Advaita Post 14-06 - So what you can do...

Volume 14 No. 6 (March 24, 2013)

An Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma Gouda, November 15, 2000

The original light

It's good to reflect further on the statement: "You are That." What is That? It has to do with that which is totally ungraspable, which precedes all forms, which is beyond all forms. You can approach with specific meditations. You can, for example, take a few steps back, expanding your attention behind you. Or: when you look, mostly you look at things and then it's closed off. But you can also see through and beyond things and in this way you contemplate infinity. You can have a sense of what lies beyond all these forms and is nevertheless their basis. When you just withdraw far enough and enter into this source of yourself, you encounter a great light which creates the possibility for anything at all to appear. If something is to appear only light is needed. There must to be a luminous space in which something can appear. Externally you get the absolute on the world-side, the object side. Internally at a certain point you get that absolute on the 'I'-side, the subject-side. You can imagine it as the sphere of the universe. Whenever you go far enough you come to the edge of the universe. Whenever you withdraw far enough you also come to the edge. In both directions you become aware of the space in which the realm of the universe exists, that which supports the universe. There's nothing to say about it: only the things that fall within the universe, that exist for us, these things we can speak of. Within, there is a certain space, a certain time. There are things, there are words, but when you come to the edge all that is going to shift. You get a sense of the space which lies beyond it. So about that there's nothing to be said. The last thing you can still say is that it's a great bright light, that it's the space in which everything appears. It's an incredibly bright light, even brighter than lightning. You can focus on that, to the extent it still retains a particular quality. When you focus on it then it increasingly becomes your own sphere. So that means that all the old forms of your own identity disappear. The incredibly great on the world side, that which makes the world possible, that ultimate, you also discover within you when you return to the source of yourself. In both directions you come to this border region with the absolute and that is one unity. That is you. You are that.

Therefore, what's important is the opening of the attention. There is an intuitive sense of this ultimate openness. When you remain within it, then this openness works through. When you close it back up you're completely back within your own little world, both on the world side as well as the self-side, on the side of the 'I'-person in the world. So what you can do is exercise this attitude of openness. And then just let everything happen. You should just see what happens then! When there is no resistance, no more cramping, then the process goes very fast. Then you're no longer fixed onto all those forms of yourself, they dissolve. You see how limited it all is and you experience that Great. It has always, already been there but you have completely gone along with that cramping impulse towards a particular center, and through that, have closed yourself off from that Great. So continually see where you have limited yourself. Let everything remain open. When you have a sense of that highest as a very bright light, then let that bright light completely enter you. Let yourself and that light completely coincide. Just take a look at what happens when you actually coincide with that great light. The forms that still remain are not resistant to that bright light, this space. They dissolve. What's left over? You are that: that original light. Every time there is a tendency to fix yourself somewhere: an immediate impulse should recur of: no, the light.

*****


Er is geen tweeheid

als je ontspannen bent
in zelf-bewustzijn
is dat duidelijk.


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