Advaita Post, Volume 19 #10
From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma, in Gouda on April 8, 1981
Yoga and Vedanta 23 No. 3 (September 1981), 118-119
Visitor: You advised me to look clearly at the points where I am stuck. Isn’t that a thought process?
DT: No, it’s not a thinking or sensory perception of a physical person. You are consciousness and images arise within that. Your own aware being goes out beyond the senses and the thinking process. Realize that. Keep asking yourself: what am I? Am I thought on the level of thinking, or am I consciousness? Dismantle again and again what you and the “other” are. When you have an intuition of yourSelf, you will have to completely drop everything else. That’s the most important.
Visitor: Yet I experience that I often fall back onto the physical, onto the natural care for health, the instinctual things. I have a feeling you can’t escape that.
DT: The point is not the body that needs care and has all kinds of tendencies. As long as there is a body, it continues. What matters is the identification with it, the fact that you are attached to it. Do you keep asking yourself: am I that body? Do I need to take care of that? Experience that this happens automatically when you let go of the physical. You are yourself, no matter what happens on the bodily level. And in yourSelf, there is no concern for anything else. As long as there is concern, there is an ego and you are not that. You are Everything. What happens in it, happens spontaneously, without tension.
Visitor: I often feel very well physically, for example, when I have been active outdoors and [then] I can relax very well.
DT: That’s great, not bad at all. There are feelings of health and illness. That’s inherent to the body. Only, to what extent do you say again: that is my situation, how comfortable I feel again. To what extent do you link the feelings to the physical ego. Sever this limitation. See the feelings arise and don’t get lost in them. When you are in it, you are in a pleasant cosmos of your own creation. [But] The next moment you feel bad and you have a bad cosmos. Then you are determined by the circumstances. It’s not about making possible conditions, but rather about not being a slave to circumstances. Realize that your Self is not subject to it.
Visitor: Is the ultimate really something like the I-am?
DT: From the ego you can’t focus on the Ultimate. There’s no concept to create of that. You can only realize that you are not trapped in the ego, that you are not this and not that. Still you can also focus yourself on something positive: on the self-being, which everyone is. When the boundaries of this disappear, there is the great consciousness I-am, the Self, which is incredibly subtle. Ultimately that can merge with the Absolute. You have the feeling I am. That indicates the right direction. Let that grow stronger. It can be a tool for letting everything go. Then the realization of the Ultimate will come by itself. Don’t worry about that.
Visitor: I had a strong experience for a while that “It” was already present, but now that has subsided.
DT: You will have to focus on that positive [aspect] again; on That which is always present, of which you have an intuition, so that it can blossom. Then it turns out to be there during the day and not just during periods of meditation. Initially it is a positive feeling, a feeling of love, or whatever you want to call it.
Visitor: For me, occasionally that comes spontaneously.
DT: It can only come spontaneously, without an ‘I’ controlling it. You can only open yourself up to it. Then you can stick with it in an intimate way. Then, what initially is a feeling, changes, but when it’s really there, it’s your own reality. Let that come and let go of everything that keeps you from it. You will see soon enough what holds you back from it; you know it very well. Only you really have to let it go, too.
Visitor: I think it has to do with your relationship with other people.
DT: When it’s there, it’s not limited to a relationship with particular people or a particular person. Let everything go; no more borders. It goes beyond them. See when it becomes restricted again.
Visitor: It’s especially evident when I help other people.
DT: That’s understandable, isn’t it? In that case you don’t keep everything to yourself. You open yourself up to others. That creates a greater space. But see that that Space is not tied to a situation of helping. Far too often helping is just a means of caressing the ego.
Visitor: No, it happens spontaneously.
DT: As long as you realize the essence of spontaneity and space and don’t peg it to a particular situation. Just give to others and do a lot for others, but do it totally, without holding anything back, completely spontaneously. It’s not about a small opening towards someone else, but about the complete, all-sided Openness. The first may be the pinprick in the balloon which allows it to completely burst. Don’t close the hole up again. See that you only know the Openness. Then you see the whole game of the ego and its cosmos as a soap-bubble, with all kinds of energies and the I-feeling in it. And what kind of reality does that soap-bubble have?
thegroundlessopenness 