What Is the Ultimate Truth?

ithout being aware of it, most of us are convinced at the very core of our being that something is terribly wrong. And it is this one fundamental conviction that keeps us locked in the three-dimensional prison of time, thought and feeling. If we are seeking Liberation, if we want to be free from that prison, we have to be ready to question the validity of that conviction as if our salvation depended on it because it does. In the end, the difference between Enlightenment and unenlightenment completely depends on whether we have freed ourselves from the fundamental conviction that something is wrong. But the problem is that we are usually so closely identified with this conviction that it is all but impossible for us to be able to recognize it. If this is true, and if we sincerely want to free ourselves from the bondage of that conviction and the long shadow that it casts upon our entire existence, then what are we to do? \yhen we want to see our way through fundamental What Is the Ultimate Truth? confusion, there is only one solution. We have to be willing to let every thing he as it is. We have to be ready to uncondi- tionally let everything be as it is. What does that mean? It means that if we want to know for ourselves what is ulti- mately true, we first have to be willing to let go of absolutely everythinig^—everything we have thought, everything we have felt, everything we have desired and everything we have feared. If we can do this—simply let everything, be—we will sink , slowly but surelv. naturally and effortl essly to the very ground o f being itsel f. Through doing only this, letting everything be, we will find a place that is completely still, where there is no movement whatsoever. In that place there is freedom from time and thought , from the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain. . In that place there is only peace. Perfect peace and a mystery that the mind cannot comprehend. When we let everything be in this way, we take absolutely no position in relationship to anything we experience^We are resting. We are no longer struggling to maintain or control anything. We are only resting and nothing more. Finally at peace, we are utterly free from everything we have ever known—including the fundamental conviction that some- thing is terribly wrong. The world of opposites and differences having long fallen away, there is only THAT. Now, having transcended all opposites and resting in eternity beyond the mind, what is the ultimate truth? Having Embracing Heaven & Earth. gone beyond time, having gone beyond becoming, resting in a place that existed before the universe was born, there is only one truth nothing ever happened. At that extraordinary depth, that's what the truth is. And it is that profound dis- covery—that nothing ever happened—that is Enlightenment. When we return to the world of time, thought and feeling, the power of that revelation, if it has been deep enough, has the miraculous potential to completely liberate us from all the historically based, life-inhibiting impressions that have been made on our consciousness. It was our absolute con- viction in the significance of those painful impressions that created the estrangement from our own deepest Self. And it was that same conviction that convinced us that something fundamental was terribly wrong. But when that revelation has made a deep enough impression on our consciousness when we finally do come home to our true Self—the past is literally destroyed. So what does the liberating discovery that nothing ever happened mean upon our return to the world? It means that nothing is wrong! Beyond time, beyond the world of opposites and differ- ences, where nothing ever happened, what the ultimate truth is, is a mystery But in the world of opposites and differences, where many things are always happening, what is the truth there? The answer to that all-important question entirely depends upon how deep and profound our own experience What Is the Ultimate Truth? has been. For if our experience has been ultimately superficial, lacking the knowledge of that radical depth, if we've only known the world of becoming and have not tasted the time- less, that mystery from which the world of becoming arose, then its more than likely that the truth of our own experience will be based on the fundamental conviction that something is terribly wrong. Never having tasted that eternal ground that is always untouched by anything that has ever happened, all we can know in our human experience is a happiness that is fleeting and a deep conviction that life itself is fundamen- tally limited. But when we have known that ground of being, even if it was only for a few moments, we will never be able to forget it . Indeed, that experience will inevitably determine that the deepest conviction upon which our life is based is that nothing is wrong. This is very important. Whether we are aware of it or not, our deepest experience of life always exerts a pivotal positive or negative influence upon the way we perceive the world. If we want to be free and seek that freedom through the knowledge of what is ultimately true, then we must make the effort to find out what fundamental conviction exerts the greatest influence on the way we perceive the world. We must sincerely ask ourselves: Is that conviction ulti- mately positive or negative? And once we've answered that question, then we must ask ourselves: How deep is the experience that that conviction is based upon? Embracing Heaven & Earth Embracing Heaven & Earth Meditation Is a Metaphor for Enlightenment Perils of the Path Liberation without a Face The Glory of God The Call oj the Absolute These five chapters endeavor to bring to light the true meaning and significance o/nonduality. They attempt to reveal the deeply mysterious relationship and simulta- neous nondifference between heaven and earth, between Enlightenment and the human experience.