This is non-separation. How obvious it is when it is seen. Past and future belong to thought and nothing else. So, where does that leave Now? I suggest we can eliminate Now from our enquiries. You would have more success knitting fog than getting your head round Now. Now is a thought because it is made out of past and future and we have already associated those two with thought.
If someone comes up to you and says, ‘Sorry son, it is hopeless. You have no future here,’ do not take offence. Thank him for his honesty and walk off with a spring in your step. There has only ever been one thing, which you can call ‘present-sensations-of-no-duration’. Sounds, sights, smell etc. constantly appearing and disappearing. You cannot grab this and make it into something. It is like trying to bring that Ferrari out of your dream last night and park it outside. It won’t happen.
A clock is a machine with a repeating event: tick-tock, tick-tock. Digital timepieces may change numbers at regular intervals with some other numbers changing occasionally and other numbers staying the same for a while. Imagine that you are standing in front of an analogue clock watching the second hand make a complete revolution. We can say the hand is moving and time is flowing—but what is really going on? I suggest the answer is ‘nothing’. Nothing happening. There is just the current event of hand movement that plods along in a timeless zone.
Time will appear real while you live in thought and fantasy. Here we can imagine next year’s holiday; here we can imagine getting old and dying. Just let this sink in for a while. Be amazed at what is going on. I cannot fathom it. No one can. It is just plain miraculous.
All you ever see is timeless, infinite, unborn, un-created stillness and silence—moving and staying still, changing and unchanging. These gobbledygook statements are why the mind cannot go here; it is out of bounds—no entry. This is reality in all its glory. You will not find yourself anywhere because there is only everything and everywhere. Try and stop life, try and start it. You cannot; it just happens.
You, the person, will never see this, never in a million years. They are incompatible you see; a person is time-based and this is not. If a person is time-based, he is fiction, fantasy and dream stuff. He is no different to the one in your dream being terrorised by Daleks or the one teaching Superman how to fly.
Absence
Absence can be a bit of a shock at first because there is nothing to hold onto. But like falling into a bottomless pit, after a while you can relax and forget about the impact—because it is bottomless and there will never be an impact! I suggest life is like falling, mostly holding onto ideas, thinking they are safety rails, sometimes noticing there are no rails and you are doing just fine. Nothing needs to be held onto—there is not anything to hold.
There’s no need for this to get you down; there’s no need to withdraw from life. No. You could not if you tried, anyway. When consciousness, when life itself, lets go of thinking that it is something rather than everything, it marvels at itself, celebrates itself in all its forms. There is one canvas here coloured in the most intricate of ways. The paint depicts infinite variety with all its wondrous colours. But take a closer look; it is all made of paint—one scene, one canvas built like an Etch A Sketch. Go and give it a shake, start afresh and draw something else.
Absence is actually made out of presence. If you discover you cannot locate yourself and yet do not disappear in a puff of smoke, then there is a mystery going on. Why is there still something felt? Why is the sun still shining and all the rest of life still turning up? It is simply because all these activities are an expression of what you are. If they are an expression of what you are why should they go away? Everything that appears, including thought and itchy elbows, is Wholeness appearing as that. In a dream there might appear to be lots going on including emotions like fear or ecstasy. But there is only one dream and one dreamer. When you wake up there is no time delay while bits of the dream get put away somewhere special; the whole lot goes together.
I expect you have heard it said that words cannot capture this. Not so. They do just as a good a job as anything else. Wanting them to mean anything is the difficulty. Words on a page or words clothed in sound reflect timeless presence. Seen in this way, words take their place in heaven next to my pint of lager and take-away curry.
My Story
I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t anxious. There seemed always something to be worried about. It might be the dentist appointment or the fact that I had broken something belonging to my brother and hid it away in a cupboard, and was sure my crime would be rumbled by someone any day now. Life seemed a constant problem. There was always something going on.
I am the youngest of five boys. My dad always said he didn’t know where I came from. He was telling the truth of course, except not in the way he meant it to sound. We owned our own house in a small farming village near Daventry, Northamptonshire, England. I remember the farmer leading his cows down the lane next to our house and watching while one or two fancied their chances of escape and jumped our white ranch fence to leave well formed hoofmarks on the lawn.
In the summer when I was about five years old, I would sit in the back of the corn trailer with a few other kids in the village and watch while the combine shot its booty among our bare feet as we pushed the grain towards the chute for bagging. Summers were hot and life was slow.
As I was the youngest, a clear pattern of family life and rules preceded my appearance. My parents were working class and we survived through strict money management. My Mum hated living in the village. She was away from the town she grew up in and now lived among people who were a constant topic of behind-doors criticism. This must have caused more friction and atmosphere than my developing self could tolerate. I developed a pattern of absorbing other people’s frustrations in an attempt to relieve them of their burden. I turned away from my own joy to provide mental comfort for others in a private world made up of mental characters; this led to depression, anxiety and seeking later on.
Memories of this early time in my life come and go, but the memory of one incident is made of triple reinforced concrete surrounded by a lead-lined box. Something had happened one day and my Mum was in a rage I hadn’t witnessed before. She said she’d had enough and was leaving. She opened the kitchen door and walked at great pace down the path that led to the road. I can remember running after her so fast that my legs turned to jelly. I, at 4 or 5 years old, took it on board that I could bring her back. I could sort it out for her. I don’t know what I said to her but my reward was being told off for crossing the road without looking. My mum returned after a breather and a visit to the local shop and life simply carried on.
That incident and a few others changed the view I had of people; they were not to be trusted. I protected myself by withdrawing so far within myself and feeling so isolated that spontaneity took a back seat and self-management took its place. This became the pattern that dominated. Life became serious. I suspect this is the same for most people, although our significant events are different.
Schooldays were tough. I hated lessons. I was so tense trying to keep myself from falling apart and feeling so shy and anxious all the time, I had nothing left mentally to study with. All my efforts were to keep at bay this worthlessness and hatred I felt inside. Everyone was smarter, better looking and more comfortable with themselves and other people than I was. There was a longing not to be what the voice in the head was telling me, a longing to really fit in, although I never felt I did. I wasn’t too bad at bluffing though. I had quite a few friends but hated others joining the friendship that I thought was exclusively mine. I could not cope with someone new I didn’t know muscling in. If they were very sociable and made my friends laugh I would automatically take that to mean that I was boring and uninteresting.
You see, I was living totally in my thoughts. The world had become a hostile place full of mental characters created to make my life a misery. I hated being noticed by anyone. I hated drawing attention
to myself. I thought I could hide from life and especially other people. It was as if I were on constant guard to protect this pathetic creature that was sucking the life blood out of me. It continually needed to be fed with reassurance, and if that reassurance was not forthcoming, I would take it as confirmation of my intrinsic worthlessness and badness.
Whenever I met other people it always seemed to result in taking the lower rung of the ladder and looking up at them. They were more important, more intelligent and more worthy of success. This is what separation meant to me. I felt isolated and alone in a very nasty place full of objects, places, buildings and people that were weighing me down more and more.
I left school with no qualifications. I could not engage with education. I was too scared of it. I could not allow myself to ask a silly question or get something wrong and look a loser in front of anyone. It was as if I said to myself, ‘If you do not try too hard there is little chance of not being perfect.’ Being perfect was the standard I set myself. Other people were perfect, so I thought, and if they knew something I didn’t, the assumption was they had been born with this knowledge and were special. I didn’t know and could not risk exploring and showing others what I thought I could hide from them—my worthlessness and utter stupidity.
There was always a battle raging within. Sometimes it was a little disturbance of the peace, at other times—carnage. Resting I could never do; I had to be ready for that surprise attack and fend off anyone with a pass key to the inner locker.
I found some interest and respite while reading about psychology. It was mainly self-help books, but a few others, too, that were more honest about the crazy world we live in. I studied with the Open University at age 30 concentrating on psychology, and after 4 years of hard work I finished with an Upper Second. I was working full time and had just started a family, so it was a good result. Summer schools and class activities were hellish; feelings and memories of being useless returned as soon as I smelt the interior of a place of learning. Once again, I didn’t want to say that I didn’t understand and this left me to struggle on my own behind closed doors. I received some very good marks and comments, but I never believed them fully. I thought the tutor just felt sorry for me or, God forbid, she liked me. 85% or 95% wasn’t perfect and the room for improvement section seemed to be written in red with a rainbow of highlighter pens bordering it, making sure I could notice these comments above anything else.
When the course finished I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and help people with issues and problems. I thought I could pass on my new-found knowledge and help them. A few voluntary posts and a bit more study and it fizzled out, leaving me feeling a loser once again. I got really down and depressed and sought therapy for myself. It was scary listening to my own voice in the presence of a stranger discussing some things I wouldn’t even admit to myself, but it felt good for a while and life was better.
Trying to fix a ghost does not last long though; they have a habit of evading capture. I decided to get fit and see if exercise could lift me. I read that a good workout would release happy chemicals in my brain and make me feel good, so I enrolled at a gym. Even though I felt self-conscious among all the fit, good-looking people, I managed to make a few friends and chat fairly freely.
I had a personal trainer for a while and started to enjoy life at the gym. It turned out this guy had got a few issues himself regarding drink, and last minute cancellations became more and more frequent. One day, after arriving to find my trainer absent without leave again, another trainer, Lynn, offered to train me instead. I accepted, and this is where, believe it or not, my spiritual search began.
We got on well and she seemed interested in some of my ideas about psychology and people. There was something about her: I could not put it into words at the time and cannot now. Out of the blue she dropped a book in my lap. One look at the cover and I saw the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘enlightenment’. I wasn’t particularly impressed as it wasn’t a subject I would normally choose. I didn’t want to seem rude so I took it and sat down that very lunchtime, opened it and looked inside. Whilst turning the pages and chomping on my sandwich, something clicked. Here was someone talking about time and presence and suffering. There were words on the page I hadn’t come across before. I turned the pages at great pace, eager to hear more. Something was going on. I had read some pretty interesting stuff whilst studying and in the books I normally bought, but this was different. This was activating an unexplored area. A light went on.
I Googled the author and read a bit more. As with all Google searches, it brought up loads of other relevant stuff. I found myself entering the world of the spiritual seeker. I clicked on and found Tony Parsons, Mooji, Adyashanti, Nisargadatta, Ramana Maharshi, ancient Chinese sages and texts from the past. I found interpretations of Jesus’ words pointing to Wholeness rather than a guy with a white beard sat on a throne in a cloudy place. I was hooked. I had been stirred up like one of those Christmas snow storms in a paperweight. This was 2008. I was aged 40.
I was trying hard to really get it but any clarity didn’t seem to stick. I thought I got it, but I also felt I was fooling myself as well. I can honestly say, there were times I wished I had never started this crazy stuff. Some days were worse than before: holding my head in my hands staring at my computer screen was not a pleasant posture. But this had a life of its own. I could not stop if I wanted to.
One day, on a chilly November afternoon, I was waiting for my wife outside a supermarket. I didn’t want to go in. I was in one of those moods when people seem threatening. As I stood in the doorway alcove, I found myself staring and scanning people coming out of the shop with their bags full of food and stuff. It felt like the scanning had a life of its own. Time stood still and it was like I knew what I was seeing, but at the same time I didn’t. This felt weird. I looked away in a strange state. Then, coming towards me and indicating to pull in, was the biggest, reddest, loudest bus I would ever see in my life. It felt like it was parking itself in my chest area and activating every sense I had got at full volume. Then it ended and I was in shock. My wife appeared and I said nothing.
I tried to recreate this event over the next few years. It had felt good. Is that what non-separation is like? I thought. This I could enjoy. I didn’t go to meetings of non-dual or spiritual teachers, I just continued exploring this on the internet and watching YouTube videos. I emailed a few guys whom I thought I resonated with. I did try and speak to people close to me, but they didn’t really get it and I simply shut up and kept quiet.
One Saturday, I got up like any other. I had no plans to do anything and so just went on the internet to see if I had missed anything obvious in all those words, methods and teachings. I clicked on Tony Parsons’ site and saw he had a meeting planned that day in London. I live about 90 miles away, but found myself driving to the station, catching the train, and two hours later sat in the Hampstead Friends’ Meeting House, listening to this man speak about… well, nothing. I had no questions because I kind of had a feeling what the answer might be. I just listened, spoke to no one and left three hours later. I didn’t know what was exactly being pointed to. But I was certain about one thing: I would never return to a meeting about this. If I was going to see what all the fuss was about, it was a journey I would take without a travelling buddy.
Then, one day, I just saw. I saw that the idea of anything separate—separate people, places and objects out there in a separate world—is untrue. This was absolutely known without any doubt. After that there was just a total absence of time, purpose, and silly stories. The world gave up its secrets. There is no separate person here having a life. There is just life. Life, with its amazing array of expressions, swirling and turning in a timeless zone that has always been the case. All appearances are the One, appearing as many in a dance that never ceases, continually displaying itself, disguising itself, playing with itself. Objects are no longer objects; people are no longer people. Nothing can be pinned down
and known. Nothing conforms to the crazy notions that plagued the individual person you thought you once were. Drinking a coffee and feeling the sensation and smelling the aroma are just totally stunning. Watching a duck paddle away on the water is spellbinding stuff. And as the watching’s going on, nothing’s really happening, nothing’s leaving its mark anywhere. All trails are being refreshed with new ones, constantly, unceasingly.
Normal everyday functioning is not affected. Watching television, cooking the dinner, taking the kids to parties and teeth cleaning continue. It is just that, well, that is all that’s happening, no more and no less. The drama goes on and everything continues to appear—except that somewhere it is known there are no things out there and separate; they are right here in the place you never left—Wholeness. The character that apparently masquerades as a personal entity gets released from its prison and on release it melts into everything like a drop of rain landing on the surface of the ocean. The character remains full of life, energy and freedom that enables it to say and speak whatever pops into its head with very little filtering and checking beforehand. There is a sense of aliveness that no person could ever imagine. Life is full-on. Life is a scream.
The World is My Mirror Page 4