Advaita Post #12- 20 --- When you are just a little aware of how you are with other people

 
Volume 12 No. 20 (December 13, 2011)

--- When you are just a little aware of how you are with other people, you immediately recognize the infinitely open nondual dimension. ---

 
What's left over when your clouds completely dissolve?

* * * * *

So, be aware in your un-incarnated self.

For this, go first to your incarnated self
as bodily feeling,
the bodily sense feeling.

Perceive it in your greater consciousness-space
and see that it is a feeling energy,
your energetic body.

Dedicate yourself to this body
in relaxation and expansion.

Then you easily recognize your cosmic body,
universal I am-consciousness-bliss being.

Remain alert within it,
even as the last qualities dissolve.
Then there is the realization of the origin.

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Preface

Considering the situation at the beginning of this year, it's a miracle that the 20th issue of the Advaita Post is ready to send out. It rounds off the 12th year. Every time it takes some effort to prepare a new issue, but given the number of subscribers and their response it's worth it.

In 2012, the Advaita Post will continue to appear, but at least in the beginning Douwe will not be involved in the composition or final version. Just before Christmas there will be an operation, after which he will remain in the hospital for two weeks. Then there will be a lengthy recovery period at home. If all goes well the retreat weeks on Schiermonnikoog in June and August will take place. We hope that other activities can begin again in September.

Everyone is responsible for their own situation. Readers of the Advaita Post have at least a notion of how this can best develop. So everyone can continue! Life offers sufficient lessons from which to learn. The one who is awake, learns the lessons. They arise through a transition (transcendence) from duality to non-duality.

A warm greeting to all,

Douwe

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Text Satsang

From a talk with Douwe Tiemersma in Groningen, October 9, 2011

The depth of self-being in the other

So it's always about an increase in awareness of yourself and of the whole situation. Increased awareness takes place regularly in everyday life, but then it almost always remains limited and vague. Due to that the main life quickly gets the upper hand and you are taken up once again with events in a fairly blind way. You find the high and deep points in the clarity and then you say: that is my life. So it's extremely important to become aware of your everyday situation in a lucid way.

Frequently you find it's important to take a little distance from your own situation and then to become aware of this situation anew within a larger context. Then you come to consider in a deeper way how things are with the world and with yourself in this world. With the increase in awareness you see that there is a certain depth in the world and also in yourself. This depth is not strange, as connects to what you have already been experiencing for a long time. Apparently it will need to become more aware, if the truth which reveals itself there is to persist, if you want to avoid a relapse into the more limited, more blind mode of existence.

When asked what reality is, people usually refer to the material world with the physical body. That is the firm reality. "We are our brain." But it's very important to be aware of how reality looks to you right now. And then right away you have to confirm that in ordinary everyday life you never completely live in a firm material reality. You don't do that. What does this reality look like? Then you have to capture this reality in the normal everyday life, here and now.  For example, in which reality are you when you or someone else speaks, and when you are listening to their words? Then that is a world of meanings in which you are also involved. You are looking into this world and you discover things that others have already seen. That world is not a firm material reality. When you are speaking with someone, it isn't just a relationship between two physical bodies. When you are speaking with Dr. Schwaab - as I did in a forum recently - you have a conversation with him in a world of meanings and yet he says: the brain sees, the brain judges, the brain likes or dislikes. What sort of nonsense is that? I only responded: under the skull it's very dark; there's nothing to see. Brains don't see. Of course not. But it's certainly the opinion of many people: the firm reality is the world of material things. But when you talk with someone, or see someone, do you see only the physical? You'll have to position yourself in such an artificial way to do that. A doctor who does physical examinations has learned to do that and has to take on an intentional attitude to perform a purely somatic examination. But you have to see how artificial that is. After the transition from the world in which people meet and talk with one another, you have another situation with an observational point of view, material objects and a somatic examination. Then you have a very different construction of reality.

What does the situation look like during a conversation? You speak with someone else. You talk about the weather, the holidays. Usually it is an unproblematic conversation. I went to Paris. Oh yes, says the other, I've been there too. Have you seen this and that? Yes, of course. Where are you between these two places? You're not merely situated in a material world in just one location, you are in any case also in Paris. And because you've been there and the other has been there too, there is an immediate understanding, a mutual understanding.

When you say something to someone who's important to you, where are you focused? On the other as a person. What do you mean by 'person'? In any case, it's not about the physical system of bones and muscles, and so on. It's also not about mental things such as assessing their intelligence and other things that play a role on the mental level and where a psychologist might have something to say about it. You focus on something in the other that goes deeper. It's good to experience that very concretely. You see someone and you speak to them. Where are you focused? That focus goes beyond the physical, beyond anything that has to do with life, it goes even further than anything that has to do with the psyche. And you have that already in a very superficial conversation! But you're usually unaware of it.

What that other is in his or her authenticity, you cannot formulate. You can certainly begin to formulate: he is such and such a person; do you know him? Yes, the one with the beard, and so on, and then you describe him physically. But the other cannot be enclosed by a physical description, cannot be contained by his biographical story, or his psychological report. When you're focused on another, that other has a depth which precedes anything you can define. Everyone thinks it's great, when you have a direct contact with that. Then you think it's a really good contact. The content of the talk then is much less important than that primary, deep contact. When that contact occurs, then you experience something of the infinite dimension in the other. Right away, when you remain just a little aware, it continues on in the increased awareness of the infinite dimension of your own self-being, and of the unity of the infinite being-awareness of both. So it's very simple: when you are just a little aware of how you are with other people, you immediately recognize the infinitely open nondual dimension. Apparently it's always there, even when you're not aware of it.

Nobody is satisfied with a closed definition of themselves. If you put the other into such a confining definition, it's immoral because then you reduce the other to a closed object that you can grab and use. It is rejected everywhere in all ethical systems and in everyday life.

Every man is also a subject with a depth of self-being that is ultimately inexpressible. Freedom is there, too. To the extent that you're stuck in physical or psychological conditions, there's a lot that can be said about you. Then you are a closed system in which the known rules and laws apply. But you're not a closed system, because there's always a depth that is the foundation for an infinite number of possibilities. That depth cannot be contained within a closed description.

Legally this is honored. The fundamental principle of justice is that people are free in the origin of their actions. If you let go of that, then you can eliminate the entire legal system. That's not done, why? Because we humans certainly are held responsible for our actions. How can you do that when you say: you are your brain and your brain always decides everything you will do long before you are aware of it. You can see that in practice that infinitely free depth of self from which everything arises is always taken into account.

That increase of awareness is very important and can occur in a very concrete way. You literally see the infinite depth in people. Then you also certainly see that from out of this infinite depth there is a conditioning, as in the physical person. Right away there is the depth of expression and of the whole mental world. But principally there is the depth dimension which precedes every conditioning. This can't be grasped. It is concretely present in every situation, in others, in yourself. Let that depth remain open so that the groundless non-duality can manifest itself in stability.

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Update from Pia, December 22, 2011

Message about Douwe

Douwe was operated on on Monday the 19th of December and the surgery went well. A 4 cm  tumor was removed. Further test results are yet to come, but the initial prognosis is good according to the physician. He was out of intensive care rather quickly and is expected to stay approximately 12 days in the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. It was a very serious operation that normally requires a month long recovery. It's obvious that he will not be reading and answering emails for quite awhile.

 Pia

 Cards and flowers for Douwe

Please don't send Douwe flowers, there are so many people who want to do that. Of course it is appreciated by him very much, but practically speaking, the last time the quantity was almost unmanageable. For people who want to send flowers, a small amount of money can be deposited in the foundation bank account, IBAN: NL57 0116 9790 89, BIC: RABONL2U, Stichting Openheid, Gouda,  the Netherlands, specifying "flowers for Douwe". The the board will buy a beautiful flower arrangement from all the donors when he returns home. Cards are always welcome: Count Florisweg 101, 2805 AH Gouda, the Netherlands.