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Tag: whole

  • Untouched

    Maharaj: Doctors have diagnosed that this body has cancer. Would anyone else be as joyful as I am, with such a serious diagnosis? The world is your direct experience, your own observation. All that is happening is happening at this level, but I am not at this level. I have dissociated myself from Sattva Guna, being ness.

    The Ultimate state in spirituality is that state where no needs are felt at any time, where nothing is useful for anything. That state is called Nirvana, Nirguna, that which is the Eternal and Ultimate Truth. The essence and sum total of this whole talk is called Sat-guru Parabrahman, that state in which there are no requirements.

    After the dissolution of the universe, when no further vestige of creation was apparent, what remained is my perfect state. All through the creation and dissolution of the universe, I remain ever untouched. I have not expounded this part: my state never felt the creation and dissolution of the universe. I am the principle which survives all the creations, all the dissolutions. This is my state, and yours, too, but you don’t realize it because you are embracing your beingness. Realizing it is only possible when one get support from invincible faith, from that eternal Sat-guru Parabrahman. This state, this Parabrahman principle, is eternal and is also the Sat-guru. It is the eternal property of any devotee of a Guru.

    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

  • Pure Beingness

    This consciousness is a tree, but there was a seed – go to the seed. The consciousness you have now is the same as the child consciousness; hold on to that, that is enough. So long as the consciousness is there everything is so important to you, but if that vanishes, then what is the worth of this whole world to you? Who is the knower of the seed? Give attention to how this “I Amness” has appeared – then you will know. Accept this identification only: that you are this manifest pure beingness, the very soul of the universe, of this life that you observe, and presently you are just wearing this bodily attire. Make a note of it; you have taken down so many things in life, just for fun, why don’t you take this down also and see what happens? See what happens when you look at the moon and know that the moon is there provided you are there; because you are the moon is. This grand concept, this joy, you directly experience and enjoy.

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

  • Seeing and not seeing

    Out of all the many awakenings that have been described to me, it is continuously confirmed that one of the first realisations that arises is the seeing that no­one awakens. And yet we see that the majority of teachings, both traditional and contemporary, are constantly speaking to an apparent separate seeker (subject) and recommending that in order to attain enlightenment (object) they should choose to meditate, self­enquire, purify, cultivate understanding, still the mind and the ego, surrender, be honest, seek earnestly , give up seeking, do therapy, do nothing, be here now, and so on . . . the ideas are as endless and as complicated as the mind from where they are generated.

    These recommendations arise from the belief that the “enlightenment” of the “teacher” has been attained or earned through the application of choice, effort, acceptance or surrender, an d that other seekers can be taught to do the same.

    Of course there can be nothing right or wrong with earnest seeking, meditation, self enquiry, understanding and so on. They are simply what they appear to be. But who is it that is going to choose to make the effort? Where is the effort going to take the apparent chooser to? ­ where is there to go if there is only oneness? If there is no separate individu al there is no volition, and so how can an illusion dispel itself?

    There is no person that becomes enlightened. No­one awakens. Awakening is the absence of the illusion of individu ality. Already there is only awakeness, oneness, timeless being, radical aliveness. When the dream seeker is no more it is seen (by no­one) that there is nothing to seek and no­one to become liberated.

    Here is oneness, the realisation of wholeness that cannot be attained or owned. This is the awakening in which the awareness of what is arises together with the dreaming of that which cannot be known. There can be a dance between dreaming and being, and in that dance there can be a retu rn to the fascination of personal ownership.

    However, the realisation that the dream seeker is also oneness is liberation, the uncaused, impersonal, silent stillness which is the celebration of unconditional love. This is all there is.

    There is no me or you , no seeker, no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru . There is no better or worse, no path or purpose, and nothing that has to be achieved.

    All appearance is source. All that apparently manifests in the hypnotic dream of separation ­ the world, the life story, the search for home, is one appearing as two the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.

    There is no separate intelligence weaving a destiny and no choice functioning at any level. Nothing is happening but this, as it is, invites the apparent seeker to rediscover that which is . . . the abiding, uncaused, unchanging, impersonal silence from which unconditional love overflows and celebrates. It is the wonderful mystery.

    Tony Parsons

  • The Story of Me

    All there is is wholeness . . . boundless energy appearing as everything . . . the sky, trees, feelings, thoughts, whatever. It is the mystery of no thing simultaneously being everything.

    There is nothing apart from the boundless everything and yet, because it is free, it can appear to be separate from itself . . . it can appear to be the story of me. There is nothing right or wrong in that appearance which is wholeness apparently happening.

    Contracted energy seems to arise in the human being and create a sense of separation out of which arises a unique sense of identity . . . a self consciousness. The me is born and the story of me seems to begin. Me is the story and the story is me and one cannot exist without the other. They both only appear and function in a dualistic subject object reality. Everything seems to be personally experienced as a series of events in real time happening to a real me. Within that story time, journey, purpose and free will and choice seem to be real.

    This sense of separation is not just an idea, a thought or a belief. It is a contracted energy embodied in the whole organism which influences every experience. As a consequence the me experiences a tree, the sky, another person, a thought or a feeling through a veil of separation. It is as though me is a something and everything else is lots of other separate somethings happening to me. What arises from this once removed sense is a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction. A feeling that something is lost or hidden.

    For most people this sense of dissatisfaction is not that apparent, and because they believe they are individuals with free will and choice they seem motivated to try and create a successful story . . . good relationships, good health, wealth, personal power or whatever else.

    However, for some there is a greater sensitivity about something else that seems to be missing. This feeling generates a longing for a deeper sense of fulfilment. There can be an investigation into religion, therapy or the meaning of enlightenment. Because the me has become convinced that it has the means to influence its story, it also assumes that it can find deeper fulfilment through its own choice, determination and action.

    The me may, for instance, go to a priest or a therapist or a teacher of enlightenment in order to find what it thinks it needs.

    Often because the me feels it has lost something, there can be a sense of inadequacy and so what is pursued is a teaching that satisfies the need to do something which will bring about a personal transformation and make the me worthy of fulfilment. All of this activity is apparently happening within the story of me which is functioning in an artificially dualistic reality. So me is searching in the finite for that which is infinite. It is a something looking for another something, and what it really longs for remains unobtainable by already being everything. It is rather like trying to catch air with a butterfly net. It isn’t difficult, it is wonderfully impossible. The essential futility of that searching inevitably fuels the sense of a me who feels even more unworthy and separate.

    However, in the seeking activity there can be experiences along the way that encourage the me to search further and try harder. Personal therapy can bring a transient sense of personal balance in the story. Practices like meditation can bring a state of peace or silence. Self enquiry can bring an apparently progressive experience of understanding and strengthened awareness. But for awareness to function it needs something apart for it to be aware of. Awareness simply feeds separation, and a state of detachment can arise and be mistaken for enlightenment. All of these states come and go within the story of me.

    The basis of all teaching of becoming enlightened is the idea that a change of belief or experience can lead to a personal knowing of oneness, self realisation or of discovering your own true nature. The whole investment in a progressive path goes on feeding the story of me attaining something. Even the suggestion of personal surrender or acceptance can be initially attractive and bring a satisfying state . . . for a while. There are many so-called non-dual ‘teachings’ which feed the story of me becoming liberated.

    However, the oneness that is longed for is boundless and free. It cannot be grasped or even approached. Nor is there anything that would need to be done or changed or made better than that which is already everything.

    The me experience can be very convincing because “the world” it lives in seems to be dominated by lots of me’s in lots of stories. But the me construct is inconstant and has no foundation. All of the me story is only a dance of wholeness which is without significance or purpose.

    A deep and uncompromising exposure of the artificial construct of separation and the story of me can loosen the constraints that keep it locked in place and reveal the way in which seeking can only reinforce the dilemma. The apparent sense of separation, however, is at its essence an energetically contracted energy which no amount of conceptual clarity will ever undo.

    When there is an openness to the possibility of that which is beyond self-seeking, then it seems that the contracted energy can evaporate into the boundless freedom which it already is. And still this is only another story which attempts to point to and describe a total paradox . . . the apparent end of something that was never real . . . the story of me.

    All there is, is boundless freedom.

    Tony Parsons

  • THE THINKER AND THE THOUGHT

    IN ALL OUR experiences, there is always the experiencer, the observer, who is gathering to himself more and more or denying himself. Is that not a wrong process and is that not a pursuit which does not bring about the creative state? If it is a wrong process, can we wipe it out completely and put it aside? That can come about only when I experience, not as a thinker experiences, but when I am aware of the false process and see that there is only a state in which the thinker is the thought.

    So long as I am experiencing, so long as I am becoming, there must be this dualistic action; there must be the thinker and the thought, two separate processes at work; there is no integration, there is always a centre which is operating through the will of action to be or not to be – collectively, individually, nationally and so on. Universally, this is the process. So long as effort is divided into the experiencer and the experience, there must be deterioration. Integration is only possible when the thinker is no longer the observer. That is, we know at present there are the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced; there are two different states. Our effort is to bridge the two.

    The will of action is always dualistic. Is it possible to go beyond this will which is separative and discover a state in which this dualistic action is not? That can only be found when we directly experience the state in which the thinker is the thought. We now think the thought is separate from the thinker; but is that so? We would like to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.

    Is there a division between the thinker and the thought? So long as they are separate, divided, our effort is wasted; we are pursuing a false process which is destructive and which is the deteriorating factor. We think the thinker is separate from his thought. When I find that I am greedy, possessive, brutal, I think I should not be all this. The thinker then tries to alter his thoughts and therefore effort is made to ‘become; in that process of effort he pursues the false illusion that there are two separate processes, whereas there is only one process. I think therein lies the fundamental factor of deterioration.

    Is it possible to experience that state when there is only one entity and not two separate processes, the experiencer and the experience? Then perhaps we shall find out what it is to be creative, and what the state is in which there is no deterioration at any time, in whatever relationship man may be.

    I am greedy. I and greed are not two different states; there is only one thing and that is greed. If I am aware that I am greedy, what happens? I make an effort not to be greedy, either for sociological reasons or for religious reasons; that effort will always be in a small limited circle; I may extend the circle but it is always limited. Therefore the deteriorating factor is there. But when I look a little more deeply and closely, I see that the maker of effort is the cause of greed and he is greed itself; and I also see that there is no ‘me’ and greed, existing separately, but that there is only greed. If I realize that I am greedy, that there is not the observer who is greedy but I am myself greed, then our whole question is entirely different; our response to it is entirely different; then our effort is not destructive.

    What will you do when your whole being is greed, when whatever action you do is greed? Unfortunately, we don’t think along those lines. There is the ‘me’, the superior entity, the soldier who is controlling, dominating. To me that process is destructive. It is an illusion and we know why we do it. I divide myself into the high and the low in order to continue. If there is only greed, completely, not ‘I’ operating greed, but I am entirely greed, then what happens? Surely then there is a different process at work altogether, a different problem comes into being. It is that problem which is creative, in which there is no sense of ‘I’ dominating, becoming, positively or negatively. We must come to that state if we would be creative. In that state, there is no maker of effort. It is not a matter of verbalizing or of trying to find out what that state is; if you set about it in that way you will lose and you will never find. What is important is to see that the maker of effort and the object towards which he is making effort are the same. That requires enormously great understanding, watchfulness, to see how the mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time. If we can understand this as direct experience, then you will see that quite a different factor comes into being.

    J. Krishnamurti

  • No Separation

    We live in a society that holds as its main belief the concept of separation, the idea that you and I are separate from one another. This idea has carried with it a price that has cost us a lot and will cost us everything if it continues, the death of the human race.

    The whole way that we are brought up within our society by our parents and teachers, our religious figures and our goverments is based upon this idea of separation and yet there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this belief. We have a huge trust in science and where it is leading us and yet science itself as it gets closer to what is seeking, the Source, finds less and less proof that separation exists ANYWHERE.

    Throughout the history of mankind there have been people who have stepped to the forefront of the norm of their time and challenged the accepted way of thinking. Their message in each and every case was the same — separation is not an actuality.

    The cost of upholding this idea that we are separate beings is reflected in our world as the many wars that exist and the suffering at a so called personal level that is prevailant in our societies on every level. It does NOT have to be this way and in fact it can change very easily, by SEEING what we actually are behind all these beliefs.

    A belief is a thought that has been identified with due to the fact that once one no longer knows one’s Self directly, it is natural to try to find one’s identity once one has lost sight of it. Beliefs are created in an attempt to find ones Self again as something permanent, something real.

    All human beings, regardless, are made up of three things. A physical body, a mind and something intangable called Awareness. This is always the case if the human experience is taking place.

    The first we all know as it is very clearly on display, the second we know but it is not always so clear and obvious as the former but the third, Awareness, barely gets our attention, which is somewhat strange as it is the only permanent of these three. Body and mind come and go, as in deep sleep, but the Awareness is everpresent.

    Why then , we may ask ourselves, is this which is always, already present so unknown? The answer is simple. It is NOT a THING. Awareness has no form or colour or description of any sort whatsoever, yet it IS. Without this presence of Awareness there would be no ability to experience anything at all.

    Clearly this Awareness is therefore of tremendous importance. It is this that we must come to know again so that it is no longer overlooked. When we overlook this Awareness we, as this Awareness, seek to find ourself by identifying with the objects that appear within it, the body and the mind. We then take ourself to be a finite THING and suffer the concequences of doing so, we create a false identity and from that we live a reality that is false.

    Take a look right now at your immediate experience, Body, Mind and something that sees them appearing and ask yourself – Which of these three is permanent, which of these is the seer of the two that are seen?

    YOU are the seer, the Awareness that witnesses the appearance of the body and mind. As this that sees you are No-Thing, an aware presence that is absent of thingness and therefore has no description, you just ARE. This Awareness is the same One in all human beings, the bodies and the play of the mind vary but this Awareness is the exact same One. As this Awareness again begins to include itself in on the deal of identification it becomes more and more clear that the mind and the body are the vehicles by which experience can be had but one is NOT these things. In a short time the attention naturally returns to this Awareness in between moments of habitual identification with the body/mind until there is a stabalising in this Awareness and the clear conscious realisation that one IS this.

    The problem of wrong identification falls away and with it all so called personal suffering. Life then is seen in a totally different way and seen to be One with one’s Self. This is the direction that society MUST take in order for the human species to continue.

    It need not be difficult because all that is necessary to bring this way of seeing into being the norm is already present. It requires only that we drop all our silly beliefs and SEE what IS. Body, mind AND this that is everpresent, the Eternal, our SELF.

    This is what all those whose message was shared with the intention of removing the sense of separation pointed to. This has always been the answer, it is not Christian, Buddhist, Jewish,Islamic or any other religous name it has been given. When it was shared it was being shared directly from the One, the SAME One regardless of time or place. When you awaken to the Truth of the One that you ACTUALLY are it will be the SAME One that awakened in those whose message became the religions that have become the beliefs that now hold us back from the seeing of this Oneness. Their insistance was always that this realisation had to become your own or otherwise it remained a belief and would not serve you or mankind in any way that removed the sense of separation.

    When this realsation takes place it is NOT a belief, it is Self evident and Self confirming. When you SEE the One that you truely are then you see also in that same instance that all apparent ‘others’ are no other than yourself, Love.

    Love knows no separation!

    Avasa

  • What happens when you fall off the earth’s edge?

    That being said, I’m going to tell you what you will get out of enlightenment. If the answer is initially disappointing, don’t give up. Read on and see if you come to the place where disappointment changes into clarity. So here we go: The answer is that you will get nothing out of it because enlightenment is the realization that there is no you to get enlightened; that your sense of separation and individuality is an illusion. This reply will most likely go against your direct experience. You might have learned that you are part of an ongoing process in which the fittest will survive and that you have to pass on your genes to the next generation or die trying. You may also believe that the art of living is in improving yourself and your life’s circumstances. If you’re poor and hungry, a roof over your head and a meal a day may do it for you. If you’re lucky enough to live in a situation where your basic survival needs are covered, you will most likely pursue happiness and fulfillment via relationships, the acquisition of material goods, and social status.
    When this is not enough you might become what is known as a seeker. A seeker is someone who feels that the so-called material world cannot deliver true and lasting contentment and that an inner dimension needs to be explored to find peace, enlightenment, or Self-realization.
    As a seeker you’ll perhaps try psychotherapy, rebirthing, getting in touch with your inner child, past life regression therapy, yoga, transcendental meditation, or one of the other techniques believed to lead to lasting fulfillment and happiness. Such methods may indeed deliver results that you can experience as improving or enriching your life. However, you’ll probably discover that after some time the original euphoria wears off. You come to realize that experiences and states of mind are always temporary. After this recognition, many seekers consider the so-called non-dual approach to Self-realization or enlightenment.
    Non-duality is a general term that covers several – mostly eastern – schools of thought, which point to the single source before and beyond all temporal experiences and apparent
    diversity. While reading texts from non-dual systems such as Zen, Advaita, Taoism, or Dzogchen, you will find the affirmation that Self-realization has no promise other than
    to release you from your belief in a separate self or ego. That’s it. The dropping away of an illusion simply revealing this as it is, often summed up in the phrase ‘Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’ The ego, which certainly does not want to hear that it is an illusion, may claim to accept this as a concept, but invariably resists its realization, persisting in the belief that the carrying and chopping that come ‘after’ are somehow different. Now, if there’s nothing in it for me, why would I even bother? ‘Give me some motivation,’ says the ego; ‘Give me something that makes it worth my while to pursue this.’ This way of thinking seems right to us, who are conditioned to look for a future purpose in whatever it is we’re doing. Logic dictates that we should gain something here instead of merely hearing that we don’t exist. From this perspective, it gets even worse. Enlightenment not only shows that your separate identity is an illusion, it reveals that sheer purposelessness is at the heart of this whole creation. This sounds absurd to the goal-and-future-oriented mind; yet I will tell you unequivocally that the whole point of this manifestation is nothing other than this manifestation. Realizing this is far from the bleak reality the mind imagines it to be. True, this is of no use to the ego, since it is about freedom from the ego, not freedom for the ego. The final understanding is not the result of seeking, but brings freedom from seeking. It is not about fulfilling expectations, but about being free of them. There are no future
    rewards in store. This very clarity turns out to be its own reward. Like Zen Master Hakuin exclaimed: ‘This very land is the pure lotus land, This very body is the body of Buddha!’
    Nothing changes, but everything is released from its conceptual mold, as well as from the person who tried to fit life into the mold. Life’s freshness is recognized; its presence is
    acknowledged; its oneness is seen – but by no one. There simply is recognition, acknowledgment, and seeing. All this text will do is remind you of your true identity. It is not about self- improvement or methods. It contains no seven-step-systems to help you become more relaxed, more loving, or more fulfilled. If that is what you’re looking for, there are plenty of other books and people that will cater to your needs. If you want the truth, you have to look beyond the concepts of ego and self- improvement, and beyond the states
    of mind you would like to acquire. This book will explore – and attempt to puncture – the belief that you are a separate entity. It wants to point at the sourceless source from
    which all arises, and it asks you to remember that you are this source. Once this is recognized and it is clear what you truly are, you’ll see that everything is exactly as it
    should be. It will not all fall magically into place. It already is and always has been in place. This is not about a gradual progression to a future goal, but about a radical awakening to what is. No conditions have to be fulfilled for this to become clear. Self-realization can happen at any time for anyone. There can be quirky, irreverent, irritable characters who are certain about what they truly are and there can be relaxed, friendly, happy people who never even thought about socalled enlightenment. Calmness, friendliness, and happiness may or may not be or become part of your daily experience as a consequence of awakening, but at the same time it will become evident that this clarity is not about
    being in a good mood all the time. You don’t need to do anything to ‘become ready’ for it. It will happen by itself and reveal that Awakeness is – and always has been – fully
    present. It will shine when it shines, and it will shift the attention from the content of Awareness to Pure Awareness itself. This Pure Awareness is what you truly are. When
    you think you’re not it, this thought is part of the temporal content of Awareness and has no bearing on Awareness itself. Just let yourself be. Give yourself permission to
    be up, down, pissed, or delirious. Observe the process and don’t get caught in the content. Know yourself as the limitless field of Pure Awareness in which the drama of
    life merely arises. For me this understanding has marked the end of my search and released me from the burden of trying to control my life and constantly improve myself. It did not set me free, but showed that I am freedom itself. It did not give me anything, but took ‘the me’ away. What I truly am is what I always was: Pure Awareness. This is true for you, the cat, the book, and everything else. To the mind, there seem to be separate objects; but in reality, everything emanates from the same essence. Seeing or not seeing this
    does not change anything. Everything simply is as it is, which is a lot less and infinitely more than I anticipated it to be.

    Leo Hardong

  • Thinking

    IS ‘THINKING’ REALLY NECESSARY IN DAILY LIVING?

    Is it not possible to live our daily lives without constantly creating concepts and objects in our mind?
    Unfortunately, for most of us, thinking has become such a significant part of our daily living that it seems almost impossible to live without constant thinking, because we think of such a state as being a state of stupor or even idiocy. But that is just not so. A mind that is not agitated, a mind that is not distracted by its own imaginings, a mind that is ‘open’ can look at any problem simply and directly. This is so for the simple reason that such a mind is not functioning in the background of tradition, prejudice, conditioning of hope and despair.
    It is a fact of life that, except in the laboratory or on the drawing board, thinking – conceptualizing – is generally self-centered and self-protecting. A problem can be solved only if it is seen as a whole, not in fragmentation.
    The problem needs to be seen with an awareness that is without condemnation or justification, without self-centeredness. For the problem to be solved totally, together with its root, it is necessary to be totally aware of the pettiness and self centeredness of our usual mode of thinking. Then there ARISES a state of intelligence or wisdom which is neither personal nor impersonal. It is only in such a state of tranquility of mind that the problem itself is seen with such a transparent clarity that there is no need of any solution to the problem. More often that not, the problem itself disappears.

    Ramesh S. Balsekar

  • 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