You will never be free: questions and answers on non-duality

What?

Q: What do you teach?

A: Nothing. It’s all perfect already. So, there is nothing to teach.

Q: How can I see that?

A: Well, you will never really see that. When you talk about how can I see that you’re referring to an additional state of seeing. However, perfection can’t and doesn’t have to be seen. It just is. In that sense, the apparent me is never interested in perfection, it’s only interested in seeing it. Yet, exactly that ‘me’ is illusory and so would be its seeing.

Q: Do you see that perfection?

A: No, I don’t. There is no ‘I’ thinking that I should or even could do so. Surprisingly, perfection doesn’t need to see itself in order to be – it just is what naturally is.

Q: But what’s its worth if I can’t experience it?

A: Oh, nothing. It’s not worth anything. It’s not something that you own and can use. It simply is what you are.

Q: What I am? Do you mean awareness?

A: Oh, no, there is no experience of who or what you are. All there is, is what you are, but for no one. Awareness still is an experience. Nothing is having an experience of ‘what is’ – all there is, is ‘what is’.

Unio mystica

Q: Do you think that liberation is the unio mystica?

A: The unio mystica that we speak about isn’t an experience. It’s neither an insight nor a knowing. It’s the melting of the subject-object reality or rather the melting of the trinity of experiencer, experienced and the process of experience into nothing; into unknowing.

Q: What’s unknowing?

A: Actually, it’s not just unknowing. Unknowing actually comes from not even being experienced. When I speak of unknowing, I don’t refer to a personal state of not focusing on thoughts; this dizzy I don’t think thing. Not knowing means not experiencing. Nothing can be known, because there is no experience of anything.

Q: That’s the unio mystica?

A: One could say so. The interesting thing is that there actually is no such thing. Separation is an illusion, so there is no real melting back into no-thing-ness. It’s not something that will happen one day. In fact, it doesn’t happen.

Q: It doesn’t happen?

A: No, it doesn’t. This whole union with God thing is based on the assumption of there being a separate entity. Yet, there isn’t. There is already and only union. You know, experiencing itself isn’t real, therefore the assumption of a future experience is nothing but an assumption out of that illusory present experience. There is no experience now, and there will never be any experience. Seen from the apparent perspective of the ‘me’, liberation is assumed to be an ongoing experience of consciously knowing and feeling that everything is good. Well, not just good, really good. That ongoing future experience doesn’t exist.

Q: But there are experiences of ‘absolute goodness’.

A: Yes, but they are still experiences and not fulfilling at all. They never meet the longing for the unio mystica. Nothing becomes unified in that experience. It just is another experience.

Q: Hmm. But maybe it will last one day.

A: Yes, that’s the hope.

Well-being

Q: What do you mean when you say that there is no bondage?

A: Both, bondage and liberation, are part of a dream – the dream of being some separate thing which is present. This thing lives in an apparent self-experience, which is accompanied by a sense of unfulfillment and the attempt to find an answer to that sense. That’s what’s called bondage. Liberation is either the idea to overcome that bondage or, how I sometimes use it, the apparent breakdown of the personal setup altogether. Seen by the person, liberation is assumed to be the overcoming of the seeking by finding something – and then become a fulfilled person. The person either wants to get rid of the seeking or it wants to get rid of itself and enter a state of liberation which, too, is assumed to exist as something in time and space. Yet, what I’m saying is that there is no person in the first place. When there is no person, there is neither someone imprisoned by what happens nor is there someone to be freed from what happens. So, the concepts of liberation and bondage only belong to the dream. Neither do you have to escape ‘what is’ nor do you have to bare ‘what is’. It’s really that simple.

Q: I don’t think that it’s simple. To me, it all seems very difficult. I mean, I have been struggling with this a lot for many years.

A: Yes, that’s true. The ‘I’ is struggling with this. It’s simple because it already is like that. Yet, it’s impossible to do. Look, it’s not just difficult to do, it’s impossible! It’s impossible to do, because it already is whole and complete. All experience of completeness that you create is part of the dream. All experience is illusory. ‘What is’ is naturally whole already, no matter what it looks like or what it feels like. And when I speak of ‘what is’, I don’t refer to some abstract ‘what is’. What I refer to is exactly this – the room, you, the feelings, the breathing, the atmosphere. That’s naturally whole and doesn’t need any artificial or extra state of peace or well-being. Wellbeing is the natural reality, we could say. Everything is totally and absolutely well in being what it is.

Q: Even pain?

A: Of course, even pain. Have you ever heard the pain complaining about itself? Have you ever heard any feeling complaining about itself? Have you ever heard any feeling of bliss uplifting itself? No, it just is what apparently happens. Apparent suffering is when there is someone who is experiencing pain and suffering. That one lives in the illusion of suffering from pain, instead of there being just pain. Fortunately, there is no one. There is neither someone in hell nor is there someone in heaven. That’s the freedom.

Q: Is suffering an illusion then?

A: Well, pain is what apparently happens, but yes, the sufferer is illusory. No one suffers from anything. But feelings that the ‘me’ would regard as suffering may apparently happen.

Q: And then? What do you do when there is pain? Do you just sit in silence or what?

A: No, I don’t. Or I may do. I don’t know. Something apparently happens. Taking medicine maybe.

Q: But you just said that pain is ‘it’. Why do you have to take medicine then?

A: ‘I’ don’t take medicine, but taking medicine may be what apparently happens. And, as I said, there is no one who has to bare or accept the pain. You assume this to be a personal message with a personal standpoint. I don’t see that the pain is ‘it’ from a personal standpoint and then can consciously react according to that state of acceptance. The pain as well as my reaction to it is what apparently happens. There just is no one there living in the illusion of doing any of it.

Q: But is that illusion wrong?

A: No, it’s not. It just is what apparently happens. It’s neither right nor wrong, and it’s as much wholeness as everything else.

Q: But why are we working so hard to get rid of it?

A: I don’t know. There is no illusion anyway, so working to get rid of the illusion is part of the illusion. Oneness does neither care nor know anything about an illusion.

Q: But aren’t we talking here in order to get rid of it?

A: No, we aren’t. This isn’t a teaching. There is no intention on my side at least. This isn’t happening for anything. In that sense, the ‘me’ is working on an illusory problem. There is neither a ‘me’ nor a ‘me’ illusion. There just is what apparently happens, which is exactly this and unknowable at the same time. However, it’s absolutely happy to be what it is. All the complaints come from that illusory me, but even that is happily and simply itself. No one is bothered by that ‘me’ nor is there anyone aware of its existence.

Q: Hmm. So, all my seeking was really futile.

A: Oh, yes, there is nothing to get. The whole setup of experiencing doesn’t exist. The first element of it – you – seeking in the second element – what you experience – is a dreamt reality. All results of that seeking are part of that dreamt reality as well. There is no fulfillment in there.

Q: But where can I find fulfillment then?

A: Nowhere. You can’t find fulfillment. In fact, there is no such thing as fulfillment. What you’re actually seeking is an experience of fulfillment. What you’re seeking is an awareness of fulfillment and exactly that doesn’t exist. The apparent me believes that liberation is replacing the experience of unfulfillment and seeking with an experience of fulfillment and having found. It thinks that the experience of presence is replaced by an experience of absence. However, in liberation the whole