2006

 July: Riding Bicycles without Wheels

Right, well you managed to raise a couple of questions between you after I thought that I’d got rid of them all!

Shantan writes:

”Dear Michael. I have a small problem. I have noticed I have a slow puncture in my energy field and when I feel as if I am like a flat battery I have a bad habit of eating more than my body needs to recharge. Can you recommend a good puncture repair kit? Or shall I have another frontal lobotomy?”

Small problem, big cure! Well Shantan, from the moment we are born we have a slow puncture. Sometime or other the tires go flat. So the slow puncture, in case you didn’t know it, is built into the system. That was God’s new trick: he gives you a nice new bicycle and sticks a pin in it just before you were born that will last 80 or 90 years, if you are lucky. So Shantan, anything that is geared to the physical system is going to run out of steam. And your response to having that happen is a physical thing which is not going to do it but it might as you say ”it gives you energy”, though I am surprised to hear that because if I over-eat I lose energy rather than get energy, but maybe your belief is that you get energy.

As long as you are attributing your life to your body, you can’t get rid of the slow puncture. You can get surges where you pump it up and feel great and you go for long cycle rides up the mountains and you feel ”I’m really powerful now and my bike is carrying me wherever I want”. One feels this at different times in one’s life and then you get a puncture. So the only way to avoid the puncture is to use a bicycle that has no wheels.

If a bicycle has no wheels then what does that mean? It means that it can’t use the road. It has to float. If you float then your tires will last forever. But you want to know what that means in practice. It means that to go from A to B takes time. When you are out riding your bicycle and you decide to go to Bedford and back that takes some hours each way. You take on a body and it moves through time. You are born and you become a child, a youth or a young girl, a man or woman, a father or mother, you mature. You have jobs, then become a grandfather or grandmother and then you die. That’s how time is.

Time has a beginning, a middle and an end. As long as you are in time then if you have a beginning you also have an end. But if you are not in time then you have no beginning, no end. It’s all middle – mid-points. My work is about finding that point which is not in time.

When the universe began – they say 16 billion years ago approximately, nobody knows, even the scientists don’t care to consider what was there before, they say it is an non-question – at that point – before it threw out all the energy which took billions of years to make different forms – there was something: a source or other things It is my consideration, not based on my belief system but on my experience, that the energy that was present at the beginning has never left the universe, is still here: in you, in me, in everything. It is possible to reconnect with that timeless space which is there always. If you realise that then the time is passing, wonderful! We are getting older and weaker, sequences happen, relationships begin and end, children come and grow-up and so on. That is all happening, there is no denying that and at the same time you do not go anywhere, you never have been anywhere and you never will go anywhere. To find that is to relax you on a time level.

I will go from there to a next question so that I can connect with that.

Sufia writes to me:

”Dear Michael, the group has flown by with so many questions to ask, so many answers without words in your presence. Why is it that, when least expected, it’s both so difficult and so easy to let go? Is it your radiant love which you are so willing to give and which we need to be open to receive which makes the difference? Thank you. I love you. Sufia.”

Sufia asks, ”Why is it so difficult to let go, except maybe when she’s here and she finds that she can do it.” Well Sofia, what are you going to let go into? If you are out in the ocean in a boat and you are fed-up with the boat so you let it go, you will drown. What else have you got? When you’re here, there is something to go into because I create or awaken in you and everybody, (including myself) this dimension of timeless reality, where you have fallen out of yourself - you land. Without wheels of course, but you land. You are there. You are there, yourself, the ego, the problems, your lifestyle, everything. They are what propels you along in your life, and these all vanish, momentarily, and yet you survive. But when you are in the world the personal system is the only vehicle you have. You have to get by, day-by-day; you have to get on with your life. You have to take care of your children, the husband, and wife, the job, the house, the mortgage, whatever. You have to take care of all this. And you can only take care of all this if you involve yourself in everything, as one should, as I have to. Then that seems to be all there is.

When you are here I show you that that’s all there is. I show that in you, never mind about in me. Then people say, ”Well, that’s very nice but how to bring that into daily life?” The answer is – don’t. Please don’t try and bring it into daily life. Bring your daily life into that. You can’t fit that into the daily life. Daily life is in time: the next appointment, the next job, the next action. You can’t bring timeless into that. But you can make all that be in timelessness. At the same time as you’re in timelessness, you participate in your life in time.

There is a nice line in a song, that I’ve played here a couple of times, which is my current number one by Porcupine Tree: ”Follow me down to the valley below. Moonlight is breathing from out of your soul.” It is like a valley below when you let go, and the nature of the valley is that everywhere in the valley it’s the same. So in a way it isn’t a valley. Where you fall into it’s the same each instant whether it’s a week, a month, a year, or 10 lifetimes between each time you fall into it, it has exactly the same taste. It is just so.

When you are in that source and you turn towards life then – not at once, but when you have got to know it and tuned into it – the source acts into life. Not you but the source acts into life, and timelessness moves into time. At the moment when you move into time the next moment is a continuation of the last moment, and the one after that will be a continuation of that moment, so the sequence is to move through time like that.

When you’re in the source you move through time to the next moment and the next moment and the next moment, as I do when I go into the circle with you. I will work with one and take my work to the next; I stand in the centre you all stand around. This is absolutely symbolic to what I’m saying. I work with this person then that person and each time I come from a space that is outside of your body, including me. The timeless operates in time to bring you to timelessness. So finding the Source is like finding that every instance is new, every instance is different and every instance is on its own – just this. Yesterday is unimportant, last year is unimportant, what is history is unimportant. Time is never that significant. From a timeless place they are not important and what is there before you, your timelessness, your source responds. It doesn’t matter what is going on, that source in you can respond.

So this, Shantan, to get back to your question, is where there is no leak, it is always hiding in there. There is no other way to retain the energy through your life. You will find of course you will still have time working on you physically. Things will slow down and deteriorate and you get troubles in your body - but not as much if you are in timelessness.

This dimension I am speaking of - that I’ve shown you many times - is independent of time if you are going to move into timelessness. Not only does it move into time through action but its very presence in your being reflects in your timelessness: in your body, your views, your attitudes, your behaviour, your reactions to people, your responses, your smile, your radiance. All the everyday things are influenced by the presence of your source as a reality in each moment.

There is another way which is also very helpful – you can call it the sannyasin way as we have a few friends here from that world which used to be my world as well – to live totally. That was always Bhagwan’s message: live totally – to blow your energy apart; the us that confines the elements, the restrictions whenever you can, you can’t always do it. To blow apart that part of you contained in time. In the moment when you act totally time disappears, you must know this. If you’re doing something totally, some job, some work, having an experience having a sexual experience and you are completely lost, time just goes phutt. Disappears. That is because you are living totally. Then you’re pure. And your purity and being in the source is the same because when you are in the source you are pure because there is nothing to contaminate it. There is nothing to adulterate it, you haven’t done anything, you haven’t gone anyway, and you haven’t been anybody. You may have been, but in this moment you are fresh again so all the things that you may have done or not done, all the wrong directions you took are absent, and in that instant you are free. This is freedom. This is how I see freedom. You are free of your self and your past and all your worries, concerns and guilts. You are just here and this is who you are, this is what you are doing and this is you response tonight and you can achieve some flavour of that by living totally. The best is to do both at the same time - go to the source and live totally and you will get there quicker!

I only have a few questions. Om has just written to me today and she has said:

I just wanted to say how lovely it is to see you again and to connect again with the British space. Thank you once again for all you have done for me and the incredible, good, wonderful difference you have made to my whole existence.

Well yeah it does make a difference to people’s existence and I say that because it’s not a personal thing I know that. It’s not my presence, my beautiful personality, my energy, my humour. They are just little pieces on the side. I introduce you to yourself, and to the extent you can allow that to live you, you will be transformed. Even while you are waiting to be transformed it will affect your life in many ways.

I seem to have dealt quite quickly with the written questions. If you have anything else you can just ask.

Participant: I could say Hi! I haven’t said that yet.

Well I have, but you obviously didn’t hear me. Hello Tathagata it’s been a long time!

Participant: It’s good to see you.

Thank you!

(a pause as heavy footsteps are heard outside)

It’s only in time it doesn’t bother me.

Participant: I feel responsible.

Yeah, sure!

Participant: If I could maybe say something that it is really nice to meet you. Obviously I had heard of you and when you had arrived you were pointed out to me on the ranch at one time. But we never really, really met.

It must have been very briefly. I was only been there for 2 days.

Participant: Maybe I was wrong; anyway this is what I remember. If this is mind stuff I don’t know. But anyway it’s nice to meet you. I had a good feeling about you.

Well, I think everybody has really enjoyed being here and I felt very at home, it‘s been very cosy. Last night I hear you had a great party and there was a lot of mixing was going on and I was happy to hear that, but with my work it is difficult to let people in for a session because there is that whole feeling of creating what I have been talking about and then people come in who have not gone the distance and then I’m going to have to go back again to bring them in and then I go in this place and new people say ”What’s going on?” We are here you know, so, it is really hard to allow people to come in and join in a session.

Participant: This is the way to do it. It has been nice. Thank you. Thank you for letting us in.

Another participant: If when one is doing things like Body Flow and you are following the energy lines and then get completely lost, and that takes you into cycles of the ego coming in and negativity stepping in and all these things, how does one get back into finding the movement?

(noise of train)

What with the train and these noises. I didn’t fully understand the question. Are you saying that in Body Flow you get lost and the ego comes in and says how great that was and you want to know what to do about that?

Participant: No. It’s feeling completely lost and having no idea of where to go.

Nowhere to go?

Participant: No idea of how to go, or where to go.

Why do you want to go anywhere?

Participant: Well I don’t go anywhere, that’s the whole problem. If I was left to my own devices I would just stand-up for the whole session.

You would what?

Participant: I would just not move!

And then when you wanted to piss?

Participant: Then the session would be over.

You’re lying there for one or two hours and then you really need to have a pee. What are you going to do. I’d bet you would go up and go!

Participant: Yes. If the mind takes over.

No not the mind the body.

In order to break into unknown or fairly unknown dimensions you have to be willing to go through all sorts of tests and ordeals and extreme experiences. You say you are doing Body Flow and you’re lying there with one or two people and then you feel you can’t move, something happens and you just (exhales).

This has happened to me many times. Sometimes for hours I cannot move. When I was in Poona doing my awareness groups for two months there were about five groups all five days long when I said and did nothing whatsoever, because nothing would come. There was nothing there because every time I tried to say something it was like an energy collapse. My mind was saying, ”You can’t do this, you’ve got to get up, you have responsibilities, etc, etc.” But this was stronger. I just sat and lay, got up and said, ”See you tomorrow.”

That kind of experience happened to me many times, and you have to be brave and you have to trust and see it as a test, as if saying, ‘Are you willing to break out of the structures?’

The part of you that is saying that you can’t just lie here for all this time – whose voice is that? That’s not anybody’s voice. That’s not infinity’s voice. That’s not all and everything’s voice. It is a small voice that says ”This is not allowed. This is frightening. This is unconventional. This is suspicious. This is dangerous.” This is how it speaks this voice that says, ”Come on, get up and do something, break through this.’ When all is possible and all is open, then what is wrong with that? What is wrong with saying ”Ahhh, something is happening. I cannot move.” But who says you have to move?

There is a great story about a Chinese Buddhist called Zueli-an. He wrote a book, or somebody wrote a book for him about his life. He eventually died when he was 125 years old when he was killed during the Chinese cultural revolution. The story told about him as that he was meditating in China around the 1920’s, or 30’s. There were a couple of meditators near by and they came and they all meditated together. When it comes to New Year’s Day and he says ”Come and have a New Year’s party with me and we can celebrate together.”

Zueli-an closes his eyes and he says I will just sit here quietly and meditate here. So in the evening two of his students come and see Zueli-an sitting there in meditation and they think, ”we will not disturb him, we’ll come back later”. They come back later and he is still sitting there. And they again come back and he’s still sitting there. And they say ok let’s leave him. In the morning they come back, he’s sitting there. In the afternoon they come and he is sitting there. In the evening they come and find he is still sitting there. The next morning they come again and they think oh my God, the voices. What is happening here, he may disappear all together. So they got their musical instruments and started to play some music and eventually Zueli-an opened his eyes and looked around and said ”oh, I’m glad you’ve come, the rice should be ready now!” Timelessness.

But he was not concerned. They said to him ”Look you have been sitting there for two and a half days” and he said, ”Oh that was a great meditation!”

I can never remember jokes when people tell me them – or cartoons. But one cartoon I do remember. You see a man coming with a mat and he puts his mat down, completely surrounded by open countryside everywhere. He sits down on the mat and closes his eyes. In the next picture you see a few people coming and putting up tents. Then in the next picture you see maybe a hundred tents and he is still sitting there. In the next picture you see the warriors come and they kill everybody in the tents and take over. Then you see that somehow houses have started to be built slowly. Then a bigger town comes, and then the planes come and bomb the city. Then at the end the man picks up his mat and says ”By Jove that was a good session!” So half an hour lying in Body Flow compared to that!

So one has to go through strange experiences like that and say, OK, I won’t run away. But as long as you are held by the conventions and the number of ways of seeing things, you won’t break out, you won’t let go. All this testing and playing; of course some people force themselves and go out on all sorts of enterprises where they go into the forest for a week without any food and look after themselves. Well, that would also help awaken you, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about more important things. But that’s also a style – to go out and put yourself into difficult situations, to test yourself. That has never been my style but it is a style, some teachers have that style. In my life enough has come on its own without me looking for trouble!

Once when I was in Sydney, Australia with my then wife, Pam, mother of my first kid, and then suddenly I fall down and I cannot move, cannot move. I’m lying there and Pam is saying, ”Michael, what is the matter?” So she calls an ambulance and I open my eyes and there are two guys standing there with a stretcher and I’m lying there and shout, ”Go away!” I completely frightened them to death! They ran away and I just lay there. Then after about two and a half hours I just began to move again.

The more open you are to these dimensions the more these dimensions will come into you and the more they will do things that do not belong to the conventional dimensions. Things will happen that are not part of the normal everyday life sequence. Because all the time we are selecting life and don’t know how far you realise. All the time in this great mysterious universe we are constantly picking what suits us, as far as we can of course. Some things we don’t pick that still happen: illnesses, divorces and all sorts of trouble, but as far as we can we are always selecting what feels as if is comfortable. As long as we carry on doing that then the unusual cannot get in – because we keep it at bay.

When I first used to have strange experiences I used to get up in the middle and do something – because I was scared it would take me out of my life, or I couldn’t not handle it. I wouldn’t know what to do in this world mystery, I was familiar with my own world, in control. Then, gradually, when this happened more and more I got braver and I said, ”OK – just say ‘yes’ to that.” After all, one of my basic teachings in OneLife is that whatever happens to you in life you have attracted it.

You consist of two parts: one is you as you take yourself to pieces; and two, is that whatever is there where you are at that moment. You draw everything. Why do things happen to you rather than to her or to him or to me? They happened to you because you need this experience that is happening right now. Whatever happens you have attracted or drawn it to you, in order that you - not necessarily have a good time, not necessarily have a celebration - learn something. You experience something, you go through something, you tackle something. When you confront something you find out how to deal with it.

So when these strange experiences happen from nowhere – and the more it happened the moment that I felt, ”My God something is coming” I would think, ”Thank God, I am due for a change. I am due for another little revolution” – just let it happen. Go silent, fall down, stagger around, go for a long walk, put your head in a bucket, whatever – just do it.

Be careful I might do it right now and you will have to carry me back.

Then suddenly you see that it’s all around us this mystery. But we keep it at bay – because we don’t want the mystery, we want the familiar. We want the continuation of our lives. We want what we want and not what we get. So letting go is a bit like that – letting go the attachment that you have for the way that you want things. As soon as something comes which doesn’t seem to fit in just say, ”Hooray! Great! What will this bring that is new?” Because ultimately life does not bring much that is new. Because we see to that. We are all terrible conservatives. People may vote socialist but we are all conservatives! We want to preserve a life that we have arranged and set up - even if we are fed-up with it. We get afraid if there is any major change, we just want minor changes. So it’s all about having the courage to let go and being open to that which will take you. My famous little poem from Poona ”People climb mountains - that’s the journey. Because where the mountain ends – that’s where you’ve completed your life - the sky begins, and then maybe you will get enlightened.” But the point is, says the poem, ”At every point on the mountain the sky begins - all you have to do is to jump”. At any point.

But as I said to the first question to Sufia, where are you going jump to? Where are you going to land? Where is the alternative?

The mind thing is to say, ”Well lets find out where that alternative is, but in the absolute way you jump and you find that you don’t land you are just floating. Suspended in space. Connected and yet not connected. Free of all that ground that you’ve walked step by step. It never lasts. Really it never lasts because you feel you are in the cosmos and will be forever. There is no way that this oneness in the cosmos can ever be taken away, not even by this. That’s the feeling and I guess that’s home.

If you’ve found your final home then you can go on a journey without fear. Anywhere. When you’ve found that home and you find – if you are a person who works with other people towards their understanding – that your home is also in everybody else. Now my home is in you and I feel that when I work with you. That is love.

How can I hold love? I don’t have to share what is normally in me. Love is a fact. I see that you and I are the same. Find the home in yourself and you find that you are at home everywhere and in everybody that you meet, because we all have the same home.

You think that you have your home and I have my home and she has her home and we’ll never meet again but the source is the same source. That instinct, which they say anyway was ……….……… they say the Big Bang was ………… everybody, if we all came then, then we all have the same home. That’s on a physical level. But a physical statement about how the world began is just a physical statement in time. What happened in timelessness is that nothing happened. That timelessness is that the moment has gone on and we all came from that and we were all there. So you are me; and I am you, and we are one. One life. Dum-de-dum-dum!

Anything else? Questions? Nobody want to ask me why we lost the football match yesterday? (referring to England being knocked out of the World Cup in 2006) That will take me a couple of hours!

Participant: Who do you want to win?

Well, France, because I am Arsenal supporter as you know and we have many French affiliations. No, that’s not true actually. I want Germany to win it – because Germany is my second home. That’s true I do.

I answered from my heart and my head said, ”Wait a minute. I’m supposed to support Germany, I live in Germany, I have a German wife!” Now you’ve shown me up! I forgot first to go to my source when I answered you.

Germany or France, I don’t mind. Italy is also nice, I’m very fond of Italians. Except those bastards from Portugal!

It has been nice again here. So thanks to Abava for making it possible and the helpers he had. To my assistants: Suchata and Dashkara. Some pretty difficult catching went on, I know. Two inches of space for a six foot body. Amazing!

To Tiago and Hiroshu, for taking care of me and my needs in the breaks. And to our hosts and hostesses who provided us a new place for us. I think I can speak for everybody in saying it’s been just great to be here. So, if you’ll have us, we would like to come again next year. It feels different from Buckland Hall, where we used to go.

Thank you also to all our continental friends from Denmark, Germany, Austria, Holland and Belgium for coming and supporting this happening.

Tomorrow I have to go again, and leave you to pick up the pieces from the World Cup disaster. My country is still in it

Come-on Deutschland! I never thought I would say that. The old enemy has become my friend!

Questions & Answers, England, 2nd July 2006