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The Vancouver Lectures22

The Wisdom Within

Sydney Banks38:32

© Lone Pine Publishing.

Transcript

Automated draft, not yet checked by a person. This text came from speech recognition, so it will contain mistakes and it is not a verbatim record of what Sydney Banks said. It is here so the talk can be searched and followed along. When a human transcript arrives it replaces this, and a PDF becomes available.

Thought is like a magical paintbrush. You know how I've noticed? It gets a canvas, and it gets a paintbrush, and it starts painting trees, and it starts painting rivers, and animals, and grass, and mountains. It paints a picture, where when we're born, we're given three principles, the principles of mind, the principles of consciousness, and the principles of thought. Mind and consciousness are like the paint. The brush is what you use, and the brush is thought.

When you take your thoughts, and you paint the world you live in, and if you paint a bad world, you live in the bad world, and somebody comes along and says, "Gee, that picture you've painted is pretty grim." And they'll say, "Well, that's the only one I know. This has been my life since the beginning, I've always painted this way." They'll say, "Well, why don't you take that brush of yours, which is your thoughts?" And then go over that, and paint a new picture.

Someone will say, "Never. I'm not going to destroy my picture. Do you like your picture?" No, I don't like it. I like a bad one, but I'm not going to destroy what I've already done, but the ones that have the courage to go past that fear say, "Okay." And they take the paint again, and they paint over it, and they paint a different world. They paint blue skies, and something really beautiful, and that's it.

And that's what these doctors here are doing to their patients, that teaching them to paint a different picture with their thoughts. The whole thing's metaphors. A lot of these wise writings throughout the world, they're all written in metaphors where that's a take in his gospel, then you'll get lost. The gospel is not what can be said by words. The gospel is what is beyond the work. Beyond the work lies the beauty that you're looking for, the purity of mind, purity of thought, and purity of consciousness.

Now as human beings, you can't be pure. It's impossible for the simple reason, even seeing the illusion, you're not pure. There's only one place you can find purity, and that is beyond time, space, and matter where the divine mind lies. Only divine mind can be pure. The personal mind is always impure to different degrees, but the pure of your mind is, the better picture you're going to paint in your life.

What you're looking for is inside you. If you want to listen to me, you can, but don't follow. And this is what was happening when I first started in Salt Spring. Literally, 200 people a day, it was nothing for 200 people a day to come off the boat, to come and see me. And the one time I talked for three days and three nights without even going to sleep.

And I start to realize this is silly, really silly, and I would send them home and they get really poor off. I don't know how much of a help you're sending us home. And they'd have medallions of some guru that you're following. And I'd say, "Well, look, why don't you follow this man, it's round your neck?" And I'd look down and say, "Well, I'm not getting anywhere." And I'd say, "Of course not, because you're listening to somebody else." Listen to that little voice deep within your own soul, because that's where the answer is, deep in your own soul.

And as I said yesterday, soul is pure consciousness. Now through the years you've heard people say, "That man or that woman is losing their soul to the devil and their going astray." You know what that means, that they're losing the level of understanding to their own selves, their own ego. And that's what the ego is. The ego is the dark side of life, because the ego is the illusionary carrier in this world.

And this illusionary carrier is tricky. It wants you to get lots of money. It wants you to get lots of power. It wants you to be number one. And this is what's created all the problems from the very beginning of time. This is what creates war. This is what creates all the atrocities that's gone on the world today. Now this ego is time, the way I see it, this ego is time to take over the world .

It's gone into everybody, it's gone into the mainstream. And this is why all the wars are happening, all the atrocities. Now what the world has to do is to start looking in another way and look inside and lift the level of understanding. Now let's lift a level of consciousness, same thing. You lift your level of consciousness, you lift your level of understanding. And when this understanding comes, it will not come from outside, it will not come from a book, it will not come from a lecture, it's inside.

It's an innate wisdom that lies inside. Now when I say inside, that's a metaphor. What I really mean is this innate wisdom is that mind, that divine mind that you're connected to. And that's the secret of mind. The secret of mind holds all the answers that human beings are looking for. All mankind is looking for this wisdom, whether they know it or not. Some people even look for it through drink, some look for it other different ways.

Some try it through yoga, some try it through meditation, some try it, there's thousands of ways you'll try it. But no matter how they try it, if it's an outside trial, it'll never happen. It'll always happen inside. And that's why a true mystic is not interested in you and that's same and not interested in you. It couldn't care less because you're an ego. They don't want to talk to you.

But when they talk to you, they don't talk to you, the little ego, they talk inside. They talk and enter themselves because we're all one. And they talk to you inside and they keep taking the inside. And maybe someday you will hear past the words and you go, whoa, just like what Chip was talking about, now whoa, you've got it, you feel this feeling and it'll never come from the intellect.

It'll come from a feeling. And if you are getting a good feeling right now, you're getting it. If you're getting a bad feeling, you're not, it's that simple. And people get up, I used to get up, curse and spirit mean, tell me, I didn't know what I was talking about. And even though the rest of the crowd would say, tell that man, he'd shut up and that was the way it was.

You know, I've had three people ask me, what happened to my own mother in love, remember that? Now when we first got married, I was one of the nicest human beings in the world. But after the husband passed away, I started to dissipate, to start to stay with us. And maybe we thought maybe it was because she was tame with us. But I knew better, even before the experience, I knew better.

I knew what it was, but I knew if I said this is what it was, there would be a big argument, so I just kept quiet. I have this experience and thousands of people are coming in to see us. All these gurus and different kinds of doctors and therapists, et cetera, et c etera, all sats are all coming with him. And a lot of them are changing.

And the doctors are changing their practice, then it's phoned you up and say, Sid, do you know what happened in my office today? It was a miracle. Then through time they would say, you know, when this first started to happen to me, I was really amazed that the miraculous changes in their clients. But now it's just that every day it comes and it gets boring. Now she saw this, she saw all the gurus, she heard all the stories, she was sitting with all those psychologists and psychiatrists, she was hearing all those marvelous stories, she saw Chip and John change, she saw him in LC change, she saw all these different people change and three years have gone by.

And she's still determined that she's going to do something about it. So by this time, Barbara and I knew the score, so we would just suddenly smile, you know, we just knew this was grandma, that was it. And grandma, this is what she would do. She was a great reader and she knew I had read almost zero in my life, she knew that. So she would go down the library and she'd get books on Plato and Socrates.

And she'd read little excerpts from Socrates and Plato and she would come up to me and quite sneakily. She wouldn't say what it was, she'd just say, "Sid, what do you think?" And she would quote Socrates and Plato, "What do you think about this?" And I would say, "Well, mom, Socrates, what he's saying, he's absolutely dead on, but he has Plato, I don't think he's right." And she says, "Oh my God, he's got the audacity to even talk about that.

Do you know what I'm talking about?" And I say, "No." And she would tell me. So that was it. Now we knew this one lady and I'll call her Catherine. I would never go the right name. But she was an awareness group leader. And this lady, she'd been taken to the mantle hospital quite a few times. And sometimes she was taken from her group and put into the mantle hospital and anomalies, and the group would get a get well card and say, "Dear Catherine, I hope you get well soon.

We miss your wisdom." That's true. That's true story. Now, Catherine was a lady in my middle age, slightly without me. And she wore old English, Tweety clothes, big black shoes, bent over, and she was pretty well drugged up from her psychiatrist. And she was into those upfront kind of training where you really were upfront with everybody and you didn't care if you cursed and swore at them, and this is what she was like.

And she would argue with me and really get after me time and time again. And finally, grandma says to me, "You know what I'm saying? You're crazy. Why do you put up with that woman?" And he just, his body said, "Why do you put up with that woman? She's not listening to you." And I said, "Mom, if she has the courage to come and face me and talk that way to me, I must have the respect to listen to her.

In one of these days, she's got a stick of those in too far and then she's got to get chopped off." She says, "Well, I don't think so. She'll never listen to you." And now this is a hot call in the kettle black. So time went on and one day, grandma says to me, "I'll tell you what, I will listen to you if that's a big if, if Kathleen Sonso ever hears any." And I say, "No, okay." And it was a big navy, you know?

So it just so happens, the very next morning, Barbara and I went down to the village to get some groceries. When we come back, there's a letter on the table and it's saying, "Dear Barbara , something's happened to mom, she's really frightened and she phoned me up and she wants to come and stay with us. This is our sister-in-law." And of course, Barbara phones up the sister-in-law and says, "What happened?

You know what happened?" We just got out the door, drove down to the grocery store and there was a knock in the door. So mom goes to, mom knows this woman really well. She opens the door and here's this very gavacious lady standing, very beautifully dressed and happy and smiling and she says, "It's siddered her arm home." She says, "No, I'm sorry, they just went down for groceries.

What will I say?" She's calling. She says, "It's me, Kathleen." And they're a freak-bomber. She changed so much, she didn't recognize her, she didn't have a clue who she was talking with and it freaked it out so much. She got afraid, remember yesterday I told you it was fear, she got afraid and she phoned the sister-in-law to come and get her. So that was it. About three days later, there was a knock in the door and I go and open the door and who is standing there, the grandma, and she looks at me and she's got tears on her eyes and she says, "Can I come home?" And I said, "Of course she can, grandma.

How did you enjoy your vacation?" She threw her arms on me and held me for the longest time, started to cry and said, "From now on, whatever you say, I will listen." Now here's something, within maybe a month, I would see this 70-year-old woman sitting lecturing and instructing and helping professional doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, she was lecturing to them in a very, very nice way. Her voice had changed, her whole attitude to life had changed and I was a hero.

I finally made it and I remember once there was this gentleman who came from Australia and he was a doctor or something, I forget what it is. And he got the whole spiel, you know, what was happening and everything. I said to him, "Look, let you and I walk along the beach." So the two of us walked along the beach and we're talking about this, that and the next thing.

We get back and it's about three quarters of an hour, we walk in and he said to Barbara, "You know, I mean we said for three quarters of an hour and he hasn't said anything yet." And mom said, "If you mean we said for three quarters of an hour, you just didn 't hear him." And that was it. She turned out to be the most beautiful lady you've ever made in your life and this is a laugh.

The people that knew her prior would say to me, "How's the old cockfizzing getting on?" And I think myself, "What are they talking about, you know?" And the new people that knew her would say that Mary was the most loving human being they've ever known in their life. And I'll bet you in here, there's a lot of people knew her. If anyone got up here and started talking about my mother-in-law, did we tell you she was the most beautiful, tranquil, loving lady.

And then when she was about 74 or 5 at this time, and she died when she was Amy , and just before she died she said to me, "You know, the last five years of my life are being worth the 75 years prior." She says, "If I had known this, but not five years that she got were so beautiful to her. This was her life." And she was, she was an absolute dream of a lady.

And that's our old battle night, so I was talking about yesterday. That's how powerful it is. We've seen so many changes in so many people, it's unbelievable. People were told they could never be healed, and just like that, they'd be over . But it wasn't just like that, they were over. They would jump the boundaries of time and go beyond modern day psychology. People in treatment, they just didn't get treated and become okay.

They jumped the boundaries of time and go beyond even the therapists at times. Then the therapists would ask them, and they would explain to the therapists. Because you see, it's not, it's not the amount of time that you've been listening. A lot of people will say, "Well, I've known, said for 30 years, and you've only known them for a week, so I know a lot more than you." That's not true.

And if that therapist ever said that to you, you know that therapist does not understand the three principles, because it's there's no time, times an illusion. But if you jump the boundaries of time, and you can find out in seconds where it takes somebody else 30 years. I know when I was born, I must have been a dandy in their last life. I was miserable. I honestly did.

I learned a miserable life until I was 42 years old. Nothing. Nothing out there. The whole world was against me. The way I was born, adopted, into your family, I thought didn't have any love, and we were on and on. I'll tell you something. If I had gone to a psychiatrist or psychologist prior to this, they would have said, "Wow, do you ever need help because of your past?" And I blamed my past, just like most of the people in the world blamed their past, just like how the psychologists are told to take them into the past if I know where it all happened.

But when I found out what I found, I realized the past had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was the way I saw it. Now, if you take my level of understanding now and take me back into the past and make me a little boy again, and I'm coming through life with a level of consciousness I've got now, I would have seen a totally different world.

I would have thought different, saw different, acted different. I would have had tons and tons of hope because this is something I never had, this hope. And this is what the beauty of the three principles are, and that's the beauty of your therapist that we're here now, you give your client's hope. You don't say, "Oh, there's no hope for you." You don't say, "Let's get down to the P's and Q's and find out what's going on ." You see the health in them, and you see that the only thing that's making them sick is their own thought system.

So if you can take their thought system, and all you have to do is change a thought and the sickness is gone. The thought creates the sickness, the thought cures it. All you have to do is change it. And you read any of those wise books and they'll tell you, "Forgiveness is one of the greatest things on earth." Because you don't, you don't just release in the person, mainly you're releasing yourself.

Because if you go around with bad feelings and you don't want to forgive anybody, you are suffering. No, it's hard to give it up, because I think you're a stinker. You did this to me 20 years ago, and you're still a stinker, and I don't want to give it up, because I've said a lot of horrible things about you, but more important are thought horrible things about you.

And I feel guilty, and I don't want to give it up, but the moment you give it up, there's a release, and you're free. You look at the person and say, "They weren't really a stinker, they were just lost." Then you're free again. If I could go back in time, I would tell so many people in this world that I liked them and I cared for them and I loved them, people that I disliked all my life.

Because I now see whoever it was, they were lost just like me, and that's very important. It's not just damn its loss, I was lost. And when I found my way back home again, I saw that they were suffering like I used to. And when you see somebody suffering, how can you go in the heartbeat? How can you go and have bad feelings when you see the person suffering?

It just doesn't make sense. So you take the suffering away from the people that you like, the people that you know, the people that want help, and this is what you therapist, and the people working in jails, the people working in the streets here, they're trying to take away the suffering from people. And you'll never get it from the intellect, never, never, the intellect's a joke. The intellect is what the ego uses to go through this life.

And your seeking is beyond the intellect, beyond the world, it lies inside. And as I said before, like I've heard people say, inside means your heart, inside means your shock, inside means in your head, inside is a metaphor. That really means that you're connected to this greater power called divine mind, and that's inside, because it's not in this outside world, it's inside. And inside really is outside, and outside is really inside, it's an opposite.

You have to go the opposite way, that's why you have to turn around and look a different way. I mean, I've met lots and lots of therapists, and they'll say, you know, I see all your friends doing all these beautiful things, and it's incredible, and I've seen you do it. But we don't do it that way. We do it our own way, and I say, well, is it working?

No. But this is the way we were taught, and this is the way we're going to keep doing it. They're not listening. They're not listening to themselves. If they listen to themselves saying, this is not a success, then they've been hard to say, what is, and look around. But the determinant that they won't look, and again, you know what that is, being a prisoner of the ego, and the strange thing is, the ego in reality is non-existent.

It's a delusional thing created from your own head. And how do you get rid of anything, created from your own head, is change your thoughts. Okay, let's go to the mystical sign in life. I mean, I forgot my talking, but let's go another direction. In my books, I talk about mind-consciousness and thought, all being illusionary . Now, the reason they're illusionary is because the whole world is a divine illusion.

That's simple enough. So, therefore, everything in it is illusion. And I had some physicists come up to me and say, would you come up and explain why you're saying, mine, I'm not with it. Firebings are delusion, time, space, and mana. And they say, okay, and so I visited them, and they were absolutely beautiful people. They were so nice to me, you wouldn't believe. They knew I didn't know beings about physics, and they knew within five minutes they could lose me just because of the cardplay, but they were very, very nice.

They wanted the truth, so they asked me, and they said, you know, said, for many years now, physics have been saying that time is an illusion. It's only mine made. What do you think of that? And I said, that's true, it's only an illusion. And one of them says, well, the latest one is space is an illusion. And I said, that's true, it is. And they said, well, would you explain to me how space is an illusion?

Because we see space, the space between you and I, right now. So I got on the board, and I put the three principles, and we started talking about the three principles. And I said to them, what do you want me to put? Universal principles are divine, and they said, whatever. And one man said, well, put divine. So I said, okay, so put divine mind, divine consciousness and divine thought.

I started talking about them, and these physicists and they, all of a sudden they started talking and I said, you don't say, you're talking Eastern mysticism. And I said, oh, really? And they started talking about Eastern mysticism. And the other one would say, you know what you're talking about? And they would keep going at the different subjects. And it was super interesting for Julian and I to listen to them.

But they were connecting that these principles hold everything. And they were coming over the most elaborate statements. So we got back to space being an illusion. And I have to admit, what I said at the beginning, the greats, if you want real space, is between here and here and the Scots one. And I said, but truthfully, I got two Dixie cops and I held them up and they said, what is between these Dixie cops?

And one said, space. And I said, no, there's no space. And they said, why? Now, listen to this. This is why I told you about beyond space and matter, there's a form of energy. And this form of energy is turned into form. And that's what we call creation. Nothing in creation doesn't have a form. Literally, there's no such thing as nothingness in this form, in this world.

So we got the Dixie cops and I said, what is this Dixie cop made of? It's that formless energy turned into a form, the form of a Dixie cop. And so is this one. And in between the illusionary space, there's energy, there's dust particles, there's all different kinds of things in between. But they can't see them, but it doesn't matter, there's still a form. So here's a form, in between the form and the Dixie cops a form.

So there's no such thing as a space, it just looks like it. And they said, well, what about time? You know how the great mystics of the world have always talked about a lot of emphasis on the now. And this is where these doctors of this world today are having all the successes because of the, they take everybody back to the now. And there's no such thing as a past, it's an illusion, it's historic illusion.

So this, the only thing exists is the now. Just that it doesn't exist, tomorrow doesn't exist, only now exists. Since I said that statement, that doesn't exist, only they know. It's always just the now. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're living in the now all the time, but your memory, your mind, your thoughts again, here we go, are holding onto this memory and dragging it through time and you're dragging an illusion through time.

Now the vice person comes and chops that off and says, there's no such thing as a past, forget it, there's only the now. And if you can come to the now, you will find your mental health. You will find the absolute secret of all things, what you call divine mind. Now just before Judy and I left, those physicists, all this stuff was on the board and one physicist said, you know what the great physicists of the world today, you know what they 're looking for?

It's something called God mind. It says, what are you thinking that? Now listen to this, all I did was got a piece of rag and I put everything on that board off and all I left was divine mind. I said, this is the mind you're looking for. But it's not an understanding of a mind, it's finding the essence of mind and when you find the essence of mind, you find the essence of life.

When you find the essence of life, you're home because you will travel from this world to the world before, that is you will travel from the form to the formus. Once you find the secret to the formus, you know the secret to the form. Here is where you see in the singular, if all the nine eyes be single, you will see the truth. You know folks, I know a lot of you are leaving, you've got your suitcases packed and I really think we've had enough and I would like to thank you all for coming here this weekend and I wish you all Godspeed through life, thank you.

Thank you. Godspeed through life, thank you for coming here this weekend and I wish you all Godspeed through life, thank you for coming here this weekend and I wish you all God speed through life, thank you for coming here this weekend and I wish you all Godspeed through life, thank you for coming here this weekend and I wish you all Godspeed through life , thank

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