SECRETS OF LIFE
"There is a gigantic problem facing the individual, facing the man who
lives in one part of the world or the woman living another part. That
gigantic problem, if solved, gives a gigantic reward.
But we have to solve the difficulty before we can have the reward, so
let's look at it. The enormous difficulty, which is unknown,
unexplained to the individual, is the fact that there really truly
exists a world other than his present world. There exists a way of life,
there exists an existence other than the one he presently has.
Now, you take a young man in the deep jungles of South America or any
other jungle, and he's brought up there from infant to boy to teen-ager,
to man. If all he has ever known is that remote, thick, heavy jungle, if
he has never known anything but that, how can he ever find anything
outside of that?
Now it looks like a very tough problem and you and every other person on
earth, I want you to consider yourself as that young man, young lady in
the jungle and all you can know is your jungle existence, and yet
authentically, really, there is a better life outside of it.
Now, in your present condition here this morning in this room, you are
in the inner jungle of your own experiences and wobbly routines of the
day; you are in that.
And I'm going to tell you something in a wish to push out something you
don't know is in your mind, which is imagination masquerading as
reality. Part of you now imagines that you know and maybe even
live in this other world, this higher existence. That is nothing but
your imagination. I am telling you that you don't live there at all.
Now, carry the illustration of the jungle a little further, when you
were around the camp fire surrounded by savage beasts of all kind that
inhabit the forests and hills and caves. If that is where you live, if
you live where the animals are, then there's going to be a lot of fear
and a lot of fighting between the two of you, right?
Don't dodge what I'm going to say. The evidence that you are in an inner
jungle, the evidence is that you are in conflict. Come on now - one or
the other, one or the other - you are in conflict or you are in peace.
Now you'd have to have an incredible amount of self-delusion and
self-harming arrogance to tell me that you now live in peace and
understanding and non-conflict. How about a little self-honesty until it
hurts: 'I now live in an inner jungle inside myself, therefore any
claims I make that I have inside understanding, know what it's all
about, can instruct others, if they'd only listen to my tremendous
wisdom,' and other allied hypocrisy - catch yourself trying to convince
yourself that you are in the higher place right now, that you've escaped
the jungle.
All right, I'm going to settle this once and for all and then go on. You
will all tell yourself, each one of you, will tell yourself whether
you're nervous, anxious, combative, hostile, need to prove that you're
right, need to tell others they're wrong so that you by contrast can
convince yourself that you're right.
And I'm going to make it even stronger than that. See, this is so
compassionate, to put you in the tender trap so that you're trapped so
badly that you can no longer deny that you're in a trap in the jungle
- this is why I'm doing this."
from a talk given 5/1/1988
V H's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 19, talk 482, track 2
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