Introduction
The Open secret communication speaks directly about the hidden but essential essence of Advaita and unadulterated non-dualism, out of which can arise a radically different perception of reality. It investigates the nature of various spiritual traditions whilst also exposing the myths that surround the mystery to which they aspire.
It also reveals the way in which seeking for fulfilment can only reinforce the sense of continuously reaching out for something that has never been lost.
The dynamic of this communication is essentially energetic, and this can nullify the mind's need for ideas and answers and dissipate the contracted sense of the self and its fear of unconditional freedom.
The open secret message is not a new one ... and also it is! Its fundamental essence and content is to be found in the apparent history of seeking originating in Advaita Vedanta and a particular non-dual Buddhism and even Christian mysticism. These subjects are explored in more liberally-minded schools and are certainly part of the university curriculum.
More recently, Quantum Physicists, Neuroscientists and Biologists are all speaking the same language.
What is What is?
All there is is what is . . . but what is what is?
Well, there is no real answer to that question. However, it seems that what is could be just what is happening . . . reading these words, sitting on a seat, trees growing, sounds, feelings, clouds or thoughts passing by and so on. In simple terms these events just seem to be what is happening. But the perspective here is that the essence of what is happening is an open secret.
It is suggested that what is is oneness appearing as twoness, the absolute being relative. It is the treasure that is longed for and feared most . . . the perfect lover and the grim reaper. It is of course the ultimate paradox, being simultaneously nothing and everything.
There is no possibility of the essence of what is being described, grasped or known.
The seeker attempts to be aware of or conscious of what is and immediately that function separates and objectifies and makes solid that which is wonderfully floating, effervescent and ungraspable.
The essence of what is can’t be seen by me and so me never feels fulfilled because its experiences seem to have something missing.
In what is is also what isn’t. This is the wonder of wholeness because it appears as both simultaneously. Everything that is something is also already nothing . . . there are not two! Everything is therefore real and unreal, but me experiences everything as only real. Within this illusion me attempts to transform this dualistic and unsatisfactory experience into processes such as “living in the moment” or “being here now” or accepting everything as “consciousness”.
However, and again, the wonderful paradox of the play of wholeness is that the story of me is also what is. All of the dreams and hopes, processes and religious aspirations are only wholeness appearing as a separate entity rushing around looking for itself and also hiding from itself by already being everything. And in being everything, even the avoidance or rejection of what is is what is.
So what is longed for constantly sings the only song of freedom that can never be lost or found because it is already all there is.
Tony Parsons
February 2013
The Story of Me
All there is is wholeness . . . boundless energy appearing as everything . . . the sky, trees, feelings, thoughts, whatever. It is the mystery of no thing simultaneously being everything.
There is nothing apart from the boundless everything and yet, because it is free, it can appear to be separate from itself . . . it can appear to be the story of me. There is nothing right or wrong in that appearance which is wholeness apparently happening.
Contracted energy seems to arise in the human being and create a sense of separation out of which arises a unique sense of identity . . . a self consciousness. The me is born and the story of me seems to begin. Me is the story and the story is me and one cannot exist without the other. They both only appear and function in a dualistic subject object reality. Everything seems to be personally experienced as a series of events in real time happening to a real me. Within that story time, journey, purpose and free will and choice seem to be real.
This sense of separation is not just an idea, a thought or a belief. It is a contracted energy embodied in the whole organism which influences every experience. As a consequence the me experiences a tree, the sky, another person, a thought or a feeling through a veil of separation. It is as though me is a something and everything else is lots of other separate somethings happening to me. What arises from this once removed sense is a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction. A feeling that something is lost or hidden.
For most people this sense of dissatisfaction is not that apparent, and because they believe they are individuals with free will and choice they seem motivated to try and create a successful story . . . good relationships, good health, wealth, personal power or whatever else.
However, for some there is a greater sensitivity about something else that seems to be missing. This feeling generates a longing for a deeper sense of fulfilment. There can be an investigation into religion, therapy or the meaning of enlightenment. Because the me has become convinced that it has the means to influence its story, it also assumes that it can find deeper fulfilment through its own choice, determination and action.
The me may, for instance, go to a priest or a therapist or a teacher of enlightenment in order to find what it thinks it needs.
Often because the me feels it has lost something, there can be a sense of inadequacy and so what is pursued is a teaching that satisfies the need to do something which will bring about a personal transformation and make the me worthy of fulfilment. All of this activity is apparently happening within the story of me which is functioning in an artificially dualistic reality. So me is searching in the finite for that which is infinite. It is a something looking for another something, and what it really longs for remains unobtainable by already being everything. It is rather like trying to catch air with a butterfly net. It isn’t difficult, it is wonderfully impossible. The essential futility of that searching inevitably fuels the sense of a me who feels even more unworthy and separate.
However, in the seeking activity there can be experiences along the way that encourage the me to search further and try harder. Personal therapy can bring a transient sense of personal balance in the story. Practices like meditation can bring a state of peace or silence. Self enquiry can bring an apparently progressive experience of understanding and strengthened awareness. But for awareness to function it needs something apart for it to be aware of. Awareness simply feeds separation, and a state of detachment can arise and be mistaken for enlightenment. All of these states come and go within the story of me.
The basis of all teaching of becoming enlightened is the idea that a change of belief or experience can lead to a personal knowing of oneness, self realisation or of discovering your own true nature. The whole investment in a progressive path goes on feeding the story of me attaining something. Even the suggestion of personal surrender or acceptance can be initially attractive and bring a satisfying state . . . for a while. There are many so-called non-dual 'teachings' which feed the story of me becoming liberated.
However, the oneness that is longed for is boundless and free. It cannot be grasped or even approached. Nor is there anything that would need to be done or changed or made better than that which is already everything.
The me experience can be very convincing because “the world” it lives in seems to be dominated by lots of me’s in lots of stories. But the me construct is inconstant and has no foundation. All of the me story is only a dance of wholeness which is without significance or purpose.
A deep and uncompromising exposure of the artificial construct of separation and the story of me can loosen the constraints that keep it locked in place and reveal the way in which seeking can only reinforce the dilemma. The apparent sense of separation, however, is at its essence an energetically contracted energy which no amount of conceptual clarity will ever undo.
When there is an openness to the possibility of that which is beyond self-seeking, then it seems that the contracted energy can evaporate into the boundless freedom which it already is. And still this is only another story which attempts to point to and describe a total paradox . . . the apparent end of something that was never real . . . the story of me.
All there is, is boundless freedom.
Tony Parsons
July 2012
Apparently ...
A unified reality in which there are "not two" or there is "no other" surely confirms the illusory nature of separation. If separation is illusory, then any attempt to not be separate is rooted in a dualistic perspective. So the basic principle of any teaching which attempts to transform an illusory state of being separate into a state of at-oneness is based on the belief in a divided reality and cannot therefore claim to be non-dual.
Progressive teachings of enlightenment which recommend methods such as meditation, self-enquiry, or the idea of recognition or surrender, are based on the belief of there being a self who can choose to do these things. This assumption is invalidated by the recent discovery of neuroscientists that the existence of an individual with free will and choice is illusory.
Inevitably there is disagreement as well as misunderstanding about the open secret message. However, there can also be a criticism which is based, not on the essence of the message, but on its misinterpretation. It seems that wholeness embraces confusion.
The open secret communication can only point to the simple wonder of being and attempt to illuminate the futility of seeking for it. It does not accept or reject the teachings of spiritual path or process but it will expose, without compromise, the singular and fundamental misconception that drives the belief that there is something called a seeker that is able to find something else called enlightenment.
Life is not a task. There is absolutely nothing to attain except the realisation that there is absolutely nothing to attain.
What is sought remains hidden from the seeker by already being everything.
It is so obvious and simple that the grasping of it obscures it. Never found, never knowable, being is the consummate absence that is beyond measure.
Looking for being is believing that it is lost. Has anything been lost, or is it simply that the looking keeps it away? Does the beloved always dance constantly just beyond our focus?
The very intention to seek for a treasure within life inevitably obscures the reality that life is already the treasure.
By seeking the myth it dreams it can attain, the seeker effectively avoids that which it most fears . . . its absence.
Progressive teachings of enlightenment which recommend methods such as meditation, self-enquiry, or the idea of recognition or surrender, are based on the belief of there being a self who can choose to do these things. This assumption is invalidated by the recent discovery of neuroscientists that the existence of an individual with free will and choice is illusory.
This message has been misunderstood if it is believed that it is saying that there is a "you" who can or can't do anything about becoming enlightened.
Many will reject this message and return to the comforting story of knowing and doing. But there can be a resonance within which the illusion of separation collapses and leaves nothing being everything.
Doctrines, processes and progressive paths which seek enlightenment only exacerbate the problem they address by reinforcing the idea that the self can find something that it presumes it has lost. It is that very effort, that investment in self-identity, that continuously re-creates the illusion of separation from oneness. It is the dream of individuality.
The “me” searches for peace and fulfilment, the “me” searches for self-improvement, purity, presence or detachment. The “me” seeks clarity or any formula which will give the “me” what it thinks it wants or needs. But the “me” not getting what it wants is not the dilemma. The dilemma is the apparent “me”.
Liberation is like a fuse that suddenly blows, and all the little lights go out and there is only light.
The OPERA Neutrino
It must be a great relief to scientists that there has been a delay of further evidence that the manifest is multi-dimensional, chaotic and boundless, and for which travelling faster than light is a mere bagatelle. Watch this space?!
There is no answer to life because life is its own answer. It’s happening already. It’s this. It was never lost. When liberation apparently happens people say “it’s amazing because the thing I was looking for has never left. It’s the one thing that never comes and never goes, the one constant that can’t be known or held onto.”
When the assumed sense of being separate seems to collapse, already there is only the constant and unknowable wonder of being.
The open secret’s apparent communication is paradoxical, unreasonable, unbelievable, non-prescriptive, non-spiritual and uncompromising. There is no agenda or intention to help or change apparent individuality. It is prior to all teaching and its resonance is shared energetically, not through the exchange of ideas.
So, should the seeker climb the spiritual mountain or simply let go and surrender to life . . . Is that the question? Or is it possible that there is no question and no answer? Maybe what is sought is already all there is. Perhaps that which is longed for is already constantly happening . . . it never went away . . . the seeker did to look for it.
How can the seeker “Directly Approach” that which is already everything?
As we move from one formula to another, we seem unable to see that freedom does not reside here or there, simply because freedom, by its very nature, cannot be excluded or exclusive. We seem not to see that, as we march towards the next anticipated spiritual high, the treasure that we seek is to be discovered, not in where we are going, but within the simple nature of the very footsteps that we take.
Life is its own purpose and doesn’t need a reason to be. That is its beauty.
Life is simply life, and is not trying to prove anything at all. This springtime will not try to be better than last springtime, and neither will an ash tree try to become an oak.
Because the apparent self can only exist through its own knowing, its search for a deeper meaning will be limited to that which it can know and experience for itself. The separate seeker pursues everything that it can know and do, excepting the absence of itself. That absence is the emptiness which is unknowable, but paradoxically it is also the very fullness, the wholeness that is longed for.
Exclusivity breeds exclusion, but freedom is shared through friendship.
From wherever and whenever this insight is communicated, it has no connection with end-gaining, belief, path or process. It cannot be taught but is constantly shared. Because it is all that is, no-one can lay claim to it. It needs not to be argued, proven or embellished, for it stands alone simply as it is, and can only remain unrecognised and rejected, or realised and lived.
Tony Parsons
January 2011
