Advaita Post 18-01
From an Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog 9 June 2001
Part 5
Why don’t you let go of everything?
When you know this infinite peace, is that knowingness?
When you confirm it in your own experience. That confirmation is the realization, that confirmation is the knowing. That realization is there, also when you let go of the last handhold: the little ideas of the ‘I’ about coziness. Then the coziness is gone.
Coziness? No, no.
But you want to have your cake and eat it too.
I don’t want that.
But you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have a problem. Many have that conflict. The majority of people value ordinary life and don’t want to let go of it, because it offers a certain stability, even though there may be many problem areas. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you understand that that just goes on and on and that that means once again a narrowing of consciousness and hurting yourself, then you get a sense that it’s better to let everything dissolve and so in this way come to yourself. Then you ask yourself, “why do I make it so difficult?”
Because you can only translate freedom on the level where you’re at. You don’t place only all the nice words about the Self in the dissolution but also all the fears of the ego.
So, you should not do that. Just take another look then at how it is. We are always working on that. You see it. Why don’t you let everything go?
For me, letting go was a big traumatic event in my life; letting go is, for me, a very traumatic experience.
Yes, we have often talked about that. But I always refer back to the self-being. You remain yourself. Experience that.
Yes, that is the only safe haven. I realize that. You can’t be traumatized there. There is no pain because you are not bound. But of course, the way to it is … For me dissolution is colored by all the experiences [I’ve had] with it from the past. So, for me, it’s a very fearful event.
Sooner or later everyone has to deal with those fears. That’s why I emphasize the experience of self-being, even though there is a cramped body. [But] however it is, somewhere there is that self-being and relaxation can come from there. That self-being is a very good feeling; it’s not touched by circumstances. It’s a very positive feeling where ananda, bliss, is already completely there.
I don’t notice the positive very much; for me it’s a neutral feeling.
You experience that the self-feeling is not affected by circumstances. That’s why I still call the self-being a positive sphere, in comparison to all those other situations of suffering where you posit things as external to you.
Yes sure relatively, but not absolutely.
Everything is dissolved in the absolute. But first you must experience this clearly. Even though the positive feeling of self-being is still relative, it is, in any case, less relative than all those other images under which you suffer.
Yes, that’s true.
So now, take a further look at the self-being. In a relative sense, it’s a positive sphere and that can develop further. It can open up further and develop outward, until everything is included in it. When everything is lovingly included, you’ll see [for yourself]: that is the positive feeling-sense aspect of the cosmic sat-chit-ananda.
thegroundlessopenness 