gain freedom from a pattern simply by watching

there is no mind

Seek the Source. Merge in It

Direct Experience of the Body

DIRECT EXPERIENCE OF THE BODY
(Contemplating the reality of the body guided by Rupert Spira)

"Allow the experience of the body to come to your attention. 

Drop the label 'body'. 

With our eyes closed and with no reference to thought or memory, we have no knowledge of either having or being a body. 

We are the new-born infant, just a field of sensitivity, pure openness, pure knowing or experiencing.

 And in the middle of this field of sensitivity, there is this tingling amorphous pulsating vibration, which we will later label 'my body'. 

Just stay with the raw experience without knowing anything about it."

"For instance are any of you now (unless you have a headache) actually experiencing the back of your head? 

Go to the part of your experience called 'the back of your head'.

 Is there something solid and dense there or is it just open and empty?

 Is there a head there? 

Are any of you experiencing a head? 

All there is is a vibration of knowing that may have a certain intensity, and due to your memory you say it is dense, it is solid. 

It is not. It's just a vibration of empty knowing. 

There's nothing dense there at all.
You're superimposing a memory on your experience.

 Okay so I grant there may be some tingling there but for most of us, there's no experience of the head at all. 

What about your shoulders, are any of you experiencing your shoulders at the moment? 

Unless you have a pain in your shoulder or on your back, for instance, can any of you experience your back?

You see if we stay with the experience of the body, unless we're in pain, it's mostly empty space with a few little tingling amorphous vibrations floating around, unless there's a physical pain or a contraction of feeling. 

But even if there's a contraction of feeling, there will just be a slight density in this area.

 Without reference to memory you have no idea that that intensity is jealousy or fear or anger, it's just a little vibration.

Are any of you at the moment experiencing your eyes? 

Do any of you know that you have eyes or ears?

There is the experience of hearing but that wasn't the question.

 If I were to ask you 'Are you experiencing hearing now?' You would all answer 'Yes.

 There is something in my experience that corresponds to the word 'hearing'.' 

But is there anything in your experience now that corresponds to the word 'ear'? 

Unless you have an earache, no. 

When you go to the place in your experience that you used to call 'ear', is it not mostly just emptiness?
Try to find your head now. 

What is your actual experience of your head? 

Is it not just the space in which your experience is appearing? 

You sense, period. 

You're not sensing something, you're just sensing. 

'I sense my jaws' is a label that can only be supplied if you refer to the past. 

All you can say is 'I sense'. 

But you have no idea what you're sensing. In fact you have no idea even that you are a self that is sensing. All you can say is 'there is sensing'.

The new-born infant - the reason I go back to a new-born infant is that the new-born infant cannot refer to the past - is experiencing sensing. 

It's experiencing something but it has no idea what it's experiencing, and it has no idea that it is a self that is experiencing. 

There is just sensing, just hearing, just seeing. 

And if the new-born infant were to touch the stuff out of which seeing, hearing, or sensing was made, without any past knowledge or idea of it and it were able to say what it is, it would say 'all that is there is experiencing or knowing.'

 It would have no knowledge of having a jaw or a head."

"Rupert Spira : there's no difference between a small child's experience and your experience. 

The only difference is that you interpret your experience through the filter of your past experiences.

 In other words, you overlay your past onto your current experience, and you seem to experience your current experience through the filter of your past interpretations. 

The new-born infant doesn’t interpret its experience.

 It just experiences its experience.

Questioner : so where does that take me to like illness, disabilities and things like that of the body?

Rupert Spira : so, close your eyes again. 

Evoke the new-born infant again for the only purpose that you’re not able to escape from the now into a past. 

You're not able to conceptualize your experience. 

All you know is your current experience. 

Now referring only to your current experience, do you have any knowledge of being ill? 

Does anyone in this room, referring only to their current experience, have any knowledge of being ill?

I do not mean to deny at a relative level illness and pain. 

And I certainly do not mean to suggest that we shouldn't take whatever steps are necessary at a relative level to take care of the body. If it is sick or in pain, of course we should.

I'm just giving you this direct access to the highest healing, which is the knowledge that what you are now, not what you might become, but what you are now, is always in perfect health.

But as I say, please don't think that I'm suggesting that one shouldn't take care of the body at a relative level, of course one should, nor am I denying the functioning of the body. I'm just upgrading the matter model to a consciousness model."

"It is true that you are that which sees, hears, etc. 

However, you, awareness, don’t see or hear through a body. 

In other words, awareness is not located in a body, looking out through the eyes, or behind the ears hearing. 

The idea that we see through the eyes or hear through the ears is simply another mistaken interpretation by thought superimposed upon the reality of our experience.

Let us take the experience of hearing.

 Normally thought conceptualizes a ‘me’ inside the head hearing a sound that is considered to be outside the head. 

Take a sound that you are hearing now, for instance, the traffic.

 And take the experience of the head, in which hearing is supposedly taking place.

 Our only experience of the head is a tingling mass of vibration.

 
Now, is it your actual experience that the sound of the traffic is taking place inside the tingling vibration we call 'the head’? 

Go directly to the experience.

 Or rather, is it your experience that the tingling vibration called 'the sound of traffic' and the tingling vibration called ‘the head’ both appear in awareness?

 
Or we can ask ourselves, do we experience the awareness that is hearing the sound of the traffic as being located in the tingling mass of vibration called the head? 

In other words, do we experience awareness inside a sensation but outside a perception?

In order to find the answer, try to look at this awareness.

 Do you know where to look for it?

 Can you see it or find it? 

No! 

Whilst awareness is undeniably present, it cannot be located anywhere. 

Therefore, it is our simple, direct experience that awareness is not located in the sensation we call 'the head', and therefore it is also our simple experience that hearing, which takes place in awareness, is also not located in the head.

 
Our only experience of the head is through sensing and our only experience of the sound of the traffic is through hearing, and sensing and hearing both take place in the same place, that is, in the placeless place of awareness. 

In fact, it is not even true to say that hearing and sensing take place in awareness. Rather, awareness, as it were, takes the shape of sensing and hearing from time to time.

 
Awareness then takes the shape of a thought which conjures up a fairy tale about an individual entity that lives inside the head, which hears a sound which supposedly takes place in an imagined space outside the head.

 
However, this fairy tale doesn’t change the fact of our experience, which is that there is only awareness, which sometimes takes the shape of thinking, sensing and perceiving, thereby giving birth to the appearance of the mind, body and world."

"Feeling the body in a way that is consistent with our understanding that the reality of the body is pure consciousness. 

We understand that, we all understand that now or we're very close to understanding it. But we don't just want to understand it, we want to feel it.

 We want to live our lives in a way that is consistent with this new understanding. 

We don't just want to think about non-duality when we're alone in the privacy of our home, we want to feel it.

Don't forget what we're doing is countering decades of conditioning, so don't expect this knotted feeling of 'me' in the body to evaporate one morning.

 It takes time. 

It takes some time and we do it over and over again, and each time we do it (the body may go back to the old feeling of being solid and dense, but it doesn't go all the way back, it only goes 90% the way back. And the next time it only goes 90%. And in time, over the months and years if we just do this for a while, the body just becomes more transparent.

We don't feel there's a whole well of old hurt living in the chest, dictating the way we think, feel and act. We feel that the body is washed clean of the tyranny of the separate self. 

And then your body becomes open and sensitive and you feel in touch with the environment, you don't feel defended."
Rupert Spira

Open Your Heart,Let Go

I AM the Substratum of All Existence

Samskaras Dissolving

We watch the mind

The time comes, in our evolution, when we truly understand what the mind really is. 

And we begin to observe it, realizing that it functions without us. 

We begin to watch the mind in action. 

We watch it making us depressed. 

We watch it making us angry. 

We watch it making us happy. 

We watch ourselves when we accomplish something great, and we think we're important. 

Just the watching alone causes you to go further in your evolution.

 For it shows you that I possibly cannot be the mind for I have been watching all this time.

 I have been watching my thoughts bring up the past and make me unhappy, bring fears into my life, as if something bad is going to happen in the future if I don't watch out. 

We've been watching the mind do this to us.

Then we finally say to ourselves, "Who is this watcher?

 Who is this person that has been watching the mind?" 

We honestly have to say, therefore, "I don't know. I don't know who I am.

 I have no idea who has been watching, but I have to admit ‘I’ have been watching. 

All these years I thought that when I said ‘I,’ I was referring to my mind. 

I believed my mind was ‘I.’

 But now as I watch myself getting angry, as I watch myself becoming depressed, or becoming happy, I realize that I am separate from my mind. 

Therefore, “Who am I? 

Where did I come from?

 It's amazing that I am able to watch my mind doing all these things to me.

 But now I know that there is an ‘I.’ 

Who is this I? 

I don't know. How can I find out?"

By becoming silent, through silence. 

By allowing my mind to empty itself of all thoughts, and as I keep on watching my mind in action, without responding, I notice something very interesting happening to me.

 I notice that I feel happier. 

I feel more peaceful and I feel more powerful. 

I notice that I've lost my fears, my frustrations, and even my searching for truth has slowed down, for I am beginning to understand that there is really nothing to search for. 

It's all here. 

Everything I've always wanted is here. 

Amazing discovery. 

Yet I still don't know who I am. 

But I'm beginning to understand that I do not have to know who I am. 

It is not necessary to know who I am.

 Do you follow? 

I doesn't have to know who it is. 

What an amazing discovery. 

And to the extent your mind becomes quieter and quieter, to that extent does your consciousness become revealed to you as absolute reality. 

Robert Adams

Eternal Now

*** When Will I Awaken? **

Many people still ask me, "Robert will I be enlightened in this life or do I have to go through many lives?

Will I awaken in this life?

Will I become free in this life or do I have to go on playing games like everybody else, making believe, when will I awaken?"

And it's very funny to me.

My answer is never!

You'll never awaken!

It's like the water in the mirage asking,

"When will I become real water?

How long do I have to be a mirage?

When will I become the real water?"

Of course it will never become the real water.

For the mirage can never become anything but a mirage.

It will always be a mirage.

So it is with us.

What you are can never be anything else.

For you do not exist as a body at all.

And if you do not exist as a body what can become self-realized?

In other words you have nothing to become self-realized with.

You cannot become self-realized it's impossible.

Forget about it.

Don't even think of it.

Self-realization has absolutely nothing to do with your body or your thoughts or your mind or your practices or your sadhanas or anything else.

Self-realization is the ultimate reality.

It is the pure awareness, the nirvana and that doesn't exist either.

So what exists?

There is no answer.

For what exists can never be known with a finite mind.

This is why we do the work from where we are.

We do not think about becoming self-realized or becoming liberated.

We simply wonder who we are.

We just ask ourselves, "Where does this body come from?

What appears to be a body?"

And we compare it to the water in the mirage.

It's an hallucination.

It has no validity.

In other words you have no existence whatsoever.

You have never had an existence.

Nothing exists.

Yet we appear to exist.

So what to do?

Nothing, there is nothing you can do about it.

That's just the way it is.

Do not try to change it.

Stay the way you are and keep still.

That is the best thing you can do.

Be happy just the way you are.

Of course the only way you can be happy is by keeping still and not reacting to things, by leaving everything alone and being yourself.

When I say, "Being yourself", I mean being you the way you are right now, nothing else.

The world of reality exists by itself.

It just is.

There is nothing you can do to change anything.

Do not try to change anything.

Do not work on yourself.

For every time you're working on yourself you are emphasizing that you're the self, the mortal self that needs to be worked at.

"just be yourself" the way you are right now, in this moment.

I'm not saying to be yourself last week or to be your self a week from now.

Be yourself right this moment, this second, this instant and you'll be safe.

Do not concern yourself how to be the self.

Do not concern yourself what you have to do to be the self.

Don't even wonder what it is to be the self.

Just be!

Do not question it.

Do not try to understand it.

You will always be the way you are, nothing will can ever change that.

So you might as well get on with that and be happy.

Suffering comes when you try to change yourself.

Suffering ensues when you try to develop moksha, liberation.

When you try to transcend yourself, then you suffer.

For you are trying to attain something that doesn't exist and it hurts.

Isn't it wonderful not to do anything.

Never try to attain a thing or become anything else.

What about pain, what about lack and limitation, what about poverty.

What about the rest of these things that exist?

It's all part of life.

Do not try to get rid of it.

Look at it, accept it, be happy with it and leave it alone.

What I'm really saying is, "Get your mind off yourself".

Stop thinking about yourself.

Stop thinking about anybody else.

Whatever is supposed to come to you will come to you.

Whatever you are supposed to have you will have.

Wherever you have to go you will go.

You have absolutely nothing to do with it.

So why not enjoy where you are right this moment.

Stop trying to change things.

The very trying makes them worse.

The body that you're wearing right now is an hallucination.

You are not that person whatsoever.

But because you appear as that person you go through many experiences of what that person has to go through.

Do not fight it.

Do not try to change it.

Leave everything alone.

You'll be very surprised at what happens if you leave everything alone.

But when you try to change bad for good you're fighting a losing battle for it cannot be done.

You may tell me of people who have used their mind to achieve things in the world, to heal themselves of disease, to heal themselves of lack or limitation, to become powerful beings through thinking.

Those things are only changes, temporary changes.

Do not try to be a human being.

Go beyond that.

You go beyond that by doing nothing.

Yet some of you do not understand and think you have to sit down like a lump and do nothing on the contrary.

When you're doing nothing you're doing something.

Something is being done.

Something will always be done by you.

Yet at the same time nothing is being done.

So the question is, "Is something being done or is nothing being done?" and there is no answer.

What do you want to achieve and why do you wish to achieve those things?

Only for your self aggrandizement.

An animal leads a normal life.

It cannot think like we do.

It goes through its life and when it's time to leave their life it leaves it peacefully, happily.

But as human beings we fight, trying to live forever.

Trying to maintain the same beauty we've always had, the same happiness, the same joy.

This is all a waste of energy.

All is well, just the way it is.

You are perfect just the way you are.

There is nothing that you have to do.

There is no-one you have to please.

There is no God that you have to appease.

You are the one.

All of these ideas that are going through your mind of people, places, things, Gods, are all you.

You are creating everything.

Everything that you can think about you're creating.

Everything comes out of yourself.

Just like you're dreaming.

The mistake we make is we try to awaken from the dream, the mortal dream, from this dream.

Yet who is to awaken from it?

The person that wants to awaken doesn't exist.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Nothing exists that has to do anything.

The person who wants to be free does not exist, has never existed.

The person who is looking for moksha does not exist.

Then again what does exist?

Total silence exists.

Pure profound silence.

Never try to comprehend these things.

For you're using the mind, you're using the cells that are the mind, that are connected to the cells of the universe and you make your life miserable by doing this.

There is no difference between you and a tree or a mountain, a sky or the ocean.

The whole universe is composed of hydrogen atoms.

So you're nothing but a hydrogen atom.

How does it feel to be a hydrogen atom?

See how you mind begins to think?

It's difficult for most of you to stay silent.

You are not required to understand a thing I say.

I speak utter nonsense.

It's all nonsense and some of you are taking it in so profoundly like it's important.

Who are you really?

I have no idea?

If you have an idea of who you are you've got a problem.

For you're not that at all.

Again we go back to the beginning when I opened up this sentence.

Who thinks they're something.

You can never be anything.

The 'you' that you think you are can never be a thing.

Always remember this.

The 'you' can never become anything.

The only freedom you really have is to be still and quiet and that is the only freedom you've got.

To be totally quiet.

Everything else is an hallucination, a lie.

So most of you want me to sit here and tell you lies.

Stop worrying.

Stop fretting.

Stop believing something can happen to you, to hurt you.

What you are was never born.

It knows nothing of birth.

The one that knows about birth and death doesn't exist.

So here we are together again.

Why do you come here?

If you have a reason for coming here it's the wrong reason.

There is no reason for doing anything at all.

(long silence)

~ Robert Adams ,When Will I Awaken?

Commen

Never be frightened again by anything.

You look at a situation, you watch it, you observe it, you never react, you leave it alone.

 And then you'll be given the power that you need, to handle it, to go through it, without thinking, without thoughts, without any commotion, without any noise. 

These are the things you must work on. 

Be that Self.

Never be frightened again by anything. 

If I can make this perfectly clear to you. 

Never allow anything in this world to ever frighten you. 

Allow things to unfold as they may. 

Remember you just watch and observe, hold on to the truth.

 Happiness will come of its own accord. 

When you hold on to the truth, when you do not react to life's conditions, person, place or thing, when you leave things alone and you stop fighting life, you're not giving up.

In the Western psychology, we're told that you never give up.

 We are taught to keep on fighting. 

But I'm telling you there is nothing to fight, and the only thing you're giving up is your ego. 

Western psychology has never gone beyond this.

Therefore they do not know of life beyond this. 

Western psychology works in the presumption that you are a body and a mind, so naturally they tell you never give up, fight to the end. Stick up for your rights.

But in the highest teachings of the truth we learn that you have no rights. 

You're giving up your body, your ego, your mind, and when this happens, you go beyond psychology.

 Something happens that psychiatry, psychology are not aware of whatsoever. 

And that is you rise to a higher dimension, where there is happiness, and peace, and compassion, and love, joy, that is naturally yours. 

You begin to feel these things instead of the things you felt before. 

Prior to this, when you were fighting life, when you were sticking up for your rights, when you were trying to get even, when you were working as an ego, you were never able to feel happiness or joy or peace. 

Only sometimes, when you won, when you got your point across, when you won an argument, when you won a fight, when you sued someone and won, you felt happy for a while, but it didn't last long, and you have to go through it again and again.

 But this is as far as the world goes.

 It doesn't know anything else but this.

 
What I'm saying to you, let go of everything. 

Do not hold on. 

Stand naked before God, without any crutches, without anything to hold on to. 

When you can do this, from this moment on you will begin to rise.

 And you will become aware that you are not the body, or the mind, or the world, or the universe, but you are effortless choiceless pure awareness. 

You are boundless space, infinite like the sky. 

You have become everything, and everything has become you. 

Work on yourself.
Robert Adams

For there is only one Self.

What we call consciousness is a word that implies your real nature, your real Self. 

Which is you right now.

 Right now you are the Self. 

Right now you are everything you want to be. 

Right this moment. 

You say to yourself, "No, I'm just a dumb human being," then you are.

 If that is what you want to call yourself.

 But no matter what you say to yourself. 

No matter what you do to yourself you can never change your real nature one iota.
You are Brahman, the absolute reality. 

No matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter how you act. 

You're still God.

But you are not God the way you feel yourself as a human being. 

You are God as all-pervading, without your mind, without your thoughts. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your life. 

You are wonderful, wonderful, perfect! 

Just the way you are.

Yet, some of you feel as if you practice for a year or two and now you feel stunted, you feel as if you cannot go any further. 

Then stop the practice!

 Do not force yourself to practice atma-vichara, self-inquiry. 

Do not force yourself to do anything. 

Stop, and be your self. 

Just be your self. 

Do not try to be anyone else, or anything else. 

Just be your self the way you are. 

When you can really be your self, then you will be the Self. 

For there is only one Self. 

There is not yourself and myself. T

here is the one Self. 

Perfect! Absolute! 

And you are that.
Robert Adams

Be not the do-er

I took out of Ramana Maharshi something that I’ll give you now:

“Work is no hindrance to realization. Doing things does not block you from realization. It is the sense of wrong identification that is the source of all your trouble. Get rid of the false identification.”

And what’s the false identification? 

That you are the doer.

 And you have all experienced from releasing that when you’re released, it happens.

 You’re not the doer. 

Like when Yogananda was sitting in a bed, he was very high, and trying to get his balance he raised his hand, and it went up effortlessly. 

When you’re not the doer and you want your hand to go up, it just floats up with no effort.

 In everything you do the same thing happens. 

No energy, no effort is necessary. 

So, being in action is no hindrance; the hindrance is identifying as being the limited body-mind, is identifying with the ego.

If you tried to do no action, you wouldn’t succeed, because your karma is driving you now into action. 

So if you tried to do nothing, you wouldn’t succeed. 

Whatever your karma is, you would do. 

So, trying to do nothing doesn’t help. 

Only releasing helps. 

And only releasing will get you all the way—as fast as you will do it.

 So, the action, rather than being a hindrance, is really a help. 

Because as you’re in action, you’re being pushed by your feelings, which bring up more feelings while you’re in action for you to release all your feelings.

 So you must do it in the world; you must do it in action. 

You cannot do it isolating. When you isolate you’ll just escape.

Every man is where he is by the law of his being; [his] thoughts have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. – James Allen (“As a Man Thinketh”; 1903)

So, the next major point to write down is “Whatever you do, do it to perfection.” 

That’s behaving like a master. 

Behaving like a master brings up the objections to it for your releasing. 

If you don’t do things to perfection, it’s because—actually, your destructiveness, your non-constructiveness, causes you to not do it to perfection. 

But if you make it a point to do it to perfection, up will come these feelings of “I can’t” for your releasing. 

So, make it a point to do whatever you’re doing very successfully. 

That word “perfection” might not be understood; “success” might be better understood. 

Whatever you do, you should be successful in doing it.

Q: I still get confused about the action part of it. You’re saying it’s effortless. You still—the body acts to [accomplish] it, but it’s without . . .

Lester: Yes, it’s without effort. It’s like floating through the air, floating through the thing. As I explained, if you wanted to lift your arm up, it takes no effort: it just floats up. No energy is required. So, effortlessness is when I say, “I am not the doer” and I let it happen. Another way of expressing it is letting go and letting God. But your actual experience is [that there is] no effort.

Q: That makes it a lot clearer, because the body could go through all of the actions of the day, doing things, and yet be effortless if we stay released.

Lester: Right. That’s it. I think the last time I read something that Ramana Maharshi said: “Action doesn’t stop one from realization; identifying as the doer does.”

So, bottom line, it all adds up to “I am my beingness.” And when you come from your beingness, you’ll just watch the bodies float around, including your own, exactly as you would watch them on a movie screen. And when bodies on a movie screen start shooting bullets and wiping each other out, you know it for what it is—just an imagined thing. There’s no death. You can imagine a death, but actually there’s no thing as death. Get rid of the image, get rid of the mind. And, again, you’ll never stop struggling until you go all the way to freedom.

Maybe we ought to continue where we left off last night. It was, “Be not the doer.” Who wants to be a door? (Laughter) So I’ll say, “Be not the door.” (Laughter)

And in general there were a lot of questions on what it means to “Be not the doer.”

 So I think I started off by saying, well, I told you to release to get everything you want.

 When you are released, you have no sense of doership—everything falls into line.

 When you are released you experience the sense of being not the doer.

 So that ought to connect for every one of you. 

When you’re completely released, it just happens with no effort.

 And so you just sit back and watch it happen, is the experiencing you go through.

 That’s being not the doer.

Now, you cannot go into inaction because of your karma. 

But you should use the action to grow by, and one of the big things is “Be not the doer.” Watch it happen. When you are being not the doer your sense is [that] you’re sitting in a theater watching the show go on. Do you have any question on the sense of being in action and being not the doer?

Q: I got to the point where even my will seems senseless.

Lester: It is, if you can “Be not the doer.”

 But if you cannot “Be not the doer” then will is useable. 

Will is effort; it’s making an effort to undo the effort.

 But there’s a power in you, it’s a willpower, where you can decree if you will. So that now willing is good, because you could will out the whole thing if you so decided. I have yet to see the first one do it.

Okay, so, what’s your question now?

Q: You just answered it. Thank you.

Lester: See, with Alan I was able to explain it relative to something that was going on. He wanted to make a preparation for somebody to do something that he would like them to do.

 And he asked me if I would call that [unintelligible] and I said, No. 

Well, in his idea you had to go “da, da, da, da” to get ready for it. 

My concept was, in a matter of thirty seconds I’ll have the whole thing completed when I see this person. 

Because I’m not the doer; it happens right away if I continue to be not the doer. 

If I am the doer then I gotta make preparations, I gotta do convincing, I gotta do asking—a lot of roundabout stuff. 

But when you’re not the doer, it’s the sense of letting go and letting God do it. 

You actually sit by and watch the body action go on, just as you would [watch] a moving picture of your body.

I think you have all experienced times when you were not the doer and you saw things happen, right? 

So you’ve all experienced it, and experience is the main thing that we need to use to learn. 

We cannot learn intellectually through the mind, through the head. 

The mind is the enemy; the mind is the obstacle. 

The only way we can learn is through experiencing. 

And each and every one of you has experienced being not the doer and watching the thing fall into line without effort. All right.

 Now, the thing to accomplish is to have that happen all the time.

 When it did happen, was it miserable? (Laughter)

 But every time you make an effort, you’re unhappy. 

You’re striving, you’re struggling.

 Every time you make an effort, you’re not happy. 

But the moment you let go of identifying yourself as being the body, things are effortless. I should say “body-mind.” 

They’re opposite sides of the same coin, the mind and the body. The mind says the body is there.

(8:00) So, experiencing, there’s something you should know: the difference between the intellect and experiencing. 

Everything you accumulate even now in the intellect, you’re going to have to drop [in order] to get that intellect, that mind, totally quiet. 

Everything you’ve learned in your lifetimes, you’re going to dump. 

Afterwards, you’re omniscient. 

Afterward, you’re in touch with your beingness, which is omniscient.

 And what thinking would omniscience require? If everything is known, what is there to think about? So you shift from using your head, which is your block, to quieting that head, so only your beingness remains. And everything is effortless, everything falls perfectly into line, and you’re in the perfect happiness that there is, that’s really your basic nature.

You should be unattached in your works. But for an unpractised man it is an uncommon thing to reach the point where no crowd and no task hinders him. 

It calls for diligent application, so that God is ever present to him and shines before him completely unveiled at all times and in all company.

 Skillful diligence is required for this, and in particular two things. 

One is that a man has shut himself off well inwardly, so that his mind is on its guard against the images without, that they remain without and do not unfittingly keep company and walk with him, and that they find no resting-place in him. The second is that he should not let himself be caught up by his internal imagery, whether it be in the form of pictures or lofty thoughts or outward impressions or whatever is present to his mind; nor [should he let himself] be distracted nor dissipate himself in their multiplicity. A man should train and bend all his powers to this and keep his inner self present to him. – Meister Eckhart, The Talks of Instruction (Walshe)

(10:49) I remember in the early days they’d put a tape recorder on, and it meant to me, “Oh, I wish that were not on.”

Question: It would stop.

Lester: No, it would go, and when I’d replay it, it was blank.

 There’s nothing out there but your picture. And for some years, when anyone took a picture of me, I wasn’t in the picture.

 And if it was a crowd, everyone would come out but me. Until Neva Dell [phonetic] came to town and had a national conference here. She kind of put me up high, and “Oh, I must be in the picture.” 

So I said, “Oh, Lord, it had better come out this time.” And from that time on, my picture comes out now when people shoot it.

 But it’s just another example that there’s nothing out there but your consciousness. I know what did it: “Oh, I’m not that body. That body is just imagination.”

 And so it didn’t come out on the negative—nor on the positive.

Q: I have a question. How do I get myself into the place of being not the doer?

Lester: Practice. Of course, the very best way, as I said before, is releasing. 

When you’re released, you’re not the doer.

 And that bothers you sometimes!

Q: Well, it seems that things happen. You don’t really—

Lester: That’s it—things happen. You don’t have to do them. . . . But the sense is that released sense: you let go, and it happens, in the sense of letting go and letting God.

 You don’t have to do a thing. 

You just watch it happen. 

You’re not the doer.

 Does that answer your question? It’s experiential. 

You’re not going to get it in the head; you’re going to get it in the experience.

the seer, seen, seeing