I HOPE YOU DIE SOON
Word on Non-Duality
by
Richard Sylvester
Introduction
The most common misconception about liberation is
that it is something an individual can gain. But liberation is a loss—the loss
of the sense that there ever was a separate individual who could choose to do
something to bring about liberation.
When it is seen that there is no separation, the
sense of vulnerability and fear that attaches to the individual falls away and
what is left is the wonder of life just happening. Instead of meaning there is
a squirrel motionless on a grey tree trunk, legs splayed, head up, looking
straight at you. Instead of purpose there is the astonishing texture of cat’s
fur or the incredible way an ant crawls over a twig. The loss of hope is no
loss when it is replaced by the moorhens bobbing on the lake.
When the sensation that I am in control of my life
and must make it happen ends, then life is simply lived and relaxation takes
place. There is a sense of ease with whatever is the case and an end to
grasping for what might be.
ON
LIBERATION
Preliminaries
Liberation cannot be described in words. It cannot
be understood by the mind. It cannot be seen until it reveals itself. Then no
words or ideas are able to express it and no mind is able to grasp it.
Yet liberation is all there is. Right now.
Paradox.
The seeing of liberation has nothing to do with the
mind.Yet here liberation is, covered over by the mind. Covered over by the mind
which does not exist.
Paradox.
Liberation is the end of searching and the end of
meaning. Liberation reveals the meaning of life as life itself.There can be no
searching for that which is seen already to be the case.
Language by its nature describes duality—events,
experiences, things, thoughts, feelings. Phenomena. The stuff that happens.
There is no language to describe non-duality.The best we can do is to hint at
it.
So let us hint.
Awakening: Seeing there is No One
It begins with Saturday afternoons in Hampstead,
listening to discussions about non-duality held by Tony Parsons. I do not
understand a lot of what is said but something keeps drawing me there. And I
like the jokes and the conversation and the drinking afterwards so I go back
again and again.
Then at a central London station on a warm summer
evening the person, the sense of self, suddenly completely disappears.
Everything remains as it is—people, trains, platforms, other objects—yet
everything is seen for the first time without a person mediating or interpreting it. There are no flashing lights,
no fireworks, none of the whirligig phenomena of LSD or hallucinogenic
mushrooms. But this is the real ‘wow’, seeing an ordinary railway station for
the first time without any sense of self. Here is the ordinary seen as the
extraordinary, arising in oneness with no one experiencing it.
In that instant it is seen that there is no one.The
sense of there being a person has been a constant up to this point and given
meaning to this life. For so many years it has never been questioned. It has
been so thoroughly taken for granted as me, my centre and location, that it has
not even been noticed. Now it is seen as a complete redundancy. Suddenly it is
known that I never had a life because there never was an ‘I’. In a split second
of eternity it is known that without an ‘I’ everything is being seen for the first time
simply as it is. I do not live, I am lived. I do not act, but actions happen
through me, the divine puppet.
Every concern of this small but so important
apparent life falls away in an instant.
Within a second, the self returns saying “What the
hell was that?” But that split-second of no one brings about irrevocable
changes to the internal landscape. For seeing this can blow your mind.
The past becomes two-dimensional. Before this, the
past was a three dimensional landscape which I visited frequently. I rushed
about in it, jumping from place to place; every scene had energy and reality
to it. That energy appeared as feelings and thoughts, mostly about regret and
guilt, with themes of “What if…” and “If only…” endlessly playing. The past was
consequently tilled and re-tilled, different possibilities uselessly played out
as if obsessive revisiting could somehow change the geography, bring back a
lost lover or erase some offence given or received. Now, after that split second
of no one, although the person has come back, the past is like a flat painting.
All the scenes are still there—this is not Alzheimer’s—but they have no energy,
no reality, and there is little impulse to visit any of them anymore.
Occasionally one scene or another from the past flickers into life for a while but then
it dies away again. Regret and guilt loosen their grip.
Issues and problems still arise but they cannot
hang around for as long as they used to do. The rock face which gave toe holds
for them to clamber up and grab me by the throat is starting to crumble. The
internal landscape has become slippery. As Nisargadatta says, the world is full
of hoops, the hooks are all ours. Now the hooks are dissolving. However, during
the next year the self frantically tries to reassert itself, sometimes
apparently very successfully as issues manage to re-emerge, as boredom,
despair, emotional pain somehow still have to be experienced.
One thing that is immediately seen is the nature of
all the apparent spiritual experiences that arose during the years of searching
and following false paths and gurus. Suddenly they are seen for what they
really are, emotional and psychological experiences happening to an unreal
person and no more significant than putting on a shoe or having a cup of coffee.
Spiritual experiences are not difficult to evoke.
Meditate intensively, chant for long periods, take certain drugs, go without
food or sleep, put yourself in extreme situations.That will probably do it. I
had done all of these things and there had been many spiritual experiences. I
had chanted for hours and meditated to the beating of mighty Tibetan gongs. I
had seen the guru, sitting on a dais in impressive robes, dissolve into golden light
before my eyes. Personal identity had refined and dissolved in transcendental bliss. The
universe had breathed me as my awareness expanded to fill everything.
So what?
There had always been someone there, having the
spiritual experience. A person, no matter how refined, had always been present.These
events had all happened to ‘me’. None of them had anything more or less to do
with liberation than stroking a cat.
And anyway “You can’t stay in God’s world for very
long. There are no restaurants or toilets there.”
Liberation is not personal and has nothing to do
with any psychological, emotional or ‘spiritual’ experience, no matter how refined it may be.
A spiritual or psychological experience is just a personal experience. Once it
is seen that I am nothing, it is also seen that any experience arises only for
an
apparent person and falls away again in oneness with no
significance at all. There is no real person in
whom the experience arises and no possibility that it could have any meaning.
And liberation has nothing to do with
the absence or presence of problems or issues, which may or may not continue to
arise.
Liberation does not bring unending
bliss. For that, try heroin, prozac or a lobotomy.
What a relief. Liberation does not
require you to be any particular way.
Liberation does not require ‘you’ to
be at all. A person is not writing these words. Oneness is writing these
words. And oneness is reading them.
Within the story, the period of awakening lasts for
one year. During this time, the person reasserts itself, sometimes strongly,
drops away again and returns. For a while there is a desert where personal
pain is as intense as before but all the old comforts and mechanisms for
dealing with it have lost their meaning. A particular comfort had been the
belief that pain was meaningful, necessary to my spiritual evolution. “There’s
no gain without pain.” Now that thought simply appears ridiculous. I am beginning
to understand that this awakening is ruthless, stripping away every belief that
I have ever held and ever clung to. Now there are no life rafts left, not even
a piece of driftwood.
It is sometimes said that this ruins your
life.Well, it ruins what you thought was your life. And there is a saying I
remember at this point. “Why do you want liberation? How do you know you’d like
it?”
My God.Things have got worse, not better. For
previously there was hope.
Liberation: Seeing ‘I’ am Everything
Within the story, a year after awakening, I am
standing in a shop in an ordinary country town. Suddenly but with great
gentleness the ordinary is displaced by the extraordinary. The person again
disappears completely and now it is seen clearly that awareness is everywhere
and everything. The localised sense of self is revealed to be just an
appearance. There is no location, no here or there. There is only oneness
appearing as everything and this is what ‘I’ really am. ‘I’ am the shop, the
people, the counter, the walls and the space in which everything appears. When
the self disappears, and awareness is seen as everything, then this is seen
for what it is, a wonderful hologram sustained by love.
At a certain time as a child, awareness appears to
coagulate into a discrete space, becoming solid and separate from everything
else. This is what creates the sense of ‘me’ with its hopes and fears and loves
and burdensome responsibilities.The thoughts and feelings and sensory
phenomena, which really simply arise in awareness, are now owned by someone,
are now felt to belong to ‘me’. And so the drama of being a person starts.
There is no locality to awareness other than
‘everywhere’. There is only liberation. But in liberation the sense that ‘I’
am not liberated can and does arise. It manifests as the sense of separation,
of being located over here rather than over there, separate from all other
people and things. It brings fear, longing and hope, and it is highly
addictive. It cannot see through itself and it may simply continue for seventy
or eighty years until it ends at death. Or it may end sooner, anywhere, at any
time.
Liberation is freedom from the burden of being a
person who apparently has to make choices and decisions; choices and decisions
which have consequences. What a wonderful relief it is to see that there is no
choice, no person, no separation. Nothing you have ever done has ever led to
anything because you have never done anything. No one has ever done anything
although it appears that things have been done.
Isn’t it wonderful that you have never made a
choice in your life? There is nothing to regret,nothing to feel guilty about.
Nothing could ever have been any different, nothing could ever have been any
other way. Isn’t that a relief? Nothing matters. There is nowhere to go. There
is nothing that has to be done. There is no meaning and no morality. There is
no help and no hope. You can let it all go, you can release all the tension.
You can begin to enjoy the wonder of hopelessness and the gift of meaninglessness.
You can begin to enjoy your complete helplessness.
In liberation it is seen that nothing has any
meaning, it is simply what it is. The story does not stop. The story continues
but now it is seen that it is just a story. All the passions of your apparent
life are just
stuff happening. The conflicts, the
loves, the struggles for control and power, the victories and defeats are
simply phenomena arising in oneness and falling away again with no meaning at
all.
Nothing has any more significance than anything else or could
ever be greater or lesser. The Trojan war and a glass of beer are equal.
Except, of course, to the mind.
You cannot earn liberation. I have not earned
liberation. No one will ever earn liberation. You cannot become good enough or
work hard enough or be sincere enough to deserve it. Liberation has not
happened to me and it will not happen to you. Yet there is liberation. There is
only ever liberation. Perfection is already here. What you are is already
divine.
Searching will not get you anywhere, but there is
nothing wrong with searching. In this apparent process it may be heard that
searching is meaningless but searching cannot be given up until it stops. Then
it is over and it is seen that what you were searching for has always been with
you, in fact it has always been what you are. But to suggest that you give up
searching in order to find is pointless. It does not matter whether you get drunk, meditate,
read the paper, sit with the guru or go to the races. None of these will make
liberation any more or any less likely. Searching or not searching, meditating
or not meditating, misses the point. For there is no one who can choose to do
any of these things. If meditation happens, it happens and it will go on
happening until it does not. It is the same for getting drunk.You may as well
give up the belief that you can choose anything.
Except that you cannot do that either.
Until it happens.
Liberation is what is left when the self is gone.
But the self is simply liberation arising as the self. Liberation is what is
happening while you search
for liberation. Inside, you already know this.
Being Awake and
Being Asleep are the Same
—unless You are Asleep
—unless You are Asleep
When liberation is seen, it is known that being
awake in liberation is no different from being asleep. They are both seen
simply as oneness, manifesting as sleep or awakeness. In liberation all the
mystification of enlightenment is stripped away and its absolute ordinariness
is revealed. Mountains are seen simply as mountains.
But to the seeker who is still asleep, and in their
sleep is searching restlessly for an end to the sense of separation, there
appears to be a chasm between that state and liberation. Liberation seems like
a marvellous prize to be attained, promising blissful feelings, freedom from
pain and suffering, an end to all problems, perhaps magical powers and of
course the jealous admiration of your friends. This is why the search for
liberation can be so desperate and the question “Will I get it?” so powerful.
All that prevents the seeing of liberation is the
thought “I am not liberated”. So some say that what you must do to see
liberation is to drop this thought. But there is no one who can choose to do
this. The thought that this is not liberation, which is the same as the thought
“I am separate” or “I am searching”, continues until it drops away. The
apparent self can do nothing to discover that it is itself an illusion—an
appearance cannot discover reality.
Liberation is seen either while the body-mind is
still functioning or at the death of the body-mind and it does not matter
which, except in the story. “At death there is only liberation. It is just more
chic to see liberation when you are alive.”
In liberation it is seen that there never was anything
to seek. What you seek has always been with you, what you are has always been
what you are. When this is seen all searching ends.
I Hope You Die Soon
Once upon a time I was a busy seeker, meditating
sincerely, being careful with my karma, receiving shaktipat, having my chakras
opened and cleansed by blessed gurus, thinking I was going somewhere.
Then catastrophe struck. I met Tony Parsons. And
that was the end of what I thought had been my life. Tony, who hugged me at the
end of one of his meetings and said to me “I hope you die soon.” Tony, to whom
I feel the most profound gratitude, even though there is no one.
There is no more appropriate way to end this. Let
me simply pass on the blessing I was given and say to you “I hope you die
soon.”
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