Time is the horizontal dimension of life, the surface layer of reality. Then there is the vertical dimension of depth, accessible only through the portal of the present moment.

It is very hard to tell when I started to be a spiritual teacher. There was a time when occasionally somebody would come and ask me questions. One could say at that point I became a spiritual teacher, although the term did not occur to me then.

If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence. So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.

And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.

You accept whatever happens in the present moment, the only place where it can happen. Internally, you fully accept what is happening, and what is happening may include an emotion, a stream of anxiety that suddenly comes up within you.

We are in the final stages of egoic madness. Almost the whole world is fighting each other. We witnessed the final stages of egoic madness in the 20th century, and even now it still is playing itself out. It has not quite come to an end yet.

Not all thinking and all emotion are of the ego. They turn into ego only when you identify with them and they take you over completely, that is to say, when they become "I".