Andrew Cohen - N° 23 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

Witness implies duality. I'm aware of myself being aware. I don't advocate witness consciousness in my approach. So I'm saying it's very dualistic to me. It's my opinion. I'm aware of myself being aware. So it sets up a duality. So what I'm what I'm advocating is a state of consciousness in which there's not two but only one state one experience one experience there's nobody being aware of anything within him or herself spontaneous awareness in all its fullness which includes everything and leaves nothing else. People people who are very self-conscious are aware of themselves being aware of themselves creates duality. So I'm describing a state of consciousness in where there's no duality. So there's no I being aware of myself being aware it's gone. There's just one experience not two. So what I emphasize to help people awaken to this nondual state of consciousness is not knowing. Not knowing is a state where there's nothing. Zero zero point. I don't know. I don't know. And yet I am. I don't know. And yet I am. It's nothing versus something. Same result. Go back to before the beginning. Before the beginning, what was there? There was nothing. Right? There's no past. There's no future. There's no time. There's no space. There's no coming. There's no going. There's no here. There's no there. There's nothing. There's no thoughts about anything. Whereas consciousness to the mind to become a thing. But what if say referring to pure consciousness? It's not a thing. It's a grounded reality that doesn't exist separate from it. Not a thing. There's no duality in the consciousness of consciousness because everything you're saying is good. I've heard a lot of many people speak in exactly the way you're speaking. In Madant, similar ideas are expressed very clearly. But my concern is we're still in most cases we're going to be left with a unique individual awareness who's going to be looking for the I am the I am vibration the experience the vibration of silence or whatever it is going to be standing separate from experience looking for certain kinds of attributes of enlightened awareness that symbolize what they think is enlightenment. follow. It's a mental process. So you want to transcend all the mental processes and see what happens. So the safest way is to go all the way back to before the beginning, before anything ever happened, before there was any thoughts to think about anything. And then there's the primordial dimension of reality begins to awaken to itself and reveal itself. We're going to resist this temp this temptation to embrace a dualistic relationship to absolute knowledge. So there's no duality. There's nothing to hold on to. There's no duality. There's nothing to hold on to. Everything the reality becomes empty and your mind can't do anything about it. Your ego is rendered helpless in face of emptiness. It can't do anything. If you if you let go of everything, the mind the mind is rendered helpless also. It's going in circles. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. It's like a chicken with it head cut off. It can't do anything. It becomes powerless. Because we don't want to have a dualistic relationship to God. Look, this is it. I got it. This is silence. This is the I am vibration. This is whatever we think. This is the blue pearl. Whatever you want to call it. It's still separate from me and I'm holding it. I'm I'm holding it. It's holding me. Forget it. Let go of it. If you let go of it, then you're everywhere and nowhere at the same time. If you let go of the these mind objects, even these divine mind objects, and you'll be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Back to before the beginning, where everything is pure. Back to before the beginning when everything was pure, when there was nothing. These experiences you're describing and you you've heard about, they're all beautiful. They're real. They exist. I'm not denying the truth of what you're referring to. But I'm saying we have to be wary of all these ideas, these metaphysical abstractions which may have been liberating for someone else but it won't be liberating for most of us. We try to go back to before the beginning where we had any idea what we were talking about in this spontaneous freedom is the natural state. Then back to before the beginning. So we don't want to add anything to we don't want to add anything to that. The practice of self liberation is by subtraction not addition. Keep subtracting until we go back to zero. And then the minute something else appears subtract again. Continually stabilizing the zero point. See, the mind doesn't know what to do then, right? It's rendered helpless. No job to do, no position to take. And that's the place of freedom. You feel it? Can you see it when I'm pointing to it? So if you go deeper into that empty space, that empty place, that's the place of liberation, man. It's always there. The empty space that I'm speaking about is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Everywhere and nowhere is the same place. from a point of view of of enlightened awareness. And the mind can't deal with everywhere and nowhere. It's too complicated. The mind can deal with everywhere I can deal with or nowhere I can deal with. But you see everywhere and nowhere. It's it's this metaphysical paradox that the mind can't handle. Real enlightenment position destroys the mind and opens up a whole new dimension of of seeing and feeling and knowing. If you if you keep going deeply into an appointing to your awareness of your body will disappear also. The deeper you go into Brahman consciousness, the more ecstasy, the more bliss, the more joy you start to feeling. Having nothing, knowing nothing, being no one, being nowhere, never having been born, no memory, no history, no no desire, just free fall, the eternity consciousness of that which was never born. How does that sound? So my guru taught me a very to my very esoteric definition of what it means to be enlightened versus unenlightened. And he told me that Andrew the difference between enlightenment and unenlightenment is doubt which I found very odd because it sounds very intellectual like an intellectual almost like a purely intellectual position even though it's much deeper than that but on first glance sounded too mindy to me. But the point is when we have the when we have a trans when we experience a transational state of consciousness, a transcendental state of consciousness, that's very makes a deep impression on us. We glimpse a higher possibilities that we never knew existed. So we say, "Oh, I didn't know that before. Now I know that." Then we seek to have the experience again. So was it really true? Was it as amazing as I thought it was? Yes, it happens again. And we keep on going back for more and it happens again. We get convinced. Yes, it was true. What I saw was real. Unbelievable, perfect, pure, overwhelming. But then the question comes, how many glimpses do we do we need to be convinced that God exists? Absolutely beyond all relative existence, all relative matters. How many glimpses do we need? So, is one enough? Is 10 enough? Is 100 enough? How many lifetimes do we have to be involved in the seeking for enlightenment to be able to accept it as yes, it is? So, so the seeking process comes to an end when we accept at a level at a soul level that we've made it. And what that's going to mean for us is very challenging. I admit it's very challenging. But that's what he was asking for. Do you do you believe it? Not just with your mind, but your soul with your soul. You convinced that in all your inherent with all the inherent impedfection of your body, mind, and personality, would you still liberate it? Do you have the guts? Do you have the spiritual self-confidence to say yes I am? Or are you intimidated and we don't have the courage to to stand and bear witness to our liberation? That's the test. Then there's going to be life conditions too. Life can challenge us in all kinds of ways. So, can our doubtlessness sustain itself through all these ups and downs and gross and subtle challenges of life? If the answer is yes, we're going to be doing pretty good. But it's not it's not the doubt that comes from the mind saying it's the doubt that comes from the soul being convinced that it is so. And if it's so, we'll be solid. Not wavering. Not having a good week. Had a great week last week. I'm having a terrible week this week. Had a great month last month. Not having a terrible month. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Make sense? We need more reasonable ways to think about these big esoteric concepts in order not to drive ourselves crazy because we too many spiritual teachers make absolute statements that sound very sexy and idealistic. If we nobody can live up to them, they're of no use to us, right? So we want trying to find a way to be most reasonable, most idealistic at the same time. That's what I was saying. So for me, this notion of the doubtlessness is very profound and and it goes so deep, in other words, that we need we need to get to that point of 51% that we we have a preconcious conviction at a preconscious level. We have no doubt that enlightenment is the ground of our being. We don't need to think about it. We we don't need to ask ourselves. We don't have to look for any particular feeling, any particular state or anything else. We know at a pre-conscious level that it's the case. And if we know at a pre-conscious level that it's the case, we there's a spontaneous nature to the way we experience our own awakening again and again and again and again.