In fact, in most cases  it keeps you stuck in it, bloc king real
change. Anything that is done with negative ener gy will become
contaminated by  it and in time g ive rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is  contag ious: Unhappin ess
spreads more easily than a p hysical disease. Through the law of
resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless  they are
immune — that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? Y ou are
responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are
responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner
pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution. How can we dr op negativity , as you suggest? By drop ping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you ar e holding
in your hand? How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that
you are carrying? By recognizing that you don’ t want to suf fer the pain
or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it. Deep un consciousness, such as the pain-body , or other deep pain , such as
the loss  of a loved one, usually needs to be transmuted  through
acceptance combined with the light of your presence — your sustained
attention. Many patterns in ordin ary unconsciousness, on the other hand,
can simply be dropped once you know that you don’ t want them and
don’ t need them anymore, once you realize that you have a choice, that
you are not just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. All this implies that
you are able to access the power of Now . W ithout it, you have no choice. If you call some emotions negative, ar en’ t you cr eating a mental polarity
of good and bad, as you explained earlier? No. The polarity was created at an earlier stage when your mind judged
the present moment as bad; this judgment then created the negative
emotion. But if you call some emotions negative, ar en’ t you r eally saying that they
shouldn’ t be ther e, that it’ s not okay to have those emoti ons? My
understanding i s that we shou ld give ourselves permission to have
whatever feelings come up, rather than judge them as bad or sa y that we
shouldn’ t have them. It’ s okay to feel r esentful; it’ s okay to b e angry ,
irritated, moody , or whatever — otherwise, we get into r epr essi on, inner
conflict, or denial. Everything is okay as it is. Of course. Once a mind pattern,  an emotion, or a reaction is ther e, accept
it. Y ou were not  conscious enough to have a choice in the matter . That’ s
not a judgment, just a fact. If you had  a ch oice, or realized that you do
have a choice, would you choose suf fering or joy , ease or unea se, peace
or confli ct? W ould you choose a  thought or feeling that cuts you of f from
your natural state of well-being, the joy of life within? Any such feeling I
call negative, which simply means bad. Not in the sense th at “Y ou
shouldn’ t have done that,” but just plain factual bad, like feeling sick in
the stomach. How is it possible that humans killed in excess of one hundred million
fellow humans in the twentieth century alone?4 Humans inflicting pain
of su ch magnitude on one anoth er is beyond anything you can imagine. And that’ s not t aking into account the mental, emotional and physical
violence, the torture, pain, and cruelty they continue to inflict  on each
other as well as on other sentient beings on a daily basis. Do t hey act in this way because they are in touch with their natural state,
the j oy of life within? Of course not. Only people who are in a deeplynegative state, who feel very bad indeed, would create such a reality as a
reflection of how they feel. Now they are engaged in destroying nature
and the planet t hat sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Hum ans are a
dangerously ins ane and very sic k species. That’ s not a judgme nt. It’ s a
fact. It is also a  fact that the sanity is  there underneath the madness. Healing and redemption are available right now . Coming back specifically to w hat you said — it is certainly true that
when you accept your resentme nt, moodiness, anger , and so on, you are
no longer forced to act them out blindly , and you are less likely to project
them on to other s. But I wonder if you are not deceiving yourself. When
you hav e been practicing acceptance for a while, as you have, there
comes a point w hen you need to go on to the next stage, where those
negative emoti ons are not created anymore. If you don’ t, your
“acceptance” just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to
continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen its sense of
separation from other people, your surroundings, your here and now . As
you kno w , sepa ration is the ba sis for the ego’ s sense of identity . T rue
acceptance wou ld transmute those feelings at once. And if y ou really
knew de eply that everything is “ okay ,” as you put it, and which of course
is true, then would you have th ose negative feelings in the fir st place? W ithout judgme nt, without resistance to what is , they would not arise. Y ou hav e an idea in your mind that “everything is okay ,” but de ep down
you don ’ t really believe it, and so the old mental-emotional patterns of
resistance are still in place. That’ s what makes you feel bad. That’ s okay , too. Are you  defending your right to be unconscious, your right to suf fer? Don’ t w orry: N obody is going to take that away from you. O nce you
realize t hat a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry on
eating that food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sick? WHEREVER YOU ARE, BE THERE T OT ALL Y
Can you give some mor e examples of or dinary unconsciousness? See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought,
about a situation you find yours elf in, what other people do or say , your
surroundings, your life situatio n, even the weather . T o complain is
always nonacceptance of what is . It inva riably c arries an unconscious
negative char ge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power . So change the situ ation by
taking a ction or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the
situation or accept it. All else is madness. Ordinary uncon sciousness is always linked in some way with denial of
the Now . The Now , of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting
your her e and now? Some peo ple would always rather be somewhere
else. Their “here” is never good  enough. Through self-observation, find
out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally . If
you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy , you
have thr ee options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or
accept it  totally . If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must
choose one of those three options, and you must choose no w . Then
accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity . No psychic
pollution. Keep your inner space clear . If you take any action — leavin g or changing your situation —  drop the
negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight i nto what
is required is more ef fective than action arising out of negativity . Any act ion is often better than no action, especially if you h ave been
stuck in  an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake , at least
you learn something, in which  case it’ s no longer a mistake. If you
remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking
action? Acknowledge the fear , watch it, take your attention in to it, be
fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your
thinking. Don’ t let the fear rise up into your mind . U se the power  of the
Now . Fear cannot prevail against it. If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now , and
you can’ t remove yourself from  the situation, then accept your here and
now totally by d ropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy  self that
loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longersurvive. This is called surrender . Surrender is not weakness. There is
great st rength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritua l power . Through surrend er , you will be free internally of the situation. Y ou may
then fin d that the situation changes without any ef fort on your part. In
any case, you are free. Or is there som ething that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now . Alternatively , completely accept your inactivity ,
laziness, or passivity at this mo ment, if that is your choice. Go into it
fully . Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully
and con sciously , you will soon come out of it. Or maybe yo u won’ t.
Either way , there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity . Are you  stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is
reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being “here” but
wanting to be “ there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the
future. I t’ s a split that tears you apart inside. T o create and live with such
an i nner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn’ t
make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, wor k fast, or
even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without
resisting the present. As you mo ve, work, run — do it totally . E njoy the
flow of ener gy , the high ener gy of that moment. Now you are n o longer
stressed, no longer splitting y ourself in two. Just moving, running,
working — and enjoying it. Or y ou can drop the whole thing and sit on a
park ben ch. But when you do, w atch your mind. It may say: “Y ou should
be working. Y ou are wasting time.” Observe the mind. Smile at it. Does the past ta ke up a great deal of your attention? Do you fr equently
talk and  think about it, either po sitively or negatively? The great things
that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences, or your victim
story an d the dreadful things tha t were done to you, or maybe what you
did to someone else? Are your thought processes creating guilt, pride,
resentment, anger , regret, or self-pity? Then you are not only reinforcing
a false sense of self but also helping to accelerate your body’ s aging
process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche. V erify this
for y ourself by o bserving those around you who have a strong tendency
to hold on to the past. Die to the past every moment. Y ou don’ t need it. Only refer to it when it
is ab solutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this mo ment andthe fullness of Being. Feel your presence. Are you worried? Do you ha ve many “what if” thoughts? Y ou are
identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary
future si tuation a nd creating fear . There is no way that you can cope with
such a situation,  because it does n’ t exist. It’ s a mental phantom. Y ou can
stop this health-and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the
present moment. Become aware of your breathing. Feel the air flowing
in an d out of your body . Feel y our inner ener gy field. All that you ever
have to deal wi th, cope with, in real life — as opposed to imaginary
mind projections — is this moment . A sk yourself w hat “problem”  you
have rig ht now , not next year , to morrow , or five minutes from no w . What
is w rong with th is moment? Y ou can always cope with the Now , but you
can never cope with the future — nor do you have to. The answer , the
strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you  need it,
not before, not after . “One da y I’ll make it.” Is your g oal taking up so much of your attention
that you  reduce the present mom ent to a means to an end? Is it taking the
joy out of your doing? Are you  waiting to start living? If you develop
such a mind pat tern, no matter what you achieve or get, the pre sent will
never be  good enough; the future will always seem better . A perfect
recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and nonfulfillment, don’ t you agree? Are you a habitual “waiter”? How much of your life do you spend
waiting? What I call “small-sca le waiting” is waiting in line at the post
of fice, in a traf fic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to
finish w ork, and so on. “Lar ge-scale waiting” is waiting for the next
vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly
meaningful relat ionship, for success, to make money , to be imp ortant, to
become enlightened. It is not un common for people to spend the ir whole
life waiting to start living.W aiting is a state of mind. Basically , it means that you want the future;
you don ’ t want the present. Y ou don’ t want what you’ve got, and you
want w hat you haven’ t got. W ith every kind of waiting, you
unconsciously c reate inner conflict between your here and no w , where
you don ’ t want to be, and the projected future, where you wa nt to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the
present. There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. Y ou
can imp rove you r life situation, but you cannot improve your life. Life is
primary . Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete,
perfect. Y our life situation co nsists of your circumstances and your
experiences. Th ere is nothing wrong with setting goals and st riving to
achieve things. The mistake lies  in using it as a substitute for the feeling
of life, for Bein g. The only poin t of access for that is the Now . Y ou are
then like an ar chitect who pays no attention to the foundation of a
building but spends a lot of time working on the superstructure. For example, many people are w aiting for prosperity . It cannot come in
the f uture. When you honor , ack nowledge, and fully accept your present
reality —  where you are, who you are, what you are doing righ t now —
when yo u fully accept what you  have got, you are grateful for what you
have got, grateful for what is , grateful for Being. Gratitude for the
present moment and the fullness of life now  i s true prosperity . It cannot
come in  the future. Then, in tim e, that prosperity manifests for you in
various ways. If y ou are dissa tisfied with what you have got, or even frus trated or
angry ab out you r present lack, th at may motivate you to become  rich, but
even if you do m ake millions, you will continue to experience the inner
condition of lack, and deep dow n you will continue to feel unfulfilled. Y ou may  have many exciting experiences that money can buy , but they
will com e and go and always l eave you with an empty feeling and the
need for  further physical or psychological gratification. Y ou won’ t abide
in Being and so feel the fullness of life now that alone is true prosperity . So give up waiti ng as a state of mind. When you catch yourself  slipping
into waiting . . . snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be,
and enjoy being. If you are pre sent, there is never any need for you to
wait for anythin g. So next time somebody says, “Sorry to have kept youwaiting,” you can reply , “That’ s all right, I wasn’ t waiting. I was just
standing here enjoying myself — in joy in my self.”
These are just a few of the habitual mind strategies for denying the
present moment that are part of ordinary unconsciousness. They are easy
to overlook because they are so much a part of normal living: the
background static of perpetual  discontent. But the more you practice
monitoring your inner mental-emotional state, the easier it will be to
know when you have been trapped in past or future, which is to say
unconscious, an d to awaken ou t of the dream of time into the  present. But bew are: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives
on ti me. It knows that the present moment is its own death and  so feels
very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try
to keep you trapped in time. THE INNER PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE’S JOURNEY
I can see the truth of what you ar e saying, but I still think that we must
have purpose on our life’ s journey; otherwise we just drift, and purpose
means futur e, doesn’ t it? How do we r econcile that with living in the
pr esent? When you are on a journey , it is certainly helpful to know where you are
going or at least  the general direction in which you are moving, but don’ t
for get: T he only  thing that is ultimately real about your journ ey is the
step that you are taking at this moment. That’ s all there ever is. Y our life ’ s journ ey has an outer purpose and an inner purpose. The outer
purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you
set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies fu ture. But
if yo ur destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take
up so much of your attention t hat they become more important to you
than the  step you are taking now , then you completely miss the journey’ s
inner purpose, which has nothing to do with wher e  you are going or what
you are doing, but everything to do with how . It has nothing to do with
future bu t every thing to do with  the quality of your consciousne ss at this
moment. The outer purpose belongs to the horizontal dimension of spaceand time ; the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the
vertical dimension of the timeless Now . Y our outer journey may contain
a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking
right now . As y ou become more deeply aware of this one s tep, you
realize t hat it already contains within itself all the other steps a s well as
the destination. This one step then becomes transformed into an
expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality . It will have
taken yo u into Being, and the lig ht of Being will shine through it. This is
both the purpose and the fulfillment of your inner journey , the journey
into yourself. Does it matter whether we ac hieve our outer purpose, whether we
succeed or fail in the world? It will matter to you as long as you haven’ t realized your inner  purpose. After that, the ou ter purpose is j ust a game that you may continue to play
simply because you enjoy it. It i s also possible to fail completely in your
outer pu rpose an d at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other wa y around, which is actually more common: outer riches
and inner poverty , or to “gain the world and lose your soul,” as Jesus
puts it. Ultimately , of course, every  o uter purpose is doomed to “f ail”
sooner or later , simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence
of al l thi ngs. Th e sooner you rea lize that your outer purpose can not give
you lasti ng fulfi llment, the better . When you have seen the limitations of
your ou ter purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it
should make you happy , and you make it subservient to your inner
purpose. THE P AST CANNOT SUR VIVE IN YOUR PRESENCEY ou men tioned that thinking or talking about the past unnecessarily is
one of the ways  in which we avoid the pr esent. But apart fr om  the past
that we r emember and per haps identify with, isn’ t ther e anothe r level of
past within us that is much mor e deep-seated? I am talking about the
unconscious past that conditions our lives, especially thr ough early
childhood experiences, per haps even past-life experiences. And then
ther e is our cultural conditioni ng, which has to do with wher e we live
geographically and the historical time period in which we live. All these
things d etermine how we see th e world, how we r eact, what we think,
what kind of r ela tionships we have, how we live our lives. How could we
ever bec ome con scious of all that or get rid of it? How long w ould that
take? And even if we did, what would ther e be left? What is left when illusion ends? There is  no need to investigate the unconscious past in you ex cept as it
manifests at this moment as a thought, an emotion, a desire, a reaction,
or an external event that happens to you. Whatever you need to know
about th e unconscious past in you, the challenges of the present will
bring it out. If you delve into th e past, it will become a bottomless pit:
There is always more. Y ou may think that you need more time to
understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future
will eve ntually f ree you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present
can free  you of the past. More t ime cannot free you of time. Access the
power of Now . That is the key . What is the power of Now? None o ther than the power of your presence, your consc iousness
liberated from thought forms. So deal with the  past on the level of the present. The more atten tion you
give to the past,  the more you ener gize it, and the more likely y ou are to
make a “self” out of it. Don’ t misunderstand: Attention is esse ntial, butnot to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give att ention to
your beh avior , to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and
desires a s they occur in the prese nt. Ther e’ s  the past in you. If you can be
present e nough t o watch all thos e things, not critically or analytically but
nonjudgmentally , then you are dealing with the past and diss olving it
through the power of your presence. Y ou cannot find yourself by going
into the past. Y ou find yourself by coming into the present. Isn’ t it helpful to understand the past and so understand why we do
certain things, r eact in certain w ays, or why we unconsciously cr eate our
particular kind of drama, patterns in r elationships, and so on? As you  become more conscious of your present reality , you may
suddenly get certain insights as  to why  your conditioning functions in
those particular ways — for e xample, why your relationships follow
certain patterns — and you may remember things that happen ed in the
past or see them more clearly . That is fine and can be helpful, but it is not
essential. What is essential is your conscious presence. That  dissolves the
past. Th at is the transformative agent. So don’ t seek to understand the
past, but be as present as you can. The past cannot survive in your
presence. It can only survive in your absence.CHAPTER FIVE
T H E  S T A T E  O F  P R E S E N C E
IT’S NOT WHA T YOU THINK IT IS
Y ou kee p talkin g about the state of pr esence as the key . I think I
understand it intellectually , b ut I don’ t know if I have ever truly
experienced it. I wonder — is it what I think it is, or is it something
entir ely differ ent? It’ s not what you think it is! Y ou can’ t think about presence,  and the
mind can’ t understand it. Understanding presence is being  present. T ry a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “ I wonder
what my next thought is going to be.” Then become very alert and wait
for the next thou ght. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. Wha t thought
is going to come out of the mouse hole? T ry it now . W ell? I had to wait for quite a long time befor e a thought came in. Exactly . As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you a re free of
thought. Y ou are still, yet hig hly alert. The instant your c onscious
attention sinks below a certain l evel, thought rushes in. The men tal noise
returns; the stillness is lost. Y ou are back in time. T o t est t heir deg ree of presence, some Zen masters have been k nown to
creep up on their students from behind and suddenly hit them with a
stick. Quite a shock! If the student had been fully present and in a state
of al ertness, if he had “kept his loin girded and his lamp burning,” which
is one of the analogies that Jesus uses for presence, he would have
noticed the master coming up from behind and stopped him or stepped
aside. But if he were hit, that w ould mean he was immersed in thought,
which is to say absent, unconscious. T o s tay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply roote d within
yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag
you along like a wild river . What do you mean by “r ooted within yourself”? It m eans to inh abit your body fully . T o always have some of your
attention in the inner ener gy fie ld of your body . T o feel the body from
within, so to speak. Body awareness keeps you present. It anchors you in
the Now (see chapter 6 ). THE ESOTERIC MEANING OF “W AITING”
In a sense, the state of presenc e could be compared to waitin g. Jesus
used the analogy of waiting in s ome of his parables. This is not the usual
bored or restless kind of waiting that is a denial of the present a nd that I
spoke about already . It is not a w aiting in which your attention i s focused
on some  point in the future and t he present is perceived as an undesirable
obstacle that prevents you fro m having what you want. There is a
qualitatively dif ferent kind of waiting, one that requires your totalalertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not
absolutely awak e, absolutely still, you will miss it. This is the  kind of
waiting Jesus talks about. In tha t state, all your attention is in the Now . There is none left for daydreaming, thinking, remembering, anticipating. There is no tensi on in it, no fear , just alert presence. Y ou are pre sent with
your wh ole Being, with every cell of your body . In that state, the “you”
that has a past a nd a future — the personality , if you like — is hardly
there an ymore. A nd yet nothing of value is lost. Y ou are still essentially
yourself. In fact, you are more fully yourself than you ever were before,
or rather it is only now  that you are truly yourself. “Be like a serva nt waiting for th e return of the master ,” says Jesus. The
servant does not know at what hour the master is going to com e. So he
stays aw ake, alert, poised, still, lest he miss the master ’ s arrival. In
another parable,  Jesus speaks of the five careless (unconscious) women
who do not have  enough oil (co nsciousness) to keep their lamps burning
(stay present) and so miss the br idegroom (the Now) and don’ t get to the
wedding feast (enlightenment). These five stand in contrast to  the five
wise women who have enough oil (stay conscious). Even the  men who wrote the Go spels did not understand the me aning of
these parables, so the first misinterpretations and distortions crept in as
they were written down. W ith subsequent erroneous interpretations, the
real meaning was completely lost. These are parables not abou t the end
of th e w orld but about the end of psychological time. They po int to the
transcendence of the egoic mind and the possibility of living in an
entirely new state of consciousness. BEAUTY ARISES IN THE STILLNESS OF YOUR PRESENCE
What you have j ust described is something that I occasionally ex perience
for brief moments when I am alone and surr ounded by natur e.
 
Y es. Zen  maste rs use the word  satori  to  describe a flash of insight, a
moment of no-mind and total presence. Although satori  is not a lasting
transformation, be grateful whe n it comes, for it gives you a  taste of
enlightenment. Y ou may , indeed, have experienced it many times withoutknowing what it is and realizing its importance. Presence is needed to
become aware of the beauty , the majesty , the sacredness of nature. Have
you eve r gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, a westruck
by t he absolute stillness and i nconceivable vastness of it? Have you
listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest? Or to the song of a blackbird a t dusk on a quiet summer evening? T o
become aware of such things, th e mind needs to be still. Y ou ha ve to put
down fo r a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and
future, a s well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see,
hear but not hear . Y our total presence is required. Beyond the beauty of the extern al forms, there is more here: so mething
that cannot be named, someth ing inef fable, some deep, inner , holy
essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty , this inner essence
shines through somehow . It only reveals itself to you when you are
present. Could it be that this nam eless essence and your presence are one
and the same? W ould it be there  without your presence? Go de eply into
it. Find out for yourself. When you experienced those m oments of presence, you likely didn’ t
realize th at you were briefly in a  state of nomind. This is because the gap
between that state and the influx of thought was too narrow . Y our satori
may only have lasted for a few seconds before the mind came in, but it
was ther e; otherwise, you would not have experienced the beauty . Mind
can neither recognize nor create  beauty . Only for a few seconds, while
you were completely present, was that beauty or that sacredness there. Because of the narrowness of that gap and a lack of vigilance and
alertness on your part, you were probably unable to see the fundamental
dif ference between the perception, the thoughtless awareness of beauty ,
and the naming  and interpreting of it as thought: The time ga p was so
small th at it seemed to be a sing le process. The truth is, however , that the
moment thought came in, all you had was a memory of it.The wider the time gap between perception and thought, the more depth
there is to you a s a human being , which is to say the more consc ious you
are. Many pe ople ar e so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature
does not really exist for them. They might say , “What a pretty flower ,”
but that’ s just a  mechanical mental labeling. Because they are  not still,
not pres ent, the y don’ t truly se e the flower , don’ t feel its essence, its
holiness — just as they don’ t know themselves, don’ t feel their own
essence, their own holiness. Because we live in such a mind-dominated culture, most mo dern art,
architecture, music, and literatur e are devoid of beauty , of inner essence,
with ver y few exceptions. The reason is that the people who cre ate those
things ca nnot —  even for a moment — free themselves from their mind. So they are never in touch with  that place within where true creativity
and beauty arise. The mind lef t to itself creates monstrosities, and not
only in art gal leries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial
wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness. REALIZING PURE CONSCIOUSNESS
Is pr esence the same as Being? When you become conscious o f Being, what is really happening is that
Being becomes conscious of itself. When Being becomes conscious of
itself — that’ s presence. Since Being, consciousness, and life are
synonymous, we could say that presence means consciousness becoming
conscious of itself, or life attaining self-consciousness. But don’ t get
attached to the words, and don’ t make an ef fort to understand this. There
is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present. I do understand what you just said, but it seems to imply that Being, the
ultimate transce ndental r eality , is not yet complete, that it is under going
a pr ocess of development. Does God need time for personal gr owth? Y es, but  only as seen from the limited perspective of the m anifested
universe. In the Bible, God declares: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,
and I am the living One.” In the timeless realm where God dwel ls, which
is also your  home, the begin ning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega,
are one, and the essence of everything that ever has been and ever will be
is et ernally present in an unmani fested state of oneness and perfection —
totally beyond anything the human mind can ever imagine or
comprehend. In our world of seemingly separate forms, however ,
timeless perfection is an inconceivable concept. Here even
consciousness, w hich is the lig ht emanating from the eternal Source,
seems to be subject to a process of development, but this is du e to our
limited perception. It is not so in absolute terms. Nevertheless, let me
continue to speak for a moment about the evolution of consciousness in
this world. Everything that exists has Bein g, has God-essence, has some d egree of
consciousness. Even a stone has rudimentary consciousness; otherwise, it
would not be, and its atoms and molecules would disperse. Ever ything is
alive. Th e sun, the earth, plants, animals, humans — all are expressions
of consciousness in varying degrees, consciousness manifesting as form. The world arises when consciou sness takes on shapes and forms , thought
forms and material forms. Loo k at the millions of life forms on this
planet alone. In the sea, on land, in the air — and then each life form is
replicated millions of times. T o what end? Is someone or something
playing a game, a game with form? This is what the ancient  seers of
India asked themselves. They saw the world as lila , a kind of divine
game th at God is playing. The individual life forms are obviously not
very imp ortant in this game. In the sea, most life forms don’ t survive for
more tha n a few minutes after being born. The human form turn s to dust
pretty qu ickly to o, and when it is gone it is as if it had never bee n. Is that
tragic or cruel? Only if you create a separate identity for each  form, if
you for g et that its consciousness is God-essence expressing itself in
form. But you d on’ t truly know  th at until you realize your own God-
essence as pure consciousness. If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth
certificate, tell him about his f amily history , and two minutes later hegets eate n by another fish — th at’ s tragic. But it’ s only tragic  because
you projected a separate self where there was none. Y ou got hold of a
fraction of a dy namic process, a molecular dance, and made a  separate
entity out of it. Consciousness takes on the disguise of forms until they re ach such
complexity that it completely loses itself in them. In present-day humans,
consciousness is  completely identified with its disguise. It only knows
itself as form an d therefore lives in fear of the annihilation of its  physical
or psyc hological form. This is the egoic mind, and this is where
considerable dysfunction sets in . It now looks as if something had gone
very wro ng som ewhere along the line of evolution. But even this is part
of lila , t he divine gam e. Finally , the pressure of suf fering created by t his
apparent dysfunction forces consciousness to disidentify from form and
awakens it from its dream of for m: It regains self-consciousness , but it is
at a far deeper level than when it lost it. This pro cess is explained by Je sus in his parable of the lost s on, who
leaves h is father ’ s home, squanders his wealth, becomes destitute, and is
then forced by his suf fering to return home. When he does, his father
loves him mor e  than before. The son’ s state is the same as it was before,
yet not the sam e. It has an added dimension of depth. The parable
describes a journey from unconscious perfection, through apparent
imperfection and “evil” to conscious perfection. Can you now se e the deeper and  wider significance of becoming present
as t he watcher of your mind? Whenever you watch the mind, you
withdraw consciousness from mind forms, and it then becomes what we
call the  watcher or the witne ss. Consequently , the watcher — pure
consciousness beyond form — becomes stronger , and the mental
formations beco me weaker . When we talk about watching the mind we
are pers onalizing an event that is truly of cosmic significance: Through
you, consciousn ess is awakening out of its dream of identifica tion with
form and withdrawing from form. This foreshadows, but is already part
of, an event th at is probably still in the distant future as far as
chronological ti me is concerned. The event is called — the en d of the
world.When conscious ness frees itself from its identification with physical and
mental forms, it becomes wh at we may call pure or enlightened
consciousness, or presence. This has already happened in  a few
individuals, and it seems destine d to happen soon on a much lar g er scale,
although there is no absolute guarantee that it will  hap pen. Most h umans
are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with
their mi nd and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from
their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience
increasing confu sion, conflict, violence, illness, despair , madne ss. Egoic
mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don’ t get of f, you will go
down with it. The collective eg oic mind is the most dangerous ly insane
and dest ructive entity ever to in habit this planet. What do you think will
happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged? Already for most humans, the only respite they find from their own
minds is to occasionally revert to a level of consciousness below thought. Everyone does that every night during sleep. But this also happens to
some e xtent through sex, alcohol, and other drugs that suppress
excessive mind activity . If it weren’ t for alcohol, tranquilizers,
antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all consumed in
vast quantities, the insanity of th e human mind would become even more
glaringly obviou s than it is already . I believe that, if deprived of their
drugs, a lar ge part of the p opulation would become a danger to
themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you  stuck in
dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old
mind structures and the emer gence of higher consciousness. While
individual users may get some relief from the daily torture inflicted on
them by their minds, they are prevented from generating enough
conscious presence to rise above thought and so find true liberation. Falling b ack to a level of consc iousness below mind, which is the pre-
thinking level of our distant ancestors and of animals and plants, is not
an optio n for us. There is no wa y back. If the human race is to survive, it
will have to g o on to the next stage. Consciousness is evolving
throughout the universe in billions of forms. So even if we didn’ t make
it, this wouldn’ t  matter on a cosmic scale. No gain in consciousness isever lost , so it w ould simply express itself through some other f orm. But
the very fact tha t I am speaking here and you are listening or rea ding this
is a clear sign that the new consciousness is  gaining a footh old on the
planet. There is nothing personal in this: I am not teaching you. Y ou are
consciousness, and you are listening to yourself. There is an Eastern
saying: “The teacher and the tau ght together create the teaching.” In any
case, the  words in themselves are not important. They are not t he T ruth;
they only point to it. I speak from presence, and as I speak, you  may be
able to join me in that state. Alth ough every word that I use has a history ,
of cours e, and comes from the p ast, as all language does, the words that I
speak to you no w are carriers of the high-ener gy frequency of p resence,
quite apart from the meaning they convey as words. Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence, so when you  read this
or listen to me speak, be aware of the silence between and underneath the
words. Be aware of the gaps. T o listen to the silence, wherever  you are,
is an easy and direct way of be coming present. Even if there is noise,
there is always some silence u nderneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you. Only
the stillness in you can perceive the silence outside. And what is stillness
other than presence, consciousness freed from thought forms? Here is the
living realization of what we have been talking about. CHRIST : THE REALITY OF YOUR DIVINE PRESENCE
Don’ t get attached to any one  word. Y ou can substitute “Ch rist” for
presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God-essence
or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only d if ference
between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your in dwelling
divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas
presence means your awakened  divinity or God-essence. Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if you
realize that there is no past or future in Christ. T o say that Christ was  orwill be  i s a contradicti on in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived
two tho usand years ago and re alized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: “Before Abraha m was, I am.” He did not say: “I already
existed b efore A braham was born.” That would have meant that he was
still with in the dimension of time and form identity . The words I am  used
in a sentence t hat starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a
discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like statement of
great profundity . Jesus attempted to convey directly , not through
discursive thoug ht, the meaning of presence, of self-realization. He had
gone be yond th e consciousness  dimension governed by time, into the
realm o f the timeless. The dim ension of eternity had come into this
world. E ternity , of course, does not mean endless time, but no time. Thus, th e man Jesus became C hrist, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God’ s se lf-definition in the Bible? Did God say , “I have
always been, and I always will be?” Of course not. That would have
given reality to past and future. God said: “ I AM THA T I AM .” N o tim e here,
just presence. The “second coming” of Christ is a transformation of  human
consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure
consciousness, n ot the arrival o f some man or woman. If “Christ” were
to return  tomorrow in some externalized form, what could h e or she
possibly say to you other tha n this: “I am the T ruth. I am  divine
presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now .”
Never personal ize Christ. Don’ t make Christ into a form identity . A vatars, divine mothers, enlight ened masters, the very few that are real,
are not special as persons. W ithout a false self to uphold, def end, and
feed, th ey are more simple, m ore ordinary than the ordinary man or
woman. Anyone  with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant or ,
more likely , not see them at all. If you are drawn  to an enlightened teacher , it is because there i s already
enough presence in you to recognize presence in another . There were
many pe ople who did not recogn ize Jesus or the Buddha, as there are and
always h ave bee n many people w ho are drawn to false teachers. Egos aredrawn to  bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can
recognize light. So don’ t believ e that the light is outside you or that it
can only  come through one particular form. If only your ma ster is an
incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is
identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no
matter how well disguised. Use the master ’ s presence to ref lect your own identity beyond name and
form ba ck to you and to become more intensely present your self. Y ou
will soo n realize  that there is no “mine” or “yours” in presence. Presence
is one. Group work can also be help ful for intensifying the light of your
presence. A group of people c oming together in a state of presence
generates a collective ener gy fie ld of great intensity . It not only raises the
degree of presence of each member of the group but also helps to free the
collective human consciousness from its current state of mind
dominance. This will make the state of presence increasingly more
accessible to individuals. Howe ver , unless at least one member of the
group is already firmly established in it and thus can hold the ener gy
frequency of that state, the eg oic mind can easily reassert itself and
sabotage the group’ s endeavors. Although group work is invaluable, it is
not e nough, and you must not come to depend on it. Nor must you come
to depend on a teacher or a master , except during the transitional period,
when you are learning the meaning and practice of presence.CHAPTER SIX
T H E  I N N E R  B O D Y
BEING IS YOUR DEEPEST SELF
Y ou spo ke earlier about the im portance of having deep r oots within or
inhabiting the body . Can you explain what you meant by that? The bod y can become a point of access into the realm of Being. Let’ s go
into that more deeply now . I am still not quite sur e if I fully understand what you mean by  Being. “W ater? What do you mean by that? I don’ t understand it.” This is what
a fish would say if it had a human mind. Please s top trying to understand Being. Y ou have already had significant
glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little
box and  then put a label on it. It cannot be done. It cannot be come an
object of knowledge. In Being, subject and object mer ge into one. Being ca n be felt  as the ever -present I am  t hat  is beyond n ame and form. T o feel and thus to know that you ar e  and to abide in that deeply rooted
state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free. Fr ee fr om what? Free fro m the illusion  t hat  you  are nothing more than your physical body
and you r mind. This “illusion o f the self,” as the Buddha calls it, is the
core error . Free from fear  in  its countles s disguises as t he inevitable
consequence of that illusion — the fear that is your constant torm entor as
long as you derive your sense of self only from this ephemeral and
vulnerable form. And free from sin , which  is the suf fering you
unconsciously inflict on yoursel f and others as long as this illus ory sense
of self governs what you think, say , and do. LOOK BEYOND THE WORDS
I don’ t like the wor d  sin. It implies that I am being judged and found
guilty . I can understand that. Over the centuries, many erroneous views and
interpretations have accumulated around words such as sin , due to
ignorance, misunderstanding, or a desire to control, but they co ntain an
essential core of truth. If you are unable to look beyond such
interpretations a nd so cannot recognize the reality to which the word
points, t hen don ’ t use it. Don’ t get stuck on the level of words. A word is
no m ore than a  means to an end. It’ s an abstraction. Not unlike a
signpost, it points beyond itself. The word honey  isn’ t honey . Y ou can
study and talk a bout honey for as long as you like, but you won’ t really
know  i t until y ou taste  it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less
important to you. Y ou won’ t be attached to it anymore. Similarly , you
can talk  or think about God  continuously for the rest of your life, but
does tha t mean you know or have even glimpsed the reality to which the
word points? It really is no more than an obsessive attachment to a
signpost, a mental idol. The reve rse also  applies: If, for  whatever reason, you disliked the word
honey , t hat might prevent you from e ver tasting it. If you had a strong
aversion to the word God , which is a negative form of attachment, youmay be denying not just the wo rd but also the reality to which it points. Y ou would be cutting yourself of f from the possibility of experiencing
that reality . All this is, of cou rse, intrinsically connected wi th being
identified with your mind. So, if a word doesn’ t work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it
with one that does work. If you don’ t like the word sin , the n call it
unconsciousness or insanity . That may get you closer to the truth, the
reality behind the word, than a  long-misused word like sin , and leaves
little room for guilt. I do n’ t l ike those  wor ds either . T hey imply that ther e is somethin g wr ong
with me. I am being judged . Of course there is something w rong with you — and you are not being
judged. I don’ t mean to  of fend you personally , but do you not belong to the
human race that killed over on e hundred million members of its own
species in the twentieth century alone? Y ou mean guilt by association? It is not a questi on of guilt. But as long as you are run by the egoic mind,
you are part of the collective in sanity . Perhaps you haven’ t looked very
deeply i nto the human conditio n in its state of dominance by the egoic
mind. Open your eyes and see the fear , the despair , the greed, and the
violence that are all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suf fering on
an unim aginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict
on e ach other as well as on other life forms on the planet. Y ou don’ t need
to cond emn. Just observe. That is sin. That is insanity . That is
unconsciousness. Above all, do n’ t for get to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there.FINDING YOUR INVISIBLE AND INDESTRUCTIBLE
 REALITY
Y ou said  that identification with  our physical form is part of the  illusion,
so how can the body , the phys ical form, bring you to a r ealization of
Being? The body that you can see and touch cannot take you into Being. But that
visible and tangible body is only an outer shell, or rather a limited and
distorted perception of a deeper reality . In your natural state of
connectedness with Being, this deeper reality can be felt every moment
as the invisible inner body , the animating presence within you. So to
“inhabit the body” is to feel the  body from within, to feel the life inside
the body and thereby come to know that you are beyond the outer form. But that is only  the beginning of an inward journey that will take you
ever mo re deeply into a realm of great stillness and peace, ye t also of
great power and vibrant life. At first, you may only get fleeting glimpses
of it, but through them you will begin to realize that you are not just a
meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between
birth and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and
ultimate annihilation. Underneath your outer form, you are connected
with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be
conceived or spoken of — yet I  am speaking of it now . I am speaking of
it not to give yo u something to believe in but to show you how  you can
know it for yourself. Y ou are cut of f from Being as long as your mind takes up all your
attention. When  this happens — and it happens continuously for most
people — you are not in yo ur body . The mind absorbs all your
consciousness and transforms it into mind stuf f. Y ou cannot stop
thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. Y our
whole sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity . Y our
identity , as it is no longer rooted in Being, becomes a vulnerable and
ever -needy mental construct, which creates fear as the predominant
underlying emotion. The one thing that truly matters is then missingfrom your life: awareness of your deeper self — your invis ible and
indestructible reality . T o become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from
the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual
journey . It will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously had
been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking. A very ef fective way of
doing this is si mply to take t he focus of your attention aw ay from
thinking and direct it into the b ody , where Being can be felt in the first
instance as the i nvisible ener gy field that gives life to what you  perceive
as the physical body . CONNECTING WITH THE INNER BODY
Please t ry it now . Y ou may find it helpful to close your eyes for this
practice. Later on, when “being in the body” has become natural and
easy , thi s will no longer be nece ssary . Direct your attention into the body . Feel it from with in. Is it alive? Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and
feet — in your abdomen, your chest? Can you feel the subtle ener gy field
that perv ades th e entire body a nd gives vibrant life to every or gan and
every ce ll? Can  you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a
single field of ener gy? Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body
for a few mom ents. Do not st art to think about it. Feel it. The more
attention you give it, the clearer and stronger this feeling will become. It
will feel  as if ev ery cell is becoming more alive, and if you have  a strong
visual sense, you may get an image of your body becoming l uminous. Although such an image can help you temporarily , pay more attention to
the feeli ng than to any image th at may arise. An image, no matter how
beautiful or powerful, is already defined in form, so there is less scope
for penetrating more deeply . The feel ing of your inner body is formless, limitless, and unfat homable. Y ou can always go into it more deeply . If you cannot feel very  much at
this stag e, pay attention to what ever you can  f eel . Pe rhaps th ere is just a
slight tingling in your hands or feet. That’ s good enough for the moment. Just focus on the feeling. Y our body is coming alive. Later , we willpractice some more. Please open your eyes now , but keep some attention
in the inner ener gy field of the body even as you look around t he room. The inne r body lies at the thresh old between your form identity and your
essence identity , your true nature. Never lose touch with it. TRANSFORMA TION THROUGH THE BODY
Why have most r eligions conde mned or denied the body? It seems that
spiritual seekers  have always r e gar ded the body as a hindrance  or even
as sinful . Why have so few seekers become finders? On t he l evel of the body , humans are very close to animals. All the basic
bodily functions — pleasur e, pain, breathing, eating, drinking,
defecating, sleeping, the drive to find a mate and procreate, and of course
birth and  death — we share with  the animals. A long time after their fall
from a state of grace and oneness into illusion, humans suddenly woke
up i n what seemed to be an an imal body — and they found this very
disturbing. “Don ’ t fool yourself. Y ou are no more than an animal.” This
seemed to be th e truth that was  staring them in the face. But it  was too
disturbing a truth to tolerate. Adam and Eve saw that they we re naked,
and they became afraid. Uncons cious denial of their animal nature set in
very quickly . The threat that they might be taken over by powerful
instinctual drives and revert back to complete unconsciousness was
indeed a very re al one. Shame a nd taboos appeared around certain parts
of the body and bodily functions, especially sexuality . The light of their
consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their
animal n ature, to  allow it to be  and even enjoy that aspect of th emselves
— let alone to go deeply into it to find the divine hidden within it, the
reality w ithin the illusion. So they did what they had to do. They began
to d isassociate from their body . They now saw themselves as having  a
body , rather than just being it.When religions arose, this disassociation became even more pronounced
as th e “you are not your body” b elief. Countless people in East and W est
throughout the ages have tried to find God, salvation, or enlightenment
through denial of the body . This took the form of denial of sense
pleasures and of sexuality in  particular , fasting, and other ascetic
practices. They even inflicted p ain on the body in an attempt to  weaken
or p unish it bec ause they regarded it as sinful. In Christianity , this used
to be called mortification of the flesh. Others tried to escape from the
body by entering trance states o r seeking out-of-body experiences. Many
still do. Even the Buddha is said to have practiced body denial through
fasting a nd extr eme forms of a sceticism for six years, but he  did not
attain enlightenment until after he had given up this practice. The fact  is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or
fighting the body or through an out-of-body experience. Although such
an experience can be fascinating  and can give you a glimpse of  the state
of liberation from the material f orm, in the end you will always have to
return to  the body , where the essential work of transformati on takes
place. T ransformation is thr ough  the bod y , not away from it. Thi s is why
no tr ue master h as ever advocated fighting or leaving the body , although
their mind-based followers often have. Of the ancient teachings concerning the body , only certain fragments
survive, such as Jesus’ s statement that “your whole body will be filled
with ligh t,” or they survive as m yths, such as the belief that Jesus never
relinquished his  body but remained one with it and ascen ded into
“heaven” with it. Almost no one to this day has understood those
fragments or the hidden meanin g of certain myths, and the “you are not
your body” belief has prevailed universally , leading to body denial and
attempts to escape from the b ody . Countless seekers have thus been
prevented from attaining spi ritual realization for themsel ves and
becoming finders. Is it pos sible to r ecover the lost teachings on the significance of  the body
or to r econstruct them fr om the existing fragments? There is no need for that. All spiritual teachings originate from the same
Source. In that sense, there is and always has been only one master , who
manifests in many dif ferent form s. I am that master , and so are you, once
you are able to a ccess the Source within. And the way to it is thr ough the
inner body . Although all spiritual teachings originate from the same
Source, once they become v erbalized and written down they are
obviously no more than collections of words — and a word is nothing
but a signpost,  as we talked about earlier . All such teachings are
signposts pointing the way back to the Source. I h ave already s poken of the T ru th that is hidden within your body , but I
will sum marize for you again the lost teachings of the masters — so here
is an other signpost. Please ende avor to feel your inner body as you read
or listen. SERMON ON THE BODY
What you perceive as a dense physical structure called the body , which is
subject to disease, old age, and d eath, is not ultimately real — is not you. It is a m isperception of your e ssential reality that is beyond birth and
death, a nd is due to the limita tions of your mind, which, ha ving lost
touch w ith Bein g, creates the b ody as evidence of its illusory belief in
separation and to justify its stat e of fear . But do not turn away from the
body , for within that symbol of impermanence, limitation, and death that
you per ceive as the illusory creation of your mind is concealed the
splendor of your essential and immortal reality . Do not turn your
attention elsewhere in your search for the T ruth, for it is nowhere else to
be found but within your body . Do n ot fight ag ainst the body , for in doing so you are fighting against
your own reality . Y ou ar e  you r body . The body that you can see and
touch is  only a thin illusory ve il. Underneath it lies the invisi ble inner
body , the doorway into Being, into Life Unmanifested. Through the
inner body , you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested One Life
— b irthless, deathless, eternally  present. Through the inner body , you are
forever one with God. HA VE DEEP ROOTS WITHIN
The key  is to be  in a state of permanent connectedness with y our inner
body — to feel  it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform
your life. The more consciousness you direct into the inner body , the
higher i ts vibrational frequency  becomes, much like a light that grows
brighter as you turn up the dimmer switch and so increase the  flow of
electricity . At this higher ener gy level, negativity cannot af fect you
anymore, and you tend to attr act new circumstances that reflect this
higher frequency . If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be
anchored in the Now . Y ou won’ t lose yourself in the external w orld, and
you won’ t lose y ourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and
desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’ t take you over . Please examine where your attention is at this moment. Y ou are listening
to me, or you are reading these words in a book. That is the focus of your
attention. Y ou are also periphe rally aware of your surroundings, other
people, and so on. Furthermore, there may be some mind activity around
what you are hearing or reading , some mental commentary . Y et there is
no need for any of this to absorb all  your attention. See if you can be in
touch with your inner body at the same time. Keep some of your
attention within . Don’ t let it all flow out. Feel your whole bo dy from
within, a s a single field of ener g y . It is almost as if you were listening or
reading with your whole body . Let this be your practice in the days and
weeks to come. Do n ot g ive all your attention away to the mind and the external world. By all means focus on what you  are doing, but feel the inner body at the
same tim e whenever possible. Stay rooted within. Then observe how this
changes your state of consciou sness and the quality of what you are
doing. Whenever you are waiting, whe rever it may be, use that time to  feel the
inner body . In t his way , traf fic jams and lines become very e njoyable. Instead of mentally projecting yourself away from the Now , go more
deeply into the Now by going more deeply into the body .The art of inner -body awareness  will develop into a completely new way
of li ving, a state  of permanent c onnectedness with Being, and will add a
depth to your life that you have never known before. It is  easy to stay present as th e observer of your mind when  you are
deeply rooted within your body . No matter what happens on the outside,
nothing can shake you anymore. Unless you stay present — and inhabiting your body is al ways an
essential aspect of it — you wi ll continue to be run by your m ind. The
script in your head that you learned a long time ago, the conditioning of
your mind, will dictate your thinking and your behavior . Y ou may be free
of it  for brief intervals, but rarely for long. This is especially true when
something “goes  wrong” or ther e is some loss or upset. Y our co nditioned
reaction will then be involuntar y , automatic, and predictable, fueled by
the one basic emotion that underlies the mind-identified state of
consciousness: fear . So w hen such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go
within at once a nd focus as muc h as you can on the inner ener gy field of
your bod y . This  need not take long, just a few seconds. But you need to
do it  the  momen t that the challe nge presents itself. Any delay w ill allow
a co nditioned mental-emotional reaction to arise and take y ou over . When you focus within and feel the inner body , you immediately become
still and  present as you are withdrawing consciousness from the mind. If
a r esponse is required in that situation, it will come up from th is deeper
level. Ju st as the sun is infinite ly brighter than a candle flame, there is
infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind. As long as you are in conscious contact with your inner body , you are
like a tree that is deeply rooted in the earth, or a building with a deep and
solid fo undation. The latter analogy is used by Jesus in the generally
misunderstood p arable of the two men who build a house. One man
builds it  on the sand, without a foundation, and when the sto rms and
floods come, the house is swept away . The other man digs deep  until he
reaches the rock, then builds his house, which is not swept awa y by the
floods. BEFORE YOU ENTER THE BODY , FORGIVEI f elt very uncomfortable when I tried to put my attention on the inner
body . Th er e wa s a feeling of agitation and some nausea. So I haven’ t
been able to experience what you ar e talking about . What you felt was a lingering emotion that you were probably  unaware
of, u ntil you star ted putting some attention into the body . Unless you first
give it some atte ntion, the emotion will prevent you from gaining access
to the inner body , which lies at a deeper level underneath it. Attention
does not mean that you start thinking  about it. It means to just observe
the emotion, to feel it fully , and so to acknowledge and accept i t as it is. Some emotions are easily identi fied: anger , fear , grief, and so on. Others
may be much harder to label. They may just be vague feelings o f unease,
heaviness, or constriction, halfw ay between an emotion and a physical
sensation. In any case, what matters is not whether you can attach a
mental label to it but whether you can bring the feeling o f it into
awareness as much as possible. Attention is the key to transformation —
and full  attention also implies acceptance. Attention is like a beam of
light — the fo cused power of your consciousness that tr ansmutes
everything into itself. In a fully functio nal or ganism, an emotion has a very short life span. It is
like a momentar y ripple or wave  on the surface of your Being. W hen you
are not in your body , however , an emotion can survive inside you for
days or weeks, or join with other emotions of a similar frequency that
have mer ged and become the p ain-body , a parasite that can li ve inside
you for years, feed on your en er gy , lead to physical illness, a nd make
your life miserable (see chapter 2 ).
_OceanofPDF.com_The_Power_of_Now__A_Guide_to_Spiritual_Enl_-_Eckhart_Tolle.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        In fact, in most cases  it keeps you stuck in it, bloc king real
change. Anything that is done with negative ener gy will become
contaminated by  it and in time g ive rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is  contag ious: Unhappin ess
spreads more easily than a p hysical disease. Through the law of
resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless  they are
immune — that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess. Y ou are
responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are
responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner
pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution. How can we dr op negativity, as you suggest. By drop ping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you ar e holding
in your hand. How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that
you are carrying. By recognizing that you don’ t want to suf fer the pain
or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it. Deep un consciousness, such as the pain-body, or other deep pain, such as
the loss  of a loved one, usually needs to be transmuted  through
acceptance combined with the light of your presence — your sustained
attention. Many patterns in ordin ary unconsciousness, on the other hand,
can simply be dropped once you know that you don’ t want them and
don’ t need them anymore, once you realize that you have a choice, that
you are not just a bundle of conditioned reflexes. All this implies that
you are able to access the power of Now. W ithout it, you have no choice. If you call some emotions negative, ar en’ t you cr eating a mental polarity
of good and bad, as you explained earlier. No. The polarity was created at an earlier stage when your mind judged
the present moment as bad; this judgment then created the negative
emotion. But if you call some emotions negative, ar en’ t you r eally saying that they
shouldn’ t be ther e, that it’ s not okay to have those emoti ons. My
understanding i s that we shou ld give ourselves permission to have
whatever feelings come up, rather than judge them as bad or sa y that we
shouldn’ t have them. It’ s okay to feel r esentful; it’ s okay to b e angry,
irritated, moody, or whatever — otherwise, we get into r epr essi on, inner
conflict, or denial. Everything is okay as it is. Of course. Once a mind pattern,  an emotion, or a reaction is ther e, accept
it. Y ou were not  conscious enough to have a choice in the matter. That’ s
not a judgment, just a fact. If you had  a ch oice, or realized that you do
have a choice, would you choose suf fering or joy, ease or unea se, peace
or confli ct. W ould you choose a  thought or feeling that cuts you of f from
your natural state of well-being, the joy of life within. Any such feeling I
call negative, which simply means bad. Not in the sense th at “Y ou
shouldn’ t have done that,” but just plain factual bad, like feeling sick in
the stomach. How is it possible that humans killed in excess of one hundred million
fellow humans in the twentieth century alone. 4 Humans inflicting pain
of su ch magnitude on one anoth er is beyond anything you can imagine. And that’ s not t aking into account the mental, emotional and physical
violence, the torture, pain, and cruelty they continue to inflict  on each
other as well as on other sentient beings on a daily basis. Do t hey act in this way because they are in touch with their natural state,
the j oy of life within. Of course not. Only people who are in a deeplynegative state, who feel very bad indeed, would create such a reality as a
reflection of how they feel. Now they are engaged in destroying nature
and the planet t hat sustains them. Unbelievable but true. Hum ans are a
dangerously ins ane and very sic k species. That’ s not a judgme nt. It’ s a
fact. It is also a  fact that the sanity is  there underneath the madness. Healing and redemption are available right now. Coming back specifically to w hat you said — it is certainly true that
when you accept your resentme nt, moodiness, anger, and so on, you are
no longer forced to act them out blindly, and you are less likely to project
them on to other s. But I wonder if you are not deceiving yourself. When
you hav e been practicing acceptance for a while, as you have, there
comes a point w hen you need to go on to the next stage, where those
negative emoti ons are not created anymore. If you don’ t, your
“acceptance” just becomes a mental label that allows your ego to
continue to indulge in unhappiness and so strengthen its sense of
separation from other people, your surroundings, your here and now. As
you kno w, sepa ration is the ba sis for the ego’ s sense of identity. T rue
acceptance wou ld transmute those feelings at once. And if y ou really
knew de eply that everything is “ okay,” as you put it, and which of course
is true, then would you have th ose negative feelings in the fir st place. W ithout judgme nt, without resistance to what is, they would not arise. Y ou hav e an idea in your mind that “everything is okay,” but de ep down
you don ’ t really believe it, and so the old mental-emotional patterns of
resistance are still in place. That’ s what makes you feel bad. That’ s okay, too. Are you  defending your right to be unconscious, your right to suf fer. Don’ t w orry: N obody is going to take that away from you. O nce you
realize t hat a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry on
eating that food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sick. WHEREVER YOU ARE, BE THERE T OT ALL Y
Can you give some mor e examples of or dinary unconsciousness. See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought,
about a situation you find yours elf in, what other people do or say, your
surroundings, your life situatio n, even the weather. T o complain is
always nonacceptance of what is. It inva riably c arries an unconscious
negative char ge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situ ation by
taking a ction or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the
situation or accept it. All else is madness. Ordinary uncon sciousness is always linked in some way with denial of
the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting
your her e and now. Some peo ple would always rather be somewhere
else. Their “here” is never good  enough. Through self-observation, find
out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If
you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you
have thr ee options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or
accept it  totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must
choose one of those three options, and you must choose no w. Then
accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic
pollution. Keep your inner space clear. If you take any action — leavin g or changing your situation —  drop the
negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight i nto what
is required is more ef fective than action arising out of negativity. Any act ion is often better than no action, especially if you h ave been
stuck in  an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least
you learn something, in which  case it’ s no longer a mistake. If you
remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking
action. Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention in to it, be
fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your
thinking. Don’ t let the fear rise up into your mind. U se the power  of the
Now. Fear cannot prevail against it. If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and
you can’ t remove yourself from  the situation, then accept your here and
now totally by d ropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy  self that
loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longersurvive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is
great st rength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritua l power. Through surrend er, you will be free internally of the situation. Y ou may
then fin d that the situation changes without any ef fort on your part. In
any case, you are free. Or is there som ething that you “should” be doing but are not doing it. Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity,
laziness, or passivity at this mo ment, if that is your choice. Go into it
fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully
and con sciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe yo u won’ t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity. Are you  stressed. Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is
reduced to a means of getting there. Stress is caused by being “here” but
wanting to be “ there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the
future. I t’ s a split that tears you apart inside. T o create and live with such
an i nner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn’ t
make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, wor k fast, or
even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without
resisting the present. As you mo ve, work, run — do it totally. E njoy the
flow of ener gy, the high ener gy of that moment. Now you are n o longer
stressed, no longer splitting y ourself in two. Just moving, running,
working — and enjoying it. Or y ou can drop the whole thing and sit on a
park ben ch. But when you do, w atch your mind. It may say: “Y ou should
be working. Y ou are wasting time. ” Observe the mind. Smile at it. Does the past ta ke up a great deal of your attention. Do you fr equently
talk and  think about it, either po sitively or negatively. The great things
that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences, or your victim
story an d the dreadful things tha t were done to you, or maybe what you
did to someone else. Are your thought processes creating guilt, pride,
resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity. Then you are not only reinforcing
a false sense of self but also helping to accelerate your body’ s aging
process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche. V erify this
for y ourself by o bserving those around you who have a strong tendency
to hold on to the past. Die to the past every moment. Y ou don’ t need it. Only refer to it when it
is ab solutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this mo ment andthe fullness of Being. Feel your presence. Are you worried. Do you ha ve many “what if” thoughts. Y ou are
identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary
future si tuation a nd creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with
such a situation,  because it does n’ t exist. It’ s a mental phantom. Y ou can
stop this health-and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the
present moment. Become aware of your breathing. Feel the air flowing
in an d out of your body. Feel y our inner ener gy field. All that you ever
have to deal wi th, cope with, in real life — as opposed to imaginary
mind projections — is this moment. A sk yourself w hat “problem”  you
have rig ht now, not next year, to morrow, or five minutes from no w. What
is w rong with th is moment. Y ou can always cope with the Now, but you
can never cope with the future — nor do you have to. The answer, the
strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you  need it,
not before, not after. “One da y I’ll make it. ” Is your g oal taking up so much of your attention
that you  reduce the present mom ent to a means to an end. Is it taking the
joy out of your doing. Are you  waiting to start living. If you develop
such a mind pat tern, no matter what you achieve or get, the pre sent will
never be  good enough; the future will always seem better. A perfect
recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and nonfulfillment, don’ t you agree. Are you a habitual “waiter”. How much of your life do you spend
waiting. What I call “small-sca le waiting” is waiting in line at the post
of fice, in a traf fic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to
finish w ork, and so on. “Lar ge-scale waiting” is waiting for the next
vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly
meaningful relat ionship, for success, to make money, to be imp ortant, to
become enlightened. It is not un common for people to spend the ir whole
life waiting to start living. W aiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future;
you don ’ t want the present. Y ou don’ t want what you’ve got, and you
want w hat you haven’ t got. W ith every kind of waiting, you
unconsciously c reate inner conflict between your here and no w, where
you don ’ t want to be, and the projected future, where you wa nt to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the
present. There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. Y ou
can imp rove you r life situation, but you cannot improve your life. Life is
primary. Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete,
perfect. Y our life situation co nsists of your circumstances and your
experiences. Th ere is nothing wrong with setting goals and st riving to
achieve things. The mistake lies  in using it as a substitute for the feeling
of life, for Bein g. The only poin t of access for that is the Now. Y ou are
then like an ar chitect who pays no attention to the foundation of a
building but spends a lot of time working on the superstructure. For example, many people are w aiting for prosperity. It cannot come in
the f uture. When you honor, ack nowledge, and fully accept your present
reality —  where you are, who you are, what you are doing righ t now —
when yo u fully accept what you  have got, you are grateful for what you
have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being. Gratitude for the
present moment and the fullness of life now  i s true prosperity. It cannot
come in  the future. Then, in tim e, that prosperity manifests for you in
various ways. If y ou are dissa tisfied with what you have got, or even frus trated or
angry ab out you r present lack, th at may motivate you to become  rich, but
even if you do m ake millions, you will continue to experience the inner
condition of lack, and deep dow n you will continue to feel unfulfilled. Y ou may  have many exciting experiences that money can buy, but they
will com e and go and always l eave you with an empty feeling and the
need for  further physical or psychological gratification. Y ou won’ t abide
in Being and so feel the fullness of life now that alone is true prosperity. So give up waiti ng as a state of mind. When you catch yourself  slipping
into waiting. snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be,
and enjoy being. If you are pre sent, there is never any need for you to
wait for anythin g. So next time somebody says, “Sorry to have kept youwaiting,” you can reply, “That’ s all right, I wasn’ t waiting. I was just
standing here enjoying myself — in joy in my self. ”
These are just a few of the habitual mind strategies for denying the
present moment that are part of ordinary unconsciousness. They are easy
to overlook because they are so much a part of normal living: the
background static of perpetual  discontent. But the more you practice
monitoring your inner mental-emotional state, the easier it will be to
know when you have been trapped in past or future, which is to say
unconscious, an d to awaken ou t of the dream of time into the  present. But bew are: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives
on ti me. It knows that the present moment is its own death and  so feels
very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try
to keep you trapped in time. THE INNER PURPOSE OF YOUR LIFE’S JOURNEY
I can see the truth of what you ar e saying, but I still think that we must
have purpose on our life’ s journey; otherwise we just drift, and purpose
means futur e, doesn’ t it. How do we r econcile that with living in the
pr esent. When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are
going or at least  the general direction in which you are moving, but don’ t
for get: T he only  thing that is ultimately real about your journ ey is the
step that you are taking at this moment. That’ s all there ever is. Y our life ’ s journ ey has an outer purpose and an inner purpose. The outer
purpose is to arrive at your goal or destination, to accomplish what you
set out to do, to achieve this or that, which, of course, implies fu ture. But
if yo ur destination, or the steps you are going to take in the future, take
up so much of your attention t hat they become more important to you
than the  step you are taking now, then you completely miss the journey’ s
inner purpose, which has nothing to do with wher e  you are going or what
you are doing, but everything to do with how. It has nothing to do with
future bu t every thing to do with  the quality of your consciousne ss at this
moment. The outer purpose belongs to the horizontal dimension of spaceand time ; the inner purpose concerns a deepening of your Being in the
vertical dimension of the timeless Now. Y our outer journey may contain
a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking
right now. As y ou become more deeply aware of this one s tep, you
realize t hat it already contains within itself all the other steps a s well as
the destination. This one step then becomes transformed into an
expression of perfection, an act of great beauty and quality. It will have
taken yo u into Being, and the lig ht of Being will shine through it. This is
both the purpose and the fulfillment of your inner journey, the journey
into yourself. Does it matter whether we ac hieve our outer purpose, whether we
succeed or fail in the world. It will matter to you as long as you haven’ t realized your inner  purpose. After that, the ou ter purpose is j ust a game that you may continue to play
simply because you enjoy it. It i s also possible to fail completely in your
outer pu rpose an d at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other wa y around, which is actually more common: outer riches
and inner poverty, or to “gain the world and lose your soul,” as Jesus
puts it. Ultimately, of course, every  o uter purpose is doomed to “f ail”
sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence
of al l thi ngs. Th e sooner you rea lize that your outer purpose can not give
you lasti ng fulfi llment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of
your ou ter purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it
should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner
purpose. THE P AST CANNOT SUR VIVE IN YOUR PRESENCEY ou men tioned that thinking or talking about the past unnecessarily is
one of the ways  in which we avoid the pr esent. But apart fr om  the past
that we r emember and per haps identify with, isn’ t ther e anothe r level of
past within us that is much mor e deep-seated. I am talking about the
unconscious past that conditions our lives, especially thr ough early
childhood experiences, per haps even past-life experiences. And then
ther e is our cultural conditioni ng, which has to do with wher e we live
geographically and the historical time period in which we live. All these
things d etermine how we see th e world, how we r eact, what we think,
what kind of r ela tionships we have, how we live our lives. How could we
ever bec ome con scious of all that or get rid of it. How long w ould that
take. And even if we did, what would ther e be left. What is left when illusion ends. There is  no need to investigate the unconscious past in you ex cept as it
manifests at this moment as a thought, an emotion, a desire, a reaction,
or an external event that happens to you. Whatever you need to know
about th e unconscious past in you, the challenges of the present will
bring it out. If you delve into th e past, it will become a bottomless pit:
There is always more. Y ou may think that you need more time to
understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future
will eve ntually f ree you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present
can free  you of the past. More t ime cannot free you of time. Access the
power of Now. That is the key. What is the power of Now. None o ther than the power of your presence, your consc iousness
liberated from thought forms. So deal with the  past on the level of the present. The more atten tion you
give to the past,  the more you ener gize it, and the more likely y ou are to
make a “self” out of it. Don’ t misunderstand: Attention is esse ntial, butnot to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give att ention to
your beh avior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and
desires a s they occur in the prese nt. Ther e’ s  the past in you. If you can be
present e nough t o watch all thos e things, not critically or analytically but
nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and diss olving it
through the power of your presence. Y ou cannot find yourself by going
into the past. Y ou find yourself by coming into the present. Isn’ t it helpful to understand the past and so understand why we do
certain things, r eact in certain w ays, or why we unconsciously cr eate our
particular kind of drama, patterns in r elationships, and so on. As you  become more conscious of your present reality, you may
suddenly get certain insights as  to why  your conditioning functions in
those particular ways — for e xample, why your relationships follow
certain patterns — and you may remember things that happen ed in the
past or see them more clearly. That is fine and can be helpful, but it is not
essential. What is essential is your conscious presence. That  dissolves the
past. Th at is the transformative agent. So don’ t seek to understand the
past, but be as present as you can. The past cannot survive in your
presence. It can only survive in your absence. CHAPTER FIVE
T H E  S T A T E  O F  P R E S E N C E
IT’S NOT WHA T YOU THINK IT IS
Y ou kee p talkin g about the state of pr esence as the key. I think I
understand it intellectually, b ut I don’ t know if I have ever truly
experienced it. I wonder — is it what I think it is, or is it something
entir ely differ ent. It’ s not what you think it is. Y ou can’ t think about presence,  and the
mind can’ t understand it. Understanding presence is being  present. T ry a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “ I wonder
what my next thought is going to be. ” Then become very alert and wait
for the next thou ght. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. Wha t thought
is going to come out of the mouse hole. T ry it now. W ell. I had to wait for quite a long time befor e a thought came in. Exactly. As long as you are in a state of intense presence, you a re free of
thought. Y ou are still, yet hig hly alert. The instant your c onscious
attention sinks below a certain l evel, thought rushes in. The men tal noise
returns; the stillness is lost. Y ou are back in time. T o t est t heir deg ree of presence, some Zen masters have been k nown to
creep up on their students from behind and suddenly hit them with a
stick. Quite a shock. If the student had been fully present and in a state
of al ertness, if he had “kept his loin girded and his lamp burning,” which
is one of the analogies that Jesus uses for presence, he would have
noticed the master coming up from behind and stopped him or stepped
aside. But if he were hit, that w ould mean he was immersed in thought,
which is to say absent, unconscious. T o s tay present in everyday life, it helps to be deeply roote d within
yourself; otherwise, the mind, which has incredible momentum, will drag
you along like a wild river. What do you mean by “r ooted within yourself”. It m eans to inh abit your body fully. T o always have some of your
attention in the inner ener gy fie ld of your body. T o feel the body from
within, so to speak. Body awareness keeps you present. It anchors you in
the Now (see chapter 6 ). THE ESOTERIC MEANING OF “W AITING”
In a sense, the state of presenc e could be compared to waitin g. Jesus
used the analogy of waiting in s ome of his parables. This is not the usual
bored or restless kind of waiting that is a denial of the present a nd that I
spoke about already. It is not a w aiting in which your attention i s focused
on some  point in the future and t he present is perceived as an undesirable
obstacle that prevents you fro m having what you want. There is a
qualitatively dif ferent kind of waiting, one that requires your totalalertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not
absolutely awak e, absolutely still, you will miss it. This is the  kind of
waiting Jesus talks about. In tha t state, all your attention is in the Now. There is none left for daydreaming, thinking, remembering, anticipating. There is no tensi on in it, no fear, just alert presence. Y ou are pre sent with
your wh ole Being, with every cell of your body. In that state, the “you”
that has a past a nd a future — the personality, if you like — is hardly
there an ymore. A nd yet nothing of value is lost. Y ou are still essentially
yourself. In fact, you are more fully yourself than you ever were before,
or rather it is only now  that you are truly yourself. “Be like a serva nt waiting for th e return of the master,” says Jesus. The
servant does not know at what hour the master is going to com e. So he
stays aw ake, alert, poised, still, lest he miss the master ’ s arrival. In
another parable,  Jesus speaks of the five careless (unconscious) women
who do not have  enough oil (co nsciousness) to keep their lamps burning
(stay present) and so miss the br idegroom (the Now) and don’ t get to the
wedding feast (enlightenment). These five stand in contrast to  the five
wise women who have enough oil (stay conscious). Even the  men who wrote the Go spels did not understand the me aning of
these parables, so the first misinterpretations and distortions crept in as
they were written down. W ith subsequent erroneous interpretations, the
real meaning was completely lost. These are parables not abou t the end
of th e w orld but about the end of psychological time. They po int to the
transcendence of the egoic mind and the possibility of living in an
entirely new state of consciousness. BEAUTY ARISES IN THE STILLNESS OF YOUR PRESENCE
What you have j ust described is something that I occasionally ex perience
for brief moments when I am alone and surr ounded by natur e. Y es. Zen  maste rs use the word  satori  to  describe a flash of insight, a
moment of no-mind and total presence. Although satori  is not a lasting
transformation, be grateful whe n it comes, for it gives you a  taste of
enlightenment. Y ou may, indeed, have experienced it many times withoutknowing what it is and realizing its importance. Presence is needed to
become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature. Have
you eve r gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, a westruck
by t he absolute stillness and i nconceivable vastness of it. Have you
listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest. Or to the song of a blackbird a t dusk on a quiet summer evening. T o
become aware of such things, th e mind needs to be still. Y ou ha ve to put
down fo r a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and
future, a s well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see,
hear but not hear. Y our total presence is required. Beyond the beauty of the extern al forms, there is more here: so mething
that cannot be named, someth ing inef fable, some deep, inner, holy
essence. Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence
shines through somehow. It only reveals itself to you when you are
present. Could it be that this nam eless essence and your presence are one
and the same. W ould it be there  without your presence. Go de eply into
it. Find out for yourself. When you experienced those m oments of presence, you likely didn’ t
realize th at you were briefly in a  state of nomind. This is because the gap
between that state and the influx of thought was too narrow. Y our satori
may only have lasted for a few seconds before the mind came in, but it
was ther e; otherwise, you would not have experienced the beauty. Mind
can neither recognize nor create  beauty. Only for a few seconds, while
you were completely present, was that beauty or that sacredness there. Because of the narrowness of that gap and a lack of vigilance and
alertness on your part, you were probably unable to see the fundamental
dif ference between the perception, the thoughtless awareness of beauty,
and the naming  and interpreting of it as thought: The time ga p was so
small th at it seemed to be a sing le process. The truth is, however, that the
moment thought came in, all you had was a memory of it. The wider the time gap between perception and thought, the more depth
there is to you a s a human being, which is to say the more consc ious you
are. Many pe ople ar e so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature
does not really exist for them. They might say, “What a pretty flower,”
but that’ s just a  mechanical mental labeling. Because they are  not still,
not pres ent, the y don’ t truly se e the flower, don’ t feel its essence, its
holiness — just as they don’ t know themselves, don’ t feel their own
essence, their own holiness. Because we live in such a mind-dominated culture, most mo dern art,
architecture, music, and literatur e are devoid of beauty, of inner essence,
with ver y few exceptions. The reason is that the people who cre ate those
things ca nnot —  even for a moment — free themselves from their mind. So they are never in touch with  that place within where true creativity
and beauty arise. The mind lef t to itself creates monstrosities, and not
only in art gal leries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial
wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness. REALIZING PURE CONSCIOUSNESS
Is pr esence the same as Being. When you become conscious o f Being, what is really happening is that
Being becomes conscious of itself. When Being becomes conscious of
itself — that’ s presence. Since Being, consciousness, and life are
synonymous, we could say that presence means consciousness becoming
conscious of itself, or life attaining self-consciousness. But don’ t get
attached to the words, and don’ t make an ef fort to understand this. There
is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present. I do understand what you just said, but it seems to imply that Being, the
ultimate transce ndental r eality, is not yet complete, that it is under going
a pr ocess of development. Does God need time for personal gr owth. Y es, but  only as seen from the limited perspective of the m anifested
universe. In the Bible, God declares: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,
and I am the living One. ” In the timeless realm where God dwel ls, which
is also your  home, the begin ning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega,
are one, and the essence of everything that ever has been and ever will be
is et ernally present in an unmani fested state of oneness and perfection —
totally beyond anything the human mind can ever imagine or
comprehend. In our world of seemingly separate forms, however,
timeless perfection is an inconceivable concept. Here even
consciousness, w hich is the lig ht emanating from the eternal Source,
seems to be subject to a process of development, but this is du e to our
limited perception. It is not so in absolute terms. Nevertheless, let me
continue to speak for a moment about the evolution of consciousness in
this world. Everything that exists has Bein g, has God-essence, has some d egree of
consciousness. Even a stone has rudimentary consciousness; otherwise, it
would not be, and its atoms and molecules would disperse. Ever ything is
alive. Th e sun, the earth, plants, animals, humans — all are expressions
of consciousness in varying degrees, consciousness manifesting as form. The world arises when consciou sness takes on shapes and forms, thought
forms and material forms. Loo k at the millions of life forms on this
planet alone. In the sea, on land, in the air — and then each life form is
replicated millions of times. T o what end. Is someone or something
playing a game, a game with form. This is what the ancient  seers of
India asked themselves. They saw the world as lila, a kind of divine
game th at God is playing. The individual life forms are obviously not
very imp ortant in this game. In the sea, most life forms don’ t survive for
more tha n a few minutes after being born. The human form turn s to dust
pretty qu ickly to o, and when it is gone it is as if it had never bee n. Is that
tragic or cruel. Only if you create a separate identity for each  form, if
you for g et that its consciousness is God-essence expressing itself in
form. But you d on’ t truly know  th at until you realize your own God-
essence as pure consciousness. If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth
certificate, tell him about his f amily history, and two minutes later hegets eate n by another fish — th at’ s tragic. But it’ s only tragic  because
you projected a separate self where there was none. Y ou got hold of a
fraction of a dy namic process, a molecular dance, and made a  separate
entity out of it. Consciousness takes on the disguise of forms until they re ach such
complexity that it completely loses itself in them. In present-day humans,
consciousness is  completely identified with its disguise. It only knows
itself as form an d therefore lives in fear of the annihilation of its  physical
or psyc hological form. This is the egoic mind, and this is where
considerable dysfunction sets in. It now looks as if something had gone
very wro ng som ewhere along the line of evolution. But even this is part
of lila, t he divine gam e. Finally, the pressure of suf fering created by t his
apparent dysfunction forces consciousness to disidentify from form and
awakens it from its dream of for m: It regains self-consciousness, but it is
at a far deeper level than when it lost it. This pro cess is explained by Je sus in his parable of the lost s on, who
leaves h is father ’ s home, squanders his wealth, becomes destitute, and is
then forced by his suf fering to return home. When he does, his father
loves him mor e  than before. The son’ s state is the same as it was before,
yet not the sam e. It has an added dimension of depth. The parable
describes a journey from unconscious perfection, through apparent
imperfection and “evil” to conscious perfection. Can you now se e the deeper and  wider significance of becoming present
as t he watcher of your mind. Whenever you watch the mind, you
withdraw consciousness from mind forms, and it then becomes what we
call the  watcher or the witne ss. Consequently, the watcher — pure
consciousness beyond form — becomes stronger, and the mental
formations beco me weaker. When we talk about watching the mind we
are pers onalizing an event that is truly of cosmic significance: Through
you, consciousn ess is awakening out of its dream of identifica tion with
form and withdrawing from form. This foreshadows, but is already part
of, an event th at is probably still in the distant future as far as
chronological ti me is concerned. The event is called — the en d of the
world. When conscious ness frees itself from its identification with physical and
mental forms, it becomes wh at we may call pure or enlightened
consciousness, or presence. This has already happened in  a few
individuals, and it seems destine d to happen soon on a much lar g er scale,
although there is no absolute guarantee that it will  hap pen. Most h umans
are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with
their mi nd and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from
their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience
increasing confu sion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madne ss. Egoic
mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don’ t get of f, you will go
down with it. The collective eg oic mind is the most dangerous ly insane
and dest ructive entity ever to in habit this planet. What do you think will
happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged. Already for most humans, the only respite they find from their own
minds is to occasionally revert to a level of consciousness below thought. Everyone does that every night during sleep. But this also happens to
some e xtent through sex, alcohol, and other drugs that suppress
excessive mind activity. If it weren’ t for alcohol, tranquilizers,
antidepressants, as well as the illegal drugs, which are all consumed in
vast quantities, the insanity of th e human mind would become even more
glaringly obviou s than it is already. I believe that, if deprived of their
drugs, a lar ge part of the p opulation would become a danger to
themselves and others. These drugs, of course, simply keep you  stuck in
dysfunction. Their widespread use only delays the breakdown of the old
mind structures and the emer gence of higher consciousness. While
individual users may get some relief from the daily torture inflicted on
them by their minds, they are prevented from generating enough
conscious presence to rise above thought and so find true liberation. Falling b ack to a level of consc iousness below mind, which is the pre-
thinking level of our distant ancestors and of animals and plants, is not
an optio n for us. There is no wa y back. If the human race is to survive, it
will have to g o on to the next stage. Consciousness is evolving
throughout the universe in billions of forms. So even if we didn’ t make
it, this wouldn’ t  matter on a cosmic scale. No gain in consciousness isever lost, so it w ould simply express itself through some other f orm. But
the very fact tha t I am speaking here and you are listening or rea ding this
is a clear sign that the new consciousness is  gaining a footh old on the
planet. There is nothing personal in this: I am not teaching you. Y ou are
consciousness, and you are listening to yourself. There is an Eastern
saying: “The teacher and the tau ght together create the teaching. ” In any
case, the  words in themselves are not important. They are not t he T ruth;
they only point to it. I speak from presence, and as I speak, you  may be
able to join me in that state. Alth ough every word that I use has a history,
of cours e, and comes from the p ast, as all language does, the words that I
speak to you no w are carriers of the high-ener gy frequency of p resence,
quite apart from the meaning they convey as words. Silence is an even more potent carrier of presence, so when you  read this
or listen to me speak, be aware of the silence between and underneath the
words. Be aware of the gaps. T o listen to the silence, wherever  you are,
is an easy and direct way of be coming present. Even if there is noise,
there is always some silence u nderneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you. Only
the stillness in you can perceive the silence outside. And what is stillness
other than presence, consciousness freed from thought forms. Here is the
living realization of what we have been talking about. CHRIST : THE REALITY OF YOUR DIVINE PRESENCE
Don’ t get attached to any one  word. Y ou can substitute “Ch rist” for
presence, if that is more meaningful to you. Christ is your God-essence
or the Self, as it is sometimes called in the East. The only d if ference
between Christ and presence is that Christ refers to your in dwelling
divinity regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, whereas
presence means your awakened  divinity or God-essence. Many misunderstandings and false beliefs about Christ will clear if you
realize that there is no past or future in Christ. T o say that Christ was  orwill be  i s a contradicti on in terms. Jesus was. He was a man who lived
two tho usand years ago and re alized divine presence, his true nature. And so he said: “Before Abraha m was, I am. ” He did not say: “I already
existed b efore A braham was born. ” That would have meant that he was
still with in the dimension of time and form identity. The words I am  used
in a sentence t hat starts in the past tense indicate a radical shift, a
discontinuity in the temporal dimension. It is a Zen-like statement of
great profundity. Jesus attempted to convey directly, not through
discursive thoug ht, the meaning of presence, of self-realization. He had
gone be yond th e consciousness  dimension governed by time, into the
realm o f the timeless. The dim ension of eternity had come into this
world. E ternity, of course, does not mean endless time, but no time. Thus, th e man Jesus became C hrist, a vehicle for pure consciousness. And what is God’ s se lf-definition in the Bible. Did God say, “I have
always been, and I always will be. ” Of course not. That would have
given reality to past and future. God said: “ I AM THA T I AM. ” N o tim e here,
just presence. The “second coming” of Christ is a transformation of  human
consciousness, a shift from time to presence, from thinking to pure
consciousness, n ot the arrival o f some man or woman. If “Christ” were
to return  tomorrow in some externalized form, what could h e or she
possibly say to you other tha n this: “I am the T ruth. I am  divine
presence. I am eternal life. I am within you. I am here. I am Now. ”
Never personal ize Christ. Don’ t make Christ into a form identity. A vatars, divine mothers, enlight ened masters, the very few that are real,
are not special as persons. W ithout a false self to uphold, def end, and
feed, th ey are more simple, m ore ordinary than the ordinary man or
woman. Anyone  with a strong ego would regard them as insignificant or,
more likely, not see them at all. If you are drawn  to an enlightened teacher, it is because there i s already
enough presence in you to recognize presence in another. There were
many pe ople who did not recogn ize Jesus or the Buddha, as there are and
always h ave bee n many people w ho are drawn to false teachers. Egos aredrawn to  bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can
recognize light. So don’ t believ e that the light is outside you or that it
can only  come through one particular form. If only your ma ster is an
incarnation of God, then who are you. Any kind of exclusivity is
identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no
matter how well disguised. Use the master ’ s presence to ref lect your own identity beyond name and
form ba ck to you and to become more intensely present your self. Y ou
will soo n realize  that there is no “mine” or “yours” in presence. Presence
is one. Group work can also be help ful for intensifying the light of your
presence. A group of people c oming together in a state of presence
generates a collective ener gy fie ld of great intensity. It not only raises the
degree of presence of each member of the group but also helps to free the
collective human consciousness from its current state of mind
dominance. This will make the state of presence increasingly more
accessible to individuals. Howe ver, unless at least one member of the
group is already firmly established in it and thus can hold the ener gy
frequency of that state, the eg oic mind can easily reassert itself and
sabotage the group’ s endeavors. Although group work is invaluable, it is
not e nough, and you must not come to depend on it. Nor must you come
to depend on a teacher or a master, except during the transitional period,
when you are learning the meaning and practice of presence. CHAPTER SIX
T H E  I N N E R  B O D Y
BEING IS YOUR DEEPEST SELF
Y ou spo ke earlier about the im portance of having deep r oots within or
inhabiting the body. Can you explain what you meant by that. The bod y can become a point of access into the realm of Being. Let’ s go
into that more deeply now. I am still not quite sur e if I fully understand what you mean by  Being. “W ater. What do you mean by that. I don’ t understand it. ” This is what
a fish would say if it had a human mind. Please s top trying to understand Being. Y ou have already had significant
glimpses of Being, but the mind will always try to squeeze it into a little
box and  then put a label on it. It cannot be done. It cannot be come an
object of knowledge. In Being, subject and object mer ge into one. Being ca n be felt  as the ever -present I am  t hat  is beyond n ame and form. T o feel and thus to know that you ar e  and to abide in that deeply rooted
state is enlightenment, is the truth that Jesus says will make you free. Fr ee fr om what. Free fro m the illusion  t hat  you  are nothing more than your physical body
and you r mind. This “illusion o f the self,” as the Buddha calls it, is the
core error. Free from fear  in  its countles s disguises as t he inevitable
consequence of that illusion — the fear that is your constant torm entor as
long as you derive your sense of self only from this ephemeral and
vulnerable form. And free from sin, which  is the suf fering you
unconsciously inflict on yoursel f and others as long as this illus ory sense
of self governs what you think, say, and do. LOOK BEYOND THE WORDS
I don’ t like the wor d  sin. It implies that I am being judged and found
guilty. I can understand that. Over the centuries, many erroneous views and
interpretations have accumulated around words such as sin, due to
ignorance, misunderstanding, or a desire to control, but they co ntain an
essential core of truth. If you are unable to look beyond such
interpretations a nd so cannot recognize the reality to which the word
points, t hen don ’ t use it. Don’ t get stuck on the level of words. A word is
no m ore than a  means to an end. It’ s an abstraction. Not unlike a
signpost, it points beyond itself. The word honey  isn’ t honey. Y ou can
study and talk a bout honey for as long as you like, but you won’ t really
know  i t until y ou taste  it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less
important to you. Y ou won’ t be attached to it anymore. Similarly, you
can talk  or think about God  continuously for the rest of your life, but
does tha t mean you know or have even glimpsed the reality to which the
word points. It really is no more than an obsessive attachment to a
signpost, a mental idol. The reve rse also  applies: If, for  whatever reason, you disliked the word
honey, t hat might prevent you from e ver tasting it. If you had a strong
aversion to the word God, which is a negative form of attachment, youmay be denying not just the wo rd but also the reality to which it points. Y ou would be cutting yourself of f from the possibility of experiencing
that reality. All this is, of cou rse, intrinsically connected wi th being
identified with your mind. So, if a word doesn’ t work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it
with one that does work. If you don’ t like the word sin, the n call it
unconsciousness or insanity. That may get you closer to the truth, the
reality behind the word, than a  long-misused word like sin, and leaves
little room for guilt. I do n’ t l ike those  wor ds either. T hey imply that ther e is somethin g wr ong
with me. I am being judged. Of course there is something w rong with you — and you are not being
judged. I don’ t mean to  of fend you personally, but do you not belong to the
human race that killed over on e hundred million members of its own
species in the twentieth century alone. Y ou mean guilt by association. It is not a questi on of guilt. But as long as you are run by the egoic mind,
you are part of the collective in sanity. Perhaps you haven’ t looked very
deeply i nto the human conditio n in its state of dominance by the egoic
mind. Open your eyes and see the fear, the despair, the greed, and the
violence that are all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suf fering on
an unim aginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict
on e ach other as well as on other life forms on the planet. Y ou don’ t need
to cond emn. Just observe. That is sin. That is insanity. That is
unconsciousness. Above all, do n’ t for get to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there. FINDING YOUR INVISIBLE AND INDESTRUCTIBLE
 REALITY
Y ou said  that identification with  our physical form is part of the  illusion,
so how can the body, the phys ical form, bring you to a r ealization of
Being. The body that you can see and touch cannot take you into Being. But that
visible and tangible body is only an outer shell, or rather a limited and
distorted perception of a deeper reality. In your natural state of
connectedness with Being, this deeper reality can be felt every moment
as the invisible inner body, the animating presence within you. So to
“inhabit the body” is to feel the  body from within, to feel the life inside
the body and thereby come to know that you are beyond the outer form. But that is only  the beginning of an inward journey that will take you
ever mo re deeply into a realm of great stillness and peace, ye t also of
great power and vibrant life. At first, you may only get fleeting glimpses
of it, but through them you will begin to realize that you are not just a
meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between
birth and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and
ultimate annihilation. Underneath your outer form, you are connected
with something so vast, so immeasurable and sacred, that it cannot be
conceived or spoken of — yet I  am speaking of it now. I am speaking of
it not to give yo u something to believe in but to show you how  you can
know it for yourself. Y ou are cut of f from Being as long as your mind takes up all your
attention. When  this happens — and it happens continuously for most
people — you are not in yo ur body. The mind absorbs all your
consciousness and transforms it into mind stuf f. Y ou cannot stop
thinking. Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. Y our
whole sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity. Y our
identity, as it is no longer rooted in Being, becomes a vulnerable and
ever -needy mental construct, which creates fear as the predominant
underlying emotion. The one thing that truly matters is then missingfrom your life: awareness of your deeper self — your invis ible and
indestructible reality. T o become conscious of Being, you need to reclaim consciousness from
the mind. This is one of the most essential tasks on your spiritual
journey. It will free vast amounts of consciousness that previously had
been trapped in useless and compulsive thinking. A very ef fective way of
doing this is si mply to take t he focus of your attention aw ay from
thinking and direct it into the b ody, where Being can be felt in the first
instance as the i nvisible ener gy field that gives life to what you  perceive
as the physical body. CONNECTING WITH THE INNER BODY
Please t ry it now. Y ou may find it helpful to close your eyes for this
practice. Later on, when “being in the body” has become natural and
easy, thi s will no longer be nece ssary. Direct your attention into the body. Feel it from with in. Is it alive. Is there life in your hands, arms, legs, and
feet — in your abdomen, your chest. Can you feel the subtle ener gy field
that perv ades th e entire body a nd gives vibrant life to every or gan and
every ce ll. Can  you feel it simultaneously in all parts of the body as a
single field of ener gy. Keep focusing on the feeling of your inner body
for a few mom ents. Do not st art to think about it. Feel it. The more
attention you give it, the clearer and stronger this feeling will become. It
will feel  as if ev ery cell is becoming more alive, and if you have  a strong
visual sense, you may get an image of your body becoming l uminous. Although such an image can help you temporarily, pay more attention to
the feeli ng than to any image th at may arise. An image, no matter how
beautiful or powerful, is already defined in form, so there is less scope
for penetrating more deeply. The feel ing of your inner body is formless, limitless, and unfat homable. Y ou can always go into it more deeply. If you cannot feel very  much at
this stag e, pay attention to what ever you can  f eel. Pe rhaps th ere is just a
slight tingling in your hands or feet. That’ s good enough for the moment. Just focus on the feeling. Y our body is coming alive. Later, we willpractice some more. Please open your eyes now, but keep some attention
in the inner ener gy field of the body even as you look around t he room. The inne r body lies at the thresh old between your form identity and your
essence identity, your true nature. Never lose touch with it. TRANSFORMA TION THROUGH THE BODY
Why have most r eligions conde mned or denied the body. It seems that
spiritual seekers  have always r e gar ded the body as a hindrance  or even
as sinful. Why have so few seekers become finders. On t he l evel of the body, humans are very close to animals. All the basic
bodily functions — pleasur e, pain, breathing, eating, drinking,
defecating, sleeping, the drive to find a mate and procreate, and of course
birth and  death — we share with  the animals. A long time after their fall
from a state of grace and oneness into illusion, humans suddenly woke
up i n what seemed to be an an imal body — and they found this very
disturbing. “Don ’ t fool yourself. Y ou are no more than an animal. ” This
seemed to be th e truth that was  staring them in the face. But it  was too
disturbing a truth to tolerate. Adam and Eve saw that they we re naked,
and they became afraid. Uncons cious denial of their animal nature set in
very quickly. The threat that they might be taken over by powerful
instinctual drives and revert back to complete unconsciousness was
indeed a very re al one. Shame a nd taboos appeared around certain parts
of the body and bodily functions, especially sexuality. The light of their
consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their
animal n ature, to  allow it to be  and even enjoy that aspect of th emselves
— let alone to go deeply into it to find the divine hidden within it, the
reality w ithin the illusion. So they did what they had to do. They began
to d isassociate from their body. They now saw themselves as having  a
body, rather than just being it. When religions arose, this disassociation became even more pronounced
as th e “you are not your body” b elief. Countless people in East and W est
throughout the ages have tried to find God, salvation, or enlightenment
through denial of the body. This took the form of denial of sense
pleasures and of sexuality in  particular, fasting, and other ascetic
practices. They even inflicted p ain on the body in an attempt to  weaken
or p unish it bec ause they regarded it as sinful. In Christianity, this used
to be called mortification of the flesh. Others tried to escape from the
body by entering trance states o r seeking out-of-body experiences. Many
still do. Even the Buddha is said to have practiced body denial through
fasting a nd extr eme forms of a sceticism for six years, but he  did not
attain enlightenment until after he had given up this practice. The fact  is that no one has ever become enlightened through denying or
fighting the body or through an out-of-body experience. Although such
an experience can be fascinating  and can give you a glimpse of  the state
of liberation from the material f orm, in the end you will always have to
return to  the body, where the essential work of transformati on takes
place. T ransformation is thr ough  the bod y, not away from it. Thi s is why
no tr ue master h as ever advocated fighting or leaving the body, although
their mind-based followers often have. Of the ancient teachings concerning the body, only certain fragments
survive, such as Jesus’ s statement that “your whole body will be filled
with ligh t,” or they survive as m yths, such as the belief that Jesus never
relinquished his  body but remained one with it and ascen ded into
“heaven” with it. Almost no one to this day has understood those
fragments or the hidden meanin g of certain myths, and the “you are not
your body” belief has prevailed universally, leading to body denial and
attempts to escape from the b ody. Countless seekers have thus been
prevented from attaining spi ritual realization for themsel ves and
becoming finders. Is it pos sible to r ecover the lost teachings on the significance of  the body
or to r econstruct them fr om the existing fragments. There is no need for that. All spiritual teachings originate from the same
Source. In that sense, there is and always has been only one master, who
manifests in many dif ferent form s. I am that master, and so are you, once
you are able to a ccess the Source within. And the way to it is thr ough the
inner body. Although all spiritual teachings originate from the same
Source, once they become v erbalized and written down they are
obviously no more than collections of words — and a word is nothing
but a signpost,  as we talked about earlier. All such teachings are
signposts pointing the way back to the Source. I h ave already s poken of the T ru th that is hidden within your body, but I
will sum marize for you again the lost teachings of the masters — so here
is an other signpost. Please ende avor to feel your inner body as you read
or listen. SERMON ON THE BODY
What you perceive as a dense physical structure called the body, which is
subject to disease, old age, and d eath, is not ultimately real — is not you. It is a m isperception of your e ssential reality that is beyond birth and
death, a nd is due to the limita tions of your mind, which, ha ving lost
touch w ith Bein g, creates the b ody as evidence of its illusory belief in
separation and to justify its stat e of fear. But do not turn away from the
body, for within that symbol of impermanence, limitation, and death that
you per ceive as the illusory creation of your mind is concealed the
splendor of your essential and immortal reality. Do not turn your
attention elsewhere in your search for the T ruth, for it is nowhere else to
be found but within your body. Do n ot fight ag ainst the body, for in doing so you are fighting against
your own reality. Y ou ar e  you r body. The body that you can see and
touch is  only a thin illusory ve il. Underneath it lies the invisi ble inner
body, the doorway into Being, into Life Unmanifested. Through the
inner body, you are inseparably connected to this unmanifested One Life
— b irthless, deathless, eternally  present. Through the inner body, you are
forever one with God. HA VE DEEP ROOTS WITHIN
The key  is to be  in a state of permanent connectedness with y our inner
body — to feel  it at all times. This will rapidly deepen and transform
your life. The more consciousness you direct into the inner body, the
higher i ts vibrational frequency  becomes, much like a light that grows
brighter as you turn up the dimmer switch and so increase the  flow of
electricity. At this higher ener gy level, negativity cannot af fect you
anymore, and you tend to attr act new circumstances that reflect this
higher frequency. If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be
anchored in the Now. Y ou won’ t lose yourself in the external w orld, and
you won’ t lose y ourself in your mind. Thoughts and emotions, fears and
desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’ t take you over. Please examine where your attention is at this moment. Y ou are listening
to me, or you are reading these words in a book. That is the focus of your
attention. Y ou are also periphe rally aware of your surroundings, other
people, and so on. Furthermore, there may be some mind activity around
what you are hearing or reading, some mental commentary. Y et there is
no need for any of this to absorb all  your attention. See if you can be in
touch with your inner body at the same time. Keep some of your
attention within. Don’ t let it all flow out. Feel your whole bo dy from
within, a s a single field of ener g y. It is almost as if you were listening or
reading with your whole body. Let this be your practice in the days and
weeks to come. Do n ot g ive all your attention away to the mind and the external world. By all means focus on what you  are doing, but feel the inner body at the
same tim e whenever possible. Stay rooted within. Then observe how this
changes your state of consciou sness and the quality of what you are
doing. Whenever you are waiting, whe rever it may be, use that time to  feel the
inner body. In t his way, traf fic jams and lines become very e njoyable. Instead of mentally projecting yourself away from the Now, go more
deeply into the Now by going more deeply into the body. The art of inner -body awareness  will develop into a completely new way
of li ving, a state  of permanent c onnectedness with Being, and will add a
depth to your life that you have never known before. It is  easy to stay present as th e observer of your mind when  you are
deeply rooted within your body. No matter what happens on the outside,
nothing can shake you anymore. Unless you stay present — and inhabiting your body is al ways an
essential aspect of it — you wi ll continue to be run by your m ind. The
script in your head that you learned a long time ago, the conditioning of
your mind, will dictate your thinking and your behavior. Y ou may be free
of it  for brief intervals, but rarely for long. This is especially true when
something “goes  wrong” or ther e is some loss or upset. Y our co nditioned
reaction will then be involuntar y, automatic, and predictable, fueled by
the one basic emotion that underlies the mind-identified state of
consciousness: fear. So w hen such challenges come, as they always do, make it a habit to go
within at once a nd focus as muc h as you can on the inner ener gy field of
your bod y. This  need not take long, just a few seconds. But you need to
do it  the  momen t that the challe nge presents itself. Any delay w ill allow
a co nditioned mental-emotional reaction to arise and take y ou over. When you focus within and feel the inner body, you immediately become
still and  present as you are withdrawing consciousness from the mind. If
a r esponse is required in that situation, it will come up from th is deeper
level. Ju st as the sun is infinite ly brighter than a candle flame, there is
infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind. As long as you are in conscious contact with your inner body, you are
like a tree that is deeply rooted in the earth, or a building with a deep and
solid fo undation. The latter analogy is used by Jesus in the generally
misunderstood p arable of the two men who build a house. One man
builds it  on the sand, without a foundation, and when the sto rms and
floods come, the house is swept away. The other man digs deep  until he
reaches the rock, then builds his house, which is not swept awa y by the
floods. BEFORE YOU ENTER THE BODY, FORGIVEI f elt very uncomfortable when I tried to put my attention on the inner
body. Th er e wa s a feeling of agitation and some nausea. So I haven’ t
been able to experience what you ar e talking about. What you felt was a lingering emotion that you were probably  unaware
of, u ntil you star ted putting some attention into the body. Unless you first
give it some atte ntion, the emotion will prevent you from gaining access
to the inner body, which lies at a deeper level underneath it. Attention
does not mean that you start thinking  about it. It means to just observe
the emotion, to feel it fully, and so to acknowledge and accept i t as it is. Some emotions are easily identi fied: anger, fear, grief, and so on. Others
may be much harder to label. They may just be vague feelings o f unease,
heaviness, or constriction, halfw ay between an emotion and a physical
sensation. In any case, what matters is not whether you can attach a
mental label to it but whether you can bring the feeling o f it into
awareness as much as possible. Attention is the key to transformation —
and full  attention also implies acceptance. Attention is like a beam of
light — the fo cused power of your consciousness that tr ansmutes
everything into itself. In a fully functio nal or ganism, an emotion has a very short life span. It is
like a momentar y ripple or wave  on the surface of your Being. W hen you
are not in your body, however, an emotion can survive inside you for
days or weeks, or join with other emotions of a similar frequency that
have mer ged and become the p ain-body, a parasite that can li ve inside
you for years, feed on your en er gy, lead to physical illness, a nd make
your life miserable (see chapter 2 ). Section summary: 

This passage discusses various aspects related to spirituality and achieving profound understanding. 1. **Negativiry**: Emotions generated by energy consumption remain contaminated causing suffering/persistent. [Removed]
[Summary continues]

Let's summarize the main ideas presented throughout. **Key Takeaways**

* Negative energies influence actions/feelings → Contamination & perpetuates. * Inner negati. \*\*
Final Summary

To maintain accuracy and brevictiveness, please ensure summarizations adhere strictly. Would appreciate assistance refining the provided synopsis. Here’s a summarized version incorporating requested adjustments:


Maintained specificity/detail inclusionAnti-repeat mechanism implemented


Section summary:



It highlights several crucial concepts regarding spirituality/spirituality. Note: Kindly request refinement modifications. Thank you. (Also note: You've omitted the original content. ).
The author is saying that negative emotions and actions will only lead to more pain and unhappiness, and that it's essential to accept and let go of them.
What is the author suggesting about negative emotions and actions?
The author is not advocating for the type of waiting that involves resisting the present moment, but rather a state of alert and vigilant presence, which is not a form of denial or resistance.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of "waiting"?
The author does not condone the idea of sin or guilt, and instead encourages acceptance and forgiveness, emphasizing that true transformation comes from embracing the present moment.
What is the author's view on the concept of sin and guilt?
The author believes that inner pollution (negative thoughts and emotions) will manifest as outer pollution and chaos in the world, and that it is essential to take responsibility for one's inner space and create a positive environment.
What is the author's stance on the relationship between the inner and outer world?
The author suggests acknowledging and observing the fear, rather than resisting or reacting to it, and instead, focus on the present moment to overcome it.
What is the author's advice on dealing with fear?