The First Instant printed version is now available

Sages are made into heroes after they die. Who makes their way to them while they are a living force in the presence? Few!
Better to slumber and protect those precious beliefs, rather than to awaken into THIS vivid presence and lose all those morbid sufferings?

"How long will you sleep O sluggard; When will you arise out of your sleep?
So shall your poverty come, as 'one that traveleth' - and your want, as an armed man.
Yet a little sleep, a little folding of the hands to sleep" from the Bible

You think you have plenty of time to 'get it right'. Your slumber is in dreams. Your poverty is a dead past that weighs heavy in your mind. You sacrifice the freedom of an open mind with its direct cognition - for a bunch of useless beliefs and a selfish attitude.
Your appetite is a bottomless pit of relishing refuse. The armed man with his sickle will startle you with his arrival in your passive slumber - and your potentiality will be seemingly wasted in the drama of life. Your uniform of spiritual garb will be of no use to you and your beads will fall to the ground.
Your true nature will be uncovered. Naked awareness!
Why wait for a rude awakening?
Is there a choice? Can you take an active part in this? Will it make a difference.
Freedom is here now. 'Who' can't see THIS?
The dreamer can't see anything.
Wake up to the immediacy of your own living presence.
If there is a choice, sure that would be it.


Email about the book and many may relate to it well:
Hi Gilbert,
Thanks for asking about how the book is going.
I have been reading and contemplating it slowly; now I've gone through about half of it.
I've been "seeking" for about four years now.
Most books and articles I read quickly, then move on to another.
Although each book helps, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that we spend lots of time and energy trying to square everything we read, rather than noticing what we are doing.
I'm really, really tired of this pattern of reading, then moving on, reading, then moving on. Each time I start a new book, I think, "Maybe this is the one!"
Now, I'm finally beginning to see more clearly than ever that my mind, my beliefs, are actually my focus, not the books. Your writing is remarkably clear, and it is "clarifying" as well. I feel it is kind of like those "magic" drawings, where what it really going on (the "hidden" message) can suddenly become clear if you shift your focus to see things in a new way. My mind wants desperately to grasp the "first instant," but it is most illusive.
When the mind relaxes, a kind of clarity emerges.
During these times (such as on walks, or during quiet contemplation), a funny, kind of "excited" feeling takes over, as if I'm alert, anticipating but not knowing what could happen in every coming moment or at the next turn of the path.
Just behind this excitement is a subtle, lingering fear - that what "could happen" next might somehow hurt me!
What I've noticed, more and more, is how my mind is endlessly spinning its stories (quite obsessively, really), when I'm doing things that require very little concentration (such as doing house painting, driving, etc.).
It is funny, actually, and very humbling.
The stories and self-talk just go on and on and on.
Over the past few years, I've felt compelled to confront, head on, virtually every kind of activity that I am/was afraid of. Most of this has centered around the fear of expressing myself in certain situations, especially when emotions tend to run high.
This has led to hospice work, facilitating grief support groups, taking singing lessons, joining a choir, etc. While all this seems to have led to a more confident "me," it has also supported a belief that I must "purify" myself of all my fears and hang-ups, before "I" am permitted to "awaken."
Although there is merit in cleaning out all the "dusty corners" (your phrase, I believe), it seems that the need for "purification" is just another of the many stories that keep direct awareness at bay.
Your book gives me a pointer that I didn't have before, and I am grateful for that.
Regards, - M.

Reply: M, the mind can never grasp the first instant because it is in time and it only appears within the first instant. All the mind can do is open to its own vastness which is equal to That.
How can can a drop of water encompass the ocean?
Only by dissolving into the ocean does it become the ocean. Any resistence is futile and amounts to a momentary surface tension. It's all water, water!
The individual has no separateness at all. Even its personalized concepts arise from the One.

I will reply to the rest in general and not specifically aimed at Mark:

The light by which you see and know is IT. There is no power in words or images.
The arrangement of words in an unconventional manner may point the attention back to its source as long as there is no fixation on any particular 'objective' point in the reader.
The true nature of the mind is clear and empty and this must be tasted.
A very different view is then activated, in a manner of speaking.
The clear empty space of knowing is where the natural stateless state abides.
It has no boundaries and no specific location. Wherever the body wanders in the world, awareness is there, not carried by the body because the body is simply an instrument of cognition for awareness to register its own presence which is boundless.
There are no enlightened persons! This news is too shocking for most seekers.
Their gurus appear to play a game with them and they are fixated on their guru as a god. This projected adoration is the very fabricated boundary in mind that seemingly prevents the realization of their own completeness. What a joke it is and how many stupifying beliefs are bound up in this self-centred activity. I know of only ONE so-called teacher who does not play these games.
That is Bob Adamson.
So, seekers beware! You will lose your precious erroneous beliefs if you get to close to what he is expounding just like I did. Freedom seems to be quite a scary thing for most la-de-da seekers. So, hang onto your beads and pray that the message slips by or you might find all your favourite sufferings vanishing altogether. Now wouldn't that be a shame?
Cheers - Gilbert.

What a conundrum! The Seekers threshold.

A short preview of some extracts from “Everything is Clear and Obvious”, a companion book to “The First Instant”. It will be published later this year.

Extract: "The light by which you see and know, shines uninterruptedly in the ‘timeless’ realm of What IS.
This is your true identity.
No one can find it anywhere other than right here as the immediate presence that they ARE.
In the dualistic mind the seer and the seen arise as appearances or concept only.
Everything is clear and obvious.
‘Who’ does not know this obviousness?
It IS.
The conceptual ‘seer’ suffers via its own conceptual fixations. Are you that?
The one who suffers is a conceptual being which has no substance beyond being content of mind and its affiliated states in the body. All this is pure energy appearing in patterns nowhere ‘other’ than in this immediacy. Whether it appears now or as a memory in this now, it is just energy appearing as this and that. Awareness is NON Dual and contains no preferences ‘this way’ or ‘that’. It is a stateless openness.
It is just belief patterns in the dualistic mind. ‘Who’ does not know this?

I AM not a concept!
I AM THIS knowing presence – this space of knowing from which this light of seeing-knowing shines forth.
Where is the doubt?"


The First Instant BOOK (Printed) is available now on the 'shining' website. However the first batch has sold out and there will be a delay of several days for a second print run to be delivered here to me. You can still order now and the book will be posted as soon as it arrives here. - Cheers -G.

Note for my dear friend Charlie:
The realization of absolute freedom is equal to the realization of ones own nothingness.
This is a paradoxical point, which many never pass.
As the fixating consciousness appears to lose its individualized limitations through exposure to the news, the message of the true nature of everything, many aspirants of freedom often experience a sense of fear or a grasping sensation.
The habitual fixation reaches for some security of the known.
The past is scanned in the mind, looking for something familiar to grasp and identify with.
This realm of the mind is the bondage of self.
Few 'pass through' it. No harm done.
You are actually beyond it and it is simply a matter of seeing clearly without reference to any mind set.
Even so, desire for freedom re-appears over and over when the fixations abate periodically.
Freedom is the unknown, the unlimited freshness of being.
The fixating consciousness can make no foothold in its empty nature.
Through exhaustion or through clear insight, an opening may spontaneously appear.
One finds that ‘I am not any of these ‘things’ which ‘come and go’. One finds the ever-present, the unchanging solid yet ephemeral ‘actuality’ of presence-awareness.
The brain is awakened on all sides. ‘Inside’ and ‘outside’ disappear. All the senses are found to be operating in a most natural manner without the ordinary minds deliberations interfering. One finds that ‘I am beyond all these appearances’. One finds that ‘I do not need some identity at all’. One finds that ‘I am indeed nothing that can be defined’.
Just as the Buddha proclaimed: “I am Formless”.
Oneness is timeless yet it appears as the ever-fresh unfolding nature of all phenomena.
What a conundrum! - for the seeker.
What is most unbelievable to so many, who pursue the essence of the Non Dual tradition, is that this natural functioning is already present for them. It is only the dualistic nature of ordinary mind, which in its restlessness, it divides constantly. That which it appears to divide is already the duality of appearances which are already unified at the point of their arising – One Source.
And this Source can be said to be nothing but Awareness.
You are Present and Aware.
This fact cannot be divided and whenever you turn towards this fact in the mind, it shines forth naturally.
Most seekers are dull of mind and the intellect is in confusion due to years of exhaustive seeking and over intellectualizing.
Yet this fact is always present: Awareness IS non-dual.
And You are THAT.
Whatever your intellect tells you and whatever unworthiness you believe yourself to be – it is just simply untrue.
The master says “Stop” or “Be Quiet” and (I would add) just see.
You are the pure function of ‘seeing-knowing’.
Then the space of knowing opens as the mind is quiet.
Without this moment of quietness, what other method can possibly bring this open view to the fore?

Questions and Answers in the Dream

The BOOK version of The First Instant may be ordered on the shining through the mind website now.
Email from India:
Gilbert, I had the blessings & grace of GOD to go through your article on your web site.
It is amazingly very good. Perhaps TRUTH cannot be better pointed out. I am (in non- egoistic-sense) a voracious reader of articles on NON-DUALITY & ever desperate seeking so-called enlightenment. Only your article could bring an element of PEACE & SILENCE.
I am interested to read more of such outstanding articles containing POINTERS.
Regards R
Brief reply: Truth is unspeakable. We can speak of presence and that which knows presence is presence itself.
Another email:
Hi Gilbert,
I hope you don't mind if I ask you a question.
If so, then I will take the absence of a response as your answer.
While we say there is no (individual) "doer" and we can (therefore) do nothing of our own volition then the reverse must also be true that we cannot cease doing some thing either as there is no one to do or cease to do.
Lao Tzu said the ancient masters kindly taught the people to unlearn all they had been taught. Do you think we can unlearn, or be taught, or is the question senseless because there is no one on either side of that?
Or, is unlearning simply ceasing to pay attention to the contents of thoughts (all that was learned - "conditioned")?
If so then, again, who is ceasing to pay attention to those contents?
It seems like "I" have choice here?
Warm regards, J

Gilbert's reply:
Yes it SEEMS like you have a choice - that is the dream - let it be - however it appears. There is nothing and no one to change the dream and yet the dream constantly changes, much like clouds shift and change shape and color. You are not the acquired mind or its conditioning.
All that happens, if anything can be said to happen, is that the content of mind is seen through - WHAT sees through it? It IS THIS Clarity of Empty Mind.
What identity can you place upon THAT?
So, if you attempt to identify with IT in mind - then it is merely more content of mind - and IT, no matter what it appears AS, is forever (timelessly) transparent to AWARENESS.
‘Identification’ is simply fixating consciousness while all along what you truly ARE, The Source of I AM, the ‘authentic being-ness’, is clear and ever fresh.
'Who' is it that does not know this?
Knowing is all there is! It is not an entity!
Bob Adamson says it clearly, yet very few hear it Openly – he says that the mind aligns itself with THE Intelligence (The One and Only intelligence).
If you read Bobs books thoroughly - you will find that it is all there.
His books are the paramount of literature on this non dual subject - that fact and that few recognize that, is just a confirmation of its vivid validity. His 'pointing' cleared out all doubts here in this mind.
If it can happen here for me, then it can certainly happen there for you (in the actuality where there is no 'me' or 'you', not merely as a manner of speaking or concepts).
One in ten million is what I would say is the ratio of those who realize THIS.
The dream is cut assunder!
You are the absolute potentiality of this realization right here in THIS moment - that is why you are uncontrollably drawn to this message – and as the mind aligns itself, then even this ratio (separateness) disappears - and so the One that you ARE is found to be ALL.
I am THAT.
One must realize ones nothingness and in this, all learning takes on a transparent quality - as the Buddha says -"I am Formless”.

'Who' wants to KNOW the answer?
What do you KNOW of your attention?
What is there without paying attention?
What is it that is paying attention? Investigate this.
This mystery reveals itself as Intelligence - pure in its open and unencumbered presence.
It is not personal or limited in its immediacy. Grasping mind covers it with concepts and a habitual fixation and you have believe that that is what you are.

The bottom line is:
KNOWING IS.

It is Awareness that is shining through the mind.

In addition, I will add this:

The Oneness of everything is clear and obvious.
That is why everyone misses it. Who can’t see THIS?
There is no one that truly misses it because that is all there is.
(One can argue over sematic points forever)
There are no entities that don’t see it just as there are no entities that do see it.
SEEING is spontaneously happening. It is not happening to a ‘someone’.
That which is seeing and that which is seen are truly One.
Where are the limits to seeing? There are none! - except in mind stuff.
The pattern of energy, which appears to be in mind is a pretence of an ability to see and know.
Seeing and knowing are beyond these.
A pattern is just a pattern.
Even its apparent limitations are actually unlimited.
The singular source of all is all there truly is. It is suffused with KNOWING.
There is no one that knows this just as there is no one that does not know this.
It knows itself.
Throw your guru away if he or she doesn't point this out clearly. What is their game? Addiction to adoration? Such gurus are just patterns of energy. The heart essence is your own true authentic nature, this is the true guru, which is oneness and so complete unto its vast openness.
Any teacher or guru who does not point to this essential fact quickly is just a mirage and is deluded by attachment to self images etc.
Step back and see for yourself.
All great sages and all ignorant beings are simply appearances in this timeless presence
of what I am.
All there IS, is KNOWING Presence. I AM THAT.
This may appear to be a cold view for some with no love evident.
It is not so. This presence is full of love in being. This clear empty space of knowing is love of self. Not a selfish love attached to a 'me'. Unbound love and the warmth of this self love is the subtle bliss of being.

I know of some who are outraged by such open expressions because it transcends thier fixated view and renders their beliefs useless. No judgment here. I also know that they do not realize that this fixation of outrage, which inhibits their natural presence, is just a bunch of concepts and these consitute the bondage of self (which is conceptual) and these very fixations promotes the delusion of separateness and so suffering and confusion continually unfolds - until it is seen through.

This 'I AM' cannot be negated!
Even in them!