Human beings as a species,
All human beings,
With some exceptions,
Have certainly been making war for a long time.
All cultures meaning in all minds.
Because a culture is just a reflection of the individual mind.
An individual mind is just a reflection of the cultural mind.
So,
You are here tonight because you are interested in peace in your own mind.
You are not waiting for them,
Whoever they may be,
To make peace.
You are interested in peace in your own mind.
And this is very good news.
Because the biggest wars that have been fought,
Have been fought in trying to get them,
Whoever they may be,
To get it together so that you can live in peace.
And when you stop waiting for them,
And you instead shift your attention to your own mind,
And you recognize the tendency to war in that,
The tendency to fascism in that,
The tendency to hatred,
The tendency to grudge and revenge and holding on,
And you recognize the suffering that those tendencies continue to deliver,
And somehow in the face of that,
You notice that you want peace.
You notice that you are sick and tired,
Fed up with the war.
And maybe some kind of conscious prayer or plea for help,
For understanding,
For deliverance,
For grace is made.
Maybe it's not conscious.
Maybe grace,
Deliverance,
Comes to get you,
Knocks on your door,
And says you have a chance to be at peace.
And in your willingness to take that chance,
To accept that invitation to be at peace,
When you have an opportunity to share this peace everywhere,
And in your willingness to take that chance,
To accept that invitation to be at peace,
Then you have an opportunity to share this peace everywhere.
I truly don't know if what we have experienced in the 20th century,
In terms of war,
Will continue into the 21st,
But I certainly know it will,
Unless each one of us in this room takes responsibility for peace within one's own self,
Not waiting for someone else to get it to change,
Not waiting for someone else to forgive you so that you can forgive them,
Not waiting for someone else to say I'm sorry to you so that you can forgive them,
Not waiting,
Not postponing,
Not recognizing that the war to whatever degree is a war going on within your own mind,
Is based on one thing,
And that's the firm belief that has been supported and conditioned through endless eons,
That you are a separate entity,
That you are something separate from the totality,
That you are something separate from me,
Or your parent,
Or your child,
Or your lover,
Or your enemy,
That you are some thing.
This is what all wars are about,
Because when you believe firmly that you are some thing,
You get very busy protecting that thing,
And that protection takes all forms,
Territorial,
Sexual,
Personal power,
And the horror and the irony is that that some thing that you are protecting in reality doesn't even exist.
Who you think you are doesn't even exist.
It's a thought,
And as a thought,
It has huge power.
That power is the mediator of the experience of reality,
But that doesn't mean it exists.
You look through a glass that is tinted,
And reality takes on that tint.
It doesn't mean reality is tinted.
It means that the mediation of reality delivers the experience of reality,
That has a particular distortion or tint,
And the distortion that people fight for,
Go to war for,
Is the distortion that I,
This individual,
This experience,
As a collection of experiences,
Of history,
Of thoughts,
Of concepts,
Of talents,
Of successes,
Of failures,
That I am separate from consciousness,
And that I is nothing.
It does not exist.
It's all a story made up.
As a story,
There is no harm to it.
It's quite beautiful.
Even in its horror,
It's certainly entertaining.
But as a belief that the story is reality,
It's a huge tragedy.
That's the original sin,
The original mistake,
The belief that the separation from the source,
From consciousness,
From God,
Is even possible,
Because of a story,
An experience of separation,
The belief that that experience is reality.
This is the cause of suffering.
So what will be the result of this human experiment,
And this opportunity that ordinary humans have,
That was only granted the most extraordinary humans in the past,
But now ordinary humans like you and me have the opportunity to discover that never,
Not for an instant,
Is it possible that you can be separate from consciousness,
From the source of everything,
From God,
And to discover that directly is to then broadcast that with every breath you take,
With every step you take.
Whether you speak or never speak again is secondary to that broadcasting.
Then we will see which way this human experiment goes.
But at this point in time,
In this Leela called the world,
Called your life,
You have the opportunity to discover what is deeper than human being,
What is before human being,
Not to mention female human being,
Or male human being,
Australian human being,
Or American human being,
Or Yugoslavian human being.
What is before that,
That beingness,
That beingness that we have assumed is simply tacked onto human is actually the source of human,
As a source of plant being,
Animal being,
Sentient being,
And in sentient being,
Beingness.
And that beingness is alive with intelligence and presence,
And it wants to know itself.
It has come to know itself in you,
So that it can know itself everywhere.
.
