About freedom (Part 2) October 3, 2016

Advaita Post, Volume 17 No. 10

 

Text Satsang

 

From an Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog* June 9, 2001, part 2

 

About freedom

 

When there is independence from the circumstances there is freedom. The transition to that freedom can only take place when everything has been released. Let’s look again at that transition. We have frequently confirmed that you cannot do anything. The only thing [you can do] is to let go. This also applies to the attention. When you look at particular things, you are focused on them; you see this and you see that. That means that you keep your attention focused on that, that your attention is a bundle of light, which lights up certain things: you are focused on that. In this attention, in that special seeing of things, there is usually a lot of concentration and tension. When it comes to letting go, it also means letting go of this tension in the attention, in the attention of seeing, in the attention of hearing, a relaxation of the mind, of the eyes, of the ears.

When you look at an open landscape, there is a broad visual field. The eyes are built so that you have a focal point somewhere, a focus of your gaze and also a focus of your attention. You see that small area sharply. Around that, you can see everything, but much less sharply. Usually you limit your visual attention to a very small part of the field and that means a concentration in the attentive seeing. When relaxation comes, the whole visual field suddenly becomes visible. Then it’s not as sharp everywhere, but it’s certainly visible. Even though you can [still] look at something specific, you can be aware of the entire visual field. The transition from the one situation to the other means that you are relaxing in your seeing, that you relax your eyes, that you relax your attention. A global, expansive awareness arises. With a further relaxation, it also opens up to the rear and also above and below.

 

When you are focused on something with a tense attention, you are limited by it. Your identity then, is formed by this specific way of seeing. You are a visionary with blinders. You are fixed on and stuck to a limited field of vision. There is only the relationship between that object of sight and yourself there behind your eyes as a seer. That is why you are not free. When the attention is opened, there’s no longer such a specific object that determines you retroactively. When everything on that object side, on the world side, opens up, you yourself immediately open. There is no specific I anymore, because there is no specific object. Through the relaxation the world opens up and you open up. Then there is the natural situation: that of freedom. It’s great during the first day on the island to go see if the sea is still there and the lighthouse is still there, and so on. But, actually you already know that. It’s all there in the openness, it’s all there. Everything is completely there in the here and now.

 

I hope this is clear. On the one hand there is the lack of freedom, when there is such a specific fixation, in seeing, in hearing, in wanting, in desiring, in defending. Again and again, when there is something in the world that you are focusing on specifically, that also means a narrowing of your own sphere. Then you will be defined by that. We experienced that this morning with the CD containing the sounds of a storm. When that rumble swells again there are two possibilities. The first is that of defense. You hope that that terrible noise will soon stop. This means that you have set yourself up quite firmly against the sound and against the further noise that is likely to come. Then it’s about hard against hard. Then you are defined by the external noise through the corresponding reaction of fear and of thinking. The second possibility is that everything remains open. Then everything happens as it happens. When the noise is over, nothing has actually happened.

 

As an excuse for the closing and the hardening, it’s often said that when you open yourself up you become too vulnerable to the things that come at you. But, actually, it’s the reverse. When you are open, you are invulnerable. Then everything goes right through you and there are no consequences. When you focus on something somewhere, you get a concentration of your own energy and that hardened standpoint is a point of engagement for external forces. Then it’s hard against hard and just see who is the strongest. Sometimes there is so much coming at you that you become stressed out. That’s right, but you yourself gave rise to that because you positioned yourself so firmly against all those outside forces. When you completely open yourself, there is no point anywhere that could become stressed. When you are free, even if everyone in your neighborhood experiences a stressful situation, those stress forces don’t have a grip anywhere in your own sphere. Just like acting without a center, everything can take place in the great whole. So, freedom is [about] celebrating, letting go. Letting everything go its own way. Then nothing is needed, you don’t have to see something special, you don’t have to hear something special, you don’t have to do anything special. You walk or bike around the island and everywhere it’s perfect. Because it’s perfect everywhere, you don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to be focused on anything particular. You can, of course, because the wheels keep turning, the feet keep running, the eyes keep seeing. But nothing is needed, everywhere it’s perfect, complete, precisely because it’s completely open. Everything is in the here and now, it’s not elsewhere.

 

 

• An island off the coast of the Netherlands where Douwe would hold retreats.

About knowing June 1, 2015

 

Advaita Post Volume 15 No. 6

Text Satsang

From an introduction and talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Gouda, May 22, 2002

About knowing

(Visitor) You say to steadily turn your attention back to its source within. When I look at that flower there, then the impulse is only directed out towards it.

(Douwe) That’s the normal way of knowing.

And everything else that takes place internally distracts me from what’s out there.

Yes, that’s possible. Initially the withdrawal is necessary in order to become detached from what’s out there. When the attention really turns back to its source first, then it creates what I’ve often referred to as an inside-out inversion. Then everything returns in a wonderful way. That occurs in a very different way than with the internal-external separation. Namely, there’s no longer the old structure, “Me, here, the other things, there, and in between, the relation.” This latter means a concentration of the attention, a fixation, a limiting and frequently also an obsession. It’s important for all that to be thoroughly broken through. You see that the old form of knowing is so terribly limited, because it always begins from a particular ‘I’. And that whole ‘I’ structure can become inflated. But what kind of knowing arises when this flower here actually enters completely within? The knowing then becomes more intimate than it ever could have been with the distancing kind of knowing. With it there’s no separation any more between inside and outside, so that you, in a certain sense, are that flower. Everything is present in the realm of Self-being. That’s a very different, intuitive kind of knowing. Traditionally, it is said of the liberated that they see themselves in everything that’s visible. That’s impossible when you continue to maintain this distance in your knowing. With this distance, you can observe the other, you can also analyze the other, you can pick it apart. So then the other is an object, in contrast to yourself as subject, as the source of the perceiving. But if just once, all that objectivity were to actually revert to the source of light in yourself, then suddenly everything would show itself to turn inside-out. Then there’s no limitation in the self-being or its objects any more. Both completely merge into one another. Indeed, there certainly is a knowledge of this and that, but fundamentally, there is no separation any longer. That’s advaita, non-separateness. It’s not a positive unity, but non-separateness, about which you can’t really say anything else. There is a direct knowing in your own sphere. And that knowing is unlimited.

When you start out from an ‘objective’ world and an ‘objective’ knowledge, you go around looking at and labeling everything, actually you want to rule out your subjectivity thereby. This is especially evident in the traditional sciences: if knowledge is to be objective, the subjectivity must be turned off through use of the scientific method. That this could be possible is a delusion. The subject always has a role to play. Why? Because there is no aloof perceiving and no perceived external world without a subject with its own starting point and method of perceiving. Consequently, knowledge is always conditioned. Truth remains a conditional truth.

But now, what is that subject? Traditionally, this is frequently asked in the texts of the ancient Upanishads: who is the actual perceiver? Now, just consider, not this, not that. When you truly realize something of the ultimate perceiver, then this whole structure of perceiver, perceived and perceiving turns out to not exist any more. Then it turns out that perceiving is a direct confirmation. Precisely because the phenomena are directly perceived phenomena, the perceiving of something is a given. The phenomena are there or they are not. When they are there, it turns out that they are there, as such. That is truth: the appearance of something.

When you start thinking and introduce all kinds of intermediate processes of perceiving, you say that perception is indirect. It makes use of different sense organs and all kinds of cognitive schemas. But if you start looking at perception just as it is present in yourself, then it is direct. Then it has nothing to do with eyes, brains and forms of knowing. There is a direct confirmation. Only when thinking jumps in, then you return to the disassembly, the indirectness. But, thinking is not perceiving.

Does your identifying with a person or a thing also belong to that direct knowing?

Yes of course. You don’t have this direct experience only when you’re involved in the advaita approach, rather, it’s constantly there. You experience your identity directly with all kinds of people, especially the ones that are closer to you. If something happens to that other it also happens, more or less, to yourself. In communication, you often need only a word or two from the other in order to understand them. Yes, that is a direct knowing. Recognize that everywhere, even in the ordinary seeing of things.

Where does the perceiving take place? Not, like the neurobiologists say, in the brain. That’s pure nonsense. When there is perception of a landscape, it has nothing to do with your brains and everything to do with the landscape. In the perception itself there is no brain, and if it is there, it’s a brain, perceived as an object. Perception is direct: bam. Something appears here and now, in the light, and it’s there. Even when a little later you look from the other side and you see something different. Even then, there is a direct perception in the here and now. Again and again there is a direct confirmation or there is not.

Yes, then in principle all is one. You can take any object …

Yes, every object in perception comes intrinsically linked together with the subject, because otherwise there is no perception. In every instance of perceiving, there’s actually a timeless moment, pang, and something is there. And that is a process in which the subject and object coincide. As subject you perceive something, and you perceive it as true, even though you may later establish that it was an inaccurate perception. Then there is namely, a new direct confirmation in your own sphere.

In the immediacy, the confirmation and the appearance coincide; consciousness and being, subject and object. Prior to their actual coincidence, there is an intuitive, internal perception, a being-knowing, in which you are no longer different from that which you perceive. When both poles completely coincide there is nothing more. Of this an empty being-knowing is still possible.