Advaita Post Volume 14 No 19

October 27, 2013

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Text Satsang

An Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Gouda, January 25, 2006

The sword of clear insight

Yes, it is a strange combination: groundless relaxation and yet within it an exceptional sharpness. An endless relaxation on the razor's edge. Relaxation is often associated with a little fading off. Of course it's nice, you rest from it, just like a good night's sleep, but when the relaxation period is over, just like when sleep is over, life goes on in the same way as before. If anything is going to really change then there will need to be something else in that relaxation: a sharp clarity, a presence of mind. In this endlessly deep relaxation there is no 'I do' anymore. This presence of mind is free of such an 'I'-center. From there anything can happen, spontaneously, just like that. Or nothing can happen. Do you see that this is an original sphere which precedes all activity and inactivity? That is your own original nature and so you can stay there in a conscious way. In this source-ness nothing happens, but everything emerges from it. What does emerge from it emerges spontaneously, without an 'I' forming itself who says 'I do this'. The things that happen happen by themselves.

It's difficult to let that sharp clarity remain present while relaxation continues. But it is possible. You can begin to experience it for yourself. All those phenomena which arise from the origin are not separate from you. In that sense, you remain the self of all. Despite the forms, there is non-duality, apparently there is no duality. Is that clear for everyone? If you've lost it, then look again at that relaxation and clarity. In that clarity you affirm: in this relaxed sphere there is absolutely no duality. Get to know it better and better. You can try out how it works for yourself. When you are at rest in yourself you affirm both the relaxation and the clarity. Just that can deepen it, this relaxed clarity radicalizes itself. When there is 100 % relaxation while there is also 100 % clarity: that is yourself. Then you can also affirm that there's absolutely no duality any longer, there are no real oppositions anymore. Is there an opposition between head and heart? No. Between 'I' and the other? No. Between inner and outer? No. Between man and God? No. Between being and not-being? No.

Are there tools for remaining alert? Milarepa put toothpicks under his fingernails ....

Yes, it's possible to do it like that. But recognize this sharp clarity, that incredibly clear sphere, like a cold, frosty night without clouds. The stars twinkle and a slight sound is remarkably clear. And that still a hundred times stronger. Do you see that most people, and probably to some extent yourself, move about in a dreamlike sleep, while saying they're awake? You only have to see how this sphere looks when you're drawn first this way and then that. Do you see that those circles infinitely recur? Until the sword of clear insight comes and cuts the whole thing wide open. Then you see how that whole mechanism which traps you again and again in your own constructions works. If that wakefulness isn't there, then you can do everything, you can surrender to all kinds of spiritual practices - but you see, it doesn't matter because the attachments and the dream continues. So take a strict look at yourself, to what's not yet totally clear, see what's blocking it, what's going wrong there. Everyone has that possibility. Why? Why do you have the possibility of becoming more aware of that? Doesn't everyone have this possibility of increasing their own awareness, of taking another look at their own situation? Why is that?

Because you are that.

Yes, you are already that. This was an easy riddle.

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