preface: I recently discovered this guy and I think what he's saying is absolutely amazing.
This article suggests a simple and literal perspective of Nondualism which is neither spiritual nor therapeutic but rather as a statement of non-separation, which is unachievable. The suggestion is, there is no real separation, no person. Separation is only apparent and the person is illusory. There is no real separation to overcome, there is no wholeness to become. Nondualism is not seen as a positive statement of what should be, nor is it a negative statement of what should not be. But rather a statement without positive or negative charge of “what is” already.
Nondualism or non-separation cannot be described, it, „this“, is unknowing. There is no separate position to describe it from. It points to a reality that is simultaneously empty and all that appears; all-encompassing and limitless, timeless and complete, whole, unconditional, unknowable “isness". Non-separation is an unbelievable, unapproachable, uncompromising freedom which is already. These are not descriptions of a condition, but “what is” already, when the personal condition unravels. As the illusory person can only find value in what can be owned or known.
This condition-less freedom - which is never found but seemingly lost - is continually longed for and is overlooked by being unknowable.
The experience of real separation - which is the arising of the “I am” experience - is simultaneously a discontent of the need to know and the feeling that something needs to happen. It is exactly the need to know, which makes the unknowable freedom of “what is” seem out of reach. This message of non-separation does not in any way meet the expectations or needs of the seeker, it undermines them.
Therefore - when this message is listened to, the seeking energy may react in many different ways. One is to reject it offhand, as it does not reflect its experience of itself nor meet any of its’ expectations of logic or need to find something else; something better or more. It may misunderstand what is being suggested and attack its misunderstanding. The concepts can be quite foreign to the expectations of the seeker. Or it may believe the concepts making it about itself and thereby inevitably (although falsely) believe that Nondualism points to a reality separate from „what is“ already and therefore a philosophy to apply or a desirable reality to become. These reactions are all functions of the personal experience, there is no free will or choice involved.
Of course, the reality being suggested is not limited to or by the concepts nor is it simply a philosophical understanding. This article points to „what is“ as “already unconditional isness”, which is never recognized by the “I am”.This message however can be “heard” and when it is heard, it is not the “I am” which hears but rather the message rings true with something unidentifiable, a simple but profound response, an unconceived yes of no one.
“What is already” is nothing to the “I am” seeking energy, which is looking for something knowable. As the “I am” and the experience of real separation are illusory and what is truly longed for is never lost, any personal search to overcome separation or find what is already, is utterly hopeless.
A perspective arising out of an illusory „real“ separation will suggest, that personal effort such as being aware or more aware, being conscious or more conscious, being in the now or being present can lead to the end of separation. These suggestions in essence take the seeker prisoner. Confirming the hope, that what is longed for will be or could be found through personal effort. However: No experience, realization, or process of becoming could possibly lead to the dissolution of the already illusory experience of „real“ separation. The “I am” is hopelessly and choicelessly trapped in a dream of personal process, in its’ efforts to find something for itself, thereby missing what is already: unrecognizable freedom.
The end of the “I am experience“ is the recognition, that there never was one. Real Separation is a dream.
With this recognition, the need to compromise with the seekers' expectations of becoming, naturally also ends. The assertion, that what is truly longed for would or could be found as the result of a process, is revealed to be completely misguided. Nothing leads to „what is“ already. Non-separation is never realized, found, or known. But can be recognized by no-one in the falling away of the illusory experience of real separation.
The end of seeking is not the fulfillment of the individuals' need for answers about what life is, what death is, nor is it the satisfaction of the need for meaning and purpose. It is the end of the need to know, which is the end of questions and search for answers as the causeless end of the questioner which never was. The end of something that never happened. There is already not two. Real separation is a dream.
Nondualism takes no prisoners.
Vienna Feb 2020 INTRODUCTION
The topic of the meeting is what you would call non-dualism. The difficulty in talking about it or trying to have a meeting around non-dualism is: it's not a thing, it's not an object. So we can't really say what it is, but at the same time there's nothing that's not it. So when we're talking about the absolute, when we are talking about freedom, when we're talking about the unconditioned - which would all be words that would be in some ways synonymous with non-dualism - what's being suggested is that EVERYTHING IS THAT.
Whatever's arising, whatever's happening, this room, these words, sitting on the bench, looking here, is absolute; rooming, sitting on a bench, looking, hearing.
Absolute isn't a word to understand. It's pointing to or suggesting that listening, hearing, rooming isn't understandable. It's immediate and all encompassing. There's no distance or space or separation to absolute, to what's happening, to listening, seeing, rooming. There's no distance there. Whatever's happening is everything, is absolute. There is never two.
This room is absolute, appearing as a room. This body is absolute appearing as a body. Thoughts and feelings, whatever is arising, is absolute freedom or unknowing appearing, the absolute being.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that there's an absolute somewhere that sort of generates this appearance and so there's an absolute over there and this appearance here. Or that there's an absolute that then hears. It is literally absolute hearing. Now what that means in concrete terms is: the experience that there's someone hearing, the experience of the room as a knowable object in relation to a central experiencer, is illusory.
To have a meeting about non-dualism or about the absolute is really absurd, and it's ridiculous because there'd be no reason to do that. What would the reason be to talk about something that first off can't be talked about and is already everything?
So the meeting is actually a response to that experience which I was suggesting just a minute ago, that the room is knowable. Or that I'm sitting in the room and I have an experience that is separate from everything else that's going on. That's what this meeting actually in a sense is about.
And the meeting has a very simple message: that experience is an illusion. I'm talking about the experience of a contracted energy in the body that knows where and what this is, knows what's happening. The suggestion is that's illusory. Illusory in the sense that it's not happening. That experience has certain claims. It says: „I'm real, I'm in the body, what's happening is real. I know what it is. This is my life.“ That arises out of the sense that what's happening is knowable and real. But THIS is not knowable or real. The experience of knowable or real is illusory. This appearance is never knowable or real. It's never solid. It's never a part of a story that's attached to an individual. That is illusory.
The appearance is not an illusion. These hands aren't illusory. This body isn't illusory. The bodies aren't illusory. The room isn't illusory. It's the absolute appearing, looking like, being a body, a room, words. The only absolutely illusory bit, the only bit that's truly not happening is that this is real and knowable and happening to me. The obvious question is then what is it like, or how do I find this that's not illusory and not knowable?
And there's no way to find what this is or what the suggestion is because there's no way to separate from it. It's impossible to find because it's impossible to lose. There is no separation.
The experience that there's a sense of loss or something missing or something wrong arises because this appears as something it's not. It appears as though it's separate. It appears as the experiences through knowing that I have control over my life. Through knowing that I'm able to make decisions and find things that are good or bad for me.
That experience (= the person) is convinced that it's necessary or responsible for finding the reality of what this is. That experience is exactly what hides the reality of what this is. That experience says the mystery has to be found somewhere else, and that hides the reality that there is only the mysterious. There is only unknowing.
That experience says, I need to, through my free will and choice, find the meaning and purpose to this apparent happening, this appearance. That's an illusion. There is no meaning and purpose, there's nothing missing. This doesn't need to be completed. It doesn't need to become whole. It already is, and that includes the experience that it isn't. That's wholeness or the absolute appearing as the experience that something needs to happen for this to be okay. This is never okay or not okay. It's simply the mystery appearing as THIS.
APPEARANCE WITH NO BEGINNING OR END
In this meeting there is nothing special about the speaker. What is being shared is not coming from something that's known. There's nothing that can be given. What can happen here is: the experience — all experience — is exposed as an illusory experience, an illusory sense of here and there, an illusory subject-object reality.
We will be describing how that subject-object reality is experienced. 'I' am experienced as the beginning and the end. That happens to hide the reality that there isn't a real beginning or an end, there isn't a real subject or an object. It points out that the experience “I am“ says that “I am alive“, which hides the reality that I am is really the experience of death. It separates life from death. It says “I know I am” and that experience puts death somewhere else. And therefore actually goes on the search for aliveness, trying to avoid what it considers death, which hides or covers over the reality, that there's no beginning or end, so who would there be to die? There is no one to die.
This — what is and is not — being the whole of everything, already doesn't actually move. This doesn't actually happen. This has no actuality at all, is neither alive nor dead. It is indescribable, unknowable everythingness. And that includes everything appearing to happen, even experience. Experience in that sense is completely illusory. It's not real, it's not really happening. There is only this appearance, which has no beginning or end to it. This also has no meaning, no purpose, no need.
Introduction Sharpham Residential England Sept. 2019
THE ILLUSORY EXPERIENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Introduction Austria residential • June 2019
When the individual thinks it hears or understands this message, it's sometimes heard or understood as a negativity, as something wrong or not good. That is a reaction to the experience of the individuals' need for something to happen. The individual is basically a sense of need. It needs the next moment, it needs hope, it needs meaning and purpose, it needs the experience of freewill and choice. That need is a positivity for more and more and more experience. Those needs are all part and parcel of the individuals idea of what this is about.
This message completely undermines the experience of the individual as real. The suggestion is, that experience is an illusion. It's literally already not happening. So it doesn't need to stop happening. The message isn't actually negative, nor is it positive. The message is - as much as it can be - a reflection, a suggestion, that “this“ has no need. This is completely neutral. Everything that seems to be happening is neutral. It's total equilibrium. That includes the experience of being an individual.
The message is one of absolute unconditional freedom. It's not freedom that fulfills or is in relationship to the need of the illusory individual. It's not freedom that anybody ever knows or has.
THIS IS ALREADY IT
THIS isn't about getting anywhere. We're not going anywhere. If an individual has shown up today, it probably thinks that it might get something, or that there's some intention to what's going on here, even if that intention is to become intentionless. That's not the case though. This is already intentionless. This has no point. The meeting has no point. What might not have been recognized yet is: nothing does. It's already free, absolute freedom. This is that freedom.
If this is already free, what are we doing here?
In that freedom, there can arise the experience "I am" or "here-ness" That here-ness has an apparent effect on the appearance, so it no longer is free, no longer seems free. It seems like it's a part of a story, and of course, it's „my“ story, and my story has one intention, and that is to be uninterruptedly happy. How's it going? Laughing
What that intentional experience "I am" doesn't know is, that it's already the freedom that it's looking for, which means, it can never find it. What the experience of the "I am" is looking for is something real. So, that it knows that it's gonna be okay, something to hold on to. It needs that, or it seeks that because it has experienced itself to be real. It says, "I am real." And as it is completely illusory and everything else is only apparent (meaning it's not real) it's not unreal, but it's not real. It starts a journey, and that journey is to find something real.
Most people don't know they're on a journey. Most people don't know they're looking for something real. Most people are just trying to have more sex, more money, more whatever, more movies, more TV, more food, whatever experience seems to make them feel good. Everything the individual does though (when it doesn't ever do anything really) is to find something that's real. And it's a hopeless effort, because this appearance, which is already absolute freedom, isn't real. And, as this is all there is, there's nowhere for the individual to go to find something real. There's nothing to find.
What we're talking about here, isn't gonna be finding the solution to “I am“ or the need to find something real. What's being pointed to here is that there's no hope. Being an individual - or the experience of being an individual - is an absolutely hopeless situation, because it can't find what it's looking for. It doesn't want what we're talking about here.
What we're talking about here is unwantable. It's unwantable because it means the end of the individual. It doesn't want that. It's also unwantable because there's no distance to it. So, there's no way for want to arise. This is already it. Any wanting, apparent wanting, is avoidance of this. It's not right or wrong. It just seems to be. It's just what happens. This is what's happening. What's happening is absolute. Birds singing is absolute. Toilet flushing is absolute. It's the absolute singing or flushing.
Introduction residentail in England/Sharpham • Summer 2018
THE MEANING OF LIFE AND LONGING FOR WHOLENESS
By Excellence Reporter on January 26, 2018
Nicolae Tanase: Jim, what is the meaning of life?
Jim Newman: There is no meaning and no need for a meaning of life. Everything is already what it is, which is already needlessly, free and fulfilled.
“Life” is not separate from what is. Without separation, there is no space or distance in which the need for a meaning of life could arise.
There is only what is. “What is” is not objective or subjective, it is not conceptual, knowable or understandable. “What is” is indivisible, all encompassing, everything without position or perspective, no inside, no outside, not two, not separate, non dual.
What is – undifferentiated everything – can appear as something, a perspective, an apparent position. A position can be experienced, making the appearance seem personal. As a personal experience, life appears to be an object or “a something” requiring meaning. However, the person is illusory and has no reality outside of its experience of itself. The search for meaning is a need that arises out of that experience, which is the experience of separation, the experience that “what is” is real and personal.
The question or search for a meaning of life comes from the longing for wholeness, absolute freedom, which is unknowingly a longing for dissolution, an end to the person. The personal experience inevitably seeks for an answer to the question of “what is my life about?”. For the person there is no answer because this, what is, is not about anything. And it does not need to be about anything. The only solution for the person is the end of the person.
The person cannot go beyond the illusory nature of itself and cannot help being an effect of itself: a seeker. Its search is for love, for more or better experiences. It experiences itself on a path to find what it hopes will resolve its diss-ease of need. The path is seeking. Seeking can be the search for money, power, more… Because the search does not and can not address the cause of need, it can only lead to more seeking. The premise for seeking – that something intrinsically is wrong or missing – is illusory. Consequentially all of its efforts are hopelessly limited to that false premise.
The person is trying to overcome this diss-ease of the need for experience through more experience.
The effort exerted by the person can never lead to the fulfillment it seeks, the unlimited all inclusiveness of the unknowable “what is”. What is longed for is beyond personal seeking, by being “what is” already. “What is” is not an objective reality, is not knowable. “What is” is emptiness being everything as it is. Everything being what it is, is already complete, already absolutely free, without any need of meaning.
WHY NON DUALISM IS NOT A TEACHING
There seems to be some confusion about what is meant by non dualism; why it is not a teaching and why non dual speakers are not called teachers.
Spiritual teachings and teachers function within the belief, knowing or experience, that there is a lack, something missing in the student, that can be rectified through becoming better or learning something new. Spiritual teaching comes from the perspective, that separation — the subject-object experience — is real and can be or even should be overcome. The overcoming of the separation has the goal of becoming a better person or even the so called personal enlightenment.
Non dualism says, the experience of separation is illusory. Therefore, trying to overcome it, is just furthering the misunderstanding. All justification for spiritual teachings and teachers is based on this misunderstanding.
Spiritual teachers and teachings are lost in the dream of separation and are dealing with consequences and not the cause of apparent separation, becoming an effect of an effect of an effect (and so on) of the experience of the individual. Spiritual teachings are in that way a trap that can never provide the promised goods. As already stated, the only justification for teaching would be, if the experience of separation was real. But there is no real separation.
Absolute Freedom cannot be found within the experience of separation, which is where all spiritual teachers and teachings function.
The individual has never, would never, and could never do anything to rid itself of itself or uncover the reality of itself or what is.
What effect does working with the consequence of separation have? Spirituality and the spiritual path do have effects in the experience of the individual. They can make that experience better or worse (both only temporarily) and more or less functional. Just as therapy can. Spirituality bases its function on the assumption of there being something wrong with the person — the seeker. Which is in agreement with the assumptions the person has about itself, that there is something wrong with it. Spiritual teachings confirm this false assumption and tells the individual, what they can, could or should do, to be a better person, to find what is looked for. None of these approaches recognisze the real cause of the discontent: the experience of separation, the individual.
There is nothing missing and no need to find anything. When the dream ends, no one wakes up. The dream was the dreamers only reality. When it ends, there is no one left to wake up.
Non dualism has no judgment, as it does not recognize the free will (the individual experiences itself to have) as real. So there is no one to be responsible. Free will and personal responsibility are simply aspects of the illusory experience of the individual. This is a description, pointing out common misunderstandings, which arise because the suggestions and descriptions of non dualism are so foreign to the logic which arises out of the experience that “I am real” and “I do everything”.
Even the idea of “being no one” can be falsely understood as having to do with a real experience or real knowing. Real experience or real knowing are consequences of the illusory individual. Non dualism points to the unknowing emptiness, appearing as what is, which is beyond experience and knowing.
There is nothing to find, except “there is nothing to find”, which is never the result of seeking. There is no value in seeking, contrary to the seekers experience and value system.
Non dualism points to the completeness which is beyond words or understanding. It points to the wholeness, which is not effected by the experience of separation. It points to the unconditional love, which is already everything. It points to the unbounded absolute freedom, which is so free, it can appear as separation seeking freedom. There is only what is — everything — never anything else and this everything is the absolute freedom longed for already.
SEPARATION AS A PSYCHOSOMATIC MISUNDERSTANDING
THIS WEBSITE AND THE MEETINGS share the unexpected and unconditional. What is, is already what’s longed for, which is always overlooked by what is commonly considered normal, even necessary: the experience that “what is” is personal.
The experience of being an individual is self-confirming. “I am reading these words, because I experience it now, therefore I am real.” That position is a psychosomatic misunderstanding: separation is real. The result is the experience, the false claim, that something is missing, the individual is real and its experience that something is wrong with it or with everything else, are all true.
The experience is firstly what is, is incomplete and second, that through its own efforts it can find that completeness and make its life good (whatever that means). This sharing explores and undermines these false claims by pointing out the overlooked. The individual is real only in reference to knowing. Knowing is the currency of the individual. Experience is the currency of knowing.
This sharing undermines the veracity of the claim, that the individual is what it experiences itself to be. It explores the possibility, that what is beyond experience and beyond knowing, is what is longed for. What is (unknowingly) longed for is the end of the search, the end of need, the end of trying to find completeness.
The individual is stuck in finding something, unwittingly longing for nothing, the end of experience, in that missing the solution: unknowing. There is no answer to the problem of being an individual, the solution is the end of the individual. What is left when the individual ends? Everything as empty is-ness, nothing arising. What is, what is happening, is nothing arising. 'What is' arising, is about nothing. Which is paradoxically the fulfillment of need. Nothing to know, nothing to understand, nothing more needed. The empty is-ness of what is, being without reason.
THIS IS ABOUT NOTHING
J: There is no way to say „what is“ is about nothing, because there is no one to tell and no one who wants to know. No one wants to hear this. For the individual the experience is: this is about something.
R: You say there is no choice, you also say there is no consciousness. With consciousness one always needs to be conscious of something, an awareness of something. And of „this“ you cannot be aware. I ask – is it not crazy that „this“ is all there is and one cannot access it.
J: There is no accessing it and there is no not accessing it. It simply is. „What is“ cannot be gotten and cannot be lost, it is unknowing.
R: Sounds like a paradox. You cannot get it, you cannot lose it? What kind of relationship do you have to „this“!
J: Well that is the thing – there is no relationship in „what is“.
R: Because there is no awareness of it?
J: No, because there is no distance. For a relationship you need distance to it.
R: Pause That is pretty cool.
J: This is all about nothing. Which is covered over by the experience „this is about something“ which is a pretty dissatisfying experience. Trying to find a something that it is about. And – it is not about anything. It is completely empty. And „what is“ is completely empty includes a seemingly „it is about something“ so everything that is appearing, everything that is, is not a misplaced everything, it is just empty. It is not about really anything.
R: What does that mean „it is empty“.
J: Well, it means it is not about something which the person is experiencing.
R: Like that it is going somewhere?
J: Well, coming from somewhere, going somewhere, that there is the need of finding something, that something is really happening. So if you are asking somebody what difference it makes if you die now or in ten years, most people will say „a huge difference!“ because things can change, one can have experiences. And all this is seeing what is happening from the perspective of that the appearance is all there is. So from that perspective the individual feels like it is the appearance, that being everything, the appearance is all there is. So being the appearance something real could happen. But the reality is, the appearance is real and unreal, doesn't have any real effect because nothing is really happening. So if there would be no individual there it would be recognized, that dying now or dying in ten years makes no difference because nothing really happens. The individual thinks that they are taking it with them. They imagine that there is a continuum that will go on after they die so whatever they experienced has some reality that belongs to a continuum. When there is no one experiencing this is about something, then there is obvious (to no one) that „what is“ is about nothing, isn't something that happens. It is always all nothing, it is just covered over by the experience that it is something or about something. So when the „about something“ stops happening, nothing actually changes. Because the „something happening“ is also nothing, makes no difference. „What is“ doesn't care if there is an individual that thinks it is about something or if there is not an individual, it makes absolute no difference because the reality is: everything that is appearing, is nothing appearing that way. It is all about nothing.
R: But isn't that a cold universe?
J: No, the cold universe is the individuals world. Where it is about something, where it is hard and full of need, and lack, that is cold. What is left - when that is no longer - is really beauty, is unconditional love, what is natural actually.
R: But total uncaring it sounds like.
J: It is the end of anxious caring. The caring becomes broader, so it is recognized that the individual is looking for nothing but doesn't want nothing, cannot have nothing, cannot know nothing. And that is really tragic because that can lead to a lot of suffering and unhappiness. But here is a bigger picture, that all the need where that comes from is also nothing, pointless and useless. So in a big sense there is a caring and a understanding or a compassion for the whole suffering but for the individual experience, it is such a self masturbatory exercise of the individual going up and down and up and down in its own world of need which is going nowhere. So it is hard to care about that.
R: And then on top of it there is no person anyway.
J: It doesn't matter, yes there isn't one but that is also just nothing appearing as a person or appearing as no person. Nothing makes a difference. It just doesn't matter because it is not happening, it is not real.
R: And then the bottom drops out when this is seen?
J: No, the bottom drops out when there is no one left feeling like there is a bottom. Because nobody „sees“ nothing. It is the end of looking. And it is not a recognition. There are all these insights or realizations that there is nothing left inside, that there is no such thing as an individual, never was, everything and nothing are the same thing, that everything is empty and there is no story. Those still seemed to me like something happened and it is still an experienced happening. They are like peepholes into another reality, but they are still peepholes. When all of that ends and there is nothing, that is just something completely else. Because when there is recognized that there is no „me“, that is like something you can talk about, that is like something you can recognize, something that there is no one and never was one. But when the bottom drops out then there is nothing, it is not like there is nothing left, it is like there never was anything. So „there is nothing happening“ is not a recognition, not a realization because there is no one to have it.
R: And where does the „something“ fit in? All that is appearing? Is that all nothing appearing as something? But doesn't that mean that „Nothing“ is in a way stronger than the something?
J: No.
R: There is a balance between something and nothing?
J: There is no balance, it is all the same thing. It is all empty. There is not nothing somewhere else or then something somewhere else. If there were, there would be something happening.
R: What is the difference between nothing and empty?
J: No difference, it is the same thing.
R: But again: there is much more nothing than there is something.
J: No. Everything. Is. Empty.
R: So there is just empty nothingness.
J: … appearing as something "everythingness".
R: What to do with that?
J: Who would do anything with that?
R: The one who thinks they have to pay a rent and worrying about ending up on the street.
J: Well that is something seemingly happening.
R: Yeah, it feels very much something happening to the one worrying about ending up on the street.
J: With the individual, when there is the experience of it being about something than all of that shows up as being meaningful. Of course all of this seems to happen but it doesn't mean anything. It either does or it doesn't happen.
R: But if somebody takes that to heart they think „it doesn't matter anyhow“ and their children have nothing to eat. So isn't that a reckless advise to give to a person?
J: I am not giving any advice. There is no point to get, there is nothing to take away from this. This has nothing to do with the experience that this is about something. There is no relationship.
R: But if this is heard by somebody …
J: Nobody gives this. If somebody misunderstands it and decides they can do all sort of things, then that's what happens.
R: It is a powerful insight that this is all about nothing.
J: Huge. And it is not an insight.
R: What is it then?
J: The end of insights. The end of this being about something. That is the „bottom falling out“, that this being about something and all that is left is free fall.
R: But when nothing can be done with it, it is a completely useless message.
J: Completely useless.
R: No easing of pain, no motivation of sports, no relief of worry. But I did see deep relaxation in people.
J: I think this is „known“ by everybody. And there is an unraveling. „Known“ is not the right word.
R: So what is your advise how to go on in everyday life?
J: The point is, there never was anybody who made a choice in the first place. It just seemingly goes on as it always did and actually nothing goes on.
R: But is there no glory in the psyche to experience, a little bit maybe?
J: There is nothing in it for the individual. The one thing that is recognized when the bottom falls out is, that the individual is exceptional arrogant thinking it is about something. Because it being about something is really a being about me. Me, me, me, me. What I think is important, what I feel is important, what I do is important, where I go is important, it is all so important, but really important.
R: So the me is totally oblivious? And then it is just erased, swoosh gone?
J: Well sort of except it was never anyway. So it is the end of something which never happened. This is a completely unwant able message. It is just not want able.
R: It is like being trapped in a house of mirrors and being told that everything, all the reflections you see of yourself is an illusion because there is no self and there is no way out and there is nothing you can do and really all of this is not happening. Really one goes mad, don't you see that? Just madness.
J: Well I think what you are talking about is a subtle recognition of the reality what is pointed to and the hopelessness of the individual to do anything about it or anything with it.
R: This is an unkind universe, to me.
J: The individual is trapped in its own dream.
R: Without a dreamer.
J: No, the individual is it's own dream so when the individual is no longer then there is no one that ever dreamed. No dream, no dreamer.
R: What is left then?
J: Everything. This, just as it is, what is. Which is all there ever is.
R: So it was actually never really different, just seen a bit askew.
J: The experience of this being about something makes this for the individual appear as about something it is not. There is nothing to get, there is nowhere to go because there is nothing to find because there is nothing lost.
R: That is quite diametral what I feel my me is about.
J: It is. Absolutely. The individual, the me is the experience it is about something and the reality is, it is about nothing.
R: … when the me wants to go and get, „here I come!“ and be on a „solution finding mission“.
J: Solution to a problem which is unreal.
R: That is depressing.
J: To the individual it is a quite tragic message. But really all what the message is doing is exposing the tragedy of the individual in the first place. Actually it is not really doing anything, it is just simply a description.
R: But in describing it, a veil can be lifted.
J: Or not. Or there is the recognition there never was a veil.
Pause
It is difficult to get my head around the fact that no one wants to hear this and everybody wants to hear this. It cannot be said because it is too everything and too nothing.
R: So there is the big price available and it cannot be claimed.
J: There is no big price. But there is suffering, there is discontent.
R: When it is really really seen that nothing can be done, that one cannot lift itself out on its own boot-straps, will it then fall away?
J: Could be. The end of the story is the end of the story when it is obvious it is all about nothing. This is the end of it being about something.
R: Is there anything else you need to say.
J: No, I need a drink of water.
R: Me too. So this is still happening.
J: laughs Apparently.
Jim Newman / 29th of January 2017
THE SEARCH • Why am I here? What is the purpose and meaning of life? What happens when I die? How do I find happiness, peace, fulfillment?
These questions every person has answered in one way or another with hope and belief. The imagined future. Some of these self-serving answers can be seen in religion, faith, higher consciousness, Higher Self with a capital S, enlightenment knowledge and knowing among others names.
Every apparent answer points to a special "what will be", never to the ordinary original what is. What will be is also called the search.
All apparent answers point away from what is, confirming the reality of the questioner and its questions. This apparent confirmation of the question and therefore questioner does nothing to give the individual - the questioner - the happiness, peace and fulfillment it is looking for. There is no answer to any of the questions because the questioner is an illusion. The search and the appearance of an individual in the body are the same thing.
The person is a construct, a contraction, a center to the psychic cloud of unknowing, of everything. The center, the subsequent interaction is the person and its illusory life of meaning and purpose. The result is necessarily the search for hope, meaning and purpose. The search is a search for the answer to the problem of itself.
The search is completely hopeless.
SEPARATION • The separate sense is on a mission, it is searching for the impossible to know the end of itself, the end of the fear of death, the end of separation. The non- dual reality. In this search it will always fail. The situation for the sense of self is completely hopeless. As is its efforts to control its life by repeating the pleasurable and avoiding the painful which is the simple description of its entire life. There is no free will - that is another illusion.
The good news is, there is no such thing as separation. What the separate sense of self is looking for is all there is. There is only that. This. This is not particular or exclusive. It is everything exactly as it is. Everything is an expression of wholeness, everything is the end of the sense of separation which the separate sense is looking for but in looking the separate sense can only register something, the particular.
When this reality is recognized, it is seen that there is no separation, that the sense of separation was simply a dream, that it never happened, there is no and never was a separate self in the whole of everything. Everything paradise is perfect and complete. But nothing changes, as there never was separation. The appearance is no longer informed by the search for the end of the fear of death and the neurotic outcroppings of that search, but everything is still, everything. In the absence of the search there is a unknowable wonder that this what is, can be, just that it appears, a quiet awesomeness that is this meaningless purposeless explosion of everything, which is an anarchy of love. Absolute freedom appearing as whatever is.
In sharing this, it may be recognized, resonated with. Sometimes there is the registration, that this is undeniable although there is no recognition, simply a refreshing understanding that seems to ring true somewhere and the straightjacket "me" may loosen or even fall away completely.
As the message is that there is nothing to find, it is already this, the separate sense of self has no part to play in the recognition. There is either an impersonal willingness or there is not.
It, this, is everything, completely impersonal and has nothing to do with what the separate sense feels or thinks.
NON DUALISM turns the way one normally thinks of enlightenment and spirituality on its head. Non Duality is a revolution. The simplicity of the message is absolutely undeniable. It reveals, that the search for enlightenment is in itself the continuation and confirmation of the separation.
Non Duality is a description of what can not be described, hence the negative non. Or what it is not, there are not two. The “two” being pointed to are all the opposites of existence, perception or the basis for experience.
It is obvious there is experience and perception so what is “not two”? And why can it not be said? “Not two” is pointing to the reality that perception and the experience of two is not what it seems to be. Experience seems to be the basis of what is. Non Duality acknowledges that fact but says perception and experience are distorted, made exclusive, by the experience of what is as personal.
The experience of being a person results in a transformation of all experience, that it is personal. That, what is happening, is happening to me. This veils the reality that experience being non dual in nature, is in reality empty. It is not happening to me, it is just happening.
How does this happen? The experience of being a person is the result of the body being experienced as the center of what is happening. This experience of being the center has a gravity or pressure to it. In reality the gravity or pressure is simply a feeling which happens, with no claim of center or of being personal, it has the flavor of “here”. The pressure of here incites a false claim, that this gravity or pressure is personal, that it signifies a center. This assumption or false claim is the beginning of the person and the personal story. This changes the impersonal everything or what is seemingly happening being obviously center less to: this is happening to “me”, a center.
The consequence of the assumption of an "I" is the personal story. This assumption or false claim is a reaction. The entire personal life which flows out of this false claim is also a reaction. A reaction to a reaction to a reaction... A reaction experiencing itself as the cause. As a cause it assumes free will and choice, meaning and purpose.
Of course free will and choice as well as meaning and purpose only make sense when the person is a cause, as a reaction, they are meaningless.
This illusion of the personal, the illusion of the separate person, which hides the reality that what is seemingly happening is not really “two”, is the impersonal appearing personal. Timelessness appearing as time. This illusion that defines itself by experience hides the fact, that experience as the basis of everything is empty. That knowing - for example I am - is not a cause but a reaction, hiding the reality that there is no “I” or “am”.
There is no real cause and what is, is not a result. The known is an appearance. An appearance is what it is, but it is not, what it seems to be. As long as the appearance is perceived as exclusively real, it is being taken for what it is not. What is, is empty. All appearance is empty.
“What is” is not logical, is not a conclusion. It is indescribable because there is no other to compare it to. The appearance is describable, it is the “is not” which is indescribable. As what is, is simultaneous “is” and “is not”, it is beyond description. Although what is is not describable, there are words that seems to arise: paradise, perfect, awesome, pure, free, absolute, infinite, love.
