A Taste of the Other Shore

 In This Room there are Many Worlds

When I speak, something that was there before is lost, but if I don’t speak, then many of you will miss it, and if do I speak, perhaps many of you will find it.

As I experience it, all the worlds are present in this room. Despite that, the staff from this hotel will walk through here tomorrow, and they probably won’t experience any other world than the one they normally live in.

This is just one room, stuck in the middle of northern Italy, yet I am hereby claiming it contains all the possible worlds. How can all the different worlds exist in the same place? If you go to Mars then that’s a different world, and if you go to Heaven then that’s a different world. You can travel to some exotic country, and that feels like different world, but I’m saying that all the worlds are here, in this space that we share.

A Zen master is dying. Like everybody else, Zen masters have to die; it’s a pity, but they do, otherwise they’d all still be here. In his last few minutes, one of you guys asks the dying master, “Where are you going now?” He says, “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be right here, but don’t ask me anymore questions, because I won’t answer.”

He says, “I’ll be right here.” Well, it’s true that when masters die – especially significant masters – their presence is felt for a long time afterwards. For example, many people go and visit the site of Ramana Maharshi’s last moments, and they say they can still feel his presence. But that’s not what I mean when I say that the Zen master is still here.

If many worlds are in the same place – as I am now claiming – how can that be? Well, we are about a hundred people here, and in a way we are in the same world – called the Earth – but in another way, we’re all in different worlds, aren’t we? This gives a hint of what I mean; that we can all be in the same world but in many different spaces, and that in the same space there can be many different worlds.

It all depends on vibration. The bliss world is here, the love world is here, the emptiness world is here, the ecstatic world is here, and the stormy world is here. I guess the violent world is here too, but I didn’t experience this just now. All these worlds – and many others I have not mentioned – are accessible to us all, right now, in this place.

Sometimes, when I’m here with you and you can see me walking about the room, moving my finger a bit, or looking around, I’m in a world where everybody is together. Well of course, everybody is together – we’re here in this room – but what I mean is that everybody is linked together. There is a wave that simply moves through us all. Each person is individual and separate, but not only that; they are linked, from one end of the room to another. The reality of this is as clear to me as looking at the shirts and trousers that you’re wearing now.

In one of the other parallel worlds that are here, there is a great wave coming, and it runs through the whole room. Then the next time I look, it’s running in a different way. I try and make these waves visible by tracing them with my hands and my body; not in such a way that you actually see them, but in a way that allows you to meet them. You can see my hands and body, but these waves you cannot see. Maybe you can see them, in which case you don’t need me to add anything for you. When I’m moving, what I’m trying to do is make these waves conspicuous, apparent, and experience-able to other human beings, through the medium of my body. That’s one of the worlds that is present; there are many others that I feel enveloped by, and each day that we’re here they become stronger and more multiple. As we have merged, worked, and connected together, we have opened up to that which is universal and present everywhere. Your vibrations have shifted from their normal level – the world of doing, being, spending, and exchanging – and everyone has been touched in ways which have awakened their susceptibility to these other worlds.

The connections with these other worlds are naturally very delicate and fine. If they weren’t then it would be simple to just decide, “I’m going off for a trip to another world.”

We are all largely committed to the world we live in, the world that consists of people, relationships, events, and work. These are all interactions at a distance, and the worlds I’m talking about are not like that; they are different parts of one wave.

There is nothing wrong with differences, because these worlds can also be fascinatingly diverse. I’m not saying that it’s a mistake to see differences, I’m saying that there are many other worlds that are also concurrently available. When people shift into these other worlds, then there is no longer conflict. There is no longer a struggle, an ego fight, or a war. There is no clash of civilisation against civilisation or belief system against belief system.

All these other worlds contain light, and light is not a breakable thing. It doesn’t break at one person before it moves to another, it embraces them all. That’s very beautiful, and I hope that some of you will have experienced this, at least for a few moments.

To go from the ordinary world to these other worlds is not easy. It can happen, and you can do certain things that connect you, but then you lose it. You can’t take the Path there, you have to let the Path take you there. The Path that takes you there is not something that you can choose, invent, manufacture or even conceive. It cannot be done with the instruments we have – the mind, creativity, and ingenuity – because these belong to a different world. You can only be taken there by surrendering to waves, movements of energy, and ‘things beyond things’ that seem to come from nowhere, lift you, and drop you somewhere else. Being open to these kinds of phenomena is part of what we’re doing here; not just looking in places that we already know about, but opening to a sweep, a flash, or a lift from some energy that lands you in a place that you’ve never been before. These are the events that will draw us out of our commitment to what we’ve taken to be the one and only world.

Being able to let go can lead you to a place where these worlds become apparent. They are wonderful, ecstatic, extraordinary, and yet ordinary; a simple fact. When this happens you have a feeling of great okay-ness, that you’re not missing anything anymore, and if there is more, then there’s a feeling that you’re open enough to receive what is to come. It may not all come at once, but being open will ensure that you’re ready when it does.

On this Path that I share there are two fundamental qualities. They are receptivity – which means being open – and resonance – which means you can hear and respond. You connect and allow in; you let yourself to be touched, and something touches you. Out of that can come a kind of inner explosion; the ordinary world that you live in explodes. It doesn’t disappear, but it explodes, because its limits get broken. The shell is broken, and when that happens these magical worlds become available.

I’m playing music like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. He was a man who drew all the rats out of the town, but when the town’s people didn’t pay him what he asked for, he took the children too. I’m taking you out of the town and into many other dimensions.

This doesn’t mean that I can bring you out just like that – it can be a slow process, but I go on doing it, day after day, week after week. Through this, slowly, some resonance can happen, and then the colours, lights, and waves are there for you, and many worlds are yours too.

For these last couple of days my back has tried very hard to keep me in the committed world, but I’ve managed to leave it behind and float away from the troubles. Hopefully, before we finish tomorrow, I can do some somersaults for you, to prove my body is working at one-hundred percent again!

Okay, we’ll break now.

Talk given during the Winter Festival in Italy, 30th December 2006