Author Archives: Zareen

Sam Quotes

From Gnostic.org by Walter H. Bowart, EditorTucson, Arizona, 1972 Forward for This is the New Age in Person Lectures Inspired by St. Paul’s ‘First Epistle to the Corinthians The first thing that struck me about Samuel L. Lewis (called Murshid, or teacher, by his disciples) was his deep humanness. He had a gruff manner behind …

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Aliens and Nonduality

So, we’ve been watching this TV series, made for TV, on Netflix. It’s about aliens. It’s called Roswell. It’s set in Roswell, New Mexico, and it’s about aliens landing in ’47.

In this story there are aliens left in the town who grew up in glowing pods. It’s so funny to watch because, as the show goes along, you can tell the writers are literally making it up each episode. I don’t think they had a full plot to start with; new characters will come in whenever they need something weird to happen. Everyone in the show is super beautiful and handsome. People die and then aren’t dead. And it’s full of existential angst.

As we watch this show we’re always shaking our heads at the leaps from reality that are required to follow the plot, and commenting that if you’re writing a show about aliens, you can do any crazy thing. Add some aliens to a plot and boom! You can do anything. You can go in any direction; you don’t have to be moored to any reality at all.

This is just like living in the dual state… which is the opposite of nonduality. When you’re living in the dual state, you’re living in a projection of yourself rather than knowing who you are and living your life as your actual self.

The actual self is very simple. You know who you are—you’re just a “boring” you. It goes very deep, however. If you take a minute to stop and feel the essence of yourself it is also the essence of everything. It’s your connection to earth and reality. In the nondual state everything is real and connected.

The dual state is just the opposite. It’s always projected onto other things—the things we see, the things people have said about us, what we’ve been taught about Heaven and Hell. We’re always trying to find spirituality rather than just being a human being whose nature is to do spiritual things. In the dual state you’re always projecting out of yourself. People literally invent the stories of their lives as if it’s very bad fiction.

So many of our spiritual teachings, like “create your own reality,” or A Course in Miracles, are literally about how to invent your best projection. It’s like “How to Become an Alien 101.” In A Course in Miracles—the basis of it is that we come from somewhere else, and we’re here to learn a lesson. We’re not even from here; we’re not even from Earth.

We are aliens living on the earth. Stuck entirely in our heads.

The Nondual state, on the other hand, is solid and real. You can’t invent your own reality—you live inside a shared reality with not only every person but also everything: all our relations, all the animals, the stars, the molecules, and the energy. We live inside an actual reality that we are a part of. One of the basic prayers of monks studying nonduality is: “Bring us from the false to the real.”

Our alien story and living constantly in projections is very persuasive. We do the opposite. We put a lot of work into bringing ourselves from the real to the false, trying to make the false a powerful alien shell of illusion.

So, nonduality and aliens: watch the show Roswell and you’ll see what I mean. Have a good laugh at how it’s so obviously made up. It’s a total metaphor for living in the dual state—you can make up anything about your life that you want. Like the self-help gurus? Their job is to teach you how to make up the very best thing you can possibly make up about your life… and hopefully end up with lots of money.

Nonduality teachers are the opposite. We say, “No, real reality is just fine. Come out of the projection and into who you actually are.”

Little sidebar: I actually have a friend who totally believes in aliens. She’s written some books and stuff, and she was just telling me last week that the aliens are coming, and their job is to teach us to live in the nondual state.

I’m like, “Oh yeah, sweet, nice.”

But I’m thinking, “We can do that ourselves; we don’t need aliens to come teach us how to be human beings.” This is our birthright. This is what we do.

Anyway, come out of your alien state and be a human being on Earth. Amen.

Flat Earth and Nonduality

Flat Earth and nonduality—you might be thinking, what do those have to do with each other?

Well… lately, I have been talking about nonduality and Native wisdom. I’ve been saying that nonduality didn’t start with Buddha. It didn’t start with Nisargadatta. It didn’t start with Rupert Spira or Adyashanti, or anybody. These people are all describing a state that was already there. Just like Newton didn’t ‘discover’ gravity—he didn’t create gravity; he just found a way to describe it.

The nondual state has always been there. All of these people—Buddha in particular—who have described the state have been misinterpreted. So many stories have grown up around it that the idea of nonduality has turned into a total fiction.

Anything you hear about Nonduality is crazy. What we’ve actually interpreted the nondual state to be is nuts.

As I try to talk to people about it I see their misunderstandings. The belief that it’s a philosophy, a system of thought, rather than a natural state is deeply intrenched. It’s very hard to break through the conceptions to show just how real and ancient the nondual state is.

I’ve realized lately that it’s just like talking to a Christian fundamentalist about evolution. I’m calling it Flat Earth, but it’s the same thing, right? People who believe the world is flat because the Bible doesn’t say it’s round, or people who believe the world was created 6,000 years ago, and refuse to listen to anything different.

This is the same fundamental belief that people studying Eastern mysticism have, almost as if enlightenment was invented when Buddha lived 2,600 years ago. No! Buddha simply discovered a natural state that’s always been there.

We need to get past this “Flat Earth Society” mindset that everyone is stuck in and start looking at reality as if it’s real.

Big concept, right? [Laughter]

We need to realize that the nondual state is the natural human state. There are plenty of people around the world still living in indigenous communities who exist in this natural state. The second we truly realize the truth in that all seeking changes completely. You’re not seeking something in the future, something outside yourself—you’re seeking yourself. And how can you seek yourself? You’re right there!

You’re trying to become fully aware of your humanity, which is always there. The stories implanted in our heads cause us to miss this truth. Once you realize this, everything makes sense.

This is why spiritual teachers instruct students to calm down, relax, sit still, and be silent. When you calm down, relax, sit still, and just be silent, you are your natural self. Even when you’re running around, angry, and your mind’s going crazy, you’re still your natural self—it’s just that you don’t like that version of you.

Coming down into your actual being, you see that you’re only this simple, alive presence. You have a name, that’s you; you have a being, that’s you. When you’re solid in knowing who you are, in a way that you can’t be convinced otherwise, then you can live your life from that state of being. You become a positive contributor to the world rather than the consumer we’ve been trained to be. It becomes much harder to fool you. You begin interacting with people in new ways and bringing new modes of being into the society we live in.

The indigenous truths we still have today are the old way of being human, but we need to modernize it so that it works within today’s society. We don’t have to throw everything away, but we do need to clean up a lot of garbage—just look at the mess we’ve created! That’s a big job, but we’re humans, and we like doing things, figuring things out.

In order to take on this job we have to shed our consumer mentality and the conviction that we don’t know who we are.

The moment you know who you are, you become responsible for everything. And from that place of responsibility, we can act like fully adult human beings, capable of living sustainably with all our relations—with each other, the atmosphere, the water, the four-legged beings, and all the living creatures in the ocean.

Then we can see our connection and start acting as if we’re not on a flat Earth that was created 6,000 years ago. We are on an ancient, beautiful, living Earth, and we are the living Earth, awake, with responsibilities as human beings. This is the new way we’ll start living, rooted in the old understandings of reality.

The Answer to All Nonduality Questions

The answer to all non-duality questions is in one simple statement that I found in Anita Sanchez’s book, The Four Sacred Gifts.

In this book, she very pregnantly points out that feeling separate is very easy to do. It’s very easy to fall into a state of feeling separate, and of course, in our world, you’re taught from day one that you’re separate.

When you’re there, it’s painful. It’s painful and alone. But more important than that, when we’re in this state where we feel separate, we don’t take responsibility for the things that we do. We feel that things just happen to us or around us. We feel to be a victim, and we don’t take responsibility.

That certainly makes sense. When we feel separate then we are not in a state of care of all the things around us. She says that in a native tribe, the Elders would then say, “We are living as if we have no relations.”

And that’s the answer to all non-duality questions right there: you’re living as if you have no relations.

There are so many things in our world that make us feel separate. Like the statement, “You’re born alone, you die alone.” It’s a common sarcastic statements that people like to make, but that’s not true.

When you’re born, there is barely a separation between you and your mother. Your DNA, your molecules are still the same. Your food comes from your mother. You’re constantly being held—well, you should constantly be being held. But more than that, if you think you were born alone then you are acting as if you have no relations.

You might be sitting in your house all by yourself right now, but you’re not. Your house is full of little bugs and tiny bacteria hiding in the corners. Little life beings everywhere.

You can even see it when the sun comes slanting through the window in just a particular way. The sun hits the air and you can see all the molecules of dust flying around.

The air seems invisible, but it is full of so much stuff.

More than likely in your bathroom, there’s bacteria growing all over the place, living beings. Maybe you better go clean that [laughter].

You’re surrounded with life everywhere. There is life all throughout your building; there is life outside your building.

And there’s the past and the present too. Your house didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It was built by people, and if it’s got wood in it, then there’s all the tree beings in your house. If it has metal in it, there’s all the mineral beings in your house.

We are constantly intermeshed with all of our relations. The only thing that matters is whether we notice this or not. This feeling of being by yourself, of being alone even, is simply a projection and an imagination in your mind. You’re acting as if you have no relations.

From the day you are born you have relations. You couldn’t have been born without relations. When we die, we’re surrounded by beings. There are eight billion people, right? Even if you’re all by yourself on a hill, there’s still eight billion people.

There are animals, birds and bees everywhere. There’s the sun being—that’s our relation. What about the air being—that’s our relation. What about the gravity being—that’s our relation.

Then think of all the non-duality questions that we have.

“I’m trying to get rid of my negative thoughts.” You’re acting as if you have no relations. You’re acting as if the only thing that matters is you. The second you start relating with things, the second you start noticing and appreciating your relations, being with your relations, this obsession with your thoughts just goes away.

Question: “Who am I?” Answer: “You’re acting as if you have no relations.” You can’t even ask this question if you are in full relation with everything. You are the singularity interacting with all these things. You’re interlaced with all these things.

Think it through. What are your non-duality questions? Then answer that with, “You’re acting as if you have no relationship.”

The second you put yourself in relation with everything, all non-duality questions go away because duality goes away. We are all who we are—we’re in relation. We’re a moving, breathing, awake being. We are intwined with all the little air molecules twiddling around us at all times, little bugs running through our houses, breezes.

We have rock beings around us everywhere—our house has wall beings and ceiling beings, and there are birds flying around outside my house. It’s a very poignant and human way to say that we’re connected to everything. You’re connected to everything.

Stop turning everything an inanimate object and duality is gone. We are intertwined with billions of life beings, and you are one of them.

All your questions answered, as promised.