Separation is the root of all seeking. As tiny children there is simply being. There is no one.

Life
happens. Regardless of whether a child cries or seems hungry, there is just pure being. And then a
moment comes when that tiny being identifies itself and becomes a separate person. At that moment
of separation, there is a contraction back into the sense of being limited in the body. “My boundary is
this skin, and everything else is separate”. From that moment on there is seeking, and a sense of
something lost. ‘Being everything’ is lost in that moment. And being a separate person, an entity
looking for everything, begins. From that moment on there is only seeking — until there isn’t.
And that seeking is endless. People we see in the world — wanting to be rich, to have lots of lovers,
to have power or whatever they want — all desire is the longing to come home. And home is
wholeness, home is being everything, which is our origin.

So oneness arises as wholeness and then plays the game of becoming separate. So the whole key
to liberation has nothing to do with the apparent separate person. We grow up and we feel separate,
and we learn from our parents and teachers and priests and bosses and spouses that we are
definitely separate, live in a separate world, and there is absolutely no doubt that we have a choice,
we are a separate individual that has free will and can choose to make our lives work, or not. So
what you see in the world is a desire to make people’s lives work, when what people are really doing
is trying to fill this sense of loss.

Most people spend their whole lives living like that, trying to fill that sense of loss. For some making
money, being powerful etc. isn’t enough — there’s still a sense that there’s something missing. So
they look for what’s missing — in religion, in therapy, and in the search for ‘enlightenment’, but all
this time there’s an absolute conviction that they’re a separate individual with the choice to fulfil this
sense of loss. And when you go to an enlightened ‘master’, you’re naturally attracted to the ‘master’
who still presumes the fundamental idea that you are separate, and that you ‘need’ to meditate or
self-inquire or ‘give up the ego’ in order to find what you’re looking for.

And all of that is the ignorance. That’s how the game continues. Religion is the seeking, through
‘individual choice’, for something that already is. What we’re looking for already is this. But all the
time there is someone seeking, this can’t be seen. The fulness we seek is timeless and the seeking
is in time — “It’s going to happen when I’ve meditated”, or “The answer’s going to be on the next
page of this book.” “I’m going to find it one day.” There’s that constant agitation of looking for this.
Sometimes it’s gratified for a short while and it seems everything is complete. But that gratification is
short-lived and is soon replaced by the longing for and seeking of this.

That gratification and wholeness can never be found until there’s no one looking. It can’t be found by
the individual, because the individual function is to look for that. When there’s no longer a seeking,
that which is sought, is seen. But it is seen by no one.

So we’re here today to rediscover the key to wholeness. And the key to wholeness is that there is no
one. So this is a very simple message, and a very difficult one — difficult because it’s about your
death, the death of the individual. It’s about moving beyond the idea that there’s anyone sitting in this
room who can ‘do’ anything, beyond the idea that there’s anyone — any separate entity — in this
room.

And it’s coming to realize that what’s happening right now, is happening to no one. There’s no one
that this is happening to. The whole sense of being separate is that everything that’s happening is
happening ‘to’ you, and that everything ‘you’ do affects that and ‘attracts’ what happens.
Liberation is the realization that all there is, is this, is what’s happening, and it’s happening in
emptiness. So that all that’s sitting in this room is emptiness. There’s a body that feels, there’s a
mind that thinks, but it isn’t anybody’s body or anybody’s mind. It is just what’s happening.
This is so simple that it totally confounds the mind. So what we’re here to talk about is totally beyond
understanding. It can’t be understood. You’ll never understand your way to ‘enlightenment’. Nobody
ever has. There is no such thing as an enlightened person. Already, all there is is liberation, all there
is is enlightenment, and in that there are people looking for it.

So we can talk together and it’s possible that something will be seen, but it won’t be ‘you’ that sees
it; it will just be seen. And also energetically, as there has been a sense of contraction (me, I am this
body), there can be an expansion, a dropping of that sense of contraction and a moving out into
free-fall, into boundlessness, into the unknown. The idea that ‘you’ can know and ‘you’ can do it
simply drops away and suddenly there’s a wonderful, free but dangerous place called everything.
It’s very simple: All there is, is this. That ‘thisness’ is totally physical, all the five senses are speaking
to you right now. Through all the five senses the beloved is waving and saying “I’m here already.
You don’t need to look for me. This is already what you’re looking for. This is it. I’ve never left you.
I’m the perfect lover. I’m here already and I sit here watching you looking for me.”…

We don’t function in duality. In the dream we think we do. In the dream we’re absolutely sure ‘we’
choose this and avoid that and do that and not that. This apparent choice ‘we’ don’t do — it is done.
You don’t go in and out of duality by choice. There is only what is. Everybody in this room is being
lived. There is just life happening in this room. There’s no choice, no will, and nowhere to go,
nowhere that anything has ever been. All there is, is this…

It’s not something to ‘get’. Liberation is actually a loss of something rather than a getting of
something. The loss is the one that’s trying to get it. When there’s nobody trying to get it then
suddenly it’s realized that it already is that. This is it. There’s nothing to ‘get’. Choice and doing
apparently happen, but nobody has ever done anything. There’s no responsibility, nothing to forgive.
It’s just happened. Breathing is happening. Seeing and hearing are happening, but nobody is doing
it. This [pointing to himself] isn’t doing it. There’s nobody doing it. Isn’t that amazing?…

It feels dangerous to the person, because it’s the end of apparent individuality. For the individual
who thinks they’re in control of their life, that fallacy that you’re the ‘managing director’ of your life,
and can make it continue, falls away, and that feels risky…

There is something that I call ‘liberation’, and with liberation, it’s all over, there’s no one, there’s just
life happening, but previous to that there can be an ‘awakening’, a sudden realization that there is
only oneness, and then for a while, subtly the seeker comes back and wants to own that. So you
can’t say how long it lasts. Awakening and liberation can happen at the same moment, or after a few
weeks or longer.

Awakening is not gradual. Awakening is totally immediate because it’s timeless. There’s a seeker
looking for oneness and then suddenly there’s nothing. There is no time. There is only this.
The idea in the mind that if you meditate long enough you’ll get to it, is ludicrous. That’s what keeps
the story going. The whole idea that there’s something to do to find this is a total denial that already,
all there is, is this.