Advaita Post #12-17 - The more specific your being-experience of pure self-being is...

Volume 12 No 17 (October 31)

--- The more specific your being-experience of pure self-being is, the faster the process of realization ---

Indefinable light: then a scene and someone who looks at it

Everything comes so close to me;

it overwhelms.

So I am the self of everything.

Transition from duality to non-duality with children

From an email:

...tonight Arthur complains that I've already been with Annabelle first a couple of times, and so not with him, and also that I've been with him less than her already a few times today. The jealousy is contagious, because Annabelle is almost rolling on the floor with venom. Then I begin to respond; I tell them that I'm so proud of them, that they are so kind to each other, stick up for each other, so quick to forgive, and I pull all kinds of examples up from the day; Annabelle gave her lollipop to Arthur so that he could stir it in his warm milk and experience the pure pleasure of a lollipop that tastes like cream, Arthur helped Annabelle to craft a little 3D heart ... Suddenly Annabelle throws herself over me, and embraces Arthur; "It's even better to cuddle with Mom and Arthur at the same time, then I have warmth on both sides." Arthur smiles and joins in. It becomes a group hug. ...

Arthur says: "Yes, cuddling together is great. Yes, actually we are hugging the bed and the house and the earth. Yes, and even the other houses and the people in them."

Annabelle: "Yes, so we hug the ground all the way to the beach and the sea. And so we hug to other end of the world, where people are living with Chinese names. And we hug all the animals, and the fish, even the unknown creatures deep in the sea, like the orange frog with pimples. ...

Just before Arthur fell asleep, he added, that via the world, the sky, the universe, the stars, the planets and their inhabitants we cuddle.

Douwe:

... So the duality falls away and a great non-duality arises by itself. Children are (still) very sensitive to it. You see how important it is in how parents react to the behavior of their children. Through what they say and do they can encourage their children to become more aware of the greater space and the non-duality in it.

Children will not easily forget that experience of unity. Therefore it's important to identify it and be aware of it in relation to their jealousy.

Call

If there are others who have written down their experience of non-duality in a passage or a description, these could be inspiring for an AP or could be published on the website - secretariaat@advaitacentrum.nl.

Text Satsang

The concreteness of the being-experience "You are That" - Part 2, The realization

From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma in Gouda, September 21, 2011

A realization of the great non-duality is still nothing more than insight...

Yes, first there is a vague sense on the insight level: "I recognize that more or less". That insight can be intensified. The realization is the actualization: the self-being internally confirms that the non-dual openness is its own reality. Then all separations and restrictions are gone.

The less the mind interferes with it, the better.

Of course, because the mind has nothing to do with it. Insight and realization are not positioned on the level of thought. It is on a much more essential level. There is clarity of mind still present, so that a recognition and confirmation is possible. You aren't positioned any longer on the level of mind and not even on the level of insight, thus no longer on the level of the person.

Even if you talk about realization, I experience it as a concept.

Then you should stop using that word. I usually indicate that awakening with the term 'being-experience'. It is something of yourself and in that sphere there is a clear aware experience of: yes, I am that and that's how it is. It's about the actualization of what you have already known on the mental and insight levels. That actualization is a question of being.

Thinking is not contradictory to it, but does come up short on all sides.

Yes, that's clear. You confirm that the realization can't take place on the level of thinking. It can be a point of departure, but then that will really have to happen. Once again: just start from your own situation with all its separations, but focus on your sense of the essential. Then something opens and that something, far beyond the thinkable and expressible, will manifest itself. Leave it open, leave it open, and as long as it remains open its affect will be on your own sphere of being.

That openness itself is also a concept.

Yes, if you remain on the mental level. But in the beyond conceptual being-experience you know exactly what it means: I just leave the openness open. It is something which, up to a certain point, you can do with your own self-being. The alternative to leaving it open occurs all too easily: that you have attention for something limited which then limits your awareness. Then that is a distraction. Let the unfathomable openness stay open. You will notice that it is acting.

At first you are there as I-person. Then there is a center of I-being, self-being, especially a bodily center from which you view everything, from which you act, to which you relate everything, even in your thought, while you are alive. Gradually you will recognize the meaning of: "You are That". Here that 'you' doesn't refer to the forms of body and mind. It applies to yourself. Thus the infinite depth of yourself, also on the subject side, becomes even more clear. It's the same depth as the "That" of "You are That". It's applicable here once again: the more specific your being-experience of self-being is, the faster the process of realization. So you will have to recognize your self-being in a very specific and practical way.