AMIGO No. 7

April 2004 edition 7
originality
If you as editor of this magazine begin to reflect about what you are actually
doing, then all kinds of wise words, inspiring people, wonderful and
confrontational moments and many apparently meaningful experiences pass
through your mind in revue. At the same time you realize that they are only little
films that derive their story from a series of words and meanings that are
dictated by memory.
Have you made any progress with all that? Have you become wiser? Have you
found any answers? No! It
could make you desperate.
I recently visited a meeting of

the Chaos-forum, which had
the theme 'How do you
generate power of movement
in conversation models?' In
other words: How do you
create a good conversation.
Somewhat hastily I had a
judgmental thought that said:
Our cramp (which is
incidentally a completely
natural reaction to everyday
chaos, survival needs, and
maintaining the appearance of
the ego in this sort of
situation) tries to get control
and command of things that
are actually elusive.
Did this conclusion spoil the

meaning and importance of this afternoon for me? Yes at first, but the opposite
turned out to be true. I was 'captivated' and threw myself passionately into the various
discussions. At the end of the afternoon we tried to come to a closing conclusion. And,
I realized that without our 'mission impossible' we would never have had such an
inspiring conversation, interaction, and exchange of thoughts. I summarized the
afternoon as: 'The beauty of helplessness'.
Simply: I don't know, and am nevertheless surrendered to the hopeless attempt.
As far as I am concerned that is exploring 'what is' without pre-judgment or goal.
Translated to our subject: there is nothing nicer than playing little Kees, or being a
person, in the knowledge that he or she hasn't got a clue, but nevertheless just
pretending as if he does. Just see what happens then; opinions, positions, challenges,
Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 1

confrontations, dilemmas, agreements succeeding one another in the fruitful
atmosphere. The dance is danced, the creation created, the play is played. And then,
the play is central and not whether one wins or loses.
Being-a-person, is then not something static or stuck, but is a dynamic principle that
takes on various forms depending on the situation demands other expressions, calls up
a variety of reactions.
Motto? Be yourselves brothers and sisters, the meaning of life is to be who you are.
Central to this amigo are: originality, authenticity and spontaneity.

Including: Wolter Keers, who this time explains how an 'enlightened' one now sees
and feels. 'Back from never been away' by Jan van Delden with his original vision on
Homer's Odyssey. A conversation with Steven Harrison who explains how you can give
expression to life. An interview with Joan Tollifson who answers our questions
frankly and with humor. Jan Kersschot in conversation with Chuck Hillig about
'yourself who does as if'.
Johan van der Kooij explores the relation between psychotherapy and advaita with
Susan Frank. And finally a column by the undersigned about 'I'-art in Utrecht.
...pray; when prayer appears,

laugh!; when there is laughing,
cry! when there is crying,
sing! when there is singing,
work! when there is work,
angry! if there is malice,
dance! if there is dancing,
speak!: if there is speaking,
make love!; if there is love or loving,
struggle!: if there is struggle,
be still!; if there is stillness and
wonder!: if there is wonder...*
P.S. Our bureau for impossible questions can be reached via: impossible-questions@ods.nl.
We are eagerly waiting, albeit with a wink!
• thanks Ramses
[Kees Schreuders]

contents:
• The rabbit in the hat

[Wolter Keers]
• Jan’s Odyssey
[Jan van Delden]
• Advaita & (psycho)therapy

- Supplementary or conflicting? -
[Susan Frank & Johan van der Kooij]
• Here is what you are

[interview with Joan Tollifson]
• Not even God can explain God!

- Enlightenment For Beginners -
[Jan Kersschot in conversation with Chuck Hillig]
• Expressing life!
[interview with Steven Harrison]
• Do you see what I says?

[column by Kees Schreuders]
• God hidden in people

[interview with Jan Koehoorn]
• Original oneness
[Stephen Jourdain]
• From the waiting room

[review workshop Eckhart Tolle]

The rabbit in the hat
(Wolter Keers, 1923 - †1985)
What does an enlightened one see and feel?
Even though the answer to this

question is extremely simple, it is
at the same time completely
incomprehensible. The
enlightened one feels everything
and nothing.
Why is the answer
incomprehensible? Because the
one who asked the question has
hidden 'the rabbit of his
personality' in the hat of the
enlightened one, seeing him, whether he wants to or not, as another personage. The
extension of the personality of the questioner is the personality that he projects on
the enlightened one. There is no such thing as an 'enlightened person or personality'.
As long as one sees oneself as a personality, that is to say as a point of view, everyone
else appears as a personality (also the 'greatest' enlightened one before him). The
questioner sees a mister or a madam, because he sees himself as a mister or a
madam. And in addition he sees a mister with all kinds of characteristics. Some of the
'enlightened men or women' radiate holiness and then the personality is immediately
ready to say that this is a case of 24 carat gold. But others, who are also called
enlightened, seem to be in a bad humor or be irritable or afflicted with all kinds of
things. Such a person can not be enlightened...
In fact there is no criteria that applies. There is no behavior from which one can
deduce whether someone is enlightened or not. There are people about whom it is
claimed - and about whom 'acknowledged enlightened ones' claim that they are
enlightened - who behave like the village idiot. Who can understand that someone
who can get angry or shows worry and so on is nevertheless 'an enlightened one'?
In a certain sense the enlightened one is only enlightened from the one impersonal
point of view. He is happiness itself, but not that which the personality calls
happiness. The personality speaks of happiness when a certain deep emotion appears.
The enlightened one is that from which the emotion is made, where it arises, and
wherein it again dissolves like ice in water without leaving a trace behind. What he
calls 'happiness' is always present as the background of everything, also for the
movement of feelings, including rage, concern and other things. He knows that he is
not limited by any state of mind. He is like the Indian prison inspector about whom
Shri Krishna Menon told: 'sometimes the inspector had to visit an out of the way police
station where there might not be any hotels. So, he slept in a cell, just like the robber
in the next cell. So, at least on the surface there was no difference between the
inspector and jailed thief. But if you look deeper into the situation there is a world of

difference: the prisoner has to stay in the cell, whether he wants to or not. The
inspector can go out any moment he so wishes.
Seen from the outside, that is the position of the enlightened. Maybe there is an
appearance that comes over as a personality with all kinds of desires and aversions,
but the enlightened can, any moment he wishes, be out of the cell. This is possible
from the moment that he has seen the situation as it actually is: from the instant that
he sees with his whole being that all these things that he felt until then as 'I', are no
more or less than fleeting appearances, because this can only be seen from an
'observation post' outside the personality, outside the framework of body, senses,
thinking and feeling. And 'outside of the cage' one is not someone who is now free, but
freedom itself. And that is what the old traditions designate as 'being enlightened'.
Question: When I hear you speaking I can follow it perfectly well in theory, and I
believe that I understand it. But I find it extremely difficult to apply all of this in
my daily life. Can you give us a remedy? What must one do in certain situations?
W.K.: In the course of the last years we have again and again discovered that the idea
of being a someone who does all kinds of things, is nothing other than a projection. In
fact such a 'someone', such an active person does not exist. The person is only
imagination. Your question is based on the assumption that you have done all kinds of
things in your life, but you have never done anything. After the finish of an action or a
thought, a feeling or a sensory perception, an 'I' projects itself at the end, as a sort of
tail. During listening there was no I. But, at the end of the story an I who heard the
story, is manufactured.
How can an I, that isn't there at all, hear a story? The 'I' is nothing but an invention.
There is no such I and you have never done anything in your life. Things do
themselves. You are the witness of the movements of the body, also of the movement
of what you call 'your will' and that possibly precedes an action. You are, whether you
want to or not, and without any effort, witness of fleeting thoughts and feelings. And
you are - and that is the most important thing to see - also always witness of such an
I-thought that you tack on like a tail behind a thought, a feeling, a perception or an
action. The I-thought is just a thought, similar to the thought about a nephew or
niece, or about the Eiffel tower. It is one pan in the row of pans on a kitchen shelf.
You are no more the one 'I-pan' than you are the other big and small pans.
Thus, there is no way to act in daily life. The only thing that needs to be done is to
see exactly that. There is no one who behaves this way or that way. You have never
done anything and the only thing that needs to happen to consciously be the freedom
that you've always been, is to pull the I-projection out of activities, body, senses,
thinking and feeling.
Question: So, an enlightened one sees himself as someone who is not active, even
though other people do see him as someone who is active?
W.K.: Yes, exactly. To put it even more accurately: for what you call 'an enlightened
one' it is completely self-evident that 'he' is not someone who is active; the idea never
occurs to him that he could be an active someone. Even if he says: 'Now I'm going to
polish my shoes' there is no idea or feeling at all in him that he is someone who is
going to do something.

The difficulty remains that one meeting someone, always sees the other at his own
level. I remember very well that it was a puzzle to me to see Ramana Maharshi eating.
I was convinced that he was enlightened, but how was it possible that he also ate, and
slept, and walked, I could not understand. That was because at that time I identified
myself with a body and action. In my case there was an I-feeling after polishing shoes
or before, and after eating and other activities. Therefore I saw the projection of
things on 'my' body also projected on 'his' actions and so forth.
A short while ago I was talking with someone for whom as a matter of fact I have very
warm feelings; he suddenly asked me: 'So, are you happy?' I had the nerve to answer
'yes' whereupon my friend cried out, banging his hand on the table: 'No'!'
There we are...
He thinks, as many others do, that being happy means always having a sunny
disposition. But in fact, that has nothing to do with happiness. Real happiness is
invisible. It is freedom itself and that means that happiness is not determined by the
feelings that happen, but by standing apart from the feelings. Exactly as the sky is not
influenced by the clouds passing by at a certain level, and entirely independent of
whether they are beautiful or ugly clouds. Space remains space, and in our
comparison that is happiness, the space that remains unmoved even if such ugly
clouds are drifting by.
Question: But isn't that almost unattainable?
W.K.: Not 'almost', but completely unattainable. How can a passing cloud reach the
sky? That doesn't make any sense. No one can attain it, because the one who wants to
attain is a complete illusion. A fantasy image can never attain anything. Only if the
fantasized I disappears with everything that belongs to it, does the immeasurable
reveal itself, independent of body or psyche or any behavior whatsoever. Being happy
means: being so completely convinced of the fact that you are not a someone that the
idea that you are not a someone doesn't even occur to you.
Question: Maybe I formulated my question wrong, but I still think it is hard to

achieve. Let's just say that getting the apparent-I out of the way is difficult to
achieve.
W.K.: These sorts of remarks are an escape. Self-realization has nothing to do with
easy or difficult. You don't need to do anything to look. Even if you close your eyes
images come up. In this room there are at least four people who have completely seen
what they are and what they are not. Why them but not you? Because they have
opened themselves up to anything that wanted to come up for witnessing, sometimes
slowly, and in some cases quickly. They never bothered with the question of whether
it is easy or difficult. They consciously held their 'eyes' open and looked in clarity,
surveyed. That is the only possibility.
People who find this all too difficult are only lazy, nothing else. They are not destined
for self-realization. The only qualification one needs to have is complete seriousness;
that one is ready to jump into the abyss. But, whoever continues to listen to their
fears, their cozy comfort, their laziness, remains where they are life after life:
someone who thinks it is very difficult. The most important has remained undone at
the end of his life, because he hasn't taken the trouble for it. So he is forced, to

trudge the same little paths over and over again... to remain swimming in an immense
plate full of gray, sweet, sticky gruel.
Question: Nevertheless it remains difficult to see that it isn't difficult.
W.K.: Whoever is in love, which literally means 'in the state of love', is a good lover,
and if the partner is also in love, they are a beautiful couple. But whoever is neurotic
thinks that they should love more than they do. In other words, whoever lays the
accent more on himself instead of the beloved, and thinks that he, the personality,
has to produce love, for him even love is an impossible task.
If you, you, you just don't do anything; if you just allow yourself to dissolve in the love
that you are in the deepest part of your being, all other problems are solved. Then,
the way that we call Jnana Yoga is as light as a feather and you would never again
pose questions about easy and difficult.
From: Yoga and Vedanta, June 1976
(illustration: Shunyam)

Jan's Odyssey
The book 'BACK from never been away'(published in
Dutch by Samsara) has recently arrived in the
bookstores. In his book, Jan van Delden gives a new and
original vision on Homer's epic poem. He found in it a
purely Western source about the essence of life, a
source that up to now was mainly sought in the East.
Below there follows a part of the postscript of the book
in which, the message of the Odyssey is made clear by
means of a bird's-eye-view.
In closing a part of an earlier Amigo interview in which
Jan recalls how he became acquainted with Homer's
Odyssey.
Love that one and do whatever happens

Homer has written a story that has no equal. It knocks to pieces anything that seems
to be made of material with proofs that no scientist can refute, if the scientist is at
least willing to examine the point of departure of his research. It gives 'enduring
happiness' as the answer, and that goes much further than the objective, temporary
knowledge and experiences that belief and thinking offer.
It gives to each of us who, with or without belief, dares to examine the world of
concepts the possibility of getting an unimaginable new look at ourselves. It gives
even the greatest doubter the chance to doubt his own doubts and so to become free
of the idea that thoughts and feelings are his property. It shows that you can stop
thinking that the little wars that you have with yourself and with your surroundings
are yours, so that you can effortlessly enter and remain in the peace and happiness of
being-there.
The Odyssey refutes every idea about how you will reach home - indeed without even
criticizing them - by seeing though to the fact that you have never been away. One of
the translations of the Odyssey is: hodos Zeus, or 'the way to Zeus'. Zeus dreams
himself in an infinite number of ways and therefore there is no way home that isn't
the way. But, you have nothing to say about how your trip home will unfold itself.
That is up to Zeus.
Only if Zeus wants it does there a longing to return home arise. And, if Telemachos
does not come to tell you what the situation of happiness was before the suitors (ed.
note: all the little I's) got their power over you, you remain ignorant of what your true
self is - even if you live at home with Zeus your entire life. It is only if the you feel the
search engine in yourself turning toward home, does that abstraction 'coming home'
mean something to you, and you may see the thinking and its stories just passing bye
without increasing or diminishing the just being-there.
Mostly you are alone in trying to find your way home against the world's stream of
logic. Nowadays in the western world, you are no longer physically threatened if you
name or describe the process of realization, so as happened with Jesus, Socrates and
Meister Eckhart. However, the sooner you know that it is better to keep your mouth
shut, the sooner you can see that being what you are has no function or task, because
there is nothing and no one other than the all encompassing being-there.
The failure of the ego

If you have that virus, that longing for home, then the biggest obstacle is learning to
see that there is no personality, no free will, no body and no world of the suitors (the
hundred and eight inner inclinations and 'little I's' - ed.), while the stories of their
being just continue in the waking state. If you are able to see all that, then a turning
takes place from 'I am that little main character in a world that is real and just keeps
going on' to the undefined all-encompassing being-there. That process of being the
doer ('I am the inventor of the Trojan horse'), to 'if Zeus doesn't bring me home then
I'll do it myself in vain' is in practice the greatest obstacle. First a demolition, a total
failure of the ego-idea is needed to be able to take that hindrance. Naturally I mean
that it is grace if you are effortlessly the witness of that happening.
Seeing the failure of the ego signifies the end of the 'yesterday and today'-story.
(including the inner and outer suitors [the inner little I's of the main character and the
'little I's of the other players - ed.] and the body) and seeing that all is from Zeus, the
undefined all-encompassing. But because there is no one in Zeus, that means that
there is no goal, or any reaching in the realization of what we are. As soon as we
begin to see that a strong reaction happens because the suitors and their powers of
holding on, which is the feeding ground of the feeling of being a doer, is threatened
and they do all that they can to defend the little Jan's story (the suitor's stories - ed.)
For many of us - just as for Odysseus - the inclination to disappear totally into that
phantasmagoria ( the suitor's constant commentary on what is happening and how it
should be according to them - ed.) becomes very strong. Then you pretend that you
want to go home, but in safe way by making the truth into an object. So you get lost
in the 'doing' of the endless task package of the ego and its suitors, until you are
allowed to see through it .. and that doesn't depend on you but on Zeus himself.
The image of the highest god who deceives his wife so
often like an adulterous fool
For most of us the way out of duality is so abstract that we'd rather not hear that on
coming home you are still not there. When I asked my mentor why he didn't warn me
and others about everything that still needed to be done and undone after coming
home, he answered simply: 'Then they wouldn't begin at all!' Then I resolved to do it
differently, which shows the as yet undigested nature of my knowledge about the non-
existence of the doer. But, when the last little trace of the doer dissolved I received,
unasked, the code for understanding the Odyssey on a serving platter.
The uniqueness of the Odyssey is that it represents the procession of a life from unity
to duality and then back to unity in its totality. In addition, it has remained
unchanged after all these centuries, without any 'tinkering' with the suitor's stories to
adjust them to the ruling morality. It also shows that the ancient Greeks were very
tolerant and highly civilized in the humorous manner they used to lay bare and put
lofty subjects in perspective. No other culture known to me explains the important
insight - water plays with water - with an image of their highest god who betrays his
wife so often like an adulterous fool.
For me the Charybdis episode is the most important insight of Odysseus's journey.
There you learn that you are beyond the three states, even while you continue to
witness them effortlessly. You thus become drenched by the fact that you can neither
remain nor live in any state. Yes, that may bring your thoughts rather into panic,
because then you have to be something quite different from what you thought you

were! That process is often difficult if not dramatic and can last for a long time.
Mostly women think then that they are going mad and men that they are dying. But,
after a time in the desert you begin to see more clearly that you can not be the body
in the waking state. Thus you see the body more and more as an object, and the
suitors, your dog-thought little 'I's with all their different impulses, come loose from
the one I-being.
What is fine about having thrown your body out figuratively as not belonging to you is
seeing that you body is a kind soul that doesn't ask for attention like the suitors, but
seeks only satisfaction through eating, drinking and sex. As long as the suitors - your
troublesome opponents - can't interfere with this satisfaction there is no problem. It
all happens very naturally and you thus become a witness to the dissolving of your
body. In fact it has always been the case that the body asks for satisfaction because
then the body feeling disappears, and we are all too happy when we don't feel the
body.
But it is completely different with the suitors. They are never satisfied and ask for
attention continuously. Only when they are in love do they become pigs for a bit and
remain quiet. But as soon as they escape the bewitchment they begin to demand your
attention again. You have to learn to recognize the eternal dissatisfaction of the
suitors. In practice, making all the suitors visible is not something that can happen in
one day as was the case with Odysseus. You have danced to their tune for years, and
it is difficult to see them all and to subsequently pay no attention to them. Speaking
for myself, I needed ten years after coming back home to definitely get rid of their
automatism. If someone praises you to heaven or wishes you in hell, for you it is all
just pot of wet water and you don't get fooled anymore into thinking that it is
something other than water - also not when the little wave that you once thought
yourself to be gets a beating or worse.
Not anything other than water is a disguise

If everything is water, and the waves could never be anything but water, then all the
hindrances and all the help were nothing else but water in disguise. Coming to
understand the consequences of that insight in relation to our ideas about good and
bad, life and death, and the moral experiencing of what happens in this world, is a
change of perspective of one hundred and eighty degrees, because there is no guilt
either for the culprit or the victim.
But what if your child, just as was Odysseus's case before he left for battle against
Troy, is plowed under. Being totally convinced that everything is consciousness means
accepting everything as it is and that no more reaction to be found in you from an 'I'.
It is always water playing with water. Maybe you will be a witness to Jan saving his
son and not wanting to go fight, but if that is not possible, Jan will simply fight. But
you refuse to see the fighting as you opposing others, as the surrounding 'waves' do
experience it, and you remain effortlessly recognizing water in everything. In your
experience you do not kill, you do nothing and leave nothing: only Zeus regulates
everything. Give all the responsibility to Zeus and the seventh day is a fact in spite of
all the wars or anything at all. Finally it is not what happens that holds us prisoner but
our experience of it.

The gratitude in seeing that there is nothing to reach, that everything that we seem
to accomplish devolves on us, and that we never do or have done anything, makes us
constantly conscious of receiving everything. That is a big difference from the past,
when little Jan still complained about everything and especially about others. It is
gratitude for everything and everyone, including the suitors who definitely helped me
to see how everything is put together.
Even though I now see that Wolter was never my mentor, because there has never
been anything or will be anything except the knowing, Zeus himself thus, I still just
continue seeing Wolter as my great helper in the never existed familiar side of the
threshold. Allow the apparent duality with its spirit play to just be. Love the one and
do what happens. What difference does it make if you know that the play of waves is
not made of waves but of water?
Then you can still calmly put the wave Wolter on a pedestal with a worshipful Jan-
wave at his feet. And by the way no little I is doing that, but you see it happening by
itself!
The fun of Zeus

That seeing everything happen is the ocean of peace that need not go anywhere and
tastes everything as itself without becoming saturated or changing. Seen from this
place birth and death are no more than stories. It is the position of the fig tree that
you can longer leave to disappear into one of the stories. Then, all your interest in
answering curious questions about how it all fits together disappears. All these things
are actually nonsense because you see for yourself that there is only one truth that
everything is Zeus himself. Then, you automatically stop believing in any story
whatsoever, and then life becomes a play.
So the unchanging peace, that was always already the self-evident ground of our
existence, appears with its sweet power of being to turn everything on and to
transform it into stillness and clarity. Until the creative and destructive forces, and
the clear attention become one with all encompassing, undefined being-there-space
to then be as one experience, the now.
Let the Odyssey be a help in pricking some holes in your illusion of being a wave at
your own tempo, so that you can see more of the whole by yourself - until the one
thread of Zeus, the water is completely accomplished and Athene in her play becomes
the leading character in your play. Only then the beauty of Zeus appears and the
whole process transforms itself to 'the fun of Zeus'.
(from: interview Amigo 5)
Amigo: You have always had a fascination for the Odyssey and Odysseus, you read
it when you were a child. When did you actually discover that the entire Odyssey
is a metaphor for you own seeker's journey?
Jan: The first time that I really became conscious of that was at Wolter's (Keers). At a
certain moment I was tired and 'defeated' in searching for truth. During meditation I
fell in a trance.

At that time I could remain in trance for a long time and nevertheless simply remain
doing everything. I had no desire to search anymore and escaped into a trance. Trance
is actually the same as the natural state, but then being done by an person who
doesn't want to play anymore in this evil
world. You sit then comfortably,
delicious. safe in your little trance and
have nothing to do with the world. At a
certain moment I was in a trance at
Wolter's, who was explaining to people
how stupid they were if they fell into a
trance (also called samadhi) and got
stuck there. At that moment the trance
suddenly burst open: I have to pass by
the Sirenes. And I must not let the little
I's (the little Jans) 'eavesdrop' and keep
my attention on the mast (the subject),
in order not to be sucked up in the
eternal 'why-story' of the Sirenes in a
'never ending story'. At that time I
became really aware that the Odyssey
had always been a sort of 'fully
automatic' guiding principle for me that seemed to run in synchronicity with my
advaita vedanta path and that the Odyssey is an authentic script for the 'searching for
home'. Simultaneously I saw that no little I did that, it just overcame me.
You have developed your own language and tone from the Odyssey to talk about it
and based on that you tell about your own search.
J: Yes, what interested me more and more is: was it actually meant to be this?
As a child I wanted, as every child does, to understand and master the big world. And I
then thought that the answers were in the big scholarly books, and this book about
Odysseus was in my fathers book shelves. That was universal literature for me.
How did you read it at that time, as a fairy tale or as a bible that gave instruction?
J: I only saw that the Odyssey was a book that was read by intelligent people and I
wanted to be one too. In fact among all those books this was the only that was a bit
normal for me to read. The other books were much too abstract for me.
I also discovered then the hypocrisy that it contained: Odysseus does everything,
makes love everywhere, does everything that is forbidden. When he finally arrives
home he hypocritically slaughters the 108 suitors who had done nothing with his wife,
besides trying to seduce her. And this Odysseus was thought to be a just man! I
couldn't swallow that; I thought it was so unjust. Still it meant something to me and it
came back again and again when I was allowed to see something on my path.
After the big 'seeing', did you already know: the Odyssey is my manner, my
language to understand it?

J: That was about 3 or 4 years ago. I already knew that before, only I had never
thought: this has to be told. In the years after Wolter's death I had seen that it is
nonsense to tell 'yourself' and all the other waves that you are made of water,
because that is already the case.
When did you get the feeling that you had to talk about it?
J: I've never had that. There have been moments when I wanted to talk about it, and
that also happened, but I have always looked to see if consciousness also wanted that.
Sometime around 1988 I gave a series of lectures on invitation. But that stopped. I
never promoted it. At a certain moment I became open for it and after that
everything went very fast.
Did you then begin to use the Odyssey as a script for your story?
J: Jan has always been a bit of a social worker and after all if the whole story is just
an illusion, why shouldn't little Jan enjoy the story that tears down all illusions.
Something in my head is always busy with how to make it even better. I don't 'do' that,
it is in Jan's nature. In view of Jan's limited capacities, with a bad memory, the
Odyssey is an easy representations book on which I (or little Jan) can draw time and
again to be able to navigate. A sort of inner computer with which I can see in what
situation someone finds themselves and throw some light on that with examples. For
me it is an easy resource with which to bring all stories back to the one unchanging
essence.
And it is unique...
J: But you don't do it! What you have to do, and I advise everyone to do that, is to
play with the things that enthrall you. The Odyssey has 'played' itself in me, it is a
kind of seduction of yourself. What is nice about it is, your becoming aware that again
and again something new strikes you that you were not aware of before. The entire
Odyssey just fell in my lap, but that's also 'two times two is three'(an apparent result
from an apparent cause, in other words a story). I can't see it any other way than that
everything falls in your lap. And that doesn't come from me but from Consciousness
itself, and that always sits in the box and follows the show from a surveying point of
view which has Jan's humility as a by product.
That is not a supposed situation, but I survey from a place that can't be influenced,
and that at the same time is conscious of knowing that little Jan has nothing to say
about it. I am the witness of Jan's humility. Because of that Jan can no longer get
away with being the full-of- himself sufferer as in the past, because I have him sharp
in focus: I see without any trouble that he has nothing to say. Isn't that just like the
Odyssey: a story that tells everything about 'nothing and no one'!
for more information on Jan (in Dutch): www.ods.nl/la-rousselie

Advaita (psycho)therapy
Supplementary or conflicting?
[Johan van der Kooij in conversation with Susan Frank]
I heard a visitor ask a question during a seminar given by Ramesh Balsekar:

'What do you think about psychotherapy?'
The hall became stock-still as if everyone were holding their breath so as not to
miss the answer. Balsekar’s answer was simple and clear: 'If your body is weak,
then it makes sense to go to a doctor, similarly, if your mind is weak it makes
sense to be in therapy.'
At first sight it seems as if the principles of advaita and psychotherapy are
contradictory.
Jean Klein described the distinction very clearly:
'All forms of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, are based on a premise that is

exactly the cause of what could be called a fundamental neurosis in the light of
advaita namely the arising of an ego that experiences itself as a separated
entity...The psychoanalyst tries to restore an ego to balance and harmony, an ego in
balance with its surroundings and with other beings. On closer examination this ideal
is seen to be completely nave... This is just about as absurd as applying oneself to
curing the symptoms of a disease without turning to the sickness itself. The
psychoanalytic cure is thus not a real cure. It doesn’t liberate the sick person from the
sickness, it helps him to live with it, with the ego. His sickness is imaginary. From the
point of view of advaita a psychoanalyst always works, whether consciously or not,
and in all sincerity, just as does Monsieur Purgon, the doctor in Molières The Imaginary
Invalid. (source: Be who you are, Watkins Publishing, Dulverton 1978)
The vestibule
After the second world war a broad interest arose in personal growth and spirituality.
Humanistic psychology developed as a reaction to classical psychoanalysis and is
accessible to a broad audience. Humanistic psychology is a collective name for
experience-directed psychotherapy which stresses personal growth. The heart of
humanistic psychology lies in the art of looking into the inner. Another important
starting point of humanistic psychology is that there is fundamentally nothing wrong
with people, that everyone uses a mask now and then in order to be able to function.
The masks arose in the psyche, almost invisibly, when they were needed. Seen in this
way we are all a little bit neurotic. Humanistic psychology offers a method to unmask
the personality and so to come in touch with a deeper reality in ourselves.
You could call humanistic psychology a vestibule to the interest that currently exist
for spirituality in general, and non-duality in particular. Humanistic psychology began
to use self-awareness to explore the depths of consciousness. It goes without saying
that it came into contact with areas where scientific psychology stops and experience
of being begins.
- Is it a pitfall or just a form of support if we do therapy during our sadhana?

- Can one penetrate to the essence of advaita without psychological insight into the
personality? Or is that just another mental game, a mental foothold?

Amigo visited Susan Frank, who regularly gives satsang in Holland, with these and
other questions.
Some years ago ShantiMayi, the spiritual Master of Susan Prajnaparamita, asked her to
'spread the light all over the world.'
Since then Susan has unceasingly offered satsang and intensives, inspiring all who are
longing to awaken to their inherent Buddha nature. Susan, living devoted to truth and
freedom all her life, she has been given a rich vista of non-dual teachings: Advaita
Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Zen, Chan.
Also see: www.susanfrank.nl
Johan: I see similarities between advaita and psychotherapy and that is what I
would like to bring to the foreground in this conversation.
Susan: I don’t know anything about

psychotherapy and I also know nothing
about advaita, so this could become an
amusing conversation. !
Johan: A large number of people do

psychotherapy to work on
themselves. It seems as if this target
group also go deeper into advaita. Do
they fit together?
Susan: Naturally everything fits

together, there is one totality, a
division cannot be made anywhere.
Does this tree and that cloud belong
together? Yes, naturally, it is
manifestation, everything belongs
together, One. All divisions that one
makes are mind-made, and in essence
misunderstandings, One cannot be
divided. What items would you pull out
of existence, and where will you place
them?
Ah, but you know, there are an infinite number of points of view, and which one is
true? Everyone is right, seen from their own point of view. But lets change the
perspective.
Most people work on themselves in order to become happier, to resolve traumas or

heal sadness. Psychotherapy groups have an important function. The realization that
everyone in the group is confronting the same difficulties; that you can share with
each other, and work away your sadness, the catharsis, the feeling that you are not
alone
Pieces of tension and pain fall away, maybe even big pieces. The focus is on feeling
better, on feeling more free. And this is all a great good.

And now we come to a crucial difference: my first and great love is advaita, a
beautiful way Then all interest in what you think or feel stops. Here we come to a
totally different dimension. 'How are you?' Yeah, Who cares?
Here, the fascination stops for how you feel, your fascination for your fancied
identity, for your attainments, your status, your possessions, your experiences
Find that which is free of all that.
Who is ready to face a total loss of identity? Who dares to be so open and vulnerable
and admit to being nobody?
Johan: In my introduction to this article I quote Jean Klein on the conflict between
advaita and psychotherapy. To put it briefly, that quote says that psychotherapy
has the goal of bringing the separated ego into balance again.
Susan: In psychotherapy it is always assumed that you are somebody. For example, the
sad person who wants to be in balance again and feel happy. When you are willing to
open to non-dual spirituality, and take a deeper look, you will see that there is no
such thing as an ego, or a separated ego. The ego itself is the delusion of separation.
Johan: I once asked Jean Klein whether I needed to clean up my psychological past
before I started investigating advaita. His answer was: If you look from the non-
dualistic perspective then all the psychological problems will finally dissolve by
themselves.
Susan: Yes, I agree completely.
Johan: Still that happened only partially during that time.
Susan: Jean Klein used the word finally
At a certain moment you are ready to stop investing in your pain, you are ready to lay
down your fascination for your sadness and your discomforts. You entrust yourself to a
larger perspective. It seems as if you are taking a step backward. A step from
experiencing to purely witnessing all experience, from being identified with all
movement to silently observing all movement. Slowly all anxiety will dissolve. It is a
process of purification. It takes time, trust, sincerity, boundless patience, total
dedication and no wavering.
When the old pains come to the surface, be ready to see that everything comes and
goes and that nothing really has any substance. For some people this is the moment to
declare: 'Its not going well, now I have to go into therapy'
And well, the people who absolutely want recognition for their feelings and
experiences, they may be better off with some counseling first.
Johan: Many psychotherapists have also come in contact with spirituality. Can the
two exist together?
Susan: Yes, that’s possible for some time, but even better: bring the wisdom of
spirituality into psychotherapy and don’t try to squeeze psychotherapy into

spirituality. Eventually every form of psychotherapy is superfluous and spirituality
evaporates into a life that is so ordinary, extraordinary ordinary.
Johan: You once said: 'As long as you think that you still need therapy, that means
that you have not crossed the ocean of samsara*.'
Susan: Absolutely, after self-realization there is no more benefit from psychotherapy.

The imagined personality has been seen to be completely transparent and one has lost
all interest for this phantom.
Johan: Suppose, someone has met a guru, but the old sadness continues to exist.
Susan: Yeah, it may even become ten times stronger.
Johan: What is happening then?
Susan: In satsang, and in the relation with a spiritual Master light is thrown into your
heart. Everything that is still hidden and repressed is brought to light. In the
increasing trust, and in the openness that arises in you, and in the light that comes
into your being all the old sadness dares to show its face.
If you are not sufficiently prepared, or do not have good contact with your spiritual
Master, you may think: now things are going really bad with me! At first it was going
so well, but now things are worse, what a relapse! I really need therapy!
No, it’s actually going very well, because everything that has always been ignored or
suppressed is becoming visible to you. And more and more you will find the courage to
just be with what is.
What is beautiful about these days is that so many therapists are beginning to get
deep spiritual insights. They have a far greater 'capacity' for their clients. And
nowadays, many of their clients really need that.
Johan: By means of psychotherapy you investigate yourself and your relation to

the world. Then you land in territories other than your rational mind. The way
opens itself towards essence.
Susan: As far as I am concerned it is very simple: do you have a compelling fascination

for your drama? Then go into therapy.
But, as long as you are working on a person, working on a somebody, then you are still
into reconstructing a three dimensional illusion.
Spirituality is actually for healthy, stable people. You need to be mature and stand
firmly on your feet to be able to completely surrender to, what shall we say; freedom,
truth, love to all that is.
Johan: What is then the difference between what you do and what a therapist
does?
Susan: I don’t know what I do, I actually don’t do anything, the words come
immediately without the intervention of ideas.

I have never been to a psychotherapist, but I have understood that therapists can be a
great help in making you feel better, feel more confident, and let go of old pain and
traumas.
Spirituality is about opening completely and entrusting yourself to totally nothing and
totally everything at the same time. In this, every idea of being-there dissolves.
The readiness to die, every moment, the readiness to fully live, every moment. Live
life fully. Live joyfully, fall in love, earn your money, deny yourself nothing. But look
right through it, see that it doesn’t have a single speck of reality.
You are not tied down by anything, you don’t have to let go of anything, you are not
bound by anything. Deny nothing, exclude nothing, include everything In the midst of
life and free of it at the same time.
Our togetherness is about self realization

Johan: Do you tune into a psychological layer during individual talks?
Susan: People come to satsang with varying unique problems or complications. Some
matters are not suitable to talk about during satsang. So sometimes we make an
individual appointment and take the time to disentangle some balls of twine.
Disentangling the knots means that they come to see that actually nothing is really
there, they come to see that all knots are mind made. They come to see that all is
mind made.
Our togetherness is about self realization, nothing else than that. And whatever is
needed for that, is needed for that. Everyone in their own completely unique way,
step by step going home, home which no one ever left.
Johan: Sometimes therapists say that people who are involved with spirituality
have a tendency to sweep their emotional problems under the rug.
Susan: Yes, that is true, therefore you need a spiritual teacher who can catch you by
the sleeve, when necessary. In a half baked understanding of the principle of
observing, people can get aloof, avoid participating in life, soothing their fears.
Sometimes what is meant to be a pointer, or an encouragement to the student is again

conceptualized. New ideas are made, spiritual ideas, in an ongoing attempt to define
and control life.
And there are no emotional problems really, any problem is mind made and a
resistance to directly experiencing what is.
Life itself shows. And, if you try to preserve your control behind spiritual concepts, or
behind a refusal to be totally present, then that certainly comes to light. Everything
wants to be seen, and everything that you try to avoid knocks on your front door one
day. Thus these are always the big subjects: What are you trying to avoid, and what
are you afraid of? Live life fully and deny nothing!
Johan: But, 'everything wants to be seen' that is an invitation to investigate the

personality, why am I actually sad, why does my partner irritate me?

Susan: No, all why stops! In radical spirituality there is absolutely no interest in any
why! It all depends on where you are on your path of unfolding, whether you just
allow and experience that sadness, or merely let it pass. Why sadness exists, that is
again the realm of fascination with the imagined person.
Everyone walks their own unique path.

Johan: In psychotherapy one can learn that an emotion like anger is a projection,
a reaction because maybe you received too little attention in your family. If you
see that you can let it go.
Susan: As far as I am concerned there are three possibilities: 1) go totally into the
emotion or 2) let it pass, or 3) find out the why because in order to let it go.
The why-because-and-then-letting-it-go doesn’t belong in my shop, also not when I

meet people individually.
I am not a psychotherapist, yet sometimes it can be helpful to look together at certain

complications.
Everyone walks their own unique path. Walking home: learning to listen deeply to
existence, learning to bend, learning to yield.
Everyone has ideas about what they think they need for their inner journey, but that
is not necessarily what you get, or what you really need.
Johan: How can you know?
Susan: The connection with your spiritual teacher is of the utmost importance. The
teacher is there for you, the teacher is serving you, loving you unconditionally.
There is an immense power, a very mysterious one working in this relation. I have the
feeling that this is not much realized nowadays.
Do not deny yourself such a rare gift and blessing. You will be nourished so deeply and
inspired and empowered again and again to go beyond any limit, any judgment, any
concept.
Authenticity
Johan: Is it because of deep relaxation that someone becomes totally themselves
after self-realization?
Susan: Yes, deep relaxation and then authenticity comes to the foreground. We all
long very much for authenticity. You only have to look at who our heroes are, for
example Nelson Mandela, Madonna, Mick Jagger, or on a much greater scale Jesus,
Buddha, the Dalai Lama. All people who are so much themselves. Their authenticity
reminds us of something that lives deep in us and that we long for: relaxing in just
being my self, relaxing in just being totally natural
During your sadhana you stop lugging your life around and forcing it to be what you
want. We only need to be natural, relax and surrender totally to what is.
Johan: How does personal authenticity arise?

Susan: That has something to do with self trust.
Your spiritual unfolding adds a great dimension to that. Your self trust transforms into
Self-trust by means of an ever deeper surrender, by getting out of the way and making
room for God.
You find ever more room in your heart. You need not reject or acquire anything
anymore and your existence becomes an expression of naturalness. Then authenticity
is no longer personal.
Johan: Do you still have a personality?
Susan: What is that
Johan: Do you have preferences?
Susan: Yes, certainly!
Johan: Could you call that a personality?
Susan: Personality means mask, but for me the word means that there is a delusion of
a separate identity.
A preference wells up, it wells up that I want to go for a walk, that I feel like some
coffee, a thought that I have to call somebody. Is a personality needed for that? Not
at all
Johan: Jean Klein, Nisargadatta and John Levy were three totally different kinds
of people, I would almost say that they were three totally different personalities. I
am convinced that they were not identified with the personality. But they had
very definitely different preferences.
Susan; Yes, that’s what you say, their being personalities, but that isn’t how they see.
It all depends on your point of view. Are there preferences? O.K. Are there no
preferences? O.K.
Do you still believe that you are identified? Are you flexible in changing perspectives,
do you see the transparency of everything, do you see that no perspective has any
reality?
Ananda Mayi Ma for example, was so absorbed, she merged with everything, she didn’t
see any difference between fire and water, but I do! I know that the essence of water
and fire is the same, but I also see the difference between them very clearly.
There is no such thing as a final destination

Johan: Does that insight add something to the notion of essence?
Susan: Notion of essence lets be careful, and not again objectify the unborn principle
that you call essence.
Essence is not an object. Essence has no name and no form. Nothing can be added to
it and nothing can be taken away from it.
You realize who you are, you know who you are, without knowing cognitively.

There is an unending deepening, ever finer and more subtle. But there is actually no
such thing as a final destination. Lets live by the famous mantra in the Heart Sutra:
Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha

(Go, go beyond, go beyond the highest, beyond the highest reality, beyond the
highest realization. Svaha: all intent is relinquished)
Johan: How can there still be movement after self realization?
Susan: Yes, well movement is there. In self realization nothing changes, you only know
without a shadow of a doubt that all notion of I has dissolved into formless,
indefinable consciousness.
Movement just continues. See the unchanging in the changing, and the changing in the
unchanging.
From my point of view there is no personality, I cant find anyone anywhere who is me.
There are thoughts, feelings, there are preferences, there is sleep, there is hunger,
there is a momentary impatience life expressing itself.
Johan: Do you see a personality in other people?
Susan: No personality here, no personality there. No here, no there. Once someone

asked me: 'What are you actually? Are you a Guru or a Satguru? ' I know that I am
everything, and nothing at the same time. How can I confine myself to being
something, or not being something? How can I define myself to one or the other? I
can’t say: I am a Guru, or a Satguru, I am this or I am that. impossible. Maybe some
can say that, but it means nothing to me. And you are exactly the same: limitless,
formless essence. In reality there is no me and no you, there is only God and God
can be seen in all eyes.
'Just be willing to receive

like an empty vessel
life, expressing itself as it does.
Give up your preoccupations,
your interpretations,
and all conditions put on existence.
Come to see that there is no separate individuality,
see that all sense of separation is mind made.
Realizing this all suffering ceases
and you will awaken to love, wisdom and compassion
expressing itself in all actions throughout your entire life.'
Susan Prajnaparamita
* Samsara = the ever becoming
**Ananda Mayi Ma = a unique, dazzling incarnation of divinity, India 1896 - 1982

Here is what you are!
Amigo in conversation with Joan Tollifson, writer of Awake in the Heartland: The
Ecstasy of What Is and Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking up from the Story of my
life. She teaches English part-time at a Chicago college and also holds meetings
about what is.
In her books she candidly and wittily shares memories about her seeking with the
reader.
In that same manner she answers our questions and disproves the relevance of
any why, if, or but-scenario by relentlessly pointing simply straight to the only
reality there is: the everydayness of What is.
K: After reading your book 'Awake in the Heartland', I recognized, as many will do,
the longing and seeking for a breakthrough experience. Visiting, talking and
writing to all kinds of teachers (Gangaji, Tony Parsons, Isaac Shapiro, Wayne
Liquorman, Toni Packer, Steven Harrison), trying to discover the need of such an
experience.
So what was the breakthrough in the end? And of what significance was the longing
and seeking?
J: The so-called breakthrough is the dissolution of

the seeker - which is not an event that happens to
the seeker (since there isn't one!), but simply the
clear seeing (by no one) that there never has been
anyone doing the seeking (or anything else), that
there is nothing at all to attain, that there is only
this. The Oneness (or Peace or Happiness) that has
been sought is actually inescapable and omnipresent.
Many people (in the movie of spiritual life) are

waiting for an event - some explosive moment after
which everything will be entirely different. But no
event or experience is real. The whole phenomenal
display is an appearance with no solidity or
substance.
What IS cannot be 'achieved' or 'realized' or

'practiced' or 'embodied' or anything else. There's nothing apart from it to realize or
achieve it, and there is nothing that does not perfectly embody it. Every experience is
equally sacred, equally true. Reality is what is, just as it is.
The whole search is a dream-play. It has no significance at all. It's a momentary

appearance, like the clouds, the trees, the shows on television, the beautiful sunset,
the dried leaves blowing down the street...
K: So its discovering: Nobody here, nobody there (as Tony Parsons likes to put it).
And so no-body to blame, to accuse, to love, to make up to, to worship, to hold
responsible, to be. Just get on with life and live it as it is?
I often picture this as a revolving door; longing and wanting gets you in and at the
end you find yourself outside again at exactly the same spot as you left. So whats

the difference?
Is that the reason one feels disappointed, deceived, disillusioned and gets addicted
to the revolving door and wants to keep seeking?
J: There is no one to 'get on with life and live it as it is,' and no one to go in, out or
around a revolving door. All of this is an appearance, a story.
And it's not that 'you' come back to the same spot. The journey and the one taking it
are imaginary. Here is always here. It's always Now. Appearances come and go, stories
take shape and dissolve, movies play, but Here does not come and go.
Here is God. Here is the Beloved. Here is What Is. Here is Pure Awareness. Here is
Unconditional Love. Here is what you are.
Disappointment and disillusionment are beautiful. They are an invitation (to nobody)
to give up completely, to abandon all hope, to let every belief go, to let the ship sink.
What remains?
What remains is Here. You. This.
If the mind is right now trying to see 'Here' (as an object) or figure out what 'This' is
and grasp it, there will be frustration. The mind can't grasp what is all-inclusive and
uncontained.
Every thing (even the grasping and the seeking and the frustration) is allowed to be
exactly as it is -- not by 'you' finally 'doing acceptance' correctly, but by this Here and
Now that is omnipresent and inescapable. Here accepts everything. It is the very heart
of everything. It is all there is. Any sense of separation or split is only an appearance.
And that appearance is also here. It, too, is what Is.
What Is (Here) cannot be found because it can't be lost. It can't be seen because it is
the seeing itself. It is invisible, yet it shines through everywhere--in every work of art
and in every scrap of garbage, in the most seemingly enlightened activity and in the
most seemingly neurotic activity. When this is seen, there is no impulse to search
elsewhere, for there is no elsewhere.
The words are just words -- playful sounds bubbling up out of nowhere. Like
everything else, they appear Here for an instant, and then they are gone. Here
remains.
All the things you think are wrong with you are absolutely
right
K: Let me bring up another combination of letters on screen and toy with it:
authenticity (according to the dictionary: The quality or condition of being
authentic, trustworthy, or genuine.).
If theres investigation of looking for the source going on, it seems as if it is
inevitable to meet the black hole: (that which goes beyond words or
comprehension) meeting the beauty of inability or incompetence, and seeing and
being the source expressing itself through all the stories that seem to be going on.
At the same time this word seems to point the assumed personality towards being
genuine and authentic. Living the expression of Here as it is, without any assumed

personality, past or future to measure it against or need to permit it; being:
loving, upset, blissful, angry as it occurs.
But one is confused when something occurs that is not expected. As in: I am really
getting into spirituality (meditating, vegetarian food, doing exercises, not giving in
to desire, celibacy, not smoking, nail biting etc.) but I still get upset, annoyed,
angry and I start to suppress those matters, instead of expressing them.
Another angle: in some way or another genuineness seems to touch and strike us.
We make heroes and heroines (e.g. Mandela, Gandhi, JFK, Mother Theresa and so
on) out of them. These people seem to be expressing themselves without restraint
and we look up to them.
J: What IS is authentic. Any effort to 'be authentic' is rooted in the assumption that it
is possible to be something else. Is it?
There are many teachers who speak of living in a spiritually correct way or 'embodying
enlightenment,' as if this was something that someone could do (or fail to do).
The truth is that there is simply what is, as it is. It could not be otherwise. None of it
is personal. It is one whole undivided inseparable tapestry. The dividing lines are only
in the mind, not in Reality. There is no separate one to be (or not be) authentic.
Telling a so-called lie is as 'authentic' as telling the so-called truth. Eating meat is as
'authentic' as eating vegetables. Getting angry or biting your nails is as 'authentic' as
meditating or doing loving-kindness practices.
What is truly authentic (undeniably true and genuine) is THIS that cannot be contained
in any word, THIS that includes absolutely everything and sticks to absolutely nothing,
THIS that has been pointed to by words such as 'Here, Now, Presence, Emptiness, Pure
Awareness, Seeing, Being, the Self, What Is.' THIS is undeniable. Inescapable. This isn't
a belief. It's the one thing you are absolutely sure of, right now, without any doubt.
You know you are here. You don't need a mirror or an outside authority or a course of
study to know this. Seeing is happening, hearing is happening, all on its own. This IS.
It's undeniable.
Any ideas (or ideals) about 'enlightened people' living 'enlightened lives' are simply
ideas having to do with a fictional character in a movie. All such ideas are a form of
'restraint' and 'suppression' (to pick up on your words), but even that restraint and
suppression is also genuinely what is, and it belongs to no one. It is an impersonal
appearance, like the weather. Some days are sunny and clear, some days are windy
and wild, some days are stormy and dark. It means nothing. It simply IS. We love to
idealize people, especially dead people, especially dead gurus. We love to imagine
they were flawless, perfect, vegetarian characters.
One of my main teachers, Nisargadatta Maharaj, smoked cigarettes and died of throat
cancer. He sold cigarettes for a living. He ate meat. He lived in (or near) a red-light
district in Bombay. He got angry, yelled at people, threw them out of his satsang. I
never knew him in person, but this is what I hear. I think that's part of what drew me
to him. It was instantly clear that awakening did not mean a person had to resemble
Ramana Maharshi or Thich Nhat Hanh. You did not have to be soft-spoken, beatific,
gentle and vegetarian.

Another person who has been very important to me is Tony Parsons. He joked once
that the people who were coming to him were giving up vegetarianism, putting on
weight, and dying of heart failure. He thought that was just fine. He said, 'You can't
not be in grace. Everything about you is totally absolutely perfectly appropriate. All
the things you think are wrong with you are absolutely right.' That was enormously
liberating to hear. I realized how caught up I had been for such a long time in trying to
perfect the character, trying to have some Big Bang awakening experience, trying to
get rid of all Joan's neurotic little habits, trying to turn into somebody better, trying
to make something (other than this) happen.
I realized this whole quest for self-perfection (and personal enlightenment) was a
movie, a dream. The movie was absolutely perfect, just the way it was. It was a great
movie! But it was a movie. Nothing about Joan needed to change. No Big Bang was
needed. It was a revelation to see that Joan's whole effort to wake up from the movie
was nothing more than another part of the movie. The awakening that was so
desperately being sought had in fact never been absent. But this awakening was not
an experience to be had (for any experience would just be another scene in another
movie), and it did not happen to Joan, for how can a mirage wake up from a mirage?
When I write and talk about this spiritual stuff, I seem to have an overwhelming
compulsion to reveal the neurotic quirks and idiosyncrasies of the Joan character.
Some people say I'm very courageous and honest and genuine. But actually, it's just
what happens. I can't control it. I'm not trying to be that way. In fact, for a long time,
I was trying not to do that--I had the idea that I wanted to speak and write only the
'Pure Truth,' and I thought this meant leaving the whole story of Joan and her messy,
neurotic life behind, and just speaking and writing about Pure Awareness (whatever
that might be!). What was seen eventually was that the Pure Truth is All There Is. It
even includes the appearance of Joan with all her (apparent and absolutely perfect)
flaws. Nothing needs to be attained or left out. The mess of everyday life is actually
the perfect expression of truth.
What is authentic right now? That's a great question. There's only one possible answer:
What is, just as it is.
Here is true love

K: As I read your book, I noticed that at on the one hand you were drawn by the
devotional (bhakti) teachings and on the other hand by the intellectual (jnani)
approaches. What was the role of the heart and the mind to the story of Joans
evaporation?
J: Great question. For one thing, I wouldn't characterize the so-called jnani approach
as intellectual. The kind of exploration and inquiry that attracted me was more about
open awareness and curiosity, pure sensory experiencing of what is (sensations,
sounds, sights), seeing stories as stories and thoughts as thoughts. I spent a lot of time
exploring things like how a so-called 'decision' or 'choice' actually happens--not by
thinking it through analytically, but by watching it in action. Was there somebody at
the controls? Was there a choice? Was there a 'me'? It wasn't about reasoning it
through; it was about looking to see. I suppose this had an intellectual dimension as
well, but it was primarily about direct investigation. And it was also about simply

resting in pure presence, the sounds and sensations of this moment minus the mental
overlay. My main teacher at that time was Toni Packer.
At some point, I stumbled upon Advaita (Nisargadatta and Jean Klein were my first
introduction to that), and something new began to open up, something I would now
call non-dual understanding, which is simply the recognition that there is absolutely
nothing to attain, that Consciousness is All there Is.
Before I stumbled upon Advaita, I had the sense that I was engaged in a very
important evolutionary undertaking, struggling to stabilize in a state of open
awareness and get beyond the caught-up-ness in self-centered stories and neurotic
habit patterns. It seemed that 'I' went back and forth between these two realms. The
world itself seemed very real, and it seemed that this process of becoming more and
more aware and present was crucial not only to solving my own personal problems,
but also to solving the larger global conflicts. I imagined myself engaged in what Toni
Packer calls 'the work of this moment': watching, exploring, paying attention. The
feeling-tone was quite serious and sober.
Advaita, on the other hand, didn't seem to take the world seriously. It didn't seem to
take me seriously! It didn't seem to take the whole evolutionary paradigm seriously! It
didn't seem as concerned about watching and paying attention. I found myself more
and more in spiritual scenes where people laughed uproariously and gazed into each
other's eyes and talked about love and devotion. Eventually I came upon Wayne
Liquorman and then Tony Parsons, both of whom are uncompromisingly non-dual and
also delightfully irreverent and 'unspiritual.' The whole sober, serious, paying
attention, 'being present,' 'work of this moment,' spiritual undertaking collapsed.
There was just What Is. Nothing more, nothing less.
Once spirituality gets organized and institutionalized, it starts to take on limitations.

People begin to think it can only happen in a particular setting, that it requires
external quiet or vegetarian food or something of that nature. The personality of the
teacher gets conflated with the nature of awakening, so if the teacher happens to
have a very beatific personality, for example, then people think that awakening
always looks beatific. People adopt behaviors, diets, and life styles that they imagine
to be 'spiritually correct.'
One of the liberating things for me in the Advaita world was the breaking down of all
the forms and ideas I still had about what was spiritual and what wasn't. It was like
breaking out of a shell.
Real bhakti, as far as I'm concerned, has nothing to do with adoring and fawning over
some guru--although there may be tremendous love for a guru--but real bhakti is
simply the nature of clear seeing.
When you are in love, you delight in every detail and nuance of the beloved. You are
absorbed in the beloved. You see only beauty. You hold nothing back. You are
unrestrained. All inhibitions melt away. You are completely naked. You cannot find
the dividing line anymore between lover and beloved, between seer and seen,
between giving and receiving. You disappear. You find yourself in love with
everything. The whole world seems to shine and sparkle.

Awakening isn't about being in love with a particular object; it's about the
unconditional love that sees only the Beloved everywhere. Awareness, by its very
nature, accepts everything. This is true love. This is what actually IS, not something a
person does.
I have a little section in my book about bhakti:
One of my fears has always been that if I lost my grip, I'd turn into some mindless
bhakti type swooning in devotion. Utterly useless, foolish, without shame. Fully in
love, completely mad.
Is it possible to be a mindless swooning bhakti devoted to the rain, the traffic, the
wind in the leaves, the utter simplicity of bare awareness?
K: Within the story that is apparently woven by the thoughts of the dream-
character, is it of any importance to discover or encounter the jnani and bhakti
aspects?
J: I would say, they are not two, and the discovery is that this unconditional love, this
pure awareness is all there is. How that discovery apparently unfolds in the movie is
of no real importance, and it can apparently happen in a million different ways. Truly,
it is causeless and nothing happens. It has always been so.
Anyone who claims to be enlightened is deluded

K: If you compare the memories about the drive to talk about the beloved subject
during Joans seeking and now, do you notice a difference?
J: The urge to communicate and express through writing and talking arises naturally
here. In the past, there was a lot of reflecting on this urge, thinking about it,
wondering if it was 'spiritually correct' or not. Would I be better off if I was silent?
Should I keep writing? Should I publish the book? Should I offer meetings? Was this a
huge ego game, one more escapist plot to give meaning to my life? Was I good enough,
clear enough, awake enough for the job? Was I a fake? Should I charge money? Could I
make a living this way? Did my teachers approve of my doing this?
Now it just happens. Tomorrow it might all stop happening. I have no idea. I no longer
think about whether it's 'spiritually correct' or not. I have no sense at all of mission--no
sense that I am 'serving' people or 'awakening' them or participating in some great
evolutionary wave. None of that. It just happens--or appears to anyway--and it's very
clear that there is no 'I' here doing it, and no way it could be otherwise.
K: Is there any change in the apparent story of Joans life now that theres clarity?
J: It isn't as if 'clarity' is some 'thing' that entered 'Joan's life' at a particular moment in
time, transforming her into a saint and neatly erasing all pain and suffering from her
life. That's the personal enlightenment fantasy.
Clarity is a word that points to the groundless ground that is omnipresent and
inescapable: Here Now -- This. Joan is an expression of this One Reality, not the
owner (or finder) of it. Joan's life as a drunk and a drug-user (thirty years ago) was as
perfectly an expression of this One Reality as Joan's life today.

There are many stories of Joan's life (many versions, many revisions, always being
newly revised). Life itself is ceaseless change. Joan feels happy one minute and sad
the next. She is full of energy and enthusiasm one day; she has a headache and acid
indigestion the next. She is calm and loving in one situation; she loses her temper in
another. Sometimes when she feels depressed or anxious, she meets the
uncomfortable feelings head on, with no resistance or escape, just feeling it all fully
and allowing it to dissolve; other times when she feels those same uncomfortable
feelings, she scrambles about looking for relief (reading a book, turning on the TV,
biting her fingers, checking her email, eating corn chips, whatever it might be). There
are no enlightened people. Anyone who claims to be enlightened is deluded. Clarity is
the acceptance that embraces absolutely everything. This acceptance is not
something a person does. It is a description of what always, already IS. Everything IS
being accepted--right now.
I could describe many changes in the Joan character over what appears to be time
(once she was a drunk, now she is sober; once she thought about the future most of
the time, now she doesn't think about it much at all; once she was desperately seeking
enlightenment, now she isn't; once her hair was blonde, now it is gray; once, she used
to think that she was closer to the truth when she was meditating than when she was
eating corn chips, now that thought does not seem to arise). But those changes are all
plot points in a movie. They are make-believe. They are incidental, meaningless.
Focusing on those kinds of changes (in Joan or in you or in anyone else) is focusing on
the details of a movie plot. Nothing wrong with doing that, but it won't get you one
step closer to the screen that the movie is playing on. In fact, the screen is there in
every moment of the movie, and you are actually seeing the screen the whole time
you are watching the movie. It is equally present in a scene of breath-taking beauty
and in a scene of horrific terror. Just the way that the mirror is all you are really
seeing in every apparent reflection. (All these various analogies break down at a
certain point, so don't take them too literally or get stuck on them--any 'blank screen'
or 'empty mirror' that you think you've found is just another movie image, another
reflection--you are the seeing itself--no 'thing' at all--the Here and Now that IS
accepting everything, even accepting the apparent non-acceptance).
It's very simple. Right now, right here--there is no 'Joan' at all. I'm speaking of direct
experience, not belief. Look for yourself and see if it isn't so. There is just sound and
sensation and visual images. That's all there is. There's no 'Joan' and no
'enlightenment' and no 'clarity' and no 'past' and no 'future' and no 'present' except in
the mind. Thought and memory and imagination weave the story of 'me' and 'the
others' and 'the world.' They create the illusion of time and continuity. And pretty
soon the projector is rolling, and we get movies upon movies, stunningly realistic, but
all make-believe. Joan and Her Journey to Enlightenment. Joan and Her Failures. Joan
and Her Successes. How Joan Has Changed Now that There Is Clarity. How Joan
Compares to Ramana Maharshi. Is She or Isn't She? On and on and onand it's just like
what happens when you turn on the TV. Even if the program is garbage, if you watch
for half a minute, you'll begin to get absorbed in it.
So then we get the idea that the goal of spirituality is to turn off the TV and keep it
off. And that is the goal of many schools of meditation. But this meditation practice is

also a TV program. The root illusion is still believed: the one who is supposedly
holding the remote and watching the TV. That one does not exist.
Seeing is happening, but there is no one doing it. That can be investigated directly
right now. The 'I' who is seeing, reading, understanding these words is an after-
thought, a mental image. Seeing just IS.
Everything just IS.
Who cares?
Garbage channel and sublime samadhi are different programs, different appearances.
They come and go in an endless dance. Trying to get sublime samadhi to be on all the
time is a fascinating game, and it's truly amazing how long hope can endure (along
with the image of 'me,' separate from the TV, remote in hand, trying to get control).
Finally, if you're very lucky, Ramesh's great question might spring to mind: Who cares?
That is not a nihilistic or cynical question. Who cares? is a wonderful question.
[interview: Kees Schreuders]
For more information on Joan: www.joantollifson.com

Not even God can explain God!
- Enlightenment For Beginners -
Jan Kersschot in conversation with Chuck Hillig (from: 'This is it' which will be
published summer 2004 by Watkins Publishing)
JK: When people ask me why I like your book

Enlightenment For Beginners so much, I tell them it is
because of its simplicity and directness. But in some
way, it is hard for me to sum up the message of your
book. Could you do that for my readers? In other
words: how would you summarize the essence of your
message?
CH: This book is a 30-minute reminder that you already

are 'who' [and what] you have been looking for.
However, you've cleverly disguised this profound Truth
behind an elaborately seductive game that you're
playing called 'Life.' This book uses very simple words and cartoon drawings to
demonstrate, in a playful manner, some of the cosmic [and comic] implications of
playing this Game and just how [and why] your Self-deception continues to weave
such a magic spell.
JK: What kind of Game are you referring to? How is it created?
CH: The momentum for this cosmic Game is created whenever you pretend that what
isn't, somehow, is far superior to what is. Although this belief keeps you focused on a
never-ending journey towards happiness, enlightenment, etc., it also guarantees that
you will never reach a point of permanent satisfaction and peace. Why? Because this
whole notion of being on a 'journey-to-fulfillment' is actually the secret method that
the desperate ego uses in order to survive in the face of personal annihilation by
Consciousness. In other words, as long as the ego stays more focused on making the
journey, ‘it can continue to avoid disappearing entirely in the blinding realization of
the true identity of the mystic traveler.'
JK: Why do people want to change ‘what is' into something better? Why are
spiritual seekers looking for enlightenment, while you say that everything is
already here, right now? Why do we seem to run away from ourselves?
CH: This frenzied activity around pursuing enlightenment helps the ego to maintain a
sense of personal doership. When what is not present is perceived as better than what
is present, the precious reality contained in this very moment is inwardly resisted.
However, Consciousness has no opposite, it's the only thing that's present, and it can
never really change into what isn't. It just is what it is. However, by pretending that
'something else is better', the ego hopes to survive by enthusiastically pursuing the
disowned other. Of course, the cosmic joke, is that the ego is caught on a self-
generated treadmill because it ‘already is' what it is looking for. This valiant struggle
to be enlightened secretly protects the ego from being exposed as the phantom it
truly is. As long as the search continues unabated, the Searcher is validated as being
separate from the very thing that he is searching for. But, in Truth, we can never

really run away from ourselves because we already are who we are running from, and
we already are where we are running to.
Is it true then, that there is really nothing we can do?

JK: Many seekers secretly hope to become enlightened one day,that is why they
stay around a so-called enlightened being, a master, and expect that they have a
good chance of 'getting It' by copying his behavior or at least doing what he or she
tells them to do. Many seekers believe that the state of enlightenment is
something that may be passed through from the master to the devotee. And there
are also a lot of expectations about enlightenment itself. People hope that being
enlightened equals being without problems, without fears: a perfect state, if you
like. But you say - and I agree with you Chuck - that this struggle to be enlightened
secretly protects the ego from being exposed as the phantom it truly is. Does this
mean that all the seeking is pointless, that all the spiritual traditions are useless, a
waste of time? How can a phantom ever discover Reality? Is it true then, that
there is really nothing we can do?
CH: Gaining enlightenment in the future is a persistent and time-based illusion. It pre-
supposes the absolute reality of a future ‘out there’ that your personal story can,
somehow, live into. However, you are Consciousness Itself, and so you can never
separate yourself from the essential Reality of who you already are. That would be as
impossible as trying to separate the wetness from the water. Such useless struggling is
only further encouraged by the popular belief that, if only you follow the 'right'
spiritual strategies, you will eventually become enlightened and your personal egoist
story will be able to have a happy ending. But enlightenment is not really about
seeking something out there. It is only about discovering the essential Truth about
what actually is. Meanwhile, the illusory melodrama of the world will continue to
unfold just exactly [and as convincingly] as it always has. [After all, a mirage of a lake
in the desert still looks like a real lake even after you discover that it's only an
illusion.] You won't be awakening from the dream; you'll only be awakening TO the
dream. But in this awakening, the Dreamer has to eventually disappear entirely. If
not, he'll just substitute one fascinating dream called 'Once-I-was-asleep' for another
fascinating dream called 'But-now-I-am-awake!'. Yes, there is nothing that 'you' can do
to speed up the so-called 'process' because you-as-your-story aren't even really here at
all. Only Consciousness is truly present, and Its wondrous nature is to pretend that it's
not pretending. And so you're seemingly compelled to dance out your part in this
Divine play until you awaken to the discovery that there's never been any difference
at all between you-as-the-Dancer and you-as-the-Dance.
JK: If Consciousness is all there is, isn't a state of identification with the
personality not as valid as a state of bliss or non-doership?
CH: Both of these so-called 'states' are only theoretical concepts. There's absolutely no
separate one present who is either in a 'state of identification' or, for that matter, in a
'state of bliss.' Therefore the question of validity is irrelevant since neither of these
states are actually 'happening' to anyone or to anything. Consciousness doesn't need to
stop 'misidentifying with the personality,' and it certainly doesn't need to wake up. It
just is what it is.
Absolutely nothing will ever wake up your mind!

JK: But still ever new books on the subject appear saying the same thing, saying
that we cannot talk about it. In other words, there is a lot of talking and writing
going on about non-dualism. What is the use of all these satsangs and of all these
books, if Truth is impossible to put into words?
CH: Yes, it's a great paradox, isn't it? The

short answer is that there is no real use to
any of it. Consciousness, after all, is only
seeking Itself. This mysterious conundrum
totally boggles the logical mind however,
since Consciousness is already the very same
thing that it is pointing to. But even after
acknowledging that we can't really talk
about 'It,' we still seemed compelled to go
ahead and talk about it, anyway. But what's
more 'real:' a poetic description of Niagara
Falls or experiencing the awesome force of
the falling water, itself?
The problem is, of course, that all words are

fundamentally dualistic. When used at this
level, the best that they can do is to invite
you to look within for yourself. No matter
how cleverly they might be put, though,
they can never logically solve the Great
Paradox for you. You just can't get there from here. In fact, there is nothing in your
mind that will ever become enlightened. Not going to satsangs, not reading books, not
meditating every day and not chanting mantras. Absolutely nothing will ever wake up
your mind! Why not? Because realization is who you already are.
The Self is only pretending that It's not the Self

JK: If liberation is timeless and impersonal, how could there ever be someone who
'sees it' and someone who doesn't'? If there is only One Perceiver one
Consciousness how could one sage or avatar claim to have the best part of it and
say that they have come to 'save' the ignorant ones?'
CH: There is no separate 'one' who either sees or who doesn't see. The play of
Consciousness is inclusive enough to seemingly create a universe filled with villains,
heroes, sages and avatars. How can one sage claim to have the best part of it and to
have come to 'save' the ignorant? Well, beyond this being a classic example of Self-
deception, who can really say? After all, not even God can explain God!
JK: Those people who are familiar with Advaita Vedanta say that there is no such
thing as time, space and separate persons. And they are right: it is all in our
minds. Still, the majority of the human population disagrees with that vision. As a
result, people say that all of this sounds very nice in theory [that we are not the
doer, that everything is just happening, that we are not the body, that there is no
free will], but when it comes to putting all this into practice, that is a different
story. How do you feel about such comments on Advaita Vedanta, Chuck?

CH: Time, space and the idea of separate persons are not actually in 'our' mind at all.
They're only in your mind. Like it is with everything else in the manifested universe,
the concept of a separate 'human population' also finds its true origin within your own
Self-deception. But remember, the Self is only pretending that It's not the Self and
then It pretends that It's NOT pretending. Consciousness, it seems, is a kind of
'experience junkie,' and It revels joyously in lila the Dance-of-the-Divine. In fact, It
appears to only remember Its glorious Self-deception with some degree of reluctance.
[Nobody, it seems, wants a good story to end.] So if you stand up in the middle of an
exciting movie, turn on the lights and start reminding the audience that it's only an
illusion, most of the 'others' will tell you to sit down and be quiet! But, as Ramana
Maharshi would often say, 'What others? There is only the Self.' So, how can we ever
truly practice at being 'who' we already are? Since the Self is the only Reality, It is
beyond all efforts. Yes, what you say is correct: there is no actual doer; everything
just appears to 'happen’; you are not the body; and there is no free will. That's all
very true, but so what? To fully dance with [and as] the Cosmic Dancer you are, it still
seems important that you honor and acknowledge the appearance of the Great
Illusion. After all, It's all just for you!
JK: When you say that we are already It, that we are only pretending to be
somebody, why do we keep on believing this illusion? You see, people complain
that they do not feel like they are being Consciousness. They complain they are
still guided by their personal fears and hopes. They say that life is not that easy.
CH: Well, in Truth, there really is no 'we' or 'they' out there at all. There is only 'It' the
Pure Consciousness of Self. Asking this seemingly innocent question ['Why do we keep
on believing this illusion?'] distracts you from seeing the Truth.
JK: How do you mean?
CH: Well, it makes two basic assumptions: 1] that there really is a collective 'we/they'
out there and that 2] these 'others' are all believing in some illusion. The question,
however, invites you to focus on the 'why-are-they-believing-this' before it's ever been
proven that there really are any actual 'others' out there to be believing anything at
all. You see, if there are no separate 'others' to begin with, then addressing the 'why'
part of this question becomes completely irrelevant. Things are just as they are.'
It is simplicity, Itself
JK: Several seekers will also ask you if you aren't simplifying the whole
enlightenment issue a little too much.
CH: Consciousness cannot be over-simplified. In fact, It is simplicity, Itself. The

indivisible Consciousness can only manifest the illusory world of polarities by
pretending to be divisible. Amazingly, Its nature is to be what It is by pretending to
'become' what It's pretending to not be.
JK: So, the whole thing is just a joke?
CH: That's what it is. A comic [and cosmic] game called 'Life.' The Dance-of-the-
Divine.
[published with permission by Watkins Publishing]

For more information on Jan Kersschot: www.kersschot.com
For more information on Chuck Hillig: www.blackdotpubs.com

Expressing life!
June 15th2003 - We converse with Steven Harrison in the library of the
Ambassade Hotel during his first visit to Holland.
Steven is the author of the books 'Doing Nothing', 'Being One', 'The Happy Child',
'The Question to Life's Answers' and 'Getting to Where You Are: A Life of
Meditation' (published by Sentient Publications), and father of three children.
'I sought enlightenment,

I studied the world's philosophies and religions.
I sought out every mystic, seer and magician I could find
throughout the word.
I meditated in the Himalayas.
Nothing brought enlightenment. Do nothing.'
(Steven Harrison in 'Doing Nothing')
He is a razor sharp analyst who in his vision tries to point out the impasse of
Non-Duality. Maybe the prelude for a term like 'post spirituality' or post non-
duality'?
Amigo: When you say that existence has a direction, has a purpose that is being
created now, there are two points of view: 'Be careful what you create', or 'Let
creation create itself'.
Steven: Creation is creating itself.
A: With what purpose or direction?
S: Well, we can look back and try to suggest

a purpose, but we can't really know the
purpose because it is unfolding now and the
implications are so vast. The instrument
that we would use to measure it, our mind,
isn't big enough. It can only look at objects
and distinguish between a glass and a table.
It doesn't have anything to measure life by,
life is too vast. We only know it's direction
in moments when the mind is silent, and in
that, there is a flow that's apprehended and
we can call it consciousness but that's not it
either. So here we are in that flow and label
ourselves as a glass, a table, a speaker, a
listener, a journalist, but I don't know what I
am.
A: Steven?
S: Yeah, or an author... we can call ourselves anything we wish, or we can try to

speak through and from that flow, try to capture it on a piece of paper. To me that's
the challenge, to find the form, the expression of that in my life and not in a book, or

in words or an interview. The transformation in the contact of the unlimited with
form.
A: While reading your book ('The question to life's answers') I noticed that you
have discovered and use your own authentic words like: 'exploration', 'passion’,
'amazement', 'description, describer'. Is there a drive in you to find an authentic
way of telling, of talking?
S: Well, I think that's what's left over when you take apart what you've heard, what
you know and what you've been told. What's left is left to express. Now I am sitting
here with you, and am in contact with what is occurring right now. How is whatever I
learned yesterday with this master, or that book or that philosophy going to help me?
So, I have to throw all that out for this to be alive and current. So it has to be
invented right now. We may find out that the universe is dual, and that the goddess
Kali needs to be worshipped because she is about to destroy us. So, suppose you find
that out, are you then prepared for that, for the appearance of the goddess? Or are
you 'wedded' to the non-dual? If the goddess presents herself will you worship her
because she will cut your head off if you don't? So, are you prepared to give up what
you know?
A: I don't know?
S: Neither do I, and that's all we can find every single moment.
Fear
A: Yesterday in the meeting you said something remarkable: fear causes resistance
to non-existence. That seems to be a pointer. Fear as the driving force, a creating
movement in what is, it is creating what is, while commonly fear is seen as
something negative. You turned it around.
S: We can feel that the consequences of fear: the holding on, the clinging, the going
back, the referencing, is caused by a reaction to the vitality of this moment. What we
call fear is the interpretation of that energetic movement. That is interpreted by the
mind as annihilation. But if that interpretation is abandoned, then fear is just energy.
The same energy that is flowing through life, non-dual. The goddess dies in that. Only
the mind sees the goddess as a goddess: as fear, as Kali. The form of energy and the
interpretation of that is energy and is what it is!
We live in the unknown as the unknown

A: You have to go to the brink of non-existence and then amazement comes back
into life because every moment is new again. Somewhere you wrote: 'We live in
the unknown as the unknown'. That means that you know nothing and everything
is new. Everything is created in this moment. I discover for example that my mind
is pasting the word 'table' to this... Isn't it a miracle?
S: But the mind also tries to interpret that. Everything is a miracle. Even the mind
creating a fragment called a table that is not the whole, that's pretty amazing! We sit
in a vast energy field in which we can carve out little bits, on which we can sit.

So even the mind is mysterious in how it works and what it is. So even the part we
think we understand is a deepening mystery.
That which appeared to be real was not

A: Was there a happening that caused you to begin writing?
S: No.
A: In your book you write something about your history, that you have been to
India...
S: Yeah and I have been to Indianapolis, Indiana too... (laughing)
A: Was there a moment when the seeker or the seeking left?
S: You see, what I call myself and what I was, was always more than one thing. It
depends on to whom I am talking. So, if I am talking to my mother, I am a son. If I talk
to an employer I am the worker. If I talk to someone who is doing yoga, I am a Yogi.
So what story shall I tell? This is a spirituality magazine, so I'll tell the spiritual story...
A: No, I want to hear what you have to say.
S: There is no such thing as seeker, there is just someone who is fearful, who wants
power, who wants control, who believes that through some knowledge it can find
some place in the universe.
A: But when did you discover what you are talking about right now?
S: I have always known this. When I was a year and a half I almost died, I stopped
breathing; see this scar (points to his neck). So that was the discovery, or maybe it
was birth. Somewhere in that first one and a half years. But I don't remember any of
it, so how can I talk about it? Probably something happened that suggested that what
appeared to be real was not real. Reality had something unreal about it, that is the
mystery.
If you look at your own life, wasn't there ever a time when reality was so concrete, so
clear to you that you said there is no mystery, this (knocks on table) is a table, this is
a chair, I am me, you are you... In that sense we all know the question: what is real,
since our very first breath. Because, with the first inhalation we also had to give the
breath back again (exhalation), and then we needed another breath. We sit in this
interchange and so definitely in the body. We are not autonomous. Everyone calls our
name and we feel that and respond.
All is the expression of life

A: Somewhere along the line arises the assumption that there is a focal point,
which we call a personality or an 'I', and then a seeking can appear, or do you not
wish to call it seeking?
S: Seeking always takes place, and the personality has built itself up by means of
biology, through the suggestions of the parents: 'you are such a good boy', 'that was
good, and that was wrong', and so on. A personality with; an aggressive nature, a shy
nature, male or female. That's all there is. But the question: what is real, is there

also, and that question is part of everyone's package. We are all seekers, and the
question is in fact not a question, it is knowing that what looks to be real, really isn't
so. So we are seekers and finders at the same time, and the edifice of the personality
is a sort of information that we use to express that knowledge. So you have become a
journalist who reports about these matters and I have become an author. It is all the
expression of life. But realization is a complete fiction. Spiritual fiction for good books
and lecture tours, or for gathering followers...
A: Why did you start writing?
S: The factual impetus was that I was in Bhod-Gaya (India), waiting for transportation
but there were elections and all the means of transportation were shut down and
soldiers barricaded all the roads. It was summer, there was no one in town and I had
nothing to do. I was sitting there and I had a notebook and a pen, and it occurred to
me that I was doing nothing, and in that 'doing nothing' was a beautiful 'space'. There
was nothing that I could do; nothing that I wanted to do and I could make anything out
of it.
So this became a metaphorical expression of the reality of life. So I started writing
something and that became 'Doing Nothing'.
Non-duality, a trap?
A: In your speaking you are appealing to the mind. You use the mind to make it
clear that 'the mind can't do it'. There are naturally also people who follow their
heart; bhakta, how do you see that?
S: Love is a difficult energy for us to handle. It shatters everything. So if there are

bhakta there I worship them, bring them on. But if a group of Dutch intellectuals show
up then I will express that. That is what then appears.
For that matter, I think the attraction of non-duality is a sort of intellectual clarity.
But that isn't it, it is a trap. Because it stops there, in that intellectual clarity which is
just a clarified mind. There is this movement of energy that is so clear and has more
to do with a feeling quality. You can't get to it by thinking. You come there by the
total experience of life. That is the Kali experience we were talking about and at that
point it is a jump.
A: What would you call the way you talk about it: Non-duality, Advaita Vedanta?
S: I have never been a philosopher or someone who wanted to fit somewhere and I'm
learning more here from the journalists than I am from myself. But I see the
connection; it is clear that there is no more than one. You can remember more than
one thing, but that remembering is also one. That is clear, but what then follows is:
what is life then, what is that? I am not satisfied with 'well, this is just what there is'
as an answer to that question. And especially because this invites lack of responsibility
instead of the taking of total responsibility. If you really see that you are one, then
you are also responsible for the whole. And, this is what I see happening with people
who just use this as a philosophy instead of living it. Living is complete responsibility
for what is, and that is a magical world.
A: So it does seem then that there is a 'before' and an 'after'.

S: When we think about it and talk about it and try to use words to refer to it, there is
a before and an after. But I don't think that time exists in the magical world which is
the way I see the world. If there is no time, then everything is everything.
A: What is the magical world?
S: We can talk about it, but I'm inviting you to experience it directly right now. So,
what's magical here? Can you touch that? Shall we create world peace right now?
A: ... (long silence)... the mind wants to say 'yes', but I'm speechless...
S: Yeah, the mind wants to say 'yes' but it doesn't say 'yes'. The mind can't say 'yes',
that's what I'm saying. What occurs in the magical world is actually seeing our
resistance and conditioning. We see things and say: 'this can't be'. But, if the mind
doesn't say 'this can't be', then it is so. That is the magical world. So in each of these
gatherings, like yesterday, there is human potential. A potential that can make
dramatic shifts. World peace is then a fact. But, we resist it, because we say: 'this
can't, because.... this happens, and that happens, and I happens.'
So, for world peace I have to stop happening.

The mind will resist that.
That is the magical world, a world that waits...
A: ...that waits?
S: Yes, it waits; it pauses, because world peace does not make its appearance in time.
So, it is like brushing up against reality, our reality, my reality and the mind that
resists that. And, that's what we call transformation. The question is then: is my life a
life of transformation?
A: But isn't every moment a moment of transformation?
S: That's right, but we won't have every moment, we only have this moment. It is
dynamic. If you put a dual world into one world, then there is a dynamic, because
consciousness in contact with mind is transforming.
That is the fluid universe, which can and will change in whatever form it may be. If
we talk about it we divide it into thinking and consciousness. That is how we perceive
it.
A: But are not thoughts also consciousness?
S: OK, let me say it another way, consciousness doesn't exist.
Enlightenment is spiritual entertainment

A: You like to provoke don't you?
S: Is it provocative?
A: Well, if you look at the titles of your books: 'Do nothing', 'the questions to life's
answers' and statements such as: enlightenment is a myth?

S: Is the last provocative or just true?
I mean unless you have a direct enlightenment-experience that is constant, that you
can speak about without its changing, and then if in speaking about it you collect
disciples and all the pressures that go with that it still doesn't change, 24 hours per
day, even when you are tired or have jet lag, and it still doesn't change, then it is
true.
A: Is that what you call spiritual entertainment?
S: Yes. I don't have such an experience. I know nothing about that, and I don't know
anyone who has had that. I do know people who tell that kind of stories, but they
have all been followed by scandals. The only people who are constantly in that sort of
state are either brain damaged or on drugs.
A: So, then, how do you look upon gurus, masters, sages...
S: ...lawyers, accountants, shopkeepers, bus drivers, mothers, fathers... must I go on?

(laughter!)
I think these people are 'inhabited' by fine people who are doing what they think they
need to do based on their identity. This is the human condition.
I was never very interested in the big public gurus. I was more interested in
'transformers', and these people don't appear in public or to great numbers of people.
In their case one can speak of an 'energy-state'. If you don't feel that kind of electrical
current, then all the words, all the lectures, all the cleverness isn't going to do
anything.
A: Yesterday, during the meeting, it was interesting to see how you answer
questions with questions and then a very intense dialog follows. It seemed almost
as if they were offered to the goddess. Is there an intention behind it? Is it a
discovery, or just what is being expressed through you and by you?
S: I think it is both. But, there is also a movement to communion with all beings, is
there not? When many people come together, and there is a movement to go deep
into that, and to let it find its expression, that is for me the transformation of space.
We go deeply into that until we find resistance. That is then explored, because that is
what there is. If there is no holding back then whoosh, there we go...
What is difficult is: 'why do people come?' Some come because they are hurting, they
have a problem, they are depressed or unhappy. Some come because they have read
my books. And, some people come to challenge me, to unmask me as a charlatan.
So people come with all kinds of motivations and initially that is just fine in itself. The
people who came for something that wasn't there will come back.
A: Are you a teacher, and I don't mean a spiritual teacher?
S: I don't have a profession. I guess this is a profession, I write and give talks, and I
give retreats in the U.S. and Europe.
'The living school'

A: You have a school where children are taught. Is there a certain ideology behind
it?
S: When you speak about it seems to be an ideology. But it came out of having
children. If you look at the schools in the American culture, and in your culture also,
you see that their goal is not education but conditioning, to break down the individual
and to create a person according to a certain model. And that model is exactly what
we are trying to get rid off. So, why should we let our children be formed like that?
And if we don't want that, then what? What is the 'whole' way to teach a child? How
does a 'whole' child learn? What is a 'whole' child?
These kinds of questions came up, and there were also other parents who were
interested and so there was an ongoing dialog. From that came the book: 'The happy
child, changing the heart of education.' See, 'the heart', that is a feeling word, that's
what children do with you. As far as children are concerned you can't really be
analytical. Children bring the heart to the fore and that is a bhakti experience. This is
what we have to do when we enter a child's space.
This is how the school arose, but I would not call that an ideology. I shall tell you
which way it seems to be heading. The school is seen as a learning community with
children and adults who work, live and learn together. So the school is a part of the
community.
A: So there are no formal teachers?
S: No, there is a staff. I will describe the structure, which is always changing, because
as a system the school also learns. The school embodies learning. Learning out of its
own experience and possibilities. A child has to learn so a curriculum has been set up
for that. A number of ideas are presented to them about which they also know at the
same time that they are not real. The teachers know that also. In fact that is what we
have become, grownups with a certain number of ideas that we know are not real.
And then we say: I wonder why I'm unhappy? I wonder why? I'm unhappy because I
have this fixed set of ideas, which I know are not true, but from which I am supposed
to live. In the meantime the energy swirls around. The central question for the school
is: can the student give direction to that out of their own curiosity and interest? That's
what's interesting! Interests and curiosity arise at a young age, you learn what you
need, what interests you. That forms the education.
Another aspect of it is that the school is organized democratically, so all the

individuals have something to contribute, even five year olds. Now, a five year old is
not so interested in all the decisions that have to be made. They would rather play
outside with a ball then decide something about the budget. But a twelve year old is
more interested, and an eighteen-year will certainly be interested.
Thus we see a diversity of interests, these determine the degree to which one is
involved in that democratic process. There is one last characteristic, the school is not
closed off from its surroundings, it is a part of the community. So the school is not
really a school. Maybe it does have a distinct location, but it doesn't characterize
itself as such.
A: It's self-teaching and self-organizing where and when necessary.

S: The freedom is to be found in relation to the rest of the community. My freedom is
in relation to you. Therefore, not absolute freedom, not freedom in the sense of 'get
out of my way'.
In my actions I have to consider who you are. I have the freedom to take action, but I
also have the responsibility of seeing where you are in that action.
A: So talking as a parent with two adolescent children, what responsibility do you

have?.
S: Adolescents can perfectly well make their own decisions. It depends on the family
culture whether you can live with their decisions. For children who are one, two or
three years old you are really there as a protector. You create a space in which they
can explore and grow. They are a space of love and acceptance.
Five, six and seven year olds are little people who have not yet accumulated wisdom
and life experience. For that you can sometimes, but with reservations, give some
indications. In a reserved way because they have to have the opportunity to make
their own mistakes.
If they then reach adolescence then they relate much more to their friends and
detach from their family circumstances. That doesn't have to happen with anger or
protest, but that will certainly happen if you try to hold on to them.
But basically bringing up children is impossible, so just forget it... (laughs)
A: Is a school of your own allowed in the US?
S: Every state has its own laws. Colorado is somewhat more liberal. But the state
always has an interest in suppressing this sort of education, so there will always be
pressure put on it. But the state is always benefited by stability. The primary goal is
after all to bring the individual in line with the collective. In a way that is not so
unintelligent, but we see its effects. So, if I get the chance to offer 'space' to my
children then I take that.
One of the challenges of the school is that the children come not only as children, but
as carriers of the contemporary culture, saturated with TV and junk food.
So-called freedom is driven by commercial interests. Every shirt has to have a

company logo, 24 hour TV, computer games, internet. This takes us away from the
space where exploration and research are possible to where we engage in
confrontation. We have to break down the culture more by making it transparent, so
that it can see itself. It is already so embedded and becoming more and more so. And,
I am naturally not talking about culture in the sense of art or expression, it is a
culture aimed at making consumers out of children only to make money, without any
intrinsic value to the children. Profits determine culture.
The marketing is directed to minds that are not yet formed. Thus, that is one of the
issues for the school. Do we let the children watch TV, go on the internet? We do
allow that, but do we allow everything? No! Some places are poisonous; after all you
don't allow your children to play in a toxic waste dump. This question is a challenge to
the school.

Survival
A: You say that the body-mind has free will because it will always choose the best
option in certain circumstances. That is an evolutionary force. Maybe
commercialism is the best way to survive?
S: If that were the only issue, but clearly the issue is no longer the survival of the
individual but the survival of the collective. That is in direct relation to what we are
talking about here. Thinking is to make predictions based on memory and 'I want to
survive', and for that it is an exceedingly good tool. But, it doesn't work for 'how we
survive'. That is a different faculty. And if a transformation happens it is from: 'How
do I survive?' to 'How do I survive, and how do we survive?' Both!
A: But, is there a world other than the library where we are now sitting? There is
now no Middle- East. So, is it relevant to worry about something that comes out of
memory? It's only actual if I'm there, then I can do something and be concerned
about it. Why should I be concerned with something where I cannot be of any
meaning? Even the information comes from the television whose point of view is
filtered by the people who make TV.
S: We understand that it is all conceptual, but at the same time we can make contact
with the same forces; we can find the same division in ourselves and in each other.
You and I can find the battlefield and have a fight.
A: Okay, that is then actual and present, I can worry about that.
But should I then tell my children that the world is bad and is going to destroy
itself? That is so abstract for them and in contrast to their actual reality. I can bury
myself in all kinds of worries about how to make the world a better place. But it is
better to busy myself with things that are within my actual reach. That seems
practical to me.
S: But there are people in Israel who will read this interview via the internet. The
internet is everywhere, the human mind is everywhere, and consciousness is
everywhere. Everything is everywhere.
Where we are is everywhere so we are one.
There is something that has to be lived and then the

question is are you ready for that?
A: Are you then not interfering with the flow of life? You interfere in order to
create a better life for you and your children.
But life will go its own way so you don't need to change it.
S: Life will go its own way AND I need to change it. They are not opposites. My need to
change it: is life. That is the transformation: the whole that touches the fragment,
just as consciousness touches the thoughts and changes them. We embody that. I Am
responsible because I am life and it has a direction. It is not like this table just
standing there. No, it is dynamic. The feeling of destruction that commerce is
creating is what is happening, and I am outraged about it. That is also happening, and
that is energy.
A: That's your response to that situation...

S: Yes, and you can go back and probably find a learned condition for why, but it is
and remains the response. And I surrender to the wholeness of that given.
It happens because it is happening, but you have to add something to that. This is
where non-duality gets stuck: 'things go just as they go, so be it'.
This is where passion appears. For example what appears when you speak about your
children is passion. Make all children your children, then you live in a passionate
universe.
A: But still, I prefer my children over other children.
S: Yes, that's the biological function that all parents know and have to know for
otherwise you will be taking care of all children and your own children will feel
abandoned. But such an analytical approach does not address what comes after, life
as it is, perfectly in balance and everything just happens. It is all true, AND it is
magical and fluid, AND it is energetic, and it is transformational. That's what is
missing. We have gotten so caught up in the pristine beauty of non-duality as a
philosophy. We can address everything with non-duality but we can't live it because
living is passionate, involved. And by that I don't mean passion as an emotion, but
passion as energy; the constant confrontation.
A: Is that not an experience?
S: It has nothing to do with experience. Experience has to do with trying to contain

things in good and bad, pleasurable and un-pleasurable. It has to do with 'what is',
which is not static but dynamic. So, take action, undertake something, create! Non-
duality takes you along the way of the 'negative' and there it is untouchable. You can't
reach truth by the positive way; you have to do that by deconstruction. But after you
have deconstructed everything, then what? Is it nothing? Is it something? Or does
expression take place and where does it come from? We don't live it as everything or
nothing. We live something else and that is the collision between the not-something
and the something, the total with the relative, the fragment with the form.
A: Does it matter if I know that? Seeing the magical in life, doesn't that happen
whether I see it or not?
S: The 'me' that is knowing that is the fragment. But what if the 'me' that knows it is
not the fragment but the whole. You can't find a whole 'I' who doesn't see it, so you
see it. We all see it: the whole.
A: But the assumed me can't see it?
S: The mind will never know because it only sees a fragment and that is also not
relevant. When we talk about: 'shall I see it' and I mean by that I, 'I' as a fragment of
Me, then that is hiding yourself, because we DO see it.
A: Can you imagine that people feel deceived or disillusioned by this message that
the mind will never see it?
S: I don't think people are deceived or disillusioned, they are hiding and conning each
other. We tell each other that kind of stories, 'that we don't see it and want so much
to see it'. That is why teachers (and this is part of the con) make them believe that
there is something to learn. There is something that has to be lived and the question
is are you ready to live it?

This is striking, that we are in a position to just live.
A: Why are we busy with enlightenment, realization and those sorts of things?
S: I think we are all busy with this question. To me the remarkable people that I have
met are not the people who in general are found to be remarkable, not the people in
a comfortable chair in a big space full of people.
A: What made them remarkable to you?
S: Their simultaneous existence and non- existence. The embodiment of form and
openness while being at the same time in contact with the stream without becoming
crazy. That we can sit here in an energetic state and not as a puddle on the floor and
not become crazy. It is not all as obvious at it seems.
The spiritual world suggests that it is special to be in a special state, which we all can
and probably have experienced under certain circumstances.
It is not so difficult to be special when you are in front of a room full of people who
are all saying 'he is so special'. You can go to an ashram and sit silently. But that's not
it; it is the collision between the fragment and the whole. That is what is remarkable,
that any of us is capable of living.
Do you think Ramana could have raised your children, met the challenges that cross
your path every day? How could Ramana have done that?
But what if they put you in Ramana's chair and people started worshipping you? What
would happen to you?
But the remarkable people are the people who just live, that is remarkable! Look at
what life is!
A: What is the ultimate question (referring to the title of your book: The questions
to life's answers)?
S: Living? It is not a question of the mind and it is not answered, it is what is very
much alive right now, and the good news is we are all immersed in it wherever we
may be and whoever we may be. Nothing special and no one who needs to tell you
that. No guidance, no teacher, that is the ultimate question and experience it
completely...
[interview: Kees Schreuders and Belle Bruins]
For more information about Steven Harrison: www.doingnothing.com

For more information on the school Steven talked about: www.livingschool.org
www.alltogether.org which is the charity Steven founded and his books help support.
All of the mentioned books are available through Sentient Publications

(www.sentientpublications.com) and all are published by Sentient except for 'Doing Nothing'
which is published by Tarcher/Putnam.

Do you see what I says?
If you are fascinated by our subject, (non-duality), then there all kinds of things
we come across in our daily life that take on a double meaning. For example, the
number one, the personal pronoun 'I', and the verb, 'being', take on new
meanings in this context. Take for example expressions such as: 'it takes one to
know one', or 'lighten up'. There are some days that you seem to stumble over
these unsolicited dis-coveries and the day goes by with a lot of inner fun.
Now, for a couple of days my horizon has been

'polluted'. of course, the question remains how much
one can speak about horizon pollution if one lives in a
city, but lets leave that aside. The pollution consists of
an eight meter high neon sign on the roof of an office
building that spells the word 'IK' (I in Dutch) in
complementary red and green capitol letters. It is
impossible for anyone visiting Utrecht by train, or
'training-by' in the evening to avoid that 'IK'. At first I thought that this 'I' could be the
beginning of a beautiful poetic sentence, or in a worse case, the name of a company.
But, 'IK' in this form threatens to become a part of my daily view. I actually see the
mirror image, because I look at it from behind, but a certain amount of unhappiness
began to manifest in me. I read in the paper that it is an art work which is only
illuminated between five in the afternoon and midnight. The first protests have
already been heard with words such as: 'light-pollution and ego tripping'... (snicker...
snicker...)
I personally find it a bit of navel-contemplation to use this word to mark a building

that is already too high and that houses (please note) the Tax Administration and
'National Area Service'. As far as I am concerned it is nothing more than the
umpteenth cry for attention from the many advertisement messages that can harass
your day (research indicates three to five thousand per day).
If I had chosen for such a monumental solution I would have preferred to let
something more interpersonal as a departure point and let 'YOU' be screamed from the
roof tops.
I have thought that perhaps with the millennium change that the 'I- era' of the 'fin de
sicle) might be exchanged for example by we-, she- or you-generation. But I guess the
62 year old artist sees it differently, or maybe I am missing his intentions. (Closer
examination reveals that there is a movement to be observed in this artist's work from
more to less, and that he has signed more pieces with the name 'I'.)
Now, I don't deny anyone their own vision and philosophy; naturally I cannot deny
anyone from using the word 'I' in a fitting or not fitting way. Because, no one can
claim author's rights to our dictionary; language is common property, by, for and from
all of us.
Nevertheless the iconoclast moved in me: 'You shall make no graven image, nor any
likeness of what there is above in heaven...' . 'You shall not use my name in vain',
whispered in some memories of my youth.

Last night I lay stretched on the
sofa staring at the new ornament in
my horizon and it made me think of
the headline over a newspaper
article: 'I is shining'. Of course that
is not correct grammar, it should
say: 'I shine', personal and active,
because 'I is shining' is not personal.
This thought made me sit up
straight.
What you call 'I' in your daily life is
of course already something that
you, witness at a distance and
therefore can not be 'I'. But how
often do we not pass over that
point of view, and don't pause to
see the actual meaning of 'I' That
building over there can say that it is
'I', but it is not at all 'I'. I am 'I', the
only 'I' that is I, and nothing and no
one else, period.!!! And no one can
ever take that away from me!
Of course, I could climb up to the

roof of that building in an attempt to discover my real 'I'. I could go stand between the
gigantic letters and scream with the necessary pride; 'I am this!!!' No one could find
fault with me. But then I'd be fooling myself. Because I cannot define or demonstrate
what I am even with the best will in the world. Not even with that poor surrogate on
the roof of a building. An action like that would only grant me a temporary 'Hey, Look
at me...' feeling. I also begin to understand why the Beatles made the little film
accompanying 'Don't let me down' on the roof of the recording studio. (But that's
probably an introduction to another article.) I could make that 'I' more active by
putting an S after it. Or I could make it impersonal by putting a T behind it. Anyway
go to it scrabble players, have fun.
After these reflections I relaxed back again onto the couch, with one more closing
thought. As long as I live here this clue to pointing to what 'I' is in essence, will
demand my attention every day that I lie on the sofa between five in the afternoon
and midnight, whether I want it to or not.
The message?
'I' is shining.
Just like the Sun can only see itself in the reflection of its own light on a passing
planet or moon.
An outlook with insight, what a prospect. And ah..., who am I to ask you: ...Do you
see what 'I' says?.'
[January 2003, Kees Schreuders]

P.S. As of this writing in February 2004, an elementary school
at the foot of the office building has formulated its literal
footnote commentary on this work of art: WE.

God hidden in people...
Originality has as basis the new, original. Nevertheless, originality is still not the
same as the origin, that precedes originality or creates the conditions for it. The
origin, or the source, lies in the imperishable and it is possible for a person to
see this. 'Seeing' and 'being' then coincide. You realize that you are the source,
and this makes you responsible for everything: there is actually nothing outside
you. You are then in a position to respond to everything that presents itself.
Seen in this way, not only does Advaita lead to the source intellectually, but it
also lives, especially in practical everyday situations according to Jan Koehoorn
in conversation with Dick de Boom.
Dick: To begin at the beginning, I looked up the word originality in the dictionary.
There I found:
• Forming the beginning ... first, in the first place.

• (Of things) not obtained or taken over from another.
• (Of people) not following another ... original
If you look at it that way, originality is about what is original, real. One is tempted
to think that originality is the source. Sometimes we can find the origin of things
by applying carbon dating methods, or by grabbing a microscope. To find the origin
of a river you look for the source. In short, the source is sometimes far away and
demands a lot of study and trouble.
We often try to find our own source by practicing a certain religion or going in
search of a guru.
How do you look at it?
Jan: If we are talking about originality, then it is in fact

about not imitating. Thus, anything that can be copied
is not the source. I think everybody imitates someone in
his or her life sometimes. I am busy with pop music, and
there it is a very commonly occurring phenomenon.
Still, it happens often enough in music that somebody
appears who has something so much their own that it
can enthrall people.
In your example, being in search of the source means
that you go in the hope of finding something 'tangible'.
Carbon dating places the source in time. But time is
something observed so it cannot be the source. Microscopic methods place the origins
in space. Again space (length-width-height) is something observed and thus cannot be
a source.
Why can something observed not be the source? Because the criteria lie in that which
makes observing possible, thus not even in the observing itself, but in that which
make observation possible.
What needs to happen is a sort of quantum leap in Consciousness. It doesn't occur to
many people to search for the origin of things in themselves. One way or another
originality is always sought somewhere outside the here and now.

I remember a story I once read in a book about Jnana Yoga. It is about god who has
made the world and asks himself where he should go. He thinks about it for a long
time until one day he has a brain wave.
He says: 'You know what? I'm going to hide inside people themselves. They will never
look for me there!!'
Original versus origin

Dick: I understand that self-examination finally leads 'you' to the origin, the
source. Is it not the case that you find the expression of the source in the known,
the manifest? A new composition, a new book, a new painting can after all be
original, never seen before, very unique? Seen from my own point of view it is
true, but original from its own source?
Jan: I think we have to make a subtle distinction between ' original' and 'origin'. Works
of art can be very original, but as a phenomenon they are not the origin. For example,
we can't propose that Rembrandt's 'The Night Watch', is the basis of all things. What
we can say is that the origin (Consciousness) is the basis for that masterpiece.
If you say that you find the expression of the source in the manifest, the known, then I
agree with you completely. Water, makes itself known as (for example) waves,
droplets, snowflakes, hail stones, ice and so on. All these forms are various
expressions of water.
Dick: I once heard you say: It's not about you finding all the changing things in the
unchanging, but about finding the unchanging in all the changing things. Can you
explain that to me? Do we not see the changing in the unchanging that we are,
(the origin)? How can you turn that around?
Jan: In this respect, 'seeing' is the same as 'being'. We are the unchanging. That can't
be made into an object, thus in that sense you can't see 'the unchanging in the
changing'. You can discover that you ARE THAT. So don't be anything except that.
Know that you are the source of all things. That is what I mean by: 'see the
unchanging in the changing.'
Risk everything
Dick: The question that comes 'to me' is: How do you arrive at that discovery? Is
that a question of meditating, visiting a guru, going deeper?
Jan: The way you choose doesn't really make much difference. It is more about an
honest interest and the intensity of your search. The most important thing is that the
entire 'how' disappears. Seekers after truth always long deep inside for a method, a
'how'. The whole 'how' is nonsense. It is completely impossible not to be in the
Immeasurable.
Dick: Is honest interest then something that just is there, or something that 'you'
can influence in some way or another?
Jan: If you were one hundred percent certain about your honest interest then you
already be realized. As long as you are not certain that it just is, or that you can
influence it, then there is only one thing to do: risk everything. Examine if it is so. I
could give you a cut and dried solution, but answers are not enough by themselves.

Everyone who is interested in self-investigation has to search it for himself. I say this
because I want to guard against your understudying it only intellectually.
Dick: Risking everything, does that have to do with what your spiritual master
Alexander Smit described as 'playing the last trump'? Can you explain that to me
and can you tell me how that went in your case?
Jan: I'll tell you how that went. I had already read everything I could get my hands on
about self-investigation in general and about Advaita in particular. Nisargadatta,
Krishnamurti, Jean Klein, Wolter Keers, John Levi, Ramana, just name it. On a good
day I came across the book 'Consciousness' by Alexander Smit. Even though I thought
that I 'understood' Advaita quite well, I understood only about ten percent of what he
was talking about. I read the book a number of times and decided to try to contact
the writer.
I succeeded in that fairly quickly and I went to Baarn for a satsang. The impact of
these satsangs was enormous. It seemed I still had many ideas about how an
'enlightened one' should look, behave, and so on. All these concepts disappeared
through the living contact with Alexander. I no longer wanted to become a 'better
person'. I no longer even wanted to become more 'enlightened'. I only wanted to
know: who am I?
I had often read that enlightenment is a sort of flash, like being struck by lightning.
Something completely different happened in my case; nowadays I call it 'the lifting of
the fog'. There were no more questions; there were also no more answers, only a
totally penetrating clarity completely without any doubts. I found other seeker's
questions to be nonsensical. I thanked Alexander and have never seen him again.
My last trump was thus that it I still fostered an 'enlightenment concept' in a very
subtle way. That dissolved during my contact with Alexander. What is nice about
satsang is that you think you are stepping into a sort of teacher-student situation, and
that along the way the difference between student and teacher falls away. That is
very difficult to extract from of a book.
Spiritual autism
Dick: What about things such as 'taking responsibility' in your daily activities. Has
something changed for 'you' since your realization? Or is 'accepting responsibility'
more like something that just happens?
Jan: Oh, certainly. By the way, responsibility can be explained in different ways.
Since my enlightenment in my thirtieth year I know that I am responsible for
everything. Prior to that, I could still fool myself into thinking that there were things
that had 'nothing to do with me'. Nowadays that is impossible, completely impossible.
My teacher Alexander had still another explanation for the word responsibility: 'being
in state to respond'. In English, 'responsibility', the ability to respond. That amounts
to the same thing, namely that you no longer exclude anything. Anything that comes
up is OK.
A lot of people ask themselves why it is that they understand the whole Advaita story
but are still not enlightened. Sometimes I ask them: 'are you prepared to be totally
responsible for everything that happens? After all, that is not just nothing. I often see

in practice that exactly the opposite happens. Under the cloak of Advaita one is so-
called not responsible for anything because after all, 'everything is consciousness'.
That is called the Advaita-shuffle, a term thought up by Andrew Cohen. My teacher
always called it 'spiritual autism'.
An enlightened one also remains accountable for his or her behavior. He can even
apologize. They look just like people sometimes.
Dick: Seems very clear. For me, there is still some tension between 'having to do
something, a doer' and 'letting things happen.' Or is 'taking responsibility' more
like something that just happens.
Jan: Yes. It is clear in advance that taking responsibility is unavoidable. So, it is not
even that it 'is going to be taken'. It is just as if you are looking at a film in which an
actor apologizes to another.
Dick: If one can speak about 'spiritual autism', is that also something that happens?
Jan: Yes, and it is good to see that these things can be recognized as such in self-
investigation. It is not at all about whether it should happen or not. The only thing
that needs to happen is that the faculty of discrimination does its work.
Dick: I don't understand that last remark so well, could you expand on that for me.
Jan: The faculty of discrimination is a sort of higher knowing in us, a compass, an

intuitive knowing. Whenever I say something in satsang, or in answering an e-mail,
that reaches the target for the listener, that is the faculty of discrimination doing its
work. You hear something that you 'actually' already know but that you can't explain.
It is beyond thought. For example, try sometimes to explain why you love someone.
How do you know it then? You know it without a doubt, period. That knowing without
thinking is what self-investigation is about. Because, knowing with your thought has to
do with memory, with second-hand knowledge. It seems at first (especially in Advaita)
that it is about grasping it intellectually, but that is just temporary. Finally, all
concepts: including enlightenment, teacher, student, improvement, are thrown
overboad, overboard in the sense that they are seen to be what they are: concepts.
And that cannot happen with borrowed knowledge; you have to see that, know that
directly.
I am the light...
Dick: Something else that I still want to ask you. It occurs to me that you hardly
ever, unless I am mistaken, talk about God. Other teachers talk about that often.
Everything that passes through us is God's work. Also, past teachers do speak
about leela (or the Greek Gods as for example in Homer).
Jan: I myself have no associations with the word God. If I had to give another word it
would be 'being', 'to be'. Existence itself is God. But, I do not see God as a power
outside myself that regulates everything. Sometimes you hear: 'God is Love'. I also find
that beautiful. My teacher Alexander quoted Jesus once: 'I am the Light, the Truth,
and the Life'.
Thus, Jesus didn't say 'I represent...', and so forth. No, 'I Am it!'

I didn't have a religious upbringing, but I did attend a catholic elementary school. At
the age of ten I already found it to be like a big puppet show. I don't mean the
essence, but all that carrying on around it. And then we are back to the faculty of
discrimination. I don't need anyone to tell me that it was just an outward show.
Dick: In the last (jubilee) edition of 'Inzicht' (a Dutch magazine) you write the
following about emotions:
'Imagine that you discover who or what you are. Then that has certain
consequences, but that does not always mean that at the level of feelings highs
and lows will no longer occur. The only thing that happens is that the
misunderstanding that 'you can be dragged along' by the feelings is seen through.
You know that you are always the time and space-less witness of every feeling
and every thought, that there is nothing or no one to have a grip on what is
happening. That means that there is complete synchronicity with the now. Every
idea such as 'it should be different', or 'why is that happening to me' is seen
through and has lost its power. Emotions are no longer good or bad, emotions are
emotions, and they can still be quite intense, but there is no conflict.'
Jan: We began with originality and finish with emotions. I think the connection is in
the time and space-less witness that we are.
[interview: Dick de Boom]

Original oneness:
'Being God' thanks to your own humanness.
'Another Characteristic of this Thing is it's fantastic absence of

characteristics.
No color, no taste, no form, no size, neither large nor small, neither full nor
empty:
without properties, not the least attribute: and above all, without place;
nothing to repeat: no eye, no light, no outer,
no point of view.
NOTHING!
Nothing to justify the hurricane of certainty: I SEE!
How can NOTHING see?!
Nothing to justify the hurricane of certainty: I see myself.
How can NOTHING be seen?!
Nothing to justify the hurricane of certainty:
THE ONE THAT SEES IS WHAT IS SEEN
Even more impossible, this negates all the laws!
I AM!
One is not. One is born, one has a body, one is like this or like that, in the best
case one exists.
I AM!
At sixteen years of age the Frenchman Stephen Jourdain experienced a far-

reaching change. He calls it ' the awakening of the inner person to itself'. It was
about the 'un-born', that he describes as, 'radical, but natural, free,
and of such a simplicity and originality that it is impossible to connect it to any '
mystical authority whatsoever'
Only some years later did Jourdain gain some reputation and was asked to share
his experiences. He had to invent a new language to do that because he did not
want to read the spiritual classic and does not use the language of Buddhism or
Vedanta. He preferred to read authors such as Rimbaud, Proust and Henry Miller.
According to him these are a better preparation for the western person than the
esoteric writings of one or another 'Shri something-or-other'. That explains, the
somewhat unusual, but still recognizable use of words. -
Jourdain led an inconspicuous, more or less normal life. He had a family,

children, and was a real estate broker in Paris. Later he started a ' bed and
breakfast' on Corsica. It was especially in response to the book that Gilles Farcet
wrote about him (from which the following text comes) that he became more
widely known and a stream of visitors started to arrive.
Finally he gave some lectures and seminars and wrote a few books.
Below, there follow fragments from an interview with Stephen Jourdain

conducted by Gilles Farcet. He speaks here about awakening from duality and
describes non-duality in his very own way.

Moments of oneness
In everyone's life there are moment
that form an exception to the usual
quality of perceiving. Quite often, the
elementary perception of the split
between 'I' and 'the rest' disappears.
Undoubtedly that is what many people
mean when they speak of a 'melting
together of subject and object', an
expression that for that matter I do not
find to be totally adequate.
Namely, a union between subject and

object takes place, but they do not
melt together, they do not disappear in
an amalgamated magma. What is
marvelous about these experiences is
that I, without losing my identity, while
I really remain what I am, become the
table, or the mountain, or the whole
landscape nevertheless. And also that
remains what it is without any change.
A remains A, B remains B, and still A
finds itself in the midst of B, and B in
the midst of A. It would be a wonder if the two lost their individuality in the moment
of melting together.
This is an important point because most of the time it is misunderstood. You might
believe according to what you read here and there - that if Jan becomes the tree, the
tree as such is annihilated, just as Jan is. But it is not like that at all! Jan remains as
Jan existing in his integrity, and the tree remains as a tree, but still there is a growing
together. The wonder consists in the melting together on the one hand, and in the
maintaining of their identities on the other hand. An annihilated A melting together
with and annihilated B is nothing special. The extraordinary is that two totally
different entities can literally be connected while each of them maintains itself in its
original difference.
Healthy and counterfeit duality

Mostly we feel a more or less definite separation between 'I', and 'not-I'. That seems to
be an inborn split between our inner reality and the rest. This split disappears during
those 'moments'. It is not about a simple removal of the duality, but about the
appearance of a oneness within the duality. We come thus to the most important
notion of a healthy, legitimate duality.
I am told that many forms of instruction lay the accent on non-duality. If indeed an
unjustified duality were to exist, then there is also a completely justified duality that
manifests itself not only in space, but also in time. Ordinarily one rather puts the
stress on the spatial duality. Obviously there is something that separates me from the
tree. But, there is also something that separates me from what I have been and what I

shall be, something that separates me from my death for example. If you consider it
well, a person's life is very important! My death is something that is much realer and
more certain for me, than the tree that I have
The 'moments', the sudden
nothing to do with. The duality is there, it
abysses of happiness that I
manifests itself in space and time. But in space and
lived when I was young, those
time it is either healthy or counterfeit.
were 'experiences'.
In my opinion it is a heavy tactical fault to deny the The thing that I now carry in
duality without making a distinction between a myself is of a totally different
healthy and a counterfeit duality. You cannot deny nature. Not only is the word
the duality, that is the life principle. Certainly the 'experience' no longer
unreal duality that is a product of our thinking applicable, but also in a
needs to be annihilated. But, when the veil that we certain sense it is the denial
mostly live behind disappears, whenever this of that - a sweet counterfeit.
enormous soap bubble burst, what do you find That Thing (to be definite I
then? You find the world, simply the world. There is will write it from now with a
actually something like that there! I am there and capital letter) is in no way a
the tree is there. Duality is there. And that is glorious adventure that 'flows
healthy, simple and godly! into' a subject, who above all
remains unchanged. It is the
The origin subject; it is at the same time
the subject in his accession: it
We used to talk about 'our soul', but this term has
is a pure subject, a pure not-
fallen into discredit and saying 'I have a soul'
thing, that arrives by itself:
instead of 'I am a soul' was of course wrong use of
active with the eagerness
the word. Now we might call it our 'spiritual
belonging to love, without
essence'. It is the only source of everything. Our
beginning or end; it is a pure
essence lies at the source of what we call the
subject happening; and it
world. By 'world' I do not mean only the external
means a fundamental change
reality, but also my mind, my mind in my body, my
in the subjective nature, a
body in the world, and all of this in time. To say it
reconstruction of this nature;
differently, everything arises out of the core of our
completely new and
self. Our essence is creative. Originally - that is to
unassailable
say - now, immediately, directly - I am not speaking
about a historic origin, but about the origin in this
moment - generated by the source in my world. It creates the tangible reality as well
as my mind and my body.
As long as we remain there we are in the phase of the creation of the world, thus in
the paradisiacal phase of things. Immediately thereafter, and this is where it goes
wrong, there is a second creation, because our source is so to speak, double. In this
second creation I am the personal Stephen Jourdain, who is the father of the creation.
I claim fatherhood and its fruits, while in the first creation everything bubbles up out
of my own depth, but not as something personal, without any personal interference
from my side. In any case it is impossible for me to demand its fruits. Here there is no
self-claiming by the I.
The second one is the source of the counterfeit world, the pale copy of the reality -
inner and outer in which we live. This second source counterfeits everything at one
go. This counterfeiting begins immediately with birth, so that we live in a state of

permanent hallucination from the very beginning, in the bubbling up stream of our
impure source.
Sometime people shove eastern Zen-texts under my nose. Then I have the feeling that
they concern precisely what I speak about. Nevertheless it seems to me that this
experience is not sufficiently described in these Eastern texts, and that this mountain
has another slope, that might be the Christian side, but nothing is more difficult to
describe. You might think that one could make a choice, but there is no choice to be
made. The gash of the Zen-sword and the personal and human essence are one and
the same thing. The lightning of Zen is the human being, is my humanity. You don't
enter into God except through the son, through his own humanity. In other words: you
are God not in spite of but because of your humanity.
From: Stephen Jourdain en Gilles Farcet: L'Irrévérence de l'éveil

(1992) Uitg. Les Editions du Relié
ISBN: 2-909698-01-7
Appeared also in English with the title:

Radical Awakening - Cutting Through the Conditioned Mind
ISBN: 1-878019-16-3
For more French information: www.stephenjourdain.com

From the waiting room
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) was in Holland
The book The Power of Now which appeared in 1998 has since been translated
into 32 languages and in the Dutch language territory it is in its 6th printing.
Nowadays you often see it on the desks of managers, trainers and coaches.
The attraction of Tolles message reaches beyond the content of the book. Almost
six hundred people from overall in Holland came to the Flint in Amersfoort on
Saturday, April 24, 2004. The publishers Ankh-Hermes invited Eckhart Tolle, a
resident of Canada for the lecture series authors meet readers.
On the stage: a plain little platform under-titled with the name of the publisher
comically prominent.
A simple average table a chair, two bouquets of flowers and a microphone flank a
gigantic video screen that magnifies Tolles modest style and humor. An everyday
looking kind of man takes his place before a respectful and eager audience awaiting
spiritual fireworks.
Tolle opens with the, for him

characteristic way of putting himself in
perspective: This lecture is going to last
three hours ... That seems to be rather
long if the Now is the only subject. If
you are not already restless, you will
now already become restless...
The way to come into the Now,
according to him, is to bring your
attention to your senses, and to become
aware of the formless unassailable background: the vital presence. The door to the
Now is always open and forms the entrance to this presence.
But alas, some bears lie in wait before this door, for example:
The thinking that takes on an ego identity (personal and collective) and is always
busy with the insatiable I want...
In addition, the always-grumbling complaint-ego that only wants attention and
demands the right to existence for the ego. Incidentally complaining always implies
superiority: my I is more significant than yours, and can even stretch so far that even
it complains to god about everything that he does wrong.
The next handicaps are then all the other unconscious people (fellow humans) in this
life. Here Tolle quotes Sartre: Hell is the other. The message is: dont let yourself get
wrapped up in reactions to the unconscious, because that finally turns out to be an
ego-boost.
Finally we have the personal and collective pain-body (the pain-body is the word that
he most frequently says during this lecture). Tolle compares the pain-body with the
slimy Gollum character from the film Lord of the Rings. Pain is also a devious way for
the ego to beg for attention.
These handicaps can rise up out of instinctive self-preservation of the ego exactly
during the process of becoming conscious. Pain can then become a part of the
transmutation; as for example in the case of J. Krishnamurti (quoted by Tolle) who

suffered much pain from headache but did not go to the doctor because according to
him it was transmutation in action.
The tone of Tolles voice suddenly changes when he talks about the pain that he
experienced himself and which finally as a figurative teacher showed him the way out.
He also concluded then that life offers you exactly what you need. And, at the very
moment that you realize: I no longer need this pain; you come in line with the Now
and find your liberation.
During the pause a light lobby-mood prevails; after all, we are in a theater. Mutual
acquaintances and discoveries are exchanged. When the bell rings signaling the end of
the pause the hall fills quickly and becomes smoothly still as soon as Tolle appears
once more on the podium.
We get an opportunity to ask questions, with the indication that the questions should
be sincere and relevant.
There follow questions, among others about love, forgiveness and responsibility. Again
and again he describes the working and functioning of the pain-body and indicates
how the vicious circle causing pain and hurting someone can be broken. The first step
is in any case; seeing that it works like that. That is, according to Tolle, the point of
departure for mastering our unconsciousness.
Finally Tolle gives, a final message to the public as a sort of inside-joke. Now you
might think, oh no .. now for the rest of my life I have to be conscious and now. What
a job!!! But he adds roguishly: Thats not so tough because you only have to do it
NOW! During a standing ovation Tolle disappears chuckling behind the wings.
What then is the (attractive) power of Tolles message?

According to me it lies in his emphasis on the current
moment: you do not find liberation yesterday, or
tomorrow, but Now! Just as Jan van Delden indicates that
figuratively speaking there are always four doors open:
the Now, the Silence, the Knowing and the Attention. So,
there is a path and an open door for everyone.
The folder distributed by Tolle says emphatically that it

concerns, a teaching, although he denies that himself
during the lecture (when it is asked of him if accepts
disciples) because one can only speak of a teaching when
there are pupils. Above all, the teaching according to
him, would not fit in certain movements or life
philosophies, while this nevertheless seems to draw from the non-dualistic body of
thought (Advaita Vedanta) or the way of the impersonal. Tolle does not present
himself at all as a guru and he wants no disciples. Unpretentious, thoughtfully and
with a wink, he describes from his own experience how the greatest barrier, the ego-
mechanism can be taken, and he knows how to get the laughers going.
Tony Parsons calls Tolles teaching dualistic, because it directs itself to an apparent
person who can choose to do something or not in order to become liberated. With
every handle that you reach out to a seeker, somewhere you recognize the existence
of this same seeker. While the core message of non-duality is exactly the non-

existence of the seeker (which Tolle touches on very incidentally). The pure-message
however is so direct and radical that the human mind does not wish to hear it and
would probably never attract a large audience.
Tolles message does do that.
the NOW
Looking back on this day, I realize how the thinking allows us to believe all too
eagerly I will only become happy if... If the condition is fulfilled then the thinking
pulls another ‘only if’ out of the hat. That’s how it continues to seek, time is
created, and waiting for happiness and liberation arise. Life then seems to be only
a yearning in a waiting room. I remember as if it were right now the moment in
the Amstel Church, when Alexander Smit beautifully and concisely settled with
this waiting room. With an appropriate feeling for theater Alexander made the
following announcement: Good people, I have a dramatic message for you..
' w e c a n n e v e r b e c o m e h a p p y' (a meaningful silence). With a lot of
inner-laughter he made his point: we can only bé happy!
For more information: www.eckharttolle.com
[Kees Schreuders]

colophon
contributors.to.this.edition:
Jan van Delden

Jan Kersschot
Steven Harrison
Joan Tollifson
Susan Frank
Shunyam (illustrations)
Kees Schreuders (editor& lay-out)

Belle Bruins (editor)
Raf Pype (editor)
Johan van der Kooij (editor)
Sam Pasiencier (translations from the Dutch)
Sietske Roegholt
Ilse Beumer
Erick Douwes
Jaap Poetsma
Peter van Steenwijk
Robbert Bloemendaal
Pol Sturtewagen
Dick de Boom
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.
www.ods.nl/amigo
e-mail: case@ods.nl

AMIGO No. 7

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April 2004 edition 7

I recently visited a meeting of

Did this conclusion spoil the

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 1

Central to this amigo are: originality, authenticity and spontaneity.

...pray; when prayer appears,

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 2

• The rabbit in the hat

• Advaita & (psycho)therapy

• Here is what you are

• Not even God can explain God!

• Do you see what I says?

• God hidden in people

• From the waiting room

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 3

What does an enlightened one see and feel?

Even though the answer to this

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 4

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 5

Question: But isn't that almost unattainable?

Question: Maybe I formulated my question wrong, but I still think it is hard to

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 6

Question: Nevertheless it remains difficult to see that it isn't difficult.

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 7

Love that one and do whatever happens

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 8

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 9

Not anything other than water is a disguise

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 10

The fun of Zeus

(from: interview Amigo 5)

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 11

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 12

for more information on Jan (in Dutch): www.ods.nl/la-rousselie

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 13

I heard a visitor ask a question during a seminar given by Ramesh Balsekar:

'All forms of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, are based on a premise that is

- Is it a pitfall or just a form of support if we do therapy during our sadhana?

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 14

Also see: www.susanfrank.nl

Susan: I don’t know anything about

Johan: A large number of people do

Susan: Naturally everything fits

Most people work on themselves in order to become happier, to resolve traumas or

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 15

Find that which is free of all that.

Susan: Yes, I agree completely.

Johan: Still that happened only partially during that time.

Susan: Jean Klein used the word finally

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 16

Susan: Absolutely, after self-realization there is no more benefit from psychotherapy.

Susan: Yeah, it may even become ten times stronger.

Johan: What is happening then?

Johan: By means of psychotherapy you investigate yourself and your relation to

Susan: As far as I am concerned it is very simple: do you have a compelling fascination

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 17

Our togetherness is about self realization

Sometimes what is meant to be a pointer, or an encouragement to the student is again

Johan: But, 'everything wants to be seen' that is an invitation to investigate the

Amigo 7 - april 2004 www.ods.nl/am1gos 18

Everyone walks their own unique path.

The why-because-and-then-letting-it-go doesn’t belong in my shop, also not when I

I am not a psychotherapist, yet sometimes it can be helpful to look together at certain