A Dialogue with Self
Edited transcript from a weekend retreat at Lamorna, Cornwall, UK 13 June 1981
We’re going to locate the self and isolate it. The self is a lonely, thinking, guilty, dubious thing. We’re going to get it out, express it and surrender it.
I am an expert in the self. So I’m the sort of person who upsets a lot of people. Being a Leo I can be accused of being everything we know a Leo is - arrogant and all those things. So you have to face that nature. Any truth that comes through me disturbs the self. But your protection is this: Do not believe me. Challenge what I say if it is not true in your experience. I demand your honesty, because I give you my honesty - a new and different honesty that equals the truth.
We cannot afford for you to have reservations about the truth I am. I can only have reservations about your self, as you, quite rightly, must have reservations about my self. I must be able to demonstrate my truth to you without any self, as you must respond to me without any self. You have to be simple. You have to be honest. If you are here with me you don’t need your self. You can just say: Die self! I’m free of you, now.’ It doesn’t take any time to get rid of the self. We are now, no past, no tomorrow. Now is the time to give up the self - now.
Do you have a question? All I want is the truth now. I don’t want to hear any doubts, for the truth does not live in doubt.
You talk about being simple and honest and yet you seem tremendously complex. At one point there I felt terribly angry.
Lovely! Nice demonstration of self.
Well how can you talk about being simple when you seem so high-powered and complex that I can’t understand you. I imagined a quieter, calmer sort of being. Somebody who says he knows the truth ought to have a quieter way of getting things over.
Who said that? What book did you read? Who do you worship?
You seem to have this attitude … You’re going for me, trying to tie me up.
Just pause for a moment. I have said I know the truth. I have invited you to question the truth.
So what do you think it is to be simple?
To be simple is to ask a simple question. A simple man listens to the question and gives the most honest answer he possibly can. So let me ask you: Is it simple for me to say you ought to be something you are not?
No. But what I said was: You don’t seem terribly simple to me.
Do you see the point? To be simple you would have to give up telling me what I am. Your question was: What is it to be a simple man? Answer: It is to not brand anyone according to your ideas. The only question is: ‘Is this man speaking the truth in my experience? Is the truth I am speaking simple? I am being simple. I am living now. Anyone who lives outside now talks about the past and feels the past and is not simple. All we are doing in our search for the truth is to give up yesterday. Now is that a simple statement?
Yes, but it’s hard.
I didn’t say it was easy. What I come here to do is to provoke you in any way at all to realise the simplicity of the truth - the most difficult thing in the entire world. You will have to nearly die to realise the truth, but if you can get to the simplicity of where we are now, you’ll have given up the self. The question now is: Do you know you are there now? (Don’t think though!)
Yes. Yes, I do.
You know what I mean by being simple now? Have I answered your question? Now?
Yes, you have.
Now there is no self between you and I. We are simple. It is a holy moment between two people, wherever you are, whoever you are, to reach that point where the burden has gone, just for now. And if you have done it once, I say you can do it for the rest of your life.
Another Dialogue with Self