Saturday, March 31, 2007

Take another look - (a repeat with new additions)

At last, someone tells me I talk too much. - Thank you. - Enjoy the silence my friend.
I guess you can find your own way home - cheers.

News on U.G. Krishnamurti - visit this site:
http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/ug/obi/index.html
They say he moved on from place to place and all his possessions fitted neatly into a small case. - No baggage to load the soul.
Thank you U.G. for your many pointers.

New Note:
It is all so simple, it is all so obvious, it can never be captured by the mind.
The ‘essence of knowing’ is not going to surrender to the seeker because the seeker is just an appearance in the knowing essence.
– You must BE that which is the immediacy itself to see this - and the irony is that that is all you truly are, anyway.
Thought is slow and cumbersome. - The thought train is never catching up to the immediacy of direct cognition.
As ‘what you think you are’ can you do that?
As what you truly are, there is no need to do anything – but that subtlety is not conceptual.
The 'ground' of all concepts is non-conceptual awareness.
The 'ground' of ‘all that is known’ is ‘knowing’ – it is never caught by any ‘knower’.
The knower is always one step behind (in the mind) and its net will always fall short and be empty on examination - what SEES that - or anything?
The essence (of self and all things) is far too subtle and ‘passes through’ the grossly woven conceptual net.
The one throwing the net is gross, a concept only.
The essence of all that is known is the immediate knowing.
The ‘time’ it takes to weave the net and then throw it is just absurdly inadequate.
The essence of all that is seen is ‘seeing’.
You can catch ‘the butterfly’ with your net but the life essence will vanish as you pin the body to your trophy board.
All that frustration of ‘not finding’ will never be pacified by some fancy guru and his conceptual traps.
There is no point in my ‘hitting you on the head’ and saying “wake up”.
I get no thanks for ‘shouting in your ear’ every day.
– You just stir and tell me to ‘rack off’ before rolling over back into that hypnotic dream of separation.
Frankly speaking, I am tired of shaking you.
You must stop ‘the machine’ yourself, stop the hypnotic dream, (even) for just a moment and SEE.
The mind is a seeming space where a constant flow of concepts, ideas, images and who knows what appear – but has anything ever really stayed there?
When will you stop playing games with spirituality and address that reoccurring ‘thing’ which unsettles you constantly?
You know what it is – I am not about to tell you again.

As Bob points out: “There is NO answer in the mind”.

So it is pointless looking there. – How many times must you be told?
So, ‘the ball is in your court’.


Today's Note:

Still searching for that bright insight? - Maybe you are overlooking some very basic facts.
A direct pointing to the basics requires an openness to look closely at beliefs and many apparently are not prepared to do that, at least not without a lot of resistance.
That resistance itself must be explored thoroughly.
Many popular teachers are actually adding conceptual nonsense to those beliefs and this binds the mind into time bound notions of becoming 'something' that is going to change the world for the better - ego weaves its tentacles into the matrix of a fabricated mindscapes and fed by feelings of being very special.
Beyond all that nonsense there are a few who point directly at the timeless presence of presence awareness. - A hunger for ideas and concepts drives the seeker around and around and false teachers provide an endless parade of new and more subtle ideas and concepts, to capture the mind of the seeker.
In this direct investigation that I am speaking of regularly, all ideas about acquisition are tossed aside as a taste of true freedom arises from the potency of direct SEEING.
- Nothing is really asked of you except to look and SEE. - No big fees are required, no future time is emphasised and no 'knowledge' is held up to be sacred and in need of storage in the mind.
As 'direct insight' opens up, there is a sense of something falling away - a sense of relief and a profound 'ease of being'.
Uncluttered space 'appears' and there is a freedom from wanting to fill it up with the old habitual ideas again.
One 'begins' to see and know that this space-like awareness is actually never obscured, even though there may have been a life time dis-belief that it could be ever-present. - It is the fluctuations in the waking state that give the impression of 'coming and going' with that identified 'entity' which is the transient and unstable element, not awareness.

The looking for ‘something special’ and in feel a lack of ‘something’ is the 'seeming' problem.
Is there really a problem?
What are the obstacles?
Who is looking? - And for what?
An identified sense of self, a 'me' is only a 'phenomenal object', a pattern appearing in the mind and as an instrunment of the search, it can NEVER find its own source (awareness) because that source, for it, just like itself, is insubstantial - nothing.
Nothing that it can grasp. - An insubstantial thing cannot grasp itself and it can not grasp 'No thing'.
Now, that may appear to mean 'something' to you, or most probably not.
However, that function of 'knowing', 'understanding' or 'seeing' is actually beyond the instrument that it ‘appears’ in. - Awareness - Knowing - Seeing - Understanding are one and the same (as a way of expressing it).
Does not the instrument itself, the body/mind, 'appear' in that spaceous knowing presence?
That is clearly obvious.
- Yet it is or can be extremely subtle - have a clean look and see if what I am saying is true.
- I can asure you that if you can SEE what I am pointing out, a great deal of misunderstanding gets cleared away. - (I am not inventing this!!!)

The mind pattern called a 'seeker' can never ‘get fulfilled’ because it can never acquire what it seeks.
What is the difference between 'knowing' and 'not knowing'?

Beyond the mind's conceptual and polaric 'knowing' and the 'not knowing', is that immediate knowing essence, which has no beginning and no end.
Have a look - can you find a time when it was not right here?
Everyone predictably postulates 'deep sleep' - but you know nothing about deep sleep, so disregard that as your evidence, because it is a desperate example to use.

'Who' has a problem with this? - What is the nature of that one that has a problem?
Is it not just thought patterns? - Are you subservient to them or do you KNOW them intimately?
Do thoughts run your life or do they serve you?
Thoughts in themsleves are neither right nor wrong. - Don't they simply 'appear' as the ever changing display of mind content?
- Is that not obviously so?
All we have is the mind to investigate the mind - There is no 'separate entity' that observes this fact or anything at all but it seems that it is so.
- Seeing and know that seeing is happening in that empty space of cognition.
- We can call it pure cognition but that implies that there is something that is not pure outside of it.
Zero degrees of separation.
To perceive a problem is to take on board that there is a problem, even though it has no existence at all, except as a time/space pattern in the appearance of 'things'.
As long as you seek the company of so-called enlightened souls, you will continue to ignore the light that shines forth from the source that you ARE.
There is only One source. - which ‘appears’ as this universe and so expresses itself as everything perceivable and imaginable and at the same ‘time’ in what I call the ‘first instant’ (the only instant of now) it is empty of, and beyond, all words. - It is Oneness or the true nature of awareness.
How does one demonstrate Oneness? -How can one show, to a seeming ‘other’ it’s (this other’s) own true nature? - Or it’s own? -Isn’t it One and the same?
Where is the need to show or reveal and to whom?
The so-called ‘need’ can only be in the mind, because one’s ‘true nature’ is already true and naturally in need of nothing, nothing ‘more or less’ of anything at all.
How can a seemingly ‘different point of perception’ of another – an ‘other’, merge with ‘this’ (the explainer), a different ‘point’, and so reach agreement by eliminating the apparent separation through words? -It is ‘word’ that has seemingly brought about the separation or at least the sense of separation.
- Do ‘you’ detect the apparent paradox?
- Where is the paradox except in the mind, via conflicting concepts or paradigms?
We apparently need points of reference before any thought framework can appear.
This, as well as what is written here, is of course all conceptual by its nature.
We may feel that we can’t communicate all that well without concepts.
Is there such a thing as communication happening? -
(Good question but annoying for the intellect.)
Do ‘concepts’ limit the nature of ‘things’?
The letters ‘s-k-y’ are not engraved on that blueness above.
In fact the word ‘sky’ appeared long 'time after’(historically speaking)than the sky itself appeared, in relative terms and in the ordinary way of general consensus reality.
Reality is not confined by words at all. -Reality is neither enhanced, nor limited by words. - Thoughtless reality is obvious, yet we rarely appreciate that fact.
Oneness. - What can we say about it? - Like a ripple on the shores edge, what effect can it have on the ocean? - One must imagine it as being separate from the ocean in some way, before we can entertain the concept that that ripple could ever have an effect on the ocean. -It is the ocean – water. - Or if one wants to be scientific, one could say that the ripple is an energy pattern flowing through the water.
The pulse of life is flowing through that body of yours right now.
- Is there a separation between the apparent two?
The universe is like one molecule, which appears to contain all molecules.
- The universe is one point, which contains all points.
Am I getting through? - Is there communication? - Is there a subtle stimulation?
Or is it already known? - What knows? - Is it a form, a personality that knows?
Whatever you believe about that, there is an expression flowing out here and this may register well with you or not so well.
- Some may even think that I am waffling on about a bunch of nonsense.
- No problem here about any of it.
One thing that I am totally sure of is this: - Cognition is happening (with you) and this is actually prior to any conditioning that you may believe that you have.
- It is also prior to anything in memory or acquired mind (all you have learned – personalized knowledge).
Now, the point may not be appreciated (by you) and it most probably may be a point of contrition. - Bear with me, if you will.
All of our senses, hearing, tasting etc. are indivisible at the ‘point’ of perception (or cognition).
How do you differ from that point of cognition? - Are you not that?
If not, what could you be?
We cannot deny that hearing is different from seeing but is it true at the ‘point’ of cognition?
In that pure space of cognition, we cannot divide anything and seeing and hearing are of one essence.
Now, this is extremely significant in no uncertain way - Or is it?
- You tell me.
From the point of view of mind, it is significant, if it is not recognized clearly.
It is only in ‘mind process’ that any argument about this can take place.
Recognize this fact: - Any such argument (or agreement) is registering with the ‘point’ of cognition. - In fact, everything is registering there with equal measure (although, I imagine, few would agree).
Well, I have referred to that place of cognition as being a ‘point’.
In fact it has no known dimensions at all. - It is beyond the known (because it is the ‘knowing’).
A ‘point’ is zero dimensions. -Insubstantial.
Even though it is insubstantial and has no known dimension, it contains the whole universe. - There is no ‘time’ that can be applied to it because it contains all time.
What I am saying is so obvious, we have, most probably, not even given it a thought.
So, where does all this lead us? - Nowhere at all.
You are present and aware in That and AS That.
Recognize that it is true. - To deny this pure ‘point’ of cognition is really just divergent indulgence and that will go around and around endlessly, with no escape, for that apparent individual.
If you are drowning and someone throws you a rope, you take hold of it and so you are pulled out of the rough seas (of confused mind).
Our true identity is not limited by what the mind throws up, although it seems that it is, for the identified ‘form’ called ‘me’.
Now, I realize that what I have expressed here may well have missed the mark for many, possible, readers.
I must say without being rude, it is not my problem. - I have dealt with what we term as the ‘conditioned mind’. - Whatever condition that you believe you have, is not my doing. - You must deal with it yourself. - To say such things may appear to be rather blunt or even arrogant but that is not my intention.
- The sensitive ‘ego’ will not survive that death of the body but if the ‘ground’ that it appears to reside on is totally revealed to be non existent before that ‘death’, then death can’t touch that which remains as the natural state, presence awareness.
However you perceive or translate what I am saying, it is not my intention to add data for any conditioned mind to immerse itself in. - The impulse is to point to that open space of cognition.
A road sign may say “ London ”, “ Paris ” or “Timbucktoo”.
- The place it is pointing to is not confined to the sign.
- It merely points the direction to go in.
(If you want to go to that place).
With this ‘pointing’ you don’t even have to take one step because you are that space of cognition.
Now, this space cannot be divided by any thought, concept or state of affairs.
Thought, concepts, states and conditions can only appear in it.
This clear space is actually unchanging.
It is the nature of all that appears in it, to change.
- The content of awareness is changeful. - Awareness is timeless and unchanging. - That which appears is forever changing and that is the nature of energy – moving patterns of seeming solid, substantial or subtle matter.
Yesterday’s mood is gone. - You are not that. - Yesterday’s identified states are gone. - You are not those. - The thought that appears right now is not what you are.
You are the source of that light by which you see and know all ‘things’.
Can you say that you are anything ‘more’ than that?
‘Who’ emerges out of that ‘pure’ space of knowing and ‘who’ is it that gets lost in phenomena?
‘Who’ could answer such a question?


Fun bit: I now have a 'My Space' 'place' and it's title is patternzinspace - anyone wishing to link to it with their own 'my space' can do so - it is just a bit of fun so don't go getting all serious about it. - I may add some videos of Bob to it at some point.
I will take a few photos of visitors to Bob's meetings etc and post them up there.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Nothing is acquired - whatsoever!

It is odd how gossip spreads so fast and everyone takes a keen interest in it - yet the news that can actually free them from the bondage of self is just passed over.

Newsletter 'link' at bottom of note.

Today's Note:

Gurus love telling stories of how they ‘woke up’. - It often becomes a business venture.
– Their fancy story helps to keep their ‘self-image’ intact, in a mythical realm for themselves and their poor ignorant devotees. - Many of those devotees love to pretend that they have woken up also - what a sad joke - but they are serious - seriously imitating their guru!

Regarding this ‘waking up’ or self-realization – There is no ‘How’ to it.
– No ‘How?’ - either with or without a 'question mark'.
– There is no separate one that wakes up and all stories that there is someone that has or does is a complete fallacy – including the Buddha.
Non Duality means one without a second - so Buddha nature is the whole - no pin pointed individual is isolated as containing Buddha Nature. - It is the Totality - the Whole.
Why can't you see that?
Because in taking oneself to be a separate individual, the view is automatically limited.
The origin of any view is SEEING.

It has been pointed out over and over that NOTHING is acquired and there is no one to acquire anything. – All is as it is.
- All that can be said to 'happen' is that the habituated mindset is seen through.
Yet that old idea of ‘acquisition’ persists amongst seekers like the snakes on Hydra’s head.
'Who' is it that believes in these concepts of acquisition or any concepts?
There is a so-called ‘Law of reciprocal vibrations’ which can seemingly explain why the concept of being ‘a person’ and the concepts that this ‘person’ believes in, can never be separated. – Both these vibrational patterns are appearing in the mind.
Unless this is clearly appearing in SEEING, without capturing the sense of identity, then it all is just a rotating wheel of repetition for the mind.
There is no one caught in concepts, no one identified.
Naked awareness has no content, no centre and no boundary.
That is non negotiable.
No seekers can ever attain anything and those patterns of belief could never have any ability to attain anything at all except as something equally transient as the seeker itself.

Just see that the one that believes in acquisition is just an idea, a stubborn idea, it seems.
Bob says: “What you seek, you already are”.
So the seeking is useless.
Paradoxically there is no one to stop the seeking.
So, the old question arises once more - ‘how’ does it happen?
So, I say this: - As the pure function of seeing sees through the mirage, it is not anything extra that is happening, not some added element that one 'does'. – The mirage reveals itself as a mirage just IN the SEEING.
This factor is quite subtle and easily passed by because of the habitual identified mindset.

Know that nothing touches the space of knowing where seeing is happening – everything is appearing IN the seeing – everything is appearing ON or IN awareness and is awareness.

See that 'the seer' and 'the seen' are simply objectifications IN the space-like awareness which is also called SEEING.

Simple. - Yet it appears ( for this one writing) that this factor took over twenty years to discover. - There is no way to make you see the truth of this fact.

- Yet seeing is happening.

There is NO ‘How?’ to it.

Newsletter at this URL: http://www.beyonddescription.net/flash/newsletter5.html
Copy and paste it to your web address box.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Are we Liquid Crystaline Organisms?

Nisargadatta says: “You are not the body – you are not the mind”.
It is a challenging statement by anyone’s standards.
Only a serious one will explore or investigate into it.
The next question must arise: If I am not this body or mind, then what am I?
If we look to the direct and perceivable evidence in nature, it may assist somewhat.
Some of these points below, I gathered from memory, stuff that Bob pointed out to me a few years ago. - As with so many pointers that Bob expresses, there is a 'deep' profundity to them that the surface barely covers - for those who truly contemplate them.
When an animal dies, ‘something’ appears to disappear. – Some say it is the spirit and some say it is the soul and others say who knows what?
– Most prefer not to think about it. – Death is not a favorite subject for anyone and there is a preferrence to cover it over quickly whenever the subject arises. – The subject of death inevitably reminds one of the inevitable death of oneself – although it can only be a conjecture into a 'future time'. – Just like your mythical birth, you have only heard ‘second hand’ information of that event.
So, what is that ‘something’ that disappears when an animal dies?
The first thing that one notices is that ‘the light in the eyes’ fades away.
All visible or volitional movement ceases and one would say all the senses cease to operate.
Basically the coherent order of the organism enters a new phase, one of disintegration.
Now, if you believe that you are the body then this evidence I am speaking of is a challenge to that belief, a subtle one that can be missed if the habitual rationalization kicks in too quickly.
What is this coherent ‘agent’ that is present in the living organism?
What imparts a living order to the animal or oneself?
Is it the mind?
Is it a thought?
Is it an idea?
Is it intelligence?
We can say with some certainty that it is Life.
But Life is everywhere and not limited to one organism.
So, saying it is life does not satisfy, somehow.
Is there an individual life or is there just (One big) Life?
Some biologists suggest that the body is made up of multiple liquid crystalline organisms.
Those concepts are filtering into many body work modalities with reverberating results - or so it appears.
The research into brine shrimp by James Clegg, a marine biologist, challenged all previously believed notions about life. – It did not make a bid splash in the news.
– The evidence collected shows that a form, a shrimp egg, apparently dead by conventional beliefs, completely dehydrated for 4 years or more, springs to life soon after fresh water is introduced. - Many fish owners feed these brine shrimp to their pets after hatching them.
Up until this evidence was found, it was totally believed that water was an absolute necessity for life to be present. - The quizzical thing is how did that dehydrated body retain life during the 4 years of inanimation? - Mystery! - How does life arrive in these miniature creatures?
Is it in the structure - is it information?

What is the most precious ‘thing’ you have?
Is it not ‘life’?
Do you ‘have it’?
Or does it ‘have you’?
What am I?
Inquire, explore into it.
Are you a liquid crystalline structure? - A biological mystery?
What is this light that shines out of your eyes?
Is it not the light by which you see and know?
How can what you are, your authenticity, your natural state, how can that be separate from the source of that light?
When someone asked Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, “What is purpose of life?”- he answered:
“The purpose of life is living”.

There is life, who can doubt it? - The first direct evidence of it is the livingness right there as ‘This living moment’ right now - it is what you are in this immediacy.

Are you not already that enlightened presence? - A natural presence that needs no practices or methods to bring about?

You cannot drive anything between Life and what you truly are – they are One and the same.

One without a second.

Still not seeing it?

OK, here it is in a Nutshell:

You are the immediacy, this activity of knowing, which has no past and no future, you are only the immediacy itself.
There is NO ‘person’ in that.
Who is it that is caught in the conceptual realms of the mind?
Is it not just a concept with habitual feelings added?
So, if you feel that you are not totally present in this immediacy, my advice is this:

Drop all concepts and so ‘make your way back’ to this immediacy and see that the conceptual framework actually dissolves or fades away within the seeing.
What is left and what is clear and obvious is this pure ‘I am-ness’ - that you are.
Stay with that and see that even that is known from ‘beyond’ it.

No one can teach you how to do this - it must be your own original exploration.
It is confounding for the intellect, so let the natural intelligence work on its own.
Do not think about it - just see into it all. - Seeing is immediatly present.
This is far too subtle to approach in the mind by any conceptual means and yet the essence of it all is already 'presence' - just the way it is.

In realizing this dissolution of the habitual mind stuff, the old tensions in the organism dissolve.

Life goes on as usual, but there is a knowing that that knowing presence is wakefulness itself – forever immediate and forever untouched by anything at all.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Reality is not disguised in any way

News: Another New CD "From the Chair" of 'Sailor Bob' Adamson. This new addition will be available in a week or so. - Also a new professionally produced DVD of Bob will become available soon.

Who to see:
If you are in the USA, go see John Wheeler, Burt Jurgens, Steven Wingate or John Greven.
If you have a liking for radical rascals and you are in Germany, go see Karl Renz (although he travels a lot).
If in the UK, go see Tony Parsons or/and Nathan Gill.
If in India, go see Ramesh Balsekar.
If that does not work for you, come to Australia and see Bob Adamson.
Wherever you go, pay close attention to what these chaps are pointing out.
Give it every ounce of mindful attention. – See if what they are saying is true - for you.
Something is bound to resonate.
– Reading books can be extremely helpful but a one to one can dissolve that flimsy film of separation in the mind.

If that does not work, come see me and I will make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Those teachers to avoid like the plague are:
Most of Papaji’s ‘later day messengers’.
– Anyone with an Indian sounding name but purports to be a Zen master.
– Leaders of spiritual empires.
– Any teacher that looks like they spend too much time in front of the mirror.
– Any teacher wearing flowing robes and trinkets and who arrives in a white luxury vehicle.
– Any teacher that is consistently unavailable for a one to one consultation.
– Any teacher who says they must not be touched.
– Any teacher who insists that the ‘person’ is a real ‘thing’ that can be developed and that that ‘person’ will attain what he has mastered.
– Any teacher that insists that it will take time for deliverance and therefore you must do your practices, which he prescribes etc.
– Any teacher that makes you feel like you have a long way to go and who also encourages you to ‘look up’ to them.

– None of those at the top of the page fall into these categories mentioned, so in my opinion, you can trust them, for what that is worth.


Today's 'Mule Kick' note - but first one little mind twister:

Please take note:
These small black shapes called letters which make up the words and sentences do not have much meaning in themselves.
– The words appear to carry a meaning which forms in the mind by reference to memory. – So the meaning that you find in these sentences is appearing in your own mind.
– Any drama that unfolds from them is not necessarily what is meant to be conveyed by them.
– The mind interprets things at a speed which seems to be instantly there.
– If you have been reading my notes for awhile, you may detect that I am saying, basically the same thing over and over in many different ways.
There is ‘a directness’ in all of it and ‘on that’ is what the mind translates it into.
– Strong feelings or resistances come from your own presence – nothing is transmitted from here.
– All is there in 'your own atmosphere’.
Getting caught in your own translations of what is meant to be pointed out, in these notes, is not my concern. - Although it appears that I do try to be as clear as possible and at times I throw in some 'fun bits' and some 'stirring the possum'.

In recognizing that ‘knowing’ is already pristinely present (with you) and seeing that that is never truly disturbed by anything is apparently a rare occurrence.
Just see and know that without 'that knowing' and the reading of these notes, or any written material, it is non existent, empty.
– Then realize that even ‘with that knowing presence’, these words are still empty and non existent.
The only thing you truly know is that you ARE.

That mystery will always confound intellectuals who take themselves so seriously in their expertise on this and that.

Today's Note:

Reality.

- What can you truly say about it?
- It is!
- It is neither good not bad.
Do we imagine what reality is?
- Can reality be imagination?
Or do we directly know what it is?
Do I need to think about that?
Isn't there already a natural knowing of What IS?
Is it all just in the mind - an endless parade of 'stuff'?

What constitutes a 'good question'?
Is that a good question?
How complex is the Universe?
Ha! - Am I playing with your mind?
Maybe I have been playing games all along?
Why not?
- Who is the authority of "Should and Shouldn't"?
Are you just a sponge, soaking up all the commentaries of others or do you actually contemplate the so-called deeper aspects of your own existence?
Do you live on the surface like a skimmer?
I could go on and on.
- Are they good questions?
- Who cares?

We must use the mind to investigate anything and everything and 'finally' realise that I am this presence in which all activity takes place.
Imagination is not a bad thing - it can be extremely creative.
OK - So, imagine that somehow you, or I, hear about something new, something called Enlightenment.
- Wow! - Sounds good. - It has a certain ring to it.
Then I find it is rather unique and it looks like only one guy ever 'got it'.
The interest level goes up through the roof.
- Then I hear someone proclaims that they are enlightened.
- You seek him out.
- Sure enough he looks like he has a high regard for himself.
- He hold his head in a certain fashion like an aristocrat.
- He knows how to enjoy life (at the expense of his followers).
- He gives Lectures.
- You want to have a chat with him but the 'officials' surrounding him prevent that. - Now you find out that you must never touch him.
He is untouchable - cannot be defiled by your imperfections.
What a load of bollocks! - Pardon my french!

Lets take it back a step or two, before you found that modern guru, that smelly and suspect example of enlightenment.
So, you went out in search of all the information you could gather about that ultimate prize.
- You purchased many books and sat in libraries for hours on end.
- You picked your way through that information, photocopied, hand copied and created your own little pile of info.
- You went over it all again and again - preening through it, reducing it and then chose the pieces that you could comfortably weave your own experiences around and so make it your own.
- You could talk easily about it with some fabricated confidence - you could, as they say, 'get away with it'.
But even after umpteen years of this game, that matrix in mind does not ever satisfy the hunger of neediness.
Is it only when it is discarded or one reaches a state of exhaustion that one begins to detect that it may all be a 'giving oneself over' to external ‘things’ - and then one detects that it is all going in the wrong direction?

The direct pointing is to your own immediate natural state.
To be oneself is natural and spontaneous.
No contrived mind matrix can ever be simple enough to match what one is naturally.
They never blend successfully.
- One sits on top of the other like oil on water.
You can forcefully make them mix but you end up with a cloudy fluid and that clear view has seemingly disappeared.
In the state of exhaustion, after decades of restless searching in the mind, the seeking subsides and what was clearly 'always here' reveals itself to you in a knowing way.
- Ah ha! - A moment of clarity. - Wosh! and its gone again.
The mind has kicked back in - it wants to 'claim it' and make it 'personal property'.
So, back to the guru? - Kiss his feet?
No! - I'll kiss my own ass first.
A key to all this is that what is true is always simple.
There is nothing more simple than non duality.
If you visit someone like Bob (although I know no other like him) you may detect that he is doing nothing more than pointing consistently to that non dual awareness, which is what you are.
- All the rest is conceptual.
- Bob is most certainly rare if you compare him to other 'teachers' but he would not bother to dwell on that.
- He directly points you to the fact that there are NO others - YOU are that ONE without a second.
- There is no detectable 'ego' there in Bob and when I look at these other well known so-called 'Non Duality teachers' it is clear and obvious that it is more or less all ego stuff, unashamedly on display.
- Why should I care?
- I don't - but I do remember the frustration of getting caught up in the spiritual game and any short cut out of that would have been welcome at any point along that imaginary line I was walking.

If there is a clinging to someone ‘out there’ who claims to be an enlightened being, you can be quite sure that any of their promises of deliverance is nothing but a fallacy - you just join them in their ego games and that is that.
- Most are happy to play along with that senario and good luck to them. - But there are a few who genuinely want out of that hypnotic state of affairs and all my notes are directed to those few.

We trick and fool ourselves into believing in Belief itself and we ignore what is obvious.
That proverbial carrot before the donkey is not a fresh and crunchy carrot – it is old and rotten.
Further more, if you refuse to drop that attachment with its enticement for the unachievable, you can be sure that that old habitual 'sense of lack' in yourself will continue to plague you, if only because you still believe in it.
It is the un-investigated - the haze of belief.
That fancy robed ‘teacher’ will not destroy your illusions (he must destroy his own first)- because basically he depends on yours and other devotees subservient attitudes to support his fabricated special-ness.
The direct and immediate (reality) can often be ruthlessly challenging to those precious beliefs that we hold onto.
– Reality is the uncompromised state of what IS.
– You better get used to it.
Spirituality is just one disguise, all dressed up to make one appear sacred and good.
Reality is not disguised in any way – it is clear and obvious.
Since you cannot find it on your own, only one that is direct and true in expression can direct you to your own immediate and natural freedom.
- The mind may resist but with a continued exploration and the investigation of what is true in yourself, it will unfold quite naturally of itself.
The rest are story tellers.
Stop telling yourself stories and take a direct look into that knowing – this space-like awareness that you are.

OK.....once more lets look at it:

You may be totally convinced in this thing called ‘time’.
It is an extremely common belief so it must be real – yes?
If there is time, then surely it is time to get real.
Stop pretending to be what you are not and what you can never become.
Being what you are is effortless – it is natural – it is not a contrived set of conceptual postulations in the mind.
– They always ‘arrive’ post sync.
The synchronicity of natural presence is beyond manipulations of the mind.
All we do is move furniture around in the mind and go on doing that until we fall down from exhaustion.
You are the immediate livingness and nothing more than that.
Beyond that is no thing, out of that no thing, all things appear and disappear.
This is the immediate fact which is imperceptible from a stance in the mind.
What you are actually seeing is no thing appearing as ‘things’ in the mind.
You cannot prove that things exist but you cannot deny that you exist.
When you see that you are not leaving this presence of knowing, then all things take on a very different nature to what you have been conditioned to believe.

Got it?

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Zen and the disappearing Moutain

Note: Don't miss out on Bob's new CD, only available from Bob's 'iinet website'.

Readers beware: - There are some notes further on below this next one that have the 'kick of a mule' in them. - Evidence of their impact has been flowing back via emails. - If you are just a spiritual website browser then there may be material in here that you really might not want to know. - Like the seeker who found God's House and balked at the door before knocking. - He was overcome by fear of losing who he thought he was, so he ran down the stairs and far away - and there after could only say "I know where he lives".

Email Question:
Hi Gilbert, It is about the well known Zen saying:
"Before Zen, rivers and mountains are rivers and mountains. During Zen, rivers and mountains are no longer rivers and mountains. After Zen, rivers and mountains are again rivers and mountains."
The meaning I suppose goes so:
When one has realised that oneness is all there is (second above sentence) one "must not remain" in this pure oneness ("vacuity" according to the Buddhist word) for Samsara and nirvana are both same and two, or better said neither one nor two, even for the ordinary mind?
Would you please confirm or discuss this question?
Thanks - Jean

Gilbert replies:
There is no before or after.
Only THIS.
(I call it) One Moment - the Only moment - undeniably here as your own presence.
Everything is THAT appearing as this and that and all of it can only appear in this immediacy in this Singular Moment of Presence.
The Buddha is reported to have said: “Samsara, including Dhukka (suffering), and Nirvana are not two”.
Much of what the Buddha is supposed to have said is doubtful. - Most likely scholars of the Buddha’s teaching have added their own understanding. - To me very few of them resonate with the clarity of direct pointing. - Umpteen pathways can only lead the mind away from THIS moment of clear non-conceptual 'seeing-knowing'.
– Mind you, without all those teachings to get attached to, there would be no Buddhism at all. – The irony is that the basic Buddhist teaching is meant to be very seriously about 'non-attachment'.

OK, back to the topic:
First there is a Mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is – that is the popular way this saying you are asking about, was expressed in song by Donovan in the sixties or was it the seventies.
The saying, of course can be interpreted in a thousand ways.
In this moment, what comes up is this:
In the relativity of 'an individual life' – first, things are naturally what they are - then the mind interprets those things into labels and words, concepts etc. – Belief steps in and words take on a substantiality for the mind.
Then the words and the concepts are ‘seen through’ (from beyond their hold over the mind) and so things once more are spontaneously naturally what they are - as they always were.
All this happens in the same moment. - What is clear and obvious remains clear and obvious. – Only the ‘point of view’ changes.
– When all points of view are dropped, then seeing is unobstructed.
– As the Buddha is reported to have said: “Gate, gate, paramgate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha”. - Very basically translated as “I am formless, I am formless, Horray!”

The word ‘Zen’, to me, only means ‘natural wordless presence, equanimity with what is’ - and that is truly all there is and ever is.

Zen is another word for truth - Truth remains beyond the bounds of words and is inexpressible except as the direct and immediate expression of What IS as it IS.
- That is all there is anyway. - The rest is reflections in the mind and they are That also. - They just appear and disappear.
People use the word ‘truth’ very loosely, as if it were a ‘something’ that they have discovered, 'something' they have nailed down. - Such is the way of the mind.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Could you please comment?

To Gilbert
– Hallo, In the last few months, I've been reading up on various Advaita websites, just seeing what it's all about, and I saw your comments about the 'non-dual’ mind state.
- I absolutely know the experience of "Empty Awareness" or whatever people want to call it, and I could 'go there' as a kid at will, but I never thought it was that big a deal, I just thought it was the 'background hum' of the life force (which seems to me, a kind of content-free 'Intelligent electricity') and that individual consciousness isn't anything bad - It's just a naturally occurring DNA program, an evolutionary tool for the on-going survival of the organism.
-The life force refracts itself through the biological form that it grows (as our bodies - the hardware, so to speak) and has evolved (with it) 'pre-installed software' in the brain (like propensity for language, archetypes, ego-creation etc) which when activated, constellates a mental 'ego structure' to give ongoing stability (the sense of an "I”) to the individual's psyche over his/her lifespan. - This starts forming at about 2 years old.
- Individual mind is formed in the empty space of (what I call) blank awareness.
Before that, the baby has no sense of itself as separate from its surroundings. - But this "baby" mind (which some people call "oceanic" or "unitive”) is in error. - The baby is in fact separate, and the DNA-activated ego program (The "I") is a necessary corrective.
I totally understand that "empty awareness" is the base line of our experience and we cannot reduce consciousness any further as it tends to dissipate into the oceanic emptiness - (The old ice cubes in warm bath water analogy!).
- It's a bit like a collection of crockery realizing that it is all made out of clay, regardless of its shape or function. - What I don't understand in "advaita" (or similar spiritual or religious models) is why this non-content, empty awareness, is a desirable state to 'abide' in and why individual reality is seen as akin to a dream.
- It has taken countless millennia for individual consciousness to evolve out of this amorphous 'sense of being'.
- Our true nature is both oceanic and individual and neither is 'worse' than the other.

- Life is an evolving intelligent energy, expressing itself in both impermanent phenomena and as a more permanent source.
- Both are equally 'real'. - I feel that your more 'spiritual' model contains a lot of "spiritual story". - Once you know you are both 'empty awareness' and singular individual mind, what's the big deal? - Why the need for the ‘spiritual’?

- And what difference does it make?
- Could you please comment?

- Thanks for listening (reading) - Michael.

Gilbert replies: –
No ‘story’ will ever satisfy – and doubts arise - however, what you are may resonate with an intelligent expression, something that 'rings true' and that ringing true bypasses the normal grounds of conflict in mind, and due to being caught in the realms of belief we are now so used to being with conflict internally and externally - even though there is no separation between inside and outside.
No story has ever totally satisfied the mind and that is why the search continues for so many as it does (all in the appearance of things in time).
- When any desire is fulfilled, there is a momentary absence of desire - but it soon returns because the fulfillment is only transient and the mind will not stay still in that fulfillment.
So having a fragmented sense of self, the desire to be whole arises naturally but it is a false premise - a movement attempting to be stillness. (Common meditations techniques are a good example of this)
Our true nature is already Whole - it is the Totality of What Is.

You are obviously not stupid, intelligence is there but the quality of information that has been handed to you or that you have found is a mixture of accuracy and a lot of erroneous stuff – that is not so unusual.
Consensus reality is a fabrication – Common mind agreements are just a ‘virtual reality’ which has no foundations anywhere but in the minds of men. – Virtual reality has become an obsession recently in the techno-computer world. – It appears that people ignore reality in preference for what is conceptually fabricated and that includes all information. - Watch the popular media and observe the biased presentations of supposed facts etc.
Fact: 'People' are ignorance - a 'person' is a fabricated entity with no grounds in reality whatsoever - that is why clear information about Non Duality is an apparent threat to the belief system.
- Why bother what any others think and sprout about?
- It is all stories and all stories 'depend on time' and in the telling of them, they infer another time, other than this moment.
Fact: - There is only this moment and that is an undeniable fact, one that no one can prove or disprove - such evidence can only appear in mind and time - such fabricated evidence is a mere pathetic shelter for the mind, an umbrella in the down pouring factual evidence of reality.
Spirituality is all bullshit (well, mostly). - Most spiritual 'people' in my experience are so flighty and oh so 'virtual reality' and they hide from their own shadow.
- I have little time for spiritual pretenders and their gurus.
- I have not said or even suggested that I am spiritual or that I have attained any special state.
- I do not suggest that any state is preferable to any other.
- I do not suggest that anything should be done, except to ‘see into it all’.
- In life we apparently 'do' all sorts of things and yet when it comes to an effortless seeing through the habitual mind stuff, it all seems to be too difficult and impotency engulfs the seeker. - The seeker is impotency and the seeing is not done by the mindset of a seeker.
The seeker is a phantom only.
- Yet right behind that facade is the pure functioning of 'seeing-knowing' - or space-like awareness.
So, what you truly are is not ‘a state’. - But all your descriptions of yourself refer to states and qualities that are all transient. - Is that what you are?
- All states are just energy patterns and they 'appear' to 'come and go' in this changeless presence. - All you need to do is witness that fact a few times and the whole story of a 'me' begins to fall apart.
What you truly are is not coming and going - it is ever present.
- Usually, that is far too obvious to notice-because the mind is occupied by a constant flow of thoughts and in the middle of that is a 'me', which is engaged in those thoughts.
Some call that identification, which is the assignment of ones identity onto 'things'
- And in that conceptual realm we take our self to be that activity - but it all disappears every night in deep sleep.
Common beliefs about the way things are is actually upside down and back the front but few will agree because it is too challenging. - Only direct evidence in direct experiencing can dissolve those habitual views.
Cognition is 'a stillness' and a movement - Nirvana and Samsara if you like to call it that.
The capacity of cognition is from beyond that pattern (that movement) called a 'person' or an individual, body, world etc. - That is why we observe it all - (That may be too subtle a point).
- There is no choice in altering anything in that pure cognition. - It is untarnished by anything -always clear -always present. - The reference point in mind of being a cognizor, seer or a 'me' is 'in time' and that is what appears to 'cause' all the problems (but only for that 'me').
Cut to the chase - All there is is seeing - knowing. - That direct functioning cannot be turned off or negated-by any thing, and you know that 'you are'.
- Can you stop being?
- Can you stop knowing?
- Can you stop seeing?
- Can you stop that registering of impressions back in that space of knowing - where you are seeing from?
You can't get behind that. - Is there a problem in that, in the space-like awareness?
- Only when it vibrates (in time) into the pairs of opposites as the content of mind, does an apparent problem arise - a fixation and a time bound conceptual 'entity'.
Stop thought and it all disappears.
- I do not detect any serious question in your email.
Life will provide a conflict, inner or outer, and from that a desire will arise to escape from that conflict. - That is the drama of life (in time). - Life in its immediacy, and life is ONLY the immediate, it is not a drama - it just IS as it is.
The one that wants to escape or 'to know' is a fiction.
- Knowing that and/or not knowing that are quite different 'situations' in the relativity of it all.
This so-called 'teaching' is vastly different than most others. - I am sure that very few recognize that fact. - If so-called 'spiritual people' knew of the potency of this teaching, they would flock to see Bob in the hundreds. - I have done my best to spread the word but my website is just one amongst hundreds. - Even to get Bob's books published was extremely difficult and to get bookshops to order them is even more difficult.
But I deviate from the essence of it all.
- This teaching says one should investigate - investigate the self-centre and see what is there.
In making that investigation with some genuine intent, then 'something happens' and it is far beyond anything one can anticipate or imagine.
- It is really far too profound to have some idle chat about.
- Warm regards - Gilbert.

Gilbert, - Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my thoughts on your writings. - I really do appreciate it. - I have one last point, so let me cut to the chase and not indulge in idle chitchat.
- This is what is not understood: - Non-duality seems to be suggesting (sorry about the words, but they're all I've got!) an "awareness" that is not dependent on anything but itself. -What I don't get is: My sense of "I am" is being cognized by a kind of witness 'awareness', a sort of "knowingness". - But in order for any of this to occur, there must first be 'aliveness'. - Livingness itself must be the mutual condition of awareness. - If you're not alive, you're not aware.
- I don't get the implied premise in Advaita etc that this awareness is somehow not interdependent on biological aliveness. -(Even the deep sleep dormant 'non - I am state' is still actually alive.)
- The "God" mind, just there as an amorphous source of beingness and not dependent on anything, seems to be an explanation in the Hindu Advaitan spiritual tradition, and Nisargadatta's "that" (the'non-content/baseline-awareness’) seems to make just as much sense from an evolutionary/biological point of view: - The awareness in the organism experiencing its own original source. - Gosh, it's a bit difficult to get this across........
- But I have found your writing to be interesting on this subject of 'source', and that is why I have bothered to get in touch with you.
What actually is your experience at the deepest 'baseline' level?
- Can it be described? - Perhaps I've missed the point of it all, because I haven't experienced 'bliss' or deep peace.
- To sum up: For there to be the "knowingness", there must also be organic aliveness.
- Do you feel that this is correct? - Sincerely, Michael

Gilbert writes:
There is no one to experience anything as something separate and there is no deeper or shallower in 'What IS'. - There is presence and 'space' itself appears in this knowing presence - in that space objects, matter and gaseous substances appear - the whole universe.
Every speck of matter is potentially known by that which contains it all - space-like awareness. - Awareness is not limited to individuals at all.
Those (including gurus and teachers) who pretend to be special because of some attained state are really just 'clever obstacles' on your pathless path.
In taking oneself to be the body, the view is limited to one organism and so the view is naturally limited - but that intelligence energy is appearing as all things including all sentient beings.
The Knowing knows the organic - the organic knows nothing.
The living sentience is the knowing-ness - presence awareness.
A dead body is organic - but the eyes can't see etc.
The microbes in that dead body are alive and they consume that body - so LIFE is still there and everywhere.
Livingness, the life force is not negotiable.
Awareness is not negotiable.
Oneness is not negotiable.
The First Instant of Knowing is the pure functioning of that cognition - you can't get behind that.
You are That – Not Two-ness.
All the apparent parts of the universe are appearances of or in One Pattern, One Substance, one Fractal, if you like.
It all appears out of nothing and returns to nothing - so it is nothing - nothing but the one essence, appearing as this and that (many).
You are that knowing essence. - Whatever the mind tells you, in its translating mode, is just a concept and that concept can only APPEAR in non conceptual awareness.
I say, just be the seeing-and see that everything is registering in that cognizing emptiness.
Warm regards - Gilbert

To Gilbert,
Thank you so much for answering my email. - You inspired me to actually call up Sailor Bob in person in Australia, and we spoke for an hour. - He pretty much said what you wrote in your email, but at greater length. - It really helped me, and I saw clearly that the "I" is a fiction and that my awareness was usually wrongly and exclusively identified with it.
- He pointed to my natural awareness of 'presence of being' and said it (or I) was (IS) THAT.
- Full stop.
Stay with it, let it re-orientate me to understand that life lives me.
Not the other way round. - Apparently, it's not a mind or thought job! - I feel quite humbled at the moment, and glad there are people like you out there who are able to pass this message around.
- Well, I do hope this 'sticks' and "I" don't forget it all by next week!
Thanks once again. - All the best, Michael.

Gilbert: - Hope is useless - Knowing is all there is.
- You ARE THAT and whatever forgets or remembers can only be a limited transient view in the mind - In the mind it will constantly vibrate into new patterns of explanations and they all can only at best be a pointer at THAT - the source of all that is.
That is why Bob says: "Start from the fact that you are That."

The habitual stuff kicks in and a seeker will then say "How?" - And that question is the mind vibrating into a 'time realm'. - So knowing is foregone once again, seemingly.
So, to really get what he is saying one needs 'to BE That KNOWING presence' and see clearly what the mind is doing.
- In being that 'space of registration' everything falls into place, it flips over, so to speak.
Some have taken this advice and found that they are not that limited being that they believed that they were. - It appears that many need to be shaken up or in a crisis for that clear intention to genuinely investigate arise - the intent to really look into things and SEE what is....no matter what.

Friday, March 16, 2007

THIS moment is IT. It can't be anything else but THAT.

NEWS!!!
Bob’s latest CD is ‘a must’ and probably the best of the lot. – Even though it is very typical of Bob’s meetings, I found it to contain some of the most salient 'pointings' to Non Duality. – Order it (only) from Bob’s iinet website - a link to that site is on my 'shining' website.


Here is part of an email reply I sent recently(after many emails back & forth) :

"What you have stumbled on is way beyond all other 'teachings' - so much so that there is NO comparison that can be made.
I am not sure that you have realized that fact as yet.
'People' are caught in 'belief' because that is what 'people' or a 'person' is - it is just a belief.
The essence of KNOWING, that which you truly ARE, is not a person. - An apparent substantial pattern of energy may 'appear' in that Knowing Presence but if you look closely, you will see that everything, without exception, is an appearance in that knowing presence that you are.

The simplicity of it all, is just to look into things most thoroughly - see and know - that there is ‘no one there’ in that habitual space called ‘me’.
If this is not 'done' and that 'me' is not exposed, then the mind will just go on and on dividing THAT which has never been divided and so one will wander in the abyss of ignorance - like every other seeker.

The popular so-called ‘Non Duality Teachers’ are really just from the ‘dime a dozen box’ and their ‘ego’ is so obvious, it is on display for anyone and everyone to see.
That only works for those who want to imitate a ‘superior ego’. – Freedom from the bondage of self is forever postponed in the dualism and devotion of such teachers.
That may sound like a negative comment. - It is not negative at all. - It may sound sharp and may sting in that old feeling ‘centre’ but only for those that are still caught in the bullshit of time bound teachings.

This LIVING lineage or ‘teaching’ is nothing but THIS immediacy - shining
un-obstructively through various living 'ones who speak from the immediate knowing’ They negate the concept that there is a ‘teacher- pupil’.
Their words are profound and cutting to the core for anyone that has the capacity to hear what they are pointing to. – For the rest the habituated mind stuff will prevent that clear hearing. – That is just the way it is and you cannot force anyone to SEE or KNOW anything. – Seeing and knowing are already happening.
The ‘old ideas’ are the flimsy obstacles that need to be brushed aside as one investigates the self-centre".
- Gilbert



Today’s note:

This moment, which we commonly call ‘now’ is not fragmented except in the mind and even that fragmentation is nothing but a series of transient conceptual appearances in THIS moment. - The word ‘moment’ implies ‘time’ but this ‘presence’, this ‘moment’ has no beginning and no end. - Whenever you look into it, all you find is presence, presence of things, concepts, states, images and ideas etc.
This moment is not an object in space. - Space appears in it just as all things appear in it. - It is NOT ‘in time’ at all. - What we call ‘time’ can only appear in THIS ‘moment of presence’. – Is there any other presence other than THIS presence right now? - (with you right now!) - It cannot be 'somewhere else'!
Do you see that the mind is so often engaged in conceptual nonsense about 'presence' being somewhere in the future or past. - A dualistic teacher, parading as a non dual teacher, will postualte a perfect presence for YOU and it will be way up ahead, 5 years or more in the FUTURE. - And you fall for it! - Wakefulness can only be right here, right now. - I could say that it is baffling how this obviousness can be so elusive for seekers....its all shadows on the cave wall.

This moment has no known 'duration'. – One could say that it is all duration but all duration could not be labelled as duration at all – It is NO duration – Only presence. - No begining, no end - just THIS.
In our mental ‘terrain’ we imagine a whole series of moments back to back from the ‘beginning of time, right through to the end of time.
– For that apparent individual, the conception or the birth of that body could be said to be the beginning of time, for it. – Only an extremely ‘rare one’ would remember anything of that ‘beginning’ and any such declaration of such a memory would be held to be very suspect by ‘most of us’. – We measure everything by our own experience and doubt spring up when our own ‘reference library’ is challenged.
Without memory 'who am I?' - Still present and aware.
We imagine trillions of other 'moments' and a flora of fluctuations in states of being. - We judge all those states in memory while being stuck conceptually in (just) another state.
The gross memories or experience-ings stand out more than any subtle impressions from our experiencing.
If you pause thought for ‘a moment’, for an instant, then a clear view is ‘seemingly’ more present. – What we usually don’t realize is that that clear view is not ‘something’ that comes and goes. – All impressions are registering ‘as presence in presence’. – Self-knowing awareness.
However, for that identified mind, that clarity of vision seems to vanish or leave.
– And a desire to get it back may arise. – That desire and its ‘efforts’ can only be an activity that appears in that clear view and yet it is not recognized because of an attachment, a fixation, an occupation with that apparent substance.
‘Who’ is caught in the mind content?
How do we cut through that inadvertence in mind?
There is only one ‘proven way’ (that I am the knowing of) and that is by a thorough investigation of the self-centre.
An exception could be said to be brought about by an external ‘shock’.
– That may or may not come and one can ‘wait’ in eternity for it to strike. (That ‘exception’ implies ‘time’ and the ever present evidence is infinitely more reliable than anything that is anticipated or expected.)
As the web of associative thought patterns are abating, or being seen through, the profundity of direct insight is ‘dawning’ in presence awareness.
At all ‘times’, THIS is the moment of SEEING and seeing is KNOWING.
All mind content is subsidiary and it is ‘dead’ by comparison to direct knowing.
This is why all the knowledge in the world has no effect on any true liberation of the self.

The thought comes up that maybe my notes are not all that useful and too raw to be digested. -
Whatever I say in my notes is due to my being introduced to a radical and penetrating 'knowledge', not some written words or some secret. - Bob's 'pointing' directed my mind to investigate and that 'intention' subtly and profoundly cut through an age old way of looking at life and myself. - His pointers can assist in the same way for anyone else, including you.
I recommend that you read Bob's books and listen to his CD's.
Go and see him if you possibly can. - This 'teaching', if we can call it that, is showing sure signs of spreading. - I have witnessed its blossoming over the last 7 years. - It is no accident that there has already been quite a few who have 'emerged' from the 'common hypnosis' and the bondage of self. - These 'messengers' are not pretending to be awakened beings and so they avoid the common pitfalls of being a 'guru'.
- Links to some of them are to be found on Bob's Web Link page.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

An extract from "Everything is Clear and Obvious"

Bob Adamson's NEW CD "Gentle Reminders" is out now and only available for ordering from his 'iinet' website. - It is typical of any meeting at Bob's but it captures, in my opinion, some of the most subtle pointers, expressed in a gentle and thoroughly direct way. - So, even though it remains inexpressable, Bob somehow expresses it so well, that it defies explanations.
It is a beautifully intimate recording for anyone that feels close to grasping what the non dual 'message' is pointing to.

A point of interest from my wanderings:
I strolled into the Theosophical Society Library in Sydney a few days ago. - They have an excellent collection of books there. - The Reference Library has many rare books which one is free to read quietly without disturbance. - I flipped through the card index and found a few books there by Claude Bragdon. - He was the chap who translated P.D. Ouspensky’s
Book called “In Search of the Miraculous” into English from Russian, it was a book that impacted on me very strongly when I was in my early twenties.
Well, one of his books that I did pull out to read some of, was “The Eternal Poles”.
I had never seen it before.
Written in the early part of last century, it gives the impression of being written only last week although the pages are full of foxing and the style of the book is obviously old.
The words still convey his lucid mentations very well.
Here is a short quote from this now rare book:
“Truth is found by living, not by thinking about life”.
&
“ The habit of theorizing prevents us from feeling reality, makes us immune to it, makes it seem no more than another thought”.

In the same book he quotes Arthur Stanley Eddington:
“We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint – and Lo! It is our own”.


Here below are two short extracts from my second book, "Everything is Clear and Obvious" - with some additional inserted comments in italics:

From page 21:
I put it to you that the ever-present pure-functioning of ‘direct cognition’ is directly present as this ‘actuality’, in all its immediacy in every moment — and further more it is this ‘immediacy’ itself which cuts through ‘all time realms’ without exception. It does this simply because it is immediate — un-mediated knowing.
Nothing actually compounds into anything that can be held to be separate and/or independent from ‘this immediacy’ — this ‘living now’. All conceptual postulations about this (or about anything at all) can only ever ‘appear’ in this now (this presence) and they are either seen to be conceptual or they are believed to be substantial — and so they seemingly consume the attention in ‘the realm of extensions in time and belief’.


From further into the book:
One fact which is so often overlooked is that a restless mind cannot be molded into a peaceful state, no matter what practice or method you use.
This is an unfavorable statement for many aspirants and completely indigestable.
Even so, it must be pointed out.

(Almost all spiritual types will argue 'until the cows come home' about that and even the cows will get bored with all those endless ramblings and posturings of those 'biped creatures' - those 'strange birds' called 'man'.)

The main point to recognize is that the fixated point of reference called ‘me’ is the one trying to attain liberation.
- It cannot do this.
- It is no different than any other fixation.
- It is a ‘someone’ (a bunch of ideas), which appears as an attempt to escape its own structure of reference — more ideas.
Liberation is only found in the true nature of mind, which is a clear open and natural state of wakefulness.
You will never squeeze a restless mind into a peaceful space, so don’t try!
The one trying is the obstacle!
This natural state is unachievable for any ‘individual’ due to the fact that this individual is a series of reference points that only appear and disappear in the natural open un-mediated awareness. Simple Wakefulness.
- And beyond all that has been said about this, wakefulness is already ever-present.
It IS.
It is your own true nature.
- You have never been without it.
- You cannot alter this timeless fact.
- Without it there is nothing but ignorance.

Even ignorance can only appear in, or on, it.

The book can be ordered from a link on my 'shining through the mind' website.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Naked awareness is the true sense of self

NEWS FLASH: New CD from Bob is OUT NOW - It is called "Gentle Reminders" - Go to Bob's main website to order it - Do it NOW!
I can not recommend it highly enough, because to me it feels like a gentle initiation into the essence of the teaching, if we can put that concept onto it. - Since I have known Bob, I have witnessed a subtle refinement of the expression and even though I am so familiar with this teaching, it still resonates so deeply to hear Bob spontaneously point out the essentials and how his pointers are so directly cutting to the core of (what shall I call it-) 'your situation'. - Thanks to Bob, I have realized that essential nature and there is NO reason why you cannot do the same.
- It makes me smile when my friends 'attack' me over such statements - because it can only be a 'self centre' that could ever have a problem with another's declaration of freedom.
The essence that I am and that you are is behind or beyond 'the form' and it is pure intelligence - the one caught in the form will never find this freedom - it can only fade away.
In fading away, what was always present reveals itself - but not to a 'person'.

I have nothing but the highest regard for Bob. - Even so I know he may not resonate with everyone but I am damn sure I know of no other 'teacher' that 'points' so directly to the facts.

There is NO time bound nonsense in what he is saying.
Some of those, dare I say, more popular guru's in those "Non Duality Hot Spots" could really escape their own clammering, no peace, cramped space on the devotee treadmill, if they would just 'drop' their boring old stories of 'deliverance' in some 'fictional future time', which are just mere mind games, and be open to what Bob is pointing out.
- Very unlikely for them - but YOU can step out of all that nonsense and leave it to the past for good, as I did.
- I can tell you that the air is fresh and clean away from those sickly sweet, pretentious prisons called Ashrams or Satsangs and their 'podium prison wardens' called gurus.

(please forgive my tendency to exaggerate but I am sure you 'get my drift', as they say - I tend to get a little passionate about it from time to time - especially after hearing some moaning, groaning seekers going on about their miserable 'not finding what they are looking for' and just because they listened to some hotch potch swaggering guru)
OK - that's over - back to business!!


You can listen to a whole meeting of Bob Adamson's if you go to his page on my 'shining' website and click on the appropriate link.

Email response to the Note which appears futher down the page:
Dear Gilbert,
- Hi, my name is Jamie, I want to share a few comments about "this" with you.
- Talking in relative terms for ease
of expression, I think the simplicity of this is now being seen after a ridiculously long time of intellectual seeking.
- I liked what you said on
your website about getting a chemical "hit" each time a new concept is taken on board and added to the whole collection of blind knowledge collected
during the search.
- It's seen now that the search can never lead to this
'easy simple-ness' (simplicity) except if you say that it leads to it by driving someone insane enough to give up.
- But even that isn't really true because it's
readily picked up again after a brief collapse.

So sitting here typing this, or whatever the description, is this - there is nothing more.
- There simply appeared to be something more for as long as
there was a trying to find something more...the two things collapse together.
- And what's left is whatever was already there, but at the same
time, the infinite is known through this "whatever" - not in addition to or separate from, but somehow 'through' this relative life.
- That is how I interpreted
your comment:
How can 'Infinity' be known? – except as the finite appearance of ‘things in space and time’.

And finally having played around with both concepts of "infinite" and "relative", I'll put them down and play with something else!

Many thanks – love, Jamie.


The Note mentioned above:
How can 'Infinity' be known? – except as the finite appearance of ‘things in space and time’.
What can 'the Absolute' be known as? – except as the relative appearance of ‘things in space and time’.
Can you see yourself? - Same mystery!
Infinity is inconceivable for the mind. – The Absolute is inconceivable for the mind.
The Self is inconceivable for the mind. - The concept of or about the Self is not the Self.
There are many who pretend to be experts on these ‘subjects’ but they merely delude themselves in mind games and that applies to anyone else who admires what they expound.
In the spiritual realm, that 'cess pit' of mind games is a volatile concoction for continuous suffering and endless misguidance, all in the pathetic disguise of a 'self image' - of an 'advanced soul' evolving.
Like many of the science experts, modern spiritual teachers ‘set you up’ by enticing the mind into a flourishing array of conceptual notions, a ‘conceptual cage’ and they lead the mind on, further and further, into that endless conceptual terrain. – The intellectuals love that stimulation and the chemical ‘hit’ which this endless conceptual stimulation provides.
– One can feel 'pretty damn special' when one is full of ‘sacred concepts’ and esoteric nonsense.
These teachers will even pretend to have transcended the ego and they perpetuate all sorts of spiritual nonsense, just to 'service' that feeling of being ‘special’, mostly for themselves - (it is all selfishness) - They know how to make you feel special and how to make you feel like you are 'almost there' but not quite - and they keep you there tettering on the edge begging for him to pull you 'over the line' - They will not tell you that the line does not exist because they believe it exists and they believe that they are on one side of the line and that makes them feel bloody good and Oh so special! - they keep a 'conceptual you'-- 'within reach of the goal' by using concepts to trick you - it is mostly unconscious behavior and ignorance only.
- Is that not just a picture of cruelty parading as a loving being? - It sure 'looks like it' from where I am looking from. - Who cares?
Of course these teachers and their followers are only just 'doing' what they 'know' - they are 'patterns appearing', so until the 'news' hits home with them, they will continue with their useless activities.
- No harm done - to anyone.
- So, I make no appologies for being contraversial - a bit of 'spice' makes the dish all the more tasty - no?

The unique ‘teaching’ that I am pointing to (most of the time in my notes) is so direct that any notions of there being 'anyone special', whether it be a ‘teacher’, ‘pupil’ or anyone at all, is quickly put to rest – simply by pointing (in so many ways) to the fact that you are (that) 'presence awareness’. - Everything else is ‘appearing' in that clear space of knowing, THAT is what you are. - All inclusive! - so it naturally includes the one playing the role of being a ‘teacher’, beggar or king or even that miserable seeker.
– That ‘all inclusive’ is not so easily ascertained first off. – It takes awhile for that to ‘sink in’ and disolve those fabrications, those habitual ways that the mind has been operating (for so long - mind is time - KNOWING is immediate and not in time!).
In seeing through the facade, it is as though one 'reclaims' that clear space of knowing in an instant and the fabricated importance of 'others' fades away. - The view is found to be clear and obvious (as it always was).
With this direct pointing, only 'a rare one' will respond with a total recognition of what is being pointed out. – It is the essence of that response itself, which blossoms into full bloom.
'To be direct' is the key point.
- Do you recognise that you are that 'rare one'? - or does the mind jump in a say 'no not me, I always miss out'.
It seems that no matter how long I hammer at these points - it is still a mystery 'how' it 'strikes the bell' only every once in awhile - it only seems that the seekers crust is thick? - It is actually a thin flimsy shroud drapped over the mind - the smallest 'intention of investigation' cuts through it.
I can't cut that thin film or break down those 'walls' you have built up around yourself - you must 'work at it' from the 'inside'. - YOU are the potentiality in regards to this point and everything else also. - It is kind of pointless to say that there is no inside or outside as long as you still believe that you are bound by concepts. - It is known naturally by what you truly are - and the rest is just belief. - Do you have a choice? - Stick with the beliefs? - OR Know what is real?
- Direct and immediate is the key 'element' that cuts through all attitudes.
As Bob says: "Start from the fact that you are THAT" - and in that 'position' everything is naturally direct and immediate - even a dream is seen in the immediacy.
Any indulgence in the indirect details of 'this and that' can only be entertainment or some sort of relief from the rawness of the directness. - What we call normal life is indirect and full of ‘pathways’ and erroneous beliefs - a Dream in 'common mind'.
Everyone is just too damn busy 'seeking' for 'something' that they will never find 'out there'.
Stop! - Look. - See and SEE what is real by being what is real.
There is NO other Way!

If you still consider yourself to be a seeker, take a moment to allow the mind to settle and relax - let the mind rest on nothing at all - and see what happens to those ‘time bound concepts’ of being ‘someone in time’ looking for a sense of completion through ideas and concepts.

In the dropping of all concepts, ‘naked awareness in this moment’ reveals itself, if only for a brief ‘moment’.

It is the time bound concepts, the ideas that relate to time, which appear to engage the mind ‘in time’.
– Beyond that, the mind is nothing but this clear space of knowing.
That is not a concept! - To speak of it, I must use concepts - but that 'knowing', which is the essence of what I call this 'space of knowing' is never a concept!
In a most certain way, this 'teaching' I am pointing to, is nothing but this livingness, this moment right now, with nothing added and nothing removed – just as it is.
Naked, raw and direct. - That uncontrived 'state' appears to be too threatening for most(to stay with)- even though it is the freedom that has been sort for so long.

When it all gets boiled down to basics, that ‘time bound seeker’ is just another pattern appearing in (what I call) that ‘space of knowing’ - that you are.
See whatever it is that is occupying the mind – drop it – repeat that dropping until that stale old 'mindset' ceases to invade the mind with its stale grip.

Naked awareness is the true sense of self.

Note: A whole meeting of Bob Adamson's is available for listening from a link at Bob's webpage on the Shining through the Mind website.
Mark West's book "Gleanings of Nisargadatta" is a book that one should not miss out on. - For anyone who is familiar with "I am That", this new book is a 'powerhouse' of direct pointing.
Mark is holding weekly meetings in Sydney on Wednesday evenings - email him for details.
As I mentioned at the head of the page, a new CD of Bob's will be released soon and it will only be available from Bob's website - it is most likely the best one of the lot - It is very much like a gentle initiation - Keep an eye out for its release.