Advaita Post 14 #8 - The whole world is freed when you are freed

Volume 14 No. 8 (April 20, 2013)

Text satsang

From an Advaita talk with Douwe Tiemersma, Schiermonnikoog June 20, 2011

The whole world is freed when you are freed

In his last years Nisargadatta said many things that he himself had heard from his teacher. For example, “you'll need to worship that highest, universal ‘I am’ as the highest God for a long time." That's total bhakti, total devotion. When that is not the most important thing for you, there will be all kinds of distractions and the process stops. When it really concerns realization, it will need to be so total that all the energies with which you are identified go along with this development, in this liberation.

It’s striking that all great teachers were also great tantra teachers. So it’s right that understanding is emphasized, but it’s also an energetic process because you are totally involved in those energies. Up to and including the level of 'I am' it always concerns these two things: energy and consciousness. Then it proceeds in a natural way in the direction of ever increasing expansion, ever increasing clarity, in the direction of that pure universal consciousness and bliss being. So in spiritual development you have a development of these two aspects: awareness and energy. And it couldn’t be otherwise because when they are separated you get problems. For example: “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”, “I see it, but ...” and so on. Liberation means a total liberation, in the aspect of consciousness and in the aspect of energy. Everything is liberated: your body is freed, your world is freed, other people are freed. They are freed from your egocentricity. The whole world is freed when you are freed.

See how it works. For example, when it’s ‘bad’ weather you lay a claim onto the weather to have been different. If someone’s nice to you, you are nice back and if someone is unfriendly, you are unfriendly, too. You consistently construct a world from yourself. Just take a look at how people imprison one another in their relationships. Liberation of yourself also means liberation of the other. Once you have gone through it you realize that what the world looks like depends on you. Then immediately you are much freer in relation to circumstances, in relation to conditions.

In the silence everything dissolves. Can the silence be so still that everything dissolves? When you focus on it, then you notice that the clarity of your consciousness increases. It requires an immense clarity and dedication. Only then do you notice that something is really going to happen. This absolute silence, can it simply be? When it really proceeds, it means there is a focusing. It’s a kind of meditation. A pair of Buddhist monks once visited a teacher and his followers. These followers weren’t meditating. The visitors asked why, because the heart of Buddhist practice is meditation. The teacher said: "We don’t want to be distracted." So that is the continuous meditation. It is a totally focused meditation and everything disappears into that movement. It’s a situation in which the energy develops in the direction of an incredibly great clarity and impregnability. Crystal glass is hard. When you tap on it, you have this clarity of sound. When you look through it, you see that it’s incredibly clear. Diamond is even clearer, even harder. When you just continue in this direction, then you experience that your own energetic sphere receives that quality. In hatha yoga this is set as a goal. That’s also the case in the Buddhist Tantra. Of course it’s not a goal. But certainly it is an important experience in spiritual development. It concerns the quality of your own energy - so it's still a sort of physicality - in which the spiritual development can continue. And your consciousness will need to receive this quality, with this energy, in order to continue. When there is a diminishment in clarity somewhere, when there is some sluggishness, some drowsiness, then this development stops. This consciousness energy, which you are, will need to have this quality in order to pierce through that which at first held the development back. This diamond quality, this lightning quality. It’s frequently represented as lightning needing to strike. But you are that. And you’ll have to experience that yourself. Otherwise it remains a series of object processes. It’s about you. And you can recognize that.