Self Development Idea (22): Session 3: The Perfect Body - by Lester Levenson (31 October 1965)

Session 3: The Perfect Body (31 October 1965)

If we don't have a perfect body and we want a perfect body, that means we do not believe or have a conviction that we can make the body perfect.  That means we are holding in mind a consciousness of an imperfect body, because the body is an exact copy of the mind.  The body is our consciousness projected outwardly. 

Now, is it necessary to have a perfect body?  It's not.  It's necessary to have a perfect understanding.  Everything else being equal, if you can't have a perfect body, make your body perfect. 

However, you can go beyond the necessity of a perfect body by getting the spiritual understanding of “I am NOT the body.  Therefore the body does not affect me.”  And this is a much higher state.  In fact, I think this is one of the highest of states, — to be able to maintain your spiritual equanimity regardless of what happens to the body! 

Because we are not this body, this body is not infinite.  It's an extremely limited vehicle, very, very delicate.  Change the temperature hundred degrees, it dies.  Put tiny amounts of chemical [poisons] in it, it dies.  Cut out oxygen, it dies.  So, this body is an extremely limited vehicle.  And, it is much better to not be the body.

The spiritual discipline of having an imperfect body and not having it bother you is a very high spiritual discipline.  Many fully realized masters will go through life with a sick body, setting an example of non- emphasis on the body.  Because the body is our biggest trap into limitation, — “I am this body.”  Not only is the body of limitation but associated with it are thousands of other limitations.  So, Bob, for myself I preferred not to correct the body now, but to have it touch me not, not even in the slightest, regardless of what happens to it. 

[Student: How can the body be imperfect when you said before your body is a reflection of your mentality, and if you know that there’s only perfection, how can you have an imperfect body?]

Lester: A perfect body is not the highest state.  A body is a limitation even when it's perfect.  It's a perfect body.  It's still a body, but perfect.  A higher state is not being the body, you're shaking your head now.  Have I answered it?

[Student: I’m beginning to follow what you’re getting at.]

Lester: So again, it's a matter of level, but because we're in to a level that is high, have got to stay up there.  Be not the body!  Be what you really are!  Be infinite!  Perfection is not a perfect body.  Perfection is absolute perfection. 

Well, you have a tendency to bring it down to perfect things, perfection does not relate to things.  No thing is perfect.  Everything is a thing of limitation.  So, the top state, the absolute, is a state of no thing.  It's just beingness, or pure consciousness, pure awareness — the top state.  That's not being a thing, a body — it's just being.

So, to sum it up, of course, we should have perfect bodies!  If we have bodies that pull on our attention all the time, it's difficult to meditate.  So rid yourself of body demands.  Make the body as perfect as you can; however, it is a higher state when the body does not affect us because of not identifying with the body. 

But the top state is just beingness, only beingness, or consciousness, only consciousness.  It's consciousness conscious of all consciousness.  It’s beingness being all beingness.  And, consciousness and beingness means the same thing at the top.  Being anything is being a limitation.  

See, happiness is our natural inherent state.  We are the All.  We artificially create a lack and then a desire to undo that lack, which when that desire is fulfilled, we feel better.  It's like sticking a pin into you and it hurts, and you take out and say, “Gee, that feels good.”  This is exactly what enjoying things and people is.  We hurt ourselves, remove the pain and say that feels good, that makes me happy. 

Every time you feel happiness, you feel only your real Self, more or less.  The happier you are, the more you feel your real Self.  And, you [wrongly] attribute it to things and people out there. 

The mechanism of it is that, when we create the ‘lack’, we start off thoughts, “I need this person, this thing to make me happy.”That causes a bit of pain, that need, that lack, which when we are relieved of that thought, we return back to being ourselves, which is what we call happiness. 

This is something great to be achieved in life when you see that your happiness is inherent.  And that what you have been calling happiness is doing away with it and then restoring it, and [wrongly] attributing it to people and things.

So, if you want to enjoy a body that's your privilege.  If you want more joy, don't enjoy the body, just be joy, which you naturally are.  That's the natural state.  It's not necessary to need things.  When you see that you are the All, there's nothing lacking.  So, take your joy directly — be your Self.  That's being infinite joy. 

[Student: Would you discuss your experiences of changing your body because really, many of us are in a stage of development where we don’t quite understand this. Or maybe I should talk about myself — not about “us.”]

Lester: I saw that there's as much life in this body as there is in a piece of wood.  It’s carbohydrates, the same chemicals as a piece of wood.  That the only life in this body is ‘Me’, I put the life in the body.  I saw that the body is my consciousness, and my consciousness puts life in the body. 

When you see that you make the body, you can change it.  You can mentally change it.  Now, the body we have right now is the education, body-wise, that we have accumulated up to date.  This is my concept of a body, that's your concept of your body.  It's deeply subconscious right now — this is why it's difficult. 

This picture of the perfect body must be with more powerful than the sum total of all the pictures in the past of an imperfect body.  Right now you have to get that picture of a perfect body with a thought that's Stronger Than the sum total of all the thoughts of them perfect body of the past.  When you're able to do that, your body will immediately change to this new thought of perfect body, which is more powerful than all the thoughts.  Does that make sense?  This is the mechanics of it.

All right, now what's a powerful thought?  A powerful thought is a concentrated thought.  The more concentrated the more powerful the thought.  A concentrated thought is a thought without other extraneous thoughts present at the time.  The very best way to get a most powerful thought is to let go of yourself, your little self; let go of your feeling, I am Bob, I have this, I have that.  And say, “Yes there is only perfection, including this body.” — If you can let go of the world.

So, I say your thinking mind is your biggest obstacle.  Your mind is going on faster than the speed of light all the time, whether you're aware of it or not.  Maybe if you're not conscious of it, it's going on subconsciously.  You've trained yourself to think, think, think, think, think.  And you've got it spinning all these thoughts.  You've put a lot of importance upon this thinking in the past.  The importance of it is also subconscious. 

So, it's not easy to let go of the importance of thinking.  And these are obstacles to your letting go of thinking, which if you could let go of thinking, and just one easy thought with no other thoughts around, “I am perfect.” - Instantly you'd be perfect.  I'm talking about the body.

So, it'll take a continuous trying until you achieve it.  And someday, through an almost effortless thought, is the way it feels, because your mind is so quiet at the time, it'll happen.  And you might not even be aware of it when it happens.  You might become aware of it later on.

I just reminded of the case I heard of of a man [Brown Landone], who was in a wheelchair for so many years, which I forget how many years.  His house caught on fire and he packed two bags and ran out [of the house], and sat down on them.  It was after he sat down on the bags, he had realized what he had done.  He had forgotten that he couldn't walk.  See, when it does happen, you're accepting the positive so much that negative thing is forgotten for the time being.

So, to sum it up, the thing that will affect a perfect body is a very strong conviction, — “I am a perfect body.”  Or a concentrated thought, which is saying it in another waywhich is a thought undisturbed by other thoughts at the moment, that your mind is clear of other thoughts at the moment.  And the feeling is a thing of let go.  You just let go and let the perfection be, about the body.

Now, the best way to see this, I believe, is through the night dream.  This is like a dream.  Just like a night dream, while you're in the night dream you are there.  There are other characters.  There's a world.  There are things going on.  And while you're in it, it's real right? — While you're dreaming it.  It's only when you awaken from the dream that you say it never was.  That's what happens to this [waking day] dream — when you awaken from it, you'll see that it never was, that there never was anything but perfection all the time.

So, it's a process of awakening from this [waking day] dream.  To see this you're going to have to go through it.  I couldn't give it to you.  See, but if you will continue, you'll reach a point where you'll see that, “My gosh!  It's just a dream.”  And then you'll see that it's a dream that never was, that there have always been perfection. 

But again, you can't comprehend that until you experience it.  You might get it momentarily, many people do and get a momentary picture — the whole thing is being a dream that there never was anything but perfection.  And then, the next moment you trick yourself into the delusion again of thinking that it is real. 

There's really only one thing I want to do in the world — is to have everyone know what I know.  At the same time, it's not for me to push this on anyone.  But, if they really want it, I really want them to have it.  So, to get together.  So, I don't see it as boldness, I see it as doing the right thing. 

When you see the perfection, there's nothing to do.  And I actually, I really feel that - I am NOT a teacher.  I am never teaching.  I still can't get used to the concept of being called a teacher.  Now Francis has got me to accept it more now than ever before.  I can do it more readily, say “Oh yeah. I'm teaching.”  But in my consciousness, I'm not teaching.  How can I teach a perfected being who is omniscient?

In this top state, you perceive this world is nothing but you our very own Self, with the capital ‘S’.  There is nothing but the Self.  Or there's nothing but God.  God is all.  Everything you see is God.  And you are it.  That's the way you see the world.  Others look at it and say, “Oh, no!  It's just the opposite.”  You look at it as, “It's perfect, it's God.  It's me.  It's ‘I’.” 

So, there's no contradiction, when you're in a top state, and you to the eyes of others float through life the way they do.  But in your perception, it's not the way they see it.  And the very top state is being in that top state and in the world at the same time.  

Someday you'll laugh, and all this tremendous effort to be exactly what you are, and have always been.  That's such a joke — to go through a tremendous struggle, only to be what you are! — Always have been, always will be.  Creating all these devious means of assuming you don't have infinite joy, even giving up all joy, and then gone through a tremendous effort of trying to establish infinite joy again. — But, it's a joke.

In truth, there is no such thing as time.  Time is a variable.  Truth is that which never changes.  Perfection is always perfect — it doesn't change.  Anything that changes is imperfect, is unreal.  Time is nothing but a mental concept. 

You have a dream at night, and you cover maybe eighty years.  Now, while you're in that dream it was an eighty year period.  How much time was it to you after you awakened?  That eighty years becomes maybe minutes.  I'm just trying to bring out how time is nothing but a mental concept.  In the dream, it was eighty years, and in your waking state was just minutes.  You awakened out of this dream, you'll see there was no time.  It was always there, everything that was, or will be is here now. 

Time is like taking a movie reel and looking at one frame at a time.  And saying the frame ‘before it’ is yesterday and the frame ‘after it’ is tomorrow.  It's all there; you can look at it — “all now”.  But in ‘time’, we choose to look at one frame, and then say the one on this side is the past, and one on that side is the future.

If you look at the whole reel, you can see your entire life from beginning to end.  But mentally you choose to do it the way you’re doing. 

Time is only a mental concept, but in order to accept this you’ve got to see it yourself, you’ve got to perceive it, you’ve got to realize it.  Thinking on it deeply, you will get the realization someday — “Wow!  This is just a mental concept.”

Eternality is now.  It’s in ever present now.  There is no past, no future, is all here now. There is only a Now-ness in Truth.  But, like I said you have to perceive this yourself. 

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