well i have a sort of suggestion
and that is this
that 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 and 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 some vocally inside your skull
if i think all the time i have nothing to think about except thoughts
and 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 a kind of a stuff
other people have the theory that the real world is spiritual or mental but i
want you 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 and 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 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 and 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 we would 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 eats 12 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
and we get unhappy
because we're thinking of ourselves in this way because 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
and uh we went into it in a long conversation i said what are you really
afraid of
and she thought it over and thought it over and he said you know what i'm going
to be afraid of is 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 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 as is
consistent with visibility and 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 and 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
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 prowl 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
uh 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 didn't bring me up right either and 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 you would 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 want to put something down we say it has no future
well do you much better to have a present
because if you don't it's useless to make plans
because when they work out you won't be there to enjoy them you'll be thinking
of something else
so we don't we realize that we are living out of now
and throwing the past behind us
you