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Tag: fear

  • I Am That, Chapter 90 – Surrender to Your Own Self

    Questioner: I was born in the United States, and the last fourteen months I have spent in Sri Ramanashram; now I am on my way back to the States where my mother is expecting me.

    Maharaj: What are your plans?

    Q: I may qualify as a nurse, or just marry and have babies.

    M: What makes you want to marry?

    Q: Providing a spiritual home is the highest form of social service I can think of. But, of course, life may shape otherwise. I am ready for whatever comes.

    M: These fourteen months at Sri Ramanashram, what did they give you? In what way are you different from what you were when you arrived there?

    Q: I am no longer afraid. I have found some peace.

    M: What kind of peace is it? The peace of having what you want, or not wanting what you do not have?

    Q: A little of both, I believe. It was not easy at all. While the Ashram is a very peaceful place, inwardly I was in agonies.

    M: When you realise that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid.

    Q: Such realisation comes and goes with me. I have not yet reached the immutability of absolute completeness.

    M: Well, as long as you believe so, you must go on with your sadhana, to disperse the false idea of not being complete. Sadhana removes the super-impositions. When you realise yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you — you pierce the needle!

    Q: Yes, that is how I feel sometimes — indomitable. I am more than fearless — I am fearlessness itself.

    M: What made you go to the Ashram?

    Q: I had an unhappy love affair and suffered hell. Neither drink nor drugs could help me. I was groping and came across some books on Yoga. From book to book, from clue to clue — I came to Ramanashram.

    M: Were the same tragedy to happen to you again, would you suffer as much, considering your present state of mind?

    Q: Oh no, I would not let myself suffer again. I would kill myself.

    M: So you are not afraid to die!

    Q: I am afraid of dying, not of death itself. I imagine the dying process to be painful and ugly.

    M: How do you know? It need not be so. It may be beautiful and peaceful. Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment.

    Q: I am fully aware that my fear of death is due to apprehension and not knowledge.

    M: Human beings die every second, the fear and the agony of dying hangs over the world like a cloud. No wonder you too are afraid. But once you know that the body alone dies and not the continuity of memory and the sense of ‘I am’ reflected in it, you are afraid no longer.

    Q: Well, let us die and see.

    M: Give attention and you will find that birth and death are one, that life pulsates between being and non-being, and that each needs the other for completeness. You are born to die and you die to be reborn.

    Q: Does not detachment stop the process?

    M: With detachment the fear goes, but not the fact.

    Q: Shall I be compelled to be reborn? How dreadful!

    M: There is no compulsion. You get what you want. You make your own plans and you carry them out.

    Q: Do we condemn ourselves to suffer?

    M: We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

    Q: It is because I have grown in intelligence that I would not tolerate my suffering again. What is wrong with suicide?

    M: Nothing wrong, if it solves the problem. What, if it does not? Suffering caused by extraneous factors — some painful and incurable disease, or unbearable calamity — may provide some justification, but where wisdom and compassion are lacking, suicide cannot help. A foolish death means foolishness reborn. Besides there is the question of karma to consider. Endurance is usually the wisest course.

    Q: Must one endure suffering, however acute and hopeless?

    M: Endurance is one thing and helpless agony is another. Endurance is meaningful and fruitful, while agony is useless.

    Q: Why worry about karma? It takes care of itself anyhow.

    M: Most of our karma is collective. We suffer for the sins of others, as others suffer for ours. Humanity is one. Ignorance of this fact does not change it. We could have been much happier people ourselves, but for our indifference to the sufferings of others.

    Q: I find I have grown much more responsive.

    M: Good. When you say it, what do you have in mind? Yourself, as a responsive person within a female body?

    Q: There is a body and there is compassion and there is memory and a number of things and attitudes; collectively they may be called a person.

    M: Including the ‘I am’ idea?

    Q: The ‘I am’ is like a basket that holds the many things that make a person.

    M: Or, rather, it is the willow of which the basket is woven. When you think of yourself as a women, do you mean that you are a women, or that your body is described as female?

    Q: It depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel myself to be a mere centre of awareness.

    M: Or, an ocean of awareness. But are there moments when you are neither man nor women, not the accidental, occasioned by circumstances and conditions?

    Q: Yes, there are, but I feel shy to talk about it.

    M: A hint is all that one can expect. You need not say more.

    Q: Am I allowed to smoke in your presence? I know that it is not the custom to smoke before a sage and more so for a women.

    M: By all means, smoke, nobody will mind. We understand.

    Q: I feel the need of cooling down.

    M: It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of sadhana they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organise communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books — anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control.

    Q: I admit that now I want to go back and live a very active life, because I feel full of energy.

    M: You can do what you like, as long as you do not take yourself to be the body and the mind. It is not so much a question of actual giving up the body and all that goes with it, as a clear understanding that you are not the body. A sense of aloofness, of emotional non-involvement.

    Q: I know what you mean. Some four years ago I passed through a period of rejection of the physical; I would not buy myself clothes, would eat the simplest foods, sleep on bare planks. It is the acceptance of the privations that matters, not the actual discomfort. Now I have realised that welcoming life as it comes and loving all it offers, is best of it. I shall accept with glad heart whatever comes and make the best of it. If I can do nothing more than give life and true culture to a few children — good enough; though my heart goes out to every child, I cannot reach all.

    M: You are married and a mother only when you are man-women conscious. When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting, is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality.

    Q: Why do you insist on awareness as the only real? Is not the object of awareness as real, while it lasts?

    M: But it does not last! Momentary reality is secondary; it depends on the timeless.

    Q: Do you mean continuous, or permanent?

    M: There can be no continuity in existence. Continuity implies identity in past, present and future. No such identity is possible, for the very means of identification fluctuate and change. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a pattern where no pattern can be; Abandon all ideas of temporary or permanent, body or mind, man or women; what remains? What is the state of your mind when all separation is given up? I am not talking of giving up distinctions, for without them there is no manifestation.

    Q: When I do not separate, I am happily at peace. But somehow I lose my bearings again and again and begin to seek happiness in outer things. Why is my inner peace not steady, I cannot understand.

    M: Peace, after all, is also a condition of the mind.

    Q: Beyond the mind is silence. There is nothing to be said about it.

    M: Yes, all talk about silence is mere noise.

    Q: Why do we seek worldly happiness, even after having tasted one’s own natural spontaneous happiness?

    M: When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.

    Q: Is pleasure always wrong?

    M: The right state and use of the body and the mind are intensely pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. Do not try to make yourself happy, rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure, without pain, which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. Happiness is both worldly and unworldly, within and beyond all that happens. Make no distinction, don’t separate the inseparable and do not alienate yourself from life.

    Q: How well I understand you now! Before my stay at Ramanashram I was tyrannised by conscience, always sitting in judgment of myself. Now I am completely relaxed, fully accepting myself as I am. When I return to the States, I shall take life as it comes, as Bhagavan’s grace, and enjoy the bitter along with the sweet. This is one of the things I have learnt in the Ashram — to trust Bhagavan. I was not like this before. I could not trust.

    M: Trusting Bhagavan is trusting yourself. Be aware that whatever happens, happens to you, by you, through you, that you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive and you will not be afraid. Unafraid, you will not be unhappy, nor will you seek happiness.

    In the mirror of your mind all kinds of pictures appear and disappear. Knowing that they are entirely your own creations, watch them silently come and go, be alert, but not perturbed. This attitude of silent observation is the very foundation of Yoga. You see the picture, but you are not the picture.

    Q: I find that the thought of death frightens me because I do not want to be reborn. I know that none compels, yet the pressure of unsatisfied desires is overwhelming and I may not be able to resist.

    M: The question of resistance does not arise. What is born and reborn is not you. Let it happen, watch it happen.

    Q: Why then be at all concerned?

    M: But you are concerned! And you will be concerned as long as the picture clashes with your own sense of truth, love and beauty. The desire for harmony and peace is in eradicable. But once it is fulfilled, the concern ceases and physical life becomes effortless and below the level of attention. Then, even in the body you are not born. To be embodied or bodyless is the same to you. You reach a point when nothing can happen to you. Without body, you cannot be killed; without possessions you cannot be robbed; without mind, you cannot be deceived. There is no point where a desire or fear can hook on. As long as no change can happen to you, what else matters?

    Q: Somehow I do not like the idea of dying.

    M: It is because you are so young. The more you know yourself the less you are afraid. Of course, the agony of dying is never pleasant to look at, but the dying man is rarely conscious.

    Q: Does he return to consciousness?

    M: It is very much like sleep. For a time the person is out of focus and then it returns.

    Q: The same person?

    M: The person, being a creature of circumstances, necessarily changes along with them, like the flame that changes with the fuel. Only the process goes on and on, creating time and space.

    Q: Well, God will look after me. I can leave everything to Him.

    M: Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.

    Q: I am just beginning. At the start I had no faith, no trust; I was afraid to let things happen. The world seemed to be a very dangerous and inimical place. Now, at least I can talk of trusting the Guru or God. Let me grow. Don’t drive me on. Let me proceed at my own pace.

    M: By all means proceed. But you don’t. You are still stuck in the ideas of man and women, old and young, life and death. Go on, go beyond. A thing recognised is a thing transcended.

    Q: Sir, wherever I go people take it to be their duty to find faults with me and goad me on. I am fed up with this spiritual fortune making. What is wrong with my present that it should be sacrificed to a future, however glorious? You say reality is in the now. I want it. I do not want to be eternally anxious about my stature and its future. I do not want to chase the more and the better. Let me love what I have.

    M: You are quite right; do it. Only be honest — just love what you love — don’t strive and strain.

    Q: This is what I call surrender to the Guru.

    M: Why exteriorise? Surrender to your own self, of which everything is an expression.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Tony Parsons – The Open Secret – Interview

    Iain: Since we started Conscious TV a few months ago, the number one requested guest in the Consciousness section is Tony Parsons, and we’re very lucky to have Tony here this morning. Good morning, Tony.

    Tony: Hello.

    Iain: We’re just going to talk a little bit about your life, and your work, and see what happens, see where it goes. We’ve got an open space for forty-five minutes or so. So I’m just going to start, Tony, and ask you a little bit about your childhood. I know when I was reading The Open Secret last night, you were saying that when you were very young, I think three years old, you kind of… you did feel a sense of oneness, but then that went at one point.

    Tony: Yes, it’s what happens for most people, initially, as far as this perception is concerned. As a very young child, a tiny child in arms, really, there is just beingness, there is no sense of identity at all. And then what happens with most people is that beingness, which doesn’t identify with anything, suddenly recognises another identity. So suddenly you get an identity – say, the mother – appears. And directly that the mother appears, there’s a sudden sense that there’s someone here.

    Iain: So that’s like with separation emerging in a way.

    Tony: That’s the beginning of separation.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: It’s not a thought – it’s just a sudden sense that there is now someone else in this beingness, in this wholeness. And when there’s someone else in this wholeness, suddenly there’s someone here, and this is the first identification. And that is the beginning of what I call the dream of individuality, where that identification takes place. And then there’s a sudden contraction of energy which makes that child think that they live in a body and everything that’s happening outside them is something else. So that from then on there’s separation, and directly there is separation, there is seeking for wholeness again.

    Iain: So you’re trying to find what you had and in one way you lost.

    Tony: Well, you didn’t really have it; no one has wholeness, there is just wholeness…

    Iain: I understand, yes.

    Tony: …and what seems to happen is that, in some way or other, there’s a sense of separation from the wholeness, and we grow up in a world full of individuals who actually in the end feel separate from wholeness.

    Iain: And in this, in all of this, although we’re not necessarily aware of it, there’s this feeling of this is not quite it…

    Tony: Absolutely.

    Iain: …and that’s where seeking starts from.

    Tony: Absolutely.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: There’s a sense of having lost something and there’s a sense that the individual has to find it. And that’s the misconception.

    Iain: Yes. But you actually do remember this, this time when you were two or three years old, to some extent, and that’s great because in a way it’s a reference point that’s maybe helpful.

    Tony: Certainly I can remember, actually not as three years old but more of seven years old, when I was then a person. I still felt that everything that was happening was somehow saying something other than me being separate. There was something that was being said in everything, that was inviting me to see that there wasn’t any separation. It was just a sense; I couldn’t at that time, you know, conceptualise it in the way I just have. But there certainly was a sense that, if there was a god (and, of course, as a tiny child you think there’s a god), if there was a god and he loved me, then he would be talking to me in every way – in every way: through my body, through everything that was out there. It was just an idea, it was just a sense of something.

    Iain: Right. And I know also something I read was that when you were in your teens you investigated Christianity…

    Tony: Yes.

    Iain: …and you were drawn to that for a time.

    Tony: Yes, I certainly was then a seeker like everyone else. So I looked at Christianity as one possibility… uh …of the answer to what I was looking for, and spent quite some time looking at that possibility. And then I just discarded it because somehow, for me, it was still saying that, in some way or other, I had to become worthy to be whole.

    Iain: There was a whole baggage attached to that.

    Tony: Yes, there was a whole baggage and lessons and teachings about how I should become worthy to become everything, or to become whole.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: In the end it just didn’t resonate for me, it just didn’t mean anything. So I then looked at other things.

    Iain: What kind of other things did you look at?

    Tony: Gurdjieff, Osho…

    Iain: This was still in your teens or this was later on?

    Tony: Well, Osho was later on… I looked at Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, all of that lot…

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: I was looking here and there… at various other different ideas about this…

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: …and then later on, I left my life, my previous life, and went to the Osho commune for about three years. But near the end of that three years, I saw that, in a way, I was still being given a list, a prescription, about how to get from here to there.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: You know, go to therapy, meditate, all the different things that dear old Osho, bless his heart, in a way, was recommending. So then again, I knew… There was something about that that just didn’t ring a bell.

    Iain: So when you were around twenty-one… I think I read somewhere that one day you were walking in a park in Balham in South London, and you said something to God, “Show me your face…”

    Tony: Well, there was… yes… there was that intensity, somewhere, in me, and… I was walking across a park and, although at the time I thought I was doing it, in fact there was a noticing that every footstep was uniquely different and never would be there again. That was all that came into me – I wasn’t doing that; there was just an idea or a sense that everything was totally new and unique. And suddenly, I wasn’t there any more. So there was Tony Parsons – and there was suddenly nothing. There was no Tony Parsons – there was nothing. No experience of it, there was no experiencer, there was just nothing. Bang!

    Iain: Right.

    Tony: Or absolute love, if you want… [laughing]! And then I walked out of the other side and I was still a seeker, I was still seeking, and what I now wanted was that.

    Iain: You wanted to get back to that feeling.

    Tony: I wanted to get back to that and, although I couldn’t know it, I went on, in various other ways, to try and really in a way remember, or grasp, at that which couldn’t be grasped.

    Iain: So it was like a reference point somehow, is that right?

    Tony: I don’t know about a reference point, I think a lot of people have glimpses of oneness, let’s call it, or wholeness, and then there’s something that’s recognised there. When they come out of the other side of that, they then think that they can reclaim that happening and make it their own.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: I also tried to do that. And then much later on, what actually happened was that there was an individual seeker… looking for this – and then suddenly there just [pause] wasn’t.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: It was over, there was no individual seeker. And what came out of that was The Open Secret. And also, I have to say, the realisation that the whole idea that there is something called an individual seeker that has to find something else called enlightenment is totally misconceived.

    Iain: And how did this realisation happen? What were the circumstances? Were you looking more intensely than usual?

    Tony: No, the circumstance was that I wasn’t anything any more, there was no individual. What I call liberation happened. And when that liberation happened, which was the end of there being any one, any individual seeker, simply collapsed. And there was nothing left. We can talk about that in a minute…

    Iain: But what I’m particularly interested in is, as an individual, beforehand, were you looking particularly intensely to try and find something? Or was it kind of… Some people say they give up and something happens. What was going on with you as an individual?

    Tony: OK, so as an individual, about a year before this happened, I wrote a great big thick book which I never published, which was full of recommendations and prescriptions.

    Iain: OK.

    Tony: It was really talking in the same language. “I’m an individual and maybe I can find this and maybe you can find this…” And then I suddenly realised, like with the Osho thing and the Christianity thing, that the whole thing was ridiculous. It wasn’t it, that wasn’t it, that wasn’t the answer. So I threw the book away and went and played golf [laughing]! There was no sense, you know, any more, that what I thought could be sought could be found by me.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: Then suddenly, in the middle of the night, a sentence came to me and I rushed downstairs and a sentence seemed to be written by no one.

    Iain: And what did no one write down? What were the sentences?

    Tony: It’s on page four of The Open Secret, it’s one paragraph… But it was the basis of The Open Secret and, of course, it was a communication that was coming out of no one.

    Iain: Right.

    Tony: So, The Open Secret… I didn’t write The Open Secret… I don’t give meetings – they are what’s happening. There’s no one sitting here – this is what’s happening.

    Iain: That is very hard for someone to grasp.

    Tony: OK. It’s not hard, it’s not difficult – it’s impossible. As far as the individual is concerned, there’s no way that the individual can even conceive the idea that there is no individuality. It’s impossible. It can’t happen because the nature of individuality is to be separate and seek. So it’s always moving forward, it’s always moving, looking for something – what’s next, what’s next, where can I get to? But what hasn’t been realised by the individual is that there never was anything lost. The dilemma for the individual is not that the individual can’t get what it wants – the dilemma is apparent individuality.

    Iain: [nodding] OK.

    Tony: You know, this message is a complete revolution round the other way from the normally accepted and virtually unquestioned belief that “I can find fulfilment”.

    Iain: Well, it is… and … it’s tough. I use the word ‘tough’ – you use the word ‘impossible’. Because the more intelligent members of the human race realise something is missing, they realise something is not quite right, and we all go through this, you know… I think you did the same – you were quite successful in your business. You make some money, you have a relationship, maybe some people have children… And yet whatever happens, after a time, there’s still this feeling, “This isn’t it”. And so some people just try and… Well, they drink a little bit too much or whatever, and they just put it under the carpet. Other people who may be a little bit more, I would say intelligent, and…

    Tony: …seems so, yes.

    Iain: …yes, if they think, “Well, this isn’t quite right – I’m going to do something about this”. Because our society is very much a doing society…

    Tony: Mmm!

    Iain: …and it is that ultimate dilemma that they’re in a way being ‘intelligent’, and yet it doesn’t work.

    Tony: No, of course it doesn’t work, because they’re trying to do something and get to something.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: What The Open Secret is saying is there is nowhere to get to and, of course, more importantly, there is no one to get there. The whole idea that there’s such a thing as individual free-will and choice is totally exposed as a fallacy.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: But it’s the most difficult message of all. In my recent homepage on the website, there’s nothing for sale. There’s nothing for the individual. I would go so far as to say that the individual actually doesn’t want this, because the individual fears most its own absence.

    Iain: But something happens around you, because we’ve had other people on Conscious TV and I’ve also talked to people, too, who haven’t been on Conscious TV, and they’ve said the same thing. They go to your meetings and some of them leave and something seems to have really happened. And some even say, “Well, I went to a meeting with Tony and I never left the meeting”. That’s what they say, and I think, “Well, it’s not just one person – it’s more than one person…”

    Tony: Ah yes, it’s happening a great deal. You see, really there is a constant and uncompromising exposure of the illusion of the separate individual and the dilemma of its hopelessness. The thing that happens is resonance. It’s not conceptual; this message isn’t about words or ideas. Something resonates, something is remembered. What is remembered is the beingness of child-like wonder.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: And so what drops away is the sense of something that seems to be separate.

    Iain: So let me just try.

    Tony: [laughter]

    Iain: You’ll probably just shoot this down but…

    Tony: [laughter]

    Iain: …but is it a possibility that something is vibrating in you, something latent is vibrating in someone else and something kind of gets activated?
    Tony: Yes, OK, so it isn’t in me. The power of the meetings is that there’s no one there, in a sense – therefore there’s no one who has an agenda to feed the seekers’ needs, or give them answers, or try to change their belief systems. These meetings are more about a contracted energy meeting boundlessness.

    Iain: Boundlessness.

    Tony: So, the contracted energy of individuality, which is totally embodied, it’s not just an idea, or a thought, or a belief. Individuality and separation is a totally embodied feeling of being restricted. People walk into the room and there’s a sense of whomph!

    Iain: And this whomph is something sitting there? Where’s the whomph happening?

    Tony: No, no, no. This energy has nothing at all to do with anybody, it is absolutely impersonal.

    Iain: It’s just… I have to use these words – like you, I have no other way of addressing it… For you it’s just normal somehow that the whomph is always there…

    Tony: Yes, it’s there already, in a sense; everything is new, everything is boundless already. There’s huge inspiration in the room often. And new people who come walk out and hate it, because I’m suggesting that they have no free-will, but a lot of the audience are inspired. “Wow!” It’s amazing. [Both laugh] Gorgeous, it’s just gorgeous!

    Iain: So what’s your feeling about the whole Osho thing now?

    Tony: Oh, as far as I’m concerned now, there are two totally different ways of looking at it… there are two totally different communications, really. The classically normal communication is that there is an individual who is separate and the individual can find what it’s looking for, i.e. enlightenment, liberation, whatever you like, the kingdom of heaven if you want. And that is completely divorced from what is being spoken of in The Open Secret. And not only The Open Secret: there are other people, very few, who are communicating this revolutionary message that, in fact, there is no one, there is no individual, and there is nothing that can be done.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: It isn’t then saying that you can’t do anything because then it would be implying that there’s a ‘you’ there that can’t do anything. It is saying that there is nothing that needs to be done, because everything already is whole. But that’s largely conceptual, you know. I mean, some people say, “Oh, the ‘I’ is just a thought, or separation is just a belief so, if you see through it then, it’ll vanish”. That’s talking about the symptom, the thought of being separate, as a symptom of being separate. But being separate is really an embodied feeling that makes people want, long for, something else. It’s a longing, it’s a sense of loss. So it’s a very energetically held feeling and somewhere, somehow, people come and just explode out of it.

    Iain: And the explosion – is that the start of something, or the end of something? How do you…?

    Tony: It is about the loss of an artificial construct. The energy of boundlessness is there in the meeting, but the interesting thing is that, quite often, that explosion takes place afterwards.

    Iain: So they get back to their normal environment and something happens.

    Tony: We talk to a lot of people this is happening to and, quite often, it’s after the meeting. Richard, sitting in a train on Charing Cross Station…

    Iain: Richard Sylvester, yes.

    Tony: …just after a meeting. It’s just strange, I don’t know, but it can happen in a meeting. And the other thing that does happen in a meeting is a lot of laughter, a huge amount of laughter about how strange this is now. People laugh at themselves chasing around for years meditating and opening their chakras and forgiving their mother.

    Iain: Yes, well, it’s almost like an apprenticeship, in some ways, for a lot of people. They kind of try all of these things… And you find it doesn’t work, but somehow you need to try it.

    Tony: It certainly is what happens. I don’t think anybody needs to try anything, in another sense, but that is what seems to happen. Mind you, I have to say that I know, and maybe you do, that there are others who never seek and this happens to them.

    Iain: This guy John Wren-Lewis, who’s an English guy – he died recently. He was living in Australia…

    Tony: Mmm…

    Iain: …he did some research, something happened to him, he wasn’t a seeker and he… umm… basically took a poisoned sweet on a bus in Thailand. He went unconscious, was taken to hospital, almost died but not quite – and when he woke up his life was completely different. I read on the web that he did some research, looking for people who had had a similar thing happen to them; and he found that seventy-five per cent of the people had done nothing, as he had done nothing. It just happened.

    Tony: Yes. We had a publican friend in Ireland – we go to Dublin – who had no more interest in this than fly in the air, and he was walking along one day and suddenly the whole thing was over… And he vanished and there was just everything…

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: …and he got in touch with the doctor who said to him, “Oh, that’s Buddhism!” [Laughter] And he went to…

    Iain: Really, the doctor said that?

    Tony: Yes! Well, it’s quite good in a way, because that’s the nearest he could get to it. And then he went to a Buddhist meeting and no, that isn’t it, and he went to a few others, and it just so happened that he heard about me being in Dublin and he came in and sat down and “That’s it!”

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: Bang! But he had no interest previously.

    Iain: You know, these kinds of thing on the personal really fascinate me, and one of the last interviews I did a few days ago for Conscious TV was a guy called Benjamin Zephaniah.

    Tony: Right.

    Iain: Now he’s basically a Rastafarian poet, kind of a punk poet. I met him actually at a… We’re both involved with an organisation called the Prison Phoenix Trust, which helps supply teachers of yoga and meditation to prisons, and he’s one of their patrons. And he was telling me his life story and he was saying that he was brought up in Birmingham and he was in a gang. He got to the point he was sleeping with a gun underneath his pillow at night. And then one morning he woke up and had a realisation, “If I do this for one more day I’m either going to be dead or in prison”.

    Tony: Mmm…

    Iain: He’d already been in prison once and in prison again… So he just left everything and went to London and made a living out of his poetry. I don’t think he would necessarily say there was no one there, or realisation, but it was a kind of realisation… It just happened like that. He woke up, his whole life changed. And that for me is just…

    Tony: OK, as far as I’m concerned he didn’t, you know… It wasn’t him having the realisation – the realisation happened, it’s just the… [gesticulating]

    Iain: I think you’re absolutely right. That’s right. Not necessarily the level of oneness, but something significant happened; it happened in a moment – just woke up and he… just changed his life. And I think more and more that’s available to people. And I suppose in a way there has to be an element of courage. Is that right or am I…?

    Tony: No, as far as I’m concerned there doesn’t have to be anything. There are no circumstances that bring this about and there’s no state a person has to be in. You can be in a cave in the Himalayas eating rice or lying in the gutter pissed out of your mind, and this will happen.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: Because it has nothing to do with you [laughing]!

    Iain: And there’s no going back – it’s, like, final.

    Tony: Oh, totally, totally final. Liberation, so-called liberation… there is no such thing, but it’s a word we use. In liberation it is the end of something that was never happening; it’s the end of an illusion. And it can’t come back because there’s nothing it can come back to. It’s the end.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: And it can’t be described in a sense. The only way I can describe what this is, is that there’s just what’s happening. There’s no one that anything is happening to. Everybody watching this might be sitting on a chair watching it, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. But when they watch it, it’s possible to suddenly realise that there isn’t anybody sitting on a chair; all there is, is sitting on a chair. It’s as simple as that. It’s totally simple, and for the individual it’s very frightening.

    Iain: So are you saying there can be anxiety after it happens? Or are you talking about an individual who’s watching this happen with someone else, or are you talking about…?

    Tony: No, what I’m talking about is the proposal that liberation is about the absence of the individual, it’s the end of individuality. The idea of ending their… in a way of everything they think they are, is frightening. But the strange thing is that all it is the end of is a total illusion. It’s just like a piece of smoke that’s there that you really believe in and then suddenly it’s not there. And life just goes on. Life obviously goes on. This thing drives a car and walks in here and talks, you know. Everything goes on in freefall, it’s just total freefall.

    I think the other thing that’s frightening is people believe that they are the managing directors of their lives, that they can control their lives. After there is no one, it’s realised that there isn’t any control. That’s frightening also. “I will lose control! What will happen if I’m not here?” Well, what happens is life [laughing]! It was always like that! [laughter]

    Iain: So what happens to your personality?

    Tony: Well, as far as the character is concerned, the physiology and the neurology of the actual character – let’s call it a character – there’s no one in there. The body, the person, that goes on and is now free to even be more of a personality or a character, because there’s nothing in there; there’s nothing in there judging it. There’s no little ‘me’ saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t talk like that, or be like that”. What we see with people is they become more so in the colour of them, in the taste of them, in the way they speak, in their bodies. You can see it in their bodies, you know. But there’s no one in there doing that.

    Iain: But the personality, it’s just a programme basically…

    Tony: Totally.

    Iain: …where you’ve got…

    Tony: It’s programmed. The brain is the most amazing instrument which actually correlates and works out everything, what we are… what you and I are doing. There isn’t anybody doing this – it’s the brain doing this. In other words, in the end being is simply waving its arms around and appearing to be a person.

    Iain: But the personality as we kind of know it, it’s formed by your experience (especially young experiences when you’re three, four, five years old or whatever) which forms the basis of everything that happens, which somehow shapes you. And what you’re saying is, that keeps running as the personality.

    Tony: Yes.

    Iain: Now what about the gross side of the personality?

    Tony: The neurotic drive to find oneness simply falls away, and then there’s something that’s very harmonious there, that was there anyway. There isn’t anybody in the world who isn’t actually seeking oneness in the end. What we see in the manifestation is simply the longing to come home. All desire is a longing to come home. That falls away and anything that’s around that that’s neurotic falls away. But the character still goes on: you know, habits, preferences, still happen, but they aren’t anybody’s. It’s the brain functioning in the world.

    Iain: And how about ‘bad habits’? Do they go away?

    Tony: So when that sense of loss isn’t there any more there wouldn’t be a wish to drink a lot or smoke a lot? The greatest addiction of all, of course, is ‘me’.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: [laughter]

    Iain: You’ve got a great laugh.

    Tony: [laughter]

    Iain: I’ve never met you before, I’ve never seen you before, it’s a great laugh…

    Tony: [laughter]

    Iain: It’s infectious! But this point really interests me so I’m going to persevere…

    Tony: Yes!

    Iain: …if that’s OK. So, let’s say, somebody… Let’s take the example I used of this guy Benjamin. OK, he had his realisation with the gun. Now let’s say he hadn’t had that at that point, and he was in a situation and he used the gun or whatever, or was thinking of using the gun. After whatever happened to you…

    Tony: Liberation, let’s call it…

    Iain: After liberation happens, is he still capable of killing somebody?

    Tony: It’s possible – but there isn’t anybody in there that would do that. The whole illusion that we, that the identity, individualism, is real is a fallacy. So there isn’t anybody that chooses to do anything. Of course, the whole body-mind, the whole physiology, acts in the way it does and in character. But the whole idea that anybody has ever chosen to do anything falls apart. But you can’t then say that after liberation this will happen and that won’t.

    Iain: No, I understand that, but I’m looking for an understanding of how the personality refines. That’s the word I’m using – it wasn’t your word – but you were kind of inferring that the gross, the addiction, drops away. And wouldn’t things like using a gun, or violence, wouldn’t that drop away as an addiction because that’s a grossness?

    Tony: It could do, but I can’t say it will.

    Iain: No, no, I understand that.

    Tony: Unconditional love embraces everything: tyranny, ugliness, discomfort. After liberation, discomfort still happens, you know – it isn’t suddenly walking in Elysium fields in absolute heaven. There’s nobody walking – it’s just what happens. And that can include pain, discomfort, all those things happen. So there aren’t any rules. You can’t say that liberation is about what we think of as goodness.

    Iain: OK. And would you in your space – that’s the nearest I can get in my language to where you are – would you experience fear and anxiety sometimes?

    Tony: I wouldn’t experience fear, but fear happens.

    Iain: OK.

    Tony: So there’s nobody any more experiencing anything, there’s just what happens and that can include fear.

    Iain: And that fear is happening in your personality presumably?

    Tony: It’s just happening, it’s a feeling. I mean, in the end fear is a very simple thing: it’s just a feeling in the body.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: It’s a sense of something hot, if you like, which happens. But of course, now it’s not happening to anyone, there’s nobody taking delivery of it, there’s nobody taking fear home to tea.

    Iain: Right, so it’s not somebody thinking…

    Tony: Thinking still happens after liberation…

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: …but there’s no one listening.

    Iain: OK, so the fear can’t really anchor itself?

    Tony: No. There’s nothing to anchor itself onto. It falls back out into nothing. Everything comes out of nothing and falls back into it.

    Iain: OK.

    Tony: It’s like after liberation there’s no ‘me’, therefore there’s no stickiness – that’s one way I put it. There’s just life and there’s nothing getting in the way or identifying.

    Iain: Do you dream?

    Tony: Oh yes. Well, I don’t – but dreaming happens.

    Iain: It happens…

    Tony: I’m sorry to be…

    Iain: No it’s all right, I understand what you’re saying.

    Tony: …but dreaming happens.

    Iain: Yes, and are they interesting dreams?

    Tony: Oh, well… it doesn’t really matter, but the dreams after liberation are much more ordinary than they were before.

    Iain: They are ordinary.

    Tony: Ordinary.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: I mean this is about something that is totally simple and ordinary. This is absolutely about something that’s utterly simple and ordinary and absolutely – stunning. Because you see, there isn’t anything any more that’s making calculations about what’s happening; there’s nothing that’s looking at you and saying to itself, “Now how can I manipulate the situation with this person over there?” That’s all gone. Everything that arises is new. It’s total living in newness. It’s like living in in-loveness. Because in love, falling in love, has a very similar quality to this, because falling in love, in a sense, is beyond the person; it’s about being in love with love.

    Iain: You talk about unrequited love…

    Tony: Yes.

    Iain: …on the front page of your website.

    Tony: Yes, my sense is that, you know, we’re fascinated by unrequited love, the story of it, because in a sense it points to what we’re really looking for, which we can’t know and have, which is ultimate, absolute, unconditional love. We can’t know that and we’re fascinated by the whole story of not being able to find our love in someone else, because somewhere subtly we absolutely know that the love we really long for is ultimately unknowable.

    But what’s amazing about that love is that it’s here in this room right now. That ultimate love is singing… in our bodies, in everything. It’s singing the song that the individual can’t hear, because the individual’s looking for it… Where is it? It’s here, it’s this!

    Do you know, one of the loveliest things that happens – and many, many people this is happening to – I get a lot of phone calls from people saying, “Do you know, I’ve been a seeker, I’ve looked for this, I’ve looked for that, I’ve looked for… about… bliss… Now this has happened! What’s realised is that what I was looking for has never left me – it was always this.”

    Iain: Yes, actually that touches me when you say that. Yes, I can feel that.

    Tony: That’s it too, that’s this too, but it’s there right now. You don’t have to be anything, or become anything for it. It’s just waiting for you to give up looking for it. [laughter] It’s just sitting there loving you and loving everything… amazing… I mean, I’m still stunned by it, you can probably tell [laughing]! I think it’s the most amazing message there is. It’s so simple – and immediate.

    Iain: You see, there’s not a lot of support for what you’re saying in one way. You look at the whole media thing at the moment where we’re October – is it? – November two thousand and …eight…

    Tony: Eight.

    Iain: I almost forgot for a minute! Umm, and everything just seems so unstable.

    Tony: Oh yes.

    Iain: The banks nearly collapsed a few weeks ago and there were terrible problems somewhere in Africa on the news, where people were rioting and there was no food and you feel sorry for them. Does that – when you watch the news on TV and you see people suffering – does that somehow affect Tony?

    Tony: Well, there is no Tony, but what he’s seeing is what’s happening. Of course, the other thing that’s amazing about this… I mean, I meet people who think they’re individuals who are suffering much more than Uganda, or wherever it is, or the Congo…

    Iain: Congo, yes.

    Tony: …but in a sense what’s happening is they feel they’re suffering and they think that suffering is happening to them. But when, from this point of view, it is seen that there’s no one there that it’s happening to, that’s absolute love. And in some way or other, that which thinks it’s suffering senses that. There’s nobody who suffers – there’s just suffering.

    Iain: Yes, I guess so.

    Tony: But I mean, it’s easy to say that; those are just words.

    Iain: Yes, I know those people, they don’t have… they don’t have an overview.

    Tony: Oh, no, no, no. It would be totally inappropriate for me to go to the Congo and say there’s no one there. But in answer to your question…

    Iain: Yes…

    Tony: …that’s the… that’s the… that’s the leap. [laughter]

    Iain: Is there hope for humanity?

    Tony: There doesn’t have to be, because everything that’s happening is simply the expression of wholeness. Wholeness isn’t interested in somehow saving this earth, or anybody becoming enlightened, because seeking and suffering is wholeness.

    Iain: On the other hand, it seems that what wholeness may be doing – I know you’ll say that wholeness doesn’t do anything – but in my terms what is maybe happening is that it’s becoming so obvious to humanity on a global scale that this whole set of rules we’ve got doesn’t work any more.

    Tony: No.

    Iain: The whole thing of consumerism and debt is just happening more and more.

    Tony: Yes.

    Tony: It’s just such an obvious message and, for many people, it’s a devastating message.

    Tony: Yes.

    Iain: Because they don’t really know anything else.

    Tony: No.

    Iain: Especially the United States, it’s just devastating for them.

    Tony: Oh, totally. There’s a certain investment in the individual. The other fascinating thing about this message is that neuroscientists are coming to the same conclusion… working with the brain… And they are coming to the conclusion very strongly – although you don’t hear much about it, of course – that there is no such thing as an individual with free-will and choice.

    Iain: Yes.

    Tony: That the whole thing is run in here [gesticulating around head] from that point of view. I mean, they don’t talk about wholeness, of course …but it’s interesting.

    Iain: I know… Again, we had someone sitting on that chair two or three months ago – a woman called Manjir. And she’s written a book called Punk Science, and she’s a medical doctor but she’s done a lot of physics. And she was saying – and I have heard this before – that basically what happens is when you look inside and you’re trying to find the centre of something, actually you never find anything. You look into it and magnify, magnify…

    Tony: Yes.

    Iain: …and all they’ve ever found so far – I think it’s string theory – is a suggestion that something may have been there. They don’t find, scientifically, anything tangible.

    Tony: No.

    Iain: …and the other thing she was saying, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that… It’s like this holographic principle that every tiny whatever it is, even if there’s nothing there, every tiny thing – and she had a phrase for this, I forget what it was – contains everything.

    Tony: Yes, it does, because you see what’s fascinating is that, for instance, so far the quark is supposed to be one of the smallest things that scientists have discovered. What they discover to their alarm is that it both is, and isn’t. It isn’t that it is and then isn’t; it actually is and isn’t. [laughter] So there’s nothing that’s real or unreal.

    Iain: Yes, and we’re all apparently full of black holes, different sizes. And the other thing was, which just blew my mind, that coming from a scientific point of view – and you may disagree with this – all we experience is four percent of reality. There’s another ninety-six percent on different levels of reality that we just do not experience, happening at the same time.

    Tony: No, that is so. But in another sense, for me, it is that, as a separate individual, nothing is seen as it really is because it’s seen through like clingfilm or a veil. The individual sees from the point of view of being separate and something here looking at something else. After liberation that completely collapses and everything is simply what it is. Absolutely what it is. Simply as it is.

    Iain: Yes. And do you see other dimensions, things like that?

    Tony: There’s no need to see other dimensions, or anything grand, or strange. This is a miracle… it’s a miracle, you know! Why bother? Well, why would you if there’s only in-loveness with this?

    Iain: Again I’ve highlighted this thing, “In essence what is sought is love”, which you kind of talked about. And if you had a message – I know that in a way you don’t have a message because there’s no one to have a message – but that is the important thing…

    Tony: You could call it wholeness, absolute, unconditional love – they’re all words. But that’s basically what we long for: the ultimate love that we absolutely know, we absolutely remember as a tiny child in arms. We’re just trying to return to child-like wonder.

    Iain: Yes. That’s how children…

    Tony: Yes, and that’s what we sense in children, just this!

    Iain: And that’s happening with you moment to moment?

    Tony: Well, it’s just happening.

    Iain: Just happening. Yes.

    Iain: It sounds amazing!

    Tony: [laughing] It’s amazing for no one.

    Iain: [nodding] OK Tony, thanks very much for coming along to Conscious TV.

    Tony: Thank you, thank you.

     

    Tony Parsons

  • What is relationship?

    WHAT DO YOU mean by relationship – relationship to what or between whom? What is relationship?
    Relationship is the state. It is a noun. Look it up in the dictionary. It will define relationship as “the state of being related.” It doesn’t say to what. Relationship is not in motion, it is not looking, it is not craving. It exists in absolute stillness without any source and without any object. Relationship is not to anyone or anything; it is not between any two. The mysterious alchemy of that stillness is this— by not being related “to” or “between,” relationship becomes the expression of everything. Relationship is not to totality, it is totality. This is why so many mystics have discovered that the limitation of worship is that they must maintain the separation from that which they love.

    Then what do you mean by the addiction of separation?

    The mystic is tempted by his love for God, even after he discovers that maintaining that duality separates him from the totality, which, of course, is the manifest God. So the poor mystic is in a real dilemma. He’s been fasting and praying and doing all kinds of austerities for all these years. He loves his God with all his heart. He prays to God every hour of every day. God returns his worship with words of love. One day he asks God for insight into the nature of the absolute and the boundaryless nature of life is revealed to him. God shows the mystic that the God he worships is the mind’s projection. God shows the mystic that there is no mystic who worships, and no God to be worshiped. There is no separation. There is no difference. The mystic is in rapture. He calls to God his thanks, his praise, his everlasting love. But, there is only silence in response.

    In the mystic’s realization of nonduality God has vanished.
    So, after a very long night of consideration of the unity of life, the mystic calls to God once more. This time he asks for one last boon. The mystic asks God to take away the knowledge of that true nature of life and to return as his object of love.
    Of course the boon is granted. The mystic once again can worship his God. He soon forgets the totality.
    In our lives we have built our social constructions around our separation. These are the concepts through which we organize and communicate our reality. We have forgotten the totality of our existence, and yet the pain of our lives, the gnawing emptiness, and the compulsion to fill that emptiness, are reminders that there is something beyond separation. But we can never remain still enough to see what is beyond. We can never quiet our minds or our lives. We are addicted to separation.

    You talk about the fear of the unknown being the projection of the memory of our failures, our hurts, our anxieties. Don’t we learn from our past experiences? Isn’t there a difference between irrational fear and knowing that when I touch a hot pan I am going to get burned?

    We are not talking about knowing not to touch a hot pan. This is information, not fear. We are not even talking about the caution of touching a pan because it may be hot. This is intelligence.
    We are talking about what the mind does with this information as it searches endlessly, relentlessly, for the action that will have no possibility of touching a hot pan. We are talking about the mind that projects the possibility of a hot pan everywhere.
    The mind has developed as an instrument of survival. It calculates the likelihood of survival in each action. This worked well thousands of years ago on the savannah. There we had to get to the tree with the fruit before the lion got to us. Our minds calculated. The good minds made it. The not-so-good minds got gobbled up by the lions. The good minds reproduced and got better.
    Now this mind has developed into a monster. It cannot stop calculating whether or not the lions are going to eat us. Of course, there are no lions. There are automobiles going through intersections, checkbooks to balance, phones to answer, planes crashing, MTV, fast food— in short, an accelerated world where we don’t know friend from foe. We can’t tell where the lions are. We can’t tell where the pans are, let alone which are hot. Our minds are trying to calculate our survival under the crushing weight of information overload.
    Faced with this overload the mind projects danger everywhere. It becomes neurotic. It lives in fear. It no longer knows what it fears. It doesn’t make any difference. Fear ensures survival, and survival is the mind’s game.

    You say that our biggest fear is the fear of death. Is that true for very religious people who see death as the passage to eternal life and happiness or whatever their beliefs may describe?

    For those, the fear is the loss of their belief system. The identification with their beliefs has become so strong that the loss of the belief system is their death. Fear of death is not just the fear of the death of the body but rather loss of the identification with a center.
    For most of us that identification is primarily with our body, and so death of the body is the threat. But for some there is primary identification with ideology. And for many the religious belief is an unexamined conditioning or a backup plan to a life lived entirely materialistically.

    Harrison, Steven.
    Being One: Finding Our Self in Relationship

  • The only hope

    In our ignorance we are innocent; in our actions we are guilty. We sin without knowing and suffer with out understanding. Our only hope: to stop, to look, to understand and to get out of the traps of memory. For memory feeds imagination and imagination generates desire and fear.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • A moment of jubilation

    For me the moment of death will be a moment of jubilation, not of fear. I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Religion

    Religion is chiefly the understanding that you are a part of the totality. Being a separate individual is the entire problem. All sensuality, all search for knowledge, all search for pleasure, is related to this problem. You have created a sense of duality by separating yourself from the totality.

    You have a sense of self-identity that makes you anxious. The sense of separate existence is a reflection in a separate body of the one reality. In this reflection the unlimited and the limited are confused and taken to be the same. To undo this confusion is the purpose of yoga.

    All the scriptures are of no use.

    The scriptures are for the ignorant, not for the one of knowledge. Whatever can be told through words has no permanence. It can be compared to a dream. The religions of the world are the games of the ignorant.

    The traditional scriptures are unable to locate the Absolute, which is beyond the grasp of the Vedas, because it is not conceptual. There are many volumes written about spirituality which do not destroy your concepts but add to them. All the volumes do not tell you what you are.

    Spiritual books help in dispelling ignorance. They are useful in the beginning, but become a hindrance in the end. One must know when to discard them. Whatever you think of as spiritual knowledge was gained in the realm of consciousness. Such knowledge is merely a burden upon your head and is going to add more misery. It is nothing more than spiritual jargon.

    In scriptures there are additions by unauthorized writers. Most of them are ignorant people, whose books would have been ignored in the normal course. Hence, these writers indicated the names of Vyasa etc, as the author, for easy acceptance by people. Also there are very few who question the content of the scriptures. They are taken for granted as the Truth. Even if it is not the Truth, it does not matter. For the common man spirituality comes last in their list of priorities. There are other important matters, like supply of food, rising prices, political instability etc, which need immediate attention. Spirituality can wait until one gets very old. Hence, as years pass, doubtful untruth gets established as the Truth.

    The scriptures are concepts of poets. They offer bribes as well as they threaten.

    There are so many religions. Even if people lose their lives, they will not accept anyone else’s religion. The basis of it is loyalty to a concept. Consensus means identification with concepts. But are wakefulness, sleep, hunger and thirst different for different religions? Why are there so many religions?… one likes one’s own concepts and wants others to follow them. If this succeeds one gets followers. This leads to creeds and religions. Those who teach and those who learn… all pass away. Religion is formed by the concepts of their followers, nothing else.

    Many people study Yoga, which is the joining of knowledge and ignorance. Each seeker accepts, or invents, a method which suits him, applies it to himself with some earnestness and effort, obtains results according to his temperament and expectations, casts them into a mould of words, builds them into a system, establishes a tradition, and begins to admit others into his ‘School of Yoga’. It is all built on memory and imagination. No such school is valueless, nor indispensable; in each one can progress up to the point… when all desire for progress must be abandoned, to make further progress possible. Then all schools are given up, all effort ceases. In solitude and darkness the last step is made, which ends ignorance and fear forever.

    The ignorant follow religious practices for the satisfaction of following a tradition, and also for entertainment. Everybody has directly or indirectly taken initiation as per the religion to which he or she belongs. It is important to know that principle which takes the initiation. It is necessary to find out the nature of that principle.

    Religions have come down through traditions. Is there a religion without dogma? Even a jnani has to follow traditions until a certain stage has been crossed.

    Religions are based on concepts and emotions. Those emotions are so violent and absorbing that people have immolated themselves. Those who have identified themselves with Jesus Christ have not realized that unless individuality is given up Reality can never manifest itself. One individual has identified with another individual.

    Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what man believes, watch how he acts. For most people service of their bodies and their minds is their religion. They have their religious ideas, but do not act on them. They play with them, they are often very fond of them, but they will not act on them.

    Spirituality is to realize the absolute meaning of your beingness, not the meaning of what is seen and felt.

    All the prophets, creeds, religions, etc, are not real… they are only the play of this consciousness.

    Spirituality is nothing more than understanding this play of consciousness. The ultimate religion is Self-realization. The religions based upon the bodily behaviour of human beings take them to their downfall. The highest religion means to live with the conviction that we are pure consciousness. Liberation means to be free… then one is not affected by the bondage of mind, intellect and ego. Only the religion of one’s own Self will last to the end.

    The greatest negation of religion, the greatest sin, is to believe that the body is your true nature. Your religion is to remain as the Self. The highest religion is searching for one’s nature and stabilizing there.

    In spirituality there is no profit or loss.

    It is the Atman, not the personality, that is drawn to spirituality. Whether you practice spirituality or not, it makes no difference to the Absolute.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Feeling the fear

    There is nothing wrong with being afraid but if we give into it we desensitise the body and suffer. Fear can be used to enliven the body and bring focus to the mind, when this is clear we can welcome it in the knowledge that we benefit from it.

    We are in very strange times now and anyone who does not feel fear is either enlightened or has a mental problem, I am not sure which in my case LOL.
    What I have been talking about for years now is happening and if we can face this and not try to hide in the hope that it will go away it can change for the better, we will all come out of it stronger in ourselves. If we are able to be open and allow the impact of information to be felt it will lead us to our true self. Yes we will have to face the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and uselessness but if these are fully felt we arrive in a place within ourselves where we are the power that creates the universe. This is where the change for the better for ALL can take place, ONLY from here. You are not alone in this as many are realising what is happening and are willing to be open without hiding and it is in this way that we can bring about change.
    There are no plans or strategies that will change the present situation on this planet. Only by allowing what we see and hear etc to have its affect upon us without denying it will bring about the much needed change. “I” is the greatest power that exists and only “I” can change the dream of the world. The requirement now is that we take what is happening to face whatever arises as reaction and stay present to it until “I” is revealed, We are heading into a time of mass enlightenment, conscious awareness of the fact that we are all the same Being, it is already happening. The fear is of the one that imagines itself to exist, the ego, and that one will die in the fire of the fear leaving behind this which never dies and is never threatened, “I”.
    This is our adventure.

    Avasa

  • Smaller than a point

    When you realize yourself as less than a point in space and time, something too small to be cut and too short-lived to be killed, then, and then only, all fear goes. When you are smaller than the point of a needle, then the needle cannot pierce you–you pierce the needle!

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Dialogue On Non Duality With Bodhi Avasa

    • PM.Would you talk a little about the experience you had as a child aged nine when you were consumed with the fear of death.

      It was my ninth birthday and that evening when I went to bed, I realised that I was getting old and it hit me in a profound way.

      A story ran in my mind about my life to come and, of course, the final part was death. I was seized with a huge fear and wanted to go downstairs to my mother but knew that she would not understand and would just send me back to bed. I also felt that she did not have the capability to help me with it so there was no choice but to stay with the feeling of one day coming to an end. I woke in the morning and it was forgotten about. That evening, as soon as I laid down to sleep the story came again, more rapidly arriving at the end, death, and again the feeling.

      This continued to occur for about ten months. Each morning it was forgotten about and each evening as my head hit the pillow and I began to feel sleepy, the intense feeling of becoming nothing would arrive. It just simply stopped one day.

      Many years later when the fear of death arose a short while before realisation I knew it was OK and that I could be present to it; it was already familiar ground.

      I guess it was a preparation for what was to come.

    • PM.You lived in a Christian community for a while during your twenties. What was it about Christ’s teachings that you were drawn to?

      I knew nothing really about Christ’s teaching except the usual stuff thrown at children in school. I was no lover of religion.

      I was about to commit suicide one evening when all of a sudden, I was watching my body as if from a globality of seeing; it lasted for about ten minutes and as it went away, I knew that everything was going to be OK.

      The next day, my landlord, who was a good friend of mine, kicked me out of the house I rented from him, asking me not to ask him why he was doing it but that he had a dream that night that it must be done.

      I just picked up the few belongings that I had and let Life take me wherever it wanted. Within about four days, I found myself in a Christian community in a place named Blockley, knowing that I had been brought there.

      I began to feel good about my life again for the first time in years, and in about a month I was feeling a very strong devotion for Jesus. Two months later, after a strange three-day period where I was unable to eat anything and was running a high temperature, I felt a great awakening happened. I knew something very important in my life was about to happen but had no idea what it could be.

      Then one night I awoke and went through the fear of death, realising that what I am is that which cannot die. It was a big suprise when in the morning the body was still alive and the world was still present. It was also clear that the ‘I’ that Jesus spoke of as being One was true of all beings; it was the same ‘I’. There was no one in the bodies, the ‘I’ referred to was nothing, an aware nothingness.

      For some reason I assumed that most of the lovely people there had realised this as they kept telling me that they had found Christ; so when I went down for assembly in the chapel that morning and shared what I had realised during the night, I was met with a very hostile silence. That was the end of my Christian period, three months. I was asked to leave.

    • PM.In 1972, you again had the same fear of death experience. Could you speak about that and how your life irrevocably changed?

      Yes, this was that night in the community. I awoke at around three in the morning and somehow knew that what I had sensed arriving for about three days was about to take place. I began to see that everything in the room was an energy and this energy was trying to reveal itself as light, but as it did so the items began to dissolve into light and fear arose.

      The arising of the fear prevented the full unfolding and the items would return again; each time they did it was clear that they were nothing other than light and that if this light outshone their appearance as separate objects, only this light would remain. This play continued between the dissolving of conditional existence into light and the fear that arose when this was happening.

      Each time this occurred, there was a clearer seeing that the objects had no real existence and yet neither did the fear; they were both the same thing manifesting. Eventually there was a letting go and an asking for whatever was happening to be allowed to take place without my interference. The room and my sense of being something separate from it dissolved into light and the profound realisation that this light too would dissolve into nothing. It was clear that this nothing was ‘I’ and that this is the source of everything. The light dissolved; what remained cannot be described.

      The next morning what remained exploded into an alarm clock ringing and a body getting dressed and the sudden realisation that there was no one present anywhere, it was all just energy in play.

    • PM.You then read the teachings of Ramana Maharshi. How did you respond to them?

      It was some three years later that I came across the book of the teachings of Ramana and in the first few pages, he described being overtaken by the fear of death to finally resting in stillness. It was a description of what had happened on awakening. Now I had a word for it: enlightenment.

      There were a number of things in the book that I could relate to and so this was a confirmation, but there was also a lot there that I could not agreed with. I could not agree with doing anything to get this, since in my own case, I had not done anything, it had all simply happened. Later, this became clear and it is still an area in Ramana’s teaching that cannot be agreed with.

      Nevertheless, this was the first time I had come across a written work that I could really relate to.

    • PM.You say that since then:

      “In the following years, as the residues of the ego concept completely disappeared, three communities were created in which there was a conscious living from Oneness.”

      Would you say that the ego concept has totally gone for you? And what does it mean to live from Oneness?

      Well, there is no longer a ‘me’ who the ego concept has gone for! There is no longer the concept that there is someone doing what takes place. There is the seeing that everything that takes place through the forms is simply impersonal action coming into play.

      If we look at things as separate objects or events happening, they are all dependent upon how they act by each and every other object or event happening, in the particular way that they are doing so in that very moment. If we look at things as Oneness, all the actions are happening as a movement of the One source. It amounts to the same thing.

      Living in Oneness is the seeing that in each moment, anything that is happening is the only thing that can be happening and no one is doing it. From the dualistic point of view, which would be itself an action of Oneness happening, there is an instigator of what takes place, right and wrong exist, etc.

      All of that is Oneness happening which cannot be other than what it is in that instance.

      We are therefore all living in Oneness, even if the seeing of it is not present; the not seeing of this fact is also an action of Oneness.

    • PM.To turn to the teaching, what actually is the message of Advaita in a nutshell?

      There is no doer, only doing.

    • PM.What is the difference between understanding the message of Advaita and seeing the message of Advaita?

      Understanding may or may not be present but the seeing is present even when the activity that we call understanding is not.

      There is the seeing that the action of understanding is happening or there is the seeing that the action is not present. When the understanding is happening it is ABOUT the seeing; when the arising of that action ends, there is just the seeing. The action (understanding) can appear and disappear in the seeing; the seeing is not therefore dependent on the action of understanding. The action comes and goes; that seeing is permanent.

      Nothingness cannot be understood but it can be seen that what is doing the seeing IS Nothingness. Nothingness is also what is giving rise to the action of trying to understand.

      Initially for most, there is naturally the arising of the desire to understand but after all the questions meet the answers that are coming directly from the seeing, they dwindle away and give way to the seeing. Then it is clear that the questions were coming from the same place (not locatable in time and space) as the answers. Just the Nothingness chatting with itself.

    • PM.In Traditional Advaita Vedanta teachings, the premise is that from an understanding of Advaita, a seeing may arise as a subsequent consequence. In other words, the two are linked; seeing is brought about by the understanding. But you are saying they are not linked in any way?

      Nothing that precedes this seeing in time creates the seeing as a result.

      The cockerel noticed that when it crowed in the morning, the sun began to arise; it then assumed that the sun did this as a result of its crowing.

      We could say that EVERYTHING that has happened since the moment of birth has resulted in the moment of awakening or we can say that not one single thing leads to that moment; they would both in a sense be correct.

      The fact is that the timeless is not dependent upon time or any of the actions that take place in time to see itself clearly as the eternal.

      When we are trying to understand something, anything, an activity that takes time is involved but when we arrive at the moment of having understood, understanding itself, there is nothing, just an empty Awareness. An Ah! Nothing.

      The Ah! that is realisation is a non-action; non-action is not dependent upon action for its existence. It is also not the result of action having taken place.

      The idea that something must be done before non-doing is the case is ludicrous. It is like saying, ‘I will start being here now tomorrow.’

      It’s an excuse of the mind to delay seeing what is ever present; that play of the mind too is an action of Oneness. It can be frustrating until seen clearly; then it’s a joke.

    • PM.There are traditional swamis who claim that the seeing has arisen by virtue of the understanding. What would you say to that?

      Jesus is supposed to have said, ‘By grace are ye saved and even that not of thine own doing.’ That sounds like the words of a swami to me.

      The moment of seeing is a given; it’s a gift from yourself to yourself.

      If it is characteristic for one to go the way of understanding then that is the way it is; if it is charateristic for one to not move in that way, then that is how it is. In either case, there may or may not be awakening.

      I meet a lot of people who have a lot of understanding and yet realisation has not taken place. I have also met people who never went in the direction of trying to understand and they suddenly see. I have seen people simply accompany someone to a talk with no interest in the talk and in minutes, suddenly step into the seeing of this. It happened one time to a long-term seeker whose wife had no interest in his silly hobby of questioning life. She had a baby of a month or so old and did not want to be left at home alone that evening.

      She was breastfeeding the baby and apparently not listening to me waffling on when suddenly, she stated that she and her baby and her hubby and everyone in the room were all herself and she was the one talking through this form. She spoke about this with great awe for about twenty minutes.

      The look on her hubby’s face said it all; years of hard work, meditation, studying deep scriptures on his part and she got it like that!

      If one enjoys understanding, that happens here, then that is the way it is but it is not a necessity that such action takes place prior to realisation.

    • PM.In recent email correspondence, when talking about the suffering in the world and the sad state of humanity, you said:

      “Let us be clear about something in regards to such actions appearing, they will not come to an end whilst the concept of being a separate being remains. The answer therefore is NOT to try to change the outer appearance but one’s view of one’s Self. To the degree that this can take place so too will the outer action of consciousness appear less separative and more compassionate.”

      Here the suggestion is to try to change one’s view of oneself. How is that to be done?

      Words tend to get stated in a way that they sound like commands; that was not the intention when this was written.

      BUT! Take a simple honest look at what is looking through the eyes of the form right now; if this can happen, it will be seen that there is nothing looking through the eyes. This nothing is what we are and when this is seen, things in the world begin to change without a wish for them to do so, or without effort on the part of someone. They change in a way that makes it a greater possibilty for so-called others to come into the seeing of this.

      As within so without. When it is seen that there is nothing within, then it is also seen that there is no within OR without; it is all One Self, one unbroken consciousness. The conscious living of this realisation is reflected as the whole.

      Shaving the face in the mirror (the outer) does not remove the bristles; the bristles seen there are a reflection.

      When it is seen that there is no central subjective object within that the experiencial information relates to, then there is no inside or outside, no distance, just Oneness.

    • PM.You speak a lot about love. It is a word that is often bandied around. What for you is the definition of love?

      Love is the biggest bandied-about word in existence, and even when it is believed to have a meaning, it is usually related to an emotion.

      Love here is the realisation, the seeing, that there is no body; when there is no one, there is only Love.

      Love is this that knows no sense of otherness; otherwise, the word is relating to a feeling or thought that is dependent upon the idea of separation, duality.

      Aloneness (all Oneness) is Love, regardless of how many bodies are present.

      Live knows no sense of otherness.

    • PM.Again in recent email correspondence, you said:

      “We must again know (not in the sense of understanding) our Self to BE this Love prior to all the actions that we see arising in consciousness. “

      How can we know something without understanding it? And by what means would we come to know it?

      Words again! This reference to knowing is not refering to understanding but a knowing that is fully integrated, a Being knowing.

      We are using words here to point to, and hopefully bring our focus to, rest upon something that is beyond description. Just because it cannot be described, it does not mean that one cannot BE it.

      Trying to describe nought in terms of 1, 2 and 3 would bring us no closer to understanding it, but if all the numbers were to fall away and the mind were to rest with what IS, then nought is immediately the case. It requires no description.

      The joke is we all know THIS in the sense that we are all BEing it; our attention is wandering from this to that, looking for this, and all along this is the One not giving the attention to itself, the place (not locatable in time and space) where the attention is arisng from.

      What is giving rise to the action of seeking is what is being sought. The seeking mind seeks this as an experience of some sort; so of course there are endless experiences to be had which keeps the attention from coming to rest at its source, which is a non-experience.

    • PM.Furthermore, you said:

      “If it were possible (and it is) for all human beings to come to SEE that what lives through the human form, appearing AS it, and BEING the experience of the play of Life, is what they are then this madness in our world would end.”

      Again, how is it possible to see life as is, without any methodology to achieve it?

      It is only when methodology, which would be an attempt of the imagined one, ends that this is seen.

      There is no methodology in order to watch this happening now – fingers typing on a key board, thoughts arising, etc. It just happens that way. What is maybe different here is that where all this action is appearing out of is not lost sight of.

      There was a time when this was overlooked and now that is not the case.

      No one was busy overlooking it when overlooking was the arising action; no one is busy not overlooking now that the seeing of this is present. Any attempt, the applying of any method at all, would be based on the concept that what is being sought is somewhere else in another moment to be found. Seeking is an action arising and when it ceases to arise, what will remain will be seeing, without any effort, method, practice or technique.

      What has always been will be seen by what has always been.

    • PM.How did you arrive at a point of seeing if it wasn’t through understanding?

      Understanding did take place and I guess that it was understood at some moment, that the wanting of that activity (understanding) to arise was itself an interference on the seeing of this.

      The mind itself saw its own limitation.

      One is trying to make to come to rest a still clear pool that has become disturbed; the trying to understand how to do that causes ripples on that same pool, hence the disturbance.

      Understanding still arises here, more clearly and much more swiftly than ever as questions are asked in talks or retreats but the background, as it were, is not lost sight of. The Stillness, within which all of that is taking place is present prior, during and after the action has taken place.

      When the body is alone, there is no arising of the activity of understanding in that way; there are no questions in the seeing of this, nor answers required.

    • PM.Would you say seeing is like surrender, by which I mean a total bowing down to the Self in the heart.

      Yeh, sort of. I would say it’s more like a giving up where no one does the giving up, it just happens.

      Surrender still sounds, when most people use it, like the final thing that they can do, and of course it never is because it doesn’t work either. There is still an element of a doer doing something in that word.

      I think Buddha just said one day, Eff It!, and walked away from all attempts to get this and soon afterwards came into the seeing of it; giving up happened.

    • PM.You say on your website:

      “Non c’è libertà, non c’è liberazione, perché c’è solo ciò che E’ che non è mai né libero né prigioniero.
      Only a fool would try to attain liberation through a method.”

      How else would you attain it?

      By the realisation arising that it cannot be attained, it is already one’s Being! One is always this.

    • PM.You also say on your site:

      “There is no freedom; no liberation, for there is only what IS which is neither bound nor free. By doing only what is appropriate in each moment one comes to see that there is no one who is restricted in any way at all.”

      I am reminded of the quote from Ramana Maharshi:

      “You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite being, and then weep that you are but a finite creature. Then you take up this or that spiritual practice to transcend the non-existent limitations. But if your spiritual practice itself assumes the existence of the limitations, how can it help you to transcend them?”

      Could you comment on that?

      Ha! This is one of the things that he said that I totally agree with.

      By living as though one is something other than the One, one plays at getting rid of the limitations that one feels to be not Oneness. The one that imposes the limitations is the same one that imposed the idea upon itself that it is other than what it actually is.

      We are all the One and as this One, we are all the Source. If the source creates the idea of separation upon itself, it will then create ways to get out of the sense of being separation – it is endless entertainment. As the game goes on, the suffering involved in holding to be true of one’s self, that which is totally illusive, becomes too much to bear and the game falls apart.

      Whether we know it or not we create, it is our nature, when we are ignorant of this fact; we nevertheless create and creation done in ignorance results in the sense of separation being true. When awakening happens, then it is recognised that one is the source of all that is appearing; as a consequence of this what appears changes, for now it is not the creation of ignorance.

    • PM.When will I be graced with seeing rather than understanding?

      When the interest in undestanding is no longer arising. Anytime.

      What is it that is seeing the idea that you are not seeing this right now?

      That idea is words appearing as the mind. What is seeing those words is what you are; you are not the words, for they are just a temporary appearance. You are what sees them arising and as this One, you are permanent, ALREADY!

      Always nothing. Non-action witnessing actions arising and dissolving.

      It is exactly the same here; we are the same One.

    Interview with Bodhi Avasa

  • Love never insists

    There is’nt anything you can do, you cannot go against this awakening and you cannot accelerate it. Questions arise because somewhere on the intuitive level the mind knows that something is happening of which it itself is not in control. The mind cannot ever produce silence, the mind is product of silence and therefore cannot produce what has been precedent to itself. But occasionally the mind can become aware of the approaching of this presence and although this is the thing that the mind wants the very most it is also the thing that it fears the most. It is the same scheme, the same game when you are falling in love. You see that you want to fall in love and at the same time a major part of you wants to resist it taking place. What you desire the most is what you fear the most because intuitively you know that if you fall in Love you give yourself up to love and you dissolve. Seen that it is Love that creates the entire Universe, Love will always find its own way to be able to make it happen, be clear on this. Love never insists upon its own way because it itself knows that it will have its way, it does not need to insist. This is the beauty and the power of love.

    Avasa