Hi, I realize that I'm having a hard time remembering that what I find happiness in is not objective and is in which all the content appears and I'm wondering how I can remember that because any any sort of phrase that I use easily becomes just thought and this is especially difficult when uncomfortable feelings come up and and I'm and it my impulse is to feel that happiness is to not feel those feelings so but I guess that the crux of my question is how do I remember that happiness is not objective notice that whenever you experience happiness it's always the same experience five-year-old boy and you got model airplane airplane for for Christmas you experienced happiness when you were 10 years old and you got into the local football club you experienced happiness you passed your school exams you experienced happiness when you met your girlfriend you experienced happiness yes all through your life you've there have been numerous occasions when you've experienced happiness and each one has been preceded by or apparently delivered by a different objective experience but the experience itself is always the same experience that already is a hint that the experience of happiness itself is not dependent on any particular object it could be triggered by the same experience can be triggered by a number of different the same experience of happiness can be triggered by a variety of different objects and the second thing to notice is that happiness is in potential within you at any moment if you suddenly got a text to say that you had won the lottery or that you had got a distinction in your exams or you had found the house of your dreams or whatever immediately you'd experience happiness the happiness was there all the time waiting to be triggered and it can be triggered at any moment which means that it lies in potential in you all the time when the when the object appears you win the lottery or get a distinction in your exams or whatever it is then the sense of any sense of lack that was present before that object appeared is immediately brought to an end it is the ending of that sense of lack which reveals the underlying happiness the sense of lack is always accompanied by a desire for happiness that the sense of lack and the desire for happiness are the same experience another way of saying it the sense of lack that is suffering and the search for happiness are the same experience you can't be suffering and not search for happiness you can't search for happiness and not be suffering so when you get the the object that supposedly delivers happiness what actually happens is that your search that is the activity of mind comes to an end and as the activity of the mind comes to an end the consciousness that lies just behind and apparently obscured by that activity briefly shines so understand the mechanism of desire and see that the experience of happiness always comes when desire is brought to an end it was the desire that veiled the happiness the desire doesn't achieve the happiness the desire is the veiling the sense of lack the suffering is the veiling of happiness and just test that out in your experience notice that happiness is always the same experience therefore it cannot be dependent on any particular object we all know that we all have had the experience at one moment in our life somebody can make us very happy at another moment in our life that same person can make us very unhappy if the happiness that we experienced was due to the person then whenever we were with that person we would always be happy same when you received your toy airplane when you were a five-year-old boy when you were on your five-year-old and on your fifth birthday it made you very happy six months later you were bored with it it didn't go on producing happiness I remember when I was when my son Matthew was about he must have been six or seven years old and he was always very keen on football soccer Americans and in those days he used to play in goal and so I remember once going with him to our local town and buying him some goalkeepers and new goalkeeping gloves and we put them into a bag and did a various shopping came home and this is when we lived in Shropshire so I was in the kitchen I started cooking dinner and I heard this rustling on the table in the next room and I knew that Matt was unpacking his his goalkeeping gloves so he took his goalkeeping gloves out of the bag and then he came running into the kitchen and he said oh I love getting new things and I thought it was such an amazing thing to say of course he didn't realize the implication of it he didn't say I love my goalkeeping gloves he said I love getting new things and concealed in that statement was a great deal of understanding that it wasn't the object itself that made him happy if the object itself had made him happy then all he would need to do is keeping his goalkeeping gloves with him all the time and then he would always be happy it wasn't the gloves it was because this new object came into his life and at that moment it briefly put an end to this sense of lack now the sense of lack doesn't have to be raging suffering it could just be a very slight sense something is missing I need something to complete myself so in this case it didn't matter that it was the goalkeeping gloves it could have been anything it could have been a chocolate milkshake and the way he expressed that I love getting new things was an expression of what we're talking about now that the acquisition of the object whatever it is it doesn't matter what it is it just needs to be fresh brings to an end the search which is the activity of mind and as the activity of mind comes to an end that it's veiling quality comes to an end and consciousness briefly shines at that moment the shining of consciousness is the experience of happiness so I'm thinking if I can if I can remember to drop the search is that all I need it's a little bit more than that go to the experience of consciousness now you understand that when I say go to the experience of consciousness it's a very inaccurate phrase you cannot go to the experience of consciousness because you are already that but return your attention happiness is at the source of desire it can never be the object of desire happiness lies at the source of attention never at its destiny so with your attention can go in two ways it can either go remember my provisional definition of attention which is consciousness directed towards an object so the attention can either go towards the object or it can sink back to its source it's a two-way street now when we feel a sense of lack the attention goes out towards the object in order to relieve that sense of lack do the opposite with your attention take your attention back to its source and feel that its source awareness is inherently peaceful in other words it is at rest it is there is no lack in it that is the experience of happiness think of it more as peace than happiness because happiness has a more there's more movement in in happiness they think of it more as peace in consciousness is inherently peaceful so bring the attention back to its peaceful source and then that peace at times overflows at as happiness even said this beautiful thing which describes very nicely the relationship between peace and happiness he said happiness is peace in motion peace is happiness at rest so go for peace go for peace exactly because happiness when we think of peace we tend not to think of it as a state of the mind it's more like the background of experience whereas happiness we can see that as a fantastic state of mind with a broad smile on our face and go more for peace it's more neutral it's more transparent and that peace in in time it kind of begins to bubble in us as as joy yeah I see how the the peace could be at any moment rather than the happiness okay in that case substitute the word peace for happiness and go for peace thank you thank you is that if we could continue just a little bit my up my experience has been when getting something I get the thrill of the new the activity of getting something it's the thrill of consciousness that you get okay it's not the thrill of the new thing that little thrill is consciousness shining in your experience okay so it's not the object and it's not even the activity yeah following that is the it almost appears to me to be consistent with the acquisition is the fear of losing it or getting it damaged or some foreboding that it's going to go away and so when you first started to respond to that question I got a little confused and changing it to peace makes starts to make more but if you look carefully that there's the the sense of lack which is the equivalent of the desire for the object you get the object the desire which is the activity of mind collapses consciousness briefly shines what is it that veils the shining of consciousness it is the fear of losing the object so the mind first of all rises in the form of the desire I want the object to put an end to the sense of lack you get the object the desire that is the mind briefly dissolves consciousness shines but then almost immediately the mind rises again in the form of fear of losing the object and consciousness is again veiled so the desire and the fear are actually exactly the same activity they are the veiling activity of mind okay that happens in a pretty imperceptible time frame sometimes in between the two something must happen because during the first movement of mind the desire happiness has not yet been experienced and the second movement of mind fear happiness has already been experienced because your fear to you're afraid of losing it so the experience of happiness happens in this brief moment in between the two risings of the mind in fact it's not a brief moment it's a timeless moment because between two appearances of the mind there is no time thank you that is why we say when we're happy that time flies it's it's popular wisdom expressing a deep intuition that when we're happy the normal sense of time is altered it's true it is in the note when we're happy time disappears thank you Rupert I had an experience this morning with the meditation and I just would like some clarification okay several years ago I fell 50 feet into a glacial ravine and shattered my entire body I was alone all right you were alone I was alone so over the course of many hours I moved back and forth from my body to the light and back into the body and the one thing I need to have clarified is how that straddling occurred because it came up for me in the meditation this morning so I would be in the light and I would be in the breeze and I would be in the movement of the the emerald and the silver of the leaves and then I'd be and then I'd see my body I'd be back into the body and then I'd be lifted back out of the body and when I was in the light I could watch the body crawling so my body was crawling out of the ravine I'd go back to the light I'd be brought back down to the body okay so I was eventually found and suffice it to say so six months in a hospital bed I continued to have that experience of moving out of the body and back into the body I realized that I had to reconstitute a sense of myself in my body as myself in order to take back my life right when I was doing the meditation this morning again the dissolving the body the relocation of my sense of self outside of that brought that experience up for me again so one thing I'd like to understand is your view of how trauma sets up does it set up in the body because I can feel in the residual pain that I had throughout my body because much of it is cadaver is is is is the energy that got trapped in the desire in that in the instinct to survive because it was my body that I would watch my body crawl and then I'd be in it and then I'd be lifted out of it it was it's very hard to sidestep the the pain throughout my body because it feels like it's very much attached to the instinct to survive you said you had the same experience again during meditation this morning of being outside your body as as I was able to as you guided me into all the sensation right through the sensation yeah okay and and again the sensation would dissipate and I could step out and I really had some wonderful experiences of being present in my body and yet there was an absence of pain temporarily okay so in the experience of the ravine you were obviously close to death and in fact you were so close to death and that the death process had already begun your life was in the balance and remember what I said I think yesterday about the body being an appearance in the mind as opposed to our normal way of thinking that the mind is in the body so when the when the death of the physical body takes place an appearance dissolves out of the mind but the mind that gives rise to the body doesn't necessarily disappear so you were beginning to experience this separation between the body and mind remember Mary asleep in garrison locates herself in Jane's body in order to know the world in order to know the streets of London Mary's mind is not really located in Jane's body it only seems to be from Jane's limited point of view now your finite mind seems to be limited now in your body you it seems that your mind is looking out through your eyes it seems that the mind is located in the body just as from Jane's point of view it seems that her mind is located inside her body in fact that's not true Jane is an appearance inside Mary's mind so in fact the body is an appearance in the mind the mind doesn't appear in the body so when you describe being outside the body looking at your body crawling along in the ravine you are beginning to go back to Mary's mind Jane is beginning to recognize I am Mary so you had this reversal instead of feeling my mind is in my body looking out you realize my mind is much bigger than my body and my body is this little thing which takes place in my perception so the gravity of your accident which brought you so close to death in fact initiated the death process and this but but it didn't it just went it initiated the process but because your life was in the balance you kept coming in and out your mind seemed to locate itself in the body then you were crawling along and then suddenly your mind would expand and you'd see the body and then the next moment your mind was back in your body you seem to be crawling along so your life was obviously in the balance and then this you said it continued even it was so it was this experience was so strong that even when your life was no longer in immediate danger the six months in the hospital yes this process still kept happening I think you said in the hospital you continue to sometimes view yourself from outside the body correct the experience would be I I just turned into the experience I didn't use medication I really use what I as a psychologist I knew how to turn into the experience and go through it and I stayed present in it but I frequently in the in the fire in the heat and in that the the the extensiveness of the pain I would be taken out yes and and then it was this my question feels like something straddles the infinite and the finite and would intimately know me take me out and know when to drop me back into my body to integrate I life experience yes I would suggest that the times when you were in the hospital when the pain was so intense because intense pain eventually means death intense pain in the body means that death of the body so when when you experiencing these very intense painful experiences in the hospital that were not medicated when you were experiencing you were again beginning to go through the early stages of the death process the body was was your body was about to die that's what you're that's what pain signals that the death of the body and this precipitated this experience that you kept having of realizing that the body is in the mind not the mind in the body as a trauma sets the the traumatic experience sets up in the in the body in the mind it's the it's the you come it's you come close to death yes you're having a brush with death it's the same reason why people actually like extreme sports the reason the thrill of extreme sports is that it in a in a safe way they are brushing with death in a very controlled environment they are getting as close to the edge of death as possible precisely because it precipitates the kind of experience the kind of release it projects you out of the body and and it's a it's an it can be addictive that's why people get addicted to extreme sports what they're looking for is to come so close to the experience of death as to be forcibly it as to forcibly experience the independence of the mind or the independence of consciousness from the death of the body they are they are it's a it's a way of kind of forcing one to experience that the independence of consciousness simulating that the experience of death the fear of death is is is forcibly revealing the background of consciousness and that is why the experience was repeated this morning because this morning you were not going there through physical pain and therefore the potential the imminent death of the body you were going through it was a death of the sense of separation that you went through this morning because you were realizing in the meditation your your Jane's mind was going back to Mary's mind at some point you were standing as consciousness as infinite consciousness which is the same position that you were standing in during when you were in the ravine and in your hospital bed in fact in the ravine and the hospital bed you you didn't go all the way back perhaps to consciousness but you were going you were going back a certain extent you had a taste of it and then it in this morning it was more like a like a conscious death it's it's what the Sufis mean when they say you have to die before you die I had a lot of my feet all the way up the top my head just you had a lot of like Kundalini it was just this morning yes yes yes that's because it was just an incredible yes charge that that's because this intense experience you went through has it's left a residue in the body the body was so traumatized and naturally so by this experience that it's like the echo of this trauma has remained in the body it's like it's like it's like a muscular memory and that memory it is trapped in the body and it's it's lies below the threshold of the rational mind so no amount of therapy will access that those deep layers of trauma something finer than rational thought is required to access and release this therapy that this sorry that this trauma so this morning's meditation we weren't being rational you were you were going in your experience to consciousness or rather you were being you were knowing yourself as consciousness and that in that openness and safety and sensitivity this trauma began to release and that the Kundalini experiences shaking from from through your body were the tremors in your body as this trauma is is released it is the body letting go at a very deep level of this stored trauma I mean I've done a lot of work on it and it has felt like it's been very deeply embedded and there was an experience this morning where it did feel like that was discharged yes how would you direct me to continue to facilitate the the resolution of that experience that I would recommend these yoga meditations I think they are the most that they seem to be almost nothing we're sitting here just contemplating and visualizing but they're so powerful as evidenced by that they can get to knots in the body that were laid down very often when we were young children by what our parents did or didn't do to us or in this case a traumatic experience as an adult these experiences remain as memories in the body long after our mind has either forgotten them or come to terms with them and the flooding of the emotion the emotional experience with that yes morning it's a release it's a very you know when you what when you understand a joke you laugh when you when you love someone deeply you're moved to tears in that company it's a it's a visceral expression of this deep opening of the heart and and I would I would encourage you to go there more and I know no better way than these yoga meditations that we do I think they are tremendously powerful and I would recommend you you obviously resonate with them they have a very profound impact on you I would recommend that you you do more of them thank you and it's not oh yes I've done that exercise looking for the edge of my sensation once I don't need to do that again it's a cumulative thing each time we explore the body in this way we are as it were going deeper and the empty loving spacious quality of consciousness is infiltrating more and more deeply into these hidden dark forgotten places where trauma resides in the body it feels like if I continue to do that the experience of death is so close but it is a death it is the death of the separate self that that's what the long after we have understood in the mind that we are not a finite mind that we are consciousness that the deeper root of the sense of separation lives in the body it is stored in the body as a feeling and no amount of conversation and reading non-dual books and watching non-dual YouTube clips will access this deeper root of the me feeling that these contemplations that they go to the root of the me feeling and that they expose it they invite it up into the light of awareness and they gradually dissolve it it is the it is the death of the separate self it is a death and there can be sometimes sometimes this dissolution or death of the feeling of separation can be accompanied by great fear because we feel I'm going to die what's actually going to die is our habitual sense of ourselves what we truly are consciousness is not going to die but our familiar identity this narrow small identity that is limited to the body is it is dissolving and sometimes there can be a contraction of pulling away from that death for fear that I am going to die feels like that happens I think I've told a few of the few of you this story before about a dream I had many years ago on the last night of a retreat with my teacher Francis so it was the equivalent of tonight after it was actually after a two-week retreat and in the dream it was also the last night of the retreat the last evening of the retreat so it was the wake in the waking state it was the last evening of the tree but in the in the dream I dreamt that I was on retreat with him and it was the last evening in the dream and I was looking for him to say goodbye and the house was not like the house that the real retreat was in it was a big old house and there were lots of rooms and corridors I couldn't find him anywhere and at a certain stage right in the center of the house there was a small room and it had two doors on either side of it and as I came through one door he came through the other door and so we met in the middle of this room in the middle of this big old house and I we embraced I hugged him and I rubbed his back and as I did so I said thank you thank you thank you and as I said thank you for the third time I began to feel that my body melted into his that that our bodies melted into each other so this melting of my body started happening and there was a moment of fear for some reason I was standing on tiptoes he's not actually told me but as I was hugging him I was standing on tiptoes our bodies began to dissolve into each other and I felt this fear I'm going to dissolve into him and I started feeling I started feeling insecure and fearful and in the dream I I grabbed put my arm out like this to find something solid behind a rail or a wall or a door or something that I could hold on to to prevent myself from from disappearing and then this voice appeared in me no just just let go just just completely let go to this so I let go completely I let go of what I was grasping for and then our bodies completely merged into one another and then after some time they took their shape again and he said to me when you are speaking to people this was long before I had written the transparency of things or anything he said when you are speaking to people remember to tell them who it is that bears the light but that's not the important part the important part is this fear that I felt in the dream as my body began to dissolve my familiar sense of myself I thought I'm going to die and I reached for safety for the known for something familiar and then this voice in me said no let go surrender to this so again the body is in the mind yes and that again illness yes yes yes remember when you're thinking about this experience that the body is in the mind and this that the imminence of death when you were in the ravine in fact the death process had already started you were that close and that the body was dissolving out of the mind leaving your mind bigger than the body but because you didn't die completely there was this back and forth and it was obviously so traumatic that it continued happening in hospital particularly because you particularly because you weren't medicating and therefore you felt this terrific pain which is a signal to the body I'm dying so the experience continued while you were in hospital so what we did this morning was like a kind of conscious death and so so yes I would encourage you to keep going there that don't expect the same powerful experience each time sometimes there are releases like this or we start crying or which is a less strong version that tears or laughter it's it's the same release but it doesn't have to happen like that and it's unlikely who knows I don't want to say but don't expect the same outward signs there could be no outward signs but still if you really engage in these yoga meditations and the room this morning was just one way there are various yesterday morning with the taking out of the eyes that was a little bit more exotic and but there are very there are various ways and they they all penetrate very deeply into these store this stored trauma Oh ancient unbearable feelings in the body and invite them out of their hiding places bring them up into the light of consciousness and gradually dissolve them now the rational mind may or may not be party to this process the rational mind may not know anything is happening but the way the rational mind I mean in your case this morning it the rational mind was it was very clear that something was happening but very often the rational mind thinks what nothing really happened but in the long term over the weeks and months the rational mind notices there is a change I feel less darkness less constriction I feel more openness there is less conflict in my relationships I feel more more open to my environment less dense there are there are many different ways that we might notice it and the different ways depend on on each particular body mind so don't look for extraordinary science they may come again but they may not thank you I had two questions before just now but now I have a third I you just I just to get clarity about a little bit of what you've just said until this moment I've thought myself to be at least sort of not not particularly taken up with the fear of death but I thought I heard you just say that very strong pain is always an indicator of or death is heralded by very strong pain in the body always not always know that death can come about without intense pain but but the if there is any pain in the body it's it's a signal that there is something wrong with the body the body is in danger you put your hand in the fire the pain is basically telling you the body is in danger take your hand out if you have a toothache the body is telling you through the pain it's a very intelligent signal from the body saying something needs attending to if you don't attend to it it the body's going to be going to be in trouble so the so yes pain is a signal that the body is in trouble and the more intense the pain and this is a slightly simplified but in general we can say the more intense the pain the more trouble the body is in and if you extrapolate that it very very intense pain indicates you know you must look after the body otherwise it's not going to survive so it was in that sense that I meant intense pain is a signal to the body the integrity of the body is going to fall apart unless you take care of it so thank you for that the the question that I wanted to bring you arose from an earlier conversation today where you know I am I don't feel completely carried away by let me see how I can phrase this well enough I'm the father of two young girls and my older daughter is six and three-quarters as I've told quite a few people here this wonderful week and I noticed she she is not every child gets every single thing he or she wants but my child is not living a life of deprivation for sure and you know she has lots of dolls and she has things and and I see in her a the the the beginning I mean she's heading right into an age where the world is very much with her and she has what appears to me to be a very strong yearning for new things that and that is very and I I don't begrudge her that of course about it yes but I would love to be of good use to her in the way that as a father who loves her without giving her any bad feeling sure I would love to help her suffer less if it were possible from you know she's trying to solve that that yearning for happiness as she knows how to and I would love to help her with it very best way to educate our children or to help our children is to live our understanding children are extremely sensitive and although they may not be able to rationalize their experience all of their experience they they pick up qualities from people around them so that's the most important thing if without ever speaking about it you are demonstrating in your life this unconditional peace that she sees that in your day-to-day life around the home you know when when the water pipes burst and the water comes through the door you just deal with it no drama or when when all the things in her life that upset her take place that things that happen to her that disturb her peace and happiness that you that your presence in her life is brings peace to her life you know when when a child has a nightmare and she dreams that she's being chased by tigers and she wakes up terrified she runs into her parents bedroom she jumps into bed between her two parents tells them about the dreams do the parents start reasoning with her about whether or not there are any Tigers no the parents just hold her why is that effective it's because the parents are not afraid of the Tigers their fearlessness communicates itself to the child without having to describe it so when you're with your daughter when she's upset because one of her dolls arms have fallen off or something really serious like that you're you're you're with it you attend to her you take you take it seriously you do whatever is necessary but you're not upset by the situation that the burst pipes the arm falling off or whatever it is and she feels this your your peace communicates itself to her that is the best way to communicate this understanding to a child if she ever asks you a question about it then you can be more verbal about it and she may or may not ask questions my son who has a similar affinity age 16 for new things has has never asked me a question about it and so I have never said anything to him about it but I live my understanding to the best of my ability in everything I do with him and I hope that it communicates itself to him and my intuition is that it does because I feel that he likes being around me I mean I drive him mad from time to time it's true but but I know that he feels he that he feels comfortable with me so I think that's the best way to communicate this to a child and don't prevent her from going through whatever experiences she needs to go through in life to learn her lessons I don't mean that you don't protect her from obvious dangers but some parents can be over protective and not and that comes from their love of course but in doing so they don't allow their children to trip up and make mistakes and learn from their mistakes I I was a parent or am a parent that possibly as on the other side I'm a little I'm very liberal possibly sometimes too time will tell I'll report back in ten years time but a child has to desire something acquire the desired object feel the happiness and then realize that it's not really satisfying and then that feeling of emptiness that comes don't project your child from that feeling of emptiness I don't mean you obviously you project your child from suffering but it's necessary for us to feel that that when we get the object we want we've longed for so much it never really delivers what we hoped it would there's no escaping that experience and when you've had that experience enough times in a life hopefully you ask the question where does real happiness come from but some of us need to you know splitting up with our first girlfriend or boyfriend is enough to precipitate that question for some of us others of us need to go to the ends of the earth before we before that question dawns in our minds thank you very much thank you it's about the meditation this morning focusing on a sensation at some point I really I was confused whether what I was experiencing was more like the streaming of the body it seems that it's more like blood flow you know something circulating rather than what you were describing like a light vibration so it seemed I was trying to get deeper into the vibration it the sensation itself but then I would not find anything I would just find I would say emptiness but no real what you were saying that very slight vibration and with the sound I would I oh I when I hear a sound I hear the silence in the sound too like this background of I don't say it's even a background it's the same thing that the sound and the silence are one yes so I don't know in for the sensation was what's this streaming is because it seemed to be fairly strong it doesn't seem to be subtle I'm not sure that I've understood your question completely but so tell me if I'm not responding to it that when you say when you go deeply into the vibration or all you find is emptiness there when I go deeply into the sensation as let's say I have a sensation in my chest I didn't find a vibration there well a sensation is just sorry vibration is just a different name for sensation it's the same thing for instance go now to just hold your hand out like this put your hand on your on your knee like this and feel feel that your only experience of the hand is a sensation yes and that sensation is it's not static it's tingling yes it's not just one thing if you look carefully it's kind of flickering like the night sky yes that's what I call a vibration that that's it that's what I mean by vibration the reason I use the word vibration rather than sensation is that a vibration is a little less solid than a sensation a sensation is an object whereas a vibration is more like a movement it's little it's a little less substantial than a sensation but it's referring to the same experience so it's not that there's a vibration in the sensation vibration is just a subtler word that I use first of all we call it a hand then we call it a sensation then we call it a vibration then we call it pure knowing so it's just a different word that's trying to describe a little bit more accurately than the word sensation so I have a follow-up question is when you extend that your awareness to the whole body it feels that it becomes I felt it was like an intense vibration and like a streaming you know they use that word streaming yes like pulsating yes exactly it's never one thing the sensation or the vibration is is streaming or pulsing yes I thought it was the blood circulating in the veins sorry I thought it was the streaming was the blood circulating in the veins no but in this contemplation we know nothing of blood circulating in the veins this is just about what we are actually experiencing in the moment the newborn infant knows nothing about blood circulating in the veins all the newborn infant knows is this tingling sensation or vibration that is the experience of the body yes blood circulating in the brains is an interpretation that is added to the sensation or the vibration and I thought then that I was looking in the right the wrong direction I thought I was like because I had that interpretation I thought oh that's not it I'm looking for something yes okay okay yes that interpretation would have would have it would have been difficult for you to follow the meditation you I understand why you might think you were looking in the wrong direction or what I was the body comes to our attention we drop the label body we realize all there is to our experience because we're just interested in experience all there is to our experience of the body is this tingling amorphous sensation when we go deeply into it we don't find an object they're called a sensation that is a clearly defined border and can be can be touched it's more like a it's more like a tingling or a vibrating and then if we go deeply into that and this is why I suggested drawing that the vibration on a piece of paper just because it makes us go to the actual experience how would we depict this experience on a piece of paper in order to find out how we would draw it we actually have to go there and we were we realized oh I would just do make lots of little dots on the page and some areas would be completely blank there'd be no dots and other areas in the chest area there might be lots of dots together but if we really look it's all white page with a few dots floating around it when you when you even even the intense areas places of intense feeling or intense pain if we put them under the magnifying glass it's just dots on paper it's all that's there but as you say it's if you go deeply into it it's we can't find a solid substance there it's this empty aware presence all that's actually experienced there is consciousness and that's why I asked at some stage that I suggested at some stage asking the question first of all notice this tingling vibration but then ask yourself what is it that is vibrating there must be a substance there that is tingling what is that and when you try to find that substance you don't find anything solid you just find this empty consciousness it is consciousness is knowing that is vibrating within itself and appearing as this pulsating sensation which thought will label subsequently my body thank you I have just a quick question do you ever do the same meditation for eyesight yes I do sometimes the reason why we for the most part this morning for all of this morning we had our eyes closed is because we were exploring specifically the experience of the body and the experience of sound and I usually leave sight till the very end we might run out of time this week but I usually leave sight as late as possible because the experience of sight is the of the five sense perceptions sight is the experience in which separation and distance and otherness is at its most persuasive when our eyes are closed it's obvious that this morning when we were listening to the music just that very first sound of the music it's obvious that it appears in the same place as our thoughts appear and then even as the music gets louder it all appears in the same place then when the music goes quiet the train goes by and we realize oh the sound of the train takes place in the same place as the sound of the music which takes place in the same place as my thoughts and feelings all that is becomes increasingly clear when our eyes are closed and then we open our eyes and the world jumps outside again so that's why and the sight is very it's very persuasive the separation is very at its most persuasive with sight so the answer is yes I do go there we do explore it we haven't done this week who knows what will happen tomorrow morning but thank you so first I want to thank you for this morning's ecstasy that was wonderful thank you so right now I'm sitting with the upcoming event when I leave here tomorrow I will be going to visit a cousin and she is in the realm of Alzheimer's quite deeply let me preface this with as I have the opportunity and the blessing of growing older I find that I have many more opportunities to experience grief and experience sort of free-floating awareness of a grief that is not necessarily attached to any particular object or subject and I am also more aware of the possibilities of life deaths randomly being taken away brought forth I mean it's just very random it seems that another opportunity for grief might arise so I'm going to be visiting with her and I do have a bit of grief about her condition she was an exceptionally intelligent vibrant person and now I will be experiencing her in another state and I sense that she's probably resting more in Mary and much less in Jane that she used to however I'm not sure how to relate what can I bring to her that might be of service and what might I learn from her your absence of the fear of death and your peace the greatest gift you could give to someone who is on their way to death is the absence of death is there any the absence of the fear of death that's the greatest thing you can give your friend the deep feeling understanding that what she is is in the same pristine condition as it has always been in what she essentially is is not deteriorating it's not growing old it's not destined for death that doesn't mean of course that you insensitive or facile with her condition you take care of her or relate to her on the level at which she can relate as best you can but hold in your heart this knowledge that what she essentially is is this beautiful radiant pristine deathless being and if that's your feeling understanding it will inform your relationship and your communication with her and she will feel it thank you I would I'm sorry Moses yeah that one it's funny I don't know if you ever walked that way but this this road here is called Mary's way I don't know if you know that I have a question more about memory which came up in the beginning of this retreat by some people and I've been pondering about this a lot and I just wanted to share some of my findings because it's not yet I just wanted to see if you have similar thought about that first of all I want to bring in the three-dimensional screen the screen the living screen which is a transparent screen which we are and in which sounds appear thoughts appear feelings appear sites appear everything appears in them and like yesterday I was walking in a forest where there was some mushrooms that I noticed and I had this perception of this mushroom which filled this transparent screen and comes up and say wow I was got this reaction it's like triggers reactions probably something like in this mirror or in this screen something echoes back from a deeper death I don't know what and that's what my question is going to be about is that deeper death that the first time I see this fresh and another thought comes up in the same screen probably after because you usually insist that there cannot be two experiences at the same time and that second experience would then say whoa what a beautiful mushroom white mushroom is there now today I happen to make the same walk in the morning and I see this white mushroom again but this time I again see this as a pure perception that comes into this open screen three-dimensional transparent screen but this time a follow-up thought comes from the same death saying oh that's the same mushroom as yesterday so I'm just wondering about the is there any difference at all or not and what is it that the perception of yesterday's mushroom and the perception of today's mushroom have in common what is it that is the same in both experiences the transparent screen exactly so what you should have said when you saw the mushroom today is oh there's the same screen yes and it's true that the memory confirms consciousness not time yeah and it's true that the previous day's experience is not coming back it confirms the sameness of consciousness sorry yeah but it's true that the second day when I remembered that I had seen that mushroom before it's a bit like the other person who raised I already heard that Beatles song before yeah when that memory came back that's not yesterday's experience it's again a completely fresh experience of this moment you said which is colored by somehow something that happened before you said when the memory came back okay try now to just choose any experience you like from your past try to get it back take lunch today let's be more specific take take a single mouthful your first mouthful of mozzarella and avocado sandwich trying to get that taste that experience back or take a thought now and now take a second thought now try to get the first thought back doesn't experience ever come back no never and but somehow there is a way there's an experience go in consciousness but somehow there is if it goes into consciousness it the experience arises out of consciousness it exists in consciousness it dissolves into consciousness therefore during its existence what was it made of consciousness yes so the object didn't come into existence existence means to stand out from the object never really stood out from consciousness in other words nothing no new experience appeared and then disappeared and became an old experience the only substance that is ever experienced is this present consciousness it's only from Jane's point of view that objects come in and out of existence but from Mary's point of view the only substance present is her own infinite mind nothing other than that ever comes in or out of existence so memory is a function of Jane's limited mind memory doesn't tell us about reality it tells us about the limitations of Jane's mind but it's it's it's true and that that white mushroom somehow when it reappeared again it didn't reappear it appeared freshly again but somehow you see the white mushroom was never a white mushroom what was your experience of the white mushroom seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling hopefully you didn't eat it but it was it your knowledge your experience of the mushroom was perception perception appears in consciousness is known by consciousness is made of consciousness in other words it was never a white mushroom there was no thing independent thing with its own reality called a mushroom it's just like a thought appearing it's a whole experience of knowing and I agree it's all consciousness vibrating in certain way that generates certain things called white mushrooms after the facts but I'm still puzzled by the fact that the first time it came up fresh and the next day there was a second thought coming up saying oh that's the same mushroom as yesterday that thought was fresh that thought was as fresh as yesterday's fresh mushroom but the most my question is really there must be some kind of registry of all things we lived and I know it may be in Jane's memory mind limited mind that triggers this new fresh experience saying oh I've seen this yesterday it's Mary is trying to let Jane know that there is something in her experience that is consistent and reliable however Mary knows that Jane cannot see Mary's mind Jane doesn't know about Mary's mind although her main mind although Jane's mind is made out of Mary's mind Jane doesn't know that but Mary wants Jane to come back to her so Mary thinks to herself I'm caricaturing Mary's mind now Mary thinks I have to somehow show up my consistency my ever-presence has to show up in Jane's world in a way that is consistent with the limitations of her mind so Jane cannot know this is Mary reasoning with herself Jane cannot know about my ever-present being so I am going to have to show up to her as a continuous object in time so what for Jane is a continuity of objects is a reflection in Jane's finite mind of the eternal nature of Mary's infinite mind so Mary is giving Jane a hint of her eternity in the form of continuity in time Mary looks Mary goes out walking and each day she notices the same mushroom she thinks wow there is something that always remains the same in my experience it's the mushroom she doesn't realize that the sameness of the mushroom is a hint in her finite mind of God's eternal being yeah the the conclusion that I came about is indeed who cares about all these mushrooms and whether it's a memory or whether it's a new thought or a fresh thought or the only thing is the screen or Mary's the conclusion is memory proves consciousness not time but your conclusion was also fine yeah it's kind of perfect that we're talking about mushrooms because it's there's a trippiness to the reduction that we're talking about here because I found doing the yoga meditations in the box set especially the ones toward the end that a sight there is when you stay with the knowing there is no difference between a sight and a sound yes and a thought yes and a taste that the knowing of them is all formless like the knowing is formless exactly so that's why we have to reduce matter to mind and mind to consciousness so at the level of matter there are 10,000 things at the level of mind there are only five things seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling so we've reduced the multiplicity and diversity of 10,000 things we've simplified it in mind it's no longer 10,000 objects it's five activities seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling but there is still a multiplicity and diversity of objective experience at the level of mind we have to further reduce the mind as you're now describing and realize that the only stuff present in seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling is knowing and then now we go the other way we follow the same path in the other direction it is knowing pure consciousness that modulates itself in the form of seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling and appears as 10,000 things I think that I'm following what you're saying I found that when I'm able to do that reduction fully and recognize that everything is the same it's it's a it's a cool it's a kind of a science fiction II feeling it's it's a neat feeling I wouldn't describe it as an ecstasy but wow this is so cool kind of thing but then when I'm in my day you know at work or I'll think back on that experience and it's kind of because I'm not established in it yet what not this everything is nothing and nothing is everything and everything takes place you know what I mean because when you're when you're not yes when you're in the experience of the formlessness it makes sense it makes some sort of sense I can't explain what the senses but when you're not in in that that felt experience you're kind of it's what but it's okay having having traced our experience back from matter to mind and mind to consciousness then we turn and retrace our steps and go back into the mind and the world and yes we may as we go back into seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling and then back to separate objects themselves we may forget from time to time this recognition that we had that everything is a modulation of the same infinite being but nevertheless every time we take the inward facing journey and establish that all there is in experience is consciousness then when we go back again when we retrace our steps take the outward facing path something of this understanding lingers we take it with us out into the world so that the the experience of seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling and then the experience of 10,000 things in time has less and less veiling power in other words experience remains transparent to its reality but that that takes time and again that the yoga meditations are like a are like a halfway stage between the recognition of pure knowing and life out in the world the yoga meditations facilitate this realignment of the experience of the body and the world in a way that is consistent with our recognition of pure knowing my first teacher he said in one of his pieces he said for your for your inner eye the the trend what is the transparent is opaque he was speaking to somebody who doesn't have the recognition for the inner eye I'm not quite I don't might not be getting it exactly right yeah for your inner eye the trend the transparency is opaque and I always thought oh that's kind of a nice poetic thing to say but now he wasn't kidding like when you're not when you're when you're lost in things yes everything appears opaque but when you're when you're able to be in that felt experience you see that everything is transparent yes what's that bouncing back yes this is what it says in this is what it means in them the bhagavad-gita when it says this is my free translation of the bhagavad-gita when when consciousness sleeps the world wakes when consciousness wakes the world sleeps the world as a collection of objects made out of matter that is why Ramana Maharshi said the world is the forgetting of the self it's why Rumi said the world is a kind of ignorance they don't mean experience experience is shining with consciousness they mean the world as it is normally conceived as a collection of objects made out of matter that world in order to experience the world in that way consciousness must fall asleep and when consciousness wakes to its own reality that material world disappears and all experiences seem shining with consciousness so in essence that experience of what is is ignorance I don't say that in putting myself down it ignorance in the sense of the forgetting or the overlooking it's a temporary forgetting of this the recognition that the only substance in your experience is infinite knowing that the the world has through force of habit managed to persuade you that it is made out of something other than consciousness namely matter and then you just take the inward path again re-establish and it takes once you've done traveled this path many times it doesn't take long it's just it can be an instant recognition go back to lead yourself walk yourself back through the inward facing path to recognize all that is known is knowing and that it is knowing that knows knowing and then take the outward path again but retain that understanding and see as you said at the beginning of your question that all seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling is actually made of this knowing it doesn't have any seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling doesn't have any intrinsic veiling power unless we give it that power in which case they will seem to veil knowing but if we don't give them that power then the very experiences seeing hearing touching tasting and smelling which previously seemed to veil knowing now shine with it express it they celebrate it thank you hi Rupert this question goes back to the yoga meditation this morning and I have this really strong sensation under my right scalpel that I feel for the last seven years every time I sit down to meditate or every time I pay attention to my body and so it's become like a friend you know it's like oh hi there I recognize you I sense you and then today when you said to put a microscope on it and yeah and the dots very intense and I look into it and there's space between the dots and it feels like it's dissolving but then it comes right back and it's really intense like fire like burning and when you say is there a weight no there's no weight because it feels like burning is your density no there's no density but it feels like a cutting thing and I know it's not the kind of pain that leads to death type because it only comes on when I sit down in stillness and it's quiet but I like to know how to work with it because it's been with me for seven years it shows up every single time in every single meditation that I've had here or contemplation with you yeah I don't know whether I'm embracing it too much you know whether this attitude of oh hi there it's you again my friend whether that perpetuates it that's a very good beginning it's it's much better than me oh not you again my enemy I want to get rid of you that would perpetuate it so this welcoming attitude is absolutely right it's a right start but you can be a little bit more proactive than simply welcoming you and this is what we were doing this morning you can put the intense sensation under the microscope and go as we did this morning with your feeling imagination into the sensation for instance at some stage this morning I suggested asking yourself does the sensation have a density to it now in order to answer that question experientially we have to go into the sensation to find out what it's made of so I would suggest you do that the same thing you put the experience under the micro microscope isolated you're not you're excluding the sensation of the soles of your feet or the sounds of the birds or whatever so just with this you've got this ball of intense sensation bring it fully up so that it fills the whole space of consciousness and go deeply into it explore it in the way that we did this morning and don't just explore it in a static position you could you could move while you're doing it you could move your arm did you say it was your right well that's the thing is that I feel every time I move it goes away so it's like no I want to explore okay I'm not gonna move and because the moving seems to be a pushing away okay in that case don't seven years of exploring this okay that's fine so I'm like maybe I'm not working with it the right way no no it's fine if it goes away when you move unless the pain is unbearable then of course make yourself comfortable but if it's something that only comes up when you sit as the open space of consciousness it suggests that it's an underlying tension that is normally buried and that only comes up or that is normally eclipsed when your focus when your attention is focused in another direction but it comes up when your focus is open so put it under the microscope microscope and explore it in this very very gentle hands-off way that we did this morning take the meditation that we did yesterday morning where we actually after we had removed all the organs and tissues we then folded up the skin and we all that was left was this vibration and then we started breathing emptiness into the vibration of the body allowing the emptiness that the breath was like the courier of emptiness that we breathed into the sensation filled up the sensation with the emptiness and then as on the exhale we exhale this emptiness all over the surface the porous surface of the sensation and as you breathe in and out like this the the emptiness of the space all around the sensation pervades percolates into the sensation mixing its emptiness with the density of the sensation so that would be another way you could establish in your experience that the space the knowing space in which the sensation is floating is a is a loving space and breathe that love into the sensation so you're not breathing just empty awareness into the sensation you're breathing loving empty awareness into the sensation and with each breath feel visualize first and feel that the loving emptiness percolates more and more deeply into the tension of the sensation and then the ten sensation is progressively saturated in this loving emptiness and then as on the exhale the loving emptiness carries the density of the sensation out into space all around so these are just different ways that you could be a little bit more proactive than just allowing the sensation allowing the sensation is a good place to start but work but be careful always keep always keep your the exploration very loving not goal-orientated not I'm doing this because I want to get rid of the sensation I mean I don't feel that that in your approach but keep it very very gentle very loving well I know time doesn't exist but it has been seven years and every single day you haven't been trying this approach for seven years okay I will try it for seven weeks and see what happens I'll report back thank you thank you hi but so I've been doing the practice of going back and forth between Moses and Sanjay or Mary and Sanjay let's say you know I try to do that as just on a whenever I remember whenever it comes up I kind of try to do that and more recently it's just felt more like instead of this back and forth there's just a sense of gratitude it doesn't matter what's like if there's fear coming what it's just and yes and I don't know whether you know I should just let that go and let that continue or try to consciously go back and forth no no it's fine doing what you're doing because it's fine to do what you're doing remember that Jane's Mary is dreaming that she's Jane so how much distance is there between Mary's mind and Jane's mind no exactly the finite mind in the teaching we sometimes use the term tracing our way back to our true nature or allowing the attention to sink in its source these kind of phrases are concessions to the finite mind but and they suggest that there is some distance between the finite mind and its source remember Jane's mind is just a coloring of Mary's mind there is no distance between the character in the movie and the screen the character in the movie is already the screen but with an imaginary limit superimposed so there is this is why it's called the direct path or the pathless path there is no distance between the separate self and consciousness because the separate self is an apparent limitation of the true and only self of infinite consciousness so there is no there is no room for a practice there is no distance between the finite mind and consciousness there is no time that is required to travel from the mind to consciousness the mind is just a modulation of consciousness so that's why it's called the direct path or the pathless path so when you say you just feel gratitude and you don't want to go back and forth the gratitude actually when you feel gratitude your mind comes to rest yes you rest you no longer want to go anywhere you're completely at one with your experience so the gratitude is actually an experience of the fact that your finite mind is God's infinite mind because your gratitude brings to an end the struggle of the finite mind the desire of the finite mind to leave the here and now and go into space and time so the feeling of gratitude is Jane's recognition of the infinite nature of her mind so this love and gratitude that you feel is God's presence shining in the mind you don't have to do any more thank you hey um so I was gonna ask this really intellectual question but then as I've been stewing over here it's kind of becoming more emotional so I'll just get right to it basically my dad was 62 years old when he had me so I really had this very profound anxiety and fear of death when I you know my whole life basically contracted kind of feeling and one of the things that's very hard like I'm excited to do this meditation more regularly and I've been having a lot of anxiety you know when we do it because I know it's hitting on something kind of like what you described with beginners meditating but what's really tripping me up right now is that I'm trying to recognize my true nature instead of trying to push away fear of death you know I don't want to I don't want to always be pushing things away it seems like I spent I've spent a lot of my time trying to keep life at bay or keep fear of death at bay and it hasn't really worked I used to do hallucinogenic drugs trying to like conquer fear of death it hasn't really worked so I want to do these meditations very badly my father's 93 years old and I kind of want to have that peace when I'm at his bedside well I'm not holding the frequency of more fear of death you know yes but what's really tripping me up is how do I do these meditations without the motivation I want to get rid of fear of death so I can be like a good boy for my father on his deathbed you know what I mean that's that's really confusing to me so it's like in picking up the CD and putting in the CD player I bet you my motivation would be I'm sick of this fear of death I'm sick of this contraction and anxiety and I want to get and I want to get it right okay so as my teacher once said if we want to if we want to live without the fear of death we first have to learn to live with the fear of death so instead of seeing these yoga meditations as an opportunity to get rid of the fear of death see them as an opportunity to become acquainted with that fear the reason why the fear of death is so unbearable is because we're not fully acquainted with it so do the opposite see these yoga meditations as an opportunity to bring the fear of death closer to you you've been so afraid of this fear all your life that you've been pushing it away without ever really knowing what it is so see these yoga meditations as an opportunity first of all for the fear of death to come out of the twilight zone where it's been hidden in the body all these years up into the light of consciousness and explore it there's no such thing as getting rid of the fear of death there is only seeing through the fear of death if the fear of death were something real if it had its own identity then it would be something that we have to get rid of the fear of death is only there because we haven't seen clearly who and what we are the way to see that is to see through this fear so the only way to be free of the fear of death is to fully experience it and see through it to the reality that is behind it which is your immortal being and it's a beautiful endeavor it's a beautiful intention that you have that you want to give this gift to your father when he dies and that you recognize that your own absence of the fear of death is the the most loving thing you could give your father so when the fear of death appears in your meditation don't think oh there's that terrible feeling again I must meditate in order to get rid of it think ah good there's this fear again that I've been running from all my life this is my opportunity to really discover what it is made of so you turn around to the fear and say thank you for showing your face again come closer come fully into me you can stay for as long as you like I've been running from you all my life without really knowing what you are now I want to become acquainted with you I want to find out who is the one that I'm so afraid is going to die the other thing that's keeping me tethered intellectually is that is that I've you know I'm like a personal trainer I do so much work to help people get embodied so and a lot of no don't we're not interested in being embodied we're interested in being in consciousness yeah which is so this is that's brand new for me so yeah I'm excited about it but I just wanted to talk about one knot one intellectual knot I had which is that um you know like with the world's relationship with mother nature which I gather is happening in Jane's consciousness there's a lot of things um like the religion and science it's like the body is bad nature is bad nature is to be overcome and I've been really in rebellion against that way of thinking because I think it's been very damaging and so one of the intellectual knots I have now in embracing this and like letting myself you know be more than just a body is I feel like it's a betrayal of that philosophy that you know was is really necessary like let's be embodied let's um let's respect and honor nature you're quite right to be rebellious about any any attitude that denies the body or the body discover what the body is and and the world go go having taken this inward facing path go back out into the world take this understanding back out into the world suffuse your activities in the world when you're doing your work as a coach when you're with your father bring this understanding out into bring it to your body and bring it to the world in your activities yeah one of the reasons I was so attracted to your teaching is you acknowledge that some of this stuff comes from you know India and places where there was this you know repulsion towards the body the body was yes you know and and that now it's like that bringing it more into the tantric path and I'm so I I like that you honor that it means a lot to me yes because I haven't it's true that in the in the Vedantic tradition not in all expressions of it but in a lot of them the body and the world that that they were more focused on the inward facing path of recognition of infinite consciousness and as part of the neti approach the body and the world were considered to be distractions you hear phrases like the despicable body made out of blood and excrement and bones and it's a little body and world negative or denying not all expressions but it's a general characteristic and and it's it's a valid path but it's only half the path this recognition I am not the body I am not I'm not this I'm not that and it's a beautiful path because it establishes the presence of consciousness and the primacy of consciousness but it's only half the path in the tantric traditions the outward facing path the path of inclusion rather than the path of exclusion was elaborated in more detail in the tantric path they're not so good at the path of the inward path they don't describe that path very thoroughly and therefore a lot of people who just approach reality through the tantric path don't establish first of all that that what they essentially are is infinite consciousness therefore a lot of people that get involved with a tantric teaching get lost in exotic feelings and expressions and a kind of expanded feeling of the body but they don't because they haven't really first recognized what they essentially are so the tantric path is not so good at that so both paths that's why in this path we hopefully we're balanced between the two approaches the path from I