Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[CARS HONKING]
JAMES SEBASTIANO JR.: You know, I didn't know what was going on in my life when I was younger.
I was kind of lost.
So I just drank as much as I could,
bottle after bottle and smoked as much weed as I could
and then started taking acid.
And, you know, at 16 years old, I lost my girlfriend.
She, uh, she overdosed on acid and committed suicide.
And then I kept going to the point I was 21,
and I was like, alone in my apartment for three days,
just doing coke like crazy, and I, uh, I flatlined.
I ate a whole bag because I thought that the cops were coming
and started hallucinating, and literally flatlined.
And, um, from that point on, I was like,
I don't know what's, what's happening in my life.
I don't understand. So I quit stuff and I became a vegetarian.
And, not saying that everybody should be a vegetarian,
but for me, that was the turning point in my life
because I feel like it's the first in my life where I started to be aware,
just being more aware of what I put in my body.
It didn't make sense to do a juice cleanse
and then the next day, to go to the bar and get hammered.
Um, and I opened a lot of vegetarian and vegan restaurants
and a vegan hotel. And I'm having these healthy businesses.
I'm trying to help people and I don't do the drugs anymore.
I don't do this, I don't do that.
And I did all this other stuff, and I felt like I kind of got addicted to work.
I mean, we can do everything that way.
Probably a little drama still,
because he's friends with some of the staff.
So that stuff that we'll always deal with probably no matter what.
What happens after she signs it?
Because she told me, I haven't really...
Yeah, So I stopped those other things and I, I started working like
crazy amounts and became successful and like,
so I was still waking up in the middle of the night and, um,
going to the emergency room because my heart was skipping beats
and I was having full blown anxiety and, and panic attacks.
-[MACHINES BEEPING] -[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
And I didn't understand what was happening.
I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes
and feel this like, fear,
taking over me to the point where my heart was skipping beats
and I couldn't even speak because my face was getting so tingly and numb
and my whole body was kind of tightening up
and, I don't know, it felt like I was dying.
And then that's how this journey started.
I was super confused because
I had all this fear in me. But on the other hand,
I was totally secure in, in terms of
what the world kind of taught me was secure.
I had a house and a good job,
I was making money and, so, didn't make sense.
I didn't really understand what the hell was going on.
To feel these things and to have everything
that I thought that I was supposed to have.
So we've been traveling around the world for the last two years,
um, with an effort of me really understanding who I am better.
But for me, it was, it was a very challenging thing.
And it still is, like, you know, it takes focus
and it takes dedication.
And it takes a really strong will to do it.
[MELODIC PIANO MUSIC PLAYING]
[PREM BABA SPEAKING OTHER LANGUAGE]
I'm glad you made it back all right.
All those places.
Yeah.
A long way, man. It's a long trip.
You wouldn't go?
I don't think so.
I don't think there's anything I want to see to be on a plane for that long.
What about baby pandas? [LAUGHS]
Yeah, I'd go to Busch Gardens, see 'em nice and easy.
-What if we go tomorrow to try and see the baby pandas? -Nah.
I don't think so.
When I was working, I didn't, I felt like something was not right.
With me. I didn't really understand what it was or whatever.
So going on this trip kind of...
helped me understand that stuff better.
By doing yoga in India, and doing meditation and doing all this stuff,
I started to kind of figure out what was going on.
-Why you look at me like that? -I think you're cracking up on me.
-But it's all right. [CHUCKLES] -What do you mean?
Yeah, you're cracking up.
-Why is that... -So you found yourself in India.
Is that what you're saying?
It's not about, like, finding myself or something.
-It's about realizing... -Does it all feel right now?
Now that you went out to India
and Nepal, and... Does it feel right now?
Feels good?
SEBASTIANO: It's not so hard to go to India for a month
and practice yoga and feel good.
And, you know, being yourself
and hang out with those people and you don't have much worries.
You're not working, you're away from everything.
Everything's nice, um, and it's much easier,
but it is more challenging when you go home and you talk to your dad.
Talk to your mom, to talk to friends,
you try to explain the stuff that you're going through,
and the stuff that you learned like in the East, and it's challenging.
JOSH KORDA: As I say pretty much every week,
we are a social species,
and that our biggest core drive in life
from the beginning is to connect with others.
Um, we survive simply because
in infancy we can bond with other adults
who will nurture us until we reach an age
where we can survive, uh, without constant care and support.
So the core,
uh, neural components of the brain from birth
are simply again to establish these bonds.
When, and these bonds are established by looking
into the eye of someone:
your parents, your caregivers, the other adults,
having them see you and then express
whatever state you're in through your emotions.
So you're tired, you're frustrated,
you're sad, you're lonely, you're vulnerable.
You express that physiologically.
Those times where we feel disconnected from care,
from love, support are the greatest traumas of childhood.
Those negative emotions, we believe are
some kind of really horrible part of ourselves
that we don't want to experience.
And the key... [COUGHS] ...to soothing us,
which means regulating us back to a state of calmness
is that experience of being seen in the eye of someone
who will be empathetic and will meet these needs.
RUSSELL BRAND: I reckon fear, anger, anxiety,
these are, like, on a basic biochemical level, signals.
Signal is communication.
Communication is an attempt to create community,
connection, togetherness.
I suppose people feel fearful and angry
'cause they're not being heard.
And I don't necessarily mean on an individual level.
But my sense is there's an aspect of, of spirit
that's being neglected.
If you ignore it, fear will happen.
[VOICEMAIL PLAYING] Hello, James. This is Zelda here.
I have time for a session with you
at 2:00 p.m. I hope that suits you. Just let me know. Bye.
Yeah, I really, I realized, actually like, wow, anxiety is a big thing for me,
-HALL: Mm. -But I don't feel like I ever gave it the attention
that it kind of needed, you know.
and I, also through work with you, I feel like a lot of it comes from my childhood
and, but I don't know, I still have it.
And, and I'm a little bit confused
because on the trip I've heard different things
from different people, you know?
Do I have to go back to the root of every single thing in my life
that could have caused anxiety?
For example, when I was a kid, work, or is it good enough to just, like,
sit with the anxiety when it comes up, and just feel it?
People often ask that in therapy.
Do I need to go into every single thing
that happened in my childhood in order to really change this thing that
I'm having trouble with? No, you don't.
Um, you, but you do need to go into it as it comes up.
You know, when you stay with things for a while,
if you, if you allow yourself to be present with them,
then you start noticing,
um, something that wants to be addressed.
And, yes, then it's useful to deal with that.
Um, that's a useful time to do it with somebody else.
Like, have somebody guiding you in it
to give it, give enough safety in the situation.
Maybe you'd like to try it out a little bit now.
-Yeah, we can. -Yeah?
Uh, yeah, let's just
take a couple of deep breaths there.
Just check in with yourself if that
is actually what you want to do at the moment.
So that we're really sure that's the right thing to be doing now.
Here. Now. This situation.
Okay. You sure you want to try this out now?
-Yeah. -Okay.
[INHALES]
MAN: [IN VIDEO] Boy, this is beautiful.
WOMAN: [IN VIDEO] This swimming pool is their swimming pool.
It's in the backyard of their house,
and it's very, very nice.
MAN: Well, now we're gonna go inside.
RUPERT SPIRA: If we were to take a survey
out in the world of all seven billion people
and we were to ask everyone,
what is it that you really want in life?
There would be a variety of answers
from, uh, more money, better health,
an intimate relationship, a family.
A nicer home. But then, if we were to ask everyone,
but why do you want more money or a better home or intimate relationship?
Um, they would say, "Because I think it will make me happy."
In other words, everybody seeks happiness
above all else. There's nothing greater than happiness.
And nearly everybody seeks happiness through
the acquisition of some kind of objective experience.
An object, a substance, uh, a state of mind,
an activity, an intimate relationship, a family, etc.
Many people, at some stage in their life,
begin to suspect that happiness for which they seek
can never be delivered
via an objective experience.
And it's the madness from which
the vast majority of humanity are suffering.
Actually feel like
my anxiety's starting to come out.
-My face, like a little bit tingly and... -Mm-hmm.
SHARON SALZBERG: Everybody really wants to be happy,
not just in a superficial sense.
We want a sense of belonging,
each of us to this body, to this mind,
to this Earth, somewhere.
We want a sense of
being a part of something greater than our limited sense of who we are.
Yeah, but what are we taught?
It's not easy to figure out.
You have to separate from a lot of conditioning
and be able to look at it to say,
"Oh, this is where happiness lies."
GRAHAM HANCOCK: We live in a rigidly controlled society, rigidly structured,
which seeks to oppress us down and turn us only
into vehicles for production and consumption.
That's all we are supposed to be in the present set up.
BRANFear and desire provoke action.
They cause you to get out of the present.
If you're continually being frightened,
turn on your TV set, look at your phone,
terror, death, cancer, war, famine,
in that and then desire... [HUMS JINGLE]
Then constantly inundated with
some beautiful imagery of whatever, uh, sex you're into.
And, uh, it's very hard, it's hard.
I feel like you're being like this.
Your culture's got jump leads on my consciousness,
keep sending signals that are not helpful.
It's not a coincidence, is it, consumerism and capitalism?
That's where we've all got to.
That's what we've all generated through our consciousness.
That's what we were all participating in.
And enough of us seem to find it hard to go,
I'm just not gonna participate.
I'm coming off Facebook. I'm coming off Google.
I'm not even gonna own this phone no more.
I'm not going to try and earn money.
I'm just gonna sit quietly by the river and breathe.
I'll sit there quietly for a while and breathe.
That's if I didn't wanna see if anyone has called while I've been breathing.
I feel like, um...
All the things I do and just like doing
like, things compulsively in general...
-HALL: Mm-hmm? -...are all like...
...so that I don't have to feel like...
HALL: Yeah.
That's it. It's okay.
Try not to explain it too much.
Just allow yourself to feel, James.
It's okay. The more you can allow yourself
to have that feeling,
the easier it will get.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
HANCOCK: There is just one area
where every one of us human beings is powerful,
and that is over the choices and decisions we make
about our own lives.
You have enough time. You have 70,80, 90 years, if you're lucky.
Maybe more on this planet, maybe less.
There's a random element to life,
but you have time to make changes to your life.
Even at the level of the single individual
operating in society,
if we choose right rather than wrong,
if we choose light rather than darkness,
if we choose love rather than fear,
then this is going to affect everybody else.
And if enough of us change ourselves,
then we will change the world.
[PREM BABA SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
[PRAYER CHANTING OVER LOUDSPEAKER]
[PLAYING FOLK MUSIC]
SEBASTIANO: Which tools have helped you in your life?
Say, maybe 20 years ago or 25 years ago,
what were the things that you used in your life to heal things within yourself?
[SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
SEBASTIANO: I started to spend more time in silence
and more time questioning myself.
I feel that a lot of the problems that I was having
were definitely related to fear.
You know, fear that I wasn't good enough, for example.
Do all these different things I could see myself doing,
creating lots of businesses,
trying to get acknowledgement that I was good enough for myself.
And I didn't really realize that, until recently, that
I don't actually need acknowledgement from
anything outside of myself.
That maybe there's a way that I could feel good enough inside of myself,
to the point where I don't need to do things for other people to feel that.
Where I could just feel that in myself, I could be whole in myself.
SEBASTIANO SR.: So how is... Your anxiety's okay now?
What, what's happening?
No, I went... I mean,
it's better for sure.
Because I feel like,
growing up with, like, wanting to be good in school,
wanting to be good at sports, wanting to do all those kind of stuff,
you know, the American dream. You have to grow up,
you have to make a certain amount of money,
you have to have a certain amount of cars.
You have to get the shoes that the neighbor has.
You know what I mean? You know exactly what I mean.
Well, some of its valid.
I mean, if you don't go to school and you don't get A's,
you don't get a good job.
[BLOWS RASPBERRY]
But, but, whatever it is, it puts a lot of pressure on us.
Once you get older, you don't need that stuff, you know?
You realize you don't need that same kind of pressure from society anymore.
-Mm. -You make your own choices.
So I went on this trip to, kind of...
That stuff did create anxiety in my life.
When I was younger, I would get drunk with my friends.
I've smoked weed. I don't know how many times, you know, did it.
You didn't see anxiety. I didn't even know that that's why I was doing it.
-But now I can figure out... -How did you figure out that you had anxiety?
When did this anxiety thing pop up?
Just, I had it. I had panic attacks when I lived in Europe.
In Bali, I had a couple of times where I went to the emergency room
because my heart was beating at a different rate
and I couldn't feel my face.
I used to call Mom sometimes and pull over on the side of the highway
when I was like, 20, 21.
I couldn't like, even talk.
I'm straight. I could tell you that I never had anxiety, ever.
I could fix your anxiety, a little 10% you got left?
Its, it's either a right hand or a left foot. Which would you prefer? [CHUCKLES]
-That'll fix this? -That's the end of your anxiety.
You wake up, you will be healed.
You say, "I don't want that shit again. So, my anxiety is gone."
[LAUGHING]
It's all good, bro.
It wasn't all good, you know? Now it's getting better, you know?
-That's, that's one thing you should... -It'll get better.
I mean, you know, ten million miles later, you know?
Yeah.
JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN: Instead of seeing it just as craziness out there,
begin nearly to see it as suffering, you know?
Because we see it in ourselves, we see the suffering that
a lot of these mindsets of greed and desire,
wanting and hatred and fear
that are playing out in the world.
We've seen that in our own minds,
and see the suffering, understand the suffering of it.
Of course, a lot of good work, great work, can be done
at alleviating and adjusting the symptoms of the suffering.
But what's the cause?
What's the underlying cause of these problems?
GARY WEBER: I think, as a species, we have to realize
that there is a solution to the problem.
I mean, there is a way to stop our suffering.
We have to find out what the root of the suffering is.
And if we look carefully, we can see that this
egoic/I belief set that we have,
it comes from some software that we generated for ourselves 75,000 years ago,
that was very useful at the time.
Now, it's not working.
You borrowed from chimpanzees six million years ago.
We went through six million years, minus 75,000 years,
and we were just like, there were four other species like us
running around, very, very competitive.
And so we said, "What we gonna do?"
Somehow we developed this idea, this way of saying,
"Okay, symbolic logic."
I can represent this by...
...drawing that. And I could point to this,
and you'll know, "Oh, that's this thing."
That may sound simple,
but that's a big deal, because then there's a you, a subject,
and an object out here
that's, you know, you can refer to,
and we can begin talking about other things
in complicated ways.
And so what happened 75,000 years ago,
we developed this subject
doing object relationship with this symbolic language.
Once we did, then we had this I, the I is in there, planted.
-Mm. -That I is right there.
And the I is involved in everything that goes on.
Common across our species.
Once we learned how to do that,
we just kicked ass.
I mean, the other four species, "Go on."
And we shouldn't have won.
There were bigger, stronger, bigger brained species.
They should have beat us. They didn't. We wiped them off this Earth.
But at the same time, we eventually came of out that,
and we said, "We really are gonna control the package." And we did.
With that knowledge, that symbolic logic,
and the structure, "I" structure,
this piece of software, that's all it is, piece of software.
We wiped up the planet, for good or bad,
and that now is our problem.
We got this egoic structure
and you can see it everywhere you look.
There's a big ego sitting there.
And this ego is what's running the process, and screwing everything up.
HANCOCK: We've lost ourselves in objective experience.
We have allowed ourselves to become immersed in,
and therefore, apparently limited by our objective experience.
To the extent that that's what we think we are.
We think I am this bundle of
thoughts, images, feelings, memories, activities, relationships.
Now, most people are so involved in their experience
that they don't notice,
they overlook or forget their essential self.
And this overlooking of ourself,
this is the ignoring of the essential element of our experience.
What is there for him to do?
To stop trying to put an end to his suffering
by seeking to change his
activities, relationships, etc.
But to investigate who he truly is and to begin with that
will require some exploration.
[INAUDIBLE]
[CHANTING PRAYER IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
GOLDSTEIN: The root causes of suffering
can be described in many ways.
Different spiritual traditions may describe it differently,
but certainly this sense of the, the ego self...
is definitely a,
you could call that basic ignorance.
Where we've created this notion,
the sense of I, very deeply conditioned, really deeply habituated.
Uh, it's, it's...
But it's really a construct.
[CHANTING SANSKRIT HYMNS]
And, of course, the meditative process
is to see that this very notion
is illusory.
And that, yeah, there's a conventional meaning
to the sense of self and I
and it has a use.
But it also has a danger.
Because long as there's that view,
you know,
then what is it that we do around the sense of self?
We try to gratify it, we defend it,
we aggrandize it, we judge it.
We do all kinds of things.
But meditation takes us to a deeper level
where we say, "Okay, what is it that we're actually calling self?"
And when we look deeper, we see the constituent elements that go in.
And this is just helpful because then we're not so attached
to this idea, to this concept of self.
The more we can let go of this self-centeredness,
which is just really what ego means.
There is a self-center
that we gravitate around, you know?
When we, when we see through that,
then the natural expression of that insight is compassion,
is connection, is love.
SEBASTIANO: I had a dad who was very strong.
Nothing's good enough. You have to keep going.
You have to score more goals, hit more home runs.
-Better, better, better. -Mm-hmm.
Somehow it was a beautiful thing
because I became successful financially and materially
and accomplished these things.
But I feel like somehow, it's... [CLEARS THROAT]
...what I'm being drawn to is the complete opposite.
[SPEAKING OTHER LANGUAGE]
SEBASTIANO: This ego part of myself is so strong and so powerful.
It's been just fed for the last 34 years of my life.
It's being fed, and fed, and fed, and fed,
just getting stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger,
telling me that I need this,
I need that, I need this, I need that.
And it was really overwhelming to see, like, "Shit.
"This is causing so much stress in my life because
"I'm allowing myself to get caught up in this,
"this race of how can I get more stuff?"
What would, I would really like to hear
from myself, and understand is like the suffering part,
like, I, I suffer,
to be honest. Like I have, I do...
-I don't know if it's daily or weekly. -Right.
It just varies, it's not like on schedule or something,
-but I do have anxiety. I do feel fear. -Right.
I do feel like sometimes my mind is like, just controlling my life.
Out of control, totally.
What can I do really to be free from that?
We say, we could look at self-inquiry.
Ramana Maharshi, probably the sage of the 20th century,
said, "Just look for the I."
Just ask "Who am I?" Over and over and over and over again.
Western philosophy, only one or two people ever even looked at the possibility
of questioning the I.
Eastern folks did it.
-Where am I? -Just like, like meditate
and just like, on that,
-kind of make that my mantra kind of thing? -Yep.
Not a mantra though, not a mantra!
We're trying to do, is get really curious.
Is it, is it simple enough to say,
like, if we don't want to feel suffering,
to just don't do things that make us suffer?
No, but, even more fundamental than that.
It's like, "Okay, let's just
"deconstruct the sufferer."
If we don't have the sufferer, there is no suffering.
There are an infinite number of pleasures and possibilities
and desires and thoughts.
But there's only one I,
because it's there in every thought,
every desire, every lack,
there's an I there.
And if you just keep going after that I,
don't get sucked into stories.
Just keep going back into "What is this I?
Where is this I?" When I ask, "Where is James?"
"Well, James is sitting here."
"No, but where is James though?"
"Well, James is someplace in here."
"No, he's not, though."
And you keep watching, keep asking, you know, "Where is James?"
And you find out that, in fact, James isn't a real thing.
Every time, James, you meet somebody,
a different person, you talk to Mark,
or you talk to, you know, Ana?
There's a different James shows up for those two situations.
You watch carefully, you concede you're two different James' there.
If you watch yourself in the course of a day,
you can see lots of Jameses.
You know, what's the deal here?
How important can James be
if he's got all this, you know, a whole pack of them.
Which one do we believe is real?
If you take a, put yourself in a scanner,
you can look at your brain, you can say, "Hold it.
We can't find James anyplace.
We can find lots of Jameses,
but James is just an ad hoc entity created as waves of energy sweep across the cortex.
Scientifically, we can show you there is no James there.
So according to all that stuff, who is James? Who am I?
Well, that's the question.
You're only now, now.
Now, you aren't becoming now.
You are only now. There is no past.
There's only this very moment.
Be. Not "I will be present now."
No, you're only there.
Only being-ness.
There's no one being. There's just being-ness.
BRANYou know, it's difficult not to evaluate the experience almost aesthetically,
if you know what I mean.
It's been called, even having the idea of a good meditation.
"There's no such thing as good meditation." aren't they? But you, sort of,
"I know I want, I want cessation of self."
I want, "Ah, bliss. There was nothingness for a while."
Because on some level we know, "I've put this thing together."
It's not really who I am.
Stare too long in a mirror, you freak yourself out whether you're on acid or not.
And it gets to a point where you think, "Who's looking back at me now?"
Who is that? Where is the distinction?
HANCOCK: This is the process of self-inquiry.
I would start by asking,
tell me about yourself, and chances are,
the person, which starts
with something like, "I'm a school teacher,"
and straightaway, I would say, "No.
"You haven't always been a school teacher,
"and you probably won't always be a school teacher."
So I want to know about yourself.
Can you tell me about yourself?
So then the person might say, "Well...
"I'm 34 years old."
Again I would comment,
"Well, you haven't always been 34 years.
"You're still yourself when you were 13 years old."
So yourself cannot have any particular age.
So I'm presuming, of course, that person understands, this is very easy to understand.
Nothing extraordinary, nothing mystical, nothing spiritual
and just, just inviting the person
to go deeper and deeper into their sense of themselves,
the sense of their being.
What they've called "I" all their life.
The person may then refer to some bodily sensation.
Again, I would point out that our bodily sensations
change innumerable times throughout the day,
let alone throughout our life.
So no actual experience of the body is inherent
to begin where they would describe thoughts, feelings and activities.
But as the conversation went on,
there would be longer and longer periods of silence
as they tried to find something
in their own experience which they could say,
"This is with me when I'm dreaming,
"it's with me when I'm deeply asleep,
"it's with me whatever I'm feeling.
"It's with me whatever age I've been,
"in whatever circumstance I find myself."
So they would begin to struggle to put a name to that.
What is it in our experience that
qualifies as I?
Obviously no thought, no feeling, no bodily sensation,
no activity, no relationship qualifies as I because these are continually
leaving us and reappearing and leaving us.
So, self-inquiry begins
by tracing...with this tracing back of the attention.
I'm not my thoughts.
I am that which is aware of my thoughts.
I'm not my feelings, I'm that which is aware of my feelings.
We trace our way back
until we get simply to that which I am, the only element
that remains with us all the time
is our essential being or our essential self-aware being.
And at some point, there is this recognition.
I am pure awareness.
That is the recognition of our true nature.
And we've lost touch, in most cases, with our essential self,
which is not a thought, or a feeling, an activity, or relationship,
and is above all inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled.
In other words, it is the place in us of peace and happiness.
But most of us have overlooked that
or forgotten it in favor of the objective content of our experience.
[PREM BABA SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
So, is suffering kind of an illusion?
Ah! Yes.
Very good. [CHUCKLES]
Very good.
[CONTINUES IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
It's not real.
-[LAUGHING] -But it feels so real.
It feels real.
-It's tricky... -Yes. Yes.
[CONTINUES IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
So, by separating,
by cultivating silence and self-investigation,
those are the ways to disconnect from the mind?
Are those the ways to bypass the mind,
-to dis-identify with the mind? -Yes.
This is the main goal.
[CONTINUES IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
[CHANTING PRAYERS]
[PREM BABA CONTINUES IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
I was just in India not too long ago, and I was studying with an amazing kind of guru,
spiritual teacher,
and we're having an incredible chat, and
he said, at one point during the talk, I kind of realized like...
with suffering and this "I,"
or the ego and separation, it kind of...
was understood by me that it's an illusion.
But like, I understood it on one level,
but when I'm having, like, an anxiety attack, or
-you know... -It's not enough.
...this doesn't feel like an illusion to me.
I can't breathe. Like it's...
if this is fake, you know, I feel still a little bit confused about it.
If James has bad thoughts,
problematic, anxiety, fear, traumatic thoughts,
then... That's one kind of a thought.
You can feel the difference, you can feel that one
and you can feel, I think we should shoot this afternoon,
or this morning or tomorrow.
That's a different thought from,
"Oh, my God, this is a horrible fiasco."
"This is a terrible thing, my one business is failing."
[MUMBLES]
Those feel differently.
So, are those thoughts the suffering?
The ones that cause the problems? Is that...
-Is that, maybe, your definition of suffering? -That's it.
If these kind of thoughts are quiet,
and most people, 99% of their thoughts are these kind of thoughts,
the bad thoughts.
And so, if you can quiet those down,
you gain a huge amount of bandwidth.
You know, the whole thing... Now this thing is quiet in here.
There's just nothing going on, it's just quiet.
And do you feel like you...
still suffer from those things at all?
Anxiety, fear, separation?
-All the things that you're talking about? -No.
So, you don't feel like you suffer at all, in life?
Do... Do you, like, know how you did it? Or...
I went into self-enquiry.
Enquiring who you are, and what you are...
and it worked.
You know, you watch your thoughts, you could watch your thoughts.
You could see all that taking place.
They all had an "I" in them.
Part of this stuff that I do, this practice.
It's getting rid of your attachments,
because the attachments really generate the I.
They work together. I want this green tea.
I have to have a green tea. If I don't,
"Oh, my gosh, I feel terrible."
So, you just need to deconstruct all those attachments,
and so, that drives you forward
because if you start to take apart James,
you find a lot of resistance.
It's all the James stories about this and that.
A lot of old memories, a lot of old traumas,
and you won't... There's ways to push through those.
Take a look at them and say, "Where's the James in this one?"
You look at your attachments and, "Why am I attached to that?"
There's a James there attached to the car,
or the reputation, or the story, or whatever.
And you say, "Those are all parts of James."
You can break all those down.
But you've got to decide, "Hey, this is serious."
"I can't just buy another car, get another girlfriend, get more drugs, rock n' roll.
"I've gotta somehow fix this thing.
"I'm responsible for this mess."
Everyone has to feel that,
and change.
If they don't change, the ship sinks.
Titanic goes down.
How do we fix it?
If you first begin to recognize, "Look,
"I don't need to suffer."
I say, "Fuck it..." pardon my French, "Fuck it.
"I don't want to suffer anymore.
"I'm done suffering.
"This has to stop."
-Do you need to suffer? -No.
Okay, 'cause that's an important part.
When you get to that point, then you'll do anything
to get free.
But it needs to get there.
It is, um...
I think I'm at that point... [VOICE BREAKING]
How much are you willing to surrender?
Accept, let go, forage and use,
but we don't like to use the word "surrender."
But to me, it came down to when I totally surrendered.
[EXHALES]
I was totally held.
Totally.
Completely.
I have no sense of doing anything.
HALL: You don't have to understand it right now.
That will come later.
It's okay.
Like, I feel it a lot right now in my face.
It's like really tingling... [VOICE BREAKS]
-Yeah. Yeah. -[SIGHS]
It may not be the
ideal situation to do this in.
Don't do it if it's not right for you,
but see if you can allow yourself to make some sound.
-[DEEPLY EXHALES] -Yeah.
That's it.
It's difficult, but try not to control it.
Yeah, try and let the sound out as much as you can.
Even if it's only a little bit.
[EXHALES]
SEBASTIANO: It's something new for me. We didn't learn about this stuff growing up.
They don't teach this stuff in school.
This isn't what they taught us in church and all that.
It's different, it's a different thing.
You know, I met a couple of people on this trip in India.
A teacher, a guy in New York and they said
by learning these things, learning how to be more present
and stuff like that, they actually don't get angry, ever.
-They don't. They're not making bad decisions... -That's a process.
That's a process. You're not born that way.
No, definitely... Well, maybe we are born that way
and then stuff happens in our life which changes us.
I don't think we're born as like little assholes.
Well it's learned behavior, you learn how to be
an asshole, and then, you know
you learn, you unlearn, whatever.
Yeah, it was definitely interesting, that's for sure.
I went to Peru also.
You want to know what I did in Peru? [CHUCKLING]
You told me. There was the monks and everything else, right?
No, Peru there was no monks. It was the shamans.
We drank...
We went one month in the jungle in Peru,
and there's this stuff called Ayahuasca.
-Have you ever heard of that? -No.
It's like this... they take this vine...
like, that grows above ground, like a vine,
and they take a leaf from another plant
and there's like, priests, and at night you sit,
like, in a room with 12 people...
-And you drink it? -...and you drink it.
-Just you? And they watch you? -No.
SEBASTIANO: 12... everybody drinks it.
Yeah, they're experimenting on you.
No, no, they weren't experimenting on me. It was crazy,
but I started to have that panic attack before I drank it.
I was like, crying, shaking, and I didn't even drink the stuff yet.
And I drank it.
I wouldn't have drank it. I would have faked it.
I would have been like, yeah...
I wouldn't have drank it at all.
Yeah, but I felt like I was fighting this thing
and then like, the fourth time I did it...
We were there for like a month, and I did it five times.
-You drank the juice five times? -Yeah.
But the fourth time, I felt...
I figured out that I was fighting this...
this thing, they call it a medicine.
They're like doctors actually,
and this is like, a natural medicine that "God" told them about.
That's what they say.
But some people leave with no depression or anxiety
or some people are suicidal and they go, and it helps them.
It fixes... It can help people fix their problems.
For me, I felt like it really helped 'cause I felt like...
lot of the anxiety I had, was 'cause I feel like I tried to control stuff.
-Mm. -To always be in control of everything
in my life.
And with that kind of stuff, you can't be in control.
So, it's hard because you start freaking out at the beginning, because
your body and your mind, and all that stuff, you're just,
can't do anything. You're totally out of control.
You're lucky you didn't piss yourself in front of all those people.
SEBASTIANI was hearing all this stuff from these teachers and these gurus
and people that I saw about how suffering's an illusion,
and, you know, that it doesn't really exist.
But I was still feeling suffering.
So, I really wanted to take Ayahuasca
and work with that medicine to see if I could access that place in myself,
where the suffering didn't exist anymore.
BRAND: When you start to analyze your life,
you start to question what is the nature of reality.
And it seems that there's more than one answer to that question.
This isn't all reality.
Who is it behind the "I"s?
When I think to myself, whose "I," and who's "myself"?
How can I have a simultaneous, subjective, objective experience
in my own consciousness?
Who's talking in there and who's listening?
That's at least two people
in every single human mind.
SEBASTIANHola.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
ALEX GREY: Coming to the surface of all the shadows
and all the lies, and, uh,
getting back to a sense of what is the truth
and how can we know it?
Maybe there's something more
than the game show reality I'm being sold,
and they discover it.
And when they do, then
they're so perplexed
because they're not seeing it on the cover of The New York Times.
But it's the most important thing that's ever happened to them.
[INSECTS CHIRPING, CHITTERING]
[BIRDS SINGING]
[JOSE SPEAKING IN SPANISH]
Ayahuasca is an amazing medicine
that has been known about for centuries
and brewed in the Amazon
by the combining of two elements.
What it is, is, you have the vine
and then you have the leaf.
So the combination of the vine and the leaf
in a tea allows the DMT
to become orally active.
DMT is one of the most powerful psychoactive agents ever discovered,
and it happens to be
a naturally occurring neurotransmitter in everyone.
[BUBBLING]
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
MATHEW WATHERSTON: It's helpful to understand that this is a pathway.
This is not just a medicine that we can drink or ingest,
that's just gonna fix our problems.
In so many ways we have become dismembered, disconnected,
dislocated, dislodged as a result of trauma.
So, now we see in the West that our medical system
is not able to address the root causes
of the chronic issues that we face, typically on the psycho-emotional level.
So, the epidemic of depression, anxiety, stress
that we see in the modern world,
is not being addressed by our medical system.
Ayahuasca and the tradition that surrounds Ayahuasca
does offer us an opportunity to really address the root causes
of stress, depression and anxiety.
Fundamentally by clearing the barriers, the blockages,
the difficulties, the traumas that we've been through
and accumulated over our life,
to purge them out, to cleanse them.
When we cleanse them, we then find ourselves being
able to live in a much more authentic way.
Feeling a sense of presence, feeling a sense of coherence,
a flow, and connection in our life.
So, Ayahuasca, in a nutshell,
is really helping us to remember who we are.
We forget who we are because we get too trapped
in the conditions, and patterns and programs
that have been laid in, often in our childhood,
that take us away from our presence and authenticity.
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
HANCOCK: Nobody should be going into this sacred experience with a view to recreation.
This is not what it's about. It's not about that at all.
It's about deep, often very troubling personal work.
If you're prepared to do that work,
it can be transformatory.
What Ayahuasca is going to show you is the plain, unvarnished truth
about yourself
and the impact, either positive or negative, or a bit of both
that you have in the world.
You're going to get that message loud and clear.
Sooner or later, maybe not your first session, maybe not your tenth,
but sooner or later, it is gonna hit you like a rocket.
[RAIN PATTERING]
ALEX GREY: When you have a really powerful Ayahuasca experience,
it's like the rapids,
that you're going down in your imagination.
One dimension after another is coming at you,
and it's just overwhelming.
There's no way that you can control it,
and so the best is to surrender to it,
and to orient toward your...
your most...
[EXHALES] ...deep center of your soul.
GRAHAWhen you open that door
to the realm beyond the material realm,
you're opening it to everything that's in there.
[SPITS]
[BLOWING RHYTHMICALLY]
HALLet whatever comes up, just let it come.
It's okay.
That's it.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, I'm guessing
there's a little bit of control going on there.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, I can feel that.
Sorry, what?
-Yeah. -Yes.
Okay...
What happens when I say that, James?
I feel more emotions come up.
Okay. Just let them be there.
Just allow them space.
It's safe to feel your heart.
[BLOWING RHYTHMICALLY]
See, I may not be right,
but I have a slight feeling that there's something that wants to put that scream to sleep.
Shut it up.
Not be so noisy.
Does that make sense?
-Yeah. -Mm-hmm.
So...
-I also feel like there's like physical... -Yeah, lot of...
No, like there's...
like this shaky... Like, I can shake away this like...
that it actually feels good to like...
-Yeah, great. -...shake away the...
...like let it out...
Yeah, do a bit more of that and see if you could make some sound with it.
[GROWLS]
[CLEARS THROAT]
[EXHALES, GRUNTS]
[GROWLS]
[CONTINUES BLOWING]
-[GROWLS] -Yeah, that's it.
[BOTH GROWLING]
-[YELLS] -Yeah, that's great.
-[YELLS] -Yeah.
[YELLS]
-[SCREAMS] -Yeah.
[SCREAMING]
[SCREAM FADES AWAY]
[WOMAN SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
[WOODEN WIND CHIMES TINGLING]
[WOMAN SINGING TRIBAL SONG]
[DEEP BREATHING]
-[WHIMPERING] -HALL: Yeah.
-[SOBBING] -Yeah.
[BREATH TREMBLING]
BRAND: Get out of the way, there's something there.
There's something there and if you get out of the way
so that it just comes through in a variety of
colors and flavors, and all manner of permutations.
You have to be completely, completely and absolutely present.
You have to fall into it. You have to surrender.
I sense that there is just a oneness,
continually communicating with itself.
The infinite is expressing itself through the temporal,
that between our consciousness, your consciousness and my consciousness,
that we are one.
[SIGHS] I don't know, mate.
I don't know what we're gonna do. Luckily,
you don't live that long.
[LAUGHING]
It's good, innit, to just take the piss 'cause none of it is real.
It's this little curtain,
you come behind the curtain, you see that it's all silly,
go back around the curtain and worry about death again for a bit.
How long is there now?
Maximum, 50-60 years.
Then it's the old bone yard.
[CHUCKLES]
[WATER SPLASHING]
SEBASTIANO: Yeah, so I was in Peru not too long ago, and
I stayed there for a month in the Amazon, like deep,
and we worked with Shipibo people.
And we did some very intense Ayahuasca ceremonies.
It was the first time in my life that I ever tried Ayahuasca.
Yeah, it was pretty intense place to go for the first...
the first round.
And the first night, I was kind of like mellow, and I didn't really
have much of an experience.
So the second night, I drink much more,
and before I even drank the medicine,
I was like, having crazy anxiety attacks.
Before even drank it, just pure panic.
And then I realized something. I realized like,
I was trying to control something.
I was trying to like, control the medicine
-and I wasn't really willing to let go. -Mm-hmm.
and I had this thought of like, "What the fuck am I doing?"
I'm here like, in Peru, in the jungle,
drinking Ayahuasca, and I'm trying to control something
that can't really be controlled.
So I comp... I had that thought,
and then I completely let go, like... [EXHALES]
-Yeah, great insight. -Everything.
-Yeah. -And everything changed.
I feel like I even let go of, like, life.
I remember having a thought of...
Well, if this is death, and I'm dying right now,
I'm okay with it.
Which is something that was huge for me 'cause I always had this fear of dying,
and I felt like I actually did die on some level...
-Wow. -...but it was okay.
And I was just like... [EXHALES] You know?
But you had reached that point of surrendering even your life,
in that limited form, you know,
to the great flow,
and that is beyond your control.
Letting die the controller, you know,
and getting in touch with the Great Controller.
-You know? -But I still do like,
suffer in my life from anxiety,
and I feel it coming
and I do the same kind of thing where I start to control,
try to control, "What's happening, what's that feeling?
"What's coming up in me."
And I guess, what you just said makes a lot of sense. I have to maybe...
I have to maybe treat it like I did with the Ayahuasca, and somehow completely
surrender to the feelings that I have.
Instead of trying to control them, maybe.
GREY: Exactly. You were still there
after you surrendered.
Right?
You were still there
and, uh, identifying with that,
witness that's still there,
always, you know?
No matter what happens on the outside.
HANCOCK: I think first and foremost,
we have to concede that we're dealing with
a gigantic mystery.
What we're here to do,
as best as we possibly can
in one lifetime or in multiple lifetimes,
is to explore that mystery
and understand, try to understand
what all this magic is about
because surely it's a magical thing,
an enchanted thing,
to live in this universe,
to live on this beautiful planet.
Where I see the light is an awakening of consciousness.
That people all around the world
are waking up to this fundamental fact
that we are not our knees, we are not our shoulders,
we are not our skulls. We are our consciousness.
SPIRA: The most transforming effect of this recognition
is that it puts us in touch with the place of happiness in ourselves,
and it brings an end to the impossible and unfulfillable
search for happiness in objective experience.
It doesn't even mean to say that we necessarily stop desiring
activities and relationships,
but we desire them not
in order to find happiness in them.
We desire them in order to express, or celebrate, or share
the happiness or the peace that we have already felt.
I've never done psychedelics. I'm still a psychedelic virgin.
We're gonna change that right now. I actually have someone LSD...
Everybody I work with has done everything.
So, I'm the only virgin. But, uh...
Yeah, I just still try to find some way through.
-So through meditation... -Yeah.
-...through practicing yoga. -Yeah, but...
I'm just interested to know the different methods that you used to end suffering.
Yeah, but it could even be...
It's really the core of it is, how do we deconstruct this "I"?
When you completely surrender, it happens.
Poof. Like that.
God, how many people I think are even aware...
-That's possible, -...of what it is that's...
What this thing is, that they could actually have access to?
That's right. That's right. And you've...
And everybody's felt it at some point in life.
Everybody has, at some place, had a...
[GASPS IN WONDER] Wow.
Pfft. It goes way then.
It wasn't caused by an orgasm or something...
Just that little window
into some other space, that was like, "What is that?"
And quickly the brain, conditioned very heavily,
plasters it over, "Oh, pay no attention to the man behind the screen."
I mean, just get it out of the way.
But if you recognize, you can have that.
That little window that you had, that little, "Oh, wow!"
What is that? Poof!
That's real.
You can be in this blissful, transcendent
OMG state all the time.
You could just be there, life still goes on.
These bodies still have behaviors that they do.
But, in fact, what's inside is vast stillness.
You still pick up coffee and tea, move it around the table and everything else.
But, in fact,
what's happening inside isn't anything to do with that.
The body still does what bodies do.
But, in fact, you've moved far beyond that.
You can see that all of this is a dream.
All of this is... None of this is real.
You're in a whole different... place.
You're not there anymore.
I mean, to be here in now, now, now,
to really just be there,
there is no past, literally.
There's no recollection of what took place 10 seconds ago.
There's just now,
and now.
And now.
It's a whole different world.
[PREM BABA SPEAKING IN OTHER LANGUAGE]
[BOTH CHUCKLE]
You'll feel bliss.
Because the bliss
pass through you.
[RAIN PATTERING]
SEBASTIANO: The path, in the sense, that I'm on, is trying to figure out how to
be controlled by thoughts and not let my emotions control me.
Be who I really am, and not
pretend to be somebody else, you know?
When we're kids, we have to be a certain way,
so that our teachers like us, so that our parents are happy with us,
so that the society works. You know what you mean?
-Mm-hmm. -We can't actually be ourselves.
So we pretend to be something else
that we think everybody else wants us to be.
And just that idea in itself,
like, causes us to suffer, and we don't even realize it.
It 'causes us from, like, reaching our full potential.
You know what I mean?
And from what I learned, traveling around the world, talking all the...
these amazing people, smart people, scientists,
people from every different religion,
the way to kinda fix all this stuff,
is to really just be in the moment.
-Mm-hmm. -To be present.
Well, that's the bottom line, I guess. I'm a bottom line type of guy.
You can try it, I'll give you some CDs.
You can listen to and see.
Hmm.
If you say you're present all the time anyway,
it'll be easy for you.
I'm present when it's important. When it's important, I'm present.
What's not important?
Well... I'm here visiting with you,
it's important for me to be
-in the moment, right? -I didn't...
Also, I didn't realize how important life is.
Yeah. Yeah. It goes by quick.
-Yeah. -It goes by quick, real quick.
But you said like being present
when things are important.
And what I'm saying is, what's not important?
-I don't know, something's... -Everything's important.
-Every minute is like a gift. -Yeah.
You figure it out. Carve your little circle out, and do you.
You can never change what other people think or act, or...
feel. That's for sure.
-I don't wanna do that. -I stopped watching the news,
and reading the newspaper a long time ago
'cause you can't change the news.
But the news can change you.
Nothing you can do about what's happening, you know, on the 8 o'clock news.
But, we better get outta here. They're gonna...
-You want to go to the jazz place later? -Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
-Check out some jazz and ginger ale. -Jazz out. Yeah.
-Cranberry, bro. -Cranberry juice.
I live it up at night.
Cranberry and pineapple something.
It looks like a drink. So you could perpetrate with the...
with the pineapple juice.
Sometimes I'll tell 'em "Give me umbrella."
[CHUCKLES]
Yeah.
You need to eat a big steak. Stop messing around.
Eat a big steak. Get it over with.
I'm not gonna eat a steak.
Forget the vegan thing for a month.
No. I've been doing it for like, eight years.
Get down with a steak.
That's it.
-No steak. -Big Texas Cattleman.
You tried the vegetarian thing too.
Yeah, I know. I know.
SEBASTIANO: You did like a year, right?
SEBASTIANO SR.: Yeah, year and a half.
I'm about to go back though.
I gotta just get off, just eat chicken
for a few weeks, and then just get off the chicken.
SEBASTIANO: Or fish. You could start with fish...