William Samuel

Wodsong Talks #2 -  Side 1

Hello everyone. Please be comfortable. The talk, the 

subject matter today is not new to anyone, nor should not 

be. And it is a timeless matter. It seems to be a great 

concern to many right now because there is a tremendous 

influx of messages coming from all directions. Oh, the 

other day the National Enquirer had seventeen 

advertisements for book, all purporting to be 

metaphysical, mystical, occult, or just plain old good 

luck, and for talismans and good luck ointments and all 

that sort of thing. But the books promised everything, 

metaphysically, from immediate and long-lasting health 

to riches, to one’s ability to control anyone he liked, to a 

better memory. One even offered sex prowess. 

Metaphysically induced.

Well now I have just had a letter from my dearest 

friend Marianne who is presently in California, and 

she tells me that California is simply awash with new 

gurus, new teachers, new theories, and new ideas, 

that everyone is busily running from one to the other. 

And of course this is the thing that induces the 


question I am asked so often: how do we know 

whom to listen to? How do we know whom to study? 

How do we know there is not going to be a little bit 

of truth in this or that or something else?

I had a young lad once ask me about whether or not 

he should go to India and study there. And I 

encouraged him to go. That was Hinduism. He went, 

he saw the light. The light developed over a pace and 

he is now about his Father’s business. Another lad 

asked me about the possibility of studying with 

someone in Hong Kong. And I said by all means. 

Another asked about studying in Japan, to attend a 

particular ashram in Japan and I said by all means go. 

Well I have been asked how I can include all of these 
 
ideas. Someone else wanted to attend Christian 

Science class instruction under a mister so and so and 

I said well by all means yes if you can get in the class 

without waiting five years. And if you cannot get 

into his class then there are other classes you can get 

in.

So the question arises, and the point of the first part 

of our talk now will be how do we know whom to 

listen to? Which pathway should we follow? 


Pathway…Pathway… pathway. The bird up there 

laughs with us. There is no pathway to the goal when 

one is standing on it. When one is sitting on it. When 

one is breathing it. The goal is right here. Right 

where one is. Oh I do not mean here with Bill 

Samuel, after your pilgrimage here to Alabama that 

you have found the goal and that you had a pathway 

here. No way. That is not what I mean. There is no 

way there to light, enlightenment but to be light and 

enlightenment.

But I am getting ahead of myself now. Let me point 

out a few things that perhaps you have not thought 

about. Whatever path one travels, and I hate to use 

that word path but what can I do? That is how it 

seems. It seems we start out as a very ignorant stupid 

mortal and we carry this ignorant stupid mortal along 

acquiring wisdom from this teacher or that one. And 

we walk a very very long pathway in our attempt to 

arrive at some light, real light, genuine light, honest 

light, something that will really do what it is 

supposed to do. But, in any event, whatever path one 

travels Eastern, Western, heathen for Pete’s sake, 

mystical or occult, secret, it can be voodoo or it can 

be metaphysical. It can be a scientific metaphysics or 

it can be a religious metaphysics.

But now listen. All of them produce in their most 

effective moments, all of these pathways, all these 

systems, all of these philosophies produce in their 

very best moments, an experience that is identical. 

Now who will deny this? The mystical experience 

that comes from Zen Buddhism when it has been 

written of and spoken of is an identical utterance 

when it comes from a Taoist, or whether it comes 

from a Catholic, one of the early Catholics of the 

Christian church, or one of the latter day Catholics. 

The mystical experience would appear always to be 

the same.

Now a scenario for all of this goes a little bit like 

this: whatever pathway one chooses, the pathway 

itself, either intentionally or unintentionally, and 

usually unintentionally, brings one, brings the 

disciple (the one who walks the pathway) to a place 

where he simply gives up.

Now why does he give up? Everyone does not give 

up but everyone who has a mystical experience gives 

up. Perhaps it is the frustration of the pathway, in that 

it fails to live up to its promises. Or it could be that 

the pathway promised great health, wealth and joy, 

that sort of thing. And it worked initially but then, as 

the years grind on and as a lot of Christmases go by 

and a lot of new years arrive, it would seem that the 

joints grow stiff, and the back gets stiff and the eyes 

are not quite as bright as they were and one does not 

hear quite as well and we say gee whiz, the 


philosophy is not working now as it did before. And 

so again there is a great giving up at that point. Or 

perhaps that giving up is sometimes induced by 

personal tribulations that are too great to bear, great 

depressions that settle over the humanity of us. But 

in any event however it is induced and by whatever 

route one is walking, travelling, and studying a 

turning point is reached and a giving up takes place.

Now, I am pointing out that the giving up is the same 

whether one is going the Buddhist route, the Zen 

Buddhist route, the Taoist route, or an independent 

route, as I guess you could say this has been for me. 

But in any event one comes to a giving up place and 

so the question is giving up what? What does one 

give up? Well it is always the same. Every discipline 

has spoken of the same giving up. It is a giving up of 

some degree of personal self-importance, giving up 

some degree of a human sense of self, of humanhood, 

a surrendering, a giving up, a letting go of that old 

boog-a-boo ego.

All right a giving it up but to whom or to what? And 

it seems that the giving up is accompanied by a sense 

that ‘all right, I give up, but I yield to something 

greater. To something greater than this personal sense 

of my self that has to this point availed nothing.’ A 

yielding to, if you were a Taoist you would say to 

Tao. Or a yielding to God. Or if you were a 

fundamentalist perhaps you would say I am yielding 

to the blood of Jesus or something like that. Or you 

might be giving up to Nellie D Grabbenbaker. But in 

any event all those, by whatever discipline they have 

travelled, in speaking of the event and what appeared 

to induce it, inevitably speak of a giving up and a 

giving up of a personal sense of selfhood and a 

yielding, giving it up, not in despair to nothing but 

giving and yielding and despair to an inferable 

something.

All right what is next in this scenario we are talking 

about? Whenever this yielding happens always, 

always comes a grand sense of relief. You can read 

countless accounts of this relief. As it is spoken of it 

seems as though guilt has been lifted. It is as though 

darkness has been taken off, as though scales had 

fallen from the eyes. And whatever the discipline of 

the world one is following, if it is organized, and has 

an institutional something behind it, inevitably they 

take credit for this grand sense of relief that follows 

the giving up. Well it seems to me that…and this, of 

course, fortifies and strengthens their basis for being 

in a tangible world of organizations, and they take 

credit for this grand sense of relief that everyone 

feels. 

And of course, there, unfortunately it works like this 

too in the scenario that we call the human experience. 

The disciple feeling this sense of relief inevitably he 

or she knows that the release is honest, that there 

really has been a lessening of the sense of guilt, a 

lessening of a sense of person or ego. And what does 

this do? It strengthens that one’s belief in the power 

and the importance of the discipline or pathway that 

he or she is walking.

Well let us talk about this feeling of relief that comes 

about for just a moment. We have all felt it. It is the 

same for all mankind. It is as physical as anything 

can be physical. What is physical but the means by 

which spiritual is made plain and the two are one. 

But in any event it is this physical feeling of relief 

that comes from giving up and letting go, which has 

been spoken of by countless people. Again, from 

whatever path they came from and usually in the 

same terms, it is as though something warm had been 

poured ove him, and it drains the tensions away, it 

washes the guilts away. There is a physical feeling 

that is actually like water pouring from the fingers 

and toes. Now Christianity calls this experience, 

which incidentally is very natural and very normal 

for everyone. It is not so often recognised for what it 

is, but when it is recognised for what it is, that 

experience has been called the holy baptism by 

Christianity. It has been called other things in the 

other disciplines but it is always the same experience.

Now we have always experienced this sense of 

baptism every time we have given up and let God 

take charge of our affairs. I do not mean giving up to 

do nothing. I mean give up to allow God to be in 


charge of our affairs and then do under those 

circumstances what that relief, that grand sense of 

relief allows us to see to do.

All right, I will ask you to listen again, that with this 

grand sense of relief what happens most often is the 

disciple’s reaction from this honest experience will, 

in one way or another, turn around on him to not only 

reinforce the institution or pathway in his head, that 

he has been studying. And excuse my use of a word 

like ‘in his head’. I cannot help it, I have to use 

words. But it not only reinforces his belief in that 

organization but lo and behold it reinforces the very 

old man, or the sense of himself who had the guilt in 

the first place. 
 

Now listen. It is difficult to find words to say this. 

Christianity does nothing, virtually nothing, nor do 

any of the disciplines really, to stop the 

self-righteousness that follows so quickly on the 

heels 0f this mystical experience that comes with the 

yielding, simple yielding, simple giving up of 

personal sense of self. And the very sense of ego that 

yields, lest we are careful, is so thrilled by the 

accomplishment that the thrill renews the ego rather 

than diminish it. And lo and behold we are right back 

where we started.

All right, let us carry on with this thing. With the 

yielding, with the giving up, which incidentally can 

be done right here right now, one does not have to be 

an ego. We will explain later in this talk just 

precisely what the ego is and why and how it can be 

given up immediately without long arduous 

pathways, years of meditation and study. But we will 

get to that in just a minute.

Let us continue with this feeling that comes along 

which we have spoken of as a sense of relief and with 

a feeling of having been washed clean, from which 

comes the holy baptism. There is another physical 

feeling that very often comes with this yielding, that 

comes most often with an unconscious yielding. It 

was written of very often in the early days of each 

discipline. Unless perhaps maybe the voodooists did 

 not write about it, or the independents, but those 

who did spoke of a grand stirring in the solar plexus. 

Tumult in the bowels, it was spoken of because it is 

so physical and sensual in nature, and because it is so 

often accompanied with a sense of singleness or 

oneness and a sense of desirelessness. It has been 

referred to, in Christianity at least as the holy union. 

It is spoken of in the orient as the divine intercourse. 

So many disciples of many of the pathways still 

speak of it as the divine intercourse.

 Now another one of the physical things that seem to 

accompany this giving up, this letting go, this ending 

of one’s sense of humanhood is a feeling… bear in 

mind that all of these things, while I am naming them 

one by one by one and starting at the so-called lowest 

level of them and building up to what is supposed to 

be the highest of the spiritual attainments…can all 

happen simultaneously. And there are none totally 

separated from the other. There is a degree of all of 

them in each of them. And there is a sense of 

eachness all of them. Well another one comes as a 

sense of lightness, freshness, sort of like cool air, a 

cool refreshing air. It has been hailed as the holy 

breath. I am sure you have heard of that in your 

studies.

Remember now, I am saying these great mystical 

experiences, none of which can be poo-pooed, they 

are experiences which are a joy to experience, to be, 

and that are available immediately, to come as wings 

on the feet for all of us. Any scholar can see that they 

are the same by way of any discipline.

Now there is a final one that is supposed to be the 

grandest of them all, a sense of peace, an all-rightness 

that is accompanied with an almost a disorientating 

light, but a feeling of timeless singleness, a feeling of 

oneness of everything. And always with this feeling a 

knowledge that peace and all-rightness are the 

 genuine and honest fact of being.

The Eastern discipline makes no bone about the last 

one here, as being the most significant. It speaks of 

the rest of them as being somewhat lower in degree. 

The last one is the most significant because it allows, 

and demands actually, a total yielding of the yielder. 

It calls for the demise of the one who surrenders. It 

ends the one walking along the pathway. There is not 

even that consciousness any longer of a person or a 

human that is struggling to climb his way up, to try 

to get to God’s belt or something. And it is highly 

venerated, this last experience because it leaves a 

timeless sense of consciousness only on the scene.

For myself, these experiences come as one 

experience. 

It seems always that there has been no interval of 

time between them. I do not know how else to say it 

except that from one experience to the next there is 

an absolute certainty that all of the human tolderoll in 

between was as though it were light slowed down, or 

entrapped light in which nothing really mattered. 

What does matter is the light-to-light experience 

between which, as if it could really be interrupted, 

but between which all of the aging processes, all of 

the time processes and so forth are understood to be 

nothing.

I might point out that the obverse of this is true. If it 

can seem, humanly, that we have a human experience 

that we call good, most certainly there is a 

delineating experience within humanhood to make 

that plain. Humanly we might call that a bad 

experience. I went from one bad experience to 

another bad experience and it seemed that the same 

was true, that there had been no intervening time in 

between. I remember the Korean War, and ten years 

earlier there had been World War II. I was in combat 

in both of those experiences. When, after ten years, I 

found myself back in combat leading troops up and 

down hills and doing all of the things a soldier is 

called on to do in combat, it seemed to me as though 

 here had been no intervening time at all. And yet 

that intervening time included marriage, two sons 

and a home and the experience of a civilian in a 

business world.

So the obverse is true too but the peak-to-peak 

experience that all of the disciplines are aiming for, 

the experience of peace, the peace that is beyond 

understanding, is the same no matter what discipline 

one follows. It is spoken of in the same terms 

whether written of by an Indian, a Jew, a Christian, or 

a heathen, whatever heathen is. And I am sure the 

birds singing are singing of the same experience. And 

I know, I know that when the wind blows the trees 

tell of that experience.

Ok, so much for that. The experiences induced by a 

frustrating letting go, or giving up, and to whom? To 

God. A giving up of what? As the giving up of one’s 

personal sense of self. And inevitably it is 

accompanied by a grand sense of relief, of I am not 

guilty of all the sins of commission or omission. Lo 

and behold everything is all right.

Well all of the garden tractors have started up and the 

lawnmowers so we have moved inside. And we are 

inside Woodsong now for the conclusion of our talk.

I guess the simple point that has been made here is 

that with the study we began with the goal of all the 

other disciplines. Their goal is the recognition that 

life, awareness itself is identity. We began at that 

point. The purpose of other disciplines is to allow 

one that grand peace that is past understanding that 

comes with letting go a personal sense of self, the 

one to whom awareness has been given, to simply be 

awareness itself and joy in the joy of being awareness 

itself. We began at that point. All of our writings and 

all of our teachings have, for lo these many years, 

begun with the acceptance of God-awareness, the 

awareness of the divine mind, as the starting point, 

the identity as which we live and move and have our 


being.

I have, in essence, said that all of the disciplines of 


the world, to include the metaphysical or scientific 

metaphysical philosophies as they are currently 

taught or practiced or apparently almost universally 

believed, began with a little speck in time and space, 

like a spot on a motion picture screen. That goes 

through all of the gyrations of study, learning, 

putting off, overcoming, healing, enlightenment after 

enlightenment, pit of hell after pit of hell in order to 

one day perceive that one is not just the speck in 

space. The little spot on the corner of the screen. But 

that, rather one is the entire screen itself upon which, 

and as which all of the scenes unfold. We identify as 

awareness within which all world scenes appear.

Once upon a time it was as though we identified as 

perhaps a bug in a garden. And lo it was a beautiful 

garden, it had roses along the borders, it had violets 

in the centre, gladioli here and there, all of the 

beautiful flowers. But it also had clods and weeds 

and poison ivy and brambles and briers. And as an 

ant e poked our way about the garden to examine first 

this flower and then that one to determine which was 

the best and which we liked and which we did not. 

And then finally, in grand frustration,one day it 

dawned on us that we were the garden entire. And 

that everything in the garden, every flower, every 

bramble, every brier, every insect about the business 

of trying to find its way and make its determination, 

every one was garden itself and at this point we 

stopped identifying as a struggling ant about the 

business of fighting a battle of weeds and brambles, 

to be garden. And to perceive that each flower in the 

garden was only another quality or attribute of 

garden itself.

The question comes, is it necessary to have the 

mystical experience of the light, the mystical 

experience of the holy baptism, the sense of lightness 

and forgiveness? Is it necessary to have that tangible 

experience this tangible world before one can begin 

taking awareness itself to be identity, before one can 

begin to think out as awareness itself, as 

God-awareness? Does one have to have the mystical 

experience first? And the answer is absolutely not. 

Absolutely no. We take awareness to be the who and 

the what we are. God-awareness to be the who and 

what we are. And we take it on faith if necessary. If it 

should be, there is no conscious recognition of never 

having felt the grand forgiveness or the peace. We 

take that identification on faith if necessary. We think 

out from, live out from, be out from the position of 

God-awareness about the business of God-being. 

And lo and behold, when we do, when we do we find 

that all of the experiences of the many pathways 

 begin to happen, hand over fist, hard pressed, shaken 

together and running over they happen. It is as 

though we had meditated for years and years and 

years with little or no results when suddenly results 

happen. It is as though we had studied the Buddhists 

discipline or the Hindu discipline or the Taoist 

discipline to little or no avail, awaiting some grand 

road to Damascus enlightening experience so that we 

could feel we were on our way. And lo and behold it 

all happens. It happens quickly without wait, without 

the long years of hard study, disappointing 

anticipation, it happens. We can take awareness right 

now to be the who and the what we are. And this is 

where we began. This is the beginning the ancients 

spoke of. Blessed is he who has found the beginning 


let him stay there.

Well obviously one takes on a sense of a new 

identity. He has let go a false sense of identity. And 

here is where I find such weakness in the instruction 

that comes from our metaphysical philosophies. The 

term mortal mind is often used but mortal mind is 

seldom defined, if ever. The term the old man is often 

used, put off the old man. But just what do we mean 

by put off the old man? Churchdom has indicated 

that putting off the old man means simply getting rid 

of the bad habits of the old man, but it leaves the old 

man on the scene still, a very purified, sanctified, 

sanctimonious, self-righteous old man but he is still 

there on the scene trying to equate himself with God.

What is mortal mind that is put off? First, let me say 

this, that once we take awareness to be the identity 

we are we have put off the old man. And let me 

explain just how this is so. Who is the one that feels 

he does not know? Who is the one who is forever 

searching after truth? Seeking and find. Who is the 

one who is trying to arrive at an altered state of 

consciousness that induces a sense of at-one-ment 

with God? It is the old man of us. The old man of us 

is the one, or the ego, or the role we play, when we 

play the one to whom we believe awareness has been 

given.

Now let me say that again. Right here right now here 

we sit listening. The concept that hangs in and 

lingers longest with us is that there is a me sitting 

here to whom this awareness that listens, thinks, 

feels, has been given. There is a me who says this 

awareness is mine. Well there is no such me. There is 

no such ego to whom life has been given. But there is 

life present right here right now. Awareness is present 

right here right now. Awareness and life being the 

same thing as I use it here in this context. Awareness 

is here. Yes. And there is the body that we say life 

has been put into or given to. A body that is stupid or 

does not know, that is struggling and striving for a 

healing. Yes. But where does that body exist? Within 

awareness. Awareness, consciousness is not in that 

body.

Do you see? Awareness is going on right this minute. 

The ego, the old man, the liar from the beginning, the 

one that so tenaciously would mimic God, in all 

ways, is an hypothetical ego that says this awareness 

is mine. And I identify as the me who says this 

awareness is mine. There is no such one, that is the 

old man. Now to think out from the position of a me 

that says this awareness is mine, to think out from 

that position is to live mortal mind, to live a fraud, to 

live an identity or an ego that does not exist. Now 

this idea is neither new nor unique with me. You 

have heard this many times in many ways from other 

places. It seems that it is a common statement that 

comes with enlightenment via whatever discipline 

that enlightenment appears to arrive.

Catherine of Sienna, one day after a period of 

introspective prayer and grand enlightenment 

suddenly she arose and said, my me is God, nor do I 

see any other me but my God himself. Meaning that 

there is no personal identity to whom life has been 

given.

And if we take it out of the religious context, the 

religious frame, Dr Lang, from England, world noted 

psychiatrust, did a few months ago address the 

national meeting of psychiatrists from all over the 

world and gave the keynote address. And to 

paraphrase very liberally he did say in effect, 

“gentleman, for all these years we, as psychiatrists, 

have been trying to get at the root of the human 

problem, and when we finally arrived at the root of a 

human problem we then did all the good we could to 

heal that problem for the ego, so that the ego could 

go on its way unencumbered and unburdened by its 

previous burden”. And then he said “but gentleman, 

all of our study now indicates that there is no ego to 

heal. We have been spinning our wheels in the sand. 

We have been wasting time. Check me out on this 

and see”. This is the Lang school of psychiatry 

coming on strong, saying that an ego does not even 

exist.

And what again is ego? Ego right here right now, in 

its simplest terms, is the idea that this awareness, this 

life that is perceiving, at the moment looking outside 

at a black walnut just green with spring, and at the 

cotton trees in the distance waving, this awareness 

that right now feels a chair beneath it, floor under its 

feet, that this awareness belongs to a me. Who is this 

me who says awareness is mine? There is no such 

me. And to let it go, to let it go can be done 

effortlessly. In the 

same way one can let go the belief of a flat earth. We 

may base all of our calculations on the idea that the 

earth is flat but the earth is not flat. So we can let go 

of the concept of it. We can let go of the concept of a 

personal possessor of life. There is no such personal 

possessor of life. But life is right here, right now.

Now this new view, this new sense of identification 

that automatically lets go an old sense of 

identification does not alter anything at first. There 

are no great gongs going off or rockets flashing in the 

sky. There might be a grand warmness and gentleness 

in the heart when one suddenly realises that identity 

is not sitting in a room looking about at tables and 

chairs or outside at squirrels. But that identity, 

identity includes the room, the table and the chairs 

and the squirrels. We may very well joy in the 

expanded sense of identity as being infinitely more 

than we ever thought it was. But we still see trees. 

We still look down and see the fingers and toes of a 

sense of identity that we used to limit ourselves to. 

But we are infinitely more than that. Indeed identity 

is all awareness perceives. And it is not the personal 

possession of Bill, or Ruth, or Mary, or Jan. It is 

God’s awareness. The divine mind’s awareness.

Infinite awareness is the identity one is. Eternal 

awareness is the identity one is. That position can be 

assumed right now, without wait, and without 

struggle, because it is a fact right now. We do not 

have to wait until all the maps of the flat earth are 

reprinted, declaring that the earth was not flat but is 

round, we do not have to wait until all the printed 

material in the universe begins disclaiming the ego or 

a personal possessor of life. We can take that identity 

to be our own this moment because it is who and 

what we are this moment.

About this false sense of I, about this false identity, 

just who is the one who struggles to understand the 

truth? He is always the one who says, I am aware. I 

am the one who possesses an awareness of my own. I 

am the possessor, the container of life. I am the one 

who looks at the sights and the sounds of my own 

awareness, and then make this my determinations 

about whether this is valuable or that is invaluable, 

this is good, that is bad. I like, I do not like. That is 

the one who struggles to understand. The one who 

struggles to understand says, I am the one who uses 

all of the sights and sounds within awareness in order 

to get along in the world, as though the sights and the 

sounds within awareness were separate and apart 

from him. As though he were one speck on the grand 

screen of awareness and the sights and sounds on the 

rest of the screen were separate and apart, yes 

separate and apart from the speck, from the ‘I possess 

life’, but not separate and apart from the screen, the 

screen of awareness, God’s comprehending going on 

which is right now listening to these words. Who is 

the one who understands the truth? Inevitably the one 

who understands the truth is the one who is simply 

being awareness itself, only, right now, and has let go 

of the concept of being a little limited speck in space 

that possess it, owns it, uses it.

Well now what does it require, what does it require to 

give up the possessor? Well it is just as easy as 

letting go nothing, because that is what the possessor 

is, nothing. The possessor is a dream. The possessor 

is a belief that life is in matter. To stop being the 

possessor, to stop being me is to stop doing those 

things the possessor does. And what is that? Well the 

possessor is forever looking on the sights and sounds 

of awareness and saying, they are out there. They are 

not me. That is a tree over there and I am here. Me, a 

body that weighs 150lbs or some such thing as that.

And how does one stop seeing things as outside 

himself when actually the view of things does not 

change a bit? How does one stop doing it? Well to 

identify as awareness, it is so easy to say, why the 

tree I see is the tree I be. The tree is included within 

identity, and identity is this very awareness that is 

going on here now. I identify as life living, and 

suddenly we find ourselves with a brotherhood never 

experienced before, never known before. Suddenly 

we see that all the people we see are but the infinite 

appearing of an infinite and eternal identity.

All right now, it has been taught so often that to take 

this grand identity as oneself is to give up and lose 

your personal sense of self, that is to lose one’s ego, 

that is that it melts into some grand charismatic light.

Now this is the charge often brought against Eastern 

philosophy and sometimes brought to bear against 

Christian Science, but it is not so at all. Ego is still 

present to be seen within the grand scope of 

awareness, but it is understood for what it is. The 

grand scope of awareness still includes the tree and 

its shadow, and the shadow inevitably leads straight 

away to the tree. Awareness knows that tree is tree 

and shadow is shadow, so ego is still plainly evident 

to be seen. Ego, shadow that leads straight away to 

egolessness or the divine Ego, that God is. And that 

God is God, and that ego is Ego. Oh, it is very 

interesting to see how clearly one does begin to see 

when he identifies as awareness itself, life itself and 

not as one who possesses life. Has it stuffed in his 

body like an apple in his pocket.

Now listen gently. Right now, right now you hear a 

sound coming from a tape recorder. Perhaps you hear 

the sound of automobiles in the distance or children 

playing. Is it not possible to simply be the awareness 

within which this sound sounds and the children 

laugh and the automobiles in the distance sound? Is it 

not possible to simply not be the one that says, “this 

is my awareness?” Oh yes it is possible. And to let 

go of that me who says, ‘my’ is to let go the weight 

of Job, the weight of the world.

Now you know folks one must see this for oneselves. 

And it is not done with effort. You see, awareness is 

being awareness whether we believe we are the 

possessors of awareness or not. We have believed 


the smell of smoke.

So to let go the possessor of awareness is effortless 

on the one hand and yet it must be done, consciously 

done but it is done with tenderness and love. It is 

done with gentleness and it is done with a soft soft 

touch. You see it is like opening one’s eyes, it is like 

awakening, it is like relaxing, just relaxing and 

letting go trials and tribulations. Let them go to the 

wind. It is like opening one’s hand, loosing and 

letting go a gas balloon with which we have been 

long enamoured. It is like ending the struggle. It is 

like going home to a warm and happy place. It is like 

coming home again, only to discover why this is 

where have always been. This is what we have  

always been. We have always been just life being 

life, living.

We have always been awareness itself. There has 

never been a time, nor a situation, no matter how 

terrible it seemed, no matter how pain-filled or grief-

stricken it seemed, when life or awareness or 

consciousness was not just going right on, being 

aware. 

We have always been aware of trees and children and 

the sounds of things. Awareness itself has just gone 

right on being aware, or it has always been the one 

who has said, this is my awareness. Who has been the 

one who has suffered? Who has been the great judge 

on the scene? Who says, I do not like this sight and 

that sound? And I want to get rid of this and I want 

to change that. I want this and that. It has always 

been this impostor who has been miserable, or happy, 

according to how well things go in his little, small 

frame of reference, as to what is good and what is 

bad. 


That is the one, the possessor is the one that has 

always been engaged in such great prodigious 

thought taking and planning and calculating and 

arranging and rearranging. He is the one who created 

time. A time that was very necessary for his 

sequential events to transpire. And that impostor is 

that miserable one that we let go., just as quickly as 

we take life, consciousness itself to be the only 

identity in all existence, the only identity in all 

existence.

I guess, I guess the most difficult thing I have found 

to communicate is the fact that there is but one 

awareness. I am not the only one who has found it 

difficult. I have read countless instances where those 

who have made this simple, gentle, marvellous 

discovery that awareness is single, alone, only and all 

have found it relatively impossible to look out at that 

object within awareness called people and say, listen, 

awareness is single, alone, only and all. And then see 

what appear to be others understanding that. Most 

often those who attempt to make this point are forced 

to give up or else find themselves coming down from 

the position and reaching out and talking to others as 

though they could themselves perceive and 

understand rather than just appear to. Oh how 

difficult to make this point. How difficult to make 

this point. Else it would be understood how the 

Oriental could say, about the appearance of people, 

that people are straw dogs. There is no life there. And 

people, life exists as the awareness that perceives 

people. And people are the tangible appearing of one 

life made plain.

If this were easy to communicate it would be 

understood how Huang Pooh, in his famous last talk 

that he ever made said: “Gentleman remember please 

that the perceived does not perceive.” Oh we can 

understand this well enough when we look in the 

mirror and see an image in the mirror we say, my 

goodness the image there appears to live and move, 

have life and breath in it, yet we understand that that 

is only a reflection and that awareness that does the 

perceiving of the image is where the life is. But how 

difficult it seems to be to comprehend that all life is 

one life perceived within one awareness. And whose 

awareness, friend, whose? This awareness that is you. 

This awareness that listens, right here right now is 

the one awareness of being. God’s awareness. It does 

not belong to Bill, Mary, or John or Joe, though 

awareness certainly includes within it the appearance 

of Bill, and Mary, and John, and Joe and countless 

others, the many. But awareness is single, alone. To 

identify as the screen is to see that Bill, Mary, John, 

Joe, rabbit, aeroplane, world, universe is included 

within the single selfhood that one awareness is, and 

that that single selfhood is God-self. Self-aware.

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