Transcription
Well, I have a sort of suggestion, and that is this: before we decide either to save the planet or to destroy it, we pause for a moment of silence.
I don't mean that kind of grim silence which one observes when somebody says such and such a famous person has just died, and we'll observe a moment of silence in his honor. Everybody frowns and thinks very serious thoughts—that's not silence at all.
I mean real silence, in which we stop thinking and experience reality as reality is. Because, after all, if I talk all the time, I can't hear what anyone else has to say. And if I think all the time—and by that, I mean specifically talking to yourself, vocally or inside your skull—if I think all the time, I have nothing to think about except thoughts. So, I'm never in touch with the real world.
Now, what is the real world? Some people have the theory that the real world is material or physical; I say it's made of a kind of stuff. Other people have the theory that the real world is spiritual or mental. But I want to point out that both those theories of the world are concepts of words, and the real world is not an idea; it is not words.
Reality is. You will find, therefore, that if you get with reality, all sorts of illusions disappear. I will mention several illusions that have not this kind of existence.
Let's begin with some very down-to-earth ones, like money. Money is a very useful method of accounting; it is a measure of wealth in the same way as inches are measures of length and grams are measures of weight. You cannot eat money. You could have a fantastic quantity of dollar bills and stock certificates on a desert island; they would be useless to you. What you would need would be food, animals, and companions.
Money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the menu represents the dinner. Only we are psychologically perverted in such a way that some of us would rather have money than real wealth. But you know, you cannot drive in five cars at once, even though they be Cadillacs. You cannot live simultaneously in six houses or eat twelve roasts of beef at one meal. There is a limit to what one can consume.
So, that's one of the sort of confusions I'm talking about. Another is that we confuse ourselves as living organisms with our idea of ourselves—that is to say, with the conception of myself which is called the personality or ego. We—that is what we have been told we are—and it's an extremely crude and limited conception of oneself, of the actual unique living organism.
We get unhappy because we're thinking of ourselves in this way. We think, "Well, gee, I'm going to die." I once talked to a woman who came to me and said she was afraid of death. We went into it in a long conversation. I said, "What are you really afraid of?"
She thought it over and thought it over, and she said, "You know what I'm going to be afraid of? It's what other people are going to say. They're going to say, 'Poor old Gert, she couldn't last it through.'"
Because, you see, who you think you are is entirely dependent on who people have told you you are. You're not that.
Then another thing that bothers us is time. Most people nowadays say, "I have no time." Of course you don't, because you are not aware of the present. You know, the present is represented on your watch by a hairline that is as thin as possible, consistent with visibility.
So, everybody thinks the present is instead of now. The present is the only real time. There is no past, and there isn't a future, and there never will be. We think ordinarily of the present as an infinitesimal point at which the future changes into the past.
And we also do a terrible thing: we imagine ourselves to be results of the past. We're always passing the buck over our shoulders, like when God approached Adam in the Garden of Eden and said, "Hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shouldst not eat?"
And Adam said, "This woman thou gave with me; she tempted me, and I did eat."
And God looked at Eve and said, "Hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shalt not eat?"
And she said, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."
And God, out of the corner of His eye, looked at the serpent. The serpent said nothing.
So, you see, we're always passing the buck. You don't realize that the past is caused by the present, as the wake of a ship flows back from the prow. Now, the wake doesn't drive the ship any more than the tail wags the dog.
But we've all got excuses: "My mother had a fit while she was carrying me in the womb," or "They didn't bring me up right." And then they go to the mother and say, "How is it that you could have been so irresponsible with your children?" And she says, "Well, it was my parents; they didn't bring me up right either."
So, everybody passes the buck. But the truth of the matter is, it all begins here. This is where the creation begins, and you're doing it and won't admit it. Because, of course, you're all God in disguise. Jesus found that out, and they crucified Him for saying so.
So, this is a very odd thing for Westerners to understand, and particularly for Americans, because we are so fixated on the future. When we say we want to put something down, we say it has no future.
Well, do much better to have a present, because if you don't, it's useless to make plans. When they work out, you won't be there to enjoy them; you'll be thinking of something else.
So, we realize that we are living out of now and throwing the past behind us.