Non-dualism

Are you a dualist or a non-dualist? What incredibly silly question? Are you a Muslim or a Jew? Are you a left-winger or a right-winger? Are you a materialist or an idealist? Are you a banana? You are a human being, for heaven’s sake.

What difference does it make to you, if consciousness is created in your brain or if it is created somewhere else? Seriously, what difference does it make? What difference does it make for you, right now, if some part of you lives on after death, or if no part of you survives death?

What makes you think that the material world is of less importance? What makes you think that the material world isn’t magical? Where did you get those ideas from? Did you get them from your religious conditioning?

You don’t know what matter is. You have absolutely no idea of what consciousness is. You don’t know how nightmares are created. You don’t even know where daydreams come from. How can you expect to understand what is happening to us when we die when you don’t even know what thoughts consist of?

Or, maybe you are a materialist, although materialism is an outdated worldview. Any high school kid can explain to you that an atom consists of practically nothing. If the nucleus of the atom would be as big as a pinhead, the atom would be as big as an ordinary classroom. Moreover, what is an electron, really, a particle or a wave? How can anyone call himself a materialist today, without being ignorant?

Can you explain to me how a telephone works, or a computer? Eternity. Holy Moses!
I tell you, you don’t know nothing about anything. You have been deceived or you have deceived yourself. Either way. Wake up! For heaves sake!

Change

Beliefs, views and opinions are hardwired. To discuss politics with a right-winger is a waste of time. It’s also a waste of time to discuss ethics with a devout Muslim or a born again Christian. They know already what’s right or wrong. Many of them would rather die than admit that they may have misunderstood something.

We find this stubbornness everywhere. We find it in all other people but we don’t find it in ourselves. Isn’t this peculiar?

Maybe there is a biological reason for this pertinacity. Maybe only those who never gave in survived.

It’s good to be stubborn if we fight for something good. If we fight for something bad, however, then we will create nothing but troubles and misery. The problem is that we can never know for sure if what we are fighting for is good or bad. Everybody knows, deep in their hearts, that they are right. The Nazis in Germany didn’t fight for what they believed was wrong. Economists, politicians and CEOs of today don’t fight for what they believe will ruin the earth.

We are not able to solve the problems with global warming and environmental pollution. We are like drunkards who refuse to see that we drink too much. This is the reason why I don’t believe in a positive future for our global civilization. It will crumble and fall. All previous civilizations have perished. Nothing is strange about this view.

Nevertheless, it’s all very sad, because it’s indeed possible to realize that all thoughts and ideas are nothing but thoughts and ideas. It’s possible to see that thoughts and ideas are like ghosts and spirits - fantasies. We don’t have to fight so hard to defend them, if we don’t want to.

It’s possible to realize that one can be wrong about things. In fact, it’s possible to leave the thought dimension altogether, at least for short moments. Thoughts and ideas are not all there is in life. It’s possible to wake up from reveries and ruminations. It’s not even particularly difficult. In fact, it happens spontaneously many times every day. When you wake up from such a daydream you have a chance to say to yourself, “Oh, here was an idea again, a fantasy.”

It’s possible to discover that the sun, the wind and the trees are still here. The world is still beautiful. To be alive is such an amazing mystery.  

Why do we forget this so easily? What power pulls us back into the fog again? This is the big question.

What's this all about?

Imagine a crime scene. A police inspector and his team are trying to find out whom the culprit is. They’re interrogating a number of witnesses. One witness saw a man in a grey overcoat leaving the house in haste. Another witness saw a man in a cap who drew off in a blue Toyota. One neighbor heard strange noises the day before and another neighbor had a feeling that something wasn’t right in that house.

In trying to understand what life is about, you are like the police inspector and his team. Many people have important things to tell in this mysterious case.

Some people look at life from a spiritual perspective, some are more down to earth, and some see things from a scientific point of view. You must listen attentively to what everyone has to say. If you only listen to one Guru, one kind of scientists, or one witness, you will get a very limited view.

I know very well that I will never be able solve this case, no matter how many clues I will follow up, but I will still never be able to drop it. To give up is simply not an option for me.

Many people give up because they’re convinced that they already know what life is about, others give up because they’re lazy and don’t care, but many people are very persistent. They can’t give up. I belong to that crowd.

Too much emphasis on the now

Hippocampus is a part of the brain that is important for the formation of memories. If this part of your brain is damaged or destroyed, you may find yourself living in the eternal now. You will not even remember what happened thirty seconds ago. The future will also disappear. You will not remember that you have to go to the laundry to pick up your clothes or that you have an appointment with the dentist in the afternoon.

Eckhart Tolle and many other spiritual teachers put too much emphasis on the now, I think. To focus all attention on the now will not lead to spiritual transformation or awakening. Why bother about climate change, environmental pollution and injustice if only the present now is real? Why bother about anything if only what you have here in front of you, at this moment, is real?

However, to completely loose touch with the now is very harmful. Many people suffer from this disease in our modern societies. They’re always somewhere else. They’ve lost contact with themselves and the reality. Trying desperately to reach a goal or playing one’s old cassettes over and over, is to be gone. It’s very important to be able to be present.

It’s good for both mental and physical health to be present in the now. For example, Jon Kabat-Zinn has showed that psoriasis patients will respond better to UV-light treatment if they are mindful of the present moment during the treatment. Isn’t this an interesting discovery? Why would mindfulness of the now improve psoriasis treatment? In addition, you will more often be in a better mood if you spend more moments in the now.

The mind is planning for the future and looking back at what happened, but returns to the present, again and again. A normal healthy mind works this way. The now is very important but memories of the past and making plans for the future is also important. Without memory and plans for the future, we would need people at a nursing home or a monastery to take care of us.

Fantasies, daydreams, theories and ideas are also very important but we must not forget that all such mental bubbles will eventually burst. Our minds are often fooling us. The world is not as we think it is.

However, nothing is more important than warmth. A cold, intellectual analysis of life is the most serious delusion of all. This approach is to give up our humanness and settle in a theoretical reality.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus

The reality

The reality is not only what you have here in front of you. The reality is very much larger. The cosmic horizon is 46 billion light-years away. This is as far as the light has traveled since the Big Bang. No one knows what’s beyond that edge. Maybe there are tons of universes out there.

If you look at the stars at night, you’ll look back in time. The stars you see can have gone out thousands of years ago, but you’re unaware of it. The twinkling lights you see have traveled for thousands of years before reaching your eyes. If our sun would explode, it would take eight minutes before we would notice it.

Moreover, if someone in another galaxy looked at our planet through a powerful telescope, he would see what was happening thousands of years ago. What’s happening here right now can only be seen in that galaxy after thousands of years.

The now is irrelevant from the cosmic point of view. Everything is irrelevant from the cosmic point of view. We’re stuck here at this time. If there are other civilizations out there, we will never be able to contact them because of the distance and the time difference.

Some people believe that there is no reality outside their own minds. Philosophers call this idea solipsism. What’s this idea good for? Is it useful? I don’t think so.

Others believe that highly advanced civilizations can travel faster than the speed of light or that angels and other strange beings can sneak into our dimension through mysterious loopholes. It may well be so. I don’t know. However, is it meaningful to speculate about such beings if you have never met them? In what sense do such speculations improve your life situation?

Pondering space and time may be fun, but it’s not particularly important. We need food and shelter, love and friendship. Such things are important. We don’t need war, greed, environmental disasters, or injustice. We spend too much time and energy on unimportant or idiotic things and too little time on what really matters. This has to be changed. We need to wake up.

The world is unimaginably huge, and life is unimaginably complex. Most religious and spiritual people make the mistake of believing that they know what everything is about. They know it all, but they arrive at different conclusions.

Many scientists have similar problems. They believe they understand what‘s happening, but they don’t. What they know is just a tiny fraction of the totality. They look at life as if they were on the outside looking in, but they’re not. No one knows what life is all about. Life’s an incomprehensible mystery.