10 - A CANÇÃO DA VIDA - SÉRIE SRI RAM, leitura comentada - Lúcia Helena Galvão

Good evening everyone! (Audience): Good evening. Today we are going to talk about topic 10. Remember? Just situating ourselves a little, is anyone coming for the first time today? A few more people coming for the first time. We're doing a job, which is kind of a reading group, more or less, isn't it? Where we do a lecture a week, about a chapter of this book. The intention is to make this author better known. It's a wonderful book. My idea was to take the books that I liked the most in life and make series about them. It

was made about "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran, all chapters, which are all on YouTube. And the first ones here too. Even chapter 6 is already on YouTube, the lecture I gave about this book. So I ask you to help spread the word. An excellent way to publicize our work is to send the New Acropolis YouTube channel link to a friend, via email or whatsapp. We have very interesting topics. There are more than 100 free titles on the internet, of interesting lectures. Sri Ram, who passed away last century in 1973, he was an Indian author, but

not a Hindu, not of the Hindu religion. He was a great philosopher. He works very delicately and very deeply with various issues of human life. Sometimes it was very metaphysical. As some people had a certain difficulty reading the book, I thought I'd give a talk about each chapter, to try to make it easier to read and draw people's attention to this author. Because there are certain things that are precious, and we are not able to discover them during our lifetime. We often read trendy books, irrelevant, aimed only at entertainment. There are excellent books that could

really make a difference for us. This reading is a little difficult. And I hope these lectures help you to successfully do this reading, and that can be something enriching for you, how it was for me. He was a great philosopher. I like to make summaries about the topics we are going to see. I've already told you that this is my favorite theme in the book. I really like poetry. In this theme, which is theme 10: The song of life, he puts things in a very poetic way. It starts from certain fundamental premises, which, by the

way, all philosophy departs. First, the universe is not chaos, it's cosmos, and has a meaning in the experience, not only of human beings, but of all beings. In other words, we are not here for nothing. There is a sense, a message, behind the scenes of life. He assumes that this message not only exists, but that life is endowed with intelligence, meaning and purpose, which is the unit. All things leave and return to unity, versus unum, towards the one. As man is endowed with intelligence, it is possible to discover that meaning. We can dialogue deeply with

life and make it fully pedagogical, learn all the time. The contact that man establishes with beings, of love, of beauty, of deep connection with beings, it is not simply an emotional contact. It's a very deep exchange of content. Imagine that we have a big puzzle. Every time we know, deeply, something or someone, it's another piece of this puzzle that we found. It is a piece of unity that we recover in the midst of multiplicity. And that doesn't separate anymore, doesn't divide anymore. When we deeply understand someone's heart, it cannot be broken. Hence comes that idea,

which today we understand so badly, that love is eternal. This love is eternal. It is as if we incorporate the point of view of the other's universe. He becomes part of us and we of him. There's no way it can go back. When we interpret love as passion, we think that love is simply fleeting. I usually comment with you about that rivalry between Vinicius de Moraes and Plato. Vinicius de Moraes said that love was infinite while it lasted. Plato said: either it is infinite or it is not love. Evidently, the two were talking about different

things. Passion is meant to be fleeting. It is more or less enduring entertainment. There's nothing wrong, or maybe even, depending on the context. However, it is not love. Love would be something much more than that. Love has within itself a very deep level of understanding of the mysteries of life. Love is a mystery. It is a way of penetrating the mysteries of oneself and the other. Sri Ram starts from these principles. When he speaks of the song of life, imagine this, although it may be a not very original image, imagine as if life were a

great symphony and may each of us have, intimately hidden within us, a note. A note that has to sound, has to be brought up and combined with all the other notes so that this melody gives its message, to perform the execution, that pace it has to play. First, show the world what you are. Second, through what you are, discovering the mystery of the other. The other is not just another human being. It could be a plant, an animal, anything. Sri Ram works a lot with Plato's idea that things do not exist in the material world,

if they don't have a model in the world of ideas, an essence, from a rock to a planet. They have to have an essence, an idea that generated them. Things evolve to correspond to this idea that created them. I always give the example of the carpenter who created this table. He thought of a very perfect table. As he wasn't very skilled, the table didn't turn out that perfect. But he has an ideal. As he develops himself as a carpenter, this table is getting more similar to this idea. It's more or less like that, as if

we were ideas of a spiritual plane or plane of ideas, and all of us shadows, running after that perfect idea that generated us. That would be evolution. The word "develop" originally, etymologically, meant to unfold. It came from the papyri, did you know that? They were rolled up, and inside them was a hidden message. You had to unroll them to read what was inside. We are like rolled-up papyrus: we have to open it to see what is the message that exists within us. This opening and reading of beings means, for Sri Ram, hearing the song of

life. He says: if you are an artist, you can hear it like a song; if you are a poet, you can hear like poetry. Have you ever dreamed... dream consciousness sometimes plays interesting tricks on us. Have you ever dreamed of a melody and when you woke up, you couldn't reproduce it? But in the dream you were really enjoying the melody. What the classical philosophical traditions say is that, when we see something very beautiful, whoever created it, did not, properly speaking, create it. That person was a pontiff, a decoder of that for human language. Beauty exists

in itself, and would exist even if men did not exist. If you were a great musician, maybe you knew how to reduce that to notes. I've dreamed of a song and I would love to have it transcribed but I don't remember it anymore. If, at that moment, I knew musical notation, I would have transcribed it. I've lost. Maybe a great musician could do that. These things would exist on a plane and are reflected here. Our function as beings who have a more advanced type of consciousness, mental, would be to go beyond appearances. Live with depth,

with inner life. Go beyond appearances. Go backstage and hear the song of life. He says that the man who makes a difference is the man who has heard the song of life. Life gave him its message and now he can teach somebody, he can educate. This topic is very interesting. I am restraining myself not to extend this lecture too much, because our time is a little limited. He says you can only educate someone... Education is representation. You can only educate someone, according to Plato and his theory of education, this is the theory of platonic education,

when you are aware that something in that person is dormant. You represent what is absent in her: a higher, nobler consciousness. You represent a consciousness that is absent in her: a spiritual awareness, as if that awareness were present. In other words, a good educator leads a person how she herself would behave, if she were more mature, How would she handle herself? Then he leads that being to awaken on higher planes. Now the fatal question, how can we wake someone up if we're sleeping? Realize? Here come several parallel findings. The role of the educator is to

have less information and more virtue. The fundamental condition of the educator is the contact of conscience with the human being and not, properly, the accumulation of information. We can obtain this, especially today. Do you understand? Isn't it curious? Can you imagine an ad looking for teachers like this? Virtuous people are sought. They don't need to have a resume or experience. They have to be virtuous. If a person is fair, good, industrious, upright, quickly, she runs after the information. But if she is not fair, nor good, nor whole, are you going to put her through a

six-month integrity cram? Of kindness? This question of the deepest human condition is complex. It is considered as a touchstone. One who, somehow, went beyond appearances and heard the song of life, you can sing it to others. And it can help others discover their horizon of possibilities. Imagine that, it's beautiful. They say that, in the past, it did not exist, as we have it today, an educational structure of teacher and student. There was master and disciple. A master could lead someone because he did not see the person, but what she could become, and helped that person

to see too. He looked at the person and said: What potential! Up ahead! And helped her to see. Show that person to herself and helped her to see. It illuminated the horizon of possibilities that lay ahead. Why? Because he saw the ideal of things, he went beyond appearances. But first, of course, I should have done this to myself. This is the keynote of this chapter, "The song of life": Depth! Finding a concatenation, a rhythm, a logic, a melody in the facts of life, behind the scenes of life, in such a way that arouses people's curiosity

to communicate with this hidden interlocutor, who, from behind the scenes, is telling you things all the time in very curious ways. We started connecting the facts and to realize that life is pedagogical and has a language, who is telling you something, is wanting to convey something to you. In some passages of this book he quotes other books. Particularly, in this theme 10, he will quote a book, which is one of the most beautiful I've ever read in my life, which is called "Light on the Path". It is a very small book, but very beautiful. It

is a transcript of a part of a Tibetan book called "Book of Golden Precepts". This is a part of the book "Light on the Way". "Listen to the song of life. Life itself has a voice and is never silent; learn from it the lesson of harmony." So realize this. Life made each being like a musical note. No being is expendable, no being is silent. Within himself, he has a message. Nobody is empty by nature. Emptiness is made by accommodation or by impulse. But everyone has an essence within them, which, if communicated, harmonizes. This is very

interesting. He himself will say, in another passage, in the book, that when wise people come together, they don't need to make an effort to get along, because their voice is like the notes of a melody. When pronounced, they match. It's almost like a continuity of ideas. One complements the other. Have you ever imagined this? Could it be that, in Plato's Academy, there were many problems of coexistence? It seems not. When we get to a certain level, our most intimate expression does not clash with that of the other, fits like a jigsaw puzzle. If we polish

the roughness of our piece, It fits perfectly with the others. It's melodious the coexistence of people whose consciousness is on a higher plane. Imagine climbing a pyramid. The higher you climb towards the apex of the pyramid, the more you join the people who are going up with you. So if we are increasingly pushing people away, becoming more and more conflicted, I suspect that we are going down, not up. Because when we go down, we move away; when we ascend, we unite. It's a natural tendency. The entire conscious universe fits together. There are no parts left

over or missing. The universe has no chance. There is a very interesting passage, of a Tibetan tradition, which I always like to talk about, from a book called "Bardo Thodol", the Tibetan book of the dead, which says the following: "If there was a minute in your life that I had nothing to teach you, that minute would have already been taken out of your life." Life teaches you all the time; there are no leftovers, there are no shortages, there are no shortages or excesses, neither in time nor in space. Neither things are dumb, nor the moments

of your life are dumb. Everything is telling you something. How many voices of life have we heard? How many times? That I really closed the loop. I know why it happened in my life and I know what life wanted to tell me with that. This person, who passed through my life, I closed the circuit. I understood why. She revealed something very important to me, that if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have seen it. And I did it for her too. We reveal, we shed light on something that we needed to see from that point,

otherwise we wouldn't be the same. So this is very interesting. Life itself has a voice and is never silent. Learn from it the lesson of harmony. When we take the excesses out of things, it's like we have a puzzle where the pieces are deformed. When we take the excesses out of them, they fit. When things find their identity, they harmonize. The excesses or deficiencies, which come from apathy or desires, make us either static or react, they don't let us really act or take the initiative. When we conquer this action that starts from our own identity,

we are all harmonious. So, deep down, the problems of coexistence constitute ninety percent of the problems in our lives. I always joke with my students: we can't stand to live with people or without them, it's hell. Ninety percent of our life's problems come from there, directly or indirectly. Problems of coexistence are lack of identity. Oh, how boring to know... but it is. It sucks, but it's true. And facing that, we have a better chance of solving it, don't we? To find a way out. "Listening: having receptivity, producing a certain silence within you, no worries or

memories. Listening with the being, with the heart: to perceive the true nature of things." This is a very complicated thing. This would imply a reasonable, basic mastery of our thoughts and emotions. One very important thing that Sri Ram talks about a lot is that every now and then we have to stop the scene stop the party, to observe ourselves. See the working mechanism of our thoughts, our emotions, so that we can depolarize ourselves from them and have some dominion over them. They are tools, they are not our person. The same way my legs carry me

back and forth in this room. I know what my legs are and I know who I am. I am the driver, they are vehicles. Thoughts and emotions too. When we have a certain depolarization of them, we have the possibility of dominating ourselves a little. How will anyone do some deep thought if the mind doesn't stop chattering for a minute? Does your mind stop? Tell the truth. Do not stop. It's a real broken stereo, crazy business that. Professor Michel Echenique, who brought New Acropolis to Brazil, used to say that our mind chatters so much, that we

get under the shower and don't feel the water. Or do we have to go back to the bathroom to examine toothbrush bristles to see if we really brush our teeth. What were you doing while doing this? Between us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! We were everywhere but here and now. Or else, this moment is useless, it has nothing to teach you. So the Bardo Thodol is wrong. We own the truth and not the Tibetan tradition. In other words, every moment has something to teach us, all moments. And it would be interesting if we had, first

of all, a certain mastery of mind and emotions to produce serenity, silence, so that we could go beyond our paranoia, of our mental fixations and see things in themselves, without projections. And when we looked out the window, we were able to see a bird flying, a person humming along the street, small things, and we started to think about it without these things being our portrait. I was talking to you about that song by Caetano Veloso, that he says that Narciso finds ugly what is not a mirror. We look at things and they are our portrait,

they are projections, projections, projections. Nothing from me. The things in themselves, the beings in themselves, what are they saying? What are they looking for? Where do all things move? Deep down, what do beings really want? What is behind all their cravings? What is the great motivation of humanity? From that person who is walking down the street? What do all the noises around us mean? What's behind? What is the hidden voice behind all the noise? We have to ask ourselves things that sometimes to an ordinary man they seem strange, but for a philosopher they have a

whole meaning. In general, he gets something in response, understand something, a little. A little bit of the logic of how things work, a little bit of what people are looking for, a little of the other's heart. When we manage to produce a certain silence in ourselves, it's a little of what that book says: "The voice of silence". Reasonable mastery of your emotions and thoughts to produce an observation in which you get out of yourself and project yourself out, and see life the way it is. And dare you think life is smart and wants to tell

you something. This will go through a very important element, that you are interested in it. It has that too. We are so conditioned in our emotions, that we talk about thoughts, but we don't talk about emotions. We like to think about certain things and only about them. We have a certain addiction, a certain resistance to getting out of there. Am I going to stop to think about things like that? They're irrelevant! I find this curious. Like this? Someone may, someday, go through a situation to invite a friend to attend a Philosophy class, and he answers

you: "I don't have time to listen to these classes, about these old people, about old-fashioned things, about this Plato who lived more than 2,400 years ago. I have more things to do." But what? What? Window-shopping? Watch TV? Read the latest corruption scandal in the newspapers... new one until tomorrow, because tomorrow there will surely be another one. What is so relevant in our lives? If we had a hierarchy of priorities, we would know that we don't have anything so relevant in our lives. We would have to provoke a genuine interest in more valid things, that justify

our life as a whole. Think that our worries, that were in our heads today, ten years from now, will they be worth anything? Will they have any importance in our lives? If in ten years we have already lost all our interests, imagine a lifetime. But Plato lived 2,400 years ago and the things he said have not died. So they must be more important. They must have more relevance. Let's see what it is. We have to think about breaking our vicious circle of interests, which, in general, is linked only to pleasurable survival. Not much else. So,

be silent and realize the true nature of things! "The ideas we have of things prevent us from seeing things in themselves. Worries and interests: generate an inner deafness blocking messages from life." As I already told you, we have a tendency... First of all, you get a lot of information over a lifetime: that the family gave you, the culture, the historical moment in which you live... then you get that baggage, as if it were the absolute truth. And from that baggage, you look at things, and looks already with the intention of liking or rejecting. That is,

you already have ready answers to questions you haven't even asked yet. And that doesn't let you see things. I was telling you an episode of a person who was bitten by a dog when he was a child. From now on, any poodle or toy that appears in front of him It is a devouring and dangerous monster. 'Cause he projects an image, a trauma and doesn't see the poor poodle or toy, that is a monster to him. That image is ready in your mind, before the poodle appears. The poodle is a mere canvas, where he designs

a concept that is already ready. This is a joke but many things are like that. We don't know why we like things or not. "It must be something that comes from other incarnations, a natural dislike." This is emotional complacency. An indulgence. The person has been conditioned. And if he's been conditioned and it's not good for him, could rebuild it. In fact, this is one of the most sensitive issues. Whenever I treat it in Philosophy courses, people react and sometimes react badly. Stop to consider that what you like and what you reject, maybe it has nothing

to do with you. Deeply, no! It is mere social conditioning. Maybe if you were born in another country, in another family, at another time, would like and reject other things, so much so that, throughout your own life, you don't stay in the same spot. Social conditioning! Like it or not! This or that! The funniest thing is that sometimes people get together around these very fleeting interests, isn't it? Loving couples. I love such movie in the cinema. Me too! I love such a dessert. Me too! I love traveling to that city. Me too! We are soul

mates! Ten years from now, neither of them likes it anymore. They drifted in different directions. Because that's not deep! There are several assimilated whims! What you really are, in general, has very little to do with it. That is, we would have to dive in and have a vital curiosity to discover this mystery that is within us. Why do I like it? What kind of reaction does it bring on me that I think benefits me? What are the grounds for this liking and this rejecting? Or this opinion I have about things? Was this born of me

or was it ready-made software that I assimilated? Sri Ram will say that we would have to break this inner deafness that we produce from life software. It's all programmed and thought out. There's nothing more to think about! We have nothing more to ask! We've been told everything, we already know everything! Like this? We don't know anything! The philosopher, normally, is tortured by the mystery. You must know this. We look at things that were, an old photograph, we see those people and circumstances and say: where did all this go? How can a being so vivid, so

full of ideas, so full of feelings, suddenly disappears and nobody knows where it went? What is life? What is death? Where did all these things come from? Where did they go? Why the time? What is it? The philosopher sleeps and wakes up with the mystery. He wants to know, he needs to know. It is part of your necessary happiness. In other words, there are deeper questions. Don't just stay on the surface and listen to these messages of life. "Life is a succession of events, but it is also a flow through beings, modifying them and manifesting

their message." He is proposing an entirely different idea. When asked to talk about our life, we tell a story of when we were born, of the first birthday and the gifts we got. We are talking about our history. Is good. This is one of the meanings of the word life. But the main meaning of the word life is: a flow that nature wants to send to the world and we are the emissary. A message we came to give the world! A message that passes through us and manifests itself, or it doesn't pass, it gets blocked

and makes us unhappy. We are more or less happy as we do what life expects of us or not. Life is a flux, alive, mobile, which is transformed into action through beings. The beings are like emissaries of these messages of life, more or less accomplished the more they give way to it. Because when life passes through beings, it does what they do best. Make the most of your potential for them to express what it wants to say. The beings that serve life, instead of wanting to be served by it, realize their human potential to the

fullest. I was telling you some time ago about a movie I watched. In fact, every lecture I have to talk about film. I'm still going to make a cine culture. There is an old French movie called: "The Master of Music", in which two opera singers disputed each other. One of them was very successful and the other was a little stuffy. They asked the one who was successful why he had been victorious and the other had not. And he would say: "Because so-and-so thought music had to serve him and I've always been a servant of the

music." I thought it was beautiful! I am a servant of music, I never wanted it to serve me. Do you understand? It is the vision almost of a priest, of a pontiff. Bridge between heaven and earth! And so I managed to express it, because I didn't want to take for myself the merit that is life. I didn't want to take credit for the messages that this life wants to give to the world. I wanted to be a good servant. I mentioned to you, in a previous lecture, that even pedagogy is like that. When a teacher

wants to show her own personality, generally she doesn't touch anyone very deeply. When she wants something deeper to pass through her, she is capable, at times, of making the true education. Touch people's hearts! It's like that in everything! And our life is like that. Life flows through beings, changing them and expressing your message. This is another excerpt from the book "Light on the Path". One of the projects I've always wanted to talk about is this book. But so far, I haven't taken up enough courage, because it is much more metaphysical than Sri Ram's books. It

is a very beautiful book for anyone interested. "Look seriously at the life that surrounds you." Take a serious look at the life around you. Looks like we haven't taken it seriously so far. We are playing at living, floating on life. There is a passage where Sri Ram asks a very disturbing question: what time are we going to set foot, at least once, in the real world? So far, we're floating. We're in a bubble, built by images, fantasies, designed by us of how we wanted the world to be, or what they wanted us to think the

world was. Because sometimes our fantasies aren't even ours, are absorbed from the collective. At what time will you get tired of playing, and step into the world? At least once, to say you've been in the world for real, and that did not float on it? Isn't that unsettling? That is, seriously look at the life that surrounds you, for what things are in themselves, and not what they are for you. "Forms express, clearly or fleetingly, the divine idea that is within them." All! More or less completely! When they express this idea less fully, you can help

them express it better. Exactly that Master's idea that I was telling you about. We see the ideal of things and we can help them to go there. Therefore, we are benefactors. We benefit from all the things that pass through our life and as we benefit from things, they open up to us and an intimacy is established: heart with heart. This is concord. Heart with heart! That is true love! Without a deep connection, without intimacy, is there true love? If we don't even have intimacy with ourselves, what is it that we call love? What are we

living? Do you realize that we live an illusionism where very little is real? This is serious, this is delicate! We have to think about it. A great illusion, which we call life, where everything is more or less, everything half in half, as Gibran used to say. Like a water that quenches only half the thirst! So he says that all things have within themselves a message to give us. If we know how to penetrate deeply into its essence, we learn the language of life and we communicate with all things around us. "Little consideration and authentic feeling

for the other." He's tough sometimes. He says people are all turned off, disconnected, living in bubbles. Nobody is with anybody. They do not touch each other, there is no intimacy, no true feelings are established, because there is no recognition of the other. How can you love something you don't know what it is? There is no recognition, there is no deep contact. So do you notice the mental schemes that we have behind what we call love? They are usually utilities, because I'm afraid of loneliness, I have need, I need affection, I need someone to be with

me, to keep me company, to be my friend, this, that, the other. Deep down it's me, me, me, me, me, me... Very little legitimate interest in the other. We didn't break our bubble. We ended up being alone for the rest of our lives. It is interesting to note that, in a big city like São Paulo, people are usually lonelier than when they are in a small town of ten thousand people. It's not a matter of how many things there are around you. It's a matter of the intimacy you don't establish with them. There is a

Roman writer and poet named Lucretius, who has a book called: "On the Things of Nature". He poses a situation that I find interesting. Imagine two guys who are interested in the same girl. One of them is dating this girl. The other is just looking from afar. Both are frustrated, because what they really wanted, neither of them hit. One touches the body, the other does not. Just look from afar. Both are in love with a beauty that is far beyond the body but they can't touch. So neither of them is with her in fact. They are

touching an outer, surface layer, closer or further away from the body, but neither of them had real contact, that is, there is no possibility of love. Deep down, we came into the world to be with each other and complement each other. But we are not even with ourselves. We are like bubbles, isolated, in general, trying to look at things around us to see what we can take and bring it into our bubble. I usually tell a story that, one day, came to me on the internet, and I don't even know if it's true, but even

if it were a fable, it would do. I really like telling this story. It was from a university professor, a text that you can easily find, called "Public Invisibility". A university professor decided to take a sabbatical, saying that he was going to travel abroad, and got a job as a street cleaner in the department of the university where he worked. He arrived to work all dressed up as a street sweeper. and people did not recognize him. After a few months, he wrote this text. People didn't recognize him because they didn't look at him, because street

sweeper was like an object, a chair, a wall. He had become invisible. It didn't pique people's interest. Nobody looked at him. He said it was an awesome thing, it was as if he had stepped out of people's world. They treated him like an object, they didn't see him. They didn't recognize him because no one looked at him. Why are they going to look at a street sweeper's face? Do you understand? I don't know what conclusion he came to, but for me it was very helpful. I found this experience very interesting, very imaginative. We don't look

at things themselves. We only look for things that can serve us, that are useful to us. Let's cut things to pieces and bringing what can serve us into our bubble, without intimate heart contact with anything. Without an intimacy, without a perception of the other's nature. As we have no perception of the nature of the other, we don't share. 'Cause when we're deep with someone, something of ours is shared and we both became something greater: the synthesis. From that meeting, we both embodied things from our beings. So that's why love can't be undone. Because it's as

if the other being, wherever he is, will always be with us for a while. Hence, love becomes eternal. What do we call feeling? When we are so isolated, trapped inside selfishness... So isolated, trapped inside fears, interests, of a small world around us. In a previous lecture, I talked about a passage from that same book, "The Bardo Thodol". It's a tough book and I recommend you read it, when they feel that the personality is more unbalanced, because it is "a bath of cold water". Immediately, it shows us that death exists and that we will not escape

it. The personality takes a shock and becomes more tame, because it really sees itself as a mortal being that is going to come to an end. It talks all the time about death, in a very hard and very deep way. "The Bardo Thodol" is one of mankind's classic books. And it will say that just as we have days and nights... This is a Tibetan belief, I'm not here to proselytize ideologies. Understand well, I am a philosopher. But they say: Just as we have days and nights, action times and rest times, in nature: spring, summer, autumn

and winter; in our lives; life and death would be something like this. Death would serve as a period of rest. In Tibet, the tradition is Buddhist, they believe in reincarnation. Rest period for you to return to acting on another day. When we are sleeping, we are not with anyone, we are alone. So this sleep between one life and another is lonely. We're living the only chance that we have to be with each other and we waste. Realize? We are living, in this moment, the only chance to really be with each other. And we constantly waste

it. I found it very painful when I read this. Because we really waste it. He puts it as a gem, as something very special. "Little consideration and authentic feeling for the other: mind provides sensations for the little self, and uses beings and things". It uses in a utilitarian way, everything is utilitarian. "We are isolated." "Life exists for itself, not for our gratification." I already told you about that concept of Kantian respect, that he speaks respicere, to look once more, knowing how to see, look at things and see them in oneself. And not what they are

for. That is, if I did not exist, this being would exist. And what would be the point of it? And not, simply, what it serves us for. What are we going to do with it? What use is it to us? That old Tolstoy saying: "There are those who pass through a forest and only see fuel for their fire". What are the things themselves? What purpose did they come to serve in the world? How can I help them move up to the next step in their evolution? When I was in Egypt, one thing that caught my

attention was that Egyptian temples have very small steps. The impression is that we are not climbing the steps, it feels like we are walking on a flat surface. As if, to go up, we had to take small steps and very carefully so as not to generate abrupt ruptures. Imagine thinking about all the things that are around us, and pull them to a very small step. Make a difference in people's lives. Pull them up a little bit, and not wanting to transform beings into something like us, but within what they are. Pull them up a notch

closer to your ideal and do this with everything that passes through us... As the wises say, if we put this as a philosophy of life, becomes automatic. When we pass by a place and we see that something is out of place, A little tweaking makes the atmosphere better than it was before we passed. A little help to keep the elevator door from closing for someone who comes running. It's gotten a little better. A small initiative is of great value. If I cannot transform beings into perfect beings, I do not do anything! We don't change that

fast. Why do we expect this from others? This interference in the sense of pulling up, this is what we should think about in life. Toward every thing, and not closer to us. In the direction in which each thing approaches its ideal. That would be to benefit the world, to become a benefactor. "Man must find in non-mechanical qualities (intelligence, love, beauty, etc.) the true meaning of life, so sought after. They are instruments of expression of life". When man stop looking at things and asking: what is it for me? And start looking at things and asking: how

can I serve this? Man, who puts himself at the service of life, start maximizing your tools because now he has a good cause. It's amazing what a mother can do for love! It's amazing what one person can do for something she loves! She is enhancing abilities that she never imagined she would have. When we serve nature, when we love life and serve it, we are becoming more capable of intelligence, of will, imagination, creativity, incredible things. It's sharpening our tools and takes our human potential to its best, because we realize that no one else can do

that. A person who does a conventional educational process, for many years, a university course, a postgraduate degree, necessarily leaves there more intelligent, more loving, with greater capacity to generate beauty, harmony? Does this really happen? A person becomes more generous because you have years and years of study, a degree? Or more harmonious? If our educational process is not teaching this, where would we learn? Isn't this important? Why not teach? Why not give an example? Why is this not given a value within life? That's what we came for. It is the most precious element that we have

to conquer in life. It's what makes us make a difference. We achieve this when we break through the barrier of selfishness a little and we put ourselves at the service of life. Pulling all things a step up! We then begin to express these non-mechanical qualities. It's not just skills. Oh! I know how to do a math. I know woodworking. Is good. Mechanical skills! They are not, properly speaking, human qualities. Human quality is what we are going to do with what we know. You just know a math equation, you can use it for the good or

ill of humanity. The men who have done much harm to humanity, historically, were they well-informed or ill-informed? Overall well-informed. That is, mechanical qualities are means, ends are always human qualities, that fulfill us and make a difference in the world. They are instruments of expression of life. We are instruments of expression of life. What have we already expressed from life? Have the courage to look and say: well, I didn't express much. Excellent! And start from where we are. Become aware and not be afraid to see that we did little. The scorched earth is not bad, it

is the basis for building good, solid things. At least you're not in the bubble anymore. I've never had such a deep love! How great that you saw it! Because now you can! Do you understand? This is a characteristic of Philosophy: it is not afraid of verification. Now that I've seen it, I can start having it. What if it's a really small thing? It's worth my life, it's already made a difference to the world. "When the little self of separateness fades into inaction, the mind serves Life. Man becomes a beautiful being and capable of attracting all

the love there is." That is, there is no need to run after love, love begins to run after him. Because he is one of those who benefit life, serve life. Look how interesting this is. When selfishness, separateness ends, what is the mind going to do? The mind is a tool, It's like a mirror that turns up and down. In previous lectures, I commented on an exercise I did, in class... here at the headquarters, including for my students of a certain discipline, whom I asked to stay a whole day without criticizing anything. And every time they

criticized something, marked it on a paper, like making that little square, cross out in the middle and make another one... That is, they tried to cut the mental forms of criticism. The result was very funny, we laughed a lot about it. Because the students said, "Professor, I ran out of mental issues". "Because all I thought about was criticism of something. Then, as I could not have critical thoughts, I started to look more at things from the outside, I realized that there was a molding on the ceiling of my work, I've worked there for twenty years

and I've never seen that." You notice a flower that grows there in the garden of the apartment building, it must have been there for I don't know how long. The trees they had in the garden... They began to notice a lot of things, for they could not look within, which they criticized. They began to be aware of a number of other things that they did not see. I thought this interesting, because the mind is a tool. If you take away an employer, which is selfishness, it will be unemployed. It will look for another being to

serve. Who do I work for now? It turns up and begins to perceive beautiful, noble, elevated things. We sever the mind's bond as a slave to selfishness, of vanity, to serve simply to bring more reasons to feel like the most special creatures in the world. If you have cut off this usefulness of mind, it will have to look for another employer. Naturally, the mind turns up and begins to capture things that, until then, we had not seen. And man begins to be like a magnet, to have a magnetism. There is an example of professor Jorge

Angel Livraga, who is the founder of New Acropolis, in which he tells us to imagine a sheet of paper. It's a very simple example, but it's very interesting. And you put a round magnet under that sheet of paper, and a portion of iron filings on top. If we give this sheet of paper a little fiddle, what will happen to that filings? The filings go towards the magnet, making a circular shape. Easy easy. It doesn't matter how we move the paper. It will happen automatically. But if we don't have a magnet and we move this paper,

so that the filings make a circle, do you realize it's going to be complicated? Let's move in different ways and from different angles, then it goes up, then it goes down... You will do a complex math and still, it won't be a very well-made circle. Just put the magnet there under the sheet of paper that it moves anyway and will form the circle. It is enough that we have a magnet behind us, which is an essence with values, with virtues, with wisdom, which is an essence capable of emitting feelings. Any move you make in life

you attract the filings and it takes the form we expect. Otherwise, we are looking for mechanical, external, to solve our problems of coexistence, to solve our relationship problems... It's like a recipe for moving the paper to form a circle. We can move the paper anyway, as long as we have the magnet, it will be possible. When we have something behind the superficial role of life, whatever move we make, things will take the right shape. There's no way we can make such a perfect move like that, but we can have deep and true purposes behind, that

move life in the way we expect. We're almost done, I know some of you have classes, that time is kind of short, isn't it? But y'all don't know how to juggle to put all this in so little time. We are already closing. "Without the barrier of separateness, we know people intrinsically." It is the mystery of intimacy: really being with the other. Knowing what the other is and sharing a little bit of that essence. "Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men." This is the "Light on the Path". Learn to look smart. Intelligere: choose from.

Choose, among all that he is not, its essence hidden inside. Sometimes, not even the person saw it. We help you to see. This is one of the deepest symbolisms of friendship: Bring out the best in the other, that sometimes even he is not even seeing. Every form of deep feeling is a revelation of the good in the other, that we are only capable when we also do it in ourselves. Revelation of good in all things! Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men. Ask complicated and embarrassing questions for yourselves! How many friendships? What are

they based on? Would my feelings, in general, resist everything? What do I share with people that makes them better? Ask yourself a lot of tough questions! I'm still going to give a lecture with only embarrassing questions, what you should do to yourself before bed. It's going to be terrible insomnia, but it's worth it! It is worth it. "Negative and sensitive purity: only with it we hear hidden melodies of life. You understand and know how to deal with obstacles." When Sri Ram speaks of "negative", it is in the sense of denying the cage so that consciousness

can take flight. Denying our identity with this organic matter, that we think we are just that. When, in fact, we can be in all things. It's the denial of this limited and selfish base that causes consciousness to free itself and expand, go much further and be able to penetrate the heart of things and listen to the music of life. Understand the meaning of life. We can't leave here without understanding what we came for. We cannot merely survive without ever having lived. Then he will say: "It is understood and it is known how to deal with

obstacles". When we penetrate deeply into the heart of things, doesn't mean they got better because of it. They are dual. All beings are dual, including ourselves. Plato said that we are a mixture of one and the other. We are a mixture of shadow and light. But from the moment I saw the light within each being, I communicate with the light and ignore the shadow. Sometimes it is an opportunity that this being had to bring that light to light. To help you understand this concept, I'll give you an example. You are facing a person who only

speaks German, and you studied German back in high school, a little bit of nothing. But since this person only speaks German, it brings out that little bit of German you speak, otherwise it is not possible to communicate with her. A person channeled in the good is like that. She will pull, inside, what the other has good, otherwise they don't communicate. Perhaps this was the only opportunity this being had to live with the good that is in him. The person who brings out the light in everything, leaves a trail of light wherever it goes. You have

to be better because otherwise you don't speak her language. You have to bring up what you have best, because otherwise there is no understanding, there is no communication. Maybe it's the only time to realize that better within us. Things never cease to be dual, but we no longer focus on the morbid, which is the craze of criticism. We focus on the luminous and we help all beings to see it. One understands and knows how to better deal with the obstacles of life. "There is a perfect tuning, instinctive and automatic." That is, we look at beings

and we feel sympathy, recognition for them. This recognition is often mutual. We have become charismatic, profound, able to express and help others to express their feelings. "Life flows as interest, attention, perception, as feeling, sensitivity and love, and creates forms of harmony and beauty." By your works you will know each other. A man who has a certain knowledge of himself, a certain depth, has a trail of harmony. Therefore, he leaves light along the way. He leaves a trail of harmony and beauty. Beauty is the result of a person that fit the parts perfectly. Why? Because she

knows the recipe, the model, knows how to make it. She knows something of unity, therefore, she knows how to generate it in the world. "The unhindered life is harmony and freshness. The body is a compound that stiffens and deteriorates." It is Plato's prisoner soul theory: The body is like a cage that, at a certain time, it ages, iron rusts, but the prisoner inside is a pure, timeless essence. And who wants, all the time, to see through the bars something that is beyond. Find a greater meaning for all this. I have already commented, in previous lectures,

about Professor Michel Echenique, that brought New Acropolis to Brazil. He already passed away. Was a fantastic person. He spoke of those incarcerated, that leave marks on the walls of their cells, every day they take a mark. He said: this is very important, because that person wants to remember that, one day, he was not there. 'Cause he doesn't want to give up hope that, one day, he won't be there. Realize? 'Cause if a man forgets that, he can identify with the cell as if it were the only possible world. It is important to remember that one

day we were not here and that, one day, we will be no more. Material existence is not all we are, It's just a moment, it's an experience. we are more than that and we cannot lose the notion that we can do more than that. And the body, necessarily, like this cage, like this cell, age and deteriorate. "The sense of beauty does not arise from the mind; nature tends towards the beautiful, and pure intelligence reveals all its possible harmonies." Therefore, several philosophers have spoken, among them, David Hume, on the faithful observer. If you want to know

what is beautiful in ancient India, in Tibet, in China, in an indigenous tribe, ask a virtuous man. Because he has a sense of harmony. If he has harmony within, he recognizes harmony without. Want to know what's beautiful? Ask a man who is morally beautiful. Whatever he says is a respectable, considerable opinion. It is a sound judgment, as he said. Do you understand this? Because he has moral beauty, he has harmony. So he knows how to produce harmony and knows how to recognize it. Considering that moral beauty is something rare in our historical moment, no wonder

we live in a minimalist society, who worships the ugly. This is psychologically very complicated, because external ugliness reinforces moral disharmony. Then there is a feedback process, where one feeds the other. I don't know if you understand what I'm talking about. I'm trying to be as fast as possible, but there are certain things that are very impressive. See a spoon in the antique shop. Have you noticed the amount of work done on the handle of a spoon from the beginning of the last century? In a corner of a wall of a house... everything. Today it's all

minimal effort. Form follows function. Everything straight, simple, as objective as possible. There's no point in embellishing, things just have to be utilitarian, they don't have to be beautiful. We ended up using each other, because we are utilitarians. We live in a very rough world, very minimalist, very simplistic. And one of the ways to educate man for harmony is to live with beauty. This is a constant controversy these days. Man's laziness to generate beauty psychologically harms the generations to come. The man who is morally harmonious has, of course, a trail of beauty. There are people who

have a very simple and precarious house and the garden is very beautiful and well taken care of, which causes us great well-being. Sometimes a place with much greater material luxury doesn't give us that same well-being. Obviously, those who do not have harmony cannot give harmony. We cannot give what we do not have. "Each living thing has its own message: it is the voice of life that can only be expressed through it." So don't forget. Who am I? I am a message that I have to give to the world, and that the world is waiting for

it, needs it and I also need to fulfill myself. What is my message? What is my mystery that allows me to communicate with the mystery of all things? Realize that this kind of mentality, this philosophy that Sri Ram speaks, leads us not to believe in chance, because otherwise life is flat, superficial, has no backstage. It demands that we believe that life has backstage, and that there is something that is wanting to come to light, it wants to sprout. For our function is to help this beauty to emerge. For that, we have to believe in it

and understand it. "Examine your own heart with the greatest seriousness, for through him comes that light that can illuminate life and make all things understandable in your eyes." Our heart would be like a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. Through it we light up all things and we make them all understandable. Deep feelings, desire to understand the other, believe that life has a mystery that deserves to be understood. It illuminates and shows us the same landscape in an entirely new way. Try to pay attention, and with the will to understand, in a place that

you spend every day and alienated. You will realize that it is not the same landscape, it is not the same place. We reveal what is behind appearances, and begins to make sense and become beautiful. "Recognize harmony, disharmony and their consequences. It is a path that leads, in the end, out of all human experience." We recognize what is light and what is shadow. We have hope in all beings. We invest in light, we help that light to come out, we reveal a little about the things of life. It is said that this is the way of

the human being: We came here for this. Imagine a person, whom you know a lot, and you know what she is like when she is normal. And in a moment that person is out of her mind. When you go to talk to this person, imagine the possibility of you splitting it in half, in your head, and even if she is not well, at the moment, will you treat her like you know her and pretend that this momentary anger is a child, who is next door giving a guess. It's not her. It is interesting that you

produce in it the possibility to get rid of the awareness of it. You divide the person and value what you want to value. This will give this person a very interesting feeling. She feels like she's been cut in half and ignored this voice that really isn't hers. And, little by little, we give strength to her to do the same. Divide the other and treat like the person you know and ignore that noisy voice. You help the person. Align yourself with the best of the person to help her conquer her shadows. What do we think when

a person gets sick? Look what a fake! She's never like that! Now I've seen what she really is. Isn't she that other thing and this is a weakness she's trying to overcome? Why don't you team up with her to fight this? We have a choice of allying ourselves with light or shadow, but that depends on how much we ally ourselves with the light in ourselves. In other words, believing that there is harmony behind the scenes and investing in it. This is an agent of expression of this harmony in the world. Easy is not! We are

philosophers and we are trying to live it. We are not wise! We have a spirit of perfection and not perfection. If we realize that, indeed, there is a movement behind the scenes of life, this is already a start. There is a life behind it. And that's a life that's trying to express itself in our present life, and that when it is expressed, it gives enormous meaning to everything that happens. This sense we can call human happiness. We can have it and we can provide it when we are not superficial. That's his idea of ​​the song

of life. It's poetic. Life has a poetry to tell us. Pay attention! Stop a moment and listen! Well, that's basically it. Think it's a relatively long chapter to be summarized in fifty minutes. I tried to bring you some deeper ideas, and I hope they are useful to you and that make sense.