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November 2004 edition 8

… and nothing but the truth

The truth is that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, but as long as I believe in Santa Claus he’s truer than life. What is true then, and for whom? If we then consider the opening line of the Tao Te King: ‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the real Tao’, it becomes clear that we are skating on thin ice. But, lets just take the jump into the unknown and explore some ways of approaching the subject.

Freek de Jonge (a Dutch stand up comedian) said in an interview after the publication of his third novel: […] we can’t get along without form – and that is also the reason why the truth can never be said. If someone says: ‘I’ll have to tell you the truth about that some time”, then something unacceptable is sure to follow. Nobody can take the truth, so it has to be given form. Then you begin to lie and weaken the truth. We don’t communicate directly with each other, but with a little bend, a form, and with that we have to seduce. Alas, in our current culture the form has become more important. We let ourselves be lead by the lie’. […]

Alexander Smit once said: ‘we lie the truth’. I didn’t understand an iota of that, but the statement wouldn’t let me go. I understand now that in whatever series of words you might try to express the truth, it always remains a ‘try’. It can’t be caught in words, and at the most words are only capable of illuminating one facet of the truth. Compare it for example with trying to explain the concept of yellow to a blind person or the rustling of the wind to one who is deaf. Speaking about truth is ‘lying’, but it is the truth that speaks.

Emerson said: God offers to every mind the choice between truth and Repose. Take which you please, - you can never have both.

This is what we have so far. As a reader I begin to understand that if we want to examine truth, we have to make a distinction between what is true and what we believe is true. The last is an assumption and belongs to the world of objects, the

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 1 duality, the truth that is opposite of a lie. The first is the all-encompassing truth (without opposite) and that tolerates no form, because as soon as we give it a form, whether it is a word or an interpretation, it becomes a personal coloring of truth and can thus not be (completely) true. In addition I think that the truth is undeniable; if I see a tree then I can’t not see that. I can say that I don’t see it or haven’t seen it, but I only do that if it suits ‘I’.

Maybe we can conclude that that the truth is all encompassing, completely (without a standpoint) and undeniable. But whether that is true is up to you.

The beauty is that if we play with the notion of truth, it unavoidably forces us to review and examine our points of view. Words become like magic wands that spark the sense of wonder.

In this Amigo the truth in the form of:  A text from one of the non-dual crown jewels: Being Free by Wolter Keers  An interview with Jan van Delden about games of Zeus  Anthony de Mello and Krishna Menon  A fairy tale from the Advaita fairy tale book by Pia de Blok  A portion of an exceptionally clear book by ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson  Interviews with Francis Lucille, Tony Parsons, Susan Frank, JanKees Vergouw and Jan Kersschot

In closing: naturally the joke remains that: truth, lie, honest, dishonest, etc. are all ‘I’, expressing itself as I in I with I by I.

[Kees Schreuders – Illustration: Rob Sondaar]

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 2 contents:

• The truth and nothing but the truth [Wolter Keers]

• Zeus having fun [interview with Jan van Delden]

• Reality as it is [Krishna Menon]

• Know the truth [‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson]

• Nobody can become what they already are [interview with Tony Parsons]

• Final destination or never ending beginning [interview with Susan Frank]

• Honesty means [interview with Francis Lucille]

• Nobody home [interview with Jan Kersschot]

• Changing out of greed [Anthony de Mello]

• The glass swan [Pia de Bok]

• Being complete [interview with JanKees Vergouw]

• Poetry

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 3 The truth and nothing but the truth Wolter Keers (1923-1985)

Vrij Zijn (‘Being Free’), is the book that Wolter Keers published himself in 1982. Vrij Zijn is a commentary on the Ashtavakra Samhita given by Wolter during a weeklong intensive meeting in 1979. Wolter, Amigo’s spiritual father, says about the Ashtavakra Samhita in the introduction to the book: ‘Ashtavakra’s words often carry us ‘immediately’, and ‘effortlessly’ along to the deepest of all recognitions: namely of what we are ourselves. This book can fulfill that function for those who have seen that even once.

Sloka 2

Ashtavakra spoke: ‘If you long for liberation my child, avoid then things of the senses as if they were poison and choose for tolerance, earnestness, contentment and love of truth as if they were nectar.’

Nectar is the most desirable of all things. Here we are immediately at a crossroads. Almost always, because there are exceptions, the guru tells us that we can understand what keeps us busy. But, only very seldom can we understand immediately what he means and what the scope of his words is.

That’s how it happened to the same Indra about whom I just spoke. At a certain moment, and that must have been the moment of the meeting with the Brahmin boy, he goes to an earthly guru and asks: ‘I am searching for self-realization. What is the Self? Thereupon the guru answers: ‘Well, that is after all very clear: the body is the Self.’

‘Aha the body is the Self,’ says Indra and travels back to heaven. But on the way he thinks: ‘How is that possible?’ The body changes but I don’t change. The body is born, grows up, becomes old and dies, but I am unchanging all along. According to the tradition the Self does not change at all!’ he goes back to the guru and puts this before him.

Sensory objects

Thereupon that one said: ‘Ah, but that is also not yet the whole story’, whereupon Indra receives further instructions. The same thing repeats: Indra accepts, turns back to heaven, becomes doubtful and turns back again when he is half way. He remains some time by the guru and finally when he has been there for 101 days, a symbolic number for Hindus, he understands what he is: namely all things. He is the body, but

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 4 he is not limited to the body, because he is the Self in all the bodies, the self in all phenomena, the Self in the whole creation.

Ashtavakra does also similarly say here, that you have to avoid all the sensory objects as if they were poison, as if they are a sickness. You can immediately draw various conclusions from that. The ascetics and the yogis are immediately tempted to say: ‘You see! Don’t smoke, don’t drink, no sex, no money, no earthly possessions, no fixed abode. Because Ashtavakra himself says it!’

Clarity

I think it is in response to this sloka that Shri Krishna Menon has written in his introduction to the Ashtavakra Samhita that although this interpretation may be traditional, it is nevertheless not just. I remember that he used to often say: ‘if you try to understand or interpret a text or a sloka, it can never be in conflict with the rest of the content of the tradition. And, the rest of the tradition indicates if we look closely, that in fact no sensory objects exist. If we look, analyze, than we see that the things we could call sensory objects in our daily life are in fact not that. Everything that we know, are appearances; appearances in the consciousness that we ourselves are, in the clarity that is always there. The perceptions that we call ‘the world’ exist as nothing other than the Clarity that we are ourselves. Therefore, there are no ‘sensory objects’ there is only the one Light that we are and that takes on certain forms.

Seen in this light, Ashtavakra’s declaration means something totally different. It does not mean: escape from the world, hold yourself back and live as an ascetic. Seen in this light it means: see things for what they are. Because, if you do that you automatically avoid ‘the ‘sensory objects’ because you discover that they don’t exist. In other words: what you have to get rid of is the wrong vision through which you see the world, the sensory objects for what they are not, something outside of yourself.

A precarious position

That is also the last in the series of summaries of things to strive after: striving after the truth. If you search for the truth yourself then you will discover by yourself that considering things to be something they are not is the only great poison. You discover that you let yourself be seduced by all kinds of situations and things, because you think that they have an existence outside of you. As long as you continue to do that the whole world becomes a very riotous enemy. You could almost say that the rest of creation is your enemy. Everything, every perception and every happening can divert you from what you seek. You find your self in a terribly precarious position. Well then avoid this position, avoid the sensory ness. But, the only way you can do that is to see that the whole vision of the senses is an illusion. This conclusion comes repeatedly back further along in the text.

The truth: a requirement

In the footnotes by Swami Nityaswarupananda by the word ‘truth’ stands that it is a ‘sine qua non’ condition. An absolute requirement if we want to arrive at freedom.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 5 And, it says in the Bhagavad-Gita that Krishna loves the people who follow the path of jnana-yoga the most, even more than those who adore him with their whole heart. ‘Because’, he says: ‘it is very exceptional to meet someone who is actually interested in the truth and nothing but the truth. You only come across those kinds of people a few times in your life.’

So then, if you want to find truth, then you have to respect and honor it above everything. As long as we try to fool ourselves with something, as long as we refuse to see anything at all as it actually is, then freedom, truth, are just not for us.

As long as we are not totally behind truth we maintain an ‘I’, a person who swings back and forth between fear and longing, and as long as we maintain that person freedom is unreachable. Freedom means nothing other than the disappearance of that person. Untruth, fear of the truth, means the maintaining of that person. Therefore the two are incompatible.

N.B. The whole Ashtavakra Gita or Ashtavakra Samhita is published as: 'The Heart of Awareness' by Thomas Byrom.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 6 Zeus having fun Amigo in conversation with Jan van Delden

Direct and indirect questions for Jan about tradition, about Wolter Keers and the publication of his book ‘Vrij Zijn’ (see text of Wolter in this edition of Amigo), questions about silence, knowing and the now, or about the four doors that Jan van Delden offers us... We remain fascinated by the variety of approaches to our favorite subject. The difference between Jan’s approach to ‘clear seeing’, and Tony Parson’s radical ‘invitation’ (everything is as it is; this is all there is) is ‘fascinating’. They are both ‘crystal clear’ – the same message but in totally different packages. And naturally we also touch on the two different ‘paths’: the ‘way of devotion’ and the way of the ‘impersonal’.

Amigo: The basic question is: if there is ‘nothing’ and ‘no one’ then who takes courses and goes to visit so-called ‘clear’ people, and especially: why do we do that?

Jan van Delden: There is no one who does or does not do anything. It just happens, or with a wink for Tony Parsons, ‘it is as it is’… Just as water is also wetness (incidentally), it seems as if the all- encompassing ‘water’ is sometimes caught in thinking that it is a ‘wave’. (By ‘wave’ Jan means ‘the ever-changing body and all it’s little ‘I’s and by’ water’ he means ‘the all-encompassing unchangeable’. ed.) As a result it suffers from the apparent separation. It is as if the water lies in bed to cure itself of a non-existent sickness. And yes, sometimes, very rarely it does heal itself. The way that it heals itself varies so much from wave to wave that there are a multitude of different stories by waves who tell how they have found the water again, each one in his or her way. The problem with this might be that you, as a wave, begin to compare the different stories of how the different waves have found the water. In that way you incidentally run the risk of taking the non-existent waves and their healing seriously. Because, no matter how you twist and turn it, it is one and the same water playing hide-and-seek with itself, including the game of ‘finding the water’, without the water becoming more or less wet. To make this simple and digestible I use the words ‘water’ and ‘wave’ as metaphors.

Homer tells the story that Zeus (the water) gives a party for the gods (the waves) to which one wave is not invited: Eris, the goddess of strife. Of course she doesn’t take being excluded sitting down and takes revenge by throwing a golden apple with the inscription, ‘To the most beautiful’ in among the partygoers. That causes the three most beautiful goddesses to begin fighting with each other. That was the beginning of

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 7 the fight that we see all around us in the world. Because of this ‘my-team-against- your-team’ fight we no longer see that in fact this is all about the one ‘water’– the very basis of all waves – that directs and plays this entire game and that it is not ‘the other’ the one we usually blame. In this connection, seeing that Zeus is always and in every situation the water, and never one wave against the other, is the only goal that is scored. But for that to happen, you first have to abandon every belief in the idea of being a wave in a wave-world, with a wave free will, and so on, etc. etc. Only then can you free the holy terror that you are yourself, from the spell of believing that you are something other than the all-encompassing water itself.

In that process it seems as if that wave-little-I has to do or not do something in order to become water and see all the other waves as water again. The last step is seeing that the I, as a ‘wave’, was always already water and thus was never a wave and that all the so-called effort has actually not taken place. With that, every why question becomes nonsense and there is also no I that can give an answer if a question arises.

Amigo: So, we can do all the courses in the world for the sake of the game, not for the sake of truth or reality. In other words, naturally I may do everything, as long as I don’t believe or think that my adventures, experiences, opinions, ideas, convictions – in short my stories – are true. Nevertheless, there are many people who do everything, or have done everything to ‘help the world’, or to ‘change’. I have also gone through life singing mantras in all kinds of languages to beseech the gods ‘love’ and ‘peace’ and so on; all from an intense longing to transcend the personal… Does everyone go through a phase like that? Is that what you call ‘the way of devotion’?

Jan: That is a question about ‘heart’-waves and ‘head’-waves and for me that is the same apparent distinction as the male-female distinction. One has to see through all these opposites as being untrue, before one can see everything as water just dancing its dance, as a water ballet that refutes all opposites forever.

Amigo: Because of everything that I now ‘know’ I can no longer believe in doing anything to arrive somewhere else. With that everything that was fun has fallen by the roadside. That drone in the background: everything is as it is… All my stories disappear in that and come out of that. I do see that very clearly, but my ‘little-I’ experiences that as emptiness. It is disagreeably just emptiness. That is my bottom question. What now? If you immediately ‘know’ that everything is nothing else than what there is, then it all means nothing to me anymore.

Jan: That is because you still listen to Belle’s questions and answers as it they were true and you apparently have to do or avoid something. You are not allowing yourself to relax in the notion of being water while you see the Belle-wave just chattering on. You are not the wave, and to live in yourself – the water – you only have to learn, or rather you may realize, that you, the leading role player-wave and its wave world, no longer need to take that role seriously. You have to get used to being at home for a while in that empty water before it becomes ‘enjoyable’. As long as a little-I-wave and its idea about how it should be is not recognized and gone beyond, seeing that you are the water and not a wave remains meaningless. The world of waves just goes on telling that it is real, even if you already know that the waves are just water. And

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 8 it becomes even more difficult if these non-existing waves bother or hurt a non- existing Belle, or tell her that there is nothing good about the nothing. Because this is a hurdle that occurs quite often, I have developed the course The Killing of the Suitors. That course (could) help one to not lose sight of the water and to liberate the unchanging Attention, the Now and the Silence, from experiences that unjustly try to play the boss, and to experience the happiness of JUST BEING.

Amigo: We are assuming that you have read something of Tony Parsons and have an opinion about that. It is interesting to see so clearly that here are two people, you and Tony, who have both realized who they are and speak about that in two completely different ways when they in fact mean the same and radiate the same love, whether they want to or not. For Tony It was suddenly there; suddenly on a Sunday afternoon in a park Clarity was there. He was 21, grew up with Christianity that had no more attraction for him after this experience. Tony takes the view that there is nobody, not here and not there. No one here, no one there. Thus, there is no one who has to make something clear, or do or not do something. Life is the Invitation of That Which is. There is expression and that is all. I am this moment. Here is what I am. Tony offers nothing because there is no one to take or give anything. If he were to offer something then one could speak of a ‘something’ or a ‘somebody’. If he were to offer me something then that would strengthen the I-feeling. That is why he does not use any methods that might confirm the existence of the I-feeling. Personally I think that this is about two things: Tony ‘became enlightened’ at a very young age and had to learn how to live with his new vision the following years. He is a bit of a ‘lucky one’, never any problems. He was Christian until he realized that the church had nothing to offer. Unlike you, he never had a teacher; there is no tradition that he can fall back on. You did not have an easy life as a child, and the rest of your life was also somewhat problematic. Your luck was Wolter Keers, your mentor, your teacher on the path of enlightenment. Wolter had a tradition behind him. Alexander always used to say that the tradition does its work via the spiritual master, whether you know that or not. A tradition steers along; the teacher can build on the tradition, it can help the student take hurdles. A tradition sees to it that everyone doesn’t have to invent the wheel over and over again. What is usefulness of a tradition according to you?

Jan: Strictly speaking traditions have no use, because water does not become any wetter if you discover from mentors and their box-of-tricks that you are, always were, and always shall be, not a wave but water. Nevertheless, it seems that in Wolter’s ‘tradition’ there does exist a wonder in what happened to the wave-Jantje. This wave-Jantje got a method shoved under his nose that slowly made him tumble under the rain of facts of Wolter’s tradition. That’s how he learned that there is only the all- encompassing water and that the rest is nothing more than a story, because the wave- Jantje was never a wave, thus there never has been a search or a finding, and there were only stories. Thus tradition is something that can only mean something at the level of being a wave, but as soon as the wave-Belle realizes that she is water, both the tradition and the insight become jokes of that one water itself.

Amigo: Nevertheless, don’t you have the feeling somewhere of being anchored in The Tradition thanks to Wolter?

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 9 Jan: Do you think that you have support from that consciously or unconsciously? … Yes and no. Yes because the wave-Jan apparently got the proof that he isn’t a wave but the water itself, through the immortal dear wave-Wolter. In my case it happened then very slowly by the dismantling of the automatism of being a Jantje and understanding that it was not Wolter who helped me with his tradition, but the water itself. That water told me that it was, is and always will be water. With that, the duality was broken through, and the wave Jan just became the all-encompassing Being itself.

As long as you still need to believe what the thinking and feeling little wave says, and you are not yet ready to let the golden apple from the goddess of discord roll away with a smile, the script of a tradition can be an enormous support. Then it is ‘grace in action.’ Thereby you also need not reinvent the wheel, because there is an entire script ready to help you recognize and avoid all the obstacles and pitfalls that you may come across. I had the blessing that Wolter allowed me to see that it is not totally rounded off with the ‘coming home’, and in order to erase every trace of the wave-past you still had to do and/or not to do something. In addition I had the luck of finding the ideal scenario of the play in Homer’s Odyssey in which water goes to the wave and returns to the water thereafter.

Amigo: Do you think that your teachings give a base to your students?

Jan: Yes, because recognizing the water is a good basis for surviving the violence of the wave world and if that is your wave-tendency then that is your way. If not, then you may have to search for another tradition and see if that can bring you to what you already are.

Amigo: Is tradition important?

Jan: Yes – for this oaf certainly, and with other people who follow traditions you see that they also get the same as what the tradition gave to me. And no – because every road home is finally the same water that was already there all along. Then it seems to be Zeus who plays both sides of the ‘my team against your team’ game, incites and confuses the whole business and sometimes makes it one again.

Amigo: What did Wolter say about that?

Jan: In ‘the prehistory of non-duality in the Low Lands’ Wolter, like someone calling out in the wilderness, already spoke about Krishna who said: whatever way you take, I stand at the end. That is why Wolter also promoted and encouraged every path and did everything possible for it, both literally and figuratively. Because, if you see that everything is water and not one or another Wolter with his own way, then it is also clear that every way is the good way, because behind every so called way or wave Zeus/the water is hidden duping the clod.

Amigo: Do you think you are formed by the tradition thanks to Wolter?

Jan: Naturally there was a story about a so-called ‘being on the way’, and there is a principal character in that story called little Jan, who is very thankful that he

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 10 received the grace from a light like Wolter whom he will always carry in his heart. But, if you look at it from the point of view of Zeus/Water, and not from that of the wave, then there never was ‘no water’. So, it is at the same time complete nonsense. Therefore, in order to learn to handle this apparent contradiction I always say: give to the Caesar-wave what belongs to the Caesar-wave and to Me-the water what belongs to Me-the water. Then the best thing to do is to let them both go their way, just as the left hand need not know what the right hand is doing. What is important in my story is the degree to which you succeed in daily life, in remaining yourself as the water instead of as the non-existent but presenting itself as real, ever changing wave- experiences without at the same time doing or leaving anything. Thanks to a ‘tradition’ I received the script (The Odyssey) about what might cross your path along the way, and what you need to watch out for, so that after the insight, you nevertheless don’t become enchanted by the apparently real experiences, until you see that an experience doesn’t exist, but that everything is just the all-encompassing experiencing itself. If you don’t let that roll itself out, you remain resisting so-called ‘others’. Then you have landed in the middle of the discord sown by the golden apple; in other words in opinions and judgments. My box of tricks is thus there in order to learn to distinguish the apparently two – Caesar (the wave) and Me (the water) – until you have got it so that Caesar can no longer tell any stories which the water (Me) doesn’t immediately recognize effortlessly as nonsense.

Amigo: What do you think about Wolter Keers’s book Vrij Zijn (Being Free) being published in the Netherlands?

Jan: Great naturally, because even if it was written in another time it is still clear and to the point. But, in addition it is especially fine because every report about being the water that appears in this wave-world is a celebration, especially if Wolter’s nameplate is hanging on it! But now it might seem again as if Jantje is doing something while it is the ‘water’ that does it, for example by means of all the different ‘water bearers’ from the publishers Samsara, or just directly.

Amigo: Do you know Tony Parsons work? Have you read anything by him? I know you’re not a reader but still…

Jan: After your e-mail question I quickly ate a ‘Tony sandwich’ at my vacation place, while I kept the tent poles in view at the same time because it was raining and storming. His way of speaking makes what the taste of the nothing/water is very clear, and dumps all wave-ideas into the godly nothing. So I give him a big ten for his clear descriptions of the nothing, the water and not being a wave.

However, if I didn’t look from my water point of view, but would listen to my wave- Jantje little voices then I would immediately give him a big fat zero for his touchingly naïve kicking at and putting down of other directions and ways. Then Jantje – speaking figuratively –sees clear and bigger than life that Tony-wave sitting on the empty chair of the nothing, running down every way that is different from his, as if with the others there does exist a ‘something’ or a ’somebody’ who could do it ‘wrong’ while, as he so clearly says, there is absolutely no other! This is a good example of how the ‘little Jan’s in us’ are out for war in every possible way. That is not possible from what I call ‘The Empty Chair’, not for Tony, not for me, not for

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 11 anybody. But, that is how nothingness (the water) apparently wants to play with the apparent points of view and that is what I call ‘the fun of Zeus’. By saying this it seems as if a certain Jan has an opinion about a certain Tony. But that isn’t true! There is neither a Tony nor a Jan; there is only Zeus, water, or nothingness as you wish, who is again and again bombarding with the apple of discord; the same apple that Adam and Eva ate from and so were driven out of paradise (the water) and rolled into the waves-nightmare.

Don’t be fooled by your own all-encompassing water/nothing, because looking from Me/water there is only the knowing of a Jantje who looks at Tony. The water that always illuminates Jantje’s ‘standpoint’ as well as the apparent duality will remove the ‘war’ and make everything into the play of the one water again.

Amigo: Tony doesn’t reach out to seekers; no lessons or methods; absolutely nothing, frighteningly nothing. His ‘way’ is utterly radical. Many people never return after one visit. He is available; anyone can just call him up and people do that. You are equally available; everyone can call you or email you. You offer courses. Tony’s offering is the great Nothingness. One goes home with empty hands. What do you think of that?

Jan: Every frog has his or her own way of telling the tadpoles what it looks like above the water. But since as far as I am concerned neither a Tony, nor a Jan nor a whosoever is, but always only the water itself that babbles to the water, I would never try from out of myself to say or believe anything about another wave, because naturally there is no other wave. You do remain a witness of one of the Jantjes/little I’s who go on having opinions about things, but you have to unmask that as a ‘battle sandwich’. You pull on my earlobe to arrive at apparent differences and why- questions from my answers. If that is what you want I can look for a moment at the apparent differences. If you were to see I-am-water at one go, as happened to that Sunday’s child called Tony, then mostly there is nothing to say about it other than ‘right’! You don’t have to do or leave anything. It either happens or it doesn’t, period. Then, naturally all the other ways in waterland are nonsense, but inasmuch as he says himself that he ‘received’ an insight, and that in the following years he had to learn how to live with his new vision of life, then it would be clearer if he would also describe the way. It seems then that the ‘insight’ was apparently not enough; evidently there was a learning process after that insight. Tony does not name the times and the moments of learning, while in my tradition they are precisely the most important. Because those, as is the case for most ‘home-arrivers’, who first had to cover an apparently long way full of obstacles and setbacks before seeing that it is all nothing, can offer more tips and tricks about what may or may not work in order to become free of the wave-confusion. Purely and only because it also went like that on your path by accident – just as in The Odyssey – you may possibly help all sorts of seekers to arrive home in their own way, and with their own differences, without one way being any better than another. Only believe what you already believe at this moment. Visit every oaf that you may wish, but keep a sober vision on stories and concepts and question again and again that which doesn’t make sense to you, or just go to someone else. Trust and know that it is always the water itself that tells us on every possible path you may tread that we are already, always were and shall be water and never a wave-person whatever you call him or her.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 12 Amigo: I think that people always want something to do during their ‘train trip home’.

Jan: If they come to me because they think they are suffering from being a wave seeking for the essence, then yes, I do offer them something. But, this offering like a snake in the grass, is at the same time the possible introduction to breaking up all their ideas and to ‘kill’ every belief in the little-I-voices. I say from the very beginning that it is all finally nonsense, because there is nothing to reach and therefore there is nothing that can be done or not done to be what you already are.

What is complicated is that if you think you are a wave on its way home, then that little I is completely convinced that you have to do or not do all kinds of things to reach that. What I point to is learning to see that as untrue, while the wave world simply continues to believe that it is really true. I accompany them and let them see, step for step, depending on their ripeness, that it is not about ‘reaching something’. There is only the realization that water doesn’t become any wetter if it realizes that it is, always was, and always will be, water. Every special detail of the water is finally seen to be relative, because we were already it the whole time, and nothing else! Therefore, for future seekers there is never any ‘teaching material’ or a ‘mentor’ needed! Everything is just the fun of Zeus, the seventh day game of water dancing with itself while standing still.

Amigo: Nevertheless we can never stop doing something, even if we know that there is nothing to do…

Jan: That depends on ripeness and tendencies. One just like Tony, first gets the insight I am water and not the wave and then tries to break up the automatism of the wave-ideas, using that insight as a candle in the darkness until it is seen that everything is really water. Others, so as this Jan for example, have to first trust a mentor from whom they learn to see through and transcend the ‘little-‘I’s’ and ‘body’ as untrue with other tricks and proofs without the benefit of that insight.

Thereafter, the ‘passing of the old point of view’ teaches you to become free of every belief in the automatic Jantje-thinking in your daily life. Only after that you may taste the real seeing of being water. Not every waterfinder gets to see that he, after being told that he is water, also has to learn to finish the automatism of a now seen- through-Jantje and his waveworld and to dissolve in life as being water. If not then someone who has ‘found’ the water goes to sit on the ‘chair of doing nothing’, accompanied by his not yet recognized ‘Jantjes’ who in the name of nothing testify how the nothing is and should be. In general you can see that fairly easily, but it is not always easy to keep away from conflicts, and apparently one needs effort to remain seeing the water through all the wave-stories.

Therefore, according to me, the most important is NOT the insight I am water and not the wave, but the learning that follows to get the conditioning I am a wave out of your system while the so called ‘world’ just goes on. That now ‘seen through’ wave with its Jantjes, opinions and beliefs will mostly just continue as before, but now without an I that does or doesn’t do something that is believed. And also not following

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 13 an idea or an I-feeling as being true and that now dancing in the round, without leaving a trace.

I do talk about ‘the insight’, but actually that is much less important than learning not to lose Attention, Peace, Silence or Now-ness to the compelling character of thoughts, feelings or longings (the Jantjes and their ‘worlds’). Without seeing through the slippery characters, you are in danger of landing smack back as a wave in the my team-your team competition with only the memory of being water. What good is the ‘godly nothing’ if you still have to pay attention to something instead of being undefined attention?

Amigo: It is thus clear that seekers who come to you are happy with something that could be called a ‘method’, even though it is said a hundred thousand times that no ‘method’ is needed.

Jan: Yes, precisely! Just as with a small child who comes to the side of your bed on a Sunday morning and tells you that they are going to work, you go along with the game and say: ‘really good darling! Have you packed your peanut butter sandwich to eat at your work? Instead of saying to that child: ‘what are you talking about, you don’t have a job. You are still only a child.’

Without losing sight of the fact that all waves are water, you are, at the most, available to tell the one who claims to suffer from being a wave, how you can distill the water out of the wave-thinking and how not to lose sight of the water while looking through the waves.

Finally I want to say something about the wave Tony, the wave Jan and whatever the waves are called. If you may see that every question, every opinion, whatever drivel of any wave whatsoever is a game of Zeus, or call it ‘the all-encompassing’ water (because finally there is only water), then you don’t get caught up any more in the little hot-air wars. There can be a seeming conflict between the wave-Tony and the wave-Jan, but if you remain focused on the water, then there remains only water, which can’t make any conflict with itself no matter how hard it tries to play it like that. Thus, Belle-wave, let the Jantjes enjoy their drivel. The unchanging water does know better. We don’t take those Janus-drivellers seriously any more, ok?

[Interview: Belle Bruins]

For more information on Jan (in Dutch): www.ods.nl/la-rousselie

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 14 Reality as it is Atmananda (Shri Krishna Menon) (1883 - 1959)

When we speak or write about some subject, reading one of the old ‘classics’ can be refreshing. Simply because the language is not contemporary so we are forced to read attentively. Thoughts that want to tell you a priori what the content is hardly get a chance. The Atmananda Upanishad by Krishna Menon, which consists of two parts: Atma Darshan (‘The meeting with the Self’) and Atma Nivriti (‘The return to the Self’), is and remains a pearl among these works. Below there follows Chapter 11 from Part 1, Atma Darshan.

Words such as immutable and formless, etc., cannot even by their negative import, show Reality as it is.

The statement that man is not a beast is no doubt true. But does it show any of his true characteristics?

It is impossible to show Reality as it is. Words are at best mere pointers.

If, without knowing this, one contemplates what is literally signified by words, one’s experience of Reality will be tainted to that extent.

If words are taken merely as helps to rise above all thoughts, it is perfectly in order.

If Reality is conceived of as beyond all thoughts, and contemplation directed accordingly, words may help to lead one to a stage where all thoughts cease and Reality is experienced.

Doubt may arise whether it is possible to contemplate anything beyond all thoughts. It is possible. The difficulty is only apparent.

It is true that only an object of perception can be directly contemplated. The ‘I’ is always perceiver and never an object of perception.

As it is not an object of perception, direct contemplation of the ‘I’ is out of the question. Nonetheless, because it is experienced as one’s Being, it is possible to contemplate it indirectly.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 15 Can it not be contemplated as the residue left after the removal of everything objective from the apparent ‘I’?

This contemplative thought itself will automatically come to a standstill in the end, and in that stillness will be seen shining one’s true nature.

What is beyond all thoughts may be indirectly contemplated in other ways as well. They will also take one to one’s true nature.

Always bear in mind that such words as Consciousness or Knowledge, Being or Happiness, all point to the ‘I’.

Hold on to one thought to dispel other thoughts. Let that thought be such as points to one’s being.

Think of one’s being as that into which all thoughts merge, then the one thought taken hold of gives up its form and merges into Being.

Just as we apply the word knowledge to denote also the function of knowing, we use the word happiness to denote the function of enjoying as well.

It is within the experience of all that knowledge and happiness dawn only when the respective functions of knowing and enjoying cease.

Thus, Knowledge and Happiness are one’s own Being. With this conviction, if thought is directed to either of these, that thought also gives up its form and merges.

Merger will never be into deep sleep, but into one’s own Being. All knots of the heart will be cut asunder by this means.

Chapter 11 of Part One, Atma Darshan by Atmananda (Shri Krishna Menon)

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 16 Know the truth and the truth will set you free ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson

I was asked to design the cover of the book with the arresting title: 'What's wrong with right now, unless you think about it' by ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson. For preparation and inspiration I opened the book and read, and read… it seems to be jewel! In lucid, simple and clear language he describes without stop the direct and unconditional ‘functioning’ of what is. ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson is an Australian who traveled to India in the 70’s where he discovered his peer in Nisargadatta. Nisargadatta told him that that ‘the greatest help that you can give anyone is to take him or her beyond the need for further help’. That has been Bob’s mission for 25 years.

[…] The description can never be the described. All we are doing is describing what is. Right here, right now, presently, is what is happening. There is nothing other. Primarily there is that registering of everything. Just like that mirror on the wall is reflecting everything in front of it, so that essence, intelligence or whatever name you like to call it, is registering everything just as it is. You heard that siren, but you didn’t have to say it was a siren. You are hearing this voice, seeing the sights in the room, feeling your body sitting in the chair. All just as it is. And—just as it is—what can you say about it? You can’t say anything at all about it. From that point of view, it either is or is not. The description can never be the described, the what is. The thinking is being registered also. That is discriminated into ‘this thought’ or ‘my thought’ or whatever the word might be. Rather, be aware that it all is just as it is. Say you are walking somewhere and you are not naming anything, there is no thinking going on. You are passing houses, trees, picket fences or whatever is in the street. Everything is registering immediately. You don’t have to name each individual thing. Your thoughts might be happening, and your mind might be totally involved in those thoughts. Yet one piece of concrete pavement may be higher than the other, but you won’t trip over it. It will be registered immediately and the appropriate steps will be taken over it. Or if there is a crowd walking in the street, you’re not going to bump into everyone. You find yourself avoiding them quite effortlessly without having to think, ‘I have to dodge around this one’. Yet they will be coming from all directions and all places, but that intelligence is registering everything just as it is. And in the moment, the proper activity takes place. Now it is the same with thoughts also. As you are going along, you’re passing this house or the next house. And as you are going along, thoughts are happening too.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 17 They are registered just as is. What happens? The house you have just passed has disappeared from view, or the picket fence you passed is gone. Thought is registered just as is also. What has happened to that thought? It is left behind. It also disappears. One thought might be acted upon, the next may not be. the ‘I’ that I believe

The only way we can change what is, is to correct it, modify it or alter it in some way or form. The only thing that can do that is the mind: ‘The chair over there is in the wrong position and I want to move it’. It is no longer what is. It is what I think I would like it to be. That is all that has happened—the thinking ‘That should not be there’. That thought, of itself, has no power whatsoever. It is only a thought; it is only based on words. But it refers to this ‘I’ that I believe, or have believed, myself to be up until investigation. That is so, because what has been added to that ‘I’, that belief, has become the ‘self-centre’ or the ‘reference point’. Everything is evaluated from that reference point. And because it is closely associated with that pure intelligence, it has come to believe also that it is the intelligence. Like the piece of iron in the fire, it will get red-hot and burn, just like fire. Now, if the iron had a mind it would think it was the fire: ‘I am going to burn this and that’. But take it out of the fire and what can it do? So it is with the thoughts: ‘I can’, ‘I will’, ‘I am’. Take them away from awareness or consciousness or that pure intelligence: what substance have they got? Can they stand without that? Can you have a single thought if you are not conscious or not aware? Constantly over the years with the habit patterns going on it (thought) has believed itself to be the intelligence. It believes it has reality; it has power; it has will; it can do what it likes and what it thinks it wants to do. That is why this investigation is needed. Just stop and question. Have a look at what we have believed ourselves to be. Thought can’t of itself do anything! Because that thought ‘I see’, can’t see! The thought ‘I hear’, can’t hear! The thought ‘I am aware’, can’t be aware! But there is seeing; there is hearing; and there is awareness. It is happening right now! The seeing itself cannot conceptualize. It cannot say ‘I am seeing this’. Neither can the hearing say ‘I am hearing this’. It is just pure seeing and pure hearing. It is conceptualized by the mind, which must refer to some past memory to get that name. The mind or the ‘me’, the thought that I have about myself, is the past. That is all it is. It is the past, and the past is dead. It is gone. It has happened. It is not what is. That centre that we constantly refer to or believe in is a dead image. Now, can you understand why it can never be happy, it can never be complete or whole: because it can’t keep up with what is. What is, is this manifestation, this transient manifestation, which is constantly changing. Like the river, it is constantly flowing. How can a bucket of water, taken from the river, keep up with the river? It is impossible. So, we tell you right here, that what you are seeking you already are! The idea of a separation is only a concept. With that idea of separation, there immediately comes along with it the sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Anything that thinks or believes it is separate must also feel isolated and alone, apart from me, other than me. That is the way the mind functions. As soon as there is ‘me’, there must be ‘other than me’, and that is the seeming separation. That is the cause of all of our problems. When that is understood, what problem is there, if there is no centre to refer it to? Got it?

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 18 the mind is the past

Q: The mind is just thinking that there is a problem.

Exactly. It is the nature of the mind to start stories and add to them and keep adding to them. You must see from that, that there can never be any answer in the mind. So, if there is no answer in the mind, what must happen? Whatever direction you go in, must be in the mind. So, full stop. In seeing and being with that, even in that split second, to know that there is nothing wrong with right now, unless I am thinking about it, then after that, does it matter whether the mind is there or not? Because if the mind has been seen through and understood, it is not going to be given the same belief, just the same in the understanding that the blue sky is not really blue. But we still see it as blue, and acknowledge it when saying, ‘What a beautiful blue sky’. But we know the truth about it. As the scripture says: ‘Know the truth and the truth will set you free’. Know the truth about yourself! You will see that you ever were free. You were always free. Just a seemingly erroneous belief: we ignore our true nature and believe in the appearance.

Q: You have got to use the mind to reach this conclusion, but the mind has such deep programming. The idea of intellectually knowing the truth… I find in practice I can know it, and I can try and stop the mind, but basically it takes time for me to accept it gradually. I can be told it. I can understand it, as a little bit more and a little bit more. It takes time.

As you say, we have got to use the mind. Well, the only instrument that we have is the mind. That is why the mind needs to be understood. Understood thoroughly! Then it is there as a very useful instrument. You say that all this programming is there. Now understand: the mind is the past; it is the ‘me’; it is the conditioning, all this so-called programming. Can the mind be rid of this past? […]

No one is making an effort to do it

[…] Thought is time appearing on the timeless. Well, looking from the other angle, right here, right now, everyone is breathing; everyone’s heart is beating; blood is coursing around the body; hair is growing; fingernails are growing; cells are being replaced; food is being digested. Who is making any effort to do it? Is there any ‘me’ or idea in the mind saying, ‘I have to take the next breath’, ‘I’ve got to beat my heart’, ‘I have to digest my food’? Or is it happening effortlessly? Is there an innate intrinsic intelligence, an energy within that manifestation of the body that is coursing the blood through your veins right now? Isn’t it causing the diaphragm to draw down, bringing in the air, and then pushing it up to expel the air? It is taking all the food and all these various things that are needed to these different cells. You can feel that energy. You can feel it in your fingertips and in your toes, if you like to watch closely enough, to feel closely enough.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 19 You can feel it there, pulsating, throbbing. The livingness is pulsing and throbbing through this pattern of energy right now. Effortlessly. No one is making an effort to do it. […] the answer is not in the mind

[…] Q: For a period of time, my life has been going well, in comparison to what it was before. However, sometimes my mind will tell me I need something to happen to see how well I am. Why is that? Why, when things are going well, do I want to question things?

Here is a little story. There is this traveler in the desert. It’s very, very hot, and he is thirsty. In the distance there is one lone tree. He didn’t know that it was a wishing tree. He goes and sits beneath it and he thinks, ‘this is nice, I only wish I had a cool drink now’. Lo and behold, a cool drink appears in his hand. ‘Oh! Terrific!’ he says. ‘Now if I had a soft bed to lie on and drink this with a bit of a breeze to fan me’. Lo and behold, a soft bed appears, as well as a maiden with a fan, fanning him. ‘Oh! This is terrific. Now all I need is a good meal to go with all this and everything would be just right’. Lo and behold, a big meal appears. Then the mind says, ‘Hey! What’s all this? What’s going on? Maybe it’s a devil?’ And the devil appears. The mind then says ‘Oh! He’s going to eat me’. And he does! So, when everything is going right, the mind, just on its own, wants to question. This is the usual pattern. The answer is not in the mind. Full stop! If you understand that, what direction can you take from that?

Q: No direction.

That’s right. Full stop. […]

From: What’s wrong with right now, unless you think about it – Sailor Bob Adamson (Non-Duality Press, ISBN 0-9547792-0-7, www.non-dualitybooks.com)

Published with permission of the publisher.

Website 'Sailor' Bob: http://members.austarmetro.com.au/~adamson7/

[selection: Kees Schreuders]

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 20 Nobody can become what they already are! Gary Merrill in conversation with Tony Parsons

On July 2003, at the request of Amigo, Gary Merrill and Tony Parsons had a conversation in Tony’s garden. The original idea was to come to know a bit more about Tony’s personal life. But of course that curiosity, very soon gave way to the sincere longing to hear about the non-existence of the person. To start the conversation Kees Schreuders, the editor of Amigo, had given four questions to Gary about the how and why of the quest for liberation. duality

G: Kees originally wanted to know more about what the personal Tony Parsons was like, but the personal Tony is just the personal Tony, nothing special? T: There isn’t anything of any great interest in that subject, its just what arises. But there isn’t an individual called Tony Parsons, there is no individual called Gary, there is no individual called Kees. The whole idea of individuality is just part of the dream. So, there is a character, there are characteristics of this Tony Parsons character, but they are just part of the manifestation, there is no one in here. There is no one anywhere. This is the fundamental difference between dualism and non- dualism.

G: Yes, it would perhaps be interesting to see that it’s not really a teaching, because it’s an actuality. It’s not really teaching somebody about this, because it’s a truth, it is already there. T: I don’t like the word truth‚ because it implies some sort of object or something called truth and untruth. There is no truth and untruth; all there is, is this.

G: Yes, and this is where duality comes in again. By calling it truth, we seem to have created the possibility of non-truth. T: Yes, and then there is an individual again, aiming for something called truth, whereas liberation is seeing that all there is, is this. It’s just the celebration of knowing this. And this is what arises. And in that what arises, of course, is the idea of truth and untruth.

G: And the idea of Tony Parsons that arises as this in the moment, but that doesn’t mean that that concept has any substance behind it. T: No, and I think the difficulty… the dramatic difference between non-dualism and dualism is this whole concept of there being a person. Whenever you go into dualism,

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 21 you are back into the dream of talking to an apparent individual who has a choice, and there is no such thing.

G: By that dualism I think we are saying a me and a not-me, a someone and a someone else. T: Yes, and also in dualism you have the preferred and the not preferred, the better and the worse, whereas in non-dualism there is just the seeing of this, with no question and judgment or anything of that sort. There is just the total acceptance by no one of this. And, going back to teaching and not teaching, as far as I am concerned I am definitely not a teacher. There is no one who is a teacher. I am not enlightened; no one has ever become enlightened. And what happens in meetings and this sort of conversation is that there is a description of that which already is. It’s just a sharing of a description of something that already is the case, rather than a teaching about having to become something. understanding

G: I think that creeps into talks and meetings, that there is a subtle difference between you and other people and that somehow one has to understand something in order to be on the same level. T: Well, you see, as far as I am concerned it goes beyond understanding. I think what I’d say to people is that what happens with understanding in meetings is that this understanding is still conceptual. And so people can come to these meetings with understandings or concepts about what they think they are and what enlightenment is, but those are dissolved in clarity.

G: Let us go back to dualism. I was thinking about it this morning, trying to get a grasp of what we really mean by it, just looking it up in a dictionary for an agreed definition. And they seem to classify it as seeing the world as two separate things, such as spirit and matter, as two different entities, or good and bad, good and evil, as two separate entities. The thing I was trying to say is, with non-dualism, perhaps, is that the one thing doesn’t arise without the other. T: Well, as far as I am concerned, non-dualism is really the seeing that there is only oneness, or unicity, in everything. Everything is only the one appearing. It appears as two, but it is the one appearing.

G: Yet when we express the understanding … it appears as if someone understands it. T: Well, that is still a subject-object situation; it is something understanding something else. You see, as far as I can see what happens in these meetings - and it seems to happen more and more powerfully - is that people hear this, bring their understanding and hear this, and come to give up any sense that they can find anything or that they can get anywhere or have to become anything. And in some way or other what also happens is the beginning of a sense of something that already is. Because really there are two things that go on in meetings, one is talking to the mind, talking to understanding and dissolving it: taking a thorn out with another thorn. The other thing that goes on underneath, which is far more powerful, is in a way wisdom speaking to wisdom, so there is an underlying conversation which is beyond words,

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 22 which touches the sense of that which is, awakens the sense of simply knowing what is. simplification

G: And so we might call this a simplification process. T: It is an utter simplification. It is a totally radical perception, which is beyond understanding.

G: I think we all come with the notion that we have to become enlightened somehow. But that seems to play straight into the hands of dualism, that there are enlightened and unenlightened situations. From talking to you in the past I know you feel that a lot of so-called non-duality is still playing that same game. T: Absolutely, absolutely! Directly a so-called teacher or communicator presumes and talks to an individual as though they have a choice about becoming or finding something, you are back into the dream, and reinforcing the dream of individuality, of separation.

G: So it seems that even to speak at all is to bring up a problem that isn’t even there. T: No, it isn’t. Because really we are talking about something that already is and always has been and always will be, if you think of it in terms of time, which is another idea. But we are actually communicating about something that already is. And so it’s impossible for anybody to become what already is. It is also impossible for the you‚ to make the you vanish.

G: Yes, and this is really another point, because it seems that what happens easily is that we get the idea, the understanding of the idea that there is no self and no doer, and then that concept becomes a reference point, a belief, a way of understanding again. And then we go around being no-selves and no-doers… (T. laughs). But really you are trying to say it is simpler than that. T: Oh, utterly. It’s not only simpler than that; it is another conversation altogether. It’s another way of seeing altogether. The temptation of teachings about meditation and all those things is the idea that in some way or other we can apply ourselves to make non-duality arise. But actually that’s all there is anyway. awakening: a loss

G: So we get into these rather silly conversations where we get that we don’t get it! T: Yeah. So, let us look at the first question.

G: The first question is ‘What is the use or purpose of realization?’ T: Ok, that comes totally from the idea that enlightenment or awakening has a use. But whom does it have a use for? It has no use for anyone. Of course it does not have any use.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 23 G: Is there such an event of enlightenment or awakening? You see, it rather seems contradictory to say that there is no enlightened person and then to talk about an enlightenment event. T: So, that what was the hook I just could not think of to say, and that is that actually awakening or liberation is not the gaining of something; it’s the loss of something. And all it is, all it is, is the loss of seeking. And individuality comes straight out of seeking. The moment of separation, when we are tiny children, the seeker arises, and with the seeker obviously the individual who is seeking. Awakening is simply the dissolution of that seeking and as a consequence obviously of the individual. Awakening is simply a loss of the idea there is anyone. It’s as simple as that. And when that is lost... it’s only an idea, we only grow up with an idea that we are people, that we are separate people... when that idea drops away, then what is always constantly there is seeing, unicity. So you could say that in my talks… I mean there are a rare few others who are what I call clearly non-dualistic… what is happening is destruction. You are destroying the idea of individuality. ‘You’ aren’t…but that’s what comes out of those meetings. So the people can come to meetings with an idea that they are individuals. And they can walk out with absolutely nothing.

G: Yes, and on the contrary, people can come with the idea they are not individuals, and the whole baggage, which comes along with having been a seeker for a while, such that people can have a tremendous intellectual understanding and can argue until the cows come home about it all, but it’s not about understanding in that way. T: No, not at all.

G: You could say that it’s not about understanding at all? T: It isn’t actually about understanding. Awakening, liberation is totally beyond understanding. But understanding in a way also helps, because in some way or other we come to see, we come to understand that there is nothing to understand. (Laughter)

G: Well, if we go back to duality, then we could perhaps clearly see that enlightenment and un-enlightenment form a trap; the more I try to be enlightened, the more unenlightened I am, put that way. T: Yeah.

G: So at some point there has to be a dropping of the seeking for enlightenment, not because one is sure to get something, but because the whole idea is contradictory. T: It is!

G: It is like trying to practice love. T: Yes, it is. And it is like a fish swimming in the ocean looking for the ocean. (Laughs again) the invitation

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 24 G: So, possibly that understanding is a preparation and then a contradictory attempt to get somewhere is no more, if to try to get somewhere in fact takes you further away. T: I mean, as far as I am concerned - and I don’t see this is much communicated elsewhere - as far as I am concerned we actually live in permanent grace. We live in the invitation. Even in the struggle, in the battle of trying to become something, is actually a sort of reverse invitation, because it is continuously disappointing us, and in the end it can bring us to see that there is nothing we can do. There is no one here that can do it. So as far as I am concerned, I see the whole of this manifestation and the search - and this manifestation is only the search for unicity, it is nothing else - is an invitation, a constant invitation, to see that there is nothing to find.

G: An invitation not for something, as if the experience in a way is a negative one. T: It is.

G: The enlightenment and awakening experience is a discovery of a negative principle perhaps, or a loss. T: Or a loss. But we are being continuously invited to give up, in a way, to the loss.

G: We are continuously invited to that loss rather than to something. I think it tends to be heard as an invitation to something. T: I know. It’s a difficult word, and some people find it difficult to handle. But grace is the other word, but I can’t… I mean, in another way you could say that everything that manifests is the essence of the unicity that comes straight out of unconditional love. So we are walking around in love, we just don’t know it. (Laughs)

G: Well, I think there is a tendency to want to be somewhere else. T: Well that is what avoidance is about.

G: The whole idea of grace and spiritual teachings is that it is going to take time to get from here to there. And I think that we are saying, or you are saying, there is no need to take any time over it. T: Because this is it.

G: Any time taking is really trying to get something. Even if it is trying to lose something, it’s still trying to get something. T: Absolutely. Yes, I like that.

G: What is there to gain and to lose for the body-mind mechanism? In a way, what is the carrot, for all this? There is no carrot without a stick... T: …which holds it in front of you. The other saying I quite like is that people search for something at a distant horizon, and it continuously stays on the horizon. no answer

G: Is self-realization the answer to life, but without being the answer to life’s problems? T: Well, the way I would answer that is that I am very clear there is no answer. The answer to life is that there is no answer. That is actually the answer.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 25 There is no answer to life, life is simply life, and when liberation happens, than there is just the knowing of life, there is no one there, there is just the knowing of life. And if problems arise, they just arise and are seen.

G: I think what is really going on for people is not just that they are trying to seek enlightenment; but that they are trying to get out of the shit they are in, the situation, their whole life story. T: Yes, people seek personal happiness, although they are all seeking in the end for this unicity. But people think they seek happiness; enlightenment is not about happiness. (Laughs)

G: No, but people think so when they are in their suffering and problems. I think most people would be quite happy for that to end! T: OK, so enlightenment - or awakening or liberation is the word I use these days - is actually not the ceasing of problems or suffering. It is the realization that there is no one who has a problem and that there is no one that suffers. That’s a big difference.

G: Yes, I think obviously most people would probably challenge that, in so far as their immediate experience is problems, and pain and difficulties. T: All the time they are still in the dream, they won’t... there is no way of seeing this. But after liberation it is seen that no one need ever suffer.

G: Well, non-suffering is already the case, on one hand, but that seems to appear contradictory. T: Yes, I mean, you can’t say that suffering doesn’t arise, because it does, but it arises for no one.

G: Why should one occupy oneself with realization? T: You can’t help it. There isn’t anybody in the world that is not occupied with it. All the time there is a seeker; there is an occupation with self-realization or liberation. Everybody in the world longs to come home.

G: I think there is obviously a longing for relationship of some sort. It may not be formulated as oneness, but there is a seeking of relationship. What we are saying would seem to be the one thing that people don’t want, that is to be empty of themselves. So this is almost a sort of cosmic joke. T: Yes, people seek comfort, because they think that will satisfy them, but it never does. You could have all the comforts in the world, and there will still be a subtle disappointment. People live in, what was it someone said… quiet desperation. absence

G: What we fear the most is actually what we most need. To be absent, not to have the power… T: It is the cosmic joke! (Laughs softly)

G: So this in a way is the paradox; that what we actually are seeking to avoid is that which we are needing to embrace as it were.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 26 T: The awful agony of all this and the fight that I get - and I hear the mind continually rising up with all its guns blazing, especially in meetings - is that awful contradiction of what we long for, but ‘we’ cannot do anything about that. It is an agony (laughter), because the mind is continually in motion and wanting to do something.

G: Yes, it must be continually making a difference, differentiating between one thing and another, between how it is and how it should be. It is very simple in those terms, once the ‘should be’ goes a lot of nonsense goes with it. T: Oh, totally: the whole should and shouldn’t fall away. That’s liberation.

G: I mean, even then, should or shouldn’t, can still arise. T: Oh certainly.

G: Lot of preferences could arise, but one is no longer quite in the game of stopping them or starting them. T: No there is no one who has those preferences anymore, they just arise.

G: But there never has there been anybody with those preferences. T: No, never.

G: What comes up is: if previously one had control or didn’t have control and wanted to be in a different situation, wherein one does have control, but… that never really arises as a difference. T: No, I mean I think most people live as managing-directors of their life. That’s how they think they live, actually they haven’t any control, because there is nobody that can choose or not choose. But the illusion is that they are managing-directors in their lives. Liberation is complete dropping of all that, and the wonder of this… (…long silence…) And that is a very intimate happening. You know, the wonder of this is the wonder of sitting on a seat, listening to birds, drinking water, whatever. It’s the wonder of the absolutely ordinary and intimate; it’s the wonder of childhood.

G: Of course, the mind will grab that and say ‘I am not childlike enough’‚ or you know, ‘I want to be childlike, I don’t want the responsibilities.’ T: Mmmm yeah, this is another way to be, I must become childlike.

G: So again it is an insight into dualism: that one can be one thing or the other; there is a choice to be one or the other. T: That’s why for me, when I hear of teachings that advise becoming honest, becoming totally passionate about enlightenment, you know… I cannot imagine people trying honestly to peel potatoes, honestly drive a car. It’s quite beyond me, the whole idea that somebody can become honest, that somebody can be totally passionate, so passionate about enlightenment that they jump over a cliff. So, you know, do people walk around passionately wanting to throw themselves off? It is just nonsense, this whole idea that we have to behave in a certain way. And Balsekar actually says totally the opposite about enlightenment. That actually when you give up caring about finding enlightenment then possibly it would happen. Then you get people walking around not caring about it. It is just ridiculous!

G: Yes, but then, the mind is desperately insecure…

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 27 T: Yes, and longs to have a goal.

G: Something to hold onto, when really, it’s that emptiness… T: … that always is present. presence

T: Now this is the other interesting thing, that in the last five years what I have been saying is exactly the same thing, but the message has become much finer, much more simple and direct. What for instance is coming up a great deal now with people, is to talk to them about the sense of existing, of the sense that they have always had that there is a me that exists, and begin to see that it isn’t me that exists, it is presence that exists. And this sense of…, even as we are talking, you and I, there is something else that knows that this event is happening; that is what we are. What we are is that which sits here and knows that you and I are having this conversation. It’s even in the body, you know, for a lot of people, because they localize the idea of me - which actually is the energy of presence. It is a localized feeling even behind the eyes, of something that’s just behind the eyes, that those are the eyes that are looking at something. And we think it’s me that is looking at Gary‚ but actually it isn’t me, it is presence. It is present awareness. And that is emerging far more, is really touching people. Because, you know, what they are seeing is that in every day, in their every activity, driving a car, peeling potatoes as I said, you know, or drinking water, there is that which knows what is happening. So it’s a constant living presence. Quite a number of people have awakened through these talks, and they are continually saying to me that they realize that the thing that they have discovered has always been there. It has always been there, presence.

G: This idea of presence and absence is quite interesting, because we fear absence, but like the idea of presence; to fill our absence with the idea of presence, to become present. Whereas what you were saying about an enlightenment event is that it is a loss, in fact, the discovery of one’s own absence. And it is the absence which one is touched by, emotionally touched by, as it moves the heart, opens the heart by realizing one’s own tiny ness, or own absence. It seems that it is this emptiness that opens the heart. T: OK, so I hear exactly what you say, but I think when you start to talk about the heart it becomes dangerous again, because you’re moving over to the devotional side. There are two approaches to enlightenment: there is a natural tendency in people to be attracted to total detachment or to total devotion, depending on their character. But actually liberation is the marriage and extinction of detachment and devotion. Both of them extinguish each other. Like a man and a woman, the male and the female eventually extinguish each other. Awakening is completely beyond detachment or devotion. There are an awful lot of people who reach a very high degree of detachment and believe that they are enlightened and rush out and teach other people detachment. There are also a lot of people who reach a very high level of emotional devotion, and think they are enlightened, so they go out. But none of that is what final liberation is.

G: I think a lot of people will be turned off by this conversation because it seems too intellectual, for instance.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 28 T: That’s why in the meetings I am continually bringing people back to a sense of knowing what is happening, to a sense behind the eyes or in the body or even behind the head, of knowing that what is happening is known. It’s moving back into that sense of knowing, seeing, awareness, whatever you would like to call it. Because it moves you out of this intellectual word game, and takes you back into the body, into the sense of what is immediate. (Long silence) I think we have had a really good conversation. I think we have actually covered most things.

G: We covered most things we went over the fundamentals. We have said its not about getting something more about discovering that the me was never there in the first place. T: I don’t like to call the me illusory, I don’t like to call anything illusion, it’s a rather misleading word, it comes from the east. As far as I am concerned, the idea of me, and all manifestation, is only an appearance, it’s just an appearance. You can’t say it’s real or it is unreal. All the time there is a sense of separation, what is seen is unreal, it is seen as being separate. After liberation what is seen is real, because it is seen as the expression of unconditional love, as the expression of source or the absolute or nothing and everything. I like Nisargadatta’s thing that wisdom knowing you’re nothing, which is very much detached, and awakening is really knowing you are everything. It’s the two that marry.

G: Thank you Tony. [interview Gary Merryl www.garymerrill.com] website Tony: www.theopensecret.com

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 29 Final destination or never ending beginning? Johan van der Kooij talks with Susan Frank

I used to know what self-realization would be like: after a long period of meditation and contemplation I would arrive at a dazzling moment of grace and clarity. My life would fill with radiance, peace and harmony. This peace would never ever leave me. I would have arrived at the end of my journey, at the final destination.

But now I am no longer sure whether that final destination actually exists..… Self-realization does not seem to manifest according to a fixed pattern.

Finally every seeker arrives home..… Naturally these are only words that describe how an apparent dreamer shall apparently awaken. In clear daylight there is no personality that will reach enlightenment. That is exactly one of the starting points of non-duality. The idea of the so-called separate identity, what we call the personality, dissolves the moment one sees that there is no such thing as separation.

 Speaking traditionally, the path of Advaita Vedanta ends in self-realization or enlightenment. But does that path actually come to an end? Or is there a process after self-realization?  Is it true that for someone who is self- realized things happen by themselves?  Is self-realization still an experience?

Johan van der Kooij spoke about these questions with Prajnaparamita (Susan Frank). For a number of years Prajnaparamita has been giving non-dual teachings in Dutch and English in various countries.

Johan: My previous teachers, Wolter Keers and Jean Klein never spoke about the ‘phase’ after self-realization. Because of that I thought that talking about it was ‘not done’. However, my curiosity about this subject has become bigger than my modesty. Is there actually a process after self-realization?

Prajnaparamita: What is self-realization actually? Let’s talk about that first. Everybody has his or her own dictionary about that. Self-realization is rather variously interpreted. At the deepest level I don’t know what it is… what it actually is cannot be said, words don’t reach there… however I can make an attempt:

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 30 At the most one can point to it. There are wonderful testimonies and scriptures, written down from the enlightened mouth of the Masters. There is very beautiful poetry and mystical expression by means of which one can taste the flavor of enlightenment. But what it really is cannot be spoken. There are words that give an indication, such as: truth, freedom, peace, love and wisdom. These are some of the flavors of the unnamable. But what is all that? What does that all mean?

J: Can you say some more about that?

P: The word mind comes from the Sanskrit word ‘manas’: that which measures and compares. The standpoint that we call ‘I’, in reference to which everything is compared and measured, needs to be seen as being illusionary. That standpoint is the difference between ignorance and freedom. ‘I’ is the difference between ignorance and freedom. One needs to see that there is no I and no you, no I and the world, no inside and no outside, only indivisible One. And even this One is too many. This view is so deep; words don’t reach there, no experience reaches there. Being unwaveringly anchored in this realization… Nothing more to defend, nothing more to prove, nothing more to reject. Just being available with a clear head and an overflowing heart.

J: Is this deep insight self-realization?

P: Self-realization is not an insight. No matter how deep your insight goes, no matter how wide your insight is, this is still not self-realization. Self-realization is the consummation of all insights. Become a prey to God, sacrifice your insights and allow yourself to be devoured. In this ultimate moment of grace all the knowledge of the insights evaporates and disappears. The One evaporates and disappears and from not knowing, wisdom will rise.

J: So even the highest insight is not realization?

P: There is still a sense of ‘I’, I who has such striking insights and has received such wonderful revelations. The experience of subject/object, the feeling of here and there, me and you, this and that, is still there. The sense of witnessing is still there. And this is not enough, there is still a notion of a witness, of that which is witnessed and the witnessing itself, that triangle is still there. All of this needs to evaporate, burn up or implode.

Little by little you will come to see that everything is empty. You come to see that all thoughts are empty, all feelings are empty, all experiences are empty, and the entire manifestation is empty, including that which sees. You have to go through the experience of emptiness, and subsequently need to see that emptiness is also a concept, transparent and illusionary. Emptiness is a concept, God is a concept, self-realization is a concept.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 31 J: When you realize that, is that also a revelation?

P: Yes, sooooo subtle!

J: Does the apparent duality of observer and observed, dissolve in that revelation?

P: Yes, the sense of an observer evaporates altogether. And what then? Words fall short, but if we have to make do with words… : openness, clarity, naturalness, availability. You just live your life out, as life itself.

J: Do you still have this sense of a witness and that that is witnessed?

P: No that has disappeared. The disappearance happened so unbelievably subtly. If I hadn’t been very aware, I might have not even noticed it. Imagine that you take a walk in the mist and that your jacket, your clothing and your skin slowly get damp. By the time you come home you are drenched, but you have not even noticed it, it happened so gradually. And your buddy says to you: ‘Wow, aren’t you wet!’ That’s the way it actually happened with me, I hardly noticed it, it was so thin, so rarefied, there was no question of: aha, yes look: now there is realization.

J: Does it happen differently for everyone?

P: Yes, realization is a unique opening for each and everyone. Also everyone’s sadhana* is totally unique. So a personal testimony is always a little delicate, because people are inclined to think: Oh, that’s how it goes, that’s the way it has to be…

J: Prior to being drenched by the mist did you live through exceptional moments?

P: Yes, immense… grand revelations. Actually all these years…especially during the first three years with Alexander*, during which I received the teaching, lots of knowledge and many great insights, and later also with ShantiMayi*, when everything was gradually ‘rounded off ’. There was a long period during which everything was clear to me, but still something was missing. I knew that something was missing, although I didn’t know precisely what that was. For years I waited………. for ‘that’. I learned what patience is. I discovered that patience knows no time. Eventually all waiting transformed itself into an infinite deep bow into the eternal moment now. And so all expectations were finally extinguished.

J: What was it that changed?

P: I don’t know. What has changed? I don’t know! Any change after that ultimate non- moment? Well, doubtlessness set in. And with that, authority was born, made from a totally different fiber than authority as we know it in the personal sense. Peace came, relaxation came. Living in causeless boundless joy, living life in surrender, just listening to the will of existence.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 32 J: What else changed for you?

P: For a long time there was a deep silence. I was by myself as much as possible. It was not easy to talk. I couldn’t find the words anymore, there was hardly any capacity to form concepts or images and everything was so rarefied. Even still now, during satsang, I really have nothing to say. Mostly the people have to come with topics and questions. That brings me into motion, and then the words come out, like a flood.

J: When I ask a question, then you respond…?

P: Yes, then something comes by means of your question, but there is hardly any impulse out of myself. One day ShantiMayi asked me to start giving satsang. And subsequently I was sitting on the couch again, as I had been doing for a long, long time. I took absolutely no initiative. After three months she said: ‘And, have you already begun?” Oh yes, giving satsang, oh yes, yes, right, that is true, I’m going to give satsang… but I still just sat on the couch. Again after a few months she wrote me an e-mail: Are you ever going to start? Apparently she saw that there was no motor in me, so she gave me a big impulse to begin. And that still needs to happen during satsang. People have to bring me into motion, otherwise I am in satsang with something like: anything going on here?

Stimulation brings me in motion; otherwise everything falls silent, there is just nothing, nothing is really there. It has been like that my whole life. I had no interest in a career or in the joys of the world, but there was a not to be stopped impetus towards coming home in myself. This is the only thing that ever interested me. Actually, raising my children kept me going. And now my students in the Sangha* keep me going. I can only say how this is for me. It says something about me, not about something that that has to do with realization. Yes, that is rather different for everyone. The Sacha-tradition* is imbued with a strong sense of Bodhisattva. Bodhisattvas have a passionate longing to release people’s suffering. They are available for all and their life and dedication is a great inspiration to realize freedom, to realize peace.

You could ask yourself: But is there still something to improve in the world? Haven’t you seen that everything is illusory, and perfect just the way it is? And what do you mean, a desire? To which the Bodhisattvas answer: yes, we know all that, we have seen this deeply, but nevertheless we accept this empty longing and just serve, empty handed we serve.

It is all so subtle and full of nuances. How can you say things like: it is like this, or it is like that? How can you even hold an opinion?

J: Did ShantiMayi find it important that you should speak?

P: She said something about that. Even though I have known all my life that this was my destiny, it was nevertheless completely natural for me to remain still and in silence the rest of my life.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 33 However she gave me a powerful impulse and said to me: ‘You have too much to offer, spread the light around the world and just offer.” She said: ‘You are too young to remain in silence or to go to the Himalayas, you have to give satsang”.

J: But you already knew earlier that you would speak?

P: When I was very young I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew that I would be in service of humanity. When I met Alexander I recognized it immediately: this is what I have been searching for since I was three. This is what I have always missed the most and that I longed for so intensely. I grew up in a world that was mind- and culture orientated. Everything was there, but that which was the most essential for me was missing. When I was an adolescent, I started my search in the church, in philosophy and psychology, but I found nothing that resonated deeply. I found dogmas, beliefs, fragmentation and division. Over the years I became more and more discouraged. I felt like an alien in the world that was presented to me. At last I met Alexander, and I saw in his eyes what I had been craving for my entire life.

J: What did you see?

P: Home! I thought: You see, it does exist! What life is really about, I see here, in his eyes… At that time I was at the end of my rope, I was so desperate, from the age of three until the end of my twenties; I barely held it all together. Everything in me screamed for that, but I didn’t know what that was. I only knew that real happiness had to do with total freedom and with nothing other than that. I realized that all aspects of life were secondary to acquiring absolute freedom. But I knew nothing about the existence of Gurus and self-realization. In my search I had not come across spirituality anywhere. Then one evening, I sat with a few people in a little attic room with Alexander. Sitting there and merely in recognizing the possibility that I might receive what I saw in his eyes … I was ready to die. The longing was so intense, the suffering so great, I threw myself totally into the teachings, there was no holding back. And I put everything, all and everything at stake to find ‘home’, in myself.

J: Can you say that the moment of self-realization is the herald of the all-freeing insight?

P: It was a closure in a way. The insights were already there. I can’t say that all kinds of deep insights came to me after self-realization. That golden no- moment was not a herald of new revelations; it was more a seal and the consummation of all insights.

J: You say with that: the moment of self-realization was the end of the path.

P: Yes, in a way…, a sealing.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 34 J: Did nothing change after that?

P: Nisargadatta has a beautiful definition of self-realization: no longer imagining being identified with the body, thoughts and feelings. Beautiful! But knowing and recognizing this is not enough. You have to really live it, always. And, are the actions ethical and integral? Does an inner morality come into being? Can you still measure yourself by something after self-realization, for example by behavior? Difficult questions, how do we ever determine the immeasurable? Let’s see if we can get another flavor: love for all that is, and wisdom, simplicity, boundless compassion, pure presence, selflessness, no sense of ownership, clear eyes…

Some Masters even assert that you have not even begun on the path; you haven’t even taken the first steps, until you have come to self-realization. Others say that when you have had a deep revelation, that that is self-realization and after that the purification begins. In my life the purification and the insights were first, and then came the self- realization…

And what was that? I have never told anybody about that ultimate glorious not- moment, I didn’t even tell ShantiMayi. It happened in India.

J: The final push?

P: It was not a push, it was really enlightenment, all my cells became enlightened. It was a physical experience that lasted for hours and hours in the night. It was so subtle that if I had not paid close attention it might have escaped me, as you forget a dream the moment you wake up. In this flood of light there was an immense power that went through me. My body could barely take it. The next morning I went to the ashram as usual. Nothing had changed. I did not interpret the golden happening; I did not assign any meaning. Only much later I realized: that night, that night that was it, the sealing.

J: Were there striking changes during this phase?

P: Yes, this sense of total autonomy and the arising of authority that I mentioned before; an authority that arises ‘there’ where every trace of self-consciousness is dissolved. That gave in a way a tiny, but huge shift in all areas of my life, also with ShantiMayi. Nonetheless, she remains my Guru; my heart rests in her heart forever. The readiness to yield, bow and receive, who knows how much more… And ShantiMayi lives in profound surrender to her Master, Maharajji. And Maharajji still listens deeply to what his Guru instructs from within.

This is something very remarkable in this lineage. Not at all like the suggestion you often receive in spiritual circles: o.k. guys, good, the job is done, the world doesn’t exist, I do not exist, you don’t exist, and for the rest let’s take a vacation….

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 35 In this Sacha lineage you have learned to the very deepest what it means to be a disciple. And a disciple is what you remain for the rest of your life, even when Mastership has awakened in you. That is a rather delicate dance.

J: Do you think it is necessary that a Master confirm your awakening?

P: No, of course not. Wouldn’t you be absolutely sure and unshakeable after all? A confirmation is not needed at all. That is the quality of doubtlessness and the vigor of the inner authority that awakens. This authority is born out of doubtlessness and is totally impersonal.

J: Does the mantra: Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha* apply to the phase prior to self-realization or the phase after?

P: It applies to both. Lets just keep Gate, Gate…. always in our pocket. The tendency to claim is not easily burnt to ashes. ‘I-am-realized” is more often than not too swiftly proclaimed……… But what goes on and on and on is expansion, and more and more subtlety, and more and more power.

J: What do you mean by ‘more power’?

P: When I first began giving satsang I was like a little Mini. Now I am more like an Opel, on my way to becoming a truck… something like that. It is somehow a sense of having more capacity. Abilities can spread in all directions infinitely. However, the greatest capacity is unconditional love. That carries everything, opens everything, and has the greatest power. Unconditional love is supreme.

Let’s never make a final destination, and remain alert, living on the razor’s edge, living in humility, living not-knowingness, living in free fall, living in God’s arms…

ShantiMayi: Prajnaparamita’s Master Alexander Smit: Prajnaparamita’s first spiritual teacher Sangha: a group of seekers who gather around a Master, in order to attain, with the Master’s help, realization of the highest truth. Sadhana: Spiritual practices; applying the teachings. Sacha tradition: The ages old lineage of transmission from which Prajnaparamita was given assignment to begin to teach. Sacha means: Truth in all and everything. Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha: Go, go, go beyond, go beyond the highest, beyond the highest reality, beyond self-realization, go beyond that too. (From the Heart Sutra) [interview: Johan van der Kooij]

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 36 Honesty means living in agreement with the truth Ilse Beumer in conversation with Francis Lucille

What do you ask a man who has written a book in which the answers to all questions become clear? In the book ‘Eternity NOW!’ Francis Lucille covers all areas, but inasmuch as the theme of this ‘Amigo’ is Truth and Honesty he is ready to say something about that in this interview: ‘We’ll act as if the book doesn’t exist!’ So the first twenty minutes we chatter about what truth could be, the relation with honesty and reality, during which time Francis says among other things: ‘We should look at every situation as new, in its truth and actuality. We should allow ourselves to be lead by reality and not by concepts or ideas that we have about reality’. The theory of advaita is finally also only a concept. Talking further like this we come to all kinds of analytical and theoretical explanations of this theme until a waiter brings us tea. During this pause Francis remarks in a serious but friendly way: ‘The subject is too complicated. In an interview the questions come from a theme intended for an article. That is very different from real questions that rise out of the interest of the person. The motivation is very different.’ Well, there we are then. We come to the final conclusion that Francis finds it difficult to be interviewed and that I can only ask a question if I really have a question. It seems that just drinking tea is a better alternative for this moment. We decide to begin again fresh and new. But that still doesn’t work for just an ordinary interviewer sitting across from Francis Lucille. So sitting cozily together there are absolutely no more questions. And, every time I have a question it relates to something that has been said earlier, therefore not fresh and new. However, just as I was about to give up hope, just like that a conversation started about how one can live in a practical way all the notions that one has understood in the past.

FL: Honesty means that you live in agreement with the truth.

Amigo: That sounds very logical, but how do you live that in daily life?

FL: You apply it in your life, in the decisions you make; in the way you live your life. Situations may arise where there still seems to be a kind of conflict between the old (egoistic) point of view that you take in a situation and what would be fair and harmonious. We should act in accordance with truth, by being honest with our understanding of truth. If we have an understanding of truth but nevertheless act differently we are not honest.

Amigo: It happens sometimes that on the one hand you want to do something, but on the other hand your mind tells you precisely the opposite. That feels like a conflict.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 37 FL: Yes, but sometimes it is not even a conflict. Sometimes we do things out of habit, out of fear or desire while our higher reasons tells us not to do them. Therefore, it is very important to follow our higher reasons.

The path of harmony

Amigo: Then you have to know the difference between the two of them.

FL: If we can, we have freedom. Following our understanding of the truth or not, these moments of freedom and choice are very important. The more we choose the path of harmony, truth and justice instead of the way of ignorance, the more our conviction grows that consciousness is impersonal or divine. In a certain way this strengthens our conviction of the truth and that paves a way to the possibility of choosing the path of harmony in new situations instead of the path of ignorance.

So you will trust it more. When you apply the truth in your daily life, it feels good inside, so it makes you happy. In strange ways it makes you happy. It may still be terrible on the outside for a while, but – and that is the beauty of it – sooner or later the universe will give you a beautiful response. Because, when you are one with the Tao, when you flow with the flow of justice in your actions, then there is a positive, beautiful and miraculous response from life, from the universe. Thus, if you apply this more and more you will experience an improvement in your relationships not only with other people but also in the events of your life. Serendipity: events will come up that simplify your life. That is how we know that consciousness is universal and not personal. We receive the answer from the outside world in the form of gifts, miracles and fortuitous happenings and from the inside in the form of happiness and joy. There is no difference between inside and outside. If you are inwardly established in harmony, then this not only creates happiness inside, but also happiness in the world. Circumstances don’t seem to change; however they do. When you are on the side of justice, then universe is on your side.

Knowing to be the truth

Amigo: And will the universe be against you otherwise?

FL: Yes, but not because the universe is mean. You have to understand the truth and every event in your life. The purpose is to take you to truth. Once you are in line with truth, life is simply a celebration. Life thus has a double purpose: to know truth, to be knowingly truth and to celebrate truth. That is the meaning of life. Therefore once you are in line with truth, that what remains is celebration. Before you are in line with truth, what needs to be done is to realign yourself with truth. To keep a donkey on the path, justice uses both the stick and the carrot. If the donkey strays from the path, he gets the stick.

Amigo: And the carrot?

FL: The carrot is the desire for truth. It is that energy of desire that keeps the donkey going. This energy of desire will take the donkey home. The purpose of setbacks is to

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 38 keep the donkey on the road. Thus, if you remain on the road you flow on the flow of harmony. If you stray from that, then… (laughs)

People often think there will be no desires anymore once we are established in truth. That is not true. Desires keep arising they are innocent. There is no attachment in these desires. In other words: if a desire is fulfilled, it is celebration. Like on a nice day together with your family. One might then say: ‘‘hey, lets go to the sea!’ There is nothing wrong with that, it is a creative desire, it is just celebration. However: sometimes the fulfillment of a desire is prevented. Ignorance takes charge of the desire. We become attached to it thinking that happiness depends upon the fulfillment of the desire. Then we take a plunge. Namely, the universe may or may not fulfill our wish so that the desire remains, but in both situations it will give us the lesson that there is in fact no happiness there. We are disappointed either way. Whereas if the desire arises and we just say: ‘Well, it would be nice, if it is possible we will do it’, without any attachment, then we enjoy it. If it is not possible, then we just don’t do it. But something will happen in universe that will bring this desire to fruition. In that moment the desire is even more fulfilled, possibly in different but better ways than we had anticipated.

I’ll tell you a story about that. I had a good friend in France. We were both truth lovers. He often came to visit me in the evening after work. We used to speak about truth and meditate. At a certain moment I moved to America, but I went back to France for a few days every year. Once when I was back in France I called my friend to visit him. His wife told me that he was on vacation and that it thus wasn’t possible. After that I traveled to the south of France. One afternoon I took a walk there. The idea was to walk to the cathedral, the highest point and the holiest place in the city. When I entered I saw the church almost empty on a weekday. I walk in the direction of the altar and at the point where the two lines in the church cross, the cathedral door opens and someone else comes walking towards the altar. In the twilight this person seems familiar to me, but I do not recognize him immediately. I suspected that it was someone whom I had known in my youth because I was raised in that place. So, I walked towards that person and as we approach each other we recognize each other: it was my friend! His story was that his train had technical problems and that he had to wait a few hours in the city. He wanted to take a walk and also chose the cathedral. And that’s how we met that very moment. A few days earlier I had the unfulfilled desire to see him. It was an impersonal desire that flowed forth out of love and friendship; we both loved the truth. The desire’s fulfillment was postponed just for God to make the fulfillment more majestic in the cathedral, under beautiful circumstances. I was not waiting; I also did not expect anything. This is an example of how we receive proof of the universe, of universal consciousness. We receive it from various directions. Not only in the form of joy, but also in events, from the world, from the universal harmony.

In the beginning it may seem as if terrible things are happening, but finally everything will turn out well. That is also the beauty of it. Another friend’s house burned down. He was not too well insured, but he was a truth lover and accepted it with open heart and did not complain. He was an artist who was sponsored by a very generous lady. She proposed to pay the difference between what the insurance would cover and the

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 39 actual costs. It came out of the blue, because it involved a large amount of money. So, when you trust life, you will receive this beautiful confirmation. That requires for you that when you come to the crossroads where roads separate from each other, you choose the path of truth. Be true to the path of truth, true to your understanding. That is honesty.

We are not required to be perfect. We are required only to be of good will, to do our best. That’s all we can do. Sometimes next day it may turn out that the decisions we made, although we were of good will, were wrong. Then we should take corrective actions, to change them and do all that is required. In all of that we were of good will. We were trying to be true to the truth. We were honest. It is very important not to have a separation between our understanding of the truth and the way we act, think and believe.

Loving truth

Amigo: How do we know what is loving, intelligent and correct?

FL: I don’t know how I know, but I do know when I know it. When it’s loving, beautiful and right, we feel it. For instance, just as in relationship with friends, if you have said something annoying to a friend, perhaps unwillingly, then your friend need not even say something about it, but we feel that something is not right. Something tells us.

Amigo: What about the relation then between truth, honesty and what we think?

FL: Thinking is just a tool. It depends from where the thinking starts. If it comes out of ignorance (from me as a person) then it is wrong. Further, there is nothing wrong with thinking, but anything is wrong with the source of the thinking because if thinking comes from untruth then it leads to big problems. If the thinking sprouts out of truth, out of the experience of what we are, from being or from the situation itself, then it is very different. Then it is just a tool and can be lovely. Therefore it is also a misunderstanding to suppress thinking. That is too totalitarian. We need to go to truth and intelligence and thinking is part of the process that transforms the mind. We need to be convinced, and in order to reach this conviction to erase the old belief systems we need to use thought. To unwind the mind we need to use the same tools that twisted it. Imagine that you were told as a child that babies are born out of cabbage plants. At a certain point you need to re-examine this belief and eradicate it. At the very latest when your first child is born! This concept has to be understood and eradicated by means of reasoning. Naturally we don’t remember the belief in such simple things (just as with the belief in Santa Claus) anymore, but nevertheless we had to correct these wrong beliefs.

Amigo: I remember that even small lies could make me very angry.

FL: We don’t like to be lied to we resent it. So you see: we love the truth!

(Interview: Ilse Beumer)

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 40 There is nobody home interview with Jan Kersschot

There is a little story told about two little apprentice-devils who land by a guru on a visit to the earth. After listening to him they returned to hell in panic and warned Lucifer, the chief devil, that they had found a master speaking about liberation and self- realization and that something should be done about it. Lucifer reacted to this news by asking if this ‘wise one’ had any disciples. The devils answered in the affirmative, whereupon Lucifer reassured them: ‘Then you don’t have to worry about it.’ The house called ‘Advaita’ seems to have a lot of rooms with different ‘masters’ and ‘disciples’. Or not? This was the reason for a short visit with Jan Kersschot about: ‘truth, honesty, reality, about doing and about the resident ‘who has left the building’. It appears that there is nobody home. -Take a look-

Pol: if the seeker just reads the titles of a number of books about non-duality and self-realization, for example: ‘Do Nothing’ by Steven Harrison, or your last book ‘It is as it is’, or ‘Nothing ever Happened’ by Papaji then it seems to be a great paradox. What inspires people such as you to talk about it, or to write? And, is it the truth? Is it really honest to assert that nothing can be done, since asserting this seems to be an activity itself.

Jan: You are right, saying or writing ‘do nothing’ seems to be as if I am kicking myself a bit when I’m down. It is easy to say this while you yourself in your (apparent) life have done a number of things like practicing meditation or visiting a number of spiritual teachers. It is even a bit cheap to describe with hindsight all that spiritual seeking as unnecessary, superfluous or even a hindrance. Nevertheless, the idea is found in many traditions is often described as ‘leave home, and when you finally come back, you notice that you have never been away’. Or sometimes it is said as; ‘You go through a door, and as soon as you are through it you notice that that there was no door, and even no seeker, and that there never has been a seeker’. This last comes especially close to what could be described as ‘truth’. But I don’t like to use the word ‘truth’. Concepts like ‘truth, honesty and reality’ can be misleading. They assume – or certain readers can get that impression – that there is a person who is not already honest, or that there could be a division between what is real and what is not real. Who makes this sub-division? What are the frames of reference?

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 41 I – in so far as I can speak about my ‘I’ – do see some differences but there are absolutely no gradations at the spiritual level. Seeing differences is indispensable in daily life, but if we are speaking about non-duality I find ‘truth, honesty and reality’ to be a bit confusing. But, OK, words always are a bit confusing, also the words in my books. What I am saying is also conceptual: when I say that someone has been led up the garden path, who could that be, if there is no ‘I’? How can we come home to ourselves if there is no one home anyway? And as long as we are speaking about the absolute, what is wrong with being led up the garden path? Misleading, leading up the garden path, or preaching. It is after all just to look at the boundless for a moment? You understand that silence, but nevertheless, apparently questions arise and answers come. Maybe my words are also misleading, who knows.

P: If there is no one who can be misled, are then also no ‘false masters?’ It seems often as if there are differences in approach and even contradictions between different teachers that can be noticed. And, maybe a bit less important, I have also noticed that there are ‘realized ones’ who don’t invite each other for coffee.

J: Ha ha, yes indeed, just think of that conversation between Andrew Cohen and Alexander Smit at that time. Or think of Tony Parson’s criticism of Andrew Cohen to be found in his books and in his tapes. But we need not take all that too seriously. Tony laughs at himself regularly, and I like that. If I –as Jan- give voice to criticism, I also don’t take myself so seriously. And, if someone criticizes my books, then that is also absolutely no problem. I find that Advaita is generally taken much too seriously.

Nevertheless, I think there is something sound and interesting in my critique, or better-said commentary, on pseudo-Advaita teachers. Indeed there are no ‘false’ masters, but nevertheless there are many masters who say that they are talking about Advaita and in the meantime lead their followers up the garden path. But all right, even that leading people astray is perfectly okay, even fooling someone is completely the expression of the only being. If everything is as it is then that includes misleading, false hope, dogmas and spiritual paths because, there are no seekers, no teachers, no time, and no separation. Even Advaita that isn’t Advaita but pretends to be the real Advaita is included. The ‘pseudo-Advaita’ is not inferior to the ‘pure’ Advaita. Back to your question about drinking coffee together, isn’t it so that you can’t put two roosters together? Indeed, there are many contradictions and paradoxes. The so- called realized – naturally there are no persons who are realized, that is a contradiction in terms – each tell their own story with all their consequences. The apparent underlying controversies commonly arise when one master dares to criticize another. Most gurus are surrounded by admirers and believers and are therefore not used to criticism. Being in conversation with another guru who may have dared to give outing to criticism is a totally different situation. However it doesn’t ever become real rooster fights. Mostly they are intelligent enough to avoid direct confrontation.

Become critical yourself

Somewhere in my book ‘This is it’ to be published this summer by Watkins Publishing from London, I have commentary on Vijay Shankar. I do not do this to harm him because I find him to be a sympathetic man. I do not name him in my book, but the

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 42 reader can guess it. When he was in Belgium a few years ago we ate and laughed together. But I do call my reader’s attention to some things that struck me. I do not suggest that I know better, or that the others are wrong. Jan absolutely doesn’t know it all better, and there is no one who ‘could be wrong’ as far as the one is concerned. There is nothing wrong in admiring Vijay, or in following or worshipping him. I only say that I find it strange that someone who claims to speak about Advaita has an ashram that he calls ‘the temple of the absolute’. That is how it is described in the website, as if the absolute could be enclosed in a certain space. Isn’t the absolute limitless by definition? Further, the website announces the building of a Shiva temple and a Shiva Linga: ‘detailed plans are being laid out for the construction of a Shiva Temple. The auspicious Shiva Linga will be arriving from Somnath, Gujarat, India. I do not refer to this text from his website to ridicule him, but is it so that the godly is more present in a holy statue? If everything is one, is there then a need to worship and adoration of ‘all the Great Sages’?

I just ask the question and allow the readers to take a look themselves. I just want to invite my readers to be very critical and to draw their own conclusions. Naturally it’s also all right if they want to swallow all that sentimental nonsense. It is also written that the atmosphere in his ashram in Texas is a supportive environment for those who want to realize the infinite in them. ‘Kalvalya Shivalay Ashram (Abode of the Absolute) is open to all who desire to awaken to eternal peace and bliss. Inspired by Dr. Vijay S. Shankar, the Ashram atmosphere (as perceived by many who visit) provides a supportive environment for those who wish to realize the infinite within themselves. I know it, it all sounds so beautiful, and especially seductive for the seeking I, for the thirsty ego. Because, the seeker is encouraged to come inhale the sphere in order to collect a personal trophy – realizing the infinite! This is the classical trap. Just imagine, you take a plane to Texas, three weeks later ‘It’ happens to you while you are walking around in the ashram garden and maybe a week later you arrive at Schiphol as a one who is self-realized. Naturally it could have also been Bombay or Poona – I know I am making a caricature of it – but isn’t this the classical story of ‘I want to be enlightened too’? Isn’t this an example of endorsement of the three most frequent belief systems? (See also my interview with Kees Schreuders in Amigo 5): the belief in the difference between myself and others (I am going to realize the infinite, not my neighbor) the belief in the difference between past and future (now I am still not enlightened, but in the future I probably will be) and the interest that we pay to good and evil, high and low, spiritual and unspiritual (spiritual liberation is a good thing for me). These three belief systems lead to hanging on to the spiritual path. For me that is not non-duality.

Little games with the reader

I give another example, the book by Roy Whenary: ‘The structure of Being’ (Samsara 2002)’ It is a beautiful book, but an author who claims to speak about Advaita (p. 8), cannot permit himself to play little games with the reader. In a book review that appeared in the magazine Insight I pointed this out, but apparently I am one of the few who think like that about his book. (… It soon becomes clear that the writer wants to make some compromises in his book. On page 98 he writes: ‘ To arrive at the non-dualistic state it

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 43 is however necessary to lose all the negative that is still in us’ This sentence by itself lets the whole story cave in alike a pudding. He directs himself here to a person who needs to reach a certain state… from Insight number 1 – 2004). I would say read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Also, my friend Francis Lucille who I have interviewed twice in Holland comes to Amsterdam on a Friday evening and tells a good Netherlander that he should have only positive thoughts (‘you should only have positive thoughts’). If it weren’t recorded on a tape I would not dare to repeat this. Only positive thoughts… is that still Advaita? Where is the boundary between positive and negative, and who says that one is better than the other? Who determines the difference, and with what purpose?

Champions and defenders will come with arguments like ‘it wasn’t meant that way’, or ‘the answer is adapted to the level of the questioner’, or ‘some people need symbols, ceremonies or heroes to come in contact with the real essence’. Ah well, if such answers can satisfy the reader then OK. But for me it has nothing to do with Advaita. And here, I must admit that I, Jan Kersschot, am definitely not an expert in Advaita. Other writers know much more about it than I do. I know much less about it than them. But good, it is easy to criticize. If you analyze my books you can quickly find some passages where I contradict myself, or preach a certain form of dualism – without having intended to do that. I am in fact then a vegetarian who praises hamburgers, or exactly the other way around a meat eater who condemns meat. It is impossible not to make compromises as soon as you begin to talk or write. It will always be impossible capture non-duality in symbols or concepts. Let’s not pretend that it can. Words will always fall short in describing the one.

Thus, my intention is not to criticize – I understand it sounds that way – but only to indicate some things that I have noticed. I myself am not a preacher of ’truth- honesty-reality.’ Jan Kersschot is just one of the many comic book characters, a ghost appearing between the six billion other ghosts. My books ‘Being One’ and ‘It is as it is’ are also misleading. Personally I myself have nothing to do with ’being one’ or ‘the absolute’, not to speak of my preaching them or passing them on. Jan has nothing to do with it! I can’t offer the reader anything. So you get nothing from me. No path. No value judgment, no task, no hope, no homework.

P: And after this beautiful answer there you are as a seeker. You visited various teachers, you have read books to exhaustion, meditated until you saw yellow and have paid yourself blue on all kinds of workshops. Doesn’t there come a time of frustration until ‘the insight’, the ‘grace’ comes? And then you will ask yourself that if you have never been away from home what was the whole search for? Could you not have avoided that? Is it not possible, for example to bring children in contact with that when they are young?

J: Yes Pol, I think that every seeker gets to see all the colors of the rainbow on his or her imaginary spiritual path. Yellow from meditating too much, sometimes white from a peak experience, paid blue in the face for all the retreats, until they become red with shame that they haven’t got ‘It’ yet, and in spite of all the attempts and efforts they are still not enlightened. They will never become like Ramana, Papaji, or Nisargadatta. They don’t have the right looks, or the right roots, but there are

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 44 (apparently) some Dutch people about whom it is said that they have found ‘it’. And maybe that is indeed true. Some of them could tell it so well. Others have so much charisma. Maybe you have yourself had some special experiences (or other new insights) in the presence of such master. Especially if they have died since then, we can attribute all kinds of qualities to them with which they become our spiritual heroes. If they could realize it – even if they had to go to India – we shouldn’t we also be able to? Is there is still hope after all? Apparently there are more western seekers who have stopped seeking and now give satsang themselves. Is it then something that is passed on from guru to disciple? Can I get it too by staying in their presence? Maybe lightning will strike me… You want to pay less to sit in the front row. It is all about me – me – me.

Pink Balloons

Sometimes there are longer or shorter moments of insight, of ecstasy, of inner rest. Aren’t these signs of the great happening that is still to happen? Will this little seeker who I stare at in the mirror every morning when I brush my teeth, for all that become a member of this exclusive club of enlightened masters? Will all my problems disappear then? Will the other notice the change in me?

This is an old story for most Amigo readers. You notice that this story is indeed again based on the three belief systems that I talked about earlier the personal, the temporary and the higher. As long as we believe that there is an ‘I’, the illusory I will strive for something better (read: more spiritual) in the future. And then you read books, or visit satsangs, in order to get a ‘spiritual improvement ‘ for that I. Naturally there is nothing wrong with that, but there is also nothing wrong in pointing out that all these stories could be based on a number of belief systems. The belief systems are like pink balloons that we can’t burst.

Is it possible to prevent this search, or restrain our children from entering into it? Actually this question does not arise in me. There is nothing wrong with the search, even if you see that it doesn’t lead to anything. It is again the person who wants to make something useful out of the search, to give it purpose. There never has been a search, and if you nevertheless have the impression of being on a path, then that is just whatever turns up. That’s OK too. And the children, the little comic book characters, can only play along in the game in the apparent world if they first pretend to be a person, otherwise they might wind up as psychiatric patients. And who are we to decide what is good or bad for other people? Water flows towards the ocean anyway, things happen (apparently) like they happen. And once again, if the person is an illusion, then that is not only true for ‘me’, but also for the ‘others’. The separation between ‘I’ and the ‘others’ has never been there. Nevertheless, our belief systems and our senses will time and again present to us that there is a separation between ‘I’ and the ‘others’, between good and bad, between past and future and so on. And most people continue to play this game as full grown comic book characters until they die. Some die before they are dead which is nothing more than the falling away of belief in an illusion. But it doesn’t make any difference to a blank page.

No escape

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 45 Maybe you would rather that I give hope in something, or that I make it complicated and mysterious. But it is very common Pol, it is as clear as soda water. Being knows no boundaries, no hierarchies. You don’t need to go anywhere. Pol doesn’t form a part of it, and neither does Jan, nothing matters. The Indivisible being is already there. What is, is. The separation has never existed, so there is absolutely no need to finish it. So it is also not so special that Jan or Pol has seen through it. There is no person who sees through it, thus….

I don’t see a single reason to improve anybody. I have no need to bring Pol or the readers of Amigo anywhere, they are already there, or even better, they are not there at all. They are there as Light, and they are not there because there are no persons. You can’t get anywhere because there is nobody who needs to or can go anywhere. There is nobody home, so where would you go? What you are – the Light in the images, or the Consciousness that knows no boundaries – doesn’t worry about the benefit of our longings, the effect of our spiritual paths, or the uselessness of our illusions. Everything that then remains is ‘that which is’. [Interview: Pol Sturtewagen]

Website Jan Kersschot: www.kersschot.com

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 46 Changing out of greed Anthony de Mello

Anthony de Mello (1931-1987) was a Jesuit priest who was known over the whole world because of his many books and spiritual conferences.

In the book ‘Awareness’ (published by Doubleday) he blends Christian spirituality with Buddhist wisdom and psychological insight and creates a beautiful synthesis by this means.

In short chapters he explains that it is time for us to become conscious of the silence within us instead of living a busy and hurried life. He asserts that this can only happen if we become aware of our darkest and most repressed thoughts. We have to recognize these and accept them, but not let ourselves be influenced by them. Then there comes room for consciousness (silence) that enables us to change.

Seeing that this consciousness is present in all of us is the key to a more alive, challenging, and fuller life.

Then we can be more open to our fellow human beings and see their needs and potential. A chapter out of this book follows below.

That still leaves a big question unanswered: do I have to do something to change myself? I have a big surprise for you, and a lot of good news. You don’t have to do anything. The more you do, the worse it becomes. The only thing that you need to do is understand.

Think of someone in your surroundings, or at work who you don’t like, who feeds your negative feelings. I want to help you understand what is going on. The first thing you need to understand is that the negative feeling is in you. You are responsible for the negative feeling, not the other person. Someone else in your place might be completely calm and comfortable in the presence of the person in question; he would not be offended as you are. Now you need to understand something else, namely that you are making a demand. You have an expectation from this person. Can you feel that? After that, say to this person: ‘I have no right to make any demands on you.’ If you can say that you can let go of the expectation. ‘I have no right to make any demands on you. Oh, I will protect myself from the consequences of your actions, moods, or whatever, but go your way and be whatever you like. I have no right to make any demands on you.’ Take a look at what happens to you if you do that. If

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 47 there comes resistance to saying that, well then, you can discover all kinds of things to discover about ‘me’. Allow the dictator to come out, let the tyrant be seen. You thought you were such a little lamb didn’t you? But I am a tyrant and you are a tyrant. A small variation on ‘I am a donkey, you are a donkey.’ I am a dictator you are a dictator. I want to live your life, I want to tell you exactly what is expected of you and how you should behave, and you better behave as I want you to or I will punish you with negative feelings. Don’t forget what I said, everybody is crazy.

A woman once told me that her son had won a prize in high school. He excelled in sports and studies. She was happy for him but she was tempted to say to him: ‘don’t get too big for your britches, because the prize will become a pitfall in the future if you don’t do as well. She was in a dilemma; how could she protect him against disillusionment in the future, without putting a damper on the happiness of the moment?

Hopefully she will learn it as her own wisdom grows. It is not about what she says to him. It is something that she will finally become. The she will understand it. Then she will know what she ought not to say. The prize was a result of rivalry, and that can be cruel if it is based on self-hate and hate towards others. People get a good feeling if someone else has a bad feeling. You win at the cost of the other. Isn’t that terrible? And in this crazy-house it is taken for granted!

There is an American doctor who has written about the consequences of rivalry on his life. He studied at a medical faculty in Switzerland and there was a big contingent of Americans at the university. He told that some students were shocked when they discovered that no grades were given, no prizes were awarded, no list of outstanding students, and no best and second best in the class. You either succeeded or you failed. He said; ‘There were some students among us who just couldn’t swallow that. We almost became paranoid. We thought there must be a snake in the grass.’ Thus, a number of students transferred to another university. Two who survived discovered something remarkable at a certain point, something that they had never seen at an American university: brilliant students who helped others to succeed and exchanged notes. His son who is studying medicine in the United States told him that students in the labs often tamper with microscopes so that the next student using them will have to lose three or four minutes getting them right again. Rivalry. They have to succeed; they have to be the best. And he told him a delicious story that according to him is based on reality, but could be a parable. Once upon a time there was a place in America where people used to gather in the evenings to make music. Among them were a saxophonist, a drummer and a violinist, and it was mostly older people. They came together for the company and purely for the pleasure of making music even though they were not stars. Thus, they enjoyed it and had a wonderful time until one time they decided to have a new conductor who had a lot of ambition and energy. The new conductor said: ‘Listen people, we have to give a concert. We are going to prepare to appear before the public.’ Following that he got rid of a few people who did not play so well, hired professional musicians, took care that the orchestra shaped up and they appeared in the newspaper. Wasn’t that beautiful? So, they decided to move to the big city and give concerts there. But a number of the older ones had tears in their eyes and said: ‘It used to be so nice in the past, when we played rotten and

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 48 enjoyed it.’ Thus, cruelty had entered into their lives, but was not recognized as such. Do you see how crazy people have become?

Some of you have asked me what I meant when I said: Go your own way and just become yourself, there is no objection to that, but I will protect myself. I will be myself. In other words, I will not allow myself to be manipulated. I live my own life I go my own way. I reserve the right for myself to think my thoughts and to follow my inclinations and preferences. And I will say no to you. If I do not feel like company it will not be because of any negative feelings that you call up in me. Namely, you don’t do that anymore. You have no power over me. Maybe I give the preference to company with others. Thus, if you ask me: ‘do you want to go to a film tonight? I say: ‘Sorry, I want to go with someone else, I enjoy his company more than yours.’ There is nothing against that. Saying no to people is beautiful. That belongs to waking up. Part of waking up is that you live your life the way you think is good. And you have to understand that it is not egoistic. Being egoistic is wishing that someone else should arrange his or her life according to your preferences, or your pride, or your interest, or your pleasure. That is egoistic. That is egoism pure and simple. Thus, I will protect myself. I will not feel obligated to spend time with you; I do not feel duty bound to say yes to you. If I enjoy your company I will enjoy it without becoming attached to it. But I will not avoid you anymore because of the negative feelings that you call up in me. You don’t have that power anymore.

Becoming awake must be a surprise. If you don’t expect anything and it nevertheless happens you feel surprised. When Webster’s wife caught him kissing the maid she told him that she was very surprised. Now, Webster was a purist as far as language usage is concerned - after all he had written a dictionary – thus he answered: ‘No darling, I am surprised. You are bewildered!’

There are people who make a goal out of waking up. They are determined to arrive there. They say; ‘I refuse to be happy until I am awake.’ In that case it is better to be just as you are, to be simply aware of how you are. Simple consciousness is happiness in comparison to always trying to react. People react so quickly because they are not conscious. You will come to see that there are moments at which you will react immediately even if you are conscious. But as consciousness grows, you will react less and do more. It doesn’t really matter.

There is a story about a disciple who told his guru that he was going to a far away place to meditate so that he could become enlightened. He sent a letter every six months to his guru telling him about the progress he had made. The first letter said: ‘now I understand what it means to lose the self.’ The guru tore up the letter and threw it in the wastebasket. A half a year later came another report that said: ‘now I have become open to all creatures.’ He tore it up. Then a third letter arrived in which stood: ‘Now I understand the secret of the One and the Many.’ That was also cut up into little pieces. And so it went for years until finally no more reports came. After a while the guru became curious and as a traveler was going to that far place. The guru asked: ‘Will you take a look at what has happened to that clever fellow?’ Finally he received a letter from his disciple that said: ‘what does it matter? When the guru read that he said: ‘He’s there! He’s there!’ He finally understood it! He got it!

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 49 And then there is the story of the soldier at the battlefield who just let his rifle drop, picked up a piece of paper and looked at it. After that he just dropped it and let it whirl away. Later he walked someplace else to do the same thing. His fellow soldiers said: ‘this man is exposing himself nakedly to death. He needs help.’ So he was admitted to hospital and got the best psychiatrists to take his case. But nothing helped. He wandered all over the unit picking up pieces of paper and looking at them purposelessly and then letting them fall again to whirl around. Finally they said: ‘we have to discharge this man from the army.’They called him, and gave him the discharge letter. He carelessly picked it up and then called out: Is this is? This is it!’ He finally got it.

That is how you begin to become aware of your current situation, whatever it may be. Stop acting like a dictator. Stop pushing yourself in a certain direction. So you will understand one day you have reached wherever you wanted to push yourself to with simple consciousness.

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Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 50 Advaita Fairy Tales Pia de Blok

Preamble Evidently the story of Uma from the Upanishads has stayed with me. It is a story about a young redheaded boy who can’t burn up a blade of straw, and Agni (human stuff) the god of fire. The story is also about the boy with the white hair who can’t blow the blade of straw away and Vayu the god of the wind (feelings and desires. Also, there is Glass Swan Uma, daughter of the Himalayas, whom Brahman knows and is seen as his representative. Then there is the muscled man, the god Indra (intellectual capacity). It is clear that the gods represent people’s qualities. King Silence (Brahman) says to them: Think of nothing, of no thing… and the blade of straw burns up, and the other blade of straw is blown into the wind. ‘You see’, he then says, ‘you are already the wind and the fire. You don’t have to ponder that’.

The stories want to offer us the possibility of experiencing silence. That is very important because of the increasing pressure and stress with which children currently grow up.

An upbringing that is directed more towards silence than towards stress is what every child wishes for themselves.

This little book could be an eye opener, an indication of how it also can be.

Pia

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 51 The Glass Swan

There is a swan through which the sun always shines. How is that possible? The following fairy tale will tell you.

The Glass Swan drifted on the water between two banks. Before her she saw water, behind her, under her, and above her the beaming sun. When she looked at one bank she saw nothing, absolutely nothing. There was nothing to hear, nothing to see, nothing to feel. King Silence ruled this bank. There was no one who saw that except she. On the other bank there was a lot of commotion.

Throngs of people gather at certain places as if there were something special to be seen there. She thought to herself: which bank of the river should I climb, the silence or the busyness? ‘Le me try the busy side,’ and as if it happened by itself she glided towards the busy side.

There she saw a big old-fashioned gramophone, one with a copper horn out of which the sound came. The gramophone just kept talking about all the music that it had played in its life. ‘What a busy little man’, thought the swan. Then she saw a teapot that just kept on telling about all the people whose tea water she had boiled, and a cobblestone that just went on and on about everyone who had walked on him. ‘What a fuss’, sighed the Glass Swan.

Then she saw even more people forming a circle around someone and she decided to take a look. Gliding closer by she saw a young boy with red hair dressed in red and yellow clothing. He called: ‘come take a look. My name is Fire. I can set this blade of straw ablaze!’

Everybody wanted to see that. But no matter how he tried and tried; talking loudly, or being angry, making crazy faces, standing on his hands, or using hocus-pocus, he didn’t succeed.

At another place where many people were also gathered there was another young boy busy. He had white hair and hazel colored clothing and he called: ‘come take a look at what I can do. My name is Air and I can blow anything in the world away.’ While he

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 52 said that a blade of straw whirled around his feet. ‘Blow the straw away then,’ the laughing people called. But, to his own surprise and the surprise of everyone there, hocus-pocus didn’t do the trick.

The Glass Swan looked at all of it and thought: ‘What a busy bunch.’ Then a man with very big muscles came towards him. She could see that he was very tremendously strong, and everyone there saw his strength and they were full of wonderment and respect.

‘Good day Swan,’ he said, ‘do you understand all this?’ ‘Yes, certainly,’ and with a resounding voice, so that everyone could hear the Swan said: ‘nothing can be done in all this busy-ness. It is already so crowded; there is no room for anything else. Things are made out of the stillness, wonders happen there like the blowing of the wind and the birth of the fire’. Then the Glass Swan said: ‘who wants to go with me to the other bank, we’ll go and have a cup of tea with King Silence’. And they all went to the other bank. They all followed the shining Swan. They saw suddenly that the sun shone through her; she radiated. So, full of clarity she helped the people to the other bank. They could sit on her back and travel like that.

By King Silence it is still, so still that you actually don’t exist, but he is there nevertheless. He said to the boys with red hair and white hair: ‘the wonder cannot happen out of pressure. It comes from silence, just think about nothing, about no thing’. And… the blade of straw burned up and the other blade of straw was blown into the air. ‘You see,’ said the King, ‘you are already the fire, and you are already the wind. You don’t have to think about it.’

And then everyone was quiet. And that was beautiful.

The Glass Swan and the sun and all together, decided to stay with the King from now on, and if we are all going to sleep now, then we’ll all drink some tea this evening; in stillness by King Silence.

Sleep tight.

With thanks to Dr. Douwe Tiemersma, who showed me the insight in Advaita.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 53 Being complete with what presents itself Dick de Boom in conversation with JanKees Vergouw

When I arrived a bit too early on June 11, 2004 for an interview with JanKees Vergouw, JanKees was still making music with a friend. JanKees plays a complicated looking instrument, the sarod, which comes originally from India. He had sarod lessons with Alexander Smit. His friend was playing two drums, the tabla. It was a welcome kickoff for the interview. We do the interview outside in the sun in the statue garden situated next to a greenhouse in the restful neighborhood of Haaldersbroek in Zandaam. JanKees who is 56 has lived in this area his entire life. Currently he gives yoga lesson there following the Kashmir-tradition. Actually, he prefers to call it relaxation exercises. Every first Saturday of the month there is satsang for at most twelve people in which Satsang is interspersed with Kashmir-yoga exercises.

The truth and nothing but the truth

Dick: What is the truth?

JanKees: What comes to me is that the only true thing is that which stands by itself. There are many truths that are known to be relative truths; but what is really true is that which you actually are. What you are essentially are stands by itself, it has no origin or consequences, no beginning or end. Everything that is relative cannot be essentially true. It can be true, but always in relation to something else. That is why we call it relative.

D: For very many people truth is to be found in everyday life. This is true, and that is not true. People live in their truth or the confusion of the day and are in search of truth.

JK: As soon as you have found your truth you have to defend it, because every truth that you have found can be taken away from you again.

D: Do many people search for the truth?

JK: The search for truth is the longing for your true home, for your natural state.

D: Finally is everything not truth, thus also all the things that we call truth?

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 54 JK: There is nothing wrong with relative truth. Searching for truth is not about the relative, for example, that the grass is green and the sky is blue are agreements. And it has remained like that for centuries. Those can be called truths, but these truths look like agreements nevertheless. They are projections of the thinking, which we naturally need in order to recognize things. I believe something like that is called perception. If you speak about truth you can approach that from a philosophical standpoint, but then you arrive at Bok or Jasper. (This is an expression from JanKees’ region that he often uses; it means ‘from this to that’.) Sometimes philosophy arrives nowhere. It is much easier to just avoid philosophy altogether and all other approaches that belong to a gradual awakening. You can follow the long process of spiritual disciplines if that interest you, but why shouldn’t you recognize the so-called truth immediately?

D: What is the purpose of the yoga exercises that you offer?

JK: The yoga-practice (and especially the Kashmir-method) has very beneficial effects. If you feel called to do some such practice you will naturally pluck its benefits. But like all the means that are available during the search, they do not bring you a hair’s breadth closer to self-realization. What is actually true is immediate; you can’t go to it.

D: What about functioning in daily life and the half-truths that you have to deal with if you know how it is with Truth?

JK: We wrestle with these things and then become unsure and begin to doubt. If you live without any doubts about your real nature then there is no flaw to be found, then you live complete with what presents itself. Then all the truths and untruths with which every person manages are there for you also, but you are not in conflict with them.

You can’t remember clarity

D: There where thinking stops, is that the truth?

JK: That is a truth projected by thought. As long as this being immediately available is a projection in your mind there will be doubts with all their consequences. Thus we can have moments of total clarity, but the paradox is that you can’t remember clarity. You can remember how the organism responded to what we call a realization. What I mean by that is that the body – and all that goes with that: thinking and feeling – can become rather confused or blissful. That we can remember, but not the realization itself. Realization is the immediate seeing that there is nobody. Therefore you can only remember what the effect of a similar such ‘happening’ was. Seeing that there is no somebody falls outside of the safety nets of thought as far as I am concerned.

D: If there is a conflict between two people who are both convinced that they are right…

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 55 JK: ... then we can speak about a fictive meeting between two objects, just to put it a bit clinically. But, if one of them is convinced that he is right, and the other also, but there is no conflict then it can be nice, you call that the charm of meeting.

D: In the absolute sense, is it then impossible to find the ‘truth’?

JK: Relative truths can be found left and right, those can be found, but it is evident that whatever you find can also be taken away from you. So, when you seek, you are seeking for a relative truth that we generally call self-realization. When seeking ceases, where is the sought?

D: But, if I now speak with a thousand people would there be anyone who understands this (although that is also an assumption).

JK: You can also not say what truth is. You can point to it, but you cannot say what it is. It is so simple that a child could understand it. Thus, you can never confirm the truth by means of a statement, or a gesture, or anything at all. What is true needs no confirmation. In Satsang the point that can’t be localized is always being indicated, undivided seeing.

D: Can one conceive of circumstances that might form an obstacle to truth, for example certain living conditions?

JK: There is absolutely no condition that could form an obstacle to the realization of your immediateness. That’s absolutely impossible. Such conditions do not exist.

Without seeking there is no passion

D: Nevertheless many teachers indicate methods, such as meditation for example. Does reading a lot of books help?

JK: There is no question of whether something like that helps, it is almost unavoidable that we read books that we come across about self-realization. That happens. There are very few examples that can be named of people who came to self-realization without having read, or having meditated, or having gazed at the sun, or having stood on their heads There are very few people who have not done that. It is not about whether that is needed, it is apparent that something like that happens. You can’t avoid meditating, going to satsang, reading books. Apparently this passion is inherent in the seeking. Without searching there is no passion, and without seeking there is no longing to dissolve the experience of separateness. Thus, searching for a solution is inherent in the reading of books, meditating, going to Satsang or expressly not doing any of that. That is the great paradox – searching for a solution. It stands in the way of the self-evident naturalness that we apparently are. Your whole life seems to be filled with just one longing: wanting to become enlightened. At least it was so in my case.

D: In that respect, perhaps you can say something about your way or path to self- realization.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 56 JK: As a child I was often baffled as it were by seeing that there is no I. Indeed, that seems like a contradiction, but that’s just the way it was. Then my father would lay his hand on my forehead and I would become calm again. When I was around 18 I was in a café and I asked other youngsters if they also knew that: that you are not somebody and that you scarcely have a body. At that moment everyone had a good laugh about that, but later one of the boys came to me and told me that his yoga teacher always talked about that. That is how I found my first teacher. When I was 22 he advised me to go to Jean Klein who used to come to Holland twice a year. After that, or just before that - I don’t remember that anymore– there was the experience of the stopping of the known broke through and there was no notion of individuality anymore and no body. The landscape was ablaze and there was absolutely no connection anymore to what is known by us. I don’t know how long that lasted in the chronological sense, but very slowly the thought arose in me: now I am dead. With the thinking of that line I noticed that I was sitting straight up in the bed and my body began to ‘shake’ for a few hours. Since then no bliss, no peace and no being free of fear, but well the existence of an absolutely penetrated, clear notion that the I on which we hang our existence is nothing other than a thought or a reflex.

D: You had sarod lessons from Alexander Smit. What role did Alexander play in your spiritual process?

JK: Actually Alexander did not give music lessons, but he made an exception for me. He had a great passion for classical Indian music. I had weekly lessons from Alexander from 1980 to 1984 and attended his Satsangs that were still in his living room every now and then. I have very good and friendly memories of that time. I certainly considered him to be the man who could take away the last remnants of doubt from me. In one satsang weekend, which coincided with my birthday he asked me what I wanted to have. ‘Total self-realization’ was my greedy reaction. ‘You shouldn’t ask me for things that I can’t give you’ was his immediate answer. After that the seeking stopped.

The question and answer game

D: In conclusion I would like to ask you if you would like to a little game of ‘true’ or ‘not true’ with me.

The truth is only accessible to few people:

JK: Not true.

D: You can do violence to the truth:

JK: Not true.

D: You cannot do any violence to the truth:

JK: True.

D: Truth can only be seen by realization:

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 57 JK: True.

D: Honesty does not exist:

JK: True.

D: Facts are not the same as the truth:

JK: True.

D: You can only be honest to your self:

JK: Not true.

D: Truth will out:

JK: True.

D: You can only search for truth if your daily life is under control:

JK: Not true.

D: Truth is the most boring thing there is.

JK: Not true.

D: Truth is the same as love:

JK: True

D: Truth remains if nothing else remains:

JK: Not true.

D: The truth is searching for you. You can’t find the truth:

JK: Not true. (Laughing: there is never anyone who seeks and the truth doesn’t exist at all)

In closing a short piece from a bundle written by JanKees.

Truthfulness ‘The manifest as a universe of appearances reveals itself in the law of opposites. This law cannot be anything other than that which is inferred or projected on what appears to perception. Perception is the disposition of the immediate seeing and thus can never be the perceiver.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 58 The perceiver doesn’t have a leg to stand on. It is a mistake to experience or see yourself as a perceiver. You imagine being the perceiver, and in that you can’t look through the eyes of the now. Through the eyes of the now there is extreme enjoyment. It is not so that you enjoy, there is enjoyment. In this way we can say that perception is the undivided seeing that you are. It is the only thing that really is. This perceiving effortlessly contains light and dark, hard and soft, and maybe the most penetrating opposites, life and decomposition in itself. A perception such as light and dark or a table lamp, is a momentary coming together of a so-called object with its name. Thus, when the label table lamp, which is knowledge, disappears, you don’t know what you see. If there is a sound you don’t know what you hear and so on. There is absolutely no conflict or division in the presence or non-presence of this perception and the recognition of the so-called things. This knowledge is always ready to function. There is nothing wrong with this directly functioning and that can never be separated from here where you are, or in other words: the immediate seeing”

You can find this and other Dutch texts at his website: www.oogvannu.nl

[Interview: Dick de Boom]

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 59 Truth snippets

--- Suppose you know the definitions of all substances and their derivatives, what good is this to you? Know the true definition of yourself. That is indispensable. Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it, that you may attain to the One who cannot be defined, O sifter of the dust. [Rumi]

Let Silence Take You to the Core of Life - Do the Meditation

In truth everything and everyone is a shadow of the Beloved, and our seeking is His seeking and our words are His words. We search for Him here and there, while looking right at Him. Sitting by His side, we ask: "Oh Beloved, where is the Beloved?" Enough of such questions, Let silence take you to the core of Life. All your talk is worthless when compared with one whisper of the Beloved. [Rumi, "God's Whisper]

DAISIES

It is possible, I suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing. Song being born of quest he knows this: he must turn silent Were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display the small suns of their center piece, their-if you don't mind my saying so-their hearts. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know? But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; for example-I think this as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch- the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 60 daisies for the field. [MaryOliver]

From: 'The Book of Hours' Rainer Maria Rilke

You are the future, the great red glow of morning above the plains of immortality. You are the cock-crow after the night of time; the dew, the matins and the untouched girl, the stranger, the mother, death. You are the form that transforms itself, that always rises out of fate, that remains unhailed and unlamented and as undescribed as virgin forest.

You are the quintessence of things yet you hide the last word of your nature and always appear differently to each person: from a ship, you're the coast; from land, you're a ship. [Translated by Stevie Krayer]

Those obstructed by nothingness, clinging one-sidedly to this principle, sit blankly to clear away sense objects and think that the Way is herein. None of them seeks the secret of nurturing the three treasures. Though they speak of reaching nothingness, this is really not the Way. The ultimate Way is not in reification, nor simple nothingness. The mystic essential is to balance openness and realism. [Ancestor Lu]

Horse By Moonlight

A horse escaped from the circus and lodged in my daughter's eyes: there he ran circles around the iris raising sliver dust-clouds in the pupil and halting sometimes to drink from the holy water of the retina.

Since then my daughter feels a longing for meadows of grass and green hills... waiting for the moon to come and dry with its silk sleeves the sad water that wets her cheeks.

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 61 [Alberto Blanco]

If you want money more than anything, you'll be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food, you'll be a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth: whatever you love, you are. [Rumi]

Having and being At school they stood there written on the board. The verb to have and the verb to be; With these two time was given, and eternity, One the reality, the other appearance.

Having is, nothing. Is war, not living, is being of the world and all her gods. Being is, raised above these things, Is being filled with godly pain.

Having is hard. Is body. Is two breasts. It is to hunger and thirst for the earth. Only plodding, only dull duty.

Being is soul, is listening, is giving way, Becoming child and gazing at the stars, and slowly being lifted there.

[Ed. Hoornik] Free verse translation by Sam Pasiencier

Amigo 8 - november 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 62 c o l o p h o n

c o n t r i b u t o r s . t o . t h i s . e d i t i o n :

Jan van Delden Jan Kersschot Tony Parsons Susan Frank Francis Lucille JanKees Vergouw

Kees Schreuders (interviews, editor & lay-out) Belle Bruins (interviews & editor) Johan van der Kooij (editor) Dick de Boom (editor) Rob Sondaar (illustration) Sam Pasiencier (translations from the Dutch)

Sietske Roegholt Ilse Beumer Gary Merrill (UK) Jaap Poetsma Ellis Sleutel Robbert Bloemendaal Pol Sturtewagen Wim Zonjee Pia de Blok

editorial statutes

AMIGO, a periodically appearing web-magazine, is a platform for texts about diverse Non-dualistic approaches. Said more poetically: Amigo wants to show 'you' in that empty chair, that you see at the head of this magazine, that you have found unconditional friendship. Every issue will in any case contain texts by Wolter Keers and be in the spirit, which he gave to the magazine 'Yoga Advaita' founded by him.

www.ods.nl/amigo e-mail: [email protected]

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