Andrew Cohen - N°11 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

It's usually to speak personally creates a sense of personal intimacy. It's how you get to know people by speaking personally. You speak about yourself, they speak about themselves. That's what creates a sense of mutuality and trust and intimacy. And then if there's vulnerability, it creates even more feeling of trust. So you all should notice that um even though you all don't know each other very well. Some of you know each other but a lot of you don't know each other. There's a beautiful feeling of togetherness. Even though you have not been sharing personal stories, personal feelings, personal thoughts. So I noticed this is the whole point. I noticed many years ago during these extended periods of 10 days or more, people would not be speaking personally. Again and again, I found that people who never met each other, knew nothing about each other personally, admitted feeling more intimate, feeling a greater sense of intimacy, oneness, trust, ease of being, relaxation with people they never met before, more profound sense of oneness and intimacy, love with people that they had no personal experience with. It's just because you just because you stop speaking personally and stop being personal, stop acting through the personal lens through through the personal uh portal, you begin to feel more deeply into life and you begin to feel more you experience greater intimacy which is completely counterintuitive and it goes against everything we've been taught to think about love and oneness and intimacy, vulnerability, transparency, right? So this process perspective teaches us to contemplate the nature of the cosmic process that that's producing the experience we're having right now to begin to think of ourselves as our experience is being produced by this process rather than existing apart from it or outside of it. This helps us to awaken to a much deeper sense of of who we are as the whole universe. So usually we think of oursel as some stupid uneducated ignorant way. Think of myself as existing outside the creative process, outside the evolutionary process and some kind of independent world space as disconnected from the whole. Right? This is unconscious deeply conditioned cognitive behavior. It's how how we've been taught to think about ourselves. How we end up thinking as self-existing independent entities that exist outside the cosmos somehow. Right? Does that make any sense? Because when we begin to pay attention, we begin to study that the cosmos, the whole universe has created the conditions that make it possible for us to have the temporary experience of relative integration we're having right now through this body, mind, and personality. This is why I like to say, give people the mantra, I am the the energy and intelligence that created the universe awakening to itself and realizing itself through the body, mind, personality of Andrew or any one of us. It's a different way to think about who you are. And it's more honest. It's more authentic. It's more true to reality. That this body is a temporary is a temporary emerging phenomena. Not going to last for very long. And it's producing the conditions to make it possible for you to have the cognitive emotional experience you're having right now. But you don't actually exist outside the process. The process is created. The conditions make it possible for you to have temporary experience of being separate human being that you're having right now. So you are the we are the whole process giving rise to these conditions just more it's more of an authentic picture of reality. So the process perspective encourages us to think about the nature of this process. It's part of our daily practice. And one thing that I've encouraged people to do for many years is through the practice of contemplation and introspection. Learn how to stop compulsively personalizing everything you think and feel. So we've been taught to compulsively personalize. We believe in our ignorance is my experience. My experience of thought, my experience of feeling, my experience of lust, my experience of fear, my experience of doubt. I'm having a particular feeling. And if you start to think about it, it's very impersonal. It's part of the human experience. We're all more or less having exactly the same experience with slight variations between me and you and you and someone else, but it's basically the same experience in all of its glory and mundanity. It's kind of shocking how lacking in authentic uniqueness we really are. We're more or less the same person having the same experience more or less. I'm exaggerating to make a point. But it's an important point. So what I encourage people to do is to scrutinize it to contemplate the nature of your own experience when you have when you remember during the day when you have a disturbing thought or disturbing feeling. Scrutinize it and ask is this really as personal and as real as it appears to be or is everyone else having the similar kinds of feelings and thoughts that you're having for similar kinds of reasons going through the same drama of a separate existence that you are? And the answer is yes. It's kind of it's unbearable when you think about it. This will help you to wake up. It's another way to help to wake up from the nightmare of this separate existence and the nightmare of the ego. Because the illusion of a separate existence is easy to penetrate if you stay with it. If you don't pay attention, most people aren't paying attention. If you don't pay attention, it's easy to get lost in the ego's dream. But if you start paying attention and you penetrate the walls of the ego's dream, you start finding cracks and you see a crack, you see through the illusion temporarily for a few seconds, you go, "Oh my god, it's not real. Little scary. I thought I was real." But if you keep paying attention, you'll start seeing more and more cracks and start seeing through the illusion of a separate you. The illusion of a separate you is as foolish as the illusion of a separate somebody else. We're all having the same experience. It's all the same dream. So this is one form of contemplation helps us to transcending the ego. We're part of an impersonal process. The creative process is not a personal process. It's an impersonal cosmic process. It has no ego in it till we show up. This is something you just have to pay attention to every day for a few minutes. When you remember, contemplate what you're especially when you're suffering. When you're suffering, it's good to pay attention to what you're experiencing. When you experience happiness and joy, pay attention to what you're experiencing and say, "What what am I actually experiencing right now? Is it what it appears to be or is this just a reflection of something much bigger?" And you're all intelligent enough to do this kind of reflection. Just most people just don't do it. Nobody told them to do it. Nobody taught them about the fact that they're part of a process. No experience is being produced by this process has created a condition to make it possible to see and feel the kind of experience that we're having. What's very interesting is when you stop acting from the personal part of yourself, which is the separate ego, when you stop speaking, walking and talking and thinking from that part of yourself, you start to feel better. And not only do you start to feel better, you experience more oneness and intimacy with other people that you never met. I feel more int I realize I feel more intimate with people I've never met here than I do with my husband or my wife, my children, my best friends. Isn't this fascinating? Because from my point of view, if that's true, and it is true, we've got to think about what the hell we're doing with our lives. If what I'm pointing out is absolutely true then that should have an influence on the life choices that we're making because the question you have to ask yourself the big the famous question that Ramen brought up who am I stop speaking and acting from the personal dimension of who I am this produces a greater sense of intimacy vulnerability authenticity transparency happiness happiness happiness says how much more happiness why don't I drop this personal trip. Very few people do that. But I'm just trying to give you a relatively objective picture of the reality of the human experience. If you're sensitive and thoughtful enough and attentive enough, you'll see you'll see what I'm saying is true. This is not just an opinion. So why I asked all of you not to speak between the sessions? is I wanted you to have this kind of experience so we could talk about it together because once you know what it is most of you are just discovering for the first time but once you know what it is then you say well this is the state of consciousness this is the kind of relationship to life I want to experience all the time because I experience so much more au authenticity realness transparency meaning purpose love and oneness and nondual oneness so it seems that This divided self egoic personality as magnificent as it is from an evolutionary point of view as complex as it is keeps us apart from depth spiritual depth metaphysical depth. The depth of reality keeps us very separate from it. Right? So we have to learn how to think big about reality and start feeling better automatically. This is why eventually when we're mature enough to do it, which for some people will take many years, we have to drop this obsessive fascination with our personal story. But it's the obsessive thinking about me in my story year in and year out, false sense of self, which is a separate self existing outside the cosmos. It's constantly thinking about it the story of its life which is a false story anyway because it's it's a picture of a separate existence which it never really was in the first place. So what the kind what are we doing anyway? It's self delusion. So all the constant thinking about me and my story outside the context of the totality of reality is making our experience worse causing us to suffer more and not less and we don't even know it. But it's you see it's just it's compulsive self concern. We can all learn how to do that less. So that's why I keep on repeating these teachings over and over and over and over and over again about learning what it means to have no relationship. I'm talking about our salvation to pointing out your potential fear on salvation in this life. And if you put what I'm saying into practice, you'll find out that it actually works, which will give you confidence. Don't take my word for anything I say. Don't take my word for it. Put it into practice and see for yourself. It makes sense. But when you see yourself compulsively thinking about yourself, stop. Driving yourself nuts. And I'm sure you're driving other people nuts, too. People who talk about themselves all the time are boring to be around. I'm being brutally honest. It's unbearable. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. It's not interesting on a personal level. None of us are that interesting. That's not what's interesting about any of us. It's not the personal stuff. It's the deeper dimensions of who we are. That's what's interesting and compelling. But the story itself, once you've heard it, is kind of boring. Even if it has some interesting parts in it. So explore these issues for yourself and see what happens. Everything I'm saying is very simple now. It's kind of obvious once you get it. So the intimacy you experience in these retreats is coming from the best part of you, the best part of all of us. And if you want to live a happy, liberated, enlightened life, you have to gain access to this part of yourself in a way that's solid and steady. That's what all the spiritual practices are for. That's what all the dharma is for. Show us how to do that. But this the simple experience of intimacy you're having is the foundation of the ground of liberation. You feel it for yourself. You could take this a lot deeper. I'm not saying this is everything. You're experiencing the foundation of the potential for your own liberation grounded in a deeper experience of reality. So the implications are profound. They're very exciting and they work. So the reason that I'm so interested in contemplating the sum totality of reality as a process is because when we awaken to the evolutionary perspective, it's the first thing you realize is that the universe is a process. Life is a process. Manifest reality is a process. It's one process. It's one event happening on multiple levels at the same time. And that's become quite fascinating. It was very interesting to suddenly see all the complexity of this process and as I said how the process creates the conditions that make it possible for you body mind and personality to emerge and have the experience that it's having right now. And what's even more interesting is the experience you're having right now is just as what's possible up to a point when you start adjusting the dials taking responsibility for the creative part of all this you can start having a big influence on what you experience and how you experience it. You get my point? We're not just merely ignorant, unconscious, blind, passive experiencers of being part of a process. When you wake up, you realize that you're part of a process that you can you can actually have an effect on. So when you realize, oh, I'm not just a passive participant here, but I I can be an active participant in co-creating the experience that I am having and we're having, then it gets very interesting. So anybody who's interested in evolution is interested in the process perspective. It liberates you from his unconscious ideas and beliefs about a separate existence. And inherent in that is your own potential for liberation at the level of direct experience. So as I said when you remember during the day over the next weeks you have a few minutes remember you are the process as a whole that's producing the experience you're having just just spend a few minutes on it you don't have to spend a lot of time just keep reminding yourself every day it will become more and more natural more and more obvious to you I am the energy intelligence the creator of the universe and it's creating in the universe right now awaken to itself through the body mind personality of my very own self it's a different picture so if two people can do that together two people can do that at the same time the process can start relating to itself impersonally so one part of the process starts having engaging with the other part of the process process starts a relationship with itself So it's non-dual because it's a relationship with itself, not the relationship with another, it's relationship with itself. So it's a non-dual relationship and it's a lot more fun and a lot more interesting for the process to have a relationship with itself than two egos to have a relationship with themselves. I'm telling you, but the challenge is if it's really going to be the process of relating to itself. the destroyer of all happiness, which is the ego. The negative ego has to be kept outside. That's the hard part. The ego's a party pooper. Cuz ego says, "Andrew, you've been speaking for an hour now, but you haven't been speaking about me. Me, my story, my needs, my pain, my suffering, my desire to be happy and to be acknowledged and seen and loved. I'm a good person, too." You haven't said anything about me. This must be part of your shadow, Andrew. [laughter] So, in this metaphysical context of enlightenment, we we're learning how to flex a certain intellectual muscle, which is learning how to see reality through an a non-relative or absolute lens, which is at first it's difficult to understand what that means. So you have to experiment with looking at a particular phenomenon or particular questions through a relative lens through I'm talking about your own mind in an absolute lens. So you learn how to think in these ways. You have to train yourself. It's a different kind of consciousness and a different kind of cognition. When you look through an absolute lens versus a relative lens and when you look through these two lenses that's when spirit appears. You'll start to see these spirits sneak through the the space there and you're able to hold these two truths inside yourself. You start to see this mystery of the presence of spirit will begin to appear. It's been there all the time. But now because you're holding these two truths very profoundly in your in your own mind. Revelation of spirit nual spirit begins to appear. It's very interesting. And when you understand how this works through the this kind this kind of inquiry then look at your life question the way you're living nature of your relationships. You don't have to talk to other people about it if you don't want to. You keep this very private and secret between yourself and yourself. You don't have to scare anybody or hurt anybody or hurt yourself. Just start to question things with courage and see what you come up with. See what you find. And to just to finish this part, the reason many of you are experiencing deeper happiness simply because you stopped speaking from ego and we've been concentrating on higher dimensions of reality and that does these two things help to just make us happy and concentrate on the dharma profound philosophical metaphysical questions. You stop thinking about the small self. We start to feel very happy naturally spontaneously. automatically which in and of itself is very interesting. So if that's true and it is true, I'll tell you what you see you should be spending more time doing. When you understand the dharma and you practice it, the question how to be happy is not a mystery anymore. Sounds pretty straightforward. Living a conscious life. Now cosmic conscious which is the last one more or less the same point is what it means to become a bodhicatta. And when I speak about becoming a bodhicatta, I'm not speaking about taking a vow. Taking a bodhic satta vow or cultivating a higher intention. It's coming to a point where it becomes apparent to you very naturally spontaneously and living for the highest reasons. Living for spirit. This becomes your only option left for you. You can't do anything else. Everything else as I said the other day starts to disappear and your vision becomes very everything falls away and you still start seeing a straight line to eternity inside your own consciousness. Everything else is gone and then it becomes all about consciousness and what's possible with consciousness and you become interested in that anything and everything that can support that. But beyond that you don't have any interest anymore. It's not because you shouldn't have interest, not because it's bad to have interest at a certain point falls away. So there is a awakening to the call spirit itself. As I have been saying in my teachings, consciousness in a mysterious way delights in its own self-recognition. Your consciousness and my consciousness, consciousness itself delights in its own self-recognition. So it seems it seems it's become apparent to me. The consciousness is not I can't explain this to you except I can just tell you what my experience is. You take it or leave it. The consciousness it seems to me is not without motive. You know rationally what I'm saying makes no sense and I can't explain it and I can't prove it to you. But it seems to me from my own limited experience your consciousness is not free from motivation. doesn't make sense. It seems to me, and I've experienced this many times, that doesn't mean it's true. That's it's my experience. The consciousness wants to be recognized, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be revered, to be honored. Consciousness is not merely a passive observer of Ramana's true self. Consciousness in my experience is not really the passive witness of experience. It seems to be another quality of consciousness which seems to have desire of some kind. Once again I can't prove what I'm saying is true to you but I have experienced this many times. The consciousness I have discovered in my own experience was not free from motivation. So there seems to be I'm saying seems to be I'm trying to be very cautious in what I'm saying because I don't really know the ultimate validity of what I'm saying beyond my own experience but it seems that consciousness at a certain point is not without motive which includes your consciousness if you're sensitive enough to become aware of it. So the universe the interior of the universe which is consciousness is not free from motivation. This is the motivation for the evolution of consciousness, higher becoming. This is what the universe seems to want for itself. Not just for you, but for itself. It seems to be an inherent interior motive of the universe itself, which as I've been saying is unbelievably thrilling. The universe wants us to wake up, be more conscious. There's a pull. is a natural and inherent pull in the universe towards consciousness. The interior of the universe is not a flat or static dimensional reality, but there's some mysterious God force active in the ground of the universe that wants more which is conceivably beautiful and absolutely life affirming, spirit affirming, existence affirming, God affirming. So when any one of us wakes up to this truth in a profound way, we awaken to what I call cosmic conscience because that experience of feeling the mysterious we could call it desire inherent in consciousness itself or greater [clears throat] depth becomes our own personal preference. When you make the shift from a personal identity to a cosmic identity, you begin to feel this pull in yourself. That's very impersonal. It's very subtle but very profound. Isn't it beautiful? I'm very moved by it. Now, I said I can't prove it to you. So, I can't be sure that this is not part of my own narcissistic delusion, but I don't think it is. I'm just trying to be I have integrity as a as a speaker to tell you. I don't I can't prove it. But it's a big secret. Most people don't know this. So in my teaching of evolutionary enlightenment, I'm equating the ancient idea of awaken to this bodhisic motivation which is a loving transpersonal motivation towards all sensient light to awaken to enlightened awareness. I'm replacing that with with what I'm describing to you which is this awakening to the this deepest interior dimension of the cosmos which always already is seeking for greater consciousness and greater knowledge. And when when this happens to you, this is when your vision becomes very deep but very narrow in a in the positive sense of what it means. It's very becomes very exclusive. Not because it should be but just that's what it is at that point. That's when you're living for the universe. Not because you want to at that point, but because you have no choice. And the fact that you have no choice at that point is what liberates you. Not that you have many choices, but the fact you only have one choice is your liberation. Now, so that's what cosmic conscience means. These five principles are very interesting because the first one begins with I want to be free for myself more than anything else. So it's all about you at the beginning. Right at the end the fifth tent it's all about it's all about the whole universe. It's not about you anymore. You're just a function. You're not the point. So if people practice these five principles with sincerity and earnestness, as you evolve, it'll affect you in a very profound way. If you stick with it, but you got to stick with it. You have to stay in it for a long period of time. You have to stay in it. It's to stay in deep water. Well, I've been living a spiritual life very intensively for 5 years. I think I need a little bit of some samsara break. I'm going to go, baby. When I was coming to India in 1984 85 first time doing vapasa retreats in Bgaya after these retreats because everybody been sitting quietly for 10 days everybody was very open and vulnerable and beautiful. So we were thinking talking about yeah man but how long is it going to take to get enlightened and who's going to become a monk and everybody was very loving with each other very encouraging and then I had the experience many time of meeting some of these guys a week later 10 days later two weeks later a month later and they just [clears throat] come from the beach and they started smoking dope again they started drinking gotten in a few relationships they weren't on fire anymore or it's like I brought up the subject uh what about the enlightenment but they they couldn't hardly remember what they were what they were so excited about. It's a true story. They they lost the plot that easily that quickly. [snorts] So for most people it takes a tremendous amount of intensity to begin to wake up a little bit. Like 10 days of meditating 10 to 12 hours a day is a lot. It's a heavy load. But that's what it takes for people to wake up a little bit. But our conditioning is so overwhelming. We just forget all the time. It takes so much metaphysical pressure to squeeze a little bit of light in there. But most I've seen this happen to so many people where they wake up a little bit and they get excited about spiritual potential. Really deeply profoundly excited. And then you feel somebody as experiencing the same kind of intimacy with them that you're experiencing with me and with each other. Same kind of impersonal love that comes from the love of spirit. to recognition that spirit is primary and they got distracted by some sorrow by sex and drugs and just stupid stupid stuff. They weren't bad people. They didn't do anything terrible. They were just stupid and careless with their own capacity for awakening. That's and if you're a little bit careless, it all disappears in a minute. That's why if you live the spiritual life, you have to have discipline just to protect yourself. And if you meet somebody that says all this is easy, they don't know what they're talking about. It's easy if you succeed, whatever that means. But unless you succeed, it's not necessarily going to be easy. So it's better to expect it to be hard and not worry about it. But for most of us, it is very difficult to sustain this state of awakeness through all the ups and downs of life. If you're living the teachings earnestly, it takes five years to get a basic intellectual understanding of the teachings. Takes 10 years to understand what it means to live them. I'm not trying to scare anybody, but I'm just telling you the truth. So, five years to understand them. If you're working with them every week, take about five years to get a general general intellectual grasp of of all the teachings. But it takes 10 years to understand what it means to live them because what it means to live them is a very big deal. Very challenging and subtle and profound and all demanding. It's very funny when people hear that they lose interest going to take that long. I'm not interested. I wanted the quick I want the quick path to enlightenment. There ain't no shortcuts. So you get a feeling for cosmic conscience. It means staying awake to the deepest truth to the best of your ability and being grounded in that truth. So a good way to kind of uh psychoanalyze yourself thinking out loud now is to spend some time thinking about personal stuff that really bothers you. And if it's very personal, consider that maybe it's not half as important as you think it is. Just because it's so personal doesn't mean there's not relative truth in it. Remember people who fall in love beautiful each other's guts. So I don't trust all this in love stuff anymore because on the other side of all that passion is hatred and contempt. the worst kinds of feelings. And it seems that these intense emotions that can be so intoxicating, can be very dangerous and untrustworthy. The dharma is only for very mature people. I think it's not good to hear this stuff if you're too young cuz it's better to hear the dharma after you've lived long enough to live through some of these illusions for yourself. Otherwise, you'll never believe it. But you need to suffer through the agony of seeing this horrible truth about these illusions for yourself enough times that you're vulnerable to another perspective. But love is a very challenging emotion just for the very same reason that I'm speaking about it now. If love and hate are so intimately related to each other, we have to be very cautious about what we're getting into. And I think there's there's a much deeper kind of connection I think than is typically called love which is what I've been pointing to all morning which is a kind of intimacy that's self- arising coming together in these deeper truths which are independently self-existing whether you share them with someone else or not. I think they're much more reliable in the long run much much safer much more trustworthy. So you remember your ego likes to have these intense experiences because they feel so exciting. There's nothing immoral about having experiencing this kind of personal intensity. But you have to realize it's not without cost. Potentially it's not without an enormous emotional cost. Also you have to be careful. Someone who was helping me at one point told me, Andrew, you have to protect your heart. It's true for all of us. We have to protect our hearts. So be careful with what you're doing with your emotions and the kind of people that you're spending time with and who you trust because you have to protect yourself, protect your heart because suffering is real and suffering suffering is intense and gets too strong can make them to lose touch with our higher inclinations and become cynical and nihilistic and smallminded and selfish. You see the kind of maturity you have to embrace to embrace the dharma. I mean this is not for kids. Isn't life a big game where I can just have a lot of fun, have a lot of adventures for me. I know it looks that way, kiddo, but uh it's much deeper than that. So she said, "Andrew, you have to protect your heart." And I realized in that moment that how much you cared about me. It was a very powerful moment for me. She was used for saying stop. Everything's okay. So we all have to protect our hearts that but we also have to be vulnerable [laughter] to both. So if you're listening to this what I'm saying this morning, you should be get some glimpses or some insights into what it would mean to live beyond that which is personal. You should be getting a sense of it, a feeling of what I'm pointing to. And please understand when you live beyond the personal, you attempt to live beyond the personal because nobody can do it completely. You're not giving up anything that's important. And how many years would it take you to realize that if you live beyond the personal, you're not giving up anything important. And if what I'm saying is true, it has profound implications for the life we choose to live and the way we choose to live it. But I want you to struggle with these distinctions I'm making. Find out for yourself. Is what I'm saying true or not? Don't take my word for it. If you've been brought up in a world where the personal is all there is, you're not to blame. It's not your fault. But if you if you're a sensitive person, you don't want to you don't want to live a life where you're suffering all the time. Most people are suffering so much. Jesus Christ, it's terrible. And if we suffer too much, we all have limits. No matter who we are, nobody can bear un endless suffering for forever. We all have limits and we can all break, which is the truth. So this is why we have to learn to protect our hearts and be make choices that will reduce the possibility of us suffering more not less. We have to be very mature to make these kind of choices not lost in the illusions these stupid materialistic crass modern postmodern culture is [ __ ] our minds up with. Most of us are trapped in other people's minds and other people's ideas. It's terrible. It's absolutely horrendous. It causes it destroys life. Even if you're physically alive, you'll be spiritually dead. You won't know what to do with yourself anymore, which is how a lot of us are feeling anyway. So, it's serious. But understanding what I'm saying this morning is outrageous, audacious. Just most people go, "What is he talking about? I heard he's crazy." Now, now you know it's true. I heard him. I heard him myself. He's totally nuts. He kept insisting that the personal was an illusion. He must be crazy. I'm just repeating what I'm saying is these are hard truths. They're hard truths because they're so countercultural. So because they're hard truths, they will instinctively seem strange to you just because you haven't heard them before or haven't thought about them before. So they're hard truths to cognize, to kind of grasp, to experience, to realize, but they're they're important. If you want to truly become autonomous, have real agency, you have to embrace these hard truths and allow yourself to change. You're not going to change in a way that's going to please most people. If you become a truly autonomous, self- authoring, evolving human being, you're going to stand apart from everybody else. Not because you don't love them, but because you you're not blind following along unconsciously like everyone else is, which will make you a little bit lonely. But it's better to be lonely than to be a fool. Right? And it's one thing that's been becoming more obvious to me over the last six months as we're all facing this this meta crisis together and nobody knows the answers right now. A lot of very good people are struggling to figure all this out. But the answers are not very obvious to anybody. So there's nobody that has the answer. Nobody's going to save you. [laughter] Nobody's going to save you. Nobody's going to save us from ourselves. So, we've got to figure this out on our own or together. But no one's going to save you. At this point in our history, the challenges we're all facing are too complex for anybody to have figured them out yet. They're too big. They're too complex. It's too confusing. The chaos is too new. It's too overwhelming. It's all too fast. So, don't think that anybody's figured this out already. Nobody has. It's not good or bad. That is just the truth. It will give you more confidence in yourself if you let it in. Everything I'm speaking about is all about coming together as one. When I came to India and I went to Shiva Nandasham for the first time I went to the satsang there was a famous swami there named Swami Krishna who was giving a talk and I didn't understand what he was talking about at the end of the talk he said there's a drone he said there's a drone can you hear it it's a sound of God you hear the sound can you hear the sound it's saying come together come together come together in unity there is strength come together and I never heard anybody say anything like that before because I was on the spiritual path for my own personal separate liberation I never thought of this whole idea of coming together so this idea of coming together for the sake of what's possible entered into my soul at that moment in 1984 for see how beautifully we're loving and trusting each other and some of us don't even know each other and we haven't even talked about it. So the way it works is if we agree on the on the motives because we come together for the sake of liberating higher consciousness from all of us and come together we transcend ego such a way that makes real intimate communication possible then everything's possible. We become the new being together as one. My attitude in terms of the new being and and exactly what it's capable of is yet to be seen or binda didn't do it and we began to do it but then we still we messed it up. So the thing is I'm very interested in that but I don't I don't feel that the emergence of what we're calling a new being is automatically the solution to all of our problems anyway but to whatever the degree that it is and I believe it has it has a role to play which role it has to play I have yet to see because I thought I already knew the answers to these questions I realize I really don't so my feeling is I have a wait and see attitude what I intend to do is create the conditions in which will make it possible for these evolutionary currents to flow as richly and as fully as profoundly as possible and then I want to see what's going to without already knowing. And I can feel in myself my not already knowing is what's going to make it possible for the big new things to happen. Before I figured out basically how the steps work, but I was I think I was overconfident about what I understood, what I thought I understood. And now I I feel passionately about all the same ideas, but I feel much more cautious and less invested in what the outcome is going to be. But I want to fate the conditions which allow the the potential of the process to reveal itself. And I'm paying close attention to what's happening. So I'll I'll be there to acknowledge it and to begin to guide it if I need to. But I don't think I don't think what what we used to call the new being is the automatic solution to all of our problems. Anyway, I think collective enlightened intelligence has a role to play, I'm sure, but uh it's it's not as obvious to me what the role is now as it was to me 20 years ago. So, I'm still very excited about all the same potentials, but I feel much more hesitant to be so sure. So, I'm I'm still looking for the same outrageous evolutionary potentials to reveal themselves, but I feel more cautious and more uh hesitant to be sure of how it's going to work. And I I want to leave all the space in the world for this to unfold in ways that I don't even already understand and know about myself. So in that I'm feeling very cautious while being as completely committed and as as teaching as forcefully and as fully as I can. These teachings are scientific and they all work. So the degree to which people who start living the teachings on their own terms, these potentials will start to reveal such manifest themselves more and more spontaneously. And I want to create the conditions then in which they'll emerge with less force than I used to because I saw what was possible and I had to force people into these structures that I felt would give rise to these higher potentials and I often did. So I was shooting for the stars again. But I feel much more cautious and careful about it. And I for me being more cautious and careful will make me aware of what wants to happen versus what I think should happen. And that's what I'm very excited about because I'm ready to I'm ready to see what consciousness has in mind. I feel a healthy reluctance to be overconfident. So I'm trying to hold the balance in myself between super inspiration and not being so sure and seeing what's going to emerge because if we're overconfident about how we think this is supposed to unfold, should unfold, will unfold, we won't see what maybe wants to unfold in a very different way. I don't know. That's more or less my position. That's why I want to heal because I have I needed to put more work into this. When I was at the hospital, I just had open heart surgery unexpectedly. And I was in the hospital and this woman when I was in the ICU, I had two surgeries because the first one messed up, this very wonderful woman who was the head of the ICU. She said, "I prayed three hours for you during your surgery." It was absolutely unbelievably beautiful. A lot of people were praying for me that I didn't know and I didn't know why they were doing that. So throughout the whole process I was in the hospital I felt this strange feeling of being protected that I couldn't explain. But to be honest my time in the hospital was actually quite glorious. I mean I wouldn't you don't want to have open heart surgery. Believe me it's a terrible violation of your body and your soul. But on some metaphysical level, there was a sense of being cared for that was very intoxicating and very strange. And I never was afraid that I got afraid when I went home, but I was never never experienced any fear cuz I had a feeling that everything was going to be okay. So one one thing that I changed my opinion about is this idea of fully enlightened. So in an evolving universe, the universe of becoming, we can always become more of anything. We're all works in progress. We're all part of an evolutionary process. So there's no fully anything because there's always more is possible, including enlightenment as a moving train. Some people are more enlightened than others. That's obvious. But fully fully enlightened in an evolving cosmos doesn't make any sense more. If we lived in a static universe, we could define what it means to be fully enlightened in a way that makes rational sense. When when we realize we're in an evolving cosmos, there's no final arrival. There's no final attainment for any of us. We're all works in progress. And from this perspective, even the Buddha was a work in progress. All the greatest realizers were highly realized, but they were still works in progress.