you see the problem is this we identify in our experience a differentiation
between what we do and what happens to us we have a certain number of actions that
we define as voluntary we feel in control of those and then over against that there
is all those things that are involuntary but the dividing line between these two is
very arbitrary because for example when you move your hand you feel that you decide
whether to open it or to close it but then ask yourself how do you decide
when you decide to open your hand do you first decide to decide you don't do you
you just decide and how do you do that and if you don't know how you do
it is it voluntary or involuntary let's consider breathing you can feel that you breathe
deliberately you can control your breath but when you don't think about it it
goes on is it voluntary or involuntary and so we come to have a very arbitrary definition
of self that much of my activity which i feel i do and that then doesn't include breathing
most of the time it doesn't include the heartbeats it doesn't include the activity
of the glands it doesn't include digestion it doesn't include how you shape your bones circulate your blood do you
or do you not do these things now if you get with yourself and you find out that you are all of yourself very strange thing happens you find that your
body knows that you're one with the universe in other words that the so-called involuntary
circulation of your blood is one continuous process with the stars shining if you find
out that it's you who circulates your blood you will at the same moment find
out that you are shining the sun because your physical organism is one continuous
process with everything else that's going on just as the waves are continuous with the ocean
your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos and it's all you only you're
playing the game that you're only this bit of it but as i tried to explain there are in physical
reality no such things as separate events isn't it doesn't it really astonish you that
you are this fantastically complex thing and that you're doing all of this and you
never had any education in how to do it you never learned but you're this miracle well the point is that from a strictly
physical scientific standpoint this organism is a continuous energy with everything else
that's going on and if i am my foot i am the sun only we've got this little partial view we've got
the idea that no i'm just something in this body the ego that's a joke the ego is nothing
other than the focus of conscious attention it's like a radar on a ship the radar on a ship is
a troubleshooter is there anything in the way and conscious attention is a designed function of the
brain to scan the environment like a radar does and note for any trouble making changes but if
you identify yourself with your troubleshooter then naturally you define yourself as
being in a perpetual state of anxiety and the moment we cease to identify with the ego
and become aware that we are the whole organism you realize as the first
thing how harmonious it all is because your organism is a miracle of harmony all
this thing functioning together even those copper schools and uh creatures that are fighting each
other in the bloodstream and eating each other up if they weren't doing that you wouldn't be healthy so what is discord at one level of your being is
harmony at a higher level and you begin to realize that and you begin to be aware too that the
discords of your life in the discords of people's life which are a fight at one level at a higher
level of the universe are healthy and harmonious and you suddenly realize that
everything that you are and do is at that level as magnificent and as free
of any blemish as the patterns in waves the markings in marble the way a cat
moves and that this world is really okay and can't be anything else because
otherwise it couldn't exist so then if you awaken from this illusion you can feel yourself not as a stranger in
the world not as something here on probation not as something that has arrived here by fluke
but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental what you are basically deep deep down far far in is simply the
fabric and structure of existence itself so in this idea then everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality not god in a politically
kingly sense but god in the sense of being the self the deep down basic whatever there is and
you're all that only you're pretending you're not you