Awareness it’s not like awareness ends oh but there’s not there’s there is no knowing during that period there is no knowing for like hours how do you know well I guess I rely upon memory but but that is quite different matter you’re relying on memory means the mind hmm
So you when the mind wakes up in the morning you’re relying on the mind to tell you about an experience during which it was not present what on earth can the mind know about an experience where it was not present so it’s the mind that was in prison but not
Awareness there wasn’t presence yes the mind is not present every time a thought comes to an end the so in fact there is no such thing as a mind there’s just the current thought way every time a thought comes to an end what we call the mind comes to an end that’s all
There is to the mind is thoughts and images that there isn’t a you know a collection a bag full of it’s just it’s just the current thought okay in mind because the mind identifies awareness with itself because the mirror thinks I J I have my own pocket of light inside
Me I’m not reflecting light from the Sun I generate my own light within me in other words the mind identifies awareness with itself the mind thinks when I disappear awareness disappears yeah yeah but so let’s push deeper into this what is your experience of time oh it’s
Quite fluid you know like you can meditate for a couple hours and it seems like five minutes and yeah it’s very ok unreliable okay but nevertheless you experience something called time definitely okay so can we can we agree on a definition of time as the duration between two events yeah that’s a good
Means not it’s not the only definition but it’s a I go there okay and let’s take as two events it could be two events in the past an event in the past and an event in the future it could be an event in the past and now so let’s
Just take the current event as as one of the points one of them and let’s take an event such as a dinner last night as the second point and time is the duration that we measure between these two points now and dinner last night okay so now
We’ve no I’d we’ve no doubt that now is present now we this at this point one of the points is is very obvious now where is dinner last night because in order to measure time we have to find this second event when you say we’re in in terms of
In terms of excited I know it occurred or no no just in terms of experience but we’ve got to measure the distance between these two events so first of all we need to find the event in order to be able to measure the distance between them how about six o’clock Saturday
Night where is then now it’s bad back there sin in memory when does memory take place now so memory is an image so that is the current event who okay that’s one event the current image that’s one event we don’t want the current event we want another event that
We’re going to measure the distance between them so we’re not looking for the memory of last night’s dinner we’re looking for last night’s dinner return to that experience can you return to that experience no it’s it’s over it was delicious it’s over right I get out you know well
It all arises now I mean I’m going to look good on that one better trip you said and you very emphatic about you said for absolute definite I experienced time yeah so what I’m trying to and try not to find out really whether we do definitely experience time so another
Way to another obvious way to try would be to step out of the now because time means the past and the future you can’t have time without a past in the future so if we experience time we must experienced a past and a future yeah okay now try and experience the past now
Step out which means stepping out of the now obviously because the now is neither past nor future so now just try stepping out to the now maybe just a couple of seconds into the past or into the future can you go there no have you ever experienced the past or the future no
Could you ever experience a past or a future as present experience what other kind of experience is there other than present experience there would be a No so you’ve never experienced the past or the future and yet you’re absolutely certain that you experience time but
Wait a minute I mean I get where knowing occurs it only occurs now I get that but you know I got 65 years on me here yeah what is 65 years old the current sensation the current perception or the current thought you have no other experience of the body the mind or the
World other than the current thought sensation or perception 65 years old the current perception perception the current sensation no well I don’t feel that all that that’s a very good question why don’t you feel that old isn’t it everybody’s experience and they get when we get over a certain age you
Have incidentally about 20 yeah but but this is very common not people that are spiritually inclined everyone says after they get to a certain age they say you know I just I don’t really feel I’m aging I just don’t feel the time of 70 years old that comes from a deep
Intuition they’re on to something of course they think it’s just some silly aberration of the mind and that they really are seventy years old but actually everybody haven’t you heard diehard materialists say you know it’s funny I I just don’t feel 70 I just I know this body is beginning to to get
Old and but I that they don’t feel 70 for a very good reason it comes from a deep intuition that what they are is not 70 anyway that that’s I want let’s be more scientific and experiential and so go back to have you ever experienced time
That the passage of time or I mean it’s something that only in the sense of a past or no but you’ve already we’ve already discovered it’ll never experience the past it’s the past is an idea and I’m not I’m not saying it said that it’s not a valid
Idea it is a valid idea but is it an idea that corresponds to your experience no it doesn’t hold that very well okay all right so if neither the past or the future hold up to experience and as I say that’s not to invalidate the concept
Of time the concept of time is valuable but we’re trying to discover whether the concept of time is just a tool that we use from time to time or whether it actually describes our experience whether there really is something called time and you’ve discovered you’ve admitted quite rightly that you’ve never
Experienced the past or the future and not only that nor could you it true and and if we asked anybody not just anybody in this room but any of the seven billion of us have you ever actually experienced the past not have you not have you had a thought in the present
About an apparent past but have you ever actually experienced that past to which your thought refers everyone will have to answer no now if nobody has ever experienced a past and a future could it be and the time is it is the movement between the past and the future but if
Nobody has ever experienced these two spaces called the past and the future could it be that time is not it’s just not quite what we think it is well that’s becoming clearer I mean in the common understanding of time I mean that it is a a construct of some sort
But see what I have trouble with is there’s I mean just the beginning of this conversation some minutes ago and this my words right now being with you right here there’s been the passage of time I mean if that’s just what we call it the passage of time we would yeah
We’re being real present here reprimand me but but there’s been the passage of time it I mean I don’t I want to get caught up on you know definitions or you know caught on the horns of language you can but i but this is not that language
Okay it’s not a bad language let me just give you another model as a possibility but we’re not moving along that the time is not cast in stone out there in the universe and that we are moving along this line of time that’s the conventional model that we all think or
Many of us think we experience would let me give you an alternative model but in just the same way that if this is always the same space yes our meetings take place always in the same space the space is not going anywhere we come in and out
Of it but the space is always the same we think that our meetings take place at a different time but always in the same place yes they take time place at 24-hour intervals each meeting takes place at a different time but they all take place in the same place M what
About if time was like space in that respect that the now was like space but own a bit but but without the three dimensions in other words that the now is the only now there is an at like space it’s not going anywhere and that instead of time being spread out in one
Long line from the infinite past to the infinite future and we move along a little segment of it what about if time was ever present in other words what about if there isn’t really time there is eternity which means the naughty not the everlasting now the the ever-present
Now this the only now there ever is and that thoughts appear in it sensations appear in it just like objects appear in the same space relatively speaking here what about if all the objects of our experience thoughts feelings sensations and perceptions what about if they all
Arise in the same not going anywhere now and that a thought then arises collates all these different experiences remembers them and imagined in order to house them all imagines a line of time in which it can place all these objects and with that creates the idea of linear time but actually experience doesn’t
Appear in linear time all experience appears now and if I were to ask you it is the now moving along a line of time I mean how fast exactly is the now going in your experience its motionless it’s perfect its motionless it’s not going anywhere it’s not moving from a van from
The past over there at a certain speed to a future over there its motionless in its in other words it’s ever-present this the only now is and everything appears in that and it’s only a thought because the thought cannot see the ever-present now which is awareness it has to mana fact that in
Other words thought can’t see that the space of the now in which experience arises because it’s invisible to thought so thought things are objects are coming and going they must come and go in something and what do they come and go in well I look around I thought looks
Around I can’t find them now anywhere I can’t find awareness anyway I know a makeup of this substance called time as soon as I make up this substance or time then I can populate it with all these events so time is what eternity looks like when viewed by the mind
That’s brilliant yeah write that down somebody yeah you’re so patient with bringing me along there no no I but I enjoy this I like the way that you don’t lie down too easily because this is and that you don’t just say oh yes yeah I don’t experience time well you know it’s
Much better to be highly skeptical and to push push push push push because this is how you make the understanding your own your own experience what I say means nothing but I but I fail you to my own understanding I think I do so what about death where
We were back in okay so so now having having having understood that time is a valuable concept but not one that relates to our experience our actual experiences of the ever-present now so now what what think again now of the moment of the in other word time is created by thought yes
Time is what eternity looks like when it’s filtered through the mind filtered through thought so now look again at the explicit ache to begin with the experience of falling asleep and waking up which thought says one takes place six hours after the other but now thought isn’t present in the gap to
Manufacture time yeah so isn’t it your actual experience that the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking up happened not six hours apart but this far apart and fall asleep and you wake up they’re the same there’s no there’s no gap of time between them why
Because the thought is not there and as soon as thought vanishes time vanishes in other words deep sleep doesn’t take place in time nothing takes place in time and now expand that you’ve got midnight and six o’clock in the morning just go back in both directions to birth
And death how much time is nearly how much time elapses between these two moments between birth and death how much time really elapses between two months these two moments afraid my head’s going to explode here yeah but they all right your head’s going to explode because you thought your right thought can’t go
There because these two experiences don’t take place in two different times they’re like falling asleep and waking up they take place at the same moment in the same it’s not a moment it’s not a moment in time a fraction of time in the same eternal now we can’t
Think about this it thought cannot go to the now it can only think thought it needs time and time needs thought that’s why you quite rightly say my mind is going to explode you we can go right to the edge of the now but as we touch it
Thought dies it so it’s kind of frustrating so what we’re doing now is just skirting as close as we can around the now to try to and we’re trying to make a model that makes sense and our model is an imperfect one but it’s but it’s it’s a good deal better
Than the conventional model this is very helpful very helpful I’ll watch the video a few times thank you I think I’m settled at this point
