- Hello again, it's Martha Beck
- Here with Katie.
- The amazing Bryon Katie.
Talking about this incredible new book,
A Mind at Home with Itself,
which I was lucky enough to read in manuscript
before it was printed,
and I can tell you it put me in a space
that I'd never been in before.
I walked around in a state of complete bliss
while I was going through this book for the first time
and every time I go back to it it takes me in deeper.
It's a gorgeous work of art, Katie.
- Oh, thank you.
- We're doing little summaries of the different chapters
and in particular, the quotations
at the end of each chapter.
Ad this is chapter four.
The quotation here is really fascinating.
It's the kind of thing you say,
some of the things you say are as simple as dirt,
like basically you do three things,
you sit, you stand, you lie horizontal.
- Yeah.
- And then you say things that make me go...
Like rewind, and this is one of those.
I love these, when Katie says something like this.
It's because she lives in a space beyond suffering
where my mind hasn't been.
When I hear it, it's not nonsense.
It's super sense of a kind,
and then, if I can find my way into it,
it always sets me free a little bit more,
a little bit more, so I'm hoping to get you
to do that for all of us here.
Listen to this, you guys.
She says, "I have devoted myself to the end of suffering
"in this apparent world.
"But I don't do it because I believe
"that anyone is actually suffering,
"I do it because I'm serving myself."
Now that's got three mind blowing...
First one is, apparent world?
What do you mean?
- Well, apparent world is this past-future world
that we are thinking out of,
experiencing life out of.
For example, if I tell you, if I say,
"Wasn't lunch really wonderful today, Martha?"
Then what am I talking out of?
I am talking out of the images in my head
of the past where I could see there was salad.
I can see the salad dressing.
There was salmon.
I can see that in my mind's eye.
And that's what I'm saying.
Wasn't lunch wonderful?
Well, what lunch?
And did you all see the salmon and the salad
as you were hearing it?
So that's imagination, that wasn't lunch.
And real lunch would be, you know,
like I'm eating something right here right now.
And we could say that's real.
But even what I'm eating right here, right now...
I wouldn't know what it is
if I were not perceiving a past
upon what I'm eating.
So I don't really see the food,
I see what I'm imagining
out of the past
this food to be.
The past is my reference.
So this food really is the apparent food.
- It's in your imagination.
- It's imagination, and so there really is no self
other than the imagined self.
But that doesn't make it real.
The imagined lunch, but that doesn't make it real.
So to notice things like this,
I hope that this becomes so simple
for people through this book.
You know, that's why it was written.
To take the pain out of life.
To take the suffering out of life.
So there's no separation among us.
It can be the end of war.
When I talk to you,
I'm not talking to who I imagine you to be.
I'm talking with you.
So now I can hear you
without perceiving onto you
the meaning of what you say
or who and what you are.
I'm seeing the real you, I'm connected.
So that's the first part of that.
- I remember when, you know,
I've been playing with these concepts
because I do your work on a daily basis,
and it also agrees
with the Great Masters of Enlightenment through history
so I pursued it even when I didn't understand it, at first.
And I remember sitting there one day and thinking,
"How odd that this body had three children."
And then I thought, wait a second,
every atom in my body is replaced every seven years
and that's true of all of us.
- That's also funny because her son's name is Adam.
- Yeah, right, every atom in my body is replaced,
so he's now out of my body.
But the thing is,
there is not an atom of me sitting here
that was anywhere near my consciousness
seven years ago.
Let alone 20, 30 years ago.
And I thought,
"This body, these atoms, did not have a baby."
They weren't present when those babies were born.
And where are the babies?
They were seven pounds
and now they walk around
and play the piano and stuff.
Like, where is the baby?
It's gone.
And I realized, oh my god,
nothing real could disappear that entirely.
I can not...
I can find pictures of the babies.
I can find memories of the babies.
But the babies are gone.
(snaps fingers)
Boom.
The moment something's passed, it is irretrievable.
And nothing real could vanish that completely.
- And what is left, if you question your beliefs,
what is left are,
I have three children,
and what's left?
I can see, feel, even smell what it was to hold
any one of these three children of mine.
And it's so, so beautiful.
And in my mind's eye,
I get to watch them grow up.
Now they're going to kindergarten.
And now they're going to high school and et cetera.
Now they're mothers and fathers.
And so I have them.
They're in me.
Then when one of them calls me
or comes to my home and says,
"Hi, mom."
It's just, oh I've got it.
But this is, altogether, it's my perceived child.
And so I'm always so grateful to see that child
absent of resentments
or absent of any misunderstandings
so I'm really connected.
- So there's no past.
- So it's not as simple as just hearing
like my experience or your experience
or a lofty experience.
It's about noticing what you're thinking and believing
and ending the war within yourself.
And once that's done, the war ends
in your life with other people.
You have a deeper understanding.
So again, I hope it's been transmitted
through A Mind at Home.
- Yeah, and what we really are in continuity, if anything,
is, I thought, okay, well I am the whisp of consciousness
of knowing around which these atoms seem to accrue.
And they keep going and creating an apparent body.
And that's why the end of suffering in this apparent world,
you're here with us playing in the apparent world,
to end what appears to be suffering to us.
- Which we're all doing as a matter of being weighed to it.
Which is so much fun, as you can see,
just to talk in this new paradigm,
this new world, this friendly universe
where there's a solution for every problem
and they're not separate.
They're in the same place
and they're seen instantly.
- Yeah, in the real world, the apparent world,
that's no problem.
So then you say, and this,
I've had people say,
"How dare she?"
How very dare you?
"But I don't do this.
"I don't try to end suffering,
"because I believe that anyone is actually suffering."
This is what you got,
and people are like...
(exaggerated gasp)
I have suffering, untold agonies.
So do you, apparently...
- Yeah, so did I.
And this could sound very cold
and uncaring and detached,
but in actuality
it's the extreme opposite, it's connected.
And I'm left, you know,
if you're suffering and I imagine what that feels like,
then I suffer.
But if I'm awake to when you suffer,
I can't feel your pain.
I feel what I'm imagining your pain to be.
So that's not your pain, that's my pain.
So once I'm awake to that,
and you're in pain,
I'm not in pain.
I'm awake to the difference.
You know, who hurts and who doesn't,
and so I'm freed up to be of service.
I am freed up from everything
to just handing you,
if you need a tissue,
I'm available for that.
If you need 9-1-1,
I'm available for that.
If you need to be held,
I'm available for that.
A drink of water,
I'm available for that.
I am 100 percent available
to be with those people in my life
who need someone not to suffer when they suffer,
but just to understand and to listen.
And that's like the greatest gift we can give.
Is to anticipate another person's need
and to stay connected in the deepest, most emotional way
at the same time.
So there's nothing cold about that.
That's something selfless about it.
But if someone is in pain
and I imagine what they're feeling
it's like okay, now we have two hurt people.
Oh my gosh.
And it becomes about me
when you need the help
and I'm suffering.
But one of us are suffering legitimately,
and it wasn't me.
- Yeah, well, my favorite quote,
it's a Persian quote from the 13th century,
really simple little snippet,
and it goes,
"Troubled?
"Then stay with me, for I am not."
And let me tell you,
my experience of you,
you know I've read this stuff.
You know, I don't really suffer
and nobody's really suffering
and yet, when we were getting to know each other
and you asked me a question about something
that had been painful in my life
and I was fine, I'd done the work on it.
I was happy as a clam.
And as you questioned me
and I described to you what happened to me,
you were then complete calm
with tears streaming down your face.
Without any hesitation,
any desire to separate
from what I had felt
and what I still carried.
And yet you were completely untroubled by it.
You absolutely understood it, I felt.
And you absolutely knew I was okay.
Wow, that is something
that just pulls us out of our suffering.
To be with someone whose mind is
at home with itself.
It's amazing.
- You know, compassion is very different
from feeling another person's pain
in the way that we're describing it now.
Compassion, that's...
You know, what we're pointing to here
is a connection that runs so deep
because it comes out of an understanding
and what pain really is like.
And you know, it sounds odd,
but that's not something that I can forget
because it gave me life today.
- Yeah, and that's why you finished this.
"I don't do it, because I don't believe
"that anyone is actually suffering.
"I do it because I'm serving myself."
Because you are the suffering person.
Even though you know the suffering at the core,
they're completely okay.
- You know, and I can see that they're okay.
And I invite you all to
just become aware for a few moments
of other than what you're thinking and believing,
other than your state of mind,
are you okay in this moment?
And I love that you all have that.
And just to contemplate that.
Other than what you're thinking and believing,
if you look back at the worst moments of your life
and you just meditate on that,
and witness other than what you're thinking and believing,
are you okay?
And then to honor what you see.
- This is the account of someone who has done that
to the point where no suffering can penetrate
or be believable anymore.
And it gives us a touchstone.
So read it.
(laughs)
A Mind at Home with Itself.
Thanks for joining us.
Bye bye.
- Bye bye.