Unity and goodness become evident when you relinquish your position as observer. October 4, 2012

Advaita Post Volume 13 No 17

The mirror is always there: reflexive consciousness
[Magritte]

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Dhan Gopal Mukerji

You are the Path


You are the Path,

And the Goal that is never reached by paths;

You are the lawful Lord,

In which all laws dissolve

As rivers in the sea.


This, I say, is silence,

A return to the origin,

Or, better yet, a return

To the will of God,

A return to what is permanent;

I call this enlightenment,

And to not know this

Is blindness which causes harm.


But when you know

That which never changes,

Then you have found your own shape

And that brings justice along with it.

Justice is royal

And royalty is divine

And divinity is the Path

That ultimately is.


Further Reading: Classical texts [not translated]

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Positive sounds

Emails have been coming in, not only with problems and questions, but also with many positive messages. These weren’t included in the Advaita Post or put on the website because before you know it you’re in the arena of advertising for an individual business.

Still, maybe it’s good just to show something of the breakthroughs that occur, if only because this can function in a stimulating and inspiring way for others. These are two examples.

“From this depth the world is

just an outer shell.

My core

is free of it there.

What a wonderful discovery.

That which I really am,

has nothing to do with life and death.

Oh, so wonderful.

I’m not this shell.

Thank you, thank you, thank you,

…

It is so moving

to know what I am

free from the form,

subtly present in the world of being.

So that’s how it is … ”

“… I think your teaching has performed miracles. Everything has become LUCID, but also totally normal. It’s as though you’re living in two worlds that intermingle and are one. …

In the last 30 days I have RADICALLY done what Douwe told me to do, experience your bodily feeling-consciousness as INFINITE space. Just do THIS and stop with all the chatter in your head …. THEN THE GREAT SELF takes over from there with MUCH GREATER AWARENESS. NOW it actually goes by itself. IT is Knowing WITHOUT THINKING!!!!, much faster than your tiresome puttering and you really have no interest in that any more; you’d much rather stay unfocussed … ABSORBED in the whole SUBTLE!

I still thought like the other teachers say, that you couldn’t do ANYTHING; actually what bullshit… “

*****

Text Satsang

An Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog, June 20, 2012

Insight only on the level of consciousness is still not realization

Many people have difficulty with the transition from the observer’s point of view to a totally open sphere of infinite being. We have already confirmed that the transition happens by itself because there is no longer an ‘I’ that can do something. But that naturally occurring process will only take place when you have truly stabilized at the perspective of the observer. If you are easily distracted, you’re right back to the mental or material viewpoint. So stay in the spacious sphere of that perceiving consciousness. Of course that consciousness is already infinite, but still there’s always an observing viewpoint and an object space in which things appear.

You will want to remain on level of the observer for a long time, until you become aware of yourself anew there and the process continues. That only happens when you find it to be the most important. If other things are more important to you, your attention is focused there and there’s a concentrated, focused form of consciousness. Invariably when you have become distracted by something in the outside world or internally in your mind, you again have the old restrictive situation in which you’re stuck to a small, limited location. Gradually you come to know the value of remaining on the level of the observer. When you have recognized how important and valuable it is, then you can always stay there. Then that is the most important for you. Then the further release goes by itself.

Many people surely find this interesting, it fits into their lifestyle, but fundamentally nothing changes. It needs to be total for something fundamental to change. What does that mean? It needs to totally come into the fore. I can refer to it and it remains to be seen whether it occurs. But I can certainly say that those who have ever really gone along with this process of total breakthrough had that attitude. Because this was the most important, the rest could fall away. Despite all the interest in advaita the number of people who have actually proceeded is very small – because it requires everything. Who is ready for that? It will just be apparent. So it’s all connected to your orientation. This sphere of your orientation is more important than the content of your action within that sphere. The way in which you are and the way in which you do things is more important than what you do. At a certain moment it no longer matters what you do. But you will need to be totally present in that process.

Could you go a little deeper into the importance of insight and total involvement?

First insight will need to be there, the recognition of what is most important to you. You will have to get to know it, but initially it’s not present in a stable manner. When you remain alert, it can stabilize. Through this you will increase your outlook on the level of clear insight: This. It doesn’t take place on the level of mental consciousness. Mental consciousness is always mediated by all different kinds of ideas, thoughts, words, patterns. You withdraw and see these patterns from the level of insight. From there you confirm directly what’s important and what’s not important. You’re not reasoning from the mental level. Ask yourself: what about myself? This sphere with this external view through which I see everything, that’s my most important position. What I see is much less important than the way in which I see it. I am conscious on the level of insight.

Of course, there is also an emotional side. Clear consciousness by itself doesn’t have so much force. Something can certainly be confirmed, but it will need to become total. The whole feeling sphere will have to go along with it. You can say a hundred times that you are not the body, but whether that is actually realized is another thing. When the body falters and the end is in sight, then too don’t you easily say: of course, my own being isn’t dependent on what happens to the body? Insight only on the level of consciousness is still not realization. It will have to concern all aspects of yourself. It will need to be a very concrete experience. Of course the ordinary life, reasonably adapted to society, can continue more or less in the old way although a crack is always possible. But you are genuinely interested in how it goes, your actual attention, your heart is there in the reality of the great being-awareness. And of course that doesn’t correspond with what is commonplace within society. When you are grasped by the open sphere then the importance of all other things falls away. They are relative with respect to the one which then functions as the center.

This spacious sphere becomes the framework within which phenomena arise and can be accepted, in which life goes on. We all want to live together in a good way, everyone agrees with that. What does this ‘good’ mean for co-existence? It means that there is a feeling for each other and a togetherness. On a certain level there are no separations, there is a non-duality. Don’t focus on all the many details in which we differ, but focus increasingly on this non-duality. Then you will feel contact with it and the sphere will become steadily stronger. This non-duality doesn’t mean that everything is the same but rather that there is a unity which carries everything along. This unity, which is also goodness, becomes very evident when you relinquish your position as the observer.

So then you’re no longer on the level of response, but on that of non-duality. September 16, 2010

Volume 11 no.14

Dawning enlightenment (Schiermonnikoog, August 2010)

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Text Satsang

From a talk on May 12, 2010 Gouda

Self Meditation – Part 3: Self reflection

Douwe: See what that is: your clear consciousness through which you are internally aware of yourself without distance.

Of course, in the West there is also an awareness of reflexive consciousness. They say that it’s the point in which people differ from animals. Animals also have consciousness. But people have something extra and that is the reflexive consciousness. Through it they don’t completely merge with themselves. Because you are reflexively conscious, you can be critical of yourself, you can say: just look at what you do, and: now just do it somewhat differently. It’s also the basis of conscious morality.

The difference with the Eastern approach is that the reflexive movement in the West is not pushed far enough so that a nondual openness arises. There remains the duality of the person who is reflexively aware.

But of course it’s good for people to practice reflexivity. Most people don’t come to a good reflexivity and remain uncritical in regard to themselves. It would be nice if people would be more self-reflexive, more aware of themselves. To a certain extent that’s always the case, but you see the differences. In self-reflexive consciousness you see that nothing is taken for granted any more, that you can go one way or you can go the other. That’s the basis of your notion: I’m free to choose. It’s all part of the personal situation of people who are by definition self-reflexive. There are always alternatives. You can always say ‘no’ to an existing condition.

Visitor: In some schools don’t they call that pre-reflexive, in contrast to the reflexive behaviour of animals?

That’s a very different use of the word reflexive. You’re talking about reflexes. In a reflex movement the nerve impulses are bounced back to the muscles through the spinal cord. This is about the bouncing back or reflection of images in consciousness.

In those schools, isn’t also the transpersonal important, in contrast to the ego reactions as reflexes? Isn’t that the so called pre-reflexive?

Then you are talking about reflexes in a broad sense, namely the fixed patterns of thinking and feeling of an ‘I’-person who gives a fixed response to particular stimuli. Then you define the transpersonal as pre-reflexive in the sense that no established patterns are followed, that behaviour is spontaneous. Still then you must also speak about consciousness, because the difference between the spontaneous and natural reactions of animals is that the human situation is characterized by consciousness. In some schools which strongly emphasize the spontaneous, consciousness is pretty much gone. Then they want to have the innocence of nature back again, but ordinarily that’s not possible. We can no longer live like animals.

I have another question about that reflexive consciousness. Many people don’t really have it and I see that I have difficulty with that.  So in the encounter I have the tendency to resist. But shouldn’t you then just step out of the situation? I notice that I become too involved in the struggle.

First go back to watching your own situation, where you have recognized something of the clear awareness of your own consciousness. When you really enter into it, you see that something else happens, that you open up. Then that is somewhat different than what you experience with others just because they display less clarity. No, first let it open up and follow the path of aware insight all the way… Otherwise you get dualistic reactions: no, I don’t want that, or that’s not for me anymore. Return to the most important, the continuous development of yourself. Leave the rest as it is. The most important thing is to return to yourself as clear being-awareness. If you really do that, continually back, continually back, continually back, to the core in which the clarity is incredibly strong: then you find that yourself and everything becomes completely open. So then you’re no longer on the level of reactions, but on that of the non-duality.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the Thai boat hijackers who rob Vietnamese boat people, without judging them. He shows that the Thai boat hijackers are also driven by hunger and destruction of their cultural background, like now with the Somali boat hijackers.

Yes, you come to see this background and that mechanism more and more clearly. Everyone is in a situation where he can hardly do anything other than what he does. So you see the limitations and suffering of one group as well as the limitations and suffering of the other group. These things naturally come into the light when you return to the core of your self-being.

And what is the consequence? Seeing the relationship between cause and effect, the mutual dependency and the mutual existence of all is the recognition of non-duality in the world. But how far does the recognition of the non duality of yourself and world go? It should go beyond the state of compassion. Therefore, stay with the most important: turning back to the core of yourself and everything as non-dual openness.

A warm greeting,

Douwe Tiemersma

Your consciousness has the crystal clear clarity of frosted air: everywhere you hear ting, ting, ting. August 31, 2010

Volume 11 nr.13

Every good path leads to the groundless openness

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Text Satsang

From a talk in Gouda, May 12, 2010

Self Meditation (2). The necessary intensity of consciousness

Douwe: With self meditation your internal self-consciousness should have a high intensity, because otherwise you easily go off to sleep. When I speak about the deeper meditative stages, many people become either semi or fully asleep. This is a typical reaction, because you experience less and less forms so there is no material for creating images. You go towards an emptiness and for most people emptiness means sleep. It’s very important for you to remain conscious in that situation, in the movement back to the same open state of dreamless sleep.

Visitor: Can you become aware of that dreamless sleep state?

That’s what you are, as self-being without form, without definitive qualities. Can you be aware of that? It’s only possible when the intensity of internal self-consciousness is incredibly high. Again, if the intensity is not high enough, the clarity of the consciousness disappears. In your normal waking state it’s not a factor, because all kinds of hard things come at you. These things are so rough that you certainly should be aware of them. If you aren’t, you end up running into a wall or under a car. Then you notice the coarse world, which is relatively easy to be aware of. In this regard it is said that you are incarnated into a gross material body, in a coarse material world, in order to achieve a clearer consciousness. Of course it’s good to become more aware, but the best thing you can learn is that your own being-awareness does not depend on the coarse material condition. Otherwise you remain stuck in it. It’s about the quality of your own self-being as consciousness, as being originally free.

So self-meditation is an always increasing return to yourself with a higher intensity of consciousness, an openness, an expansion and release of forms and qualities, remaining perfectly clear without concentration, without tension.

Find out what that means: a totally open, but very lucid, highly-intensive awareness. I referred to the sphere of the air frost with little sleigh bells. In a great crystal clarity you can tap everywhere and get clear notes: ting, ting, ting, ting – everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Your consciousness with its crystal, diamond-like quality is everywhere – not concentrated somewhere. It’s about this quality, this high intensity of clarity. Within it everything is open. You go back into yourself and from there everything opens up. That occurs in the ongoing self-meditation. You remain internally aware of your inner clear consciousness.

There have only been a few for whom it truly continues. There have been lots of people here. Most are gone without having really picked up on the crystal clarity. Almost all are more aware, but when does it really break open? When the consciousness becomes so perfectly clear from inside-out that it rediscovers itself in the greatest clarity, independent of anything whatsoever.

The bodily clarity

In this development, all aspects of your life change, even your own physical sphere. In your reflexive experience the physical sphere will have the same qualities of clarity and tingling that I have mentioned. This means that your laziness goes away. This is important, because what would you accomplish spiritually if your body was very lazy. No, the quality of your body also becomes that of the crystal-clear consciousness. Then this quality no longer has anything to do with the physical condition of your body. That physical body has its own laws and its own development. There is a decline as you get older and there can be illness, and so on. At a certain point it doesn’t matter anymore, because you remain in your own self-being with that clear quality. And thus that also concerns the body. You notice immediately that in this way you have become independent, and are independent of your physical body. If you remain completely identified with your body, you know that all the vicissitudes of the body concern you too: now my body is sick and so I am sick; now I notice fatigue and so I’m tired. When you return to yourself and in a practical way become aware of yourself as a clear and spacious being-awareness, then you see that the physical sphere receives the same quality. Then you are no longer dependent on the material body. This means letting go of the old identity. Of course, the physical body continues to appear for as long as it lives, but you are no longer completely stuck there. You are the expansive being-awareness in which everything has a place.

The continuous affirmation

In order to allow this consciousness to become stable, at a certain stage you need to continually affirm it: this, this, this – constantly, constantly, constantly, as long as it’s necessary to do so. If you practice this meditation, then there is knowledge without doubt. If you don’t confirm in this way, then before you know it, you’re back again in the limited dualistic form of consciousness which we call attention.

By returning to yourself in self-meditation, besides relaxation there is also a change in the quality of your consciousness. Your consciousness becomes increasingly clear and more current, more spacious and open, more intense and alert, an increasing quality of crystals or diamonds. There is always more release, especially of the ego-centeredness. Everything opens up. And through remaining there, it becomes stable. Is that clear?

Internal reflexivity without distance

You spoke about reflexive consciousness …

Reflexive means that everything which appears in consciousness is reflected.

But that implies that there is still a distance.

Yes, but now it’s about how the reflexive distance disappears through drawing attention back towards yourself; through this you continuously merge with the perceived. Then there is a phase of an internal reflexivity without distance.

But then there’s not really perceiving anymore.

No, I already said: then there is a clear consciousness that is internally aware of itself without distance.

The construction of the world

Psychologists have demonstrated in many different studies what we already knew, namely that sensory perception always depends upon the individual situation. Of course there is the biological conditioning of the senses which can register only a portion of the spectrum of the available electromagnetic and sound waves. The psychological and existential situation also determines perception. A lot can be found about this in psychological journals, the Scientific American Mind (July / August) is great holiday reading.

“When we judge distances, attractive things appear closer than less attractive things.” When you’re thirsty, a bottle of water seems closer than when you aren’t thirsty. The distance to a gift certificate of $ 25 – is estimated to be less than a voucher worth nothing. Conclusion: how we see the physical environment, depends on what we want.

Other research shows that there is usually an overestimation of the slope of an escalating path that you wish to ascend. Skateboarders at the top of the hill, who are more anxious than others to descend, experience the slope as much steeper than the others do. Baseball players perceive the ball as bigger if they hit it well and smaller when they miss. Soccer players see the goal as smaller when they have missed than when they have kicked it in. Conclusion of the writer: there is no objective perception, being human means seeing the world through an ever changing lens.

Our conclusion is that every situation of perception arises from out of a field in which there appears to be a duality of the perceiver and the perceived, but that duality doesn’t exist. The perceiver and the perceived mutually determine each other. Self-being is thus determined by the internal and external conditions of perception. Thus it’s high time to become aware of the highest possibility of yourself as perceiver and also of yourself as free from conditions.