Painful-Pain Or Pleasurable-Pain – No Thought-Constructed Self - Love Eternity
VERNON HOWARD TALK 9/24/76 Painful-Pain Or Pleasurable-Pain – No Thought-Constructed Self - Love Eternity
I was going to ask Leland to wait and let you let go of yourselves first. So why don't we do that now? Why don't you just let go of what you were doing out in the other room there, or what you were thinking about, or what had captivated you, or what scared you this week that is still coursing through you unbeknownst to you because you never notice such things.
How many of you have been scared this week? Let's see the hands of the scared people. Will you agree with me that to be scared, to live in fear of people and of life in general is a pretty terrible way to live. Will you agree with that? Would you agree?
Would you agree that a life lived in fear makes no sense at all. If you're afraid, then if you have a career in front of you that looks promising, or if you have a marriage in front of you, or an un-marriage in front of you, or if you're still young and the world looks beautiful to you because it hasn't knocked you around enough as yet—and you're the cause of it knocking you around, by the way.
Maybe you haven't noticed the number of things that scared you within the last hour. Looking at someone's face coming into this room. Unconsciously reviving the memory of something that happened to you yesterday, or a month ago, 20 years ago.
You're so scared—let me tell you something—you had better wake up and listen. You're so scared you can't even behave properly. The smallest challenge, the smallest unexpected event can terrify you and confuse you and ruin your little life for you.
I think it's a pretty good idea if we go into this matter of fear a little bit. But you had better be quite aware of how much it has captured you, how it even dominates everything you do, think. It dominates where you go, and it makes you so tensely careful, it keeps you so tensely prepared all the time that you have no life of your own.
When I say you're tensely prepared you understand what that means? You have your stock phrases ready, don't you? You have your stock set of reactions ready, don't you? All of them usual, familiar, all of them painful and you don't even see the pain in what you call your self-protection. Why on earth don't you let things happen?
Oh, now we see why. You don't let things happen because that would leave you out of it, right? If you would just let that event, that unexpected occurrence down at the office or in the home, or inwardly—your health, anything—if you just let it happen, you wouldn't have anything at all, would you?
Don't you understand the fear and the madness in deliberately creating a crisis out there—get this—in order to experience a crisis in here. For without that nervous crisis that you painfully enjoy so much, without that painful crisis you think—listen—you think you'd be afraid. Did you hear that?
You are afraid that if you don't create a crisis, a fight, a disappointment, a gloom—if you don't create that inside yourself you'll be scared. Don't you see what we’re doing? Can't we see the illogic, the nonsense of trying to do something to keep away fear when it's the very thing that creates and perpetuates it?
What if you were willing—and I'll have you read that in a minute Joan—what if you were willing to let an event teach you something that you don't know up until this time—this point of time. Whatever the event is, and you can watch yourself being made scared by it, being made timid, uncertain, doubtful, and therefore put on a false front which we always do when we’re scared. That phony front hoping that we won't see it and he won't see it.
What if we left the event all alone? What if you didn't try to do a thing with it, but at twenty minutes to eight tonight you were new to everything. New to everything that's happened or that will happen.
Some of you very likely have events going to occur tomorrow, perhaps next week, another month, something that you know will happen on the social level, everyday level. Something that's caused you concern. Maybe something longer-range than that. Again, in connection with your health maybe. Maybe a year off. Maybe a crisis you know that—a crisis you know will sooner or later meet you. Why don't you leave it alone? Why do you create the crisis at all by thinking about it? Not that ignoring it in itself is what we’re after.
What were after is to meet it very intelligently, very freely when it does come—when it comes in time, but to meet it with a self—a self that has no time in itself. So there's no clash with time. There can't be a clash with time because you and I are not living in it.
I don't know what on earth that crisis can do to me except as I want something out of it. Except as I may even want tears out of it. Want the pleasure of fighting out of it. Want the pleasure—I want the pleasure of being afraid of what has happened or of what's going to happen.
Because then I'm involved in it and I think at least I have a life. It may be a pretty miserable life but at least I'm alive—and you’re dead.
Don't you understand that this world is populated by dead human beings, to use that blunt word? Don't you know that? What do you think your condition is, by the way? What do you think you’re—do you think you're a conscious, awake, harmless individual? Or do you hurt people just by being what you are?
Some of you, I look at your faces and you’re enough to discourage anyone. That's right. Someone who is weak enough and gullible enough to take the contagion from you and look at you. I give you an order right in this class. You listen. If you ever see another depressed person in this class, another discouraged person, another scared person, another angry person I forbid you to believe in it. You are forbidden to believe in that tearful, angry, frightened, confused face. Don't you dare! [Bangs desk]
When you do your giving away the fact that you are on the same level as that person, that a mechanical force—you are giving away the fact that a mechanical unconscious negative evil force has power over you.
Now isn't that sad? Isn't that sad that something has power to tell you how to feel, to control your reactions, your emotions, your day, your life. What a tragedy that you can be set off by anyone or anything.
You understand, by the way, that even your best friends don't disturb you too much because we have a mutual social agreement that we’re going to play the game. We’re going to pretend that we like each other. That we’re cooperative. That we’re pleasant. That we’re generous. We'll play the mutual game so as to prevent each other from getting the shock.
One purpose of this class is to rise way above that and to give each other as much as we can take, even here, the shocks that are necessary to show us the actual basic cause, the fundamental cause of us being afraid.
You are afraid because you're afraid to be who you really are. You're afraid because you're afraid to be who you really are.
Now having said that, change it just a bit. You're afraid of giving up who you imagine you are, but you don't know, you have no comprehension at all that you are an imaginary person. You think you're real and I'm telling you you're not real. Because a real person cannot be scared. Repeat. A real person cannot be scared. He can be challenged.
That is, he can be—it's called temptation in the New Testament, for example. He can be challenged by that angry person, by a mad world, by people who demand from them, but he can't be taken from them. He can't be influenced. He can't be dominated. He can’t be bullied.
Do you know that you're being bullied because—you're being bullied when another person's behavior can make you jittery. You're being bullied and you're consenting to it. And that, of course, is because you have no strength in yourself.
Joan, would you read the last two sentences, the top of the two first, please. Listen to this please, and can you catch it on the tape? Read the first one twice please—the middle one twice. Joan: You can do the right thing only when you have exhausted and been exhausted by the wrong thing. You can do the right thing only when you have exhausted and been exhausted by the wrong thing.
Vernon: I'll take it now. Yes. You understand that while you and I can never do the right thing—how can artificial personality—how can an accumulation of mental junk, how can fantasies, how can hypocrisies and lies ever do the right thing toward both myself and toward you?
I can never do the right thing. My human personality has no capacity for doing anything right except on the everyday level. A psychopath could invent a machine that would help the world, dehydrated water or whatever they do with machines—on the intellectual level.
But morally, if you want to use that word, ethically, decently you and I have no power in ourselves to do anything right, anything stemming from an awakened conscience.
When I get to the point, when you get to the point when I'm exhausted as the sentence said, so tired when—listen—when I break down and cry, when I go hysterically mad because God and life, or whoever it is—the enemy out there won't give me what I want, when I get furious and hateful and want to blow up the world and scream, maybe I have a chance to become right. Not before. I'll repeat what I’ve told all of you. You had better understand what it means to cry. You had better break down. You had better fall apart. All this phony keeping yourself together with your thoughts and your defenses.
Do you wonder that you're afraid? Do you wonder that you're scared when you know that at any second you could see through yourself, that at any second your wife could see through you—as if she didn't already living with you all those years. But she keeps her mouth shut because she's playing the same game. Do you wonder that we stay scared when we’re trying to do the impossible of keeping an illusion going while calling it a reality?
I'm sorry but in this class you won't permit me to make you cry. You'd rather smile and be pleasant people. You'd rather keep the show going. You'd rather look forward to a better future. You'd rather live in your little closet of daydreams. You'd rather believe the lie that people like you. They don't like you at all. They're using you. They're exploiting you just as you’re exploiting them.
The wrongness that we must exhaust and which must eventually exhaust us is the belief, the idea that I can save myself.
How on earth can I save myself when I've been trying 30, 60, 70 years? I haven't saved myself one bit. All I've done is prop it up in this corner and it falls apart in the opposite corner. Then the next corner, and the next corner. And my life is spent wearily running around for more poles to prop up the haunted house.
As long as you insist on propping it up with your ideas, your beliefs, with your self-defenses, then 99% of what is said to you in this class will be wasted by you. Fortunately we can start with the 1% that we are getting.
Go ahead. You just go right ahead and run away, mentally, even physically. Many people have run away physically. You go right ahead and run away and never find the answer. That's exactly what will happen if you run away mentally or physically. But let's talk about mentally. Just run away. How can you find the answer when you run away from it? When you protect yourself like that?
Do you know why we run away? We're afraid that the answer won't be what we like. We're afraid that there will be something that will force me to sacrifice something. I am afraid that reality will insist that I sacrifice the illusions that are driving me batty. Think about that. Are we mixed up or aren’t we?
Do you see, do you see the great hope—to use that word deliberately—the great hope we have ahead of us if we deliberately exhaust all our ideas about saving ourselves? If I exhaust the ideas about saving myself, lo and behold, there's no one left to save. And I am saved—using the word “I” consciously instead of mechanically and with identification.
When you say the word “I” consciously you understand you don't really mean it. You understand it. You're saying it because you understand that it's a convenient tool for expressing yourself. But there's no “I.” There used to be. And it was pretty hellish, wasn't it?
The sooner we come to the end, the sooner we exhaust our idiocies, the sooner we are able to take the blows and the insults from reality, the sooner we’ll get exhausted and get to the point where our fear is total. When your fear is total you're on the edge of shattering the whole business of fear.
Not while you have these petty little partial fears. You're afraid of this and you protect it with that. You're scared of this happening and so you deliberately do something to ward it off. Terror becomes total when you cease to protect yourself. That is a state of exhaustion where you're too tired to pick up the ego’s sword anymore. You're too weary, and you lay there and you tell whoever you're talking to you—you're not sure who you're talking to you because you're in delusion over it—“Go ahead, slay me if you want. I just can't fight anymore. I have no strength left. God help me I don't know what's going to happen to me, but I can't fight anymore.” This is dying. This is dying to the ego self, to false personality. And out of that death comes life. Read the next sentence please.
Joan: You are rightly exhausted by the wrong thing when seeing there is no thought-constructed self which can do the right thing. You are rightly exhausted by the wrong thing when seeing there is no thought-constructed self which can do the right thing.
Vernon: Are you puzzled by that? Read it again.
Joan: You are rightly exhausted by the wrong thing when seeing there is no thought-constructed self which can do the right thing.
Vernon: That's not clear? Get it? All right. Ponder it during the break. Talk it over. Read it once more please.
Joan: You are rightly exhausted by the wrong thing when seeing there is no thought-constructed self which can do the right thing.
Vernon: If you would connect it with the first sentence you'd see it a little clearer.
All right. Joan, read the top one now. Now listen carefully to this. Read it twice and just listen to it please. It's too much to write down. It’s a paragraph. A short one. Listen to it please while Joan reads it twice. Follow it very carefully.
Joan: An event or condition is harmless and neutral unless it is stopped by the intellect which is filled with opposites. When stopped by any opposite it becomes either painful pain or pleasurable pain. The secret of freedom is to stand aside and let an event or condition pass through the mind filled with opposites and go to higher understanding.
Vernon: All right. Read it nice and loud and clear and slowly once more please. This is very important.
Joan: An event or condition is harmless and neutral unless it is stopped by the intellect which is filled with opposites. When stopped by any opposite it becomes either painful pain or pleasurable pain. The secret of freedom is to stand aside and let an event or condition pass through the mind filled with opposites and go to higher understanding.
Vernon: How many of you do understand that?
Rod, did you understand that? Why do you let that event give you painful pain or pleasurable pain? You understand? Why do you let the event give you a contrived invented exhilaration or depression? Why do you let it? You understand why?
In the first place the event happens. There is no pain in the event at all obviously. There’s no pleasure in the event. That happens in the mind which works in opposites: yes and no, up and down, and so on. Hatred and love, or whatever. When my mind through its conditioning translates the event so that I, I get a vibration out of it, I am “satisfied.” The word satisfied in quote marks.
If you say you love me I get an exhilaration, do I not? I get a pleasurable pleasure out of it. That's nice. He loves me. She loves me. How nice. It's nice to be wanted, and loved and appreciated. I get a feeling of self out of it, do I not? I'm somebody after all because my husband said so. My wife, my girlfriend said so. Thank you for affirming who I am.
Okay. Ten days later. (Laughter) Ten days later I see a little different kind of expression on your face and now I know you who used to love me so dearly now hate me dearly.
That's not too bad. That's not too bad. For you to hate me I still exist, don't I? I'm still an entity apart from you. You know, I'll even wallow in that. You hate me, you reject me, all of a sudden you do something—the unexpected that I didn't expect you to do and I find myself alone. Well, it's a little bit of a shock, but the shock itself isn't too bad. Not too bad. I'm somebody who gets shocked. And now I can do any number of things to enjoy the pain, right?
I can cry. I can get mad at you. I can say I hate you too. I can say I never liked you anyway. (Laughter) My mind can run recklessly up, down, sideways, horizontal, vertical; as long as it keeps in motion I have the delusion of security of being me. At first I was someone worthy of love, ten days later I'm worthy of hate. Not much difference, is there? They both reflect on who I am.
You can have these opposites if you want all your life. By the way, have you experienced something like that? You have, haven’t you?
All right. You can have the painful pain, or the pleasurable pain or you can have eternity. So which do you want, ladies? Which do you want, gentlemen? Which do you want, those of you listening to this tape?
I said you can have your hostilities and then your apologies afterward. Which are phony, of course. You can have these and you can be what you call being loved and liked and appreciated and you can be very popular. You can even be hated, but you can't have that and have God at the same time.
So it's very simple. We always come back to this. Do you want to have the hard work of getting rid of yourself or do you want to do it the easy way of living with yourself and living in hell?
These things we've talked about up to this point are to be understood by us. They are to be understood a thousand times more deeply than you think you understand them now.
How many raised their hands when I said you understood this? How many of you are going to go out tomorrow and get your feelings hurt who raised your hand? All right. You understood it intellectually, and that's good and necessary.
Now you work on it and you remember this, you remember this the next time you are tempted to try to keep yourself falsely alive by pain or pleasure. You have the courage to have the sacrifice to sacrifice both sides of the coin. One is just as bad as the other. Correct?
You see why we have to sacrifice both? Because they’re both part of the intellect and to transcend, to rise above the intellect we have to go above both of them because both exist on the level of the ordinary mind.
When I understand this, when I am exhausted, when I'm so sick and tired of being loved by you one day and hated by you the next, and going through that pattern month after month, year after year, when I begin to see that I'm walking into the trap again and I say no! [Bangs desk.]
You get emotional. You don't have brains enough to get emotional. You know why? You're afraid of what you might feel. You had better begin to feel everything you've heard here tonight instead of intellectualize it. That is, if you want to rescue yourself while you're still a living man, a living woman.
Love eternity, not this life. Put eternity first. And watch how time will exist on its proper level but will not exist as a factor making you who you are, that is, making you a creature who lives in time. Just think about that a little bit as we take the break. Love eternity.
We'll take 10 minutes.
Vernon: We refuse to examine our feelings for fear they will expose us. For heaven’s sake. We fear to examine our feelings for fear they will expose what a phony we call ourselves unconsciously.
Suppose you could look at a feeling—how about a sex feeling? A nice strong one. You know, you like that woman you look at down the street there. You like that man, ladies. And you've had a little ounce of courage to examine your feelings and so you see that you would like that woman, you'd like that man sexually, romantically. Oh, never mind the romance. Make it sexually.
That's where you want to end up.
Why can't you look at that feeling, just look at it without permitting it to go into one of the opposites we talked about. What would be some of the opposites? There's endless ones just on this area alone.
You look at the woman, you have a sex thought, sex feeling, sexual arousal toward her. You look at the feeling in yourself, now what do you do with that? That's the question. What do you do with that?
Why do you do anything at all? Why do you even say, “Well, it's alright to look at her that way. After all, God gave me these sexual feelings. They're good. They're all right. I'm not going to condemn myself for them.”
Which you already are, are you not? You're explaining to yourself. Or you feel guilty about them. Hide them from yourself. You go into any number of reactions.
Why don't you see the feeling and try not to do anything at all about it just to see what happens some time. Don’t do anything about it. Would that not put—or let me put it more positively than that. That would put an end to the mechanicalness in the feeling and it would pass away.
And this, by the way, is the beginning of command over sex. I didn't say that it would be the end of sex. I said, implied, said that you would be in command of sex, instead of sex being in command of you. And it's in command of you if you have any trouble with it in any way at all.
But that is not the topic just for now.
Look at a feeling—any kind of a feeling—we were talking about being afraid earlier. Why do you react to the fear? Why did you do anything at all with the fear? Why don't you let it go? Why don't you do what Paul did? Oh, no, let's do better than Paul in the New Testament. Paul said, “I die daily." Let's die secondly. That means a second. (Laughter) I thought I was so profound you wouldn't get it.
So that there's no re-creating ourselves, no carrying ourselves forward in time at all. So I'll tell you what were going to do right now, and then we'll have open discussion and questions if you have them. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be fresh right now. I'm going to be new right now so that there isn't one second ago or one second to come, so that I have no anticipations at all; therefore, no anxieties at all. If you want to be anxious you go right ahead. Leave me out!
How nice to know that I don't have to keep calling—keep calling the ghosts back that existed there when I was a 10-year-old child, when I used to be so scared. Remember how scared you were when you were 10 years old? How nice to know that here I am, 30, 60, 70 I don't have to call them back to live with me right now at all. I can be free of the whole haunted house full of ghosts.
(Bangs desk repeatedly) And no event and no human being is going to force me to recall them. I've seen through the bluff. No. No thank you. Dear friend, dear wife, dear husband, dear relative you want to drive yourself into frenzied fear by living with your self, go right ahead. You are not going to transfer that to me. I refuse it. (Bangs desk)
I’ve found the secret. I don't live in time at all. I'm out of the trap of time. Thank God. And by the way, the absence of time is God and eternity.
What would you like to talk about? We have lots of time.
Yes. Nice and loud and clear please.
Student: All right. I can understand, I think I understand what you're saying. I don't understand how to let go of time.
Vernon: Are you coming back to any more meetings?
Student: I hope so. This is my first.
Vernon: Do you think you’ll be coming back to any more meetings?
Student: Yes.
Vernon: Well, let's find out. What was your question again?
Student: My question was I don't exactly understand how to let go of time.
Vernon: Yeah. You'll find out when you come here for a long, long time.
Student: Okay. Can I ask another question?
Vernon: Sure.
Student: How do you become uninvolved in other people's lives?
Vernon: Were you here at the talk tonight?
Student: Yes, I was.
Vernon: You didn't understand that I answered your question?
Student: Well, I basically understand that you answered my question, but I still don't feel freed up from other people's emotions tied up with your existence.
Vernon: Would you explain back to me what you understood?
Student: Well, I heard you expressing why buying somebody else's anxieties.
Vernon: Yes. That's right.
Student: Well how do you remain emotionless when you're involved with another human being?
Vernon: Who are you?
Student: Who am I? You mean my name?
Vernon: Did you have trouble with the question?
Student: No. I just don’t see [unintelligible]. (Laughs)
Vernon: That's all right. I did this deliberately and the rest of you were watching. When you're free of yourself, the self that lives in time you will have no problem with anyone else because you'll no longer have a problem with yourself.
Do you understand that you now have a problem with yourself? Yes or no. Do you have a problem with yourself?
Student: Yes.
Vernon: Yes. So you have problems with other people based on your problem with yourself.
Student: My emotions.
Vernon: Yes.
Student: Or towards myself, whatever.
Vernon: Yes. That's part of it.
Student: I find that the ego or the "I" wishes to solve other people's problems; therefore, I get involved.
Vernon: What reward do you get from quote mark “solving” their problems? You didn't mind the quote marks, did you? (Laughter)
Student: Well, I can see now that I get a feeling of being somebody from it.
Vernon: Why don't you give that up?
Student: Okay. (Laughter)
Vernon: Think of how you'll be getting your own life back if you quit going around saving the world.
You know, you can come to these classes for one time, or for 10,000 times and still remain very, very self-deceived. You can sit in this room and look at me and tell me the most outrageous lies and you don't see through yourself and you have no idea of how I see you as a liar. I don't see you with condemnation, I see you as a liar. And I see you as suffering from that.
Try to see your contradictions. Try to see how you say one thing, but intend another. That is, if you're earnest about all this. If you want to play games then go somewhere else.
And boy, the games you will play. Thinking—thinking that you can win the game. And you never have, and you never will. You're just going to get your precious feelings hurt, you're going to get your heart broken, and some of you will get bitter and hard.
And boy, have you tripled the task you have given yourself to get out of the hardness when you keep going down that path, not listening to Truth when it tells you, "For heaven sake man stop!" If you go too far you will get out of range of the voice of Truth and you will get hard and bitter and sarcastic and sneering and you will then be condemned to live and die with yourself. What could be worse than that? There is nothing worse than that.
How would you like to live with a new self? With something that has nothing to do with you at all, but has something to do with the present moment; the freshness of the present moment. It has to do with true spirituality. True spirituality which is above words. Which is above quoting and talking about God.
And some of you had better work real hard. In fact, all of you had better work real hard in seeing that intellectual comprehension is not living the fact. Intellectual comprehension of the fact is not living it. We said fear can go. Now is that a fact with you? Or is it a parrot-like quotation?
The “I” exists in the intellectual statement, "I understand so well that I fear nothing." That has to go. When it does then you'll understand the fact.
Student: In your statement like you can go away from the light and get hardened, I see this happening, you know, like I'm getting worse, and then in the books it says you’re supposed to get worse. Then my defenses get completely…
Vernon: Chuck, you've got two things mixed up.
Student: More than that. (Laughter) Well finish it. You said you got two things mixed up.
Vernon: You were talking about, we were talking about going out of range of the voice and you talked about getting worse before getting better. Don’t get those mixed up. Let's be logical on the intellectual level. Don't get those mixed up. Try to see the two separate otherwise you’ll get all mixed up.
Was your hand up Jim? No. I see flashes sometimes and you’re scratching your ear.
Student: That’s just my halo showing. (Laughter)
Vernon: When I begin to see some of you smile once in a while on your own, not taken from the other person who smiled first, when I see you smile once in a while, when I see you have a sense of humor from yourself I’ll know you're getting healthier. Sourpusses are asleep. (Laughter)
It's dreadful, isn't it, sourpusses, to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. How terrible that God has put the world on your shoulders and expects you to carry it all alone.
That's a terrible thing.
Isn’t that right, Joan?
Student: (Laughs) That’s right. That’s probably right.
Vernon: You love the burden or you wouldn't have it. Repeat. You love the burden or you wouldn't have it. Now I’ve just said that. You love your troubles. You love your grief. Find out why.
You'd be so lonely without tears, without your fears. Your fears give you treacherous company. Write that down. Your fears give you treacherous company disguised as friends. Some friends. Go ahead and walk down into the slum part of town and walk with hoodlums and call that intelligence. And when they bop you on the head and take your wallet call that fun. That's exactly what we're doing internally.
Do you really think that God has anything to do with that? Do you even think that God has anything to do with an insane mind prattling about God? That's a mad man. A mad man with a large dictionary.
You'll never find anyone—you will never find anyone who will reduce your loneliness. You will never find anyone who'll make your loneliness go away. Right?
Aren't you lonely living with that miserable husband of yours? Shall I go ahead? (Laughter) Aren't you miserable living with that neurotic wife of yours? That came about even, didn't it?
(Laughter)
Do you want your wife or do you want Truth? You want your husband or you want Truth? You want that lover, ladies? Forget it. Seek Truth. You want that beautiful girl, men? Forget her. Seek Truth. So that you don't have an insane relationship with that man, or with that woman.
Student: This reminds me of what you spoke of last week, looking for someone to tell it to and there is no one to tell it to.
Vernon: No one at all.
Student: Nobody. Absolutely nobody.
Vernon: They don't want to listen to your troubles. They've got enough of their own, haven't they?
Student: It's interesting the goals that are given to us, such as was given to me. The goal for me to reach was to find that perfect man that will take everything away. Just a statement.
Vernon: He wasn't at this meeting even, was he? (Laughter)
When are you going to slow down? When are you going to stop blabbing so much? So that you can see what's happening internally. And understand it so that understanding itself begins the correction. So that you're not compelled to be a blabbermouth to everyone you meet. And they avoid you if they can. And you think they love you. They've simply learned to live comfortably with you while ignoring you.
Do you really think anyone likes you? Much less love you. (Laughter) Do you think you're even likable much less lovable? Let's see the lovable people in the room. (Laughter) Well, is there a likable person? Jim has always been likable.
Student: I think with what you were talking about earlier about an event creating something in you in a situation—when you were talking to this girl, I don't know what her name was, I felt a little apprehension over what was going to happen. And no reason why I should because I'm not even—don't even know the person, let alone be involved and yet the situation is there.
Vernon: Were the rest of you a bit apprehensive? How many of you were wide-awake? (Laughter) How many of you tell the truth? (Laughter)
Student: I consider myself very honest and truthful. It gets me in trouble sometimes but I do it anyway. [15 seconds of silence]
Vernon: What are you thinking?
Student: Why the silence?
Vernon: How many understand why the silence?
Student: Well, I understand it, but I’m still asking.
Student: It’s what we were talking about, that there is no I to be truthful or to be anything.
Student: The silence—nothing more need be said.
Student: My name is Legion I have many I’s because I’m a liar.
Vernon: That's very good.
Student: Something that you’ve said in the past went through my mind while you were talking to us. All of you not only lie but you are lies.
Vernon: How many of you get mad when you’re called a liar? Why do you get mad when called a liar? (Laughter) I think we know.
Student: You sort of shook me up when I heard your tapes for the first time. You know, any time you get mad you are lying. Any negativity and you’re lying.
Vernon: Correct. Correct. Think of that. Think of that. Any time we are negative in any way at all we are lying about something or other.
Student: Being touchy. The barometer.
Vernon: Touchy. Defensive. Yes. As long as I have to be nice to you you're not going to grow.
Student: An event—I’m trying to get this straight now. An event does not have an opposite, so to speak? In other words, it's how I react to the event that puts it in opposites?
Vernon: Oh, yes. The event itself is neutral and harmless. It hits the mind, doesn't it? We observe something happened. Something happens to us. It hits the mind, does it not? All right.
Because our mind is—because we’re lost, we’re not in truth, our mind has identities in it. My name is Legion. And my reaction to that event, either “happy” quote marks, “depressed” quote marks—because it's self-induced—it will go one or the other depending on my conditioning, won't it?
Why can't I bypass my intellect, so to speak, simply see the event purely without me being in it? Just as if it happened to someone else. See?
Student: For example I was watching the situation between yourself and the girl. I can understand where you were leading her to, but I was still feeling uncomfortable at the same time.
Vernon: Why?
Student: I don't know.
Vernon: Were you afraid that she might be uncomfortable with me pressing her like that?
Student: Possibly.
Vernon: You're afraid maybe there be hostility somewhere in the room? And hostility scares you. You stop being afraid of hostility. (Bangs desk.) And you'd better write that down and you'd better remember it and you'd better live it. Don't you put up with it.