juni 2010 - edition 11

The beauty of ‘our’ powerlessness

Some time ago I saw the movie Babel by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
The film is a mosaic (with a beautiful soundtrack, by the way) in which, as the movie
progresses, four separate story lines seem to become more and more entangled. The
central theme of these stories is how humans fail despite the best of intentions. In the
end the central characters give up their resistance and give in to ‘what is’. The beauty
is in the shift from being a victim to being a witness of that which is happening.

Thinking in terms of
‘failing’ is always
personal because the
thinking mind tells you
that for you one
situation is preferable
to another. As Wolter
Keers said, if you had to
choose between a slice
of pie and a toothache,
you would choose the
slice of pie. But that, of course, is not really a choice. ‘Body-thinking-feeling’ wants to
avoid discomfort and pain, so it chooses the slice of pie. So you're not really choosing so
much as following the mechanisms of biology.
But there is beauty to be found in observing how these processes of ‘body-thinking-feeling’
react to apparent success and failure. The greatest surprise is that we seem to experience
this illusion as personal and real. And that really is amazing....

In this edition:
• Wolter Keers with no less than four examples of powerlessness
• Jan van Delden about powerlessness and forgiveness
• Interviews about our theme with Ad Oostendorp and Jeff Foster
• Douglas Harding about being Douglas Harding
• Zil Chezero mercilessly disposes of everything that could possibly be ego

Alexander Smit said it this way:

‘we humans know only two problems:
something is there we don't want,
or something we want isn’t there.’
With opposites like desire and aversion, hope and fear, good and bad, creation creates
itself. And sometimes, ‘we’ align with its natural expression.

[Kees Schreuders]

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Powerless four ways
fragmenten van Wolter Keers uit een video registratie

The powerlessness of 'I'

We have constantly changing self-images.

The moment one of those images
appears, we jump in, wrap ourselves into
it, and experience that image as 'I. If I
tell a stranger that, well, I can just see
by your face that you're terribly
dishonest, chances are that he'll be
deeply offended. Why? Because he
wishes to imagine himself as an honest
person, and because he wishes I imagine
him or her as an honest person as well.
So we attach a world of importance to
those images that appear in one’s head
for a few seconds, disappear, and maybe
never return.

For all these things: the body, the

senses, the functioning of our mind,
thinking, feeling, and those self-images,
there is a general term. We call it 'my personality. And the tragedy is that as long as you
believe in that person, as long as you believe that you are a personality, you will be its
slave. You are better off sitting in prison than believing you are a person. Maybe you don't
believe it, but I hope the day comes when you see that indeed it's so. If I had the choice,
through some magic trick, between once again believing I'm a person, or going to jail for a
year, I'd prefer jail.

Day in day out, we're busy expending tons of energy just so others will accept us. What
needs to be accepted? That image in our head. We fight this exhaustive battle, all for the
sake of images in our head. Let me ask you: 'are you an image in your own head? If the
answer is yes, then since you are always there, that image must be always there. You don't
need to look more than 10 seconds to see those images aren't always there at all. They
come and they go. And also, these images look this way one time and that way the next. So
really, we live as a kind of... not a schizophrenic, but some kind of polyphrenic who sees
himself as this image for now, and then another image and acts accordingly, talks as if, gets
angry, tries to be accepted, exerts pressure and... the list is long.

What you think you are is of course nonsense to begin with because no thought can contain
your entire life. So all of us are something unthinkable to begin with. Something that
doesn't fit in any image. Because what I really am, I am always. Images come and go.
Memories come and go. Expectations of the future come and go. But there is something
that,me as the child, the adolescent, the young man, and the person I am now all have in
common. And this is true for all of us. What is it? There is something that doesn't leave us
for even a day. You can point at it in different ways. You can’t describe it, can't define it,
but you can point to it. It's a fact that we are here, that we are always now. Every human is

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always now, is always here. We are always something like presence, something like
witnessing, you could say conscious presence. And it's in this sense that I use the word
consciousness. Quite effortlessly, every one of us knows: I am.

In the instant this 'I am is recognized, you'll see that at the same time there is a witnessing.
So all these things we were taught we are: the body, the senses, thinking, feeling, are
things that come and go, that are witnessed. What all those have in common is this
witnessing that all of us constantly are.

So my story, and I can only tell you about my story, is about peeling the layers off the
onion: 'I am a man or a woman, I am Dutch, I am European, I am left or right, etc, etc, until
all that remains is what I indivisibly, inseparately, really am.

Since for many years, decades for some of us, we've learned to consult our thinking, or at
best our feelings if we want to know something about ourselves, it is sometimes quite a
chore to convince that thinking mind. This is why a whole arsenal of arguments keeps
appearing. But what is asserted here, contrary to appearances, is not intellectual. The
intellect cannot understand what I am. The intellect is something very superficial. Feelings
go much deeper. But feelings also cannot understand or express what I am. Because when
feelings have passed, I remain.

Every fascination obstructs this realization, even fascination with this spiritual path. You
can't get around it. Look, in the beginning you live in two worlds: the world of facts, and
the world of opinions that you project onto those facts like an obscuring layer of dust. You
are fascinated by things. Why? Because you separate them from other things. You don't see
all things as yourself. In fact, everything you sense is yourself and nothing else. So whether
I look at a Rembrandt painting or at that face in the mirror, in both cases I see myself. Or
at that chair. So in total oneness, things are no longer fascinating. Total oneness is one
gigantic, let’s say, accepting the whole world as yourself.

The world of time, space and causality exists by the grace of opposites. If there is no here,
there is no there. So then you cannot have a world. If there is no red, there is no green, and
there is no world, at least no colored world. If there is no small, there is no large. Project
that layer of dust of the psyche on to this, and now there is no good without evil and no evil
without good.

That is polarity. First of the sensory world, secondly of the psychological world. The instant
you know yourself as not something psychological, but as presence, you discover very soon
that the whole world is nothing but witnessing and that this witnessing happens within this
presence.

We've been taught to project the witnessing on to these mental images. We say: 'I am going
to witness nature for example. And: This is mind, the witness. But it's not like that. The
mind is not the witness, the mind is that which is witnessed. We've been taught to believe
that the thinking mind knows something. Thinking knows absolutely nothing. Thinking is just
a little dance. Thinking is known. We know a thought came and went. So we humans, as if
by magic, have turned the object into the subject. Well, that magic trick has to be undone.
It's nothing but objects. And what's left is the witnessing. As long as a world appears, there
is a witness here and the witnessed over there. If that world disappears then there is no

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longer a here and there. Then there's something that I cannot describe, but I don't mind
calling it 'pure witnessing or something. But it has no object or subject. Witness and
witnessed are the same. Like in deep, dreamless sleep.

You only know you've witnessed something after it has passed. Only after a sentence has
passed can I say I heard it. Only after I've witnessed can I say; Yes I see a tree. But first I
must have witnessed it. Subsequently I can witness that same tree again, but first I must
finish witnessing before I can say I saw a tree. It's the same with thoughts. I only know I've
had a thought after it's passed.

Shame only exists by the grace of belief in the witness, belief in the self-images. You are
not a person, you are not a self image. You are not a meatball made of memories, fears,
desires, shame and all that. If you were, you'd be that twenty four hours a day. Water is
wetness, and water is wetness twenty four hours a day, and it's never not wetness, because
water is wetness. So if you were a certain person, you'd always be that person. But you
almost never are. While you're studying for example, where is that self-image? And what
about those memories of when you were a toddler, and who knows what all? Totally absent.
And even of that you're not conscious.

Something like pure feeling doesn't exist. Pure being exists. What we call pure feeling is
feeling without egoic involvement. It exists only after the ego has been exposed and is
gone. Never by fighting it. Just by seeing through it. Because when I fight it, I'm saying it's
real after all. But I'm not going to fight an image. Not at all. All I have to do, is to see it's an
imaginary world. Then it disappears by itself.

Insight, seeing through, exposing and the willingness to let go are lethal to illusion. The art
of really living is the art of letting go. It's a kind of dying of course. It's dying while this
thing (points to his body) continues to live. So the art of dying before this thing dies. Try to
beat it to the punch. And in the end, what dies? Only illusion. Something that never really
existed in the first place. Merely a way of thinking.

What I call wisdom is letting go of everything. It's about recognizing what you are here and
now. Every moment of every day. Of course you can't occupy yourself with that all day long.
Of course not, you've got other things to do; a job etc. but once in a while that flash, like: 'I
am always now. Like that. Or, 'I am that in which feelings, thoughts and senses appear.
Things like that. Just for a moment. Give it a chance to take root. But don't turn it into
knowledge, something you know in your head.

the powerlessness of Samadhi

My teacher, he – I have that tendency myself – told me off because that was not at all what
it was about. For two years he would tell me off regularly: 'Aha, there's Keers again.
Samadhi minded. ' What I would do, I would sit there, concentrate, etc. and I would just
disappear. I would sit in a chair, eyes open, but it would be just like deep dreamless sleep.
And I didn't know it myself. He knew it, but I didn't. At some point I discovered it myself.
Because I would sit in a house with two little kids. Very noisy kids. The help picked them up
from kindergarten, and they would eat in that big room I was sitting in, and well, they were
hard to ignore. And it happened one time that all of a sudden it was one o clock, and where
are the kids? Has something happened to them? I go upstairs, and there they are, in their

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bed. The next day the same thing happened, and this is how I knew I was in samadhi. So it's
easy to see that just as after deep dreamless sleep, you don't wake up any wiser. So those
samadhis don't teach you anything. There's another really ecstatic type of samadhi, a type
of LSD trip, in which all of a sudden you know you are one with God and all of that. But that
doesn't make you any wiser either.

There are folks, Rajneesh is one, and that fat guy, Maharaji, who have this thing, where
they touch you and you get this ecstasy. And you have to have a very strong constitution to
then still say: 'Yes, but this isn't it. You have to have a very strong constitution, especially if
you aren't familiar with these things. If you've only got the priest or pastor to compare it
with, you'll say: This is God itself. This is true, but it doesn't get you anywhere, because
after you're just as stupid as before.

My first teacher was Ramana Maharshi and he had, I'd say, a radiance, just standing there
you'd be on a whole different wavelength. So apparently he had these siddhis, and if I had a
question I would be answered by telegram. Without him opening his mouth. And answered
in such a way that the question was gone forever. Anyway, I arrived there about eight
weeks before his death, which was too short, so he passed me along to a different guru,
who became my guru for number of years. He gave me a lot of words with which to clear
away my knowledge based world. I continued with that for another three years and then,
all of a sudden, everything collapsed.

He sternly warned me about Samadhis, particularly because they are so addictive. I

remember a phrase by Ramakrishna, who said:People come to me like peacocks that have
been fed opium, to return day after day for a piece of opium. He apparently also had a kind
of radiance that attracted people. At one time when I was in Brussels, there were a lot of
people and there was this couple that would really just come to enjoy the atmosphere. But
that isn't it. At some point I just had to kick them out. That's the danger with all those kinds
of yoga. But if the ego – nasty word – is exposed, and you discover that it's entirely
imaginary, literally imaginary, images mistaken for your self, the result is an enormous
relaxation which indeed gives rise to that kundalini all by itself, when you're ready for it.
The first literature by Rajneesh that I came across, long before he was known here, said you
had to sit cross-legged, with your butt on the ground like this (hops up and down) and
kundalini would rise. But chances are good you'll end up in an insane asylum. I saw that in
Arnhem during the war, these ladies got hold of this book about yoga and pranayama, and
well, they were all fired up to get started. Three weeks later they were in an asylum. So let
everything be natural. That's something you can learn from the buddhists who took the
middle road. Don't force anything.

Well, this raja yoga of Patanjali leads to samadhi. I had it, completely spontaneously, when
I was a child of five or six years old. I've seen other kids have it. I think more kids
experience this than we realize. Anyway, I myself for example didn't talk about it to
anybody until I was eighteen. Somehow you know that this is something holy that shouldn't
be touched. I was five or six, just playing in the back yard. Unfortunately, afterwards I
made every mistake possible. And a few more I think. So actually, you know there is
something between heaven and earth, something that's more than the sum of its parts, but
you can't touch it.

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The second time this happened to me was during the war, when a very good friend of mine
– we were both in Friesland (province of the Netherlands), in hiding, we were both in the
same resistance club – read me a passage from some book by a Persian mystic, and suddenly
it happened and we were both in it. What happened next? Two days later I got depressed.
One of those depressions where the sky turns red. What happened? You try to get back to it.
And that wasn't possible. Little did I know. If anybody had explained to me how it worked,
perhaps it wouldn't have happened. But I had nobody. Nobody knew about it. Because you
as a person will try to reach it, and that's impossible. This thing is exactly the absence of
the person. Happiness is the absence of the person. Absence also of thinking. When you're
happy you're not thinking. We are taught to consult thinking if we want to know something
about ourselves, but thinking doesn't know anything about it. I know my thoughts, but my
thoughts don't know me. Isn't it true? Thoughts float by. I'm the witness of this. But these
thoughts don't know me.

the powerlessness of religion

Mind splits itself in two, and one half chats with the other half. The judge and the accused.
A lot of people walk around all day with a dialog between the judge and the accused in
their head. 'Well, you should have done it better, et cetera. So what's in the mind is
apparently divided into two here. And there are lots of things like this.

This is what most religions do. They polarize the human psyche; good and bad, god and
devil, things like that. Only in Hinduism they tell you this is all just symbolic. And that all
these gods represent aspects of yourself. Here religions came into their own. But a religion
should be just a way to get going. Religion is for children. Most people of course in their
minds remain children. But children can't deal with abstractions, etc., so you tell them
stories. Paul said: I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not
able to receive it, and even now you are still not able."(Corinthians 3:1-2) Well, religion, in
the East is the milk for children. And those who grow up will ask themselves: how is this
possible? Questions that arise in everybody, like, If God is good and love and perfection,
how can he create an imperfect world?. And either you let some pastor send you on a wild
goose chase, or you just don't accept it. And I didn't accept it. I said:this isn't possible. How
can God be omnipresent, and there still be room for the devil? 'Well, that's the mystery.
And I said, rudely, ...well I won't say what I said. No. It's not one AND the other, it's not a
mystery, it's plainly a lie, it's impossible. Or the Devil is God also. One or the other.

'Yes, my old man would say, 'that's just semantics. And for him that would be the end of it.
But of course there is an answer. There's a very good answer: it's madness! These are stories
for children. What we are indeed looking for is omnipresence. What is the devil? The devil is
a Greek. It's a Greek word: devil, diabolos. It means one who throws something between. So
someone that splits. Who splits one mind into judge and accused. That principle of
splitting, for example I'm here and the rest of the world is over there, that's the devil, that's
what that word means. So the devil is seeing God for something other than he is. To see the
light as half light, half darkness. That view, that way of looking, that's the devil. But in
institutionalized churches they turned that into a man with horns. That indeed is for
children. But this story can be easily explained. It's very logical. Our illusory view, that's the
devil. When we split that which is one into two or more. To not see that these are the many
expressions of the one, that's the devil. The splitter.

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Look, the world you find yourself in, at nine o clock in the morning, or three in the
afternoon, is nothing but an extension of your own point of view at that very moment.
Someone who's depressed has a lousy life. He's had a lousy childhood, is going to have a
lousy old age, and the whole world stinks. Three months later this same person is head over
heels in love. Now the whole world looks rosy, you understand? Because his viewpoint has
changed. Not the world, his viewpoint. Well, this is always true. This is true biologically. If I
concentrate on the sense organ called eye, an optical world appears. If I concentrate on the
sense organ called ear, a corresponding acoustical world appears. If I concentrate on
thinking, a thought world appears. And this is where we, it appears, are bound. But in
actuality not at all, because the I that is bound is nothing more than a thought. As is the
bondage. But anyway, the fact remains that if we deal with our mind diabolically, splitter
fashion, we create apparent bondage, and make our lives fall apart into a number of worlds
that correspond to our ever changing viewpoints. To the rain it always raineth, to the snow
it always snoweth. The rain never sees anything but a wet world, and the snow sees nothing
but a white world. So the rain says: 'The world is wet, not white. And the snow says: The
world is white, not wet. You understand?

Memory projects these things sequentially and takes a relative point of view. 'Sometimes
wet, sometimes white and sometimes dry. But what we call the world is simply an
extension of our viewpoint in this instance. If your viewpoint is that of thought, the thinker,
you will live in a thought world. If your world is nothing but light and freedom, the whole
world turns out to be freedom. So if the idea of being John, Pete, or Nick is gone, we turn
out to be pure freedom. It turns out that bondage was only an illusion. Thought, but not
real. This is why at the very end of the journey, Shankara said: Nobody was ever bound,
nobody ever searched, and therefore nobody was ever liberated.

If you let go of your self-images, it changes what you call the world. It loses it's threatening
character. Freedom means not having defenses. That's another one of those negative
descriptions. You can't say it's this way or that way, but we say: no defenses. Also, there's
no such thing as enlightened behavior. In contrast to what some institutions contend. The
great Shankara himself said: Finding the truth is not difficult, pleasing everybody is
impossible.

the powerlessness of achievement

I remember how my guru at some point told somebody, with an emphasis I never forgot;
'Remember, this is not the path of meditation, this is not the path of concentration, this is a
path of immediate recognition.

Nisargadatta told people: Look, notice the fact that you are. Effortless, yes? You don't have
to think about it. You know for sure that you are, yes? Yes, well, stay right there. That's
essentially the same as what my Guru called immediate recognition. This is a very
important point I keep coming back to: it has to be effortless. As long as you have to effort
to get it, it's not what I'm talking about. This that you know you are, for sure, effortlessly,
without thinking, that's what it's about. Don't you know for sure that you are?

So there's nothing to achieve, because you are what you are. They can take everything from
you, but not what you are.So the only thing required for you to know you are freedom itself
is to loose the illusion you are some man from somewhere. You are not limited to that. The

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Romans talked us into the superstition that we have to have a healthy mind in a healthy
body, but actually, what appears in what? As far as I'm concerned, the body consists of a
number of observations, and those observations appear in the mind. And not the other way
around. So it's all well and good if you have a healthy body in your mind, but don't try to
stuff the mind into the body. Mind doesn't have time and place and space. Mind is that into
which time and space appear.

In conclusion, we just continue to breathe, but we see more and more clearly that we are
not a thousand and one thoughts, not a thousand and one observations, not this, not that,
not his, not that. And at some point the box is empty. And then you discover that you are as
big as the world. The shape that world, the observed, takes at some point. They are very
deep-seated, these thoughts. I really tease friends that come to my house. There's this
black guy and I call him nigger. Not that I'm a racist, but just – he calls me cracker - to
shake loose this idea that you are a thought. Somebody should be able to call you the most
horrendous names, without it affecting you in the slightest, because you know you are not a
thought, and then all is well. Of course you don't try a joke like that the first time
somebody comes around, but the important thing is that you know you are nothing or
everything, which is the same really.

As long as you think you're a person, you could say: What's the purpose? All the things you
do in life, why do them? Because you want to become happy, have a job, save the world,
have a family with kids, or any of those things. It's different for everybody, but what you
seek is satisfaction, safety, etc.. So that's the purpose. The purpose of life is to find
happiness. Some people symbolize this as God or something, or the absolute or whatever,
those are just words. I'd say that you keep trying that which you probably think is difficult:
just to be yourself. If you love someone a lot, the biggest compliment you could give them
is to say: With you I can be completely myself . So that's something we search for. The
purpose of our life is to just be ourselves. Well, the moment we are just ourselves, we see
that what I am is of course something completely different from what we thought. Skin
deep. Thinking doesn't have a clue about what I am. Nothing really, zero. Because what I
am is hidden behind all eyes. I am God. Not the one with the beard, because what does God
look like? He doesn't look like anything. He has no form. Not. He has no form. Well, what do
you look like? Really you don't have form either. God is unimaginable. But what I try to
point out is that you are unimaginable also. You cannot be contained in any image. Once
you see this, you discover that those three letters GOD and that one letter I, point to one
and the same thing. There's only one unimaginable of course. As soon as you say two, you've
got an image. Once again you've got the devil. The split. So what you are doing, without
knowing it, is you're entertaining yourself. Why are you doing that? In a sneaky way, I've
brought the question back to yourself again. Well, so it goes. I think that in the end, we
can't ask a 'Why question, but only gradually withdraw from that world of opinions, and just
live, first in and later as the world of facts and observations. And no longer make things
good or bad. And in the end, even that is not the last of it. The last of it is what all these
facts have in common. That in which waking and dreaming comes and goes self-image and
itself remains.

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Inability, failure and forgiveness
interview with Jan van Delden

Jan, this Amigo is about the beauty of our inability'. Isn’t it a bit odd to link 'beauty' to
'inability', isn’t inability failure?

The inability is knowing that you are home - whereas Jan continues to think that he must
pull himself out of the mud, before he can attain anything. And he is forever failing to
achieve the beauty, no matter how hard
he tries. So yes, at that level, inability is
failure.

But that isn_t bad, quite the contrary.

This very inability is the treasure!
Because it shows that the being-
experience inside is already switched on.
It is already set to the eternal unchanging
side. It is exactly this contrast between
Jan plodding along and the being-
experience that makes this so obvious -
for those who can see it. Because if we
can_t see it, we keep on seeking the
unchangeable in the acquired,
changeable experiences of the
Jantjes.(ed.: Jan/John uses the word Jantjes/Johnnies to loosely indicate our sub-
personalities.) And that means, end of story_ because the 'being Jan'-thinking can never see
or experience that through which this 'being Jan'-thinking and his story is known. And
there_s little joy in failure...

Is there anything that can be done?

Even if there is no thinking, we simply experience. So how easy it would be if we could just
take notice of this fact, that our very own experiencing nature is the unchangeable in us!
But we take no notice of it. What is this inability? What seemingly stops us from noticing?
Nothing but the belief in an idea or in a feeling of separateness that manifests itself. Once
thought is believed as true or as your thinking, there is no experiencing your very own
nature and therefore no beauty. Beauty and our very own experiencing nature are both
invisible and intangible for Jan and his thinking and feeling. But being - not being something
but being itself – is not diminished by that. It keeps on supporting it-is-like-it-goes'. Being
carries each experience in a disinterested way and therefore lovingly, without connecting
now or ever to the world of Jan.

So how to recognize the beauty of our inability and how to bring our attention to it and
keep it there? That is exactly the story of the spontaneous recovery of the recognition of
the beauty in ourselves as it makes itself known. The difficulty lies in what thought says
about it afterwards. Thinking will relentlessly state that it does or doesn’t do something.
But there is no doer in our being-experience! “Oh there isn’t?, says the thought, What about
me? . Because, naturally, thought – Jan – can’t handle nothing. Thought will forever seek
experiences of good times, with lots of drink, food, sex, health, and buying anything he

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likes and wants, preferably of course with lots of attention from people who like to listen to
him and agree totally- and, well, all that's obviously not to be found in our being-
experience self.

So it is questionable whether a seeker wants to go there...

Certainly, because the mind, by default, naturally searches for experiences and says: What
in Heaven’s name is the point of doing something as uninteresting as investigating being-
experience, if it means doing nothing, means needing to do nothing, to be experiencing?'
Not to mention the fact that experiencing is not an experience, nor an activity that comes
and goes. Our thinking will say: How stupid and useless.'

Hence it is grace if we may do this anyway. Or fate/bad luck/chance, if grace is still a dirty
word for you. Whatever you call it, it can happen to you that despite everything, you are
still searching for that beauty. A search that shows its own inability: for the beauty that
initially you seemed to have experienced spontaneously and now have to refind – which
reduces the beauty to an experience – and so you are back to square one. You - Jan - are
not able to know the experience-less experience! To escape from this vicious circle, you
must not only be allowed to see that your very own attention is the encompassing eternal
being-experience-. You must also, with that same attention, be allowed to see through the
belief in the thinking, feeling, the whole story of Jan and his world and be allowed to see it
as false, as not true, as non-existent, and simultaneously not fight with it or ignore it or
engage it in any discussion whatsoever.

And yes, how to switch on the realizing and how to keep it switched on? My answer to that
dilemma: sweet-talk with Jan’s world, carry that whole world effortlessly but never believe
in it. That allows us the space to get to know happiness, peace and silence as our basis,
formerly fully unconscious of itself as ‘fineness’. Your thinking tells you that you can only
have consciousness of yourself if there appear to be an ‘I’ (subject) and a ‘yourself’
(object). But seen from our undefined being-presence, there is no separateness, only
knowingness. So for our unchanging knowingness there is also no distinction between good
times and bad times. It is what it is.

Boring for our thinking – which can only talk about the ‘fineness’ but can’t go there. And
then allows anger, jealousy, sadness or whatever in response to this inability. Because for
Jan the effort was and is seeking and finding, understanding, learning, finding security,
becoming aware, etc., etc., etc.

Well, you have found something, or rather it has found you. And then what happens?

It is very difficult to express in words, but I will make an effort to describe what happens if
you are able to see it. Fears, desires, or any top or flop experience whatsoever, seemingly
just appear uninvited into your being-experience. If you, from the rear seat/the wide-
seeing/the undefined being-experience, know anything, it is being aware without action,
without counterpart or someone who is aware. You know it, for example, from the sound of
birds and rain before your thinking makes a story out of it. Your thinking, like a parrot, will
say afterwards that you’ve heard it, as if you, as knowingness, didn’t know! The undefined
watching/witnessing sees the story, pretending to be an experience, pass by. Jan and his
thinking are themselves things passing by in our knowingness. Jan, the ‘something that

10
passes by’ is known by our knowingness, the silent ‘fineness’ that doesn’t leave us, as Jan
tries to sell his story as being true.

Continuing to talk about this subject, Jan-experience will say, for example: ‘I understand
that what Jantje experiences happens within the knowingness and I understand that I
therefore must consist of that knowingness, even if Jantje is afraid or is longing for a
certain experience.' How touching to see it like this (sweet-talking!). While obviously this is
an ‘enlightened-Jantje’-story that has nothing to do with that silent intimacy that is our
knowingness.

This is a very important difference between the simple knowing-being and the knowing of
the story of the truth. Knowing itself says nothing about the truth, because it simply knows.
This apparent contradiction is like “not letting the left hand know what the right hand is
doing'. The left hand keeps on telling an apparent story and you say, figuratively, if it may
be so: “yes dear, you are absolutely right'. In short you just let it pass, let it tell its story,
nothing more… but you NEVER believe the story. Thus there is no duality, only a happening
of simply being-there.

Sounds great, but what is it to Jan?

First of all you cannot and do not have to calm down the Jantjes. Their inability is your
inability. Because YOU as presence are already, completely motionless and regardless-
awareness' and not influenced. ‘Consciously seeing’ that Jantje is afraid is already another
thought. But what’s behind that is the so called ‘drinking tea’. In drinking tea there is not a
single activity or rejoicer, only intimacy. Such intimacy does not belong to Jan, it belongs
to what we constantly are. And if you don’t understand the above, that’s fine, because
intimacy is never about understanding but about simply being-there.

On Jantje’s level it is impossible to regulate or to hold on to that intimacy. On that level

you only have the stories about how it was orshould be or could be again. But in the story-
thinking there is no ‘tea-intimacy’, because it is the basis in which Jan is passing by. If
possible, keep this simple fact in view, and learn to keep it in silence. Our knowingness
never enters into a story. It simply knows it. Not entering into experiences in general is
already a fact for our experience-being, and that’s what I call “shooting faster' (experience-
being) than the stories of your shadow (being the experience). This insight will keep you
away from believing any experience and will keep you at a distance. Just as long you can
see without effort that experiences do not really exist or have never existed, and you can
see through duality as not true, without doing, or not-doing, anything for it.

So to carry on, it may happen that by this shift in position you’ll notice that Jan indirectly
calms down a little bit, mainly because YOU see a Jantje scared not calm/quiet/story
passed by - but that story consists of being-experience itself. We cannot leave being-
experience, so all we seem to experience, is being-experience itself and not the object of
experience, something beyond the being-experience. The continuous correcting is breaking
through the duality in daily life. For example by seeing that there is no outside-the-senses.
Until that bag of tricks is also seen through and has fallen away naturally and you see that
YOU, the being-experience, never experience anything. The being-experience
/knowingness, knows nothing, experiences nothing! So you know that everything you
experience cannot possibly be something other than your very own presence.

11
We undoubtedly are that knowingness, that presence, but there is no one in this being. And
as it happens, that is the happiness that everyone seeks ... and the reason for our sorrow
and failure. Because we already are the knowingness, we cannot get happiness from
experiences, and they will, if you listen to them, always claim to be unhappy!

It makes me dizzy... I understand that if I try to understand, I miss it. But that applies
to you just as easily? How has it come to pass that you nevertheless can testify that it
apparently has ‘happened’? And what ‘happened’ next?

Learning to keep sight of that what we are in practice in any situation, could in my case
only really take place after I no longer had to believe in the Jantjes as true. And I could
bypass them, even in their most dramatic and phobic moments, with the insight that in the
all encompassing first cause there cannot exist something like duality, that knowingness and
its presence cannot be an activity of Jan and therefore I am beyond Jan and his world – and
with that I no longer step into his story as true, however real it says it is.

This implied ‘unwar’ with all Jan-contradictions and also those of others. There is no direct
control possible of Jan’s comings and goings, nor is it necessary. But because you witness
from knowingness, you learn to follow Jan just as much as all the others as not yours. Then
you’ll find out that he can be exactly that oaf he always accuses others of being and he
becomes the story of just another passer-by. The knowing that this must be a dream in the
first case and that you are yourself in the first case and not Jan, kills the belief in the
reality of the duality – including the ‘I-am-Jan’ and his war with the others. With that all
the attacks of the others will be seen through, there is no-one inside who does, did or will
do!

The result is the end of the doer. By being able to see it thus you naturally stay out of the
state of war of the ‘I and the other’, even if in the story it seemingly just goes on. That is
learning to sweet-talk with Jan and the other, who do continue to believe that they are
separate beings. Note: a holy Jan-who-knows is also a Jan! But you also see that it isn’t true
and so you stop believing in their doership.

To be allowed/to dare to see this will sooner or later end the war with a past and a future,
with main and supporting role players. You see they couldn’t help it and strictly speaking, it
could never even have taken place. We have never actually been in a past or a future. As
the only being to bear all dream experiences, you are/were/will be present always. Time is
for Jan, not for you.

If it may be, you see that it’s all untrue and you let go of your Jan and his world. Then the
inability and the failure will also disappear, because they belong to the world of stories,
which at the same time becomes touching. Seeing this is being the beauty, and then the
peace and the intimacy of our being-first-cause surface naturally and permanently, opening
the deepest meaning of forgiveness to simply being yourself.

[by Pol Sturtewagen and Robbert Bloemendaal

translation: Rangeeni Franssen and Rahmat Haverkamp]

website Jan van Delden: www.ods.nl/la-rousselie

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The Last 'Step'. Waking Up Beyond Silence, Beingness
and Awareness.
an interview with Ad Oostendorp

I had an appointment with Ad Oostendorp in Arnhem, Holland on the subject of 'The

Beauty of Powerlessness'. We had a long talk about this topic. Back at home it turned
out that the recording equipment had failed. Despite me using a modern aid, the
powerlessness to record a conversation! How beautiful is that? Luckily we were able to
get the interview completed by mail and the result is below. Ad is a homeopathic
general practitioner in Arnhem. Since 1995, Ad has been giving Satsang.

Ad, the theme of this Amigo is: 'The Beauty of Powerlessness'. What is that for you?

This is such a beautiful

theme, Dick. It
suggests a depth that
goes beyond everything
that we know. Much
deeper than most
people may realize. I
hope you are willing to
give me a little bit of
your time to really go
into it. Because this
may explain why most
people never truly
Arrive. This could be of
the greatest
importance, especially
for those who have already had deep spiritual insights and experiences and may even
consider themselves 'Enlightened' or 'Awakened'. But who still, deep inside, have this notion
that in spite of all the experiences of Love, Silence and Completeness, there is something
essential lacking.

What I'm going to try to describe will be about the final and last 'step' and why it is so
extremely rare to truly Wake Up.

Dick, you know that I have traveled a long way and probably also that my Heart, thanks to
God, could not find lasting Peace in any insight or experience. No insight, no experience, no
realization was able to undo once and for all the centre of my life: the 'I', the 'me'. On the
contrary, in spite of all those insights, experiences, mind-, advaita-, vedanta- and heart-
'realizations', 'I' became only more and more subtle. The 'I' remained, whatever happened,
the centre of my life. 'I' turned out to be 'Realization proof'. Experiences of and insights into
egolessness, centerlessness, Beingness, Love, Silence, Death, Being the Witness, all of that,
only made the 'I', me, stronger and even – in a subtle or probably not at all so subtle a way -
more arrogant.

13
I Knew, I had touched the Kernel of the Kernel, I was Consciousness, Love, No-Mind,
Centreless and Free. I was overflowing, peaceful, radiant and giving Satsang. It was easy for
people to fall into Silence, Love and Beingness in my presence. I believed fully in what I had
found. I was communicating and living Truth. How blind and arrogant I was.

Happily I met someone who was able to show me this and made me see that, however
intense and deep the experiences were, they could never ever undo the centre, the 'I', me.

The 'I' continued rising like a Phoenix and kept on, over and over again, claiming Beingness,
Love, Silence, even egolessness for itself. Slowly, step by step, it became inevitably clear
that it was not at all about 'head-' nor 'heart-' realizations. It was not about knowing, nor
about not-knowing, it was not about what can be found, not about deep mind-blowing
insights or spiritual experiences, not about what can be Known, nor about the Unknown, not
about the Unknowable.

It was about that around which my whole life was revolving, both enlightenment and being
bound, both Love and being unhappy, both having and losing, finding and being lost. It was
all about the centre, the 'I', about me.

This is the Powerlessness, the ultimate Powerlessness. That everything you can do, have
done and may yet do, that everything you may experience, know, realize, whether you are
a Buddha or not, does not make any difference at all regarding truly Waking Up.

This realization, when it finally really breaks through, not as an idea or as a comforting
spiritual experience, is the deepest suffering a human being can go through.

When this pain is not dramatized, nor avoided, not embraced, nor run away from, not
stilled with ideas, insights, Peace, Silence, Realization or Witnessing. When every solution
and trick of the mind has lost, in the face of deep suffering, any attractiveness whatsoever,
including any advice given to you by 'those who have found' – then in that fire the 'I' can and
will disappear for ever, never to arise again from its ashes.

Only the pain and truth of your own absolute Powerlessness to deal with suffering makes
the mind fall apart.

Humpty Dumpy sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpy had a great fall,
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Then the mind becomes totally still and stops. This real ending of the mind, which causes
the true death of 'I', is not an 'event' one can locate in time or space and is absolutely no
experience. Just as you cannot register or describe the moment you fall asleep, or
experience deep sleep, or know where and when you have lost your watch - so little is it
possible to have any notion of this. The instrument to register it has fallen apart, has died.

You may describe experiences of enlightenment, localize them in time and space. Then,
there under that tree, on that day, there in the park, this and that happened. The

14
instrument to register and later to recall and describe is still there. You still have the sense
that something had happened. All of this has absolutely nothing to do with Real Awakening.
Mind cannot register its own absence, nor what happens when it is no longer there.

Real Awakening makes every notion of 'thereafter'or 'before' disappear, any notion of being
and not being, of Love, of egolessness, of Witnessing, of Silence, Peace and Centerlessness.
The mind has stopped and in that stopping you have died, never to return again. You have
disappeared and with that the need to and habit of identifying yourself with anything at all,
including Self, Being, Consciousness, the Teaching of whatever. Only the Beloved is. But
this is not realized anymore, because that which caused that notion, the mind, in the way it
functioned up till now, is gone. I'm not talking about the next experience of 'no mind',
which comes and goes. But basically, factually and irreversibly, you are no more. Whatever
happens, there is no way back. The centre has died, never to return again.

With the actual and factual dying of mind and 'I', that which is untouched by this death,
that which has always been there, since the beginning of time and before, that which
cannot die, that which is Alive and the source of Life, is all that is left now. Without the
mind, without you, to have any notion of it.

After this has happened, if and when the mind returns, it is impossible for it to have the
illusion of itself being alive. Mind, willingly and without any effort, without any reasoning or
reason, takes one big step backwards and becomes the servant of that which is beyond
itself and gives life to it. Mind realizes deeply, on every level, how mechanical it is, how
lifeless and unbelievably small and utterly incapable of lodging the Living I-I, as Ramana
Maharshi calls it. The sense of 'I' falls, as it where, out of the mind back into the Source of
Creation. When such a person uses the word 'I', this 'I' will never point to the body, nor the
mind, but to that which survived the death of mind: the Unborn. Although in social life he
or she will use the word 'I' like anybody else.
Some people call this Turiya, the fourth state, which points to that which exists beyond
waking, dreaming and deep sleep. That which exists before, during, after and beyond, life
and death, duality, Love, Enlightenment, Realization and Consciousness. This is what I am
talking about. That which is independent of mind, ego, time, space, sleep, dream,
awareness, consciousness, understanding, life, experiences and all insights. That which
cannot be found, nor lost nor grasped by anything or anyone. That which I poetically call,
the Beloved. This is what you, we, really are. This, only this and nothing else, is the Beauty
of Powerlessness.

In your answer I notice that the Beauty of Powerlessness is within everything that
happens. Be it Love, pain, happiness or whatever, in all of that the – what you call it –
Beloved may be found.
And that Beloved you cannot find because that is what you are yourself.
Sometimes your story seems to resemble a process.
Is that indeed the case? If so, what about that immediacy?
The Powerlessness to understand this, is that what this is also about?

Yes, the Beauty of Powerlessness is in the inability of the mind (thinking and feeling)
fundamentally to understand that which cannot be understood. One cannot put something
big into something smaller, like you cannot put that house in this cup. The mind is far too
'small' to apprehend that which is larger than itself, that which was already there before

15
the mind even existed. But mostly the mind does not accept this and tries to put everything
it touches into a framework. But Life is far too immediate, alive, intense, large and quick
for the tiny little mind.

Powerlessness in itself, in daily life, is generally rather painful and doesn't have very much
beauty in it. But when the mind recognizes its own inability to really grasp life and through
this, not temporarily but definitively, irreversibly and spontaneously, surrenders its own
authority, then life and everything within life regains its original mind-blowing
magnificence.

Then both Self as well as Self-Consciousness disappear into thin air. And in the
disappearance of the centre as well as the centrelessness, life is at last, for the first time,
seen and experienced like it really is and always was and always will be. Without you. You
are not liberated, Life is liberated from you.

Because there is no reflection whatsoever on yourself or on your own functioning anymore,

everything becomes immediate and spontaneous. Compare it to an intense love affair.
When, after a long separation, you are at last in the arms of your beloved, your attention
will not be with yourself at all, but fully with her or him. Everything you will say or do
happens spontaneously. You don't know why you do or say something, but everything 'fits',
flows. There's no more 'I', nor 'you, not even 'we'. You become unbelievably creative and
poetic. And there is that deep recognition. This is life, this is essential, this is what it is
really all about in life. And even that recognition is momentary, totally unimportant and
felt as an infraction to the intimacy.

In that intimacy past and future disappear, as well as all uncertainties, anxieties and fears,
any tendency to manipulate, understand, philosophize evaporates. Everything that bothers
you in daily life has disappeared. For a while you are no more self-conscious and your
beloved has become the center of your life. This is our birthright, not to be experienced
from time to time, but to be truly lived, permanently.

One could say poetically, that when somebody is awakened, everything attention touches,
becomes at that moment the center of the universe, the Beloved.
I am talking about an uninterrupted and unbreakable love affair with the Beloved. A
relationship without you. You have totally disappeared. You never existed in the first place.
The only real problem in life always was you, yourself. And now you are no more. Only the
Beloved is.

This is the immediacy I am talking about, in fact this is immediacy.This immediacy is

Nonduality. An intense, lively, vibrant and intimate Nonduality. Life is way too fast for the
mind. The mind always drags miles and miles behind. This immediacy cannot to be reached
or lived. One cannot even say that this Immediacy is living you, because there is no you.
This is called the Unknowable, the Untouchable, the Invisible and the Unreachable.

This living immediacy is already annihilating you. But all you ever did and ever do, is
postponing your true awakening by resisting it. You are escaping non-stop from the embrace
of your Beloved by trying, doing, not-doing, knowing, reaching, wanting and not wanting,
manipulating, hiding in Bliss, Beingness and protecting yourself with insights. What one can
reach is Silence, Peace, Love, Centrelessness, Egolessness, Being, Being the Witness,

16
Witnessing, etc. All that can be more or less easily reached, or could be given to you, by
your guru or in Satsang. But I am talking about something completely different. About what
lies beyond the reachable and unreachable.

I am talking about the Immediate, that which is without beginning and end, that which
cannot be found nor lost. That which has no cause, cannot be experienced, cannot be
realized. That which really is. Everyone is overlooking this, including those who have
'found'.

In the living contact with someone who has gone the whole way him or herself, your
illusions and certainties may be smashed. In the end leaving you with really empty hands.
You will be left with genuine Powerlessness.

And only then, when your mind has effortlessly, gracefully and truly surrendered, you will
know what is meant with 'the Beauty of Powerlessness'. But then you won't have the least
interest in understanding or knowing that anymore. In that intimacy with the Beloved, with
'that which is', the Living, movements of separation don't happen anymore.

I needed a bit more some time to let your answer really get to me, and this is what
came up: The Beauty of Powerlessness lies in not-understanding.
Could it be said that the beauty has always been there and will be there?

Yes one could say that. But that beauty is not experienced, because the mind tries to
understand what cannot be understood. Often this is realized intellectually, but that seeing
is not able to really stop this habit of the mind. On the contrary, when the mind does not
understand something, it starts up to full speed.

You see, you have understood it, but the mind does not stop, it just goes on trying to
understand, making conclusions, hypotheses, etc.

Still it looks like with these questions we try to understand the problem, while you say
that it will never be understood. So in fact this is a paradox.

No, it looks like a paradox, but it is not. By understanding, insights, experiences, the mind
does not stop, never, on the contrary. But when the deep pain of not understanding is lived
through deeply in daily life, without escaping to understanding, conclusions, hypotheses,
Silence, Beingness, Love, No-Mind, et cetera, the mind burns up in a natural way.

Understanding may be necessary for a short while, to keep the mind a little bit satisfied, so
it does not get in the way. That is why I sometimes answer informative questions during
Satsang. But the real 'work' happens in daily life. When the mind, through a reality check
and sincere honesty, discovers its own boundaries and Powerlessness and does not back
away from them. Sincere honesty is all we need, the Beloved will do the work.

Could you say that someone who has gone the whole way, is also an illusion?

For someone who has not gone the whole way, that is true. For him, or her everything is an
illusion, although he does not realize that. Did you notice that our sense of something being
true and or false, which is giving direction to our whole life and our search for Truth, is
basically illusory? How many 'truths' you once believed in, do you still believe in now? And if

17
this is so, why do you believe the 'Truths' you hold right now? This inability of the mind to
know what is true is the tragedy of humanity and the cause of most of the man-made
suffering in this world and the reason why so few people truly wake up.

The one who has gone the whole way, is vanished, lost, fallen apart. The arrogance and
authority of the mind has collapsed and does not and cannot rule anymore. The mind has
become the 'servant'. Truth has done its job and everything that is unreal, has died a
painful death.

If the collapsing is not hurting deeply and if truth does not destroy every illusion, including
the smallest trace of 'I', then it's not what I am talking about. If your daily life and every
aspect of it is not effortlessly, spontaneously, radically, deeply and fundamentally changed,
it is only a mind- or heart realization. After true Awakening, daily life cannot, whatever
happens, in the waking state and even in your dreams, from morning till morning, be about
'you' anymore. If there still are your wants, needs, longings, inabilities, hopes, future, past,
fears, anxieties, drives, or your Bliss, Freedom, Egolessness, Consciousness, Beingness and
Awareness, etc., the Beloved has not finished his or her job.

Look around, or within you. Haven't you seen all those hypocrite 'realized ones', who have
experienced 'the centre of the centre', who speak about the ultimate, 'know' all that can be
known, who live 'the Truth' and 'Beingness', who give Satsang and radiate, even 'are', Love
and Peace? But their mostly well hidden daily life is one big egocentric mess that revolves
around their so called 'not existing' 'I'. Don't you recognize yourself, maybe just a little bit,
in this ? I hope you do. Satsang is about Truth.

Could you also say that the intimacy of the Beloved is something that has all the
time/ever/now been present, but that there is something that stands in the way of
really seeing it? Is that at all possible, that there is something in the way?

Look at your own life and that of everyone you know and see that on the whole globe there
are only a few people, to be counted on one or two hands, who really live this intimacy.
Whether it is possible or not, something stands in the way. You could notice that every
second of your life. That deep feeling of lacking something very essential, that deep sense
that everyone holds in his heart, is unavoidable.

The more intensely Truth works within you, in your life, the harder it gets to fool yourself
and find 'rest' in something or with someone. Nobody has ever, if he is honest to himself,
found final rest in something that he has ever found. Some people need a long search, while
others discover this rather quickly.

Papaji said: 'never stop' and 'let the mind never land'. But most people who give Satsang
stopped and landed somewhere. And because they didn't go all the way, their disciples and
followers stopped where their teachers stopped. And now most of us believe that what they
offer is the Ultimate. Yes we, and unfortunately most of our teachers as well, are very
much afraid to test what we have found. We lack honesty.

Aren't we shocked by the fact that only our latest truth, the truth we hold now feels true?
Why do we base our life on 'truths' that don't last? Why are we not shocked by the fact that
everything we found had a beginning and thus inevitably will end? Our most intense, deep,

18
authentic experiences of Peace, Silence, Being, Love, even of Self, will end. The moment
you experience them, they seem to be timeless and without beginning or end. But they all
end, don't they? Although they give you, as long as you experience them, a feeling of never-
ending timelessness and authenticity. Can something that disappears be the eternal Self?
Why do we like to fool ourselves so much? And why, if somebody points this out to us, step
by step, do we resist what is so obvious?

This ending of Beingness, Witnessing, Love and Silence is the gift of the Beloved to you.
Showing you how illusory they are. Why are we running away from what the Beloved is
offering us? Happily the Beloved loves Truth more than we do and crushes in your daily life
all the illusions you are so willing to defend at all costs.

Disillusion is just another word for Truth.

Many of the questions from people who go to Satsang and have already found Peace and
Silence, Being, Witnessing, etc, are about: 'can I always uninterruptedly live from THIS?' And
many of our teachers are saying that if you go deeper into it, more fully, more total, more
often, with more trust, less mind, less fear, more surrender, not 99 but 100%, that then it
will stay forever.

As if an experience, or insight could stay forever. Yes we can always live from, as THIS.
THIS is always here.

But not the THIS you found, or recognized, or hold, or experienced, or was revealed to you.
Not the THIS you found in Satsang or through any experience, insight, witnessing, grace or
whatsoever.

This THIS is impossible to be found, and that is why you cannot lose it either. This THIS you
are overlooking all the time. This THIS you must overlook, it cannot be any other way. This
THIS does not need a mind, insight, experience, realization, Awareness, Witnessing,
Consciousness. This THIS is not something that comes and goes, it has no beginning and no
end. This THIS does not disappear at the dentist, in the middle of a fight, or at the moment
you almost get hit by a car. THIS is what you really are, THIS is YOU. From what you really
are, separation is impossible.

Maybe many people who hear this will affirm that they know this THIS.

But please, be honest. It's about your life.

Is this THIS always, uninterruptedly experienced, even in deep sleep and in your dreams?
Is this THIS always there, or does your mind or understanding tells you that THIS is always
there or should be there?

When this THIS is varying in intensity, can be more or less present, more or less muddled, if
it is sometimes more in the foreground and sometimes less, if it is dependant on any
situation or on your awareness, attention, consciousness and disappearing in deep sleep –
then this THIS is not the THIS I am talking about.

Our Heart can never find peace in something that can and will disappear.

19
If you really want to go for it now, I invite you to flush everything you have ever found, and
thus will inevitably disappear, down the toilet. To give up everything that is holy and true
to you. All your insights, all your experiences and especially what you take to be your
Being, your Self. And then to stand naked and vulnerable. Allow the sword that is hidden
under the wings of your Beloved to do its final job.
Just don't walk away and don't hide in an idea, concept, experience, in Peace, in Silence, in
Being or in Witnessing.

When you are hiding in Love and Peace, in any Insight, in Being the Witness, etc. then the
Beloved cannot touch you.
There the Beloved cannot pierce your heart and annihilate you. Nobody has ever Woken Up
in a state of Transcendence, Love, Beingness, Meditation, Samadhi. There you cannot be
touched. And whatever your state is, it is still your state. And your mind is registering it all.
When you are in that state now, also these words cannot reach you. You are hiding in your
Refuge.
But the Beloved is waiting patiently, day by day, night by night. And the moment you come
out of this state, Truth will catch you.

Unfortunately, most of us will, at that very moment crawl back to our Refuge. Because it
feels better, authentic, eternal, true and you made yourself believe that there you are at
Home.

But there is a Home that cannot be shattered, that is not a refuge or retreat, but what is
the centre of Life, where that intense Heartbeat is felt.

Many of us are looking in the lake, mesmerized by the reflections in the water. I'm throwing
little stones in the water, that's all that is needed. I'm breaking your illusions.
If you don't hold on to them, not waiting till the waves are gone again, but immediately
looking away from the water, you cannot miss what I'm talking about.

You will have to die, before your physical death, and together with you all your illusions
will disappear, never to return again.

No way back!

From what I call 'Being Lost', there is no way back.

There is a way back from understanding, or the experience of 'Being Lost'.
But I hope we don't play that game any more.

No way back from Being Lost, no games, no concepts. Is that the 'Beauty of
Powerlessness'?

Yes Dick, I cannot phrase it any better.

And then there is this intangible divine beauty. Then there is no 'having reached' nor 'found'.
But in daily life a kind of 'being in tune', an 'intimate immediacy', an 'innocent vulnerability',
which is not the result of any insight, or any movement, or understanding or direction from
the mind.
The beauty of True Innocence and, thanks to God, the mind is not there to register and

20
later on to claim this.
You know, many who think they are 'realized', are floating, as it were, like a Buddha blissful
above the earth, untouched, invulnerable and safe. That's the ultimate dream and
fulfillment of the ego. That's why Love, Egolessness, Radiance, Centrelessness, Peace,
Being, Witnessing, Wisdom and Silence are so attractive for us. Ego likes very much to feel
like, be like, even to be God.
That's why the ego will never die, never stop in a state like that. That's why, when this
state ends, you are willing to pay any price to crawl back. Honesty is so rare and so deeply
needed.
If you really want to, fool the whole world, but not ever, never ever fool yourself.

What I am talking about is far beyond 'enlightenment' and… there is no way back any more!

The Beloved, Life, is intensity and is touching us all the time: In the dying of the
rainforests, the smile of a child, the illness of your grandmother, the starving dog, when the
cat you love immensely catches a bird, in the eyes of the officer that gives you a fine and in
the eyes of your lover.

I found nothing, I lost everything. I know nothing, have nothing, am nothing anymore.
Directionless, utterly lost. All there is left is the heartbeat of life, intense, in all its
greatness and painfulness, in which even the 'I' may do its imperfect little dances.
And if nobody asks me to reflect on this, there's no possibility, nor any interest to register
and know about all this.
I'm like a dead fish on the barbeque, not interested if the fire is hot and whether the herbs
are well chosen. Ad is gone. Not my centre, not my ego, not my 'I'.
No, I'm gone, never to return again.
Although people who know me, see that I'm very much alive.

Life is unbelievably beautiful, and if you are willing to allow that, life will tear your heart,
your soul apart, leaving no traces whatsoever of you.
If you let life do its job and don't stand in the way, everything that may still be left of you
will disappear in Shiva's dance.

This Heart dances, just for the love of expression.

So few people know the living open secret, far beyond Love, Peace, Silence, Being,
Witnessing and Enlightenment.
Life is so simple!

Being flooded and touched by little things, by your girlfriend, your children, the birds that
sing, leaves flirting with you, the smells of the wood, the noise of an airplane flying over,
the insecurity of life and love, the suffering of humanity, the whole planet.
Never even the tiniest movement away from the living, the Beloved.

Never having to leave is being Home.

Is it not a Divine gift, to be allowed to be here as an ordinary human being. In all our
vulnerability, with our imperfections, permitted to make mistakes, say sorry, without
holding anything back, without keeping up appearances, fully and totally, without running
away from anything. To live in the middle of the stream, not at a safe and distant shore,
without any need to escape from life and with a deep desire to taste every aspect of it.

21
And far, far beyond this little Ad, there is the Heartbeat of the Cosmos, the eons that made
all this possible. The timelessness, the beginning and the end. This also, this also, is You!

Life, I, You, shakes on its fundaments when a child cries through negligence. And nobody
sees, hears, and feels this.

How can that be?

God is not hovering like a Buddha above the earth, God does not get kicks from spiritual
experiences, insights.
If it is about Transcendence, why then is Divinity flowing over into creation? The Divine
weeps and laughs along in all His or Her vulnerability. Forgive me these words, words about
God and Life and everything else, as if there were a duality. But THIS cannot be put into
words. These words cannot speak truth, they are not 'filo-, theo-, advaita-sophical', they
are merely poetry.

To make it very clear, what I write here is not the truth: on everything I say there will be
always a 'yes, but…' THIS one cannot describe, one cannot even point at THIS.

These words are only an insufficient, be it loving, expression of that which cannot be
expressed. When I read this back, I cannot back it up anymore. Don't judge me on these
words. Truth is not to be found in them.

This heart is now speaking, this heart that bleeds and loves and is so vulnerable for the
ambitions of egos, blinded by their own radiance.

The mystery of Satsang is this bleeding heart…

I live in my own little world and share Me, this Heart, with anyone who is sensitive to it,
with anyone who longs for this, but also is able to cope with the intensity of it.

I'm not standing on top of the mountain. I'm hiding in the bushes at the bottom of the hill,
invisible, almost unrecognizable, just a 'nobody'. This heart loves to 'work' hidden, invisible
for people who don't want to really go for it. Still, how often didn't I say: 'come, come,
come again'?
How often didn't I invite you to leave your own little safe place, in order to really meet, to
feel, to embrace life and everyone, everything in it.To live in the middle of this burning fire
of intimacy, immediacy, loving honesty and truth.
But there are not many people that can handle this vulnerability, the intensity of it. You
will never be the same again, when you really allow the Beloved to enter your heart.
Ramana Maharshi once said that true realization takes place in the Heart. And then, finally,
go beyond everything, including the Heart.

Thank you Ad, for this interview.

On the website of Ad I found a number of beautiful poems. I would like to share the one
below with you:

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 These words
are
only for you

These words
are
soaked in Silence

These words
are born out of Love

These words
tell
what was never told

These words
say
what cannot be said

These words
will
never be understood

These words
are
nothing without You

Ad

[by Dick de Boom]

23
Somehow it can be shared
June 2008 a young Englishman, Jeff Foster, came to Holland for the first time. When I
talk to him, he tells me he is surprised to find himself doing the meetings and coming
to different places in the world. At first he didn’t speak about ‘it’, because he realised
it cannot be communicated. When it was seen, it was too simple to talk about. But
then he was asked to speak to people and people came to listen. During the interview
he says: I never get bored talking about this, it is always new, always alife. And the
visitors of the meetings in Amsterdam will certainly recognise that. Jeffs expression of
what was seen sounds very fresh, full of life, and it carries the power of silence.

You want what you are talking

about to be very accessible to
everybody?

What I am pointing to, this openness,

simplicity and spontaneity, is
something that at some level we all
know. We all have been newborn
baby’s. As adults we seem to have
moved away from this and became so
solid. From my perspective it is
simplicity itself and it is revealed in
everything. It can’t be possesed or
owned, so it is available for everyone
all the time. That is why I like to
stick to keeping it very simple, very
ordinary and accessible.

Everybody has experienced it also as an adult, playing with childeren, walking in nature,
listening to music. There is no past and future then, no time and space. There is just what
is happening. Those moments there is no one there, life is just flowing. As it is always, it is
just living itself. To me, awakening is not ‘out there’ or special. It is very ordinary and
hidden in the ordinary things of life. Apparently we were so busy looking for something
more that we missed this.

So you don’t explicitly refer to traditions like Advaita, Zen, etc. that speak about non-
duality?

This freedom cannot be contained in a system. I don’t reject the traditions and people may
call me an Advaita teacher, but I would never call me that myself. It is something that
cannot be taught, but somehow it can be shared. So I would not say from myself that I am a
teachter. It is a pointing back to something that is already there and that is there for
everybody, but that is overlooked because we are so busy seeking.

Ultimately it is not about the words. Traditions are wonderful and can be very appropriate
in some point in a certain situation, but what was seen here is that it is everywhere in all

24
ordinary things of life. So we can call it nonduality or oneness, all very nice words. Being an
Advaita teacher could become another identity though.

But other people will call you that anyway?

We can’t control what stories people tell of you. The mind always make stories, it gives it
something to do. The beauty of this is: it can’t be understood, it cannot be found by
intellectual understanding. It is in the mystery of everything, in the not-knowing, it is
where we are. The mind will go in circles trying to understand what can’t be understood.
Over here this trying to understand is what fell away. Then it is nothing you ever thought it
would be.

So the mind, always seeking and active is what is in the way of awakening, how will it
give up?

In the story of Jeff: some years ago I got into this intense depression and misery and to
escape that I started to seek for answers. This idea of awakening seemed to promise the
end of that suffering. I read about hunderds of books, meditated for hours, did self enquiry
etcetera. I had all kind of spiritual experiences and glimses of oneness. But the seeking
never seemed to end, and I got more and more desperate. The energy always was moving
into a future, the goal of the mind was now this awakening. All I can say is that I never
found what I was looking for. As long as I was looking for it, there was this assumption that
Jeff was going to get this awakening. The seeking reached a point of despair and in that
despair something opened up. The mind failed to get what it wanted and after enough
failure it just exhausted itself. It gave up and it was seen clearly that there is no me to get
awakened. This freedom that I was looking for was always there. The very effort of grasping
the freedom makes it appear as if it is not here. I wanted to escape my prison, but the
attempt to escape the prison is the prison. Looking back it seems funny, but at the time it
was very serious. In the collapse of the mind the secret is revealed and it is revealed in all
the ordinary things of life. It is in a chair, the floor, the air, in all things. So looking for the
extraordinary is creating the ordinary. As long as I was looking for something more out
there, there is the assumption that this is not enough. They always go together, the search
implies that this is not enough.

This search is there not only in spiritual awakening, but in all what people do and
desire?

To a seperate person life is never enough, there is always this longing to come home, to
reach wholeness. This search for wholeness takes a million forms. It isn’t only spiritual
seeking, it is also the search for money, for status, for being somene special. It is this
movement to find some sort of completion, to come home. We often have this idea that
spiritual seeking is in some way ‘higher’. That can be a real trap. There is no difference
between I am a millionaire or I am the greatest pop star or I am a spiritual person, it are all
identities.

What was seen is essentially that ‘me’ is the illusion. It doesn’t matter what the me is. We
put so much effort into becoming someone, that is is quite shocking to see that the whole
thing is a dream. This whole me, past and future, where is it? I just couldn’t find it

25
anymore. It had become just a thought. It is a kind of death to see that: I don’t really exist,
I am just a thought.

It was seen right in the midst of misery and confusion and despair. Right in the heart of not
getting what I wanted. So if you are 5 or 100, if you are a millionaire or a beggar, it is
possible to see that I is just an illusion.

You talk to people, they listen and how will this help awakening in them?

I don’t even hope or expect that awakening will happen. It will happen when it happens.
Also I don’t feel it is my mission to wake people up. I see this as a sharing, like meeting
friends. I have no sense Jeff is doing this. The words come out, I hear the words come out
and sometimes it shocks me. I, Jeff, coudn’t have done it. This is oneness expressing itself,
it is oneness meeting itself.

Somehow, I don’t understand how, it can be shared. In that sharing there is no longer me
and you, no longer Jeff teacher and you pupil. In sharing there is just oneness, oneness
appearing as this body, oneness appearing as that body, oneness looking through these
eyes, oneness looking through those eyes Oneness appearing as the chair, as the floor...
When people ask questions it are all questions I also asked. I never got answers to any of
these questions. I am not a teacher because I never answer anybody’s questions. There is
just circling around them till the questioning dissolves and it is seen that this is already
complete. In itself life is whole, complete, it is already oneness. It is oneness expressing
itself, oneness meeting itself. People who come to the meetings sometimes say that the
words leave them confused. The moment you talk about nonduality, there is paradox after
paradox. But beyond the words something is happening. It is like a feeling: I don’t
understand it, but somehow I know it, somehow I have always known this. This is what
these meetings are about, not about Jeff trying to teach.

Do you think there is some kind of a process before someone is seeing this?

There appears to be, but when it is seen, it is seen that there is no past. Of course we can
still tell the story about the person Jeff who was miserable. But it feels like a story, as a
dream. It might be a story about someone else, the whole past- it is gone. This is what is
more amazing, so alive, so fascinating. This is constantly changing, now and here.

When you meet people, in the heart of that, there is nobody there. It is the most natural
thing and true for all of us. It is not a special state I am in. It is true for us all that the past
is just a story, what we are as a person is just a story. As I said earlier, we experience that
all the time. Mind doesn’t want to stay with that for long, it always wants to seek again. So
the mind comes back and makes everything seem solid again, but it always is falling away
also all the time. We don’t notice it, because there is nothing to notice. When you are not
there, there is nobody there to notice.

When the mind knows as information how that works, it can at least be open for that?

It can see: o, it is that simple. That is what happens in the meetings. Questions fall away. It
is simpler than every thought. Relax into that , you don’t have to meditate for thousend
years, it is already trying to show itself in everything. Everything is trying to teach us this.

26
When you see a flower and you are absorbed in a flower, this is destroying you. Maybe we
are so attacted to nature, because in nature there is no grasping. The trees and flowers
allow you to be nobody, to be not separate.

All spirtitual teachings are pointing to this. But they become a practise, something to do, to
put effort in, another addiction. On the other hand, when you find yourself meditating, this
is exactly what is needed. In my case it was seen that life itself, whatever is happening,
talking, sitting ouside and eating breakfast, whatever, that is already it. Trust that the
practises are there when you need them, whatever they are. Ultimately you are not doing
this, there is something far beyong the mind, that the mind can never understand. Life is
actually always trying to show us things are outsinde out control. When this relaxation
happens there is no way of knowing where this will take you when this starts to resonate.
You might be the greatest meditator in the world, become a spiritual teacher, go off and
make a million on the stockmarket or anything else. There is no way of knowing this. It is so
clear in the case of Jeff. I found myself doing this. A year or two ago, when you would have
said that I would be talking to people and travel around the world I would have thought you
were crazy, but life takes you there. It is a mystery of life, that it takes you where you
need to be, because you are not separate from life.

The theme of this Amigo is 'the beauty of our powerlessness? Of our not-being-able-to…
You said already a lot about that.

In my experience the intense suffering was necessary to wake me up. Your whole life is
given, everything is trying to wake us up, even pain or suffering. There is a beauty in all the
seeking and suffering and longing to come home.

Home is so close, it is here. Then it is seen that you were already home and have always
been home. It is astonishing, it is the mystery of creation that this is even possible, that
there is apparent separation from oneness and seeking – some people go all over the world-
and then coming back to itself. Seeing it has always been there. The whole thing unfolded
in complete innocence. Mind is innoncently looking for something it can never have, for
something that has never been lost. Somehow, yes, there is a real beauty in that.

Website: www.lifewithoutacentre.com

Jeff published 2 books with Non-Duality press

• Life without a centre: awakening from the dream of separation
• Beyond awakening, the end of spiritual search

[by Patrica van Bosse]

27
You only know what you are not
an interview with Rob Ek

Rob Ek frequently writes short pieces about non-duality on his (Dutch) weblog and if
you want, you can post all your comments on that website immediately. The fact that
this is possible shows how easy this site is to read and thus distinguishes itself a little
from the usual broad reactions to questions about searching, although you are free to
ask those there, too.
Maybe that's the thing about Advaita.
The extreme effort needed to try and
explain the way it is keeps the
searching mind captured in its own
thinking too much. Is one summary
really any clearer than an other? And
to top it all: the places which searchers
take off from (their thinking, their
mindset) can vary a lot. So what's
obvious to one person is abracadabra!
to another. You can find further explanation on this at Rob's other (Dutch) website
Chakraplein.
Rob is a sociologist and chakra therapist and has a very clear vision of the relationship
between therapy and non-duality. All these concepts are to be found on his website, as
well as lots of other things. Rob doesn’t have any plans to give satsangs for groups, but
is more focused on the direct recognition that occurs when working one-on-one with a
client/searcher in the areas of consciousness, energy and reactions of the body.
In the free time before our conversation, where the words 'please don’t go hard on me
now' slip out of my mouth, Rob reacted that this might just be the right way to start this
interview.

So to start off right away: the daily Being (together)… Actually no questions arise from
there. Questions maintain themselves, they keep reproducing themselves.

The daily Being.. Well.. You can only speak for yourself. You are the only one experiencing
this daily Being directly. The only thing you can do with other people is assume they have
the same daily experiences and the same kind of consciousness. But you’re never a hundred
per cent sure. Right here, all you can do is take account of yourself and your own space of
consciousness.

What we wonder about is if it’s not this daily Being that makes the questions pop up. Life
has the unpleasant habit of handing out a stream of dilemmas and disasters. Life is very
unpredictable, proverbially so. It makes you want to question it. You experience
hindrances, times when everything’s against you and you can’t seem to get where you want
to get. Why? Why me? All you really want is a solution, fun things to do, to be happy and
find that inner peace. And that’s where the searching begins.

Are they even still out there, these fanatical searchers?

28
Yes, absolutely. Years after years they keep searching, like their life’s hanging by a thread.
But searchers are not finders, unless they realize searching stands in the way of finding
what they’re actually looking for. Searching is the movement in time, and whatever you
seek lies in the Timelessness. The source of all movement. In that Source, no judgement
fits. No good and no bad. Everything is what it is and you can’t change it. Fanatic searchers
don’t want to hear that. They want to find results, that one definitive answer, a sentence
that solves it all. Like some sort of penalty in the last minute of extra time in the soccer
World Cup Final. But questions move, ironically, away from the Source.

Because who even asks the question? The unknowing thinking! Who or what gives the
opportunity to be able to ask those questions? That is the only question that matters. That
gives you the immediate direction to who you really are. And that’s not a word, but a fact.
Life itself. The space of knowing, where the questions and the answers as well as the whole
world appears. That Knowing Space has always been there. That’s what you are. You don’t
have to change that or do anything about it. And that’s what makes searching such a
complete nonsense. Try this. Tell yourself ten times in a row: I exist and then stop
completely. Now there’s silence. There is no thinking for a little bit. Do you disappear? Do
you fall apart? Are you gone all of a sudden? No, of course not! You’re still there. You’re not
your mind. You are consciousness. And in this consciousness there’s a wide variety of things
that can appear.

But, problem is, a lot of those fanatics only want the Big Experiences they’ve read about.
But then you’re not talking about Being, but about (temporary) experiences.

An old theme of Zen is, how we get to a wordless communication from out of the
wordless… The one thing that everybody owns long before we were even born.

Yes, I was just reading about it in the book of Thomas Hoover: ‘The Zen Experience’. A lot
of zen practitioners struggled with that question. That’s actually really strange. When
you’ve seen that there isn’t an independent person and that everything and everyone is
One, or in other words, has the same Self, then it must be clear that we are all that same
‘Ocean’. We don’t really need transmission. You’re all ‘That’ so there’s nothing to search
for or to transfer, just the recognition that this is how it is. And even the time of
recognition is not under your control as a person. Neither is it under the control of the Zen
master. It can sometimes look like it when it’s your time and it comes to you because of
something your Zen master did or said. But it’s nothing more than a recognition because
what you were looking for was already there, before you even started searching.

Being in Unity ìs already here simply when two people are in Attention together. Like Jesus
said: Where two or three come together in my name (he meant Consciousness), that’s
where I am. And that’s how it is. At least, that was often the case with Satsang, but it also
happens in my therapy sessions a good deal. It’s just very subtle, far away from the noise a
lot of Zen masters make. You feel the subtle changes in your energy field, and you come to
a very subtle feeling – a lot of times, far away from the body. Then, already, you can
recognize what Consciousness is, namely pure Presence.

You will recognize the scent of it, the silence, the Knowing Silence. Sometimes it goes very,
very deep. You will notice that all the symptoms you came into therapy with – are not your
Self. And that is enough, that recognition. Much more, being a simple human being, you

29
can’t do. Everything will be done, including the healing process or a movement to a
permanent state of living in that condition, or becoming a teacher, or keeping what you’ve
found silently to yourself. It doesn’t matter. In our Being, we are all One and the same.

Most clients hardly understand what happens or have no interest in it whatsoever. They see
it as a pleasant experience. I do tell them that this is what they truly are, but I’m not going
to force it upon them. Everything goes the way it goes. The one that has 'found' it, doesn’t
stand above the people that haven’t found it or have no interest in it. We don’t live
ourselves as a person, life does it for us and our thinking just runs and runs behind it.

I find the rash comment 'this is about Nothing' that somebody makes after reading
Advaita Lines on your weblog, very intriguing. What do you do with that?

Ha! That’s what the woman I’ve been married to for 25 years said. We still have a great
connection. She has seen me searching, reading and writing a lot of times. I would come
down the stairs happily amazed by a new insight and she would stare at me, unaffected,
like ‘Yeah, so what? I already know this.’ Because of her I understood that being
Enlightened was a misunderstanding. It was simplicity speaking for itself. It should be the
most natural thing there is. And that’s how it was with her. She never spoke about it. And
still she doesn’t.

The Nothing was about the Nothing, the Not-Something. In the core, we’re not a thing, not
an object. Everything we see, we aren’t. We are the Seeing, which can never be seen. What
we are in the crux can’t be found, outside of time and space, and can’t be manipulated.

Eventually I came to the recognition that it’s not in the experience, but that it is
experiencing itself. Well, that’s what you do all day long.

I still experience a lot of reluctance to get into this subject with anybody. Unless
people are really interested. And then sometimes, in a simple conversation, I can just
turn to it.

Yes, after landing on my nose a few times I keep myself to the rule of only talking about
this with people who are really interested. Otherwise, it’s of no use.

People mostly want to know right away what difference it makes when you’ve come to
your real nature: how does it change your life..?

First, there is euphoria. And you have to laugh about it a lot. Thirty years of searching for
the glasses you were wearing right there on your nose! Finally you understand. And then you
realize the search has ended. The urge is gone. Though what changes for me, after the
Insight, is that you’re less tied to the events of the day and the longer lasting reactions to
them. You’ve seen that you don’t live your life as a person. You are being lived, so the
pressure is gone. Life just goes on. Also the negative side of things and the periods that feel
less comfortable. The thinking tries, a lot of times, to get it’s own rights back. And then
you just have to be attentive. And see through that.

30
You know now that Death doesn’t exist, because the Self is outside Time and Space. But the
world is definitely not something you don’t care about. And it will be in your own hands
how you react to that.

Sometimes I suppose that speaking in ‘advaita grammar’ isn’t always beneficial to

clear understanding. Avoiding personal pronouns for example or, what I call ‘speaking
from great heights’ – over people's heads. For example: ‘Nobody sits there’, ‘Being
awake and sleeping are one and the same’ and ‘You can do Nothing’. I can understand
that with this kind of stuff you can attract a lot of fascinated people to you.

Yes, and for a lot of teachers it turns into business. They try to hold you tight. They get
angry when you go up to another teacher! That costs them their money! Or they’re hurt
because they get rejected. That’s why, just like Gilbert Schultz and John Wheeler, I am so
crazy about the Australian teacher Bob Adamson. This teacher has stripped Nisargadatta’s
Advaita of all the unnecessary things, and speaks pure language. He denies being a guru. He
propagates self-investigation, where the ego gets dismantled totally. There is nothing he
keeps alive. He constantly tells you that you have to look at where your ‘ego-centre’ hides.
Where is that important person that you put your trust in so badly? Because when you look,
you see that only thoughts pass in consciousness. You can’t grab them, you can’t influence
them and you can’t stop them. You’re not in control. And – more important – if thoughts
weren’t there, when there wouldn’t be a conscious. Thoughts have no individual,
independent being. So what’s the fuss about? You’re not those thoughts. Same goes for your
emotions.

You aren’t your body either. You can see, feel or perceive anything you like of your body.
But what you see you never are. Never! You can never be the object of seeing. Which
means that you are Consciousness. We know we exist, because we knòw we exist. That’s
the first Instance. And that is what we truly are.

Well, you can really try to explain this clearly to someone and let them experience it. That
journey isn’t very mystic. But most teachers turn it into abracadabra! because they know
they have no influence on the Moment of Realisation. That’s why they turn it into a mess.
They keep promising you something for the future or they blame you because you still don’t
see it! They seduce you into attaining Bliss to prove you are Enlightened. Well, Bliss is only
an experience. And an experience is always temporary. You can’t keep up being in Bliss all
the time. And who experiences the object Bliss? That’s what it’s about. You as
Experiencing, as Knowing, as Conscious. You can also experience trouble, that’s not as nice,
but it doesn’t hurt you as Consciousness. To the sun it doesn’t matter whether there are
clouds above the earth or not. So all the running about for beautiful experiences, is only
entertainment. A lot of times it’s only getting in the way of the final insight. Finding,
actually, is very simple.

But obviously both temptation and/or ignorance are too big. As an example of this, I have
seen a Dutchman teaching Advaita at a satsang with a few ladies at his feet sitting in deep
admiration. It looks so foolish! That’s the moment I get out of there. Anyone who allows
this kind of thing immediately looks like a charlatan to me. He can say beautiful things, but
at the same time he's fooling everyone. Nobody is more or less conscious. In the essence we
are not-something, or Nothing. How can one Nothing be more or less Nothing than another
Nothing? So please, stop this humbug.

31
You’re active as a therapist and inter alia work with chakras. In doing this kind of
work, you judge in duality, because it’s about your experience of the other person.

A while ago, I ground to a halt as far as therapy is concerned. I knew that everything is One,
but also that I was the only one I could directly perceive as alive. After all, I can't
experience your experience of life directly. Just mine. You are simple an image in my
consciousness. Is there anybody but me? Who was I treating? A non-existent image in my
conscious, or someone who just like me in the end is One, but wears a lifejacket in another
color? And that’s what I could start to work on again!

And to cut a long story short, was I the only one experiencing images, or just one amongst
billions of people experiencing images and that at the core all are one with all of nature all
at the same time? But, when I have a grandchild in my arms, I also do experience this as
reality…

What do you think of Wolter Keers’ saying that every fear leads back to a fear of
losing love. I quote: 'I am afraid to show myself, ‘cause then you will think I’m crazy or
bad or something else." And then, there is this wall. ‘I’m here and the other one is
there’. See, when I think Love is something that I can own, I am afraid I might lose it.
But as soon as my whole being sees that I am Love, what else is there?

All the restlessness, all the unhappiness, all the fear is there because you feel separation.
The Fall. 'Me' against the World. Then you have to explain yourself, protect yourself, do
your best. And you, as a humble being, have to do all this in an incomprehensibly limitless
world. And you don’t even understand yourself! That’s why we run to therapists, psychics,
clairvoyants and spiritual teachers with questions like: 'Who am I?', 'Why is All this?', and
'Where am I going?'. We are all insecure and afraid.

When the lonely doer is seen through as non-existent, and you recognize yourself as Endless
(untraceable) Consciousness, then the whole Fall is seen through. You are, at the core, not
separated but at one with Everything. You have lost Everything (all that is temporary) and
you have found Everything (all that’s Timeless). You still experience life, but you aren’t life
itself anymore. Then a great sense of relaxation occurs. An enormous space or love can be
experienced, but still realize: whatever you experience is not you. What you truly are is
always hidden. You will always stay a riddle. You are a riddle to yourself forever. Because
you only know what you are not.

It’s all very subtle. The only thing that’s always true for you is the Knowledge of Existence.
More is not necessary to know. Stop right there, because if you don’t you are immediately
back in the thinking, in searching, in words, in time. Then you are outside again, always
longing for whatever used to be.

[by JZ]

32
Being Douglas Harding
What does it feel like to be Douglas Harding?

Well, I think that

Douglas Harding-ness
inevitably directs
the completeness of
my life in a certain
way. I mean, I don't
avoid that
identification, that
connection, that
expression. In fact,
lately I have
often indicated how
absolutely essential,
precious and
extraordinary that
identification is. You don't have to belittle the one you see in the mirror. You don't
have to turn down or underestimate that person. On the contrary, what I can say about
Douglas - the way he expresses himself in his face, voice and behaviour, especially his
face - is that everything is extremely valuable. To me it means that you have something
special to contribute, that you are a unique personification of the Truth and that that is
very important to complete the overall picture.

I find that very important...

[photo: Douglas' gravestone with the 'map' of the first person singular]

website: http://www.headless.org

33
Mule launched
the story of me and Zil Chezero
by Robbert Bloemendaal

Preface

This is going to be a rather strange story. It kicks off with a

deal with Zil: I’m only allowed to talk about myself, not about
any other person for whom I work or have worked . So I’m not
going to elaborate on the how and where I met Deirdre Delder.
Suffice it to say, she has written a story about her encounter
with a phenomenon that calls itself Zil Chezero. In her account
she points out how her encounter led to four sessions
encompassing a total of eighteen ‘SlamSatS’, which is the name Zil Chezero has given
to a mixture of ‘slamming’ and ‘Satsangs’. Quite appropriate, as I have been able to
establish. Because it so happens that there is not only the account by Deirdre, but also
sound recordings of the sessions themselves. They are in English and they are quite
forceful.

And there my story begins. The story of working out these sessions into the book
‘Dutch Treat’, that has just been published as an e-book on Nonduality.com. So while I
support Zil where I can, the only thing I can say about him according to my functional
profile, is that he does not want to say anything and he also wants me to not say
anything about him. The SlamSatS themselves should tell the story, because as Deirdre
Delder has pointed out: Zil does not work as a guru.

Zil’s comeback?

With all these restrictions, why go through all this trouble to ‘launch’ Zil? First of all,
because I was grabbed by the throat by the SlamSatS. ‘Getting hit by a hoof consisting
of white light’, maybe is the best way to describe the approach by Zil. A ruthless
confrontation that at the same time has no ‘I-energy’ in it what so ever. Perplexity.
Also, regret to have missed it. And by and large while working on the manuscript I
became aware of the second reason to live up to the challenge. I nevertheless hope for
a sequel, because of what I found in one of the SlamSatS. So I chose a confrontation
and got my mandate. I will produce the book, explore along two tracks the chances of
a ‘return of Zil’ and at the same time shield the guy. Because without this shielding,
no return.

Zil is a mule

To convey some of my enthusiasm about Zil’s view on matter, I want to start with a
short sketch of his approach. Part of it is the way which Zil sees himself. I am not
allowed to talk about Zil, but naturally I may cite him where he talks about himself in
the book. Right at the beginning, Zil presents himself as a ‘mule’.

(Questioner) So, you are a mule?

34
(Zil) No, Zil is. I’m awareness before it becomes aware of itself as such. As soon as that
happens, it turns into a mule. Called Zil Chezero. Mule is strong, stubborn, should be
humble by the looks of it but rather hilariously isn’t, makes the most awkward sound you
could imagine and most of all – is infertile.

Every mule is an evolutionary accident that kills a line that goes straight back to the very
origin of life. Every mule is the first and last of its kind. It’s the ultimate evolutionary
laughing stock… but this tragedy also has a benefit. Mule is free from any possible
evolutionary ambitions, free from any ‘leaving behind’, ‘making a mark’ or any other
abstract burden. The fact that it does not breed sets it free from the only future-related
task it can possibly have as an animal.

So isn’t it nice that this image of the mule fits Zil? Zil’s what’s left of a person that bit by
bit had to give up any illusions of being something or someone, having anything – including
past, future and now.

Zil in full view

So much for Zil about himself. In regard to his state of being he uses the phrase ‘in full
view’, which he prefers over ‘enlightened’. Deirdre Delder’s iron memory makes it
possible for us to witness a very condensed description of the difference between
both:

'You are not what you think. I translate. 'This book is about enlightenment too, but in a
direct way; through accounts of satsangs. Are you familiar with the term ‘satsang’? I ask
him. The man smiles. 'Yes, he says. 'That book, going by the title, might be about
enlightenment. But it’s not about realization. Neither book is about realization. His answer
takes me by surprise. 'Excuse me, what did you say? I ask a little bewildered. 'Realization
and enlightenment mean the same thing, I would think…

'If your book was about realization, the

title would be You are not what you are,
says the man, grinning. 'Enlightenment
can be the effect of realization. Even
more so, where realization is a fact,
enlightenment by definition is the
manifest effect. But the other way
around, enlightenment and realization
don’t necessarily have anything to do
with each other.

'Enlightenment has two forms. Often

enlightenment is not the result of
realization, but is the product of an
‘almost realized’. The light comes from a
lamp, both stay present on the level of
manifestation. Sometimes however,
enlightenment is the by-product of
realization, the visible effect of that

35
which does not confine itself to the manifestation. In that case, what you recognize as
enlightenment is the effect of the fact that the ‘enlightened one’ is in full view. Zil is in
full view.

The difference between ‘in full view’ and ‘enlightened’, sometimes flanked by
hilarious elaborations on the phenomenon ‘lamp’, returns many times in the text.

A thing called love

Zil is merciless to egos, the recordings make clear. But in the meanwhile I have found
out that these eighteen SlamSatS time and again prove to address matters that are
crucial for ‘neti-neti’ in all its appearances. What is more, I cannot remember when I
did not think ‘hey, this too he has smashed to pieces’. Because that is the enlightening
part – to misuse this phrase here - of his approach: he really tears down everything
and you even comprehend why it can’t be any different than that. And slowly but
surely I also connected with the enormous love that is behind all of that. Considering
his style, this is not obvious.

A fragment that says it all:

(Questioner) I have met quite a few gurus throughout my life and some certainly were
‘lamps’ as you call them. But others seemed upright and genuine and even radiated a
sort of universal love, a gentle mildness. But you beam only fire, which insults and
tortures us. Don’t you love everything, including us?

(Zil) Well 6, to begin with, I love this question! (laughter)

It offers us a chance to look at this thing called ‘love’. Let’s start with ‘your side’. Why do
you want to feel loved?

Eh, well, it gives me eh, well… it gives me comfort, the sense of being loved makes me
feel wanted, accepted as I am, and that makes me feel present, seen…

Hmm. You feel ‘present’, ‘wanted’, ‘accepted’ by love… Who is ‘you’ in these notions? Or if
that is too difficult: what part of ‘you’ wants love?

Oh. You’re burning me again, aren’t you?

Have to if I love you, lady, but we’ll get to that later. First try to answer this mule’s
question.
(...)
Is this part of you, wanting love, a beautiful sight?

Well, not really, now I look at it. I mean, I can’t really see it, but when I look closer, it
gives me a certain feeling. Well, actually, it doesn’t feel very pure.

Which takes us to the next question. Do you love this part of you that wants to be loved?

No!

36
That answer came fast…
(...)
If this hole were to be filled - would this fulfill you?

Yes! Eh, no…

‘Yes’ for that part, ‘no’ for you looking at that part?

Exactly.

Am I burning you now?

Well, I suppose so, yes.

Why, what happens?

You take something away from me.

What?

Illusions.

No hope sold

Maybe that is the crux of Zil’s approach: he does not sell you any hope. But travelling
through the SlamSatS, this seems less and less necessary. To illustrate this:

(Questioner) What game are we playing here?

(Zil) We play the ‘kick ass by mule’ game. Here’s a mule in full view that can see the totally
hopeless situation it’s in concerning this game. Hopeless in the sense of not being able to
convey any real working wisdom to another mule here, just because it’s totally impossible
to change anything about the total mulishness of both mules – all mules - and the world
they live in. It’s this hopelessness I’m enforcing on you.

But… what’s the sense of it?

The sense is that is has no sense! Sense is for mules, realization is not. How does that make
you feel, mulewise?

Well, hopeless...

I want you to really feel that feeling. Feel the hopelessness, feel that this whole realization
exercise has no use, won’t get you anywhere. Can you deeply, deeply feel that?

Yes…

Now, how does that hopelessness feel? Bad? Depressing?

No, it feels… well, it feels logical.

37
What!? Look at what you just answered. Does it appear logical to you that it feels logical?

Well, now that you mention it, no, it’s not really logical. Maybe I should feel depressed
about it but I don’t. I actually feel a sort of relief.

Dat is wat je hier krijgt. Absoluut niets. Geen hoop te koop. Tevreden daarmee?

Totally.

Totally fulfilled by nothing. Totally fulfilled by yourself.

‘Conversation with Mulekind’ and ‘Celebs’

As stated, this series of SlamSatS is one-off. A one moment Zil makes it clear that he is
interested in giving words to his knowledge for one time only. The fact that in just
four sessions so many topics are researched so thoroughly, is both an achievement of
Zil and of his partners. Concerning Satsangs that are written out, it hits me that on
the moment supreme the questioner either understands it no more, or starts talking
about something else completely, or is interrupted by another questioner… All
understandable, but fatal reactions by egos that get a hard time. The results are
endless half-hearted conversations with a tiny pearl on every five pages, which we
have had to swallow in countless books over the years. Perhaps it is the frontal
approach by Zil that makes escape impossible, maybe it’s the atmosphere of total
surrender with the (small) group of people that chose to talk with him, maybe both. In
any case the SlamSatS go on where the majority steadily lets go. For me this has been
an important reason to let the SlamSatS land in a book.

But it’s also the reason for remorse with the thought that it would end with this. So I
paid close attention when the following fragments appeared:

(Questioner) So after these sessions it’s all over? Nothing can tempt you to come back?

(Zil) For this initiative, it’ll be all over. No more speaking to average admirer mules. But
there are in fact two horizons that have come into this mule’s awareness. On the first are
the right questions. We must cover whatever ground we can in these SlamSatS, and after
that, this mule’s initial curiosity is satisfied and the drawbacks to evening upon evening of
talking about this stuff becomes too powerful. So therefore it’s finito after these sessions.
However, I can imagine embarking on a ‘conversation with mulekind’ in which questions are
formulated that are so different from or better than the ones posed in these SlamSatS that
they provoke new answers. Maybe that could be fun.

And on the other horizon is better mules.

Huh? What do you mean by that, aren’t we ‘good’ mules?

You are perfect – in this phase. You are good enough for now, but you are not the best. Not
by far. You are pioneers, willing, motivated, open…

But isn’t that good?

38
For you perhaps, for me it’s a bore already. You guys admire other mules all the time. It’s
this very trait that makes you extremely hard to reach. Your admiration gets in the way, it’s
one of the toughest defence systems mules have. That’s why you’re not the best. The best
is the celeb. You know what celebs are?

I have some images…

They are what I consider a special challenge. To kick off: celebs are fantastically stupid.
More than that, they are the most self-righteous and stubborn sons of bitches that can be
found in mulekind. As such they make great material for this mule’s hoofs: the more
resistance, the better these hoofs hit home. And now for the best part. Celebs are used to
being admired themselves and come to me because they experience the emptiness and filth
of that admiration every day. As such they are less inclined to start admiring me and if they
do it anyway, their own situation is mirrored in it immediately. All these traits together
make them incredible material.

Better than us...

Way better. They are bored with admiration – yet need it. Coming to me, they want
‘everydayness’ on the one hand and cling to their ‘specialness’ on the other. Which means
with them there’s all around ass to kick! Circular ass, so to speak. And what’s more,
herever you hit them, they are much more likely to crack than persistent admirers like you
guys.

And all of a sudden there was the plan…

The plan and the book

It took some perseverance, because Zil rather would

not. But he did say it and he will have a hard time
resisting the temptation – if I am capable of
organizing it. And that is exactly what I have been
doing recently. First of all, the book has now been
published as an e-book on www.nonduality.com. And
what’s more, the ‘Conversation with Mulekind’ gets
a podium on the internet. At www.zilchezero.com we
will be organizing a forum in which questions can be
formulated that are smarter than the ones posed in
the book. These questions should ‘break in’ on a
conversation in the book, thus giving another
direction to the conversation. In order to facilitate
this, every paragraph in the book has its own
number.

That’s it for us ordinary mortals. But there is also a ‘part two’ of the plan, which is
just a tiny bit even weirder than the first part, but nonetheless I want to try it out. Zil
refers to King Janaka as a ‘super celeb’, as an example for the current generation of
‘sissy celebs’. In the SlamSatS concerning this topic he seems willing to reappear for
celebs – and for celebs only. Well. Hum. Apart from the question whether I, being non-

39
celeb, like that attitude, it’s what we have to cope with for the time being. So I
constructed a ‘King Janaka’ platform for celebs on the site. And I will see who will
respond…

This is the story of Zil Chezero and me up till now. I wonder how it will continue.
www.zilchezero.com

[Robbert Bloemendaal]

40
'I ride my bike through town and see new things
constantly'
interview with Dick Bruna (creator of Miffy)

When somebody asked a well-known advaita

master what he was driving at when he
mentioned ‘naturalness’, he was answered:
don’t eat your soup with a fork. How simple can
it be to be simple? Amigo talks to Dick Bruna,
graphic designer, draftsman and writer, about
his life, his career, his love and the simplicity of
everyday life.

photo: Ferry André de la Porte

As an individual in society you have to live up to certain expectations and you are very
easily pushed into some sort of profession. Do you recognize that, and how did that
occur to you in your life?

That external pressure is a fact, yes. My father really wanted me to follow his footsteps in
the publishing. My grandfather asked me, ‘Boy, when are you actually starting a real job?’
That was when I was already in my forties. Only when my work started to pay off, they
became more interested. I draw and write stories as a profession. And it’s also my hobby.
From the age of four I have been drawing farms, while other children went outside to play
soccer. And I just kept on with it that. Even now at the age of 81. And the nice thing is that
it all worked out fine. I am very thankful for being able to ride my bike to my studio and do
what I do there. I maintain that seven days a week; I’m constantly busy. And I am still
making up new stories, even after having written almost 120 books.

Where does that rapture come from?

I always want myself to do better. Tomorrow needs to exceed yesterday. Miffy remains a
very difficult task. I work with a paint-brush and poster paint and every Miffy I draw is
different from the one before. I am also very precise and can spend a whole day on one
drawing. You have to be the best you can. Everything that leaves these four walls has to
display a hundred percent of what I’m capable of doing.

Do you see yourself as a blessed person?

I realize I am a very lucky man. And honestly, I am unable to do any different. It is such a
gift to be able to do this and provide for my family at the same time. What more does a
person want? I have never felt the need for a bigger house or a boat or other things like
that. I am happy with my bike, and going out to dinner every now and then. I ride my bike
through town every day and see new things constantly. A door handle, a small fence, a
school building – every single thing inspires me to write new stories. I perceive intensely, I

41
notice that everything around me is always fresh and exciting. It involves a lot of
experiencing. When I was little and watched the ocean I already noticed how it changed
colour. The first second it looked brown, when the next it had turned grey and bluish. The
view remained the same, but it was also different over and over again. Also the city goes
through similar changes as the evening grows dark. And also I love riding through the forest
and sniffing up the all different atmospheres. This is something you cannot teach people,
it’s something you feel. Maybe that’s what is called ‘astonishment’? Well, at least it’s never
boring and the concept of routine doesn’t exist for me.

Do you need some sort of special talent to be like this?

Talent? Everyone has talent. There are people out there who draw way better than I do. But
I am a self-willed whole-hogger. And I absolutely do not find my pursuits a ‘job’. Of course I
do work – I have been busy from early morning ‘til late at night. But it’s a great blessing to
have the ability to maintain one’s own time schedule. When I look at all those people with
their nine-to-five’s… I talk to youngsters sometimes and always encourage them to hang on,
in spite of the outcome of their effort. At least, when they’re passionate. When it’s in
them, they shouldn’t doubt themselves.

Do you feel like it’s all plain sailing with you?

People sometimes say to me, ‘It must be absolutely delightful to work like this and have a
job like you have’? But that’s somebody else’s perspective. To me, this is a very serious
occupation. And sometimes it’s also very gloomy, for example when I’m sketching away
endlessly and realise it’s just not working. I still have a job to do.

Do you think a lot?

Yes, I think about work a lot. It keeps me awake at night. Also on my bicycle my mind keeps
spinning. And even during holidays. Sometimes I park my car somewhere to write down a
little plan.

Do you think about life a lot?

Philosophically I don’t go too deep. Most of the time they’re such complex stories, I don’t
really care. Annie Schmidt once told me, ‘I’ve never grown older than eight’. I have a
similar thing. I have remained four years old my whole life and have a very childish outlook
on the world. I don’t know anything about finances, juridical matters and investments. I
leave that to my kids. I enjoy the small, daily things. A child that jumps over a tile on the
schoolyard.

In Zen tradition, the simplicity of every day life is pretty much considered as the highest
good. Are you into Zen?

I know Rients Ritskes, a Zen teacher from Utrecht, whom I met at the place where I
regularly have my coffees. It was a period in my life when I felt extremely uptight. He
advised me to take a few minutes in the morning to meditate. And I did so. When I arrive at
my studio, I turn off my phone and I sit still with my eyes closed. Here, I count my

42
breathing. I notice it makes me very tranquil. About ten minutes later my egg-timer rings
and I get back to work.

In all her simplicity, Miffy is also a bit ‘Zen’.

Art is leaving everything that’s unnecessary behind. Two dots and a cross, those are the
only three tools to reflect Miffy’s mood. And that is very exciting. I also create a lot of
space around my characters, just like I did on the posters I used to design. People need to
be touched. A man who missed his train and had to wait for a long time once sent me a
letter. He did not mind at all, he wrote, because he was sitting opposite one of Bruna’s
posters. The covers for ‘Zwarte Beertjes’ were always as simple as I could possible make
them, too. The final poster even had no words whatsoever. You have to try to say as much
as you can with the least amount of words. It gives space for people to create their own
fantasies.

What is it you live for?

You have a duty to unravel your talent, and with this in mind you have to give your all to
achieve the best results. That stands for me, too. And it’s a road filled with highs and lows.
Sometimes I look up to the sky while riding my bike and mumble ‘thank you’, or ‘damn it’.
Maybe that’s a very childish thing to do. It probably has something to do with the
Remonstrant (Dutch protestant) education I’ve had, haha!

Lastly, what is it like to be Dick Bruna?

Just fun. I have an occupation that I like, my children are doing well and I haven’t had any
health problems – yet. Let’s knock on wood for that. These are things I really appreciate.

[by Vincent Peeters]

website: www.miffy.com

43
 colophon

contributors.to.this.edition:

Jan van Delden

Ad Oostendorp
Jeff Foster
Rob Ek
Dick Bruna
Zil Chezero

Kees Schreuders (editor & lay-out) www.ods.nl

Robbert Bloemendaal (editor)
Dick de Boom (editor)

Patricia van Bosse

Vincent Peeters
Pol Sturtewagen
Josée Zwaferink

translation team:
Robbert Bloemendaal
Malon Bakker
Rangeeni Franssen
Rahmat Haverkamp
Erik Sleeuwenhoek
Simon Abbott (copy editor)

editorial statutes

AMIGO, a periodically appearing web-magazine, is a platform for texts about diverse Non-
dualistic approaches. Said more poetically: Amigo wants to show 'you' in that empty chair,
that you see at the head of this magazine, that you have found unconditional friendship.
Every issue will in any case contain texts by Wolter Keers and be in the spirit, which he gave
to the magazine 'Yoga Advaita' founded by him.

44