and that's the beginning of teaching. You don't have the sense that, "Okay, I'm going to
teach this person now," that's never it. You'll find that teaching is spontaneous. So you will help people to step out of identification
with unconsciousness, which means going beyond karma, because it's already
happening in your life. And this applies to everybody who is awakening and going
through the awakening process. (water serenely crashing onto boulders)
