Transcript

What I want to talk about is a perspective which is arrived at through a kind of education that happens in life. And it's arrived at through all the circumstances of our lives... and some of those are nice and pleasant and some are extremely difficult.

This is a perspective on life which is to do with life being an education towards all that we can be. And the advantage of this perspective on life as an education, is that absolutely everything that comes up is grist for the mill. So, there's some consolation when the difficult things come up - we can say: 'oh great, here is something else that I can use'... it's not always quite as easy as that, but that is there in potential.

I'm getting ahead of myself, and I really wanted to start some 100,000 years ago... or maybe even earlier... because this perspective, actually, is not about 'me'. I'm talking about a perspective that is possible for mankind. Let's say 100,000 years ago, nature had been working extremely hard, according to this perspective, for many millions of years, working towards a form - a natural form - which was capable of embodying its own origin. And let's call that origin 'Spirit'. This origin we can call one universal Spirit, or, Being - and Being not being a thing. Spirit, not being a thing, because it's not a thing, not any thing that we can think of at all.

Now, the idea in the manifestation of this one universal Spirit, is that this Spirit, or Being, has an exterior expression; and all the potential that is in it, be exteriorised in what we've come to know and regard as the world; the world, this world, which is a world of materia, of appearances, of life forms, plants, animals and, finally, people. And there were, going back to a 100.000 years ago, quite a number of people around, or, hominids we could say, who were in the race to become this place of complete expression of the Origin, the Spirit.

And as we know it was Homo sapiens sapiens who won the race. There were other contenders, like the one that's called Neanderthal and so on. This place of expression of the spirit is also a place of expression of everything that had gone before in order to produce this form. So, everything is to be found in this total place of manifestation that we call the human being. But it is there in potential only.

So, man arrived... the human being arrived, an animal, just like all the animals that had gone before it. But the special thing about this human being was that it had this potential to link up with its own origin - consciously. And to be not just an animal, but to be consciously one with its origin. This is what we call, here, Union; this possibility of Union. This requires work. It doesn't just happen, except in very very rare cases, only one or two that we know about. It requires work. It requires commitment. And before that, it requires some kind of an opening; an opening to the possibility of a different way of being. And it is said, and I can't prove this, but it is said that every one of us gets this opportunity at some point or another, whether we want to go with it or not - no matter who it is. That's what's said, and I think it's a reasonable thing.

So then, we arrive here, in this world, and we go through a process of education. And for many people, that education stops when they leave school, or when they've learnt what they need to learn for their living and that's the end of it. But there's a great deal more and until we realize there's an education – an agenda - going on in life, we are very often in for quite a hard time, until the penny drops that actually this is a learning experience. This life is a school so that we come to all that wecan be.

There are places of help like this one here, which gives us all kinds of information, and so on, that we need in order to continue this education, not just here, but in our places of work, with our families and so on and so forth. I am sure most of this is familiar to you, but what I really wanted to concentrate on was just a single point, which if we just stop, and maybe shut our eyes and try and come to centre - and for me this is quite literally coming to centre in the centre of the chest, which is where I experience my being... and where I am also conscious... and conscious that I'm conscious.

And let's ask ourselves - we've been here for a couple of days now... and we came for a reason... and we have heard various people talking... we've done Qi-gong on the lawn... we've been to meditation... we've eaten some wonderful food and met some very extraordinary people... and have been truly smiled upon by the weather - but in all of this, who is experiencing?... And what is being experienced?... Who came?... Was it a needy one who came?... or, was it my potential that brought me?... can we find a point of awareness in this place, the centre of the chest, that is looking out to everything that's in the world, all the other people and the experiences and so on and so forth... looking out, and also, connected to what's within, to what is inside?

And then we have to ask, well, what is inside? Because, you know, if you cut me open you will only find more outside stuff. If you investigate my brain - more outside stuff. So what do we mean by inside? Well... what I mean by inside is meaning, purpose, intention, qualities of humanity, courage, truth, veracity, but also other qualities which I can't really claim are mine but I know are there. These are the qualities of the spirit. But whatever there is on the inside, what we mean by the inside is non-material. So who am I? I can't confine myself to the inside and I clearly can't confine myself to the outside. So, am I all of what's inside and all of what's outside?... or, am I neither what is inside nor what is outside but simply a place of in-between?

Both are equally possible. But if I confine myself to one bit, then I create myself like that and I become something separate from everything else... I then have to protect that separate island, because it's a fearful situation... or, I want more... to become bigger... stronger, more powerful, less threatened... whatever... But if I am not that, or that, or, I'm both that and that, then there's nothing to protect. What I find in looking at this situation of this point in the middle, is that Reality is all of the inside world - what we call spirit, meaning, purpose, intention - and all of the outside, which is the expression of all those things that are on the inside.

So, what am I? Only a place in which that can be seen... this place of joining-up consciously. And this is, I believe, also the place of real, effective action. If action is required then it flows from this place of knowing that I really have no existence of my own at all; simply a place of vision in between - in between these two sides. And it doesn't matter what the two sides are. It's every two possible sides. So we can say: the world of absoluteness on one side, the world of relativity on the other; the perfection of mankind and the relative expression, which is relative, not perfect, human, fallible. Between the total knowledge and consciousness of everything, that runs through everything on the one side, and, the particular way that consciousness appears right now, which is relative, limited, and is going to change the next moment.

So, first of all, can we find this place in ourselves? Or, can we see this possibility of looking at ourselves in another way completely - which is not a bag of skin and memories and all the things that happened to us and all the things that might happen to us, but as really no thing at all? Without that, because all of those things are going to go, be forgotten, and disappear.

But this place - which is my potential, my reality, the reason for coming into this world and the place in which I can really be of service to humanity, to nature and to reality itself - this, for me, is what really I am, and the rest is just a mental figment. That mental figment gets in the way, of course, and it has effect. The mental figment, this self-existence, this island which exists only in my thought, is a killer. So, although it is just a mental figment, it has effect. It kills people. It destroys me. It imprisons me. It's misery for me and it's misery for everybody else.

But without the mental figment, what's left? For me, it's this point in the middle. A point of mediation. Ibn 'Arabi likens man to the point of the eye pupil, which is a mediator. It mediates between inside and outside. It's nothing more, but it's because of this that vision is possible. This point in the middle. Without it, no vision is possible.

So when this invitation went out, this invitation to a unified vision, I think it was probably this that I had in mind... this point of vision that is the purpose of our being here at all, and it is service to Reality. Because it is in this place of man that Reality sees Itself, and acts, and that Reality is both inside and outside and is in complete expression in humanity. Every person, everywhere. Wherever there is a human being that potential is there. That means that the Reality is there in potential, fully, whether we see it or not. But we need to act as if we see it, as if we know – in the fullest way that it is possible to know

So this human being is deserving of enormous respect because of what it truly is. We are going to sing, tonight, 'I am the pangs of the jealous. I am the pain of the sick. I am not of moulded clay. I am not of the fro'ward wind. I am not of water nor fire. I have mocked at them all. I am pure light.' This is man. Not the human being. This is the reality of the man, which is the Reality.

In other words, do not think I am made of mud – these are the four elements: earth, air, fire and water – I am not made of these things. These elements of nature are just there as a support for the light of the spirit to be present. There is the famous story of Rumi who was walking in Konya one day with some companions and he came to a hump-backed bridge and, as he was going over the bridge, suddenly another person arrived from the other side and Rumi prostrated. They asked him what he was doing, to prostrate to a man? Of course, he hadn't prostrated to a man – his vision was unguarded at that moment, taken by surprise by the reality of the man. 'I am pure light'.

That was a little introduction to a perspective. A perspective to which we are invited by life itself and by this school and by the grace of the great teachers who have come to this perspective. As Bulent said, 'This is the purpose for man on earth', why he should be respected and revered, not because of his behaviour, which may be from ignorance, but because of his potential.

So this man who comes to himself, this is the man who knows his reality as being the reality, and it seems that this is where real responsibility begins. Responsibility taken in its strict sense of meaning, that is, the ability to respond. So, to the extent we know our reality to that same extent we are able to respond to what has to happen. To respond to people, to respond to nature. We haven't been responsible. We have regarded nature as other than ourselves rather as our mother and we have exploited things for our own ends because we perceive ourselves as islands and don't see our magnificent potential, our true nature, and, I believe, the only place we can really be happy. We look for happiness in all other places but we can find it right there in ourselves.

So that is my hope for the future. I think it is a real hope. I think that this can be found, can be communicated. It is completely available for everyone here but also everyone elsewhere. It is accessible. It's so close. It is there when we just stop, the moment we stop what it is we are doing.

I believe it is a real hope and that hope is real. Hope is one of these qualities which belong to the inner world. The world of the interior, which we have come to think of as some kind of an invention of the human mind. This is really very far from the reality. That we think that this reality, hope, which we are born with, we have made up. Some kind of an invention. Just like we think we have made up the idea of god. And of course we have, in a way, until we come to know what it is, really. But this perspective regards the reality, this reality the Being from which we all derive, the Origin, First Cause, God, Buddha nature, whatever we call it, this reality the mind perceives. It does. But it then says, if it is not educated, 'I made it up'. It thinks of it as its own creation. But the mind, ordinary human consciousness, is a receptor like everything else. Like my hand is a receptor and it receives sense, feeling. The mind also is a receptor of the reality but of course it can only receive according to its own nature and its own limit. Just like I can't touch the reality as it is in itself with my hand. I have all these different receptors. Why on earth should I limit my reality to my mind? This is really strange! Or why do I think I have to be full of feelings and right ideas to be a proper human being?

Q. You used the term 'as if'. Can you say more?

I think this idea of 'as if' goes very deep indeed. Just on a purely practical level, if I am chopping wood I don't know that the axe is going to go through the wood but I have to chop as if it is. If I don't, if I doubt, it's going to bounce of the wood and sprain my wrist. So chopping wood with certainty, even though you don't know that the axe is going to go through, you have to chop as if it is. It's like that with anything that you do. You don't know that you are going to succeed but you have to proceed as if you are. So we don't know what is going to happen with the world. We don't know that there is not going to be some awful catastrophe but we have to proceed as if life will continue in the best way it can and that we can participate in that.

This goes with hope because hope, real hope, is a kind of an appreciation of reality but from behind a veil. It's a kind of knowledge. We can't say, because we don't know with absolute certainly, that this is going to be so. But this hope can really inform and instruct the way we go about things. It's quite paradoxical because it's only when we really know we are going to die that hope comes into full play. I can't explain that.

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