I don't mean that kind of silence which one observes when somebody says, such and such a famous person has just died, and we'll observe a moment of silence in his honor, and everybody frowns and thinks very serious thoughts.

That's not silence at all.

I mean real silence in which we stop thinking and experience reality as reality is.

Because, after all, if I talk all the time, I can't hear what anyone else has to say.

And if I think all the time, and by that I mean specifically talking to yourself sub-vocally inside your skull, if I think all the time, I have nothing to think about except thoughts.

And so I'm never in touch with the real world.

Now, what is the real world?

Some people have the theory that the real world is material or physical, and say it's made a kind of a stuff.

Other people have the theory that the real world is spiritual or mental.

But I want you to point out that both those theories of the world are concepts.

They are constructions of words.

And the real world is not an idea.

It is not words.

Reality is.

You'll find, therefore, that if you get with reality, all sorts of illusions disappear.

And I will mention several illusions that have not this kind of existence.

Let's begin with some very down-to-earth ones, like money.

Money is a very useful method of accounting.

It is a measure of wealth, in the same way as inches are measures of length, and grams measures of weight.

You cannot eat money.

You could have a fantastic quantity of dollar bills and stock certificates on a desert island, and they would be useless to you.

What you would need would be food, and animals, and companions.

Money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the menu represents the dinner.

Only we are psychologically perverted in such a way that we would, some of us, would rather have money than real wealth.

But you know, you cannot drive in five cars at once, even though they be Cadillacs.

You cannot live simultaneously in six houses, or eat 12 roasts of beef at one meal.

There is a limit to what one can consume.

So that's one of the sort of confusions I'm talking about.

Another is that we confuse ourselves, as living organisms, with our idea of ourselves.

That is to say, with the conception of myself, which is called the personality or ego.

We, that is what we have been told we are.

And it's an extremely crude and limited conception of oneself, of the actual unique living organism.

And we get unhappy, because we are thinking of ourselves in this way, because we think, well, gee, I'm going to die.

I once talked to a woman who came to me and said she was afraid of death.

And we went into it in a long conversation.

I said, what are you really afraid of?

And she thought it over, and thought it over, and he said, you know, what I'm going to be afraid of is what other people are going to say.

They're going to say, poor old Gert, she couldn't last it through.

Because, you see, who you think you are is entirely dependent on who people have told you you are.

You're not that.

Then another thing that bothers us is time.

And most people nowadays say, I have no time.

Of course you don't, because you are not aware of the present.

You know, the present is represented on your watch by a hairline that is as thin as possible, as is consistent with visibility.

And so everybody thinks the present is, instead of, you know, the future.

Now, the present is the only real time.

There is no past, and there isn't a future.

And there never will be.

We think ordinarily of the present as an infinitesimal point at which the future changes into the past.

And we also do a terrible thing.

We imagine ourselves to be results of the past.

And we're always passing the buck over our shoulders.

Like, when God approached Adam in the Garden of Eden and said, Hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shouldst not eat?

And Adam said, This woman thou gavest me, she tempted me, and I did eat.

And God looked at Eve and said, Hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shouldst not eat?

And she said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And God, out of the corner of his eye, looked at the serpent.

The serpent said nothing.

So, you see, we're always passing the buck.

And don't realize that the past is caused by the present.

As the wake of a ship flows back from the prow.

Now, the wake doesn't drive the ship any more than the tail wags the dog.

But we've all got excuses.

My mother had a fit while she was carrying me in the womb.

They didn't bring me upright.

And then they go to the mother and say, How is it that you could have been so irresponsible with your children?

And she says, Well, it was my parents didn't bring me upright either.

And so everybody passes the buck.

But the truth of the matter is, it all begins here.

This is where the creation begins.

And you're doing it and won't admit it.

Because, of course, you're all God in disguise.

Jesus found that out and they crucified him for saying so.

So, this is a very odd thing for Westerners to understand, and particularly for Americans.

Because we are so fixated on the future.

When we say we want to put something down, we say it has no future.

Well, do you?

Much better to have a present.

Because if you don't, it's useless to make plans.

Because when they work out, you won't be there to enjoy them.

You'll be thinking of something else.

So we don't, we realize that we are living out of now and throwing the past behind us.