Transcription
So, the topic of today's video is one that I enjoy making. It's a, it's a fun topic. It's also one I get a lot of requests for. Probably one of the top few uh subjects people ask me to talk about. It's also one that can be confusing. Uh, for instance, I get almost every time I make a video about this, I'll get a comment underneath it, um, pointing out some contradictions in the way I'm speaking and so forth.
So, I will start by saying there are going to be logical contradictions in what I'm talking about. Um, or at least the way I'm going to use language can seem to uh, almost invalidate what I'm pointing to. But that in and of itself is an important thing to recognize and notice and understand about thought and about language. And that thought and language um have major limitations when it comes to um spiritual insight or awakening or what, however you want to say that. Uh, they're valuable in the relative world when applied properly to relative things. But what I'm pointing to here is not that relative world because the relative world is a world of thought. It's a world of shared um overlays. It's a world of shared perceptions including perceptions that seem very fundamental like there being a three-dimensional world and there being time for instance. But the point is language is just not designed to talk about timelessness and that's essentially what this video is about.
Um, so timelessness, it is a valuable undertaking to do these kinds of contemplations or listen to these kinds of videos periodically to, I guess, at first just get a taste and then with time and with insight to clarify that this can be and will be an ongoing experience. Now, of course, everything I just said sounds like there's time and it sounds like you're going to get better at something and all this. There's just no other way of talking about it. Uh, but I will say if you look at where I'm pointing, you will see the truth of what I'm saying. That's the beauty of this. It's immediately and clearly verifiable. And then if you see what I'm saying and then you go into a thought or you notice a thought that says, well, but you said this and you said that and I remember this and I remember that. Um, the answer is really always the same and that is that thought is also occurring right now. Do you notice that that thought is occurring right now? Because there is only right now for anything to occur in, period.
Um, thoughts that look like memories come up. When do those thoughts come up? Right now. You ever had a thought in the past? No, it's impossible. There is no past. Um, one approach to this is just seeing if you can find any kind of thought. Um, that is not in one way of speaking pointing away from this moment because they usually are, right? Analysis, um, judgment, memory, imagination, imagining a future, planning. Most, if not all, thoughts in some way or another point to an illusory not-here-ness. And maybe there is value to that. Maybe there's a social function to thought and shared thought and language and all of it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about the point, the fact that the illusions constructed within thought are easy to dispel, the illusion of past and future because here you are right now, where you've always been, where you can't leave and no matter how many thoughts come up, you're still here, or something's here, there's a here-ness, right?
So, for instance, I could say imagine something that happened 10 minutes ago, just briefly, maybe you were pouring coffee, maybe you were walking the dog, maybe or taking a shower. Just remember it. Now notice as you're remembering that it's right here. It's happening right now. The thought itself is here right now. You didn't beam back to 10 minutes ago. Now imagine something that seems like it happened two years ago. Even just an image in the mind. Now notice when that's happening right now. So it doesn't matter if the thought seems to be talking about a minute ago, 10 minutes ago, 10 hours ago, 10 days ago, 2 years ago. It's still occurring right now, always. And you could say, well, I know there's a past. And I would say, okay, how do you verify that? And the only thing you can do is give me a thought or or a sentence based on a thought.
People will say, what about cause and effect? I'm looking at um a picture on my wall and I remember painting the picture or something like that. So I'm, I'm looking at evidence of cause and effect and it's like, look at what's, look at what's actually there. There is no cause and effect you're seeing there. You're seeing colors, shapes, and even those are overlays. Even colors and shapes are overlays, but they're the most fundamental building blocks of the visual scenery, let's say. So, when you see that even, even those descriptions are added, now you're really seeing. When you really see what's there, you'll see there's nothing about a past, there's nothing about causality there, there's nothing about memory there. The only way you can find that argument, that belief in cause and effect, the past, etc., etc., etc., is through memory.
Now, I will convolute this slightly to say that I'm not telling you actually that there is no cause and effect. I'm just telling you cause and effect are both here right now. That's very hard. It's impossible to imagine that. But it is um not just experientially true. It's backed by science, specifically the special theory of relativity and the space-time interval. If you're, if you're nerdy and interested in that stuff, read up on it, which essentially demonstrates that causality is primary, time and space are relative experientially um in the way we can test it. Uh, and if you look at what the testing is doing, it's, it's interfacing thought and belief and concepts and analysis with um math essentially, right? And even that you can see if you're doing that, if you're calculating something, if you're concluding something about calculations, you're observing what the numbers are showing you, you're doing it right here. Always right here. That's it. Yeah.
Only the mind can turn that into time and space. Because the mind is relative. That's when we say time and space are relative. To me, that's exactly what that demonstrates in immediate experience. The clarity of now, or what's not in time, even to say it's a now can be off because now the concept of now comes with it, the, the concept that there could be a not-now, past and future, and that's not true. So, it's much better to see like without any time goggles on. And sometimes you have to deconstruct the thoughts and beliefs to do that. Once you do that, once you start to deconstruct and you're really getting it, oh, oh, here, here, here, here. There's only this, there's only this. It's kind of an amazing recognition. It's an amazing realization. And you can stay here, stay with it, stay in the recognition immediately now. And notice the only thing that can seem to take you away from it. It doesn't take you away. It just puts a kind of, it just kind of turns attention in a different direction, maybe towards thought. But if we get hypnotized by the thought, if we identify with the thought, specifically identify is what what matters, then it can seem like there's a not-now happening or that's possible. And even the, even if you fall for that, it's happening right now, like, do you see this?
Another approach is can you actually make a thought create a thought or create a statement about what you're actually experiencing right now? If you say, well, I'm experiencing the now, that thought is just a concept. Do you actually see something called the now? Or do you just see this? You won't find any concept in, in immediate experience ever. Fullness, emptiness, now, presence, God, source, emptiness. You won't find any of those, any of that terminology. You won't find any evidence actually that says it is this or is that. So even concepts don't really apply, very well at all.
Um, but at worst, you might notice, no, I shouldn't say at worst, um, like worst-case scenario, you get lost in thought that makes it seem like there's something not here and then you just, you remember it again. Something, you're back here again. The language is weird. You don't actually go anywhere, but it sure seems like you do, right? You go internal, sort of. That's the worst-case scenario. And what, what I mean by that is nothing's lost there. You still never left the now. You still never left this that's not the now. You still never left timelessness. I think that's the best way to say it's just timeless. It's timeless or eternal. Eternal technically means not bound by time or not defined by time or not experiencing time. And this is just really kind of one quality of realization I would say, but it's a, it's a clear one and it gets clearer in deeper realization.
So, anything that comes up for you that's the mind trying to prove to you that this is wrong, that I'm saying or there's time based on memory or any of it, just notice all of that. You're not actually seeing it here. What you're doing is you're turning attention into consciousness, which is also here. And then consciousness can do this thing like a projector. Turn on a projector of something not here. That's the kind of genius and also the tragedy of consciousness. It has the ability to do that. Doesn't create a future or past. It just creates the illusion of it right now for you. So, in some sense, it doesn't actually matter whether you're aware of this or not because you still never left this. It all becomes really absurd and funny at some point.
Um, but I do like making these videos because they're kind of a fun exploration and they're a pretty direct um, empirical investigation for anyone who's curious into the nature of what I'm saying, whether it's actually true or not. If you really look, you can't miss this. This is empiricism. Look and see if you see time, a past or future. You don't. You can't. It's impossible. Of course not. But you can somehow become aware of something that looks like it in thought. That's all that can happen. And that clearly happens right now, too. So have fun with it.