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no2

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No. That is not what is being said here! That idea implies that there is an individual who cannot do anything. The open secret is suggesting that there is no individual and therefore no volition of any kind , except in the dream.

There's nothing that an individual can do?

No, there's just life. Being is all there is. It's just life. We just think we're experiencing it. In life there are people who think it's their life and their experience. The separate individual believes, and experiences, that what is happening is happening to a central entity they call me. But all there is is life happening , apparently. It is totally and utterly simple.

But are you saying that there's just life and we all experience this?

Utterly meaningless. Except to the apparent separate entity.

And totally and utterly meaningless.

Nothing matters. Then you see, the apparent individual thinks Oh well I can do anything. No you can't do anything because you can't do being enlightened, you can't do not being enlightened. You can't do anything because there is no individual volition. You can't do doing nothing. You can't do doing anything. There's no-one. In one way this message is incredibly liberating; in another way it's totally frustrating for the individual seeker. You can't go out of here now and raid a bank. Who's going to raid a bank? So no2, nothingness, observing nothingness right, is this nothingness all-knowing? Not in the sense that we would think of as all-knowing, no. It doesn't need to be all-knowing because nothing is already everything. The sort of all-knowing that we think of as all-knowing is certainly not relevant because there is already nothing and everything. This is boundless being without cause so there's no need for information. This is the wonder of unknowing in which everything is already new. There's no need any more for information. But you describe nothingness as a separate object out there somewhere whereas all and everything is nothingness. It is not something to be discovered, it already is being.

But it doesn't actually matter.

Well what you're saying is why is there anything? Thoughts are no different to emotions, sounds or whatever. Thinking is just another part of what's happening. So thoughts arrive and to some extent have a power all the time there's someone taking delivery of them. We grow up respecting what we call the mind, although there is no such thing. We respect most of the thoughts we have because we think they're going to get us to somewhere. All dream-thinking is about getting somewhere. She loves me. I'm going to be enlightened tomorrow. All of that is an anticipation. In one sense it's all about promoting the paradox of there being someone trying to get somewhere. But it is simply being arising as dream-thinking.

They say there's no mind, just a bundle of thoughts in the ether or whatever ,I mean these thoughts that float around in this body-mind for example are very strange sometimes. Why are these thoughts floating around?

No. Everything arises out of no-thing. It simply is what is apparently happening , to no-one. Nobody has ever thought anything , there is no-one.

But we're not generating this?

No, it's absolutely nothing to do with that. It's not anything to do with acceptance. This has nothing to do with somebody accepting what is happening in the moment, because there is nothing happening, and there is no moment and there is no somebody.

So is there just a surrendering and acceptance that in each moment everything that's happening and arising and occurring is exactly as it's meant to be?

Oneness doesn't acknowledge oneness. There is only oneness. There is no action. All there is is this. Being is totally action-less and in it arises apparent action.

Is there any point in oneness acknowledging oneness?

Yes.

If no-one knows what this particular wall looks like to no2, there seems to be a sense of separateness.

Yes. You will never get this because you're there trying to get it. When there is no-one there is only being. Is it not mindlessness? No. Thinking still happens. There's nothing wrong with anything. In liberation everything can happen. There's nothing that's denied, including thinking. The whole idea that somehow thinking is divorced from oneness is just another ignorance. All there is is being thinking. I want a cup of tea. I'm going bankrupt. She doesn't love me. Thoughts arise. A thought arises, another thought arises, another thought arises , that is thinking happening and there are times when there is no thinking happening.

It's a mystery, a paradox.

Absolutely. It's just aliveness. And it just arises seemingly in a richly different way, which is just stunning. But the different way that it arises is totally meaningless. It's just the absolute joy of oneness appearing as two and being apparently totally unique. Whatever happens right now, in the story, is unique. It will never happen again. It never has happened before. It's totally new. What's happening is totally new. It apparently comes and goes. It's alive and it's not. You're sitting in total newness. You're breathing total newness. You're thinking total newness. Nobody's ever spoken like this before. It's total uniqueness. Arising, falling away, arising, falling away. It's amazing.

So the aliveness that's me is the same as the aliveness that is her,

There is no before and after.

no2, you've just said before and after, and that's time.

to try and describe this to someone who thinks there is a before, it's a stunning realisation that what is apparently arising is totally unique. It's another way of describing what people think of as something that happened before. What I'm trying to say is you, sitting on that seat, has never happened before. But I'm only speaking to someone who thinks there is a before. Just so, there is only this.

But you just said It's never been thought before.

And silence. This is stillness and silence. This is stillness moving and silence sounding. And it's totally new , apparently.

I'm reminded of that quote from T S Eliot At the still point of the turning world , there the dance is. So it's really happening in stillness.

What, today you mean?

If someone were to ask me what I got out of this so far,

Are you trying to get something out of it? Yes. Right. OK. Fine.

Yes, now. Yes, today. Being here.

But it's possible that the one that's out there that feels lost will no longer be. This is not about learning to know something.

I'm lost out there too.

Yes.

If there is nothing, well there is nothing here either, right?

I think when you say it's illusion I wouldn't use that term because I think that's a bit confusing. This is both real and unreal. The dreaming is the dream of separation.

It's all an illusion. It's a dream.

If I told you that the wall was an illusion you might go and bang your head on it and it would still appear as a wall and so would your headache appear as a headache. But basically they are both nothing appearing as this.

Right

Not at all. There is no you. There is no conditioning. There is no wall. But in the appearance, there is you<span class=t3> who can bang your head on a wall and it would hurt.

But it's just because I'm conditioned to know that this is a wall, that I would hurt my head.

Yes.

Right. But it's like when I fall asleep in this life here, I have dreams and my dreams seem as if they're reality.

Apparently.

There's things happening.

Yes. But when the seeker wakes up the next morning there is still another dream that now seems real. It is the dream of being a separate individual.

Next morning I wake up and I find, oh it was just a dream. Nothing happened.

The dream is whatever it is. It's an appearance. Yeah, it's a fantasy, is it? You could call it a fantasy if you want to. But it's the appearance. It's nothing appearing as your bedroom and your body, you in the bed or whatever.

Right. So this is the same kind of dream that I'm dreaming at night.

There is a body appearing. But all the time there is someone, that separate individual is constantly looking for something, constantly longing for and fearing nothingness. Because it lives in this dream of being something it thinks that what it longs for is lots of money or lovers, lots of somethings. But also in the end the final search is for something called enlightenment. There isn't anything called enlightenment because there is only already that which is both nothing and everything. The difficulty the dreamer has is it's always looking for what it longs for in something else and is never able to see nothing being everything, which is what it actually longs for and also fears. So it's totally in a fix , a catch-22 situation.

But in reality there is no body.

Yes it appears to be. All the time there is seeking it is secret, it is also openly everything.

Yeah. Like a vicious circle almost?

There is no Munich, no. There's no Munich, no London, there's nothing else but this. If you get up and walk out, as you walk out of here what will arise will be nothing arising as everything and it'll look like a staircase. So you don't need to go anywhere or know anything. Enlightenment is nothing to do with knowing everything, seeing everything, seeing what's happening in Africa, because this is everything. This is totally everything.

So there is no Munich?

Yes, absolutely.

But if I'm in Africa then Africa is everything.

No, absolutely not. Your house doesn't exist, your lover doesn't exist , have you got a lover? So this is all there is? This is all there is and it doesn't matter what the mind thinks it can do about it. Wherever mind goes and whatever it does is only ever being appearing as this. The whole of this manifestation is in one way promoting the paradox that you are a separate person sitting in a room with seventy or eighty other separate people. I am something. He is something. Tom is something. So no2 is something. Whereas in reality this is simply nothing talking to nothing. Nothing is saying to nothing, Come on, there is already nothing and everything.

And while I'm in Africa this doesn't exist.

No, it's just what's happening. I have to say that when awakening apparently happens, one of the last things that drops away is a sense of location, because it's so ingrained in us that this is my body and I walk around. When I walk out of here that's what's seen. In a way that's the last thing that drops away. The realisation that this body is just body. It's not anyone's body. It's not owned.

Experience of body-mind is no different than experience of thought?

And then a very powerful part of that is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. So after separation, because there's already a longing, we seek pleasure and avoid pain, so we start becoming business people. We smile at our mother naturally and she smiles back and we like it so we go on doing it.

I always think about my childhood and maybe it's the first ever location that is there , this is there and this is me, this is you ,

Well oneness doesn't need to know anything. There is only oneness. There's not an action. All there is is this. It's totally action-less. And in it arises apparent action. But in the dream of being a separate individual, everything still arises uniquely because there is only that. So in that dream, everything is totally, uniquely for that. In liberation, in the realisation of oneness, there is still that uniqueness. The difference is that there's no-one in there that that's happening to. It just is apparently happening. It is no thing arising as uniqueness. It's totally incomprehensible, unknowing isness without a knower. It can never be understood that in liberation, when there is no-one, when the whole separation has dropped away, there is still the unique duality that appears to be arising. But it is then completely seen through as a play of being.

Is there any point in oneness knowing oneness?

No, not vertical time. Verticality.

So, sometimes you talk about vertical time as opposed to linear time.

It is seeing that there is only this which is timeless, and it's also enjoying the story of time but seeing through the story, seeing that the story is totally meaningless and has no relevance or power any more. It only apparently happens in time, that's what it is.

Verticality. So is that when that shift, whatever it is, sort of apparently happens? Is that the ending of the story?

The story is seen as nothing being everything. I really wouldn't try to understand this.

But it is seen by ,?

Yes. So then when awakening happens it will report, Oh, it's what has always been there.

So it'd be true to say, and I think you've said it several times, probably on this retreat, that in ordinary life there is actually a lot of ordinary seeing, including thoughts, and that's just normal. We all do it without realising it. And then this sort of psychology, I sense, comes in as a veil claiming ownership through the habit of prescriptive living.

So actually there is only beingness. In the whole of this appearance there is only what is. There's only this happening. It's inescapable. It's the all and everything.

Exactly.

Yes. So it's the open secret.

Somehow the psychology I sense that comes up and says I, it sort of blocks the seeing of itself because it's so fine it covers the ,

It's the secret all the time there is someone there that's trying to work it out. Then it stays secret. And it's only when there's nobody looking for it that it becomes open and apparent.

Exactly, yes.

No. And there was no-one to be enlightened.

Yet when we talk, people say I was enlightened yesterday, but there was never a yesterday to be enlightened in.

Gentle, yes.

It's so gentle, isn't it?

Yes. Yes it is.

Gently amazing.

No, no.

I think the mind just doesn't get that.

That's one thing that really struck me after the initial awakening, when there was no-one there and then someone came back to report on it. I was interested in Christianity at the time and I didn't understand this stupid idea that you could sin, and then you were forgiven. I suddenly saw that the real meaning in forgiveness is that there's absolutely no-one and nothing to forgive. It doesn't matter how many times you seem to get it wrong or whatever you do, or whatever you<span class=t3> don't do. It doesn't matter how much you seek or do not seek. There is only being this. It is unconditional love.

It's ungraspable.

Well it was just a wonder. The real meaning or quality behind the ideas that we have makes an absolute nonsense of the religious dogmas and the idea of original sin ,

Did you feel a sense of relief?

Yes, absolutely. There's a real, real, deep humour in all of this. I mean in a way it's a cosmic joke. It is the cosmic joke. It's the best joke in town.

Feels like part of the gentleness is a very deep kind of humour.

The only joke, yes. In another way you could very simply say aliveness is all there is. And aliveness is felt through the five senses and also through the sixth and seventh senses of feelings arising and thoughts happening. All of that is pure aliveness. There is nothing other than aliveness. That is all there is. And what's amazing about it is that everybody in this room is pure aliveness. What's sitting here is just simply, utterly aliveness. And that's the beginning and the end of it all. There isn't any need to say any more than that. Thank you. The Sanskrit word Advaita points to something which can't be spoken of. Although we will be doing a lot of speaking, we can never ever describe what we are trying to talk about. Nor can it be understood or known. The word Advaita also points to the futility of the idea that there is something separate from something else called oneness. So we won't be talking about reaching a state - we won't be here to try and find states of bliss or stillness or silence, or even awareness. No amount of self-enquiry will bring the seeker to that which already is. So, we won't be here looking for anything because there is nothing to find and nothing to get. What we are talking about is so obvious that it is utterly obscure and it's so open that it is utterly secret. All the time there is someone trying to get it, it stays hidden. All the time we look for it, it just isn't seen. It can't be attained, it can't be lost, it can't be taught, it can't be given and it can't be taken away. It can't be talked about or grasped because it is already nothing and everything. It is not only the biggest thing in this room, it is the only thing in this room - it's the only arising in this room. It's all that's happening in this room. And within it - within what we seek - is us seeking it. And so the seeking of being is also being seeking. And all the time that we believe we are separate from it or experience that we are separate from it - then we are inevitably seeking it. The seeker can only function in moving to find what it dreams it has lost. And it is moving to find something that is utterly still. The clock's ticking and seeking is moving in time to anticipate finding something that is timeless and still. What we are talking about has nothing to do with you or me - absolutely nothing to do with you or me. It has nothing to do with personal experience. You are not going to get this, nobody has ever got this, because it has to do with there being nobody. I haven't got it. I don't know anything you don't know - I haven't got something you don't have, but something has been lost. This is about loss, this is about a total loss. And it's a loss of something that we have grown up to believe in - we have grown up to believe that we are individuals - that we are separate individuals with free will and choice and we can do something to make our lives work in the world, and in some way or other the mind seeks to help us do that. But some of us are more sensitive to the idea that life isn't just about success or about being rich and all of that. And so we look in religion or we look in therapy or meditation or we look in self-enquiry - we look in the school of enlightenment for that which will bring us to some sort of wholeness. We know that there is something that isn't whole. This isn't it, this isn't quite it. It is slightly out of line - there is something else. Is it enlightenment? And the mind will then paint a picture of what enlightenment is like. Enlightenment is bliss, omnipresence, omni-power, everybody loves you, you love everyone and you walk around in this beautiful pink haze, People come to you and they say, I hear you are enlightened? and you say, Yes. would you come and speak to some of my friends?, and you say, Yes, OK , And you go and there are a few friends and you tell them about how you have become enlightened and they love that - that sounds good - and they look at you and you are sort of very quiet and obviously completely together and in bliss. But they want to be like you and their friends want to be like you so they get more friends and they come and you get more people in the room and in the end it has to be a bigger room and the crowds get bigger. And then you say to your friend, Well you know, I am down here on this level - maybe I ought to have a platform, maybe a bigger seat so the people can see me. You know, we have got this idea - the mind has an idea of what enlightenment is like; it's the lottery, it's the spiritual lottery. It's the biggest lottery that you can win. It's better than winning 100 million pounds because you have got everything, you are just there,<span class=t3> you are totally safe, you have got bliss and everything is wonderful. And that is the difficulty, because of course, actually, enlightenment is nothing like that. Enlightenment, liberation, is totally, utterly ordinary. It is not wonderful. It's not blissful, it is not the answer to everything. Life goes on. It goes on just as it did before. But the difference in liberation is the dropping away of any sense that there is anyone that life is happening to. Liberation is absence, liberation is loss - the loss of separation. And in that loss, the emptiness is filled. That emptiness is also fullness. In nothing - when there is nothing - everything fills nothing. Ask any question - it doesn't matter what question you ask. If a question arises it is there to arise and meet nothing and be answered by nothing. The mind can never get anywhere with this. This is totally simple, utterly simple and very difficult. It is very simple because it is totally obvious, and it is difficult because it is frightening to the individual - the sense of losing individuality is a frightening idea to the individual.

The only joke in town.

It's the same font, yes. One bit of it doesn't want to be the same - or thinks it isn't the same font.

You were saying yesterday that the very seeking prevents the seeing - I am paraphrasing - it's just such a brilliant game of appearances and deflection of attention in a way and it just helps to give an understanding of how it is all from the same font.

It's absolutely the divine play of being. And being isn't the slightest bit interested in the idea of anybody seeing this or not, because there is nothing other than being , and non-realisation is also being. So being suffers, being laughs, being searches, being finds, being doesn't find. There isn't anything other than that. And of course all of that is totally immaculately whole - there is only that so that is all there is. But in that wholeness there is something that thinks it isn't wholeness, which is also being, being separate. Being has no requirements. But what arises within being is an apparent need and requirement to find that there is no need and requirement.

But that's just all the play - or what is called the divine play of,

And the search for that is reflected in the world that we live in because everything we do is a search for that. All religion, all apparent personal endeavour, is simply a seeking for this unknowing.

And the mystery of that is just inscrutable - it's just a mystery.

It is a search for not being separate. The seeker cannot see this, because this is timeless being - this is the eternal isness which is out of time, out of space, out of being achievable. So what we are trying to achieve<span class=t3> can't be achieved because it is already all there is.

A resolution of attention, of feeling separate?

Absolutely. All desire is ultimately the search to come home. And what is strange about this paradox, this mystery, is that everything that is being done - all seeking, all reaching out, all personal endeavour, all building of churches and empires - is being-ness. It is pure aliveness. It's an amazingly strange paradox.

It's kind of hard to accept - something I have a hard time accepting is that the spiritual search is no better, no higher, no more refined than a search for money, sex, power or -whatever.

No, there is no why and there is no experiment and no choice. The basis of traditional argument is that oneness chose to become two, and if oneness made a choice to become two, it could make a choice to become one again. It's a fairy story based on the illusion of time, cause and effect. Nothing is ever chosen. The whole dream of choice and motivation is that there is something in time that can move forward with intention from a place called twoness to a place called oneness. There never has been anything but being, and this is the eternal nothing and everything. It isn't going anywhere and it's never been anywhere. There is no anywhere. There is no time or space except in the appearance. There is nothing but this, and this is nothing happening.

In some ancient Vedic text, or something like that, is there anything said about how that is, or about the why? I mean I know the Bhagavad Gita says just, it's an experiment,

Yes, it is a loop and you are absolutely right, separation engenders the question why and the searching. And as you say, when there is no-one there is no loop and there won't be any questions. There is no question and there are no answers. There is no knower and no known , and so there is no-one to ask why. But it is the most enticing question within that point of view. Oh yes, it is, and being in separation loves asking why. And that fascination has generated religion. The question why in the seeker has generated Christianity, Buddhism, and everything else that you could call a teaching of becoming that inevitably is based on the fundamental misconception that there is a separate individual with choice and volition to follow a path, to be motivated to move from one state to another, better state, to seek and find the answer that has no question.

And I see now that that question arises from the separate point of view so it is inherently unanswerable in a way. It is just an unanswerable question, but that is only because it is from the standpoint of separateness. Because in the glimpses of wholeness there is no question. There is no question at all. There is just an absence of any need to know anything because it just is. So then that question is just a loop that arises.

Absolutely - totally. The question in mind is the insistence that I am a separate individual and want an answer; and demand, and have the right, to have an answer. The difference between here and elsewhere is that the response to the questions is not feeding the seeking mind. The mind continuously meets a pointing towards that which it cannot comprehend. That is how the questioning dries up and then there is nothing left. The other very powerful element of seeking an answer is the experience of unworthiness, because the feeling of separation is a feeling of being rejected from wholeness. So immediately a huge sense of unworthiness arises and of course most religions, most 'isms', appeal directly to that sense of unworthiness. So that is another powerful element of the search because religions and teachings of becoming are teaching us how to overcome our dreamt unworthiness which is based on fallacy. It is such a powerful message - Yes I am unworthy, I feel unworthy. There is something wrong. So it must be me that did it wrong. Can you teach me how to do it right?

And it is also an insistence from the separate point of view to want the answer - it is an insistence of the very existence of the separate point of view. But if I exist, I should be able to have an answer about this because I can think this, I can experience this - it is kind of an insistence of I EXIST.

It reports to you a different time but it is still only this , what is apparently happening.

in a churchyard and see an old tombstone which is of a different time.

all the time that there is still a separate entity then what is seen appears as a story. If you are looking at a gravestone, Bill Daniels - Died in 1917, this is a story about someone else in your story.

Yes, and so it appears to be something that happened before and sometimes I see past that confusion and sometimes I don't. I was just wondering if you could say something about it.

Oh no.

So there was no Bill Daniels?

I think the word illusion is a bit misleading. It's nothing appearing as something. It's both real and unreal. It's nothing appearing as a wall and it has all the apparatus of seeming real. This is nothing appearing as bodies. That's why in liberation it is seen that everything is both something and nothing. So everything is seen as it is, there is no veil. The veil is the veil of thinking that everything else is also only another separate something.

So no2, when you say that this is all nothing, then these appearances, the wall and apparent characters - it's all just an illusion?

No there isn't. There is no always.

Are you saying that there is always an appearance of some sort or another. So even in ,

There is and there isn't. But there is no always. What the dream of separation brings with it is the belief in the reality of time, and story, a before and after and a conviction that there is an always.

There isn't an appearance?

All there is is nothing being everything and so everything is nothing. This can never be comprehended. It is essentially, by its very nature, unknowable. Deep sleep is being no-thing. Phenomena arise in being-ness or nothing - which is the same thing. So in deep sleep nothing seems to arise; however, it is nothing and everything, emptiness and fullness.

So, for example, in deep sleep, isn't that another phenomenon in itself?

There is no-one or other, except in the dream of separation. It's only that the everything, the fullness, isn't appearing to be sitting in a room wearing brown jackets and blue jumpers. It is seemingly totally still, unmoving. This is a story being described right now , when the thing wakes up within which that nothing seems to be, then nothing begins to move around and appears to be something and drink coffee. What's apparently happening right now is deep sleep. This is emptiness appearing to be aliveness happening.

But it's not a question of one or the other?

No it never will, because of course nobody is doing anything, they only believe that they are making things happen and there is somewhere to get to. It is like trying to write on water.

It's a great relief when you say that nothing really happens because we spend our whole lives trying to make something out of nothing and you think, Oh, thank God for that! You know, it's been confirmed here that in everything you are trying desperately to make happen you are always aware that it never actually quite gets there.

Yes.

no2, yesterday evening you introduced the idea of self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is uniquely something that the human being adopts or takes on board at a very early age. There is nothing and then something arises called being separate, if you like, or self-consciousness. I am conscious that I am a separate self. It is the story of the Garden of Eden; you eat the apple of self consciousness - knowledge of self. Being arises and is apparently separate and then self-consciousness arises , but only apparently.

what is self-consciousness?

Oh, it seems so. But it only seems meaningful and important to the apparent me which adds itself to being and dreams or believes it is now in a story about me.

It is very powerful, because I realise that everything is being referred to by this self-consciousness.

It is only a story. Let's say, after a year of being-ness, nothing but being , no story, and suddenly, the story starts. This is the story of no2, or Bill or Henry, in time, in space, growing up with a family. I am an individual, my mother and father are individuals, my priest, my teacher, my boss, my girlfriend and my wife are all individuals and we are all together in a world in which we are separate and we have free will and choice to do something. Because of course this place I now find myself in must have meaning. It's all got to have a meaning! This feeling of disquiet, this feeling of loss must mean something. It means that I get married and have a lovely job and three kids and it is all wonderful. Or I become a Christian and find the Kingdom of Heaven. It's all got to have meaning because it is a story with a beginning and end , apparently.

It is not only a story, it is even more than a story.

Apparently, yes. No-one is doing it, at any level, nobody is doing it. It is just intelligent energy. There is only energy appearing as a story.

But it's also spontaneous, this self-consciousness?

Yes, there is nothing out there directing it, there is nothing. There just is absolutely only energy appearing as this. There is no will, there is no greater will. There is no choice, there is no choice of any kind. So self-consciousness is another word for being , Yes, for being separate.

Apparently moving.

No! Of course, in being there is nothing wrong with anything. How could there be in unicity?

I think there's nothing wrong with self-consciousness ,

Well flowers aren't self-conscious. I haven't come across a self-conscious flower. But what arises in that self-conscious story is the idea that there is something right and wrong. Because the moment that we become separate we think it is wrong, and we are wrong. The moment we become separate apparent dualism arises. Is there somewhere else called paradise or wholeness? Why am I not in wholeness? There is something wrong and if there is something wrong then there must be something right. So I have got to find something right to make the wrong right. So I am going to become a Buddhist or whatever you like. The minute that is there then all the drama of good and evil breaks loose. You have got cause and effect, right and wrong, karma and reincarnation, time, space, separation, path - all those things that reinforce the really important idea that I am an individual and there is somewhere that is better than this. If you look at all religions they are about somewhere that is better than this. They are all totally denying that this is it.

Because the flower flowers and human beings ,

No, the mind can't see it because the mind is simply being mind-ing and the function of the mind<span class=t3> is to divide and move forward or backwards. It only moves, so it can't comprehend stillness.

no2, the mind just can't see it anyway.

It's the story of the man in the desert finding truth and then God saying to the Devil, Man has found the truth now, what are you going to do about that? And the Devil says, I am going to help him organise it. So there is a seeing of this, the mind comes in and tries to turn it into something it can try to deal with.

But there is a definite difference between the seeing of what is and then the mind coming back and trying to explain it.

It is an attempt to remember that which is boundless and unknowable. The words can never express this. The mind can only conceptualise this.

And then there is a sort of memory somewhere of what was seen. Is that mind?

It can't possible know stillness because it is stillness moving.

Well it's like it comes in ,

In a sense the moment you start thinking about it being close then you are back into thinking it is another something, another object. It's this. It's aliveness. And in a way that is the nearest you can get to it. There is nothing but aliveness which is beingness. It is so directly this, it is not recognisable by anything else!

Exactly, yes , yeah, It's just so close, I mean it's just here.

Well it can be. The mind can tell you about all there is. And there are people that will just sit there and say to you, All there is is being. There is no-one. All there is, is what's arising. So it can be conceptualised but actually this is totally felt. It is actually indescribably lived-in. You can't describe it. It is cogently, vibrantly alive.

And when this is apparent, or there is this recognition of all there is, that's not the mind telling me ,

But in the end it is realised that the mind is just beingness, mind-ing. It is totally at home - it's just another thing. It's really the seventh sense. There are the five senses, the sixth sense of feelings - and the seventh sense is thinking. So thinking is the seventh sense. It is not the enemy.

Alive, yes, aliveness. Because I am quite concerned that the mind always comes back.

And then it takes its place. It has no power any more, it is just seen as another thing that is happening, apparently. It is not the enemy of being.

Yes, it's OK.

The hypnotic dream that everything is happening to me is very powerful and it is the basic belief of most people. That's why this message is a total revolution because it topples everything. Everything that we believe in collapses and there is nothing left.

It is so second nature to personalise everything. It seems to be. It's very hypnotic. Yes, it's like a hypnotism , amazing.

Because it is about self-survival. We have to survive so we go on playing the game of being individuals calculating everything. We don't see everything, we see what we think of as something else and what we could do about it and whether it is desirable or whether it's a threat. We don't see anything except through a veil of self-survival.

But there is a powerful pull to draw you back in.

To make ourselves feel better about us - to maintain or reinforce a sense of personal worth.

Or even the identity of opinions, it is so intoxicating to have an opinion and to express it in a discussion or make a point.

It is beingness playing out the apparent story

Incredible.

No, no, no. How can there be re-unification when there is nothing dis-united?

You say that when we die that we will be reunited with ,

Whilst we only dream being a part of the unity, this is separation. When the dream is awoken from, there is only unity. There is nothing that feels, knows or is aware.

But we don't feel this unity?

There is no then as there is no now or before now. All there is is nothing appearing to happen within something else which is appearing as time.

So what happens then?

Who is going to die? There is no-one who is born or who dies. There is no difference between this and your point of death but you think there is a difference. You think you are sitting there. You think you are what has happened and what will happen , this is the nature of the hypnotic dream of separation.

There is no difference? There is no difference between now and at my point of death?

Well this absolute nothing is nothing and everything. This absolute nothing is emptiness and fullness.

Yes, sure. So this absolute nothing is an energy which we could call love?

You could say the nature of being nothing and everything is stillness, silence, the uncaused, unrelated, impersonal unconditional love, but that's just words trying to describe the indescribable.

Is this love?

Awareness, knowing, seeing, hearing is nothing arising as those apparent phenomena within the wholeness.

Um, the nothing that we were - well the nothing that is - appears to have awareness now.

You see, you are still applying time to the eternal isness. Awareness, like a consciousness of time or being separate is simply a personal experience. It is simply what is apparently happening in manifestation , in the story.

And would that awareness that is a part of nothing still be there at death?

It's not expressing itself - we are back to a deep mystery. There is only nothing and awareness is nothing arising as awareness.

Well like me, the energy that is expressing itself,

The difficulty for the seeker is that they think they have to do something about their state or be in another state that frees them from the state they think they're in.

It just happened?

Oh, am I?

But you're a left brain torturer aren't you?

Oh right, I'm a left brain torturer, So in Amsterdam I'm the Terminator. And here I'm the left brain torturer,

Of course you are.

No, there's just being. Awareness happens, or doesn't happen, in being.

You know you said there's just awareness?

Well my sense of awareness is that it's a transient state, or it's a place you can be in and out of. It's still in the story.

There's just being. And you were talking about awareness as a sense.

No.

Because I was just thinking that - when you were standing there - I was aware of your left side. I'm also aware that my shoulder's a bit tense but nobody else in the room is aware of it.