Two Kinds of Evolution

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

And about four-and-a-half years ago, I was exposed to this new way of helping people. And within a few weeks after that, I had the opportunity to hear Mr. Banks speak in San Francisco in April of 1983. And went on to train with Dr. Rick Suarez and Dr. Roger Mills who had formed an institute in Coral Gables and had written a book, as many of you know now, called Sanity, Insanity, and Common Sense.

And as I listened to Mr. Banks that day, I didn’t really know what he was saying, but my truth meter was on “truth” the whole day. The understanding to whatever degree that I’ve seen of it, and I think it’s just a bit and I know that, has led my life personally and my life professionally to be really more joyful than I ever thought it could be.

I may age myself here, but until the last few years, I thought the only people that were contented were Borden cows. Anybody remember the Borden cow commercials? We have milk from contented cows. But I see now that people can be contented, and that’s really exciting. It’s just a real joy for me to have Mr. Banks here today.

For those of you that know a little, I’ll let him share to whatever degree he wants, but Mr. Banks had an experience about fifteen years ago that really touched him, obviously, very deeply. And has assisted a man who, without a lot of formal education, is now being asked to talk to universities and professors and as Dr. Suarez and Dr. Mills would say he’s been their teacher, myself. Because there’s a level of understanding that’s been seen and that he’s been touched by that really gives hope. It really gives hope to all mankind I think. I’ll say no more. I’d like you to welcome with me Mr. Sydney Banks.

I’d like to thank Bill for that introduction because to me it’s an honour just to know Bill. Do you know that there’s some doctors in this world that really care, truly care for their patients, who truly get touched when a patient walks out and they’ve found some happiness or they’ve found some sanity? Because it’s a big world and to try and find that sanity, it can be pretty difficult. But I’ve found fourteen and a half years ago on Salt Spring Island where I lived just a very simple, little experience in my living room. And what I realized was there was, honest to God, a connection between religion and psychology. That what the true religions are trying to tell you in the very heart of it, the very centre of the religion, is sanity. How the mind or what you call God works through us.

When I, honest to God, realized I had the answer to mental health, you can imagine what I felt like. And I saw a lot of my friends suffering, and I knew I couldn’t go in and talk psychological to them because I’m not a doctor and I had no qualifications. And to be honest with you, I’m not even interested in it. I’m absolutely not interested in mental sickness one single bit. I wish I’d never hear the words again as long as I live.

But what I am interested in is mental health. And that’s what’s wrong with a lot of the groups that are created from the Freudian way of thinking. They go in and talking nothing else but mental sickness. Mental health is never mentioned. And I tell you, beware. Truly, beware of groups who insist on talking mental sickness and taking you back in the past to where it all started and getting you to wallow in it. You know what it’s like? It’s like the blind leading the blind. It’s like taking a sick human being back into the disease that created the sickness and verifying that it’s a fact.

Whereas, if you can honestly look and see that the past is gone, it’s an illusion in time now. It’s non-existent, non-returnable. And the only person that wants to return it is the human being, even though it causes them all the mental anxieties and problems, the mental upsets, mental sickness, they still insist they want to go back into it. Don’t do that. You know how the wise have always spoken and said, “You live in the now”? Now, that’s not just a cliché. What that really means is that you sit with a calm mind or you work with a calm mind. And all those upsets from the past, you forget them. It’s that simple. You forget them.

And in its place, the second your mind starts to become tranquil and you get rid of all those different upsets, those illusionary things from the past, in its place comes wisdom. And wisdom is an inert consciousness that lies within every human soul on earth. We all have the answer. Now, when I found this out and I started to give it to the doctors, believe me, all hell broke loose. Because all I was, was a crazy welder. And I had no proof. So nobody would listen.

So Barb and I gave up everything we had to try and help humanity. And the harder we tried, the more the therapists fought. And they wouldn’t fight, saying it was nonsense. On the contrary, they would say, “I see it works. I’m amazed. I’m absolutely flabbergasted. I’ve never seen results like this in my life. However, due to the fact that you’re not trained,” or, however, due to the fact that they were trained in a certain way, they wanted to stay that certain way. And I’d say to them, “But it’s not working for you. They’ll say, “I know that. But…” And off they go again. A lot of “buts” in this world.

So you’ve got to start using what they call common sense. And when you use your common sense, your common sense, this brings a lot of power to you. It brings a lot of confidence. It brings a lot of self-esteem. It brings a lot of credibility to how you function in life. Because once you use common sense, what you’re doing, again, you’re using wisdom. Not somebody’s ideas, concepts, or anything else. It’s your wisdom. And that’s where you find a good teacher. A good teacher will tell you to stay at home, forget awareness groups, forget all that garbage. That’s an insane asylum out there. The whole world has turned into an insane asylum, and it stems from our ideas and our concepts of what psychology is, or what the mind is.

I’ve put my heart and soul into it, and it’s like talking to the wind. You don’t get anywhere. Over this fourteen and a half years, there’s literally hundreds and hundreds of therapists and doctors out there have had a glimmer. And their practices are changing, and their patients are changing. The patients who have been told that they’ll be mentally handicapped all the rest of their life are walking out in twenty-four hours, healthier than the doctor.

Now, I lived on a little island where this happened all the time. And still couldn’t see it. I’ve seen more miracles happen in one month than the average preacher even heard of in his life. And nobody looks because we live in an insane asylum. It’s the blind leading the blind. And unless it stops, you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to come to the end of this world as we know it. The writing’s on the wall.

And to save the universe, what has to happen, somewhere along the line, is the level of consciousness of humanity has to rise. And when it rises, all this means is that you see in a better, more positive way. And this better, more positive way brings a feeling of love, of understanding, of tranquillity and self-esteem. And until you find that, you have no other choice but to seek and find it.

Now, I know many people here, you have the church of your choice. And I keep saying to people you may think I’m condemning some people’s religions but I’m not. Absolutely not. Keep going to your church. I’m asking you to do something, one thing. If it’s possible, go beyond your preacher. Go beyond your minister. Go beyond your teacher. Keep going. Because, you see, sometimes not knowing that they’re doing it in innocence, a teacher can hold you back because of their own ideas, their own concepts of life.

And they’re trying their best and nobody can condemn them for that, but just go beyond them. No big deal. Expect to be like that. Don’t expect to be unhappy. People will come up to me and say, “It’s not natural to be happy all the time. I can see being happy maybe twice a month.” Now, can you imagine if you got happy today and, for some unknown reason, you’re happy tomorrow, you’ve got to forget the other twenty-eight days. You’re going to think, “How am I going to sit in misery?” And you’ve got to go through misery for twenty-eight days, waiting for your turn to come up again. That’s silly. That’s really silly.

But then again, we all go through trials and tribulations. And when you’re down, what you’ve got to realise is you’re only down temporarily. It’s not a great, big stamp put on your head, “Lifelong misery,” just because you’re down today. You don’t do that. And if there’s any questions, please, please, ask them. Just relax. There’s no sense. Why are you going to get uptight for? The whole world, everybody in it, is governed by thoughts.

If the thoughts are bad, they’re going to see and live a bad life. If the thoughts are negative, they’re going to live a negative life, and they’re going to create a lot of negativity surrounding them. Now, if your thoughts are good, happy, positive, that’s the kind of life you’re going to lead. And it’s nothing great. It’s simply a thought. That’s what I’ve found: the secret lies in thought. And thought is connected to feelings. If your thoughts are negative, they’re bad, they’re low, then you’re going to live and see through the eyes of negativity. Again, if your thoughts are positive, that’s where you’re going to live. And it’s only a thought, just a thought.

How simple can you get? People will say to me, “You know, Syd, you’re talking too simple. You’re insulting my intelligence.” I told them yesterday, they say the same about Second Chance or my tapes. For the laugh is, they’ll read half of Second Chance and put it down and it’s insulting their intellect. But if you ask them what’s in it, they can’t tell you. Now that doesn’t make sense. If it’s that simple, they should know what’s in it, but they can’t.

And a little book like Second Chance, I honestly don’t expect too many people to understand it. And I don’t care about that. As a matter of fact, a lot of people that come up and say they do understand it, I just look right through them because I know they haven’t got it. But if they come up and say to me, “I read the book, Syd. I don’t understand it.” And they’re standing there crying, with a beautiful feeling. I know they’re picking it up hundred times more than the intellect that has read it and speed-reader, thirty minutes.

And that’s another thing, speed readers. I’ve met them. They can’t speed-read Second Chance. They come up to me and their minds are boggled. And they’ll say, “What is it in this book? I can’t speed-read it.” The reason for that is there’s a lot of stuff in that book that doesn’t have anything to do with a little mind. It has to do with a spiritual mind. When I say spiritual mind, I’m talking about, for the Eastern mystics and living talk about the mastermind. And of course, the mastermind is God. It’s the source of all things.

So when I say to you the mind is powerful, I’m not talking about your little two-bit Freudian mind. That, to me, is a pain in the rear end. That’s your problem. That’s what causes all the problem is the ego mind. There’s another way they call it. See how we get mixed up with words. Never mind words. Words are used to describe the indescribable and I mean indescribable. You know how like truth is unbelievable. And people will say, “Yeah, I believe that.” When it’s unbelievable, it’s unbelievable.

Now, to go beyond unbelievable, you must go deep inside yourself to the inner wisdom where you have a realisation. Then, when you have a realisation, then you see it. You cannot believe truth under any circumstances from your little mind. It is literally an impossibility. It has to be realised as wisdom. There is only one soul, one intelligence, one source, one God. And that’s what I’m talking about.

When I’m talking like this, I’m not condemning. Honestly, I’m not. And there’s only one way. You know how in the Bible it says there’s only one way? That’s true. It’s honestly true. There’s only one way. There’s an infinite amount of paths, but there’s only one way. And that one way is to look within yourself, and there lies the answer. And when you find that answer, nobody but nobody will ever change your mind because you’ll know what you’re talking about.

Now, you know the therapy nowadays is to get your old ego and boost it up. They’ll say, “Go. Push this ego. Come on. Poor guy. Give him a break.” So all the women get around and all the men get around and say, “Gee, you’re a handsome-looking guy. You’re really masculine. Look at your blue eyes and look at your curly hair. Aw, gee. You’re cute.” And he’s getting puffed up like an old turkey ready for the turkey shoot. And he walks out the door and he really believes it temporarily, because the ego will never give you self-esteem. Never, never, never. You can boost it up until it bursts, and you’ll never get self-esteem. Because as soon as you walk out the door, it gets deflated. You’re on your own.

And you’re on your own when you look in the mirror. So what you’ve got to do is get something that’s more permanent. And what you do is the very opposite of what Freud says. You destroy the ego. You totally wipe it out of your system, because all the ego is, is a self-illusion. It’s whatever you think of the world, whatever you think of you. And if you think you’re not worthwhile or you feel that you’re insecure or you feel less a woman or less a man than other people, then that’s what your ego is doing to you. And the ego—I’ll repeat it again—it’s an illusion. It’s a self-inflated idea.

And if you can honestly find out what mind is, the second you start, even start to find out what mind is, what happens is wisdom comes in. And wisdom will guide you through life. You can’t take truth and Freud and put them together. And that’s the biggest problem in the world. We don’t want to let go of what we’ve got, even though it’s garbage. We do that all the time. It’s like your old shoes.

The salesman says, “What do you want to do with them?” Well, you don’t say, “Well, I’ll take them home and keep them for future.” So in your cupboard you have maybe fifty pairs of your old, broken-down, holey shoes. You don’t do that. Well, that’s the same with your mind. You’ve got to discard. People will say to me, “Well, can’t you just take what you’ve got and put it into this rubbish that I’ve got?” No, it doesn’t mix. That’s like walking around with one old shoe and one new one. You’re going to look pretty silly.

And believe me, I’ve looked silly all my life. I’m guilty. I’ve done it all my life. It’s twelve o’clock, and it’s lunchtime. So anyway, we’ll see you at half past one.

Please, if there’s any questions, just ask them.

[Inaudible 00:07]

Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning of time. People say to me, “How do you know this?” I can’t explain it. That’s what the experience was. Knowing is a different thing. Knowing is something that’s so mystical that it can’t be explained. Now, evolution. When man first evolved, you know how they talked about Adam and Eve. Well, that’s just a story.

Can you imagine the very first two people on earth and they’ve got all the data, what they said, what they didn’t say, how they acted, who they went with, what they did, what they didn’t do, what they had for meals? Even nowadays, with modern conveniences, television and direct communication, you can’t even get the truth out of anybody. So all that was, was a dialogue to try and explain the inexplicable. And here we go: evolution.

When humanity was born, you come from what Mama Lila in that book would call nothingness. From nothingness, all things are formed. So we’re formed into what we call human beings. Now, we have the power of God within us. We have this power flowing through. We have all this intelligence flowing through, all this wisdom, and it’s coming because we are what we seek.

Now we’re born. The second you’re born an illusion takes place. You see life, and that’s what life, as we know it today, is an illusion. It’s the divine illusion brought about by a divine thought. So we’re in this illusion. And the second we see this illusion, take me back, make me like a caveman, the first man on earth. I see this illusion. I don’t know anything about it. I’m scared because I’m in a world I know nothing about. And running around me are these big dinosaurs and everything else. And I know that I’ve got to run away from them, and I know I’ve got to hunt, and I know I’ve got to do this. So I start evolving in consciousness, intellectually. And I realize if I pick up a big stick, I’ve got more power. So I pick up a big club. And I see a female, and something inside me says, Boy, you’ve got to get that female and keep the world going. You’ve got to breed.

So I go around with this big bat, and I go “boink.” “You’re mine.” And I drag her off to my cave. Through time, the intellect starts growing, and I see a fire. And I think, Wow, that fire is hot. I could heat stuff. So I learn to build a fire, and it goes on through the centuries until now I can build atomic bombs. I can build nuclear bombs. I can build almost anything in the world. I become exceptionally clever. But one thing I forgot. I’ve evolved in consciousness intellectually. As far as wisdom’s concerned, I haven’t collected much.

So I don’t know how to use all this stuff that I’ve brought into the world with wisdom, wisely. So what I do, I use it and it starts to destroy humanity. I start to pollute the lakes. I start to pollute the ocean. Sooner or later, it’s got to come to an end. There’s going to be no ocean. I think there’s three oceans now that are polluted. There’s millions of lakes. The sky. Everything is getting polluted. So through time, you know it’s going to come to an end unless somebody stops it. So what you’ve got to do is stop in time. Take yourself back and pick up that wisdom that you left there many years ago.

And you find this wisdom. You connect it with your intellect and you become a very wise person. You use your intellect. You use your inventions. You use everything wisely. And that is the greatest… You see, there’s two different kinds of evolution. There’s evolution of the intellect. There’s evolution of wisdom. That’s why people meditate: to calm their minds down, silence the mind. So they haven’t got these little busy thoughts going through it. And what comes in its place is wisdom. The second they get an insight, it’s a sight from within, it evolves in their consciousness. They rise. They see with clarity. They see with more love and more understanding and more compassion for themselves.

And unless you can see it for yourself, you can’t see it for anybody else. You know that old saying [unclear 5:38] physician, “Heal thyself first.” That’s what I’m talking about. Because those people that deal with anger, hostility, taking you back, telling you to fight with your spouse, it’s good to get your anger out. That’s how those people think, and that’s how those people act. That’s how these people behave. And if that’s the way you think, act, and behave, you can’t give anything else out.

How can a loving person come up to anybody and throw a lot of hate and anger at people? If that person did that, you can rest assured—if a loving person maybe slipped for one day, one second, one minute, and did such a thing, you can rest assured when that loving, understanding person went home, they go through hell because what comes into action is what you call your conscience. And your conscience, your inner wisdom, your soul which is consciousness with purity knows, literally knows, there’s something not right. And that’s where you get those twinges of, “Ooh, I shouldn’t have done that. Ooh, I feel bad about that. I wish I hadn’t done that.”

Now, when you bring in wisdom and you bring in love and understanding and that’s what you’re giving away to the best of your ability, then when you go home, you say, “Well, I tried my best. I can’t do any more, and I feel good about it.” Then, you’ve got that sanity. You’ll have those nice, peaceful feelings.

It’s all thought, honestly. I think it’s unbelievable that here in the United States where we’ve got the leading psychiatrists and psychologists of the universe that’s something to be proud of. And they don't look at it. They fight those wise people because they still want to stick with the stupid Freudian ideas, the insane ideas. You see, the original psychology, the original, the very original, was the study of the soul and the spirit. And every psychologist and every therapist in the world knows this. And yet, if you mention it, it’s taboo. And that was the original.

So you study consciousness to become aware. Now where the Freudian’s saying the human ideas are, they get lost because they think that when you say “study consciousness and become aware” it means become aware of what we’re doing and what we’ve done and what we will do. And all you do, when you start to study that, you become aware of the mess. And they’ll say, “You know what I became aware of? That you and I are in a mess. That they’re in a mess. That this is in a mess.” Then they get really excited the next day and say, “I found more mess!” And they write it down, and they become aware of more mess. And they publish a book on mess. And they call it mental health.

It’s the absolute opposite. It’s the absolute opposite. And that’s one of the tricks in life is to look at the opposite. Like if I’m a highly strung-up person right now, I’ve got to look at the opposite of how I am thinking because it’s my thoughts, nobody else’s—my thoughts—that are creating my mess. So I’ve got to think somewhere an opposite. But to think an opposite, I’ve got to give up the thoughts I’ve got now. Geez, that’s hard. I know it’s hard. Because you don’t have anything to take its place. And people will say, “Well, what if I give it up and there’s a vacuum?” Well, that’s silly talk. There’s not such a thing.

If anybody in this world can tell me even for one second that they never had a thought, again, I will take everything back I’ve ever said in fourteen years. Somebody will say, “Well, I did. I had an experience. One day I was driving down the road, and I went completely blank. Completely blank. And I panicked. I didn’t have any thoughts.” I said, “You did. You had the thought of panic.” You must have thoughts. You can’t be alive—that’s consciousness. To become conscious, you must have a thought. Without a thought, there is no consciousness. If I’m a doctor and I give you an injection and I really put you into a deep sleep, you go unconscious. You have no thoughts because without consciousness, you wouldn’t have thought. And without thought, you wouldn’t have consciousness. They’re both connected together, and you can’t separate them.

It’s a double life. It’s a double standard. It’s another way. I’m just telling you different ways to say the same thing. Honest. Since I walked in here this morning, I haven’t said one thing different; I just said it a different way. I honestly believe that doctors in the United States are going to be heralded as the best in the world in mental health. So what’s all the questions? There we go. Hi.

[Inaudible 11:47 to 12:15]

As a matter of fact, people I know really well for many years and have read the book many, many times. Well, it was published by another company. We had a different cover on it. When they new publishers took over, all they did was change the cover and a little bit of the introduction. But in actual essence, nothing was touched of the book. And they all swear they’ve been changed. And that’s a good sign because the book never changes. When you see something different and it makes you feel even better, it’s not the book that’s changing. That’s the proof that you’re changing. It’s no mystery. It’s just that you’re changing, and you should feel lucky about that.

Because that means to say you must somewhere along the line, you’re getting a clearer understanding of life. So when you look at that book, it changes. Now if you take some of the old books that you’ve read years ago, have a look at them. Try them because, obviously, you’ve got new understanding now. And take your new understanding and read some of the books that you used to read, and you’ll see them quite differently. You might even, one that you enjoyed years ago, throw it away in the garbage. Then you might pick up another book that you didn’t like in the past, and you say, “Wow, this is a neat book. I didn’t know this.”

You see, Second Chance, it’s not full of theories and assumptions. It’s full of spiritual facts. Now a spiritual fact, when it comes to you, is an insight. Now, an insight is something from inside you. It’s wisdom. Now, when somebody speaks wisdom, you can’t make head or tail of it quite often. A lot of you people may be scratching your head today and say, “Gee, I’m dumb. I don’t really know what he meant by that or what he meant by this.” But I’ll leave you. If I ask for inquiries here, everybody’d put up their hand that they’ve been in that position. Because you’ve been thrown not theories that you can understand. You’ve been thrown insights.

It’s like somebody throws a fact at you and you go, whoosh, like this. And you say, “Wow, what was that?” And it’s just too late. It’s passed you. But if they keep throwing it here, someday this insight is going to get right home. And when it hits home, you’ve got it. It’s that simple. And when you get an insight, it raises your level of understanding. Now, the second your level of understanding rises, it hasn’t risen on one teeny, little subject. It’s risen straight across the board because it’s your life. You’ve got a new understanding, so you walk out. You see your own children. You understand them differently. Then, you look at your spouse, and you see them differently. Then you go to work, and you see your work differently.

And everything changes right across the board because you’ve created a new world for yourself, a new reality. But if you just get a theory… Just suppose I’m into the floor and saying and I say to you people, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve got on the market right now. Here’s my list of stuff for you.” First of all, we’ve got one for married couples, like a group for married couples that have just been married. We have a group for another bunch of couples that have been married a long time and getting fed up with each other. We’ve got another group that will tell you what to do with your teenage kids. Then, we’ve got another group for sexual problems. Then, we’ve got another group on this and on that. And you’ve got group after group after group. And it’ll drive you nuts if you’re trying to figure out the solution to all these different things.

Now, if your level of consciousness rises, all these things at one time are all taken care of because it’s your understanding. I’m back to that again. It’s your understanding that’s the most important thing in the world. And when I hear people say to me that they’ve read Second Chance and it changed them, it really makes me feel good. It’s a good feeling. It brings a good feeling because you’ve raised your level of understanding. That’s that consciousness. And that’s what your—in essence, if you’re a religious person, you’re regaining your soul because you’re regaining your consciousness. It’s all consciousness.

And all consciousness, as I said this morning, comes via thought. Your thought. Only your thought. Because what you see in life is different from what anybody else in this room sees. We all see separate realities. Even the very fact that that book has changed on you, I could swear right now you’re a changed person. You’d have to be. You must feel it. Now, I see people read that book sometimes, and they’ll look at it. Interesting. Another person will open it up, and they’ll start to cry. That’s the divine thought, that person that’s crying. Because that person that’s crying has found something which is touching their inner soul, their inner consciousness, and it’s coming out as a beautiful feeling. It’s a feeling of relief, a feeling of joy, a feeling of, “Ah, thank God. I’ve found something.” So you start to cry. There’s nothing wrong with that.

You’ve got to watch it. As I started and I said this morning, it’s all common sense. Use your common sense the good Lord gave you and you can’t honestly go too far. I think we’ve had enough. And there’s something I really enjoyed yesterday.

[unclear 19:15].

And I honestly hope you all find even just a little bit of what you’re looking for because even a little bit is a lot. It really is. And if you feel a nice feeling coming, hang onto that nice feeling and don’t try and figure out why. So I’d really like to thank you, and, who knows, we might see each other again sometime. Thank you.