Excerpt from The Sacred Other
61. Physical death is simple. The body grows weak, stops working, and returns to dust. How simple and beautiful is the change that takes place. Psychological death is as simple. It is as beautiful because it means the end to the ego. The ego is the psychological identification to memory, which exists as thought, and therefore is bias, partial, and ignorant. The death of the ego ends ignorance. It opens the door to a field of life outside the movement of thought, which means the absence of ignorance. The absence of ignorance means intelligence. They are the same. Therefore death opens the door to intelligence. It opens the door to an intelligence that has nothing to do with knowledge, or the skill and ability to manipulate knowledge. This intelligence is not partial, and has no connection with anything that is limited or confined. The death of the ego reveals what it means to bring an end to partiality, and therefore makes way for that which is complete and whole. It ends the confinement within, and thereby reveals that which is unconfined, unlimited, and therefore sacred. It reveals the sacred other.
Excerpt from Love Has No Conditions
518. All past experience has no value when it comes to finding out what it means to love. One may have read many books about love, met with many so-called experts, or had what one describes as an encounter with spirits, angels, or God. Whatever the case may be, none of that has meaning if you put that experience on a pedestal, idolize it, and make it all important. The moment a past experience is given personal importance, worshipped, or glorified at all, then a form of psychological identification takes place. The identification to any past experience, which means to memory, causes psychological isolation. The identification to memory implies isolation. Memory is the past, which means the importance given to any past experience isolates the brain. It isolates it in the past. As a result an internal and psychological separation takes place. A separation occurs between what is happening and what has happened. What happens is the present, and the present is alive and moving. It has a pulse. It is vibrant and filled with immense energy. It may be the sound of crickets in an evening air, a cloudless night sky filled with stars, or the sun as it slowly descends over the silhouette of a dark horizon. Regardless what happens, the present has nothing to do with what has happened. It has nothing to do with the past. The brain that is caught up in the past, inwardly attached to a past experience, a memory, and looks at a night sky, cannot truly connect to it. The brain cannot penetrate into the extraordinary beauty that exists. A brain stuck in the past is isolated, and therefore disconnected. As long as there is any form of mental disconnect, love cannot show itself. Love only exists in relationship, and relationship means connection. It means a person who is mentally disconnected, inwardly isolated in the past, bound to memory, or crazy over a personal experience that took place a year, a month, a day ago, does not love. That person cannot see the vast and immense beauty of a night sky, a bird in flight, a tree, a flower, because the brain is trapped in the past. It is caught up in memory. No past experience can penetrate into the beauty and absolute hugeness of the present. The present is where there is love. That is why the present is so huge and immense. Test this out for yourself. Carefully observe something, anything, a cloud, an animal, or a tree. If you look at a tree, you may recall learning about the name of the tree in school, and as a result you identify the tree as an oak, a birch, a coastal redwood, or whatever. The experience of that learning is recorded in memory, and that memory is played back in the form of an image. That image is used to name the tree. In the naming of the tree there is no true connection to the vibrant color, the shape, and curve of the leaves, the gentle swaying of the branches, or the stillness of the trunk. Observation is happening through the filter of the past, a past experience, which is memory. As a result there is no real connection made to the tree. There is observation taking place but there is distortion in the observation. That is what happens when people meet life through the filter of the past. Distortion takes place. A type of mental isolation happens, which means there is an inward separation between the observer and the observed. It is this inner separation that denies love from coming into being. It is the thing that prevents love from unfolding. Love is not isolation. Love has nothing to do with anything that is separative. Only when every form of past experience that one psychologically treasures is released can this whole process of psychological separation, estrangement, and isolation come to an end. Only then can the enormity of the present show itself. The present is not an idea. It has nothing to do with memory, which means it has no connection to any past experience at all. Love exists in the present. Love and the present go and belong together. If the present leaves the room, then love goes with it. It flies out the window. Find out what it means to discard every past experience one has ever known. Do that and the beauty, intimacy, and sacredness that is love, which can only exist in the present, reveals itself. It happens.
Excerpt from Attachment Denies Freedom
1001. What psychological freedom brings is greater than any feeling of simple cheer, gladness, or joyfulness. It is much more than any of that. Freedom combines joy and awe and wonder and astonishment and elation and bliss. It is all of that together rolled into one. It is what comes when the mind discovers what it is to live without the mental dependence to any idea, image, or thought. Dependence denies independence. It denies freedom. It is the element that prevents you from coming upon this sense of immense joy and bliss. There are no words that come close to describing it. Obviously this is something one must find out for oneself. Explore it. Delve into it as you have never delved into anything before. Look at all of the things you mentally depend on, a job, a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, house, car, religious belief, a particular culture or tradition, a political group, a country, an ideology, a philosophy, or whatever. See that every inner dependence takes the form of a mental image, and that the image defines you. It creates an identity, a sense of me, an ego. The ego is the cause of every inner hurt and misery that mankind has ever experienced. The ego prevents joy. It destroys any sense of bliss. However, when the mental dependence to any and all images ends, then see what happens to the ego. See what takes place with the ego and every sense of misery, sorrow, and psychological conflict in the brain. All of it stops. The whole stream of the ego and all the conflict that goes with it come to a halt. It ends. Only when that happens can the mind come upon what it is to be free, and only in freedom does that bliss which depends on nothing show itself.
Excerpt from The End Of Ignorance Is Intelligence
1503. It happened on the large hotel patio overlooking the pristine lake under the clear blue sky in the long shadow of the snow capped mountains. It was there. The is-ness, the present, or however you want to call it, unfolded. It came out, and within it was everything a person could ever need. Everything you need exists in the present, however the present must not be mistaken for any sort of mystical idea or intellectual concept. It has nothing to do with a concept in any shape or form. All concepts imply a mental image, and the present is not an image. The present, and everything that lies within it, only reveals itself when all mental images are completely and totally discarded, which means one must learn what is meditation. However, this is a meditation that cannot come about through any regular practice, reading of any book, or following the guidelines set out by another person. It is not something that is the result of any kind of deliberate action. A deliberate action implies will. It implies desire, and therefore an ego. The ego is a hindrance to meditation, and therefore all forms of study and seeking guidance by another, have no value and can never bring about what is true meditation. The brain that sees the falsehood of seeking meditation through deliberate action, desire, study, books, and other people, is free of all that. It is free. It is in that freedom where the brain comes upon what is meditation. Freedom is meditation. They are one and the same action. The brain that sees the fallacy of seeking meditation through all of that nonsense is no longer being fooled. It is no longer taking an ignorant path. It is no longer taking a wrong path, and to side step the wrong path is the right path. Therefore the realization of what is the false brings the truth. It brings about intelligence, and that intelligence begins to work in the brain. It is the intelligent brain that learns what it means to bring the whole movement of the ego to an end. The ego exists as the struggle to succeed, advance, achieve, attain, and all the rest of it, and where there is an ego, there is ignorance. Intelligence only exists in the present, which means intelligence is all that a person needs, ever needed, or will ever need.
Excerpt from To Die Is To Live
2001. To live from this moment to the next means to die to each and every moment. It means if you hear an insult, see a face, watch a movie, eat a meal, have sex, or whatever the case may be, then there is no embrace of that experience. The memory of the experience is not carried over into the next moment, and as a result the next moment is not contaminated. It is not soiled with the past. As a result what only exists is the present. The present moment is all there is, unspoiled, unsullied, clean. If you live like that, then no sense of sadness, distress, or inner torment can arise in your life. No mental disturbance of any kind can take place. It means the brain comes upon a state of mind where conflict has no foothold. Living from moment to moment, hour by hour, and day by day is the key. The beauty of it is that it takes place without knowing it. The moment you say you know it means you are lost. You are back in the past, which means illusion, suffering, and endless frustration. To live from this moment to the next ends all frustration, and so to die to the past reveals what it is to really live. This dying to the past is death. It is the death of the self because the self is the past. Find out what it is to live from this moment to the next and what happens at death is suddenly made apparent.
Excerpt from The End Of Time
2501. What existed before the physical universe and the Big Bang cannot be known, because all that is known is memory, and memory is grounded in the past, which means time. The universe is a movement in time, which means before the universe what existed was timeless. If the brain empties itself of the known, then it not only comes upon what is unknown, it comes upon what is timeless. That means what is unknown and timeless are not only the same thing, they are creation. For the brain to empty itself of the known, it must find out what it is to give no value to, and thereby mentally let go of, all that exists in memory, which includes not only all personal beliefs, theories, and knowledge, but also all ideas, thoughts, and mental images. If that happens, then that unknown and timeless other instantly occupies the brain. As a result the brain comes upon what existed before time, consciousness, and the universe. To let go of all that exists in memory not only means to trash every opinion, belief, and mental image you treasure, which not only includes the image you have about a job, family, money, sex, political party, religious belief, and God, but it means to discard every image you have about yourself as smart, stupid, handsome, ugly, loving, angry, a success, a failure, and all the rest of it. Can you do that? If not, then you will never come upon that insight, that revelation, that unfathomable unknown and timeless other. To discard every image you have about yourself means to come upon what is death, because the end of the images you have about yourself means the end of you. It means the end of the self, the ego. The death of the ego is the end of time, because the ego is memory, the past, and the past implies time. If the brain empties itself of the ego, and therefore brings death to every mental image it identifies with and holds dear, then that timeless other manifests. It happens because death is what reveals that which is timeless, and when it happens it changes the brain. A fundamental change and inner reset takes place. However, if you continue to seek that unknown and timeless other in memory, which means the known, then you will remain caught up in the world of opinion, belief, and theory, which means that timeless other will remain out of reach. What is the state of mind that ceases to give value to memory and mental images? I will tell you. It is a mind no longer consumed by the past and therefore a mind no longer trapped in time. Instead the mind comes upon the present, and therefore it finds itself filled with tremendous sensitivity, attention, energy. It is this same energy that gave birth to the material universe. However, this energy is not a push and pull kind of energy. There is no force involved because it is an energy absent mass. Instead the energy is with zero force, and therefore without effort, struggle, or violence of any kind. Energy without violence is love, but it is not any sort of conventional love with romance, attachment, marriage, sex, and all that, because all that implies a mental image, memory, and therefore time. This love is different. This love is not an image, and therefore it is timeless. What I am trying to convey is that this love is the same unknown, timeless, effortless thing that created the universe, time, and all that is. It is the energy of emptiness. The key to coming upon this energy is to trash all opinions, beliefs, and mental images you embrace. But, do not theorize, speculate, or contemplate doing it. Instead you have to actually do it.
