The day is August 15th and the location is Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

The time is 6:30 p.m. I just took a walk around Walden—it’s about a 1.8 mile hike—and I stopped for a while at the site of Thoreau’s house. They’ve roped off an area where they discovered the foundation. Occasionally a car is driving back and forth here. It’s a sweltering evening. It was in the 90’s all day, and the pond is a mecca to swimmers right now. The pond, for those of you who don’t know, serves as a beach in the summer, and it has some of the cleanest water in New England.

Our subject tonight is transcendentalism—the awareness of eternity in the present. We ask questions.

What is life? What is its purpose? Does it have a meaning? What is our role in the lila and the cosmic game? How can I find where I belong? Do I belong in this world? Is there a God? If there is a God, what kind of God would make a place like this, where everyone suffers and dies and experiences some transitory happinesses and pleasures?

Transcendentalism answers these and other questions, not so much with verbal answers or with a singular philosophy, but by suggesting that there are layers of reality, and that the average individual only sees one or two of these layers perhaps in an entire lifetime.

But one who is not average, a person who turns their attention inward or who looks with the outward eye but probes beyond the surface, can see that there are other layers or spheres of reality.

The world we see with our senses is a world of appearances—a world of action and interaction, a world of birth and death.

We come into the world and we exist for a while. We learn about our world. We learn the necessary skills to survive for as long as we do. One day, nature appears to overpower us and we leave this world. We die—we cease to exist.

Transcendentalism suggests that we are all part of an “oversoul.”

While we have separate finite physical bodies, individual personalities and individual experiences, these are all really a covering. If we could uncover ourselves, if we could remove these layers, then we would see underneath that we’re made of something else—that we’re made of a light, energy, which the Transcendentalists, of course, referred to as the oversoul.

The oversoul that is in one person is essentially the same oversoul that’s in another person—in a tree, in a dog, in a cat, in a planet, in a universe, in an age in the past or the future or the present.

As I’m sitting talking to you, I’m watching a squirrel. I’m sitting here in the Dodge van and I’m watching this cute little guy hop back and forth, apparently oblivious to our technologically oriented civilization. He’s out there in his world, a world of trees and nuts and wind and rain and sunshine—completely unaware of the things that we are aware of, and, of course, we are unaware of the things that he is aware of.

So transcendentalism suggests that we are aware of our world, the average person. But we are completely oblivious to a world that may be right next to us. It might be right inside of us—not inside of our bodies per se, but inside of our attention, our consciousness.

Thoreau, Emerson and others were Transcendentalists. And there’s a power in the land here in Concord, in Lincoln, in this area—the western Boston suburbs—there’s a power here.

There’s an inter-dimensional vortex that opens in a variety of places in this area, which leads one to a transcendental reality. This is what we call a place of power.

There are many different places of power around the world. They’re invisible openings to other worlds. Not all of them lead to the same worlds.

We find a preponderance of these places in the Himalayas, in the western part of the United States, of course literally in every country of the world there’s some. But also, interestingly enough, we find some in the Boston area.

Reality is made up of rooms. God has a living room. God has a bedroom. God has a kitchen, perhaps a playroom. The universe is made up of countless rooms. They’re all over. These rooms are levels or planes of awareness.

We normally think that we’re in a particular awareness and that our experiences have little or nothing to do with the level of awareness that we’re in. For example, we would say that my perception … the perceptions that you’re having, are largely based upon your individualized experiences, your life history, the kind of education that you had, the people who brought you up, the kind of day you had today and so on—never realizing that all of our experiences, our life experiences are really shaped by something far, far different than our simple history.

Our life experiences are shaped by attention, by awareness. Just as we can walk into a very beautiful room or perhaps into a room that’s dirty or perhaps into a room that’s barren, so there are awarenesses in the universe, and we enter into a particular awareness for a period of time.

While we are in that awareness field, it so colors our seeing of the world and of the universe.

Let me explain what I mean. Let’s say, for example, that we see physically, in this world, through the eyes. OK, the eyes present a definite image to us of perception, of reality, of trees, cars, people, houses, experiences. The eyes, though, definitely color our experience.

Suppose we had a different organ of perception. Suppose we couldn’t see, and we could just touch. Then we would see and feel—we would touch, rather, and in our touching we would apprehend and get a certain idea of what things were like, which would be far different than seeing, right? So each sense shows us a different side of what is. However, if we just had one sense, we might not get a complete picture.

Well, life is like that. We see a certain side of something and we suppose that that’s all that is—because we have nothing to suggest to us that there’s a whole different way to perceive something. There is, of course.

The initial step that a person must make in transcendentalism is to come to realize that the perceptions that they’re having at this time are not so much created by choice as by a field of attention, a room that we’ve walked in.

In other words, we’re very happy, we’re bright, we’re in a good mood, and we walk into a room that’s kind of dirty—it’s got a lot of rubbish around it, the curtains are old, the couch is faded and maybe a lot of unhappy people have been there and we can feel their energy. The room just does not feel perky and happy at all.

When we sit in that room over a period of time, we will begin to feel those feelings—they’ll begin to saturate our consciousness and that original happy mood that we had will begin to mutate a little bit, it will begin to transform, transmogrify, and we will begin to absorb some of those feelings, and soon those feelings will take a place in our being. While we might have been very happy or perky, suddenly we’ll find ourselves getting a little bit discouraged.

Naturally, we will attribute that feeling, or those feelings and the thoughts that would generate from those feelings. So for example, if you’re feeling discouraged, a project you might have been very jazzed about and excited about might now seem difficult or impossible. While it seemed relatively easy when you were in a more open and enthusiastic state, now you might not even do it.

Choices we might make, feelings we might have, a whole list of activities in our life may or may not occur according to the attention fields that we’re in. In other words, our own volition is not ultimately important, but it’s the sphere of attention that colors all of our perceptions.

Well, the Earth consists of a variety of different spheres of attention. Each physical location has one or more different spheres of attention.

Transcendentalism seeks to see the individual sphere of attention and to note it as a part of reality, as a part of creation. That is to say, we can see that—well, OK, this is one part of life or God, this is another part of life or God, this is another part of life or God. But then there’s something that is beyond all of these individualized spheres of attention which, you might say, is their authority.

It is the kind of divine ground that they come forth from. And that’s what we would refer to as “transcendental”—that is to say, not limited to any singular interpretation, not limited to the physical world but not necessarily excluding the physical.

So a transcendental experience is not necessarily something that is strictly out of this world and has no contextual reality to it. But a transcendental experience would be something that appears to be while it is not.

It could be an experience of looking at a tree, looking at a flower, looking at a bumblebee and having a sense of its eternality—seeing beyond its simple physical form; seeing the universe within it, seeing, in other words, that other perception, that divine ground—that endless reality which it comes forth from and sustains it and transmutes it—as a solid part of that reality.

In other words, we’re all eternal.

We don’t begin and we don’t end. We have always been and we will always be, but we take on varying forms in the universe. We are consciousness. We are awareness or attention. And we adopt these varying forms from lifetime to lifetime, from dream to dream.

In this lifetime you’re in a particular form and your form is shaped by your attention and your attention is shaped, of course, by physical locality; by the awareness net of the people around you; naturally by conditioning, past experiences, descriptions of the world that others have handed you, and so on and so forth.

Transcendentalism suggests that our perception of ourselves is really incomplete; it’s inaccurate.

What we need to do is redefine ourselves. And this redefinition comes through a type of meditative activity in which we seek to quiet our lives and our mind and reflect, just as a mirror reflects. A mirror is not an image in itself, but it’s a reflector of images.

So our attention can reflect eternity, different aspects of it. If I go down to Walden Pond and I look into the water, during the day I can see the reflection of the sky and the clouds above. At night, naturally, if it’s a clear night, I can see the reflection of the sky and the clouds above. At night, if it’s a clear night, I can see the stars.

So it reflects, yet it is something itself. It’s water. Water will take any shape we assign it to. If we put it in a round cup it will become round; if we put it in a square, it will become square. So consciousness is the same.

Consciousness or attention—our awareness—will change form. It’s very adaptable. It will assume the shape it’s projected into. If it’s projected into a human world, in a human body, it will assume the shape for a while, until it leaves this shape, in which case it will transmute into something else.

But it’s also a reflector. We reflect the universe around us as the universe around us reflects the world within us. The world within us reflects eternity.

It’s hard sometimes to understand why we do what we do. It’s hard sometimes to understand why we feel what we feel. But if you would try to become less attached to the doings and feelings in your life and instead consider the world around you more.

An essential step in becoming a good reflector is in Zen what they call “polishing the mirror.” In order to reflect well, the mirror has to be clearly polished—there can’t be any dust on the mirror.

Transcendentalism has a lot to do with clearing the mirror of the self. And if the mirror is spotless, of course, we will reflect diverse forms of eternity, which is what we call enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not so much a particular state or condition or actualization. It’s not something that’s reached or achieved, but it’s rather the absence of self in individualized form. There’s no more dust on the mirror.

The mirror has broken, as a matter of fact, and it’s thousands of tiny little pieces, each one that reflects a different part of the universe. And we can’t say that one part is more mirror than another, one part is the dominant part and the other is subservient, because all the pieces are about the same size.

We can stand back and say that they’re all part of the whole. They’re all the mirror. We can look at each one and see that each one reflects something a little bit different, and we could say that they’re all individual. Both would be correct ways of assessing the mirror, the broken mirror, or the mirror of the self.

Thoreau spent two years out here on Walden Pond. He spent two years of his life, as he put it himself, coming to confront nature. He wanted to live with the bare essentials of life—build his own house, grow beans out back, cut his own wood, see how much of his food he could obtain just through the work of his own hands, because he felt civilization was already in a heavy decline in the United States.

This, of course, was around the 1800s, and he wanted to get back to the source and he felt his interaction with nature would help him to achieve that goal.

Nature for Thoreau was a touchstone to a higher reality. In nature, in the woods, and in the ecological balance we see reflected in nature and in the woods, he found suggestions of immortality.

As I’m sitting here the wind is rising. I can hear the birds calling. Occasionally a car starts. Some weary bathers leave the area, a little bit sunburned, cool and wet.

I think Thoreau would have been—old Henry would have been very surprised to see hundreds and hundreds of people flocking to swim in his Walden. But when they swim there, whether they know it or not, something happens to them.

There’s a vortex of energy at the bottom of the pond. That’s where the inter-dimensional opening is. And as people swim in old Walden Pond, it renews them, it soothes them.

It’s a little bit like the pool in “Cocoon,” I suppose—any power spot is.

Like all power spots, it needs to be treated with respect, because when you go to a power spot and you think negative or depressing thoughts, they tend to grow stronger. Whereas if you think more positive, happier thoughts, they tend to increase in strength. And of course, if you don’t think at all, you move into very transcendental states of awareness.

Thoreau wished to live, he said, with nature because he wanted to confront the essential facts of existence. He felt that by cutting his life into absolute simplicity, nature itself would teach him things about life and the world. And of course, the way his sentence runs, is that he said that he wished, upon coming to his death someday, to die knowing that he had really lived.

So his experiences at Walden, the two years in which he greeted nature in solitude and friends and all the things we read about in Walden, are a time of true living for him, and I think we can, of course, ask ourselves the same question—have you really lived?

If you were to die tonight or tomorrow, have you done what you came here to do? And if you have not, why not? And why not get about it—because we never know how much time we have.

Then you may take the view that all experience is transitory and passing and it really doesn’t matter what you do, and I would tend to agree with you. But I would also tend to agree with the person that says that everything does matter completely—because both are just ways of talking, ways of beating around the bush.

The essential fact remains—are you living the type of life that you would like to? If not, why not? Naturally it takes courage to step beyond the crowd. Thoreau reflected this courage in his lifestyle at Walden. Of course he reflected this courage in his Essay On Civil Disobedience and when he refused to pay the local tax and got put in jail for a night until he got bailed out.

Each of us refuses to pay the local tax in our own way. The taxes of this world are much too high—not so much the governmental taxes but the excise taxes upon living energy, upon beingness.

It’s essential to make a stand at some point. Winning and losing—these are ideas. But you have to sum up the complete totality of your power and bring it up into your being because otherwise, the world of people and things will wear you down.

Everyone seems to have their idea of who you should be and what you should be doing. You even have your own ideas, and they’re not necessarily even your own ideas. What can you do?

Well, the most important thing, obviously, is to develop the sense of balance in your life and a sense of happiness—a reverence for life, a sensitivity just for the state of beingness that we find ourselves in in this world.

It’s equally important to love. To love is not as complicated as it sounds, so love deeply. Love is the recognition of the infinite in someone else. And when you love someone, that infinite reality unfolds itself to you.

Giving is an essential part of all existence. Life gives itself to us. We give ourselves to life. Giving creates a sense of joy and purposefulness that frees us from what could otherwise be an unpleasant experience in this thing that we call life.

Giving elevates us above the ego and the simplistic desires that are basically insatiable and just run round and round and round us. It gives us a feeling of … it is a balance!

And it creates a sense of hope. Because when we give, we become lighter, we become freer and we become happier—when we give, of course, unconditionally, without any strings attached.

What is the meaning and purpose of life? Well, there isn’t really a singular meaning and purpose to life. There are as many meanings and purposes as there are people. And the meaning and purpose of your life will change as you shift.

The trick is to be aware of all you can be—to try to be as conscious as possible, not just of the things in your immediate surroundings or your physical environment or the people that you know or the magazines that you might read or the books that you might study. These are things to be conscious of.

But try more and more to peel back that layer between yourself and the transcendental reality. Try and look more deeply into things.

As you’re sitting reading, or you’re walking through the woods or whatever you may be doing, have the sense that you are not only walking through the woods on this Earth, but you are walking through the woods of eternity.

When you talk to someone, don’t simply feel that you’re talking to another individualized being, but try to have the sense that you are talking to a being that is infinitely old, that’s always been, that knows all things—not simply the person in front of you, but there’s another being there too.

Feel that when you walk through the world, you’re walking through thousands and millions of worlds. This physical world we see in front of us and around us is only a tiny suggestion of what is. The miracle of life and perception is endless.

We ourselves are that miracle. Our very existence, our ability to live as conscious beings, perceivers of attention, suggests life.

The most amazing thing there is, is life.

There’s truth in just about everything. There’s a lot of truth in the mirror. A lot of truth in the people you love. A lot of truth, of course, in the things that you love. Love is, really, I think, the best way to truth. There are many ways, but I definitely prefer love (just rolling down the window here to let a little air in; it’s pretty hot here.)

Why love? Well, to begin with, love is just a lot of fun. And if you don’t live with love, then all you do is feel your body all the time. You feel its desires, its pains, and so on. It’s pretty dull, a pretty slow way to perceive. Love is a much faster way to process.

We live in an era, naturally, where love is a joke. Really, practically no one loves anymore—because everyone is just so jaded. By the age of three you’ve seen and done everything you can possibly do [Rama laughs]—by nine you’ve done it five times, right?

There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of innocence around, but yes, there is. Remember, nothing is as it appears to be. You’re just seeing one part of the movie of creation right now. You’re in a particular field of attention where love is difficult to find, where truth seems hidden, where frustration is a part of your daily activity.

But just on the other side of attention there’s another field of consciousness, another room you can walk into. When you walk into that room, everything changes.

We are the places that we go. We are the people that we meet. We are the things that we experience and yet, there’s something deeper within us—an experiencer—someone who’s watching all of this, the observer.

And yet we are the things we observe. We are the life in the trees. We are the sound of the wind.

The wind is shifting. More and more people are leaving the pond. The sun is just beginning to set. And when the sun sets, of course, it’s easier to feel eternity.

During that in-between time—sunrise, sunset—there are moments of transition when nothing is completely fixed and solid. Perception shifts, and if you’re attuned you can shift with it.

There aren’t as many people in the world as we like to think there are. I say that because the people that we see around us appear to be different, but they’re really just about the same. They think the same thoughts, wear the same clothes, go to the same schools, buy the same cars, fight the same battles. It’s really not a lot of difference. There are very few people in this world.

Yet, occasionally, the individualist will come along—someone who marches to the beat of a different conga drum, someone who looks more deeply, who drinks of the waters of life more completely, who asks more questions, who is more silent, who loves more deeply, who’s a better friend.

You may be one of those beings.

There isn’t a beginning or there isn’t an ending. Life is a continuum. It’s a circle. We go round and round and round. First we see one side of the circle, then the other, then the next, then the next. Then we find ourselves back at the beginning.

Yet each time we complete a circuit of the circle, something changes—we do. We are not the same person or being that was back at the beginning of the circle when we started. Therefore the circle itself changes—its meaning changes, its definition changes.

Holiness is something that is best reserved for one’s own heart. I think it’s very important to protect and preserve your experiences in higher attention. We treat them too commonly, and they’re much, much too special. It’s best to be silent about the things that you see in life that really matter because otherwise, either people will deride them and laugh at them, or they’ll lose a certain element of power that they have when you share them.

On the one hand, it’s kind of like throwing your pearls before swine. On the other hand, there’s just something lost in the transmission. There’s a certain amount of power and energy that we have in our experience—when we have a metaphysical journey, a meditation—and that power tends to fade when we share it with someone because there’s only so much of it. When we share it, we are giving it away.

I’m a great believer in the positive power of nature. While it’s possible to sit in the meditation hall and meditate and conduct spiritual conversations with others and to read books of transcendental philosophy, I think the really exciting things happen when we go out for a walk by ourselves in the woods. And something in nature purifies us. The experience that we have as we walk and look at trees and leaves, or snow, whatever the condition of the weather may be, washes us.

We live too much inside. We live inside and we have square thoughts and square ideas because we live in square houses.

Our lives are colored by our environment. Our attention fields are colored by it. When we go out and we walk around in the wilds of nature and we tromp down leaves and walk down paths or maybe walk a place no person has ever been, an aliveness comes into our being, a sense of wellness, a sense of the simple and terrific beauty of the Earth.

Nature. Enjoy it on the planet Earth while it lasts.

There are different types of meditation. There are of course types of meditations where we sit and still our thoughts, but there’s a type of meditation that involves just walking.

Nature will soothe us, nature will still the thoughts.

Now, some teachers, of course, have said, “Well, walking in nature is sort of like taking a prescription drug. Walking in nature will not last. We take a prescription drug and it takes care of the symptoms, but it doesn’t go to the root cause of the matter.”

What they’re saying is that, yes, your thoughts do stop to a certain extent when you are exposed to nature and you do the walking in the woods. But it’s not the same as when you learn to formally meditate and you can control your thoughts in any situation and in any environment.

Of course, I would agree with that, but at the same time, I think there’s nothing wrong with prescription drugs once in a while. Because our thoughts do stop and we do reduce the environmental pollution within the mind when we are in nature.

Nature soothes us. Nature heals us—and something more. The woods are a place of power. Any woods that are still surviving on this planet, those are powerful areas to have kept themselves free from the encroachment of the industrial societies of our Earth.

And I think it’s a very important thing for anyone who seeks the transcendental experience to spend a few hours every other day in nature, just out there tromping around. That’s what old Henry David Thoreau used to do. He called it “sauntering.” He would walk for hour after hour in the woods.

Whether you walk or jog or hop or whatever it is you do, your time spent in nature—in addition to your meditation, in addition to your sort of philosophical thoughts and in addition to having a wonderful sense of humor about yourself in your life—will enable you to loosen up a little bit and to feel the oversoul, to feel those different layers of consciousness and attention.

In Walden, Thoreau has a chapter of his book about solitude. And he asserts, essentially, that solitude is—I’m rolling up the window because it’s getting a little noisy out there—that solitude is totally important, that solitude is where we find ourselves in a unique way.

Who could not agree with such a statement?

Walking in the woods, it’s easier to be alone. In the streets of the city, just the volume and broadcast basis of the thought forms that emanate from human beings are so strong. But the trees actually act as a field of absorption, all that green—or the mountains or the deserts or wherever human beings are sparse.

Nature actually absorbs a certain amount of the thought energy that human beings generate, so you can have a little peace of mind.

The Earth renews itself constantly. The green belt of the Earth generates oxygen for living beings to breathe. Without the green world, of course, none of us would be here. The Earth cleanses itself through rain. It shifts its attention through earthquakes, creates new continents, dissolves old continents.

The Earth is alive. We are alive.

Our bodies are constantly changing. We’re breathing, transpiring, creating cells, cells are dying. We’re a universe and our awareness is limitless. It’s only limited by what we think. What we think is what we become, but we are not the thoughts. We are the space in between the thoughts. We are the silent observer that watches all of this without condemnation, without approval and sees something that the eye, the physical eye, can’t see.

Our friend, which is eternity.

It’s nice to have a relationship with eternity in which you see eternity as your friend, not as your opponent. Nature is not something to conquer but something to learn from or to merge with or to join and be part of—to dance with, celebrate.

To celebrate life is a fine thing. And it really doesn’t require a party, just yourself and your good wishes towards the universe.

Take yourself on out for a walk, get out of your problems and your turmoil and go walking. Go saunter down into the woods, walk along a path or a quiet lane or through a park.

Send your good wishes to the universe. Spread your good will everywhere, and you’ll find that your life will transform, your body will be energized, hope will fill your being. Because you are now moving into a different field of attention.

You’re reshaping reality by the structure of your thoughts.

Nothing is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so. So says Shakespeare. And I would say, “Nothing is — unless we think it.”

If we don’t think, then what is there? Eternity—in all of its countless, endless forms and its formlessness. Nirvana, that which cannot be described.

So a walk in the woods can reveal many things, and it is a good time to practice transcendentalism.

Look at a tree and realize it’s not just a tree—its roots may go into the ground but it may also go into other worlds, other eternities. It reaches for the sky in the same way that we reach for light. It bends as the light shifts; its leaves grow to it. So we bend and we shift to the light, we seekers of the transcendental experience.

Go to the beach and look out at the ocean and just stare. Not at any fixed horizon in this world, but at the endless horizon that beckons us all.

Who knows what we may discover today, let alone tomorrow or the next day—what realization we’ll come to? Those who think that they’ve seen and experienced life are fools. There’s no end to life. They’ve only scratched the surface. They’ve only seen the extent to which their thoughts can carry them.

Beyond thoughts is no mind. Beyond no mind is existence itself.

Thoughts also are a reflection of eternity. Just as the physical things in this world are part of life and part of God, so are thoughts. And when a person is obsessed with thoughts or concerns of this world, we can’t say they’re any less in God than someone else who is not.

We can’t say that the enlightened person or being is more God than someone else is because everything is God—varying and shifting gradients and forms of God, of eternity, of eternal truth.

Transcendentalism sees that each one of us is eternity. We are eternal travelers, eternal journeyers.

So here I am at Walden, in the parking lot, sitting here as the hour is growing later, talking with you when I suppose I should be out doing things—however, the things never seem to matter too much. I do them sometimes because they are there to do, and sometimes I seek to avoid them and spend my time in the woods, walking about, remembering and forgetting who I am and what I’m not and what I might be—having adventures by myself, with myself and sometimes without myself. And I suggest that you do the same.

Renew your friendship with nature. Transcendentalism flourishes in nature; it flourishes in the city, it’s true. But we’ve seen the cities and spent so much time there. It’s time now for nature. It’s time to go on the road and journey into the innermost recesses of being.

Don’t be afraid of your pains and your fears—better to have your pains and fears out here where you can live, than sitting in a little room or a little apartment or a condominium all by yourself.

Nature beckons us. The transcendental adventure calls us forth.

Nature is the endless reflective pattern of existence in eternity.

As I sit here watching the leaves and watching their patterns outside of the windows of my truck here, I’m reminded of so many things I’ve seen in other planes and in other worlds.

I see all kinds of beings, of course, zipping in and out of the forest here. Non-physical beings moving around—living in their worlds and their spectrums, as physical beings live in their worlds and their spectrums, as beings like myself live in-between worlds.

Each of us seeks to find a balance, a place where we belong. The importance is not of being earnest or rich or famous. The importance is finding that still point, that balancing point that’s within your own heart.

And as you love and give yourself over to whatever it is you are, as we relent and stop fighting the process of our own becoming and being, and we accept our limitations and we embrace them and we accept the limitless and embrace that, we come to a wonderful sense of what it is to be in this world—to be alive, to be eternal.

We realize our foolishness with life, and we enjoy its gifts while it lasts.

Transcendentalism is ultimately a reflection of itself. It’s ourselves looking into the mirror of existence. We peer more and more deeply. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the fairest reality of them all? Well, it’s the one that we’re seeing at any given moment. And then that moment will change and another mirage will fade and another will appear and another will fade.

There really isn’t a purpose to it—it’s just a wonderful show that we can engage in happily or unhappily, in which we can be losers or winners, in which we can suffer or know joy, in which we can have knowledge or be fools.

And in one life or another we play all of those parts, and hopefully play them well.

We’re all actors and actresses on the great stage of life, and what really matters is not the role we play, but that we play it well—that we play it perfectly, impeccably. So in this life, if you seek the transcendental, then that’s the role that you should play well.

You should meditate deeply, give completely and be awed by all of life. Not become jaded or disillusioned because others may be jaded and disillusioned, but instead just rejoice in the moment of being, in the moment of stillness or in the time of activity. One should be of good cheer and be hopeful. Why not?

Eternity is your friend. You need to feel it all the time—it’s just your friend. It’s always with you. You are of it and it is of you. You can’t be separated from eternity.

It is your domain, as you are its puppet. It is your puppet, as it is your domain. As they say in some of the Eastern spiritual books, “I am thine, thou art mine.”

So transcendentalism is the spirit of eternity. It’s the spirit of well wishing, of seeing beyond the surface.

Henry Thoreau came out here to look in Walden Pond and he saw the stars like dust reflected in it.

And yet Walden had its own depths, and he saw the depths of his own soul to some extent out here—in this beautiful power place, on this wonderful planet, in this fantastic galaxy, in this endless creation.

So seek more deeply. Meditate more quietly. And walk in the woods! Get out there and hike a little bit and look at eternity and let it look at you. And maybe life will work out pretty well. You won’t know till you get out here, what you’re missing.

So this is “so long” from Rama, in the transcendental reality with lots of beings in and around the truck at Walden Pond, on the 15th of August.