The highest vibrations, the best of
what you’ll hear down there,
will be faint echoes of this glory. Be patient. Be present in your life.
You shall start sensing our presence;
our aura yours each time you need it
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Gathered here, sweetly humming,
fine-tuning us to wear a garment,
they make sure we’ll remember:
unreachability or reachability
shall be but brief illusions. For that star IS us; our
very Essence
✨ Because we all know where home is (from the first three-fourths of this marvellously enjoyable video below)
✨ It’s about how many shining eyes I have around me
✨“But when you played that Shopping piece…”
👼
Think of it! Sixteen hundred people –busy people; involved in all sorts of different things– listening, understanding, and being moved by a piece by Chopin.
Now, that is something!
Am I sure that every single person followed that, understood it, was moved by it? Of course I can’t be sure! But I’ll tell you what happened to me.
I was in Ireland, during the Troubles, ten years ago, and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids on conflict resolution, and I did this with them [what you are about to see and feel]. Tricky… risky thing to do; ’cause they were street kids!
And one of them came to me the next morning, and he said, “You know, I’ve never listened to classical music in my life, but when you played that Shopping piece…” [Laughter]
He said, “My brother was shot last year, and I didn’t cry for him. But last night, when you played that piece, he was the one I was thinking about. And I felt the tears streaming down my face, and you know it felt really good to cry for my brother.”
So I made up my mind, at that moment, that classical music is for. Everybody.
Everybody.
Now, how would you walk…
–because you know, my profession, the music profession, doesn’t see it that way; they say three percent of the population likes classical music; if only we could move it to four percent, our problems would be over–
I say:
How would you walk? How would you talk? How would you be? If you thought…
([mumblingly regressing and obsessing]Three percent of the population likes classical music… If only we could move it to four percent…)
How would you Walk?
How would you Talk?
How would you Be?
If you thought…
EVERYBODY LOVES CLASSICAL MUSIC!
They just haven’t found out about it yet! [Laughter]
See, these are totally different worlds.
Now. I had an amazing experience.
I was forty-five years old, I’d been conducting for twenty years, and I suddenly had a realization: The conductor of the orchestra doesn’t make a sound! My picture appears in front of the CD [silently strikes some of his hilariously exuberant conducting poses; laughter in the audience], but the conductor doesn’t make a sound.
He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
And that changed everything for me. It was totally life-changing!
People in my orchestra came up to me and said, “Ben, what happened?”
That’s what happened: I realized:
my job was to awaken possibility in other people.
And of course I wanted to know whether I was doing that.
And you know how I found out?
You look at the eyes. [Enthusiastically walks around the audience, stooping and looking into their eyes.] If the eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it… [Stops and touches the shoulders and face of a man] You could light up a village with this guy’s eyes!
Right. So, if you… If the eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.
If the eyes are not shining,
you get to ask a question.
And this is the question: “Who am I being, that my players’ eyes are not shining?”
You can do that with our children, too: “Who am I being, that my children’s eyes are not shining?”
That’s a totally different world.
Now, we’re all about to end this magical on-the-mountain week, and we’re going back into the world. And I say, it’s appropriate for us to ask the question: “Who are we being, as we go back out into the world?”
And you know? I have a definition of success.
For me, it’s very simple.
It’s not about wealth and fame and power;
it’s about how many shining eyes I have around me.
So now, I have one last thought, which is that
it really makes a difference, what we say…
the words that come out of our mouth…
I learned this from a woman who survived Auschwitz; one of the rare survivors.
She went to Auschwitz when she was fifteen years old, and… ehm; her brother was eight.
And the parents were lost.
And she told me this; she said,
“We were in the train, going to Auschwitz.
And I looked down and I saw my brother’s shoes were missing. And I said,
‘Why are you so STUPID! Can’t you keep your things together?!? For goodness sake!!!’
the way an elder sister might speak to a younger brother.”
Unfortunately it was the last thing she ever said to him,
’cause she never saw him again.
He did not survive.
And so when she came out of Auschwitz, she made a vow.
She told me this; she said,
“I walked out of Auschwitz into life, and I made a vow, and the vow was:
I will never say anything
that couldn’t stand
as the last thing I ever say.”
Now. Can we do that? No, and we’ll make ourselves wrong, and others wrong, but it is a possibility to live into.
Thank you.
[Applause; audience stand up and applaud enthusiastically]
Luciana: [reading from her letter] “I finally understood, God does not seek happiness. She is already happiness and she’s sitting with that eternally. So all her spontaneous manifestations are just doing that. Celebrating happiness. But even to speak about manifestations or creation, is not right. If all is one, and if creation is nothing apart from its Creator, we cannot speak at the same time about both of them without falling into paradoxes or circular logic. The like of, when you understand the truth about happiness, you understand that you’ve always been happy. And this can be confusing. But now it’s much clearer. So thank you.”
Yes… Ah… Paradoxes or circular logic
sometimes are that which is to be kōan… kōans in ancient China.
You see… If you say something like: “The totality is in everything”; to one who is open to it,
these words may trigger some understanding;
may trigger a revelation; deep revelation.
But to somebody else, who analyses them logically, he says,
“Well, that’s obvious” or “That’s trivial” or “That’s circular”
or “That’s a tautology”… Or, just as Voltaire once quipped upon hearing that the totality is in everything,or something like that…
he quipped:
“And conversely!”
To make fun of it!
And to show that logically it didn’t make sense.
And yes, if you remain at the logical level,
I’m fully aware of the circularity of it, or of the triviality of it…
But, nevertheless, that may also… these words like that may also go…
… penetrate deeper, and trigger some understanding.
OK. So then she goes: “When you say that ultimately we all seek happiness, is that but a pedagogical use of language?”
[Looking at the letter in gentle disbelief for a short while, then abruptly looking up]
No!
It’s the truth!
It’s obvious!
Ask yourself what it is that you seek…
And, can you say that you seek anything else in every day,
than happiness? In every of your action…
Even when you clear your throat…
And she goes: “And could you speak about the role of Pointing, when considered in the context of God’s hide-and-seek celebratory game?”
[sweetly amused]
It’s part of it…!
That’s the role of Pointing.
It’s part of “God’s hide-and-seek celebratory game”.
Ehm… The Pointing is like… … when you played hide-and-seek
with your little sister, or little friend, or little boyfriend… Aaand… he or she was hiding somewhere, and you were to seek her… … sometimes you hear a little giggle… [childlike laughter from Francis and audience] that reveals their position. So, the Pointing is the giggle of God.
The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project unto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don’t exist in it at all. Whenever you meet a ghost, don’t run away. Because the ghost will capture the substance with your fear, and materialize itself out of your own substance; and will kill you eventually, because it will take over all your own vitality. So then, whenever confronted with a ghost, walk straight into it. And it will disappear.
“We gotta survive! You must survive! That’s the great thing!” We’re all working on that, and counting it out, day after day in anxiety. Because this is a description of anxiety: Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites, might cancel the other. Forever.
And if by any chance, by any means, you find out that that is not so, you have an entirely new attitude to what human beings are doing. Which may be very creative, but which, also, may be very dangerous:
You – See – Through – The Game!
You are only just kidding, that you’re just “Poor little me.”
See, the function of a guru –that is to say, a spiritual teacher, in India– is to give you a funny look in the eye. Because you come to him and say, “Mr. Guru, I have problems!” [Laughter] “I suffer, and it’s a mess, and I can’t control my mind, and I’m miserable, and depressed,” and so on… And he gives you a funny look. And you feel a bit nervous about the way he looks at you. Because, you know, he is reading your thoughts. This man is a great magician! He can read everything that’s IN you! He knows right down into your unconscious! And you know all the dreadful things you’ve thought, and all the awful desires you have, and you’re rather embarrassed that this man looks right through you and sees them all!
But that’s not what he’s looking at!!! He’s giving you a funny look for quite another reason altogether! Because, he sees, in you, the prana, the Godhead, just claiming “It’s poor little me!” That’s why he gives you a funny look! And why he seems to look right through you; as if to say, Shiva ol’ boy… Don’t kid me; I know who you are… But you’re coming on beautifully [Laughter] in this act, that you’re somebody else altogether! And I congratulate you! You’re doing a wonderful job, playing this part, which you call the person… My person…
So.
It’s all very well. Anybody can have ecstasy. Anybody, as a matter of fact, can become aware that he is one with the eternal ground of the universe. But since that’s what you are anyway, I’m going to ask: “So what?”
When a hero goes on an adventure, and he leaves his people, and he’s going to a strange land; he can go away, and just hide himself around the corner in an obscure house, and then appear a year later, and say “I’ve been on a heroic journey,” and tell all sorts of tales. And they say, “Prove it!” Because they expect him to bring back something; something which nobody has seen before. Then they believe; “You’ve been on a journey.”
So in the same way exactly, anybody who goes on a spiritual journey, must bring something back. Because if you just say, “Oh, man! It was a gas!” [Laughter] Anyone can say that!
Now, this is why, in the doctrines of Buddhism, there is a differentiation between two kinds of enlightened beings. They are both forms of Buddha – which is to say, the word Buddha means “somebody who has awakened, who has discovered the secret behind all this” and in other words, all this thing we call life with its frantic concerns, is a big act, which you, in your unconscious depths, are deliberately setting up.
So, you can do one of two things when you discover this: you can become what’s called a Pratyekabuddha, that means a private Buddha, who doesn’t tell anything; or you can become a Bodhisattva. Pratyekabuddha goes off into his ecstasy, and never is seen again. Bodhisattva is one who comes back, and appears in the everyday world, and plays the game of the everyday world by the rules of the everyday world; but he brings with him upaya; he brings with him some way of showing that he’s been on a journey, that he’s come back, and he’s going to let you in on the secret, too, if you… if, if, if… you’ll play it cool; and also come back to join in the everyday life of everyday people.
The first thing, then, is to discover what indeed you do love! If anything. And you’ll find, there is something! And then, go into the nature of that. Now, it’s said that selfish people love themselves; is something which you thought is other than yourself. Even if it be very ordinary things, such as ice-cream, or booze… In the conventional sense, booze is not you; nor is ice-cream. It certainly… it turns into you in a manner of speaking when you consume it, but then you don’t have it anymore. And so, you look around for more, in order to love it once again. But, so long as you love it, you see, it’s never you! When you love people –even however selfishly you love them, because of the pleasant sensations they give to you– still, it is somebody else that you love. And as you enquire into this, as you follow honestly your own selfishness, many interesting transformations begin to come about in you.
One of the most interesting transformations, of being directly and honestly selfish, in the same way that for example cats are, is that you stop deceiving people.
If, what you define as you, is inseparable from everything which you define as not-you, just as front is inseparable from back, then you realize that deep down, between self and other, there is some sort of conspiracy. If these things always occur in combination, and look very different from each other, and feel quite different, nevertheless the feeling of difference between them, allows each one to exist. And so, underneath the opposition, or the polarity, between self and other, or between any other pair of opposites you can think of, there is something in common, as there is for example between figure and background. You can’t see a figure without a background. You can’t have an organism without an environment. Equally, you can’t have a background without a figure; or an environment without organisms in it; or without thingsin it. You can’t have space which is unoccupied by any solid. You cannot have solids not occupying some space. This is absolutely elementary, and yet, we don’t realize it, because, for example, the average person thinks that space is nothing. But it’s just such a sort of not-there-ness, in which there are things, and we are slightly afraid that not-there-ness, that nothingness, that darkness, that the negative poles of all these oppositions, will win! That they will eventually swallow up every kind of being and every kind of there-ness!
But when you catch on to the game, you realize that that won’t happen. Because what is called not-existing, is quite incapable of being there without the contrast of something called existing.
It’s like the crest and the trough of a wave; you can’t have a wave that is all trough and no crest, just as you can’t have a wave which is all crest and no trough. Such a thing has never been manifested in the physical universe. They go together.
