Jeff Foster - Life Without A Centre Part 1

[sumitraji]

@NondualityAndScience yes everything is concept if you dont have capasity to go beyond.

[funkstrman]

uhhhhhhhhh I don't get it.

[ccsnd77]

I don't want enlightenment...it just seems like ordinary life with all its sufferings, except that there is no one to identify with it. Instead I want peace of mind and a passion for life even if it is illusory.

[avedic]

@ccsnd77 well, that's what drugs are for. :) but...they only work for so long. i know the concepts in this are hard to really get. i read and listened to these sort of teachings for years in frustration. i got it on an intellectual level...but never had the experience. once i finally had that moment where i FELT the feeling of non-duality...it changed everything. i was in my bedroom looking at a chair. that simple. and it hit me. the feeling, once you have it, changes everything

[sumitraji]

@ccsnd77 you cannot get enlightenment because there is no you to get it. This is Truth. Mind is that what you call you but When you sleep...who are you? and aren't you in peace? Mind and peace does not go together. Your true being is peace, joy, aliveness, Life itself. There is only Being. one can look world through mind or through being. Looking and feeling with mind is death like and with being is aliveness, joy. Enlightenment is only a word.

[NondualityAndScience]

@sumitraji and at the same time none of what you said is true. It's all ideas, concepts. All there is is DOo da dee dee da dee dum dee da doo weee woo da

[Supertondo1]

wow!!!!!. from italy. :-)))))) paolo

[sillydog67]

I can't help feeling that Jeff is a little self-deluded. He avoids every question he is asked by repeating the same non-duality concepts again and again. He has very little insight, and very little new or interesting to say. I can't understand that other people seem taken with him. He's not even very articulate. Maybe it's because he's young and handsome and middle class.

[Forkfoot]

@sillydog67 False teachers give answers. Real teachers point to the dissolution of the questioner.

[lightwarrior1982]

@sillydog67 I completely agree with everything you say. In most of the interviews i've seen Jeff there is no insight whatsoever. Like you say the same non dual concepts 'there is no one there, just past and future, you were always oneness' (actually not two). I think maybe Jeff's ego is pretending to be 'not there'

[Deppell]

@lightwarrior1982 Like there is more to say about THAT -.-* ... It's hard to build a word-made castle around something so subtle, that it escapes every grasp trying to get hold of it. The most sacred mantra in hinduism and buddhism is "OM" (Aum)... One word... Only one word... enough to understand the very nature of THAT ;P

[tube4625]

blah blah blah.

every creature is seeking something; something to eat, something to have something to own. this is a natural and dynamic part of life. then you hear someone say there is something inside you so u start seeking this something inside yourself. this something inside you when you will find it; it will end duality and you will be one with the whole cosmos. it will be bliss and you will become enlightened. but one last thing when this happen u as u know yourself will not be there;

[tube4625]

@tube4625 holy crap; do you see the ridiculousness of all this activity. peace.

[JonMcIntyre68]

The moment you think you're awake, you're not. Expanding on this truth, in reality "you" are never awake because the very idea of "you" or "me" is the dream character, the individual, the separated self, the isolated fragment cut off from the rest of the totallity of existence. The very idea of you or me is the sleeper, the dreaming character, dreaming a dream of separation. Being is the awareness at center. You or me is the tranistory overlay comprised of thought form.

[kaifinn]

@JonMcIntyre68

of course you can think that you are awake. as long as you know that it is only more words for something you can not catch in words, enlightenment is a part of the illusion, there is just THIS.. and then there is what you think about this. and that 's the veil.

[mickehill]

So, when I realize this, what do I do then?

[bay751]

@mickehill live

[tube4625]

@mickehill then you just relax; lol

[WIREDFORGO]

Hypnotherapy is a very powerful tool.

Could non-duality be a kind of Hypnotherapy.

It traps the mind into giving up.

I am only asking.

Just an idea i had.

[nisheeth16]

Here is the answer to the question about 'development of personality'.

The guy who is known here as self-realized is still seen to talk, just like now he is seen doing something and later he will be seen doing something else similarly his individual personality will also be seen developing, but it is all happening on its own. It is the same entity watching developments (all imaginary) at different locations called individuals. Nothing ever changes.

[DigitalCinema100]

Anyone heard of Marc John who did a lecture-cum-performance called Beheading Buddha last summer in England? It got filmed and blows everything else away on this subject.

[NewAgeTantra]

you are sweet existence of not existence :0) talking to other existence of not existence .. and i am existence of not existence and i hear your sound - thoughts of existence of not existence .. and i pay my ego bills of non existence of somebody appearance .. somebody ideas .. i just disappeared them in my mind, but it still exist because somebody beyond want them exist and we need to be mute, because nothing to talk about nothing .. Jeff it is all good and you are cute :0)

[annisha1975]

Depersonalization is only a step in the direction of enlightenment. People stop there. Enlightenment is the physical rooting out of the me and is quite different from what these people talk. To experience this life energy at it's source is something else. Ramana and U G are your best bets. Neo advaitins con themselves and the people around them

[oggfish]

Like all believes, they are there for people who dont do what they believe. Making them more passive then actually do something. These video`s can be helpful but for many people they are poison. Its just another channel that the ego can involve with. Its like watching these kind of video`s in the weekend and on monday go of to work like nothing has happent. Entertainment then shifts from movies to spiritual video`s what actually keeps one from waking up.

[3timesoneminusone]

i suggest that anyone interested in non duality read jiddu krishnamurti talks and dialogues:) you will really gain new insights! i have dozens of play-lists for his videos i can point you to

[kantarella1]

To me it sounds a lot like UG Krishnamurti's  insights, only presented in a soft-spoken way. Thanks for posting!

[kantarella1]

sounds a lot like UG Krishnamurti's insights !

[hansjoergajja]

...living without a centre, but pointing to his chest, when he speaks about himself...

[MRPopplemouse]

If there is just this then how can there be an ego? wouldn't the ego belong to an individual?

[OilyBoily84]

Humanity loves fear, so we are just basically playing around with concepts. We could choose differently, and change our lives. But it's to funny to stay where we are so it won't happen. And it's not about becoming noone, it's about being who we are wich is really a free expression. And as such can go anywhere. And who I/we are is interconncted to all there is, and is not. All is included yet chosen separation is an experience to.

[fibanacci8]

Highest regard :-)

[gainsbourg66]

Jeff is obviously a nice guy and obviously very well versed in non duality, but is he genuinely "awakened?" He ignores the questions he is asked in favour of reciting his knowledge about non duality, especially the question "has your personality changed" which he is asked twice. After awakening the belief in being a separate individual may go, but the apparent person, the dream character is there till death, along with all its characteristics and instincts such as hunger, sexual desires etc.

[gainsbourg66]

The sense of separation may vanish after awakening but the dream character cannot end until death. it seems Jeff Foster wants to recite his (well versed) knowledge about awakening rather than answer the question about how the personality of the dream character changes after awakening. Even though he is asked this twice. It's as if he's not really concentrating on the questions, Why Is this I wonder? I'm sorry but I think he's still not there.

[Ge1Ri4]

@gainsbourg66: As long as the idea that Jeff is somehow separate from everything else is there, that this separate thing that is Jeff is somehow dodging a question put by a different separate thing, then non-duality is not being understood. Of course, that's just an idea that is appearing in this moment, and so, just like the question being responded to, is illusion. :-)

[gainsbourg66]

@Ge1Ri4 -that's fair comment. Years ago I had a sense ("experience") of non duality for quite some time, but looking back now I now realise I was simply experiencing depersonalisation - from which I now believe the philosophy of non duality stems - even Buddha's! From reading and listening to many non duality teachers I split them into those who are walking and talking depersonalisation and those who are depersonalisation wannabes. This is why understanding all this alone can't get you there.

[Ge1Ri4]

@gainsbourg66: a huge problem is that we not only communicate, but also perceive and interpret the world through the veil of language, as applied to the selective interpretations of the limited 5 senses by the finite brain. We try to imprison all of existence into a few words. Words like "depersonalization" or "tree" appear to be pointing at something real, but are they?

[gainsbourg66]

@Ge1Ri4 again you are right - ultimately there can be no certainty about "what is", including whether anything is real or an illusion, dual or non dual, but either way I believe the notion that nothing is separate (and therefore that that there is no creation, choice or free will) i.e. non duality - arises from instances of depersonisation, rather than being a spontaneous awakening to the true state of "what is" that percolates through to some "apparent" individuals.

[Ge1Ri4]

@gainsbourg66: in that case, I guess the real question is, who are we? What are we? Are we our bodies? How do you identify where a body ends? If part of it gets cut off (heaven forbid!), are we still us? If so, doesn't that cast the original assertion that we are our body in a bit of doubt? The number of cells varies from moment to moment, the very atoms that make up those cells come and go and the atoms our bodies started out with are not the atoms that make it up now....

[Ge1Ri4]

@gainsbourg66 : plus we look very different than we did when we were born and will look different still when our bodies die. So, if we're not our bodies, what are we? Can you point to us?

[gainsbourg66]

@Ge1Ri4 There could easily be no such thing as a physical body or location whether there is a self or not; duality or non duality. Concepts like location could just as easily arise from the self ("The Matrix" illustrated this beautifully) as from oneness. Non dualists feel that the environment of the world and all its apparently separate, simultaneous streams of choice-making consciousnesses arise (accidentally and for no purpose) from one. This philosophy arises from depersonalisation.

[Forkfoot]

This guy's a good interviewer. He's all, "So when you say you're not there... what the hell are you talking about?"

[swingtrade2]

man fails to see that man is an idea.

though you have eaten all day, see that not a grain of food has passed your lips. huang po

all verbs are nouns!

[espector92]

love jeff and tony parsons

[jvasilda]

Funny but Ken Wilber wrote about this in 1980 in his book Without Boundary's.

What Jeff is having a hard time telling, is all written in that book.

Eventhough good to see that people are awakening.

[KarameloKaramelo]

there is no JEff. Talking is being done by BEING. And BEIng is 'dadding' too. SO basically it is One ness talking to Oneness. Energy moving.

[cdmayers74]

No, Iain McNay actually. He's a lovely man and a great interviewer.

[VitaleBand]

Oneness...

[ashkanrabbit]

Development of the 'personality' to avoid any hold over the experience.

Personality must be seen objectively in the same sense as all characters experienced are seen. It is as much a character as all others which are witnessed, it just happens to be in the front row seat. This personality has always been speaking to the perceiver, but has become worn like clothing, pulled out of the mirror, and thus been turned back in reflection towards it's objective roots.

0.0 - 1.0 became 0.1 - 0.9

[telkines]

Be calm and aware: that´s all.

[Lehmann108]

Well, yes, but there has to be the transcendence of the final attachment which generates the "I-thought". The path to this is quieting the mind but there has to be movement beyond a simple laya of the mind.

[buffedtrainer]

The secret to spritual awakening is : YOU ARE GOD!

[telkines]

wrong, only the Ego says I M GOD!

[xurbancampx]

if you are not god, then what are you? There is nothing else but god in my opinion, its just god working in different things and ways

[xurbancampx]

hahaha, thats a thought that I get quite often too, I am god! Trying to have a good time here on earth ;)

[AmberFlame1]

Long live CTV!

[jesuisravi]

Ian--you are an interviewer of genius

[nicholaspowiull]

Whether you accept or reject these concepts doesnt matter, they are all of equal value in the fruitless search for what already is

[11moonelf]

This is great, all 6 parts. Thank you~

[LourdesAB]

Simple and straightforward. No new-age romanticizing. Thank you for posting this video.

[claronXXX]

Yes- nothing changes and yet it all completely changes! This interview is extraordinary in its honesty and depth, how come we haven't heard of this guy before? His clarity and humility is so refreshing, and his english accent is quite funny! More please, Conscious TV!

[ggcgsg]

Iain, I wish you had asked him, along the way, about the "manifestation" teachers and The Secret, etc, and how does Jeff view these teacher's points of views.

[sleepingwhale]

webley that made me feel warm and fuzzy, hahah, and i guess those 5 thumbs up felt the same way.

[rainbowrecognizer]

Yes, life is very similar, yet completely different. :o)

[dianaroo12]

thank you!

[Fishpigg]

Hello Iain ,is there any chance of interviewing John Wren Lewis ? you've mentioned him before

[nizigar]

Yet the essence of all of that is this nothingness which can't be grasped or imagined...that's the eternal mystery! :-)

[nizigar]

Jeff expresses beautifully what can't be described!...that this is not about concepts,words,yet words can help to see beyond them...to see that no one has a life but life lives itself out of control in the appaearance of separation...when this game is seen trough,everything is seen as empty and meaningless and yet full of everything;that's the paradox the mind can't never grasp,that this nothingness is not separated from everything...

[webley566]

These Videos are incredible, they can help so many people who are spiritual seekers but can't actually find what they're looking for. I understand now that this had to happen, and if you're reading this or watching this video then it had to happen for you too.