Turn Around and Look Inside

Best-version transcript — the human transcription refined against a word-timed machine transcript of the cleaned audio. Spotted an error? Corrections are welcome.

Best of Two Worlds – Our True Identity

Sydney Banks

Transcribed by Natalie Wynn Length of audio: forty-two minutes and fifty-one seconds

This is a talk given by Sidney Banks: A deeper appreciation of what he is saying can be obtained by listening to this tape many times.

We are lucky. We are starting to find this pattern of life. We are starting to realise that it’s a thought pattern, and we are starting to break this thought pattern down. When you start to break the thought pattern of life down, you start to walk in a different reality because you start to see differently, because you start to see that all things are thoughts. This is where the oneness comes in, the oneness of all things. This oneness is the is-ness of all things. This oneness, if you to put a name on it, is called God, but the is-ness. You see what we are searching for is our home grounds. We’re searching to find a way home. To find a way home, all we have to do is look at everything in reverse, because naturally if you’re away from home, if you keep walking, you walk further away. To find home you have got to turn around. You have to go the opposite. And instead of searching outside for the answer you seek. All you do is turn around and look inside and there lies the secrets that you want.

Now, the idea is when you start to look for yourself don’t get too serious really. It really doesn’t pay because seriousness, like life, is a thought, and this thought creates a feeling. If you create the feeling of seriousness, then you are in a very serious state. You are very liable to have stress, strain, sickness, unhappiness, jealousy, and everything else because of seriousness. Now seriousness doesn’t help you to do anything in life but destroy yourself. You see, you don’t have to go outside and fix all your problems; you can’t. You honestly can’t fix your problems from outside no matter how hard you try, no matter how many experts tell you—the experts have got the problems. They have all got the problems; as a matter of fact the experts are experts of the problems. Nobody can tell you; you must look inside.

Once, if you want to call it spiritually, you’re truly awakened, that second your problems will start to cease because you have stepped inside, and you can see that it was thought that was creating your problems. You go and find out what your problem is; you try and boost your ego. So in actual fact what they are doing is their increasing your sickness. This is why a lot of people go to these different places and they come away fighting instead of getting taken care of. Couples go to these different places to find themselves, and quite often they come away fighting and they’re going to get a divorce or they’re really in trouble.

Because they go to the place to get the ego boosted, and that’s the blind leading the blind. You have got to destroy the ego. Far away. Oh god, I want nothing to do with it. This is where freedom is. It’s not just a theory. It’s not just a theory that if you start to give up the ego which is just an image of self-importance, whether in your knowledge or hidden, and believe me it’s like an iceberg—the greatest part of it is hidden. You say, “Who me?” Then you get all up tight. As soon as you go, “Who me?” you’re guilty.

It’s feelings. You search for feelings. This is really nice. All you have to do is listen for truth and search for beautiful feelings. These feelings have been hidden—beautiful, unbelievable, real feelings that exist within yourself where your mind has taken you to a certain level of conscious state which refuses you the privilege of feeling and being those beautiful feelings. The mind refuses you permission. Remember your mind has got a free will and it plays the game as it wants. So why you don’t realise you’re the controller, you are out of control and you just let your mind and everything run rampant. You look at it and say, “What can I do? That’s my mind. What am I doing?” So you run up to somebody else and you say, “Hey, I want to ask you something. My mind is running crazy. What can I do?” And he’ll say, “Well, I’ll tell you what to do. Try this.” Then you go back, and you say “I’m sorry. It doesn’t work” “Well, try something else. I’ve got problems too.”

So it’s always the mind. Find out that one single truth, and you’ll know the perfect psychology, psychiatry, theology—it’s yours. You’ll see you already know it because you know how life works, because you are life. You honestly are life. This is-ness is all things; this is-ness is energy manifest into form via thought. Take the thought away and all you’re left is this is-ness. This is-ness is form and it’s formless; it’s all things. That’s why there is plenty for everybody at all times if they can go within and realise that all things come from nothing. They come from beyond. They come from inside.

If you insist on the outside supporting you, then you are going to get into trouble. You give into greed. You get into the world as it is today. So mankind with his mind tries to figure out his problems and only creates more. Because the mind of mankind is the creator of things right here, and whatever we have got we are responsible for. So what we have got to do is raise the level of conscious state of humanity in one little bit, and it will get us out of the mess we are in.

Because you see when you start to raise the level of consciousness, everybody starts to see different. They start to see more positive because they are heading towards a knowing of that it truly is a spiritual reality. That’s what it is. That’s what life is: it’s a spiritual reality. It’s a spiritual reality which appears real in another way. So you’ve got two reals. You’ve got the real outside and the real inside. They are both real and they are both true, and they both are perfect because it’s the inside reality that creates the outside. They are all one. When you learn this you can jump in and out. You can jump in and out of realities, and this is what you’ve got to do is start to realise that life is separate realities.

What I mean by separate realities, another way of putting it is level of conscious states, and everybody walks in their own level of conscious state and sees whatever they want to see. Now the second the level of conscious state rises they see differently because they see more positive, because the higher you go the more you submitting this thing called ego. The more freedom your finding, the more love, the more understanding because it’s the ego and fear are together like brothers. They really are. Ego and fear—they’re both created from the same thing. It’s fear. You must rid yourself of this ego and you rid yourself of fear. When you rid yourself of fear, you start to walk in a different world. Because insecurity, jealousy, hate—all these things are insecurity. Nervous breakdowns. Sickness. All this insecurity. Find this happiness, find this security, and you’ll find the greatest thing you’re ever looking for is that everything is truly a spiritual reality manifest in form via our own inner thought.

You live in two worlds. You have the inside and the outside. The outside is where the protection is. It’s where the truth is. Inside is all truth. Inside is total knowledge; the outside is the illusion, so pop in and out. Here’s where the help comes: the only way that mankind can find help is by looking inside. As people start to look inside, then they start to find the secrets of life. They start to find the psychological and all mental problems, etc., they find out how it works in a beautiful way because they can see the perfection of it. When you see the perfection of it, you can see the funny side of life, like the more upset we get the sicker we get. The whole world gets upset over one little thing and everybody gets all upset and everyone gets all sick either mentally or physically or anyway.

Sickness is a lost-ness, and they start to go in their negativity. We all start looking for it because we’re insecure. We search for negativity, keep it going. That’s not a medicine; the true medicine lies within. You just look inside and it’s there. It’s a really beautiful thing, you don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is hear. You don’t have to understand because I’ve already explained you can’t possibly understand. I can’t understand. There’s no way. But you don’t have to understand when you realise it is what it is because it is.

That’s why truth has always been lost; it’s the easiest thing in the world to lose because it cannot be told. The second it comes out of the mouth it’s no longer truth; it's back to a concept, a theory. Thought cannot do it. But this is the perfect way. This is a way of life. The mind challenges the ego and they keep going on and it’s the same thing.

The mind and the ego are the same thing, and yet they’re challenging each other all the time. They’re getting caught up with life all the time. They’re getting all mixed up and they’re getting all those negative things feeding them, and they’re playing a game. All you have to do is stop still. Like the more you’re in society the faster the world goes. The world goes fast. It’s just a crazy and [all muddled 11:25], and it’s going spinning around, and all of a sudden you say “Wait! Hold it!” and the world stops dead for a microscopic second, and you pick up a little fact that will assist you to go elsewhere until someday the world will stop. Then you see, then you know, and then you find out the secret. See, it’s something you already know. I swear.

Anything you ever find out you already know, but it’s hidden and the levels are the separate realities that exist within yourself, and you’ve got to go within to see those separate realities. The word never changes. It’s beyond a word. A lot of people talk words a lot of people memorise words, and they sound the same. But you soon find out to memorise one single word of truth is to truly realise that you don’t know it. Because once you see truth and you start speaking truth, you take your silly old mind out the way and you say, “Just do the job you were meant to do.” And that is to see with a clear open channel all the way through to your own divinity to where all things come from, where the secret lies, where the secret of the perfect life here on Earth lies, the secret to all things lies, and you just keep it open. That’s the state of meditation.

All you have to is listen. You don’t have to sit for hours at the weekend talking [unclear 13:26]. That’s not it. It’s not honestly that. It lies within. You see if you think that anything outside is going to give it to you, then you’re saying it’s not inside. No matter where you go you take it with you. It’s yours. You can’t run away from it because it’s the is-ness and the is-ness is everything. It’s just one. There’s nowhere to go. You’re already there. The point is you don’t believe you’re there; you forgot. That forgetting is like going to sleep. You’re in semi-sleep. People walk around in the universe, and there in certain stages of sleep or like levels of conscious state, levels of sleep.

This has got nothing to do with the intellectual mind when I say love is a conscious state, absolutely nothing to do with the so-called intelligence from the mind. It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s not a thinking process. Truth is not a thinking process; truth just is. Look for feelings. Look for happy feelings. Look for beautiful feelings. Don’t be afraid of them. Just look at them, find them, and hang on to them and never ask why. “I don’t know why I’m so happy. I’ve got no reason to be happy today.” So often you’re not. You’ve just spoiled it because you bring a thought in to spoil it. “I don’t deserve this.” That’s another one. That’s a favourite. Believe me, you deserve everything get. If they’re really, really super nice feelings that’s what you deserve. Because when you start to live in the positive side of life, when you start to get those beautiful positive feelings, this is where you start to find the relationship between thought and life.

Only from here can you find it, only from the positive side of life. Everything that comes your way be grateful to get it, be thankful, take it, it’s yours. If anybody says you don’t deserve it, nonsense. You wouldn’t have it. You deserve to live in heaven here on earth at all times because that’s where you started from. You see, heaven and earth are the same place. The only one who puts a barrier between it us once again. With our free will and our free mind, we put a barrier. We say “Heaven: sky.” No heaven: conscious state. Heaven: conscious state, a spiritual state. It’s a conscious state that lies within. That is heaven. A super conscious state—that’s us. It’s me and it’s you and it’s every living soul on earth. This is where the manifestation of the form of life comes from. It doesn’t come from any other place, and all you have to do is realise this is a fact or part of the fact. And the second you realise the part of the fact then you’re on your journey to freedom. Then your world outside must change. You see we can’t possibly change the world. Nobody can. They’ll change the details, but they’ll still basically be doing the same thing. It never changes. You’ve got to go inside. From inside then you look outside and the world changes because you see a more positive life. Because you see more positive life, this is what you throw out.

It’s contagious and people that are close to getting it will hear it. Then their life changes to more positive because they are starting to see the facts of life. The true facts, the truth that lies within, this deep knowledge. Once you see it, you’ll see that all religions are the same thing. They’re all one. The only change is the manifestation once again of the mind process bringing in beliefs and rituals and dogmas to make it something that it isn’t. If anybody told me four years ago just by listening to somebody talk that another reality and it would create such a change that all my life would totally change and I’d walk in a separate reality I’d say it was crazy but it’s a fact.

Once you’re touched, you don’t have to understand, not from the mind. You just have to hear, and hearing through hearing is going into a meditative state to see a fact. I know a lot of people have said to me, “I got facts too. I know exactly what they mean,” and they do. They have facts. I know they have facts, but they’re mind facts. When I saw my first fact, I was forty-three years of age. The first time I heard a fact my whole world just exploded in front of me. It was so simple. It was so simple a fact that it just broke me through into separate realities: realities that I knew nobody in that particular place knew existed. It was so beautiful, so devastatingly beautiful, that all my problems dropped away. They all started flashing past me as just fantasies because I started to realise that insecurity was thought, my thought, and I was free. All my problems vanished.

My whole world was an insecure world. My work was insecure. My part as a husband and marriage was insecure. I was insecure in talking. I couldn’t talk to anybody. I was insecure in everything, and all of a sudden I find out that it’s all thought. It really is just thought manifesting into a feeling. No. Just a thought. If you start to realise that then you are free. Believe me. That is the biggest one you can ever realise, is insecurity.

With me, the realisation was so beautiful that I never slept for three days and three nights. I couldn’t because the world was coming into me. It was just coming in. It was coming in with such love and understanding and such beauty and such simplicity I couldn’t possibly sleep. On the third night, I started hearing in a meditative state because here the one-ness is and because you know the one truth is all things. If you hear that one truth, you hear yourself. It was really a tremendous experience. It created what you would call cosmic humour because you can see everybody taking an Archie Bunker role in life, and they don’t know it and they’re not responsible for it. They don’t know what they’re doing. Nobody knows what they are doing, very few people. So you live an Archie Bunker life and it’s funny.

People are really serious and they say, “I’m really serious”, and I say “I know you’re serious.” And I say “Well, why are you laughing?” They don’t realise that I’m serious too but without the feeling because it’s the feelings that disturb us, so create good ones. I have no doubt at all you’ll try and that’s better than nothing until some day you just give up trying and you find them.

What everybody searches for lies within their own self. It’s an identity that you have lost. That’s what it is. It’s an identity that you have lost. It’s you; you’re lost. Not you the body, not you the little mind, but the inner you, the true you, the true self. That thing that lies inside, it’s a spiritual reality that lies within. If you can see past what you see now and look within and find the spiritual reality, then the reality that you now see changes because the reality that you now see is the illusion. It is a dream. It’s called life and it’s perfect. It’s a perfect dream, and nothing in this dream can be wrong. Nothing. It only appears wrong to the mind because only from the mind is their wrongs.

It’s the same mind that has created the life that we now see. It’s the creator of its own fear, but if you look within there’s a greater creation. There’s the very essence of life. Inside you lies the place or the space where the dream is dreamt, and all you have to do is wake up. It’s like when you’re having a nightmare and it’s real. You feel the pain. You feel the fear. You feel the hate. You feel everything in the nightmare, and it’s true. You see. What you see is true. It really is. It’s as true in that reality as it is now. As a matter of fact in the dream state, you are closer to the true reality of life than you are when you’re awake and focusing only from your mind. If you’re having a nightmare and you wake up—you know the feeling. You say, “Thank god. It was just a nightmare.” This is the same as waking up spiritually. You start to wake up. The second you see your first spiritual fact your Christ consciousness is touched, and at that second that is when you start to wake up. If you ever truly wake up, you’ll wake up from the nightmare to the beautiful absolute truth of the inner-self, the one-ness, the realisation that all things are one single divine thought broken up into pieces via Christ conscious states and the illusion of mankind.

We have forgotten how to wake up, to see what is instead of what isn’t because what we see really, really isn’t real. The true reality lies within, and if you can go within from here, this and only from here, only from here can the troubles and the problems of the universe be solved. It is the raising of the level conscious state of humanity. This must happen to get ourselves out of the mess we’re in. Because the mind that has created the problem has lost its identity. It is sick. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s out of control, and this is why the world is what it is.

It’s perfect. From the spiritual side it’s perfect. From the mankind side, because it creates so much hell, it is full of imperfections and these imperfections are not created from the inner-self, from the Christ consciousness or from what was called God. It is created from the free will and the free mind of mankind, and all you have to do is to look within and see how beautiful and how spiritual you really are. When this is seen then the solutions to all your problems will come. When you can solve your own, when you can see the spiritual side of its workings, how it is all thought manifest into form—when you can see this then you can help others. But under the illusion of the mind, of what we call intelligence, it is impossible because the mind, like mankind itself, is an illusion.

It’s the illusion forming the illusion with the idea that they’re separate, playing the perfect the game. It is not until they see the one-ness. This what you search for, the one-ness, the one-ness of all things, because this one-ness is the is-ness. If you can see this is-ness, you’ll see everything is because it is and nothing, nothing in the world can change it. The only way you can change the universe is by changing yourself. Start to see the spiritual realities that lie within, and you will start to see a more beautiful, tranquil, a more loving, a more understanding life, and from this position, because you’re becoming healthy, you will start to help your way. But it is only through truth, by hearing truth, because truth is religion. It’s a realisation of a spiritual fact, and the person that realises spiritual fact his wishes become true. His wishes are granted because he starts to find faith, and faith is knowledge being manifest into form.

If you can start living that, you can start to live in faith and it’s beyond what you think it is, because when it’s knowledge it’s life because all life is knowledge. All life is thought: knowledge and thought. Take the true knowledge and let it go into your heart, and it’ll manifest in form all around you and prove its existence. This reality that we see now it’s a fact. It’s here. It’s a reality. It’s true, but within this reality that we see there are as many realities as there are human souls on earth because each living soul has a free will and a free mind to see whatever he wants to see, using God’s power. So we all use God’s power to create whatever we are, but we don’t know it because we are lost and we are sick and we turn the power against our own selves.

The idea is to realise that all power lies within and knowledge takes you to levels of conscious states, different realities, different ways of seeing, seeing with clarity, seeing not one little individual soul’s trip in life and judging and analysing, but seeing everybody, truly seeing everybody as a spirit, playing a game in their perfect, unbelievable absolute way, not knowing what they’re doing. If they’re not knowing what they’re doing, then you feel empathy, love, but not sorrow because sorrow is a sickness of the mind.

Sorrow is only a feeling which we create and we put onto objects that we either see or things we hear, but if you can see the objects without the feeling then you’re healthy, then you can help because you still see. It’s only when you stop seeing and when you stop hearing that you have the negative feeling. It’s all thought. It really is. People can say “That’s ok talking about all thoughts, but that’s not thought out there.” It really is. I swear before God it’s a spiritual reality manifest in form via a super conscious state which lies within you. You are it. You are it. All you have to do is wake up to the fact, the spiritual fact. You see whenever anybody speaks truth they can’t be heard. That’s why a lot of these incredibly beautiful people in this hall tonight, other people talk to them, but they don’t hear them. They don’t hear them. They don’t have to hear them; they only have to be present. Somewhere along the line they’ll hear it because it’s a living a soul talking to a living soul; it’s not a person talking to a person.

You see, we all try and help each other which is a beautiful way provided you don’t get caught up in the feelings. Just like the sorrow, providing you don’t get caught up in the feelings. It’s a beautiful thing to go out and help people and figure out what’s wrong with them and talk about the past to try and help, but it’s not really the way. It really shouldn’t matter who that person is, what that person is, what’s wrong with them, what isn’t wrong with them, medically, physically, mentally. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what kind of problems there are. It honestly doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what shape or form it comes in. If you talk the one truth from impersonal, the person hearing, their problems are gone. I swear the whole world is upside down. We all search for more knowledge to try and solve the problems that we have, and you can’t get it. Because the same mind that created the problem, it has to protect itself to verify its existence. It’s quite necessary, but it’s existence is always necessary for us to exist here. It’s why we have a mind is the important mind.

Why we really have it is to use it as receiver for our inner divine creation that which we call God or the is-ness because God is the energy of all things, not a man, not a person, like heavenly. When you see heaven you relate it to a sky. You missed it; it’s a state of consciousness because when you go inside you realise that’s all there is. It’s one massive conscious state. It’s so simple that it’s the most complicated thing in the entire universe because the mind refuses to accept that it already knows. So it fights it with totally everything it has. That’s a perfect game. You’ve got to find it yourself. You’re truly responsible for losing it and finding it. It’s just a cosmic game. It truly is. It’s a cosmic game. That’s life. It’s a cosmic game. It has no beginning and no end, and anything can happen. Like it’s just endless. It’s almost because it’s nothing. All it is energy. Everything in the universe is energy, either form or formless, everything. It’s all the same stuff. It’s all the same stuff. It’s as endless as time because God—that’s what it is.

This energy is everything. It’s your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody’s knowledge, it’s everything that can be seen and everything that is unseen. It’s there. When somebody talks about it. You can’t possibly understand it because all you’ve got is your own ideas to relate it to. Your mind says, “Well, I’m just stubborn enough I’m going to get it.” And it’s not until one day you get it—what you’re looking for. Then you say, “I wasn’t even thinking about it,” because that’s when you get it. Because when you see a spiritual fact, you can rest assured you’re in a state of meditation. This is why people sit and meditate all over the world is to try and find this spiritual fact or at least a spiritual fact. Millions millions of them

They can come in any disguise, come in any colour, talk about anything. It doesn’t matter. It’s what’s being said beyond the word that’s important, because the word itself is just a bunch of hot air. Everybody that sits in this room hears the word differently, so it can’t be truth because once you hear truth you can’t hear it differently because there’s only one truth. That’s why a lot of people say to me “One thing I don’t like about all these different people and all these different centres, Victorian and [s/l Island 38:01] here they all agree with each other. They never fight.” And I said, “Well, that’s the idea.” He says, “Yeah, but they all seem to talk the same kind of thing. They all say it differently, but the same thing.” I said, “Of course, because there’s only one truth. It’s something inside.”

You find out who and what you are inside, what you have in relation to what is called religion. What you have in relationship to this spiritual identity that lies inside and when you start to fine tune, you can rest assured you find one spiritual fact about you, you find the same spiritual fact about everybody in the universe. Because you see, there’s only one truth. That one truth is that one-ness. If you can go back to that one-ness every time, you can’t go wrong. It’s the same as those people in here that have been listening and hearing spiritual facts. They’ve all cured themselves and are starting to break down the jigsaw puzzle of life, the pattern to thought and with it goes the negativity. Because when you start finding this beauty, what you have given up to find it is the garbage. As you start to find more and more beauty, you drop more and more garbage.

You can take truth and you can bend it. You can shape it. You can stick labels on it. You can stick names on it, and if it’s heard it always comes out the same way because there’s only that one truth, a simple little thing like that. Everybody’s got methods all over the place, millions of them, millions of books, but it’s very difficult to get it out of a book because the book, like the word, as soon as it’s written or as soon as it’s spoken it’s no longer truth. It’s gone because it drops on the ears of what you call mankind. It’s not until this mankind is ready, or the portions within mankind that are ready, only they will hear. Only they will hear, and only they will rise in the level of conscious state to see another inner reality, to find what they’ve been searching for from the beginning of time.

Remember earlier on I said to you don’t have to talk about your problems. We just talk spiritual facts and the hearing of the spiritual fact automatically heals all things, according to your level of your conscious state. It’s like you go back inside to this thing called God or this energy. The more you go back you start to wake up, and the more you start to wake up the more your godly powers that lie within become alive. Then you start to realise your minuteness in this universe, but even though you’re minute you are the whole because the rest, all the rest is the same energy as God. And because you’re inside that pull that God pulled you, you can’t separate; you can’t go anywhere. Nobody can leave life. There’s nowhere to go. There honestly is nowhere to go and that’s the beauty that you’re always home. You’re home in that place that they call heaven, but you don’t know it because heaven is a conscious state and it’s not just a conscious state from the mind saying, “I accept this as I’m in heaven.” That’s not it. It’s not a belief. It’s a spiritual fact. It’s an absolute spiritual fact that this heaven exists here on earth at all times for any living individual soul to see and to live in because it’s from here that all things are manifest. It’s simplicity.