The Torn Page

Student Question:  If the body dies and you don’t achieve liberation, is it possible that the soul may still achieve liberation without the body?

Student Question:  In English we use the terms like “she’s got it,” or “they want to have it,” or “someone wants to be it,” but always using the word “it.”  When I have tried to translate it into Spanish, there is no way just to say “it.”  It makes me wonder, what is the real etymology of the word “it?”  I mean is “it” ultimately like “that?”  God: is that what “it” is?

Student Question:  How is it possible that people who have had out of body experiences and experiences from other lives still identify with the body if they know that this is not what they are?

Student Question:  In your teaching you said that consciousness is bound to the ego, and I was wondering how that works?

Student Question:  Why is it that there are people like monks who are living in Monasteries who have committed their lives to a path but have not achieved liberation?

Student Question:  Can you talk about autistic people and what has happened with them internally and what their experience is like?

Student Question:  What is phobia?

Student Question:  What is the purpose and function of illusion?

Excerpt:  “It is said that there are many paths.  It is also said there are no paths. And it is also said that there is only one disguised as many…  And here we teach what has historically been considered the most direct understanding of Self-realization and liberation…  Liberation from suffering and that means liberation from illusion….  And so to say that a path is the most direct path is to say that you are not going through any indirect intellectual concepts or belief systems or practices that require you to believe that there is someone who is trying to achieve something because that is already the illusion that we are trying to break free of….  And so if you carry that further you come to the recognition that all concepts are false because they are indirect representations of what is, rather than simply being what is….  What is, is Emptiness….  There is an awareness, if you want to call it that, or consciousness that is prior to all the objects that appear in consciousness, because no objects could appear--whether sensations or concepts or images or memories or fantasies or emotions-- unless there was a container of consciousness that was empty and that could be filled with those objects.  But mental objects.  Not real objects.  Objects that appear and disappear and have no substance….”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 08, 2012.

Student Question:  Can you define self-esteem?