Advaita Post 09-01

Annual 9 nr. 1 ( 9 January 2008 )

--- Nobody can fool me anymore: I am as big as the cosmos, there is no dualitiet ---



During the Open House of Advaita Center, Gouda May 12, 2006

What is Advaita?

We start at the beginning, which is inevitable for everyone, even for those people who consider themselves to be well advanced, because it is always about the beginning. That start is non-duality, the absence of twoness. The Sanskrit word is advaita. Already in the old Indian Upanishads (8th century BC) advaita was mentioned - 'a' is absence, from ‘dvaita’ from which comes our words dual (two) and divide (separation). In the Upanishads non-duality is seen as the beginning of everything. From it arose the splits and divisions that led to the multiform cosmos and the separation between self and the other. However, the non-dual is the foundation of everything.

It can be recognized. You can have a sense that you are so wide that other people and all that is other come together, that there is a universal non-duality as the essence of yourself and the universe. In the Upanishads it is expressed that Atman (the individual self) is identical with Brahman (the foundation of the world).

The body is a whole

In order to recognize it more clearly, we start with a simple examination of your own body.

If you look at your body, there is usually a duality. Look at your hand. There is then a separation between yourself and the hand. The hand is an object, a thing that I see. ‘I see my hand’. In this statement 'I' is the subject and ‘my hand’ the direct object. With this attitude I can, for example, take a splinter from my hand. There is a separation between myself and the hand and between the various parts of the hand.

But now go within and experience your hand. Find out how your hand is from the inside. Search for separations ... Are there separations?

Someone: Yes and no.

Where is the separation?

With the skin.

Okay, but first inside the skin, is there a separation? Go look inside the skin, internally, in your own sphere.

I experience there different places.

Yes, you can distinguish that. But is there a real separation? A gap?

Yes, I meant that actually, when I said ‘ yes and no’. I experience individuality in different placesl; they also flow into one another.

Is there a real gap?

No, from head to foot, I experience the body as a whole.

What sort of a whole is that? Why are you then whole? Because there, you are yourself. That is your life, so you are yourself. So, in that life, in your physical self, there is no separation. This is an extremely important discovery. If in your life- sphere there is no separation, because it is a unit, although you can distinguish something in it, then there is no real separation between one part and another part. Organically seen: in an organism, all parts share with one another. If one part is sick, the whole body suffers. Internally, you can determine that, in your own instinctive body. It is important to recognize: life is an atmosphere of self-being and within it there are no separations.

The self sphere is infinite

Does your life-sphere stop at the skin? Are you trapped inside the epidermis? From the inside, do you experience your skin as a border? Is there a limit? Go and look. Begin once again with the inner experience of your body and let your attention go to the right. You have learned: somewhere there is a skin, it holds my body in and there the outside world begins. As you examine your inner body self, you observe that the image of your body with its skin is a fictional representation in your thinking.

That thinking you can now agree to release, you can rely on your own experience, not on what you know. Then go with your attention again to the right into the atmosphere of your own self as the sensible body. Then go even further to the right. How far can you go to the right without that atmosphere of the bodily self falling away? Stay practical and experience sensibly: the atmosphere of your instinctive self. Make no cognitive picture of your body, but go with your instinctive sense to know more. How far can you go? Where is a border? Then go to the left in the same way ... How far can you go? Then go with your attention forwards and backwards, up and down ... How is it now? Can you establish that your own body sphere is infinite, as big as the entire cosmos? Is there anybody who still experiences borders? Apparently not. I have not yet encountered anyone who still experiences them.

That self-sphere appears thus to be infinite space, as you from the inside very definitively and clearly go to determine how it is. Then, you do not use your cognitive knowledge, what you have learned, but you experience how it really is. Explore experientially, experimentally, your own atmosphere. You go to the right, left, forward, backward, down, up…

You confirm that there are no real separations in your body self-sphere. In the entire cosmos there is not a real separation to be found. It is a cosmos of being-self-being. You experience it very clearly, like you experience your physical feeling. In that atmosphere no border, no separation, no duality is to be found.

How about the things of the world?

In the universal being-self-being, all material things may come up, all sorts of things that you sensually experience. But how do they appear? They appear in that atmosphere of universal self-being. They appear in the atmosphere in which there are no separations. So the things that appear, are not different from yourself. They are yourself, in the same way as your hands and your feet belong to your self-sphere. As you experience that your physical sphere is infinite, cosmic, the things come within it. They occupy a particular place without causing a separation. There remains an air of unseparated self-being. It is the atmosphere of your own where everything is received. So, then there remains nothing totally ‘different’. The 'other' people who are, are not really ‘others’, because they are included in the atmosphere of your own self. Their self-being is also your self-being. See that all kinds of conflicts between people no longer arise. If the other is recognized in the atmosphere of self-being, an awful lot of problems automatically disappear.

The practical realization of the natural situation

Try very practically to determine what there is to determine. Then it will also be confirmed: there is no limit to the Self. That is that. From your own experience of being it is abundantly clear. Then there is no separation any more. There will also be no real conflict. It means an endless relaxation. In the return to the experience of your own sphere, all otherness disappears. That results in an infinite relaxation.

You experience it very concretely: all dualities originate from duality, as you set up your own distance. The dualities are secondary. The non-duality is the basis. It is the origin. Separation comes secondarily.

You see how practical it can be, you can precisely experience it: from out of a limited sense, you can expand to the universal, and that is the outflow of love. It is all lovingly included as yourself. You can confirm that it is not necessary to go back and create borders to distinguish between ‘I am this’ and ‘they are other’. As relaxation returns, it is the unity once again that is obvious. That unity is apparently a natural situation. You must quite artificially organize everything, this in this box, that in that box, in order to separate things. That costs effort; it is artificial. As the artificial falls away, there is relaxation and unity. That is the natural situation.

Because you have seen this very clearly, you say ‘no one can fool me any more: I am as big as the cosmos; there is no duality’.