No matter what happens, stay consciously present in that inclusive original. January 31, 2011

Volume 12 No. 2

You’re not in the funnel.

You are the whole space.

[Towards the Openness p.70]

*

When there is a more spacious consciousness, more is known and this knowledge is truer than the knowledge that comes with a limited consciousness.

As being-awareness you are the whole space. Then you confirm directly that this is a higher truth than the limited truth that you are your body.

*

When forms fall away,

Look, so much love is released

Long concealed in the heart

It flows overwhelmingly outward

Now that forms fall away.

So even if there are forms

the love can still flow infinitely on.

See, in the heart of everyone

you are yourself as love.

With and without forms there is

this open loving unity.

*

Satsang Text

From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma – Advaita Center Gouda, January 12, 2011

Letting go of your last position

Tonight as always we’re back to the essence. Can you come along and release your viewpoint?  For years I’ve spoken about this, more from a mental level, in order to explain exactly how things work. Enough of that. Now it really comes down to yourself.  Can you, in a conscious way, go along with it so that your last perspective disappears?

Remain very clearly aware in the open space. That’s where it will happen. Recognize the movement, recognize the development: a steadily increasing expansion, a greater clarity of consciousness. That great clarity will need to remain, because you will enter into increasingly subtle dimensions. Let the movement proceed by itself. The deeper layers of your own self-being, though incarnated, are extremely subtle. Remain alert with yourself in your own aware being, in that great space. Then the process will develop. Then let it proceed, totally. That process stops only when a limitation comes from your consciousness. More and more layers of your limited self fall away. At a certain point there is nothing left to fall away.

Do you see that every restriction of your consciousness, which arises when you focus on something specific, also immediately delivers a point of view and with it a limited identity? When the last anchor goes, the last identity disappears. So if you don’t fix yourself somewhere there is just openness.

Things go wrong when you dive into some part of creation and get stuck there. Then there is duality. So stay consciously present in that original, that comprehensive, whatever happens. What happens in creation is dependent upon all the factors therein. And apparently it must happen like that. So remain aware in this original openness. Don’t get distracted. What’s more important than that?

Notice what happens when you come near to that Great. Aren’t all remnants of self-limitation wiped away? That is surrender: when you let that happen and don’t grasp onto the old, limited things. So don’t pose any more questions from the mental level. You have already seen for yourself that these questions only have to do with all the difficulties that already your thinking creates. Through returning to the original openness directly there is much more space; thinking diminishes and disappears. The consciousness is direct and primary; things are immediately determined within it without separation. That’s what it’s about.

Once again: in the transition towards the release of your viewpoint, there is an incredibly alert consciousness, an extremely high intensity of being-awareness. Stay alert and you see that the process of purification and surrender proceeds radically. Recognize that process, so that you can stay with it and it can proceed by itself. It can simply be a dissolution, an evaporation. It can also be that you experience it as a burning up of everything that must still be purified. Let it proceed, up to and including the core of your viewpoint.

Beginning from all those things that are there, confirm for yourself: nothing is left over. When it’s clear once, then you see that it has absolutely nothing to do with ‘nothing’ and ‘something’. It’s of a totally different order. It’s from the order where speech and thought have nothing to say. The final standpoint disappears, even that of the global being-sphere.

Stay in this highest clarity. Then the liberation is absolute. Nothing more. Remain with this essential, with this supreme knowledge. Whatever must still happen goes by itself.

Douwe

Remain in the Light which knows no contrast between light and darkness. January 9, 2011

Volume 12 No. 1

*

Satsang Text

From a talk on December 15, 2010 – Advaita Center, Gouda

[This is the second part of a satsang where Douwe announced his diagnosis of cancer]

Douwe: It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between what is transitory and what is imperishable. The calendar year runs to its end. Another year has gone by. The activities here gradually stop. At the end of the year people look back and say: time flies. All the things that were important to you are gone. But what about yourself? After the old year there is a new year and then, so the idea goes, life continues on in the old way. How long? You don’t really know.

But what about yourself? That remains the most central question. What about yourself. To the extent that you are transient, you say: yes, I’m transient. But right away there is another element that goes beyond it, just as with the end of the year. You, yourself, extend beyond the calendar year that now comes to its end.

If you see through this in yourself, you see that time has to do only with phenomena. That in your self-being there is no time to be found. As forms vanish, there remains that within which forms appear – and that is the sphere in which you are.

This insight can come. Sometimes something hard has to happen, serious things have to happen, for instance, that you are fully confronted with the end of your life. But it can also occur just like that – when you return to yourself, where you can immediately confirm: here there is no time.

We have often spoken about the groundlessness of the origin, of total openness, the groundlessness in which there is nothing left to hold on to and also no self left that would hold on to anything. The realization of this groundless openness makes the world in time so relative, because it’s clear that there is nothing other than the groundless openness in which you are present, where you yourself are present in the same way: as openness without forms.

When you can be a little present in that large space – be even more lucid there and see where it is not yet entirely open, where certain identifications still exist. Remain in the openness and you notice that the last identifications dissolve.

In principle, you have that knowledge. That’s where independence lies.

What is the only authentic experience? Isn’t that the original, where everything has its source and is one? Every experience that has a form is conditioned. It contains all kinds of forms you have learned and that is not authentic. Take a look to see what your authentic self really is.

 Visitor: Can the path also be intense grief?

Yes, of course. Everything can be a path to that authentic. Thus, if you have experienced sadness or love in the authentic sense, then you have to go more deeply into it. And then you’ll notice that there are still all kinds of elements there on a personal level. But when you continue through to the essence of it, totally, you see that everything clarifies.

The sooner you realize that everything was always already good, the better. That is pretty much the last formulation that is possible. Experience that there is Goodness, preceding every separation including that of goodness or badness, previous to sorrow and joy, and that this was always already there in a totally open way. Thus that is something that doesn’t belong to time, because it precedes it.

Stay there with it, stay there with it.

*

Message from Douwe

This message was addressed and read to the people who were present at the retreat afternoon of December 28, but of course it applies to everyone.

Let this be a day of joy,

Of deep joy in the being-experience of unity in freedom.

Within it there is also the freedom of attachment to the perishable body.

The body has its own constitution and laws.

I too have such a body with strong genetic factors.

The body is and remains a miracle as well as the incarnation within it.

Nevertheless; I am free from the body, you are free from the body.

Therefore, the bodily life can continue in a natural way until the incarnation has lasted long enough.

Nothing is missing, everything is there, and therefore there is no longing.

I am, and everything is there as universal unity, and therefore there is no grasping.

There is nothing else and therefore there is no resistance.

Everything is complete in the one non-duality.

No one and nothing can hold you back from this openness, therefore you are independent.

It is an aware self-reliance without any restriction, without condition; groundless openness.

The many letters, cards and emails demonstrate this. I am very happy about that. The togetherness of the realization means a great joy. The love it radiates is beautiful.

So, let this be a day of joy, love and freedom.

I am there with you.

Douwe