Cult of nothingness: a soul in peace in a "body of shit"?
I... is a small business distributing books and videos specialized in nonduality. But its sales team doesn’t just distribute products. It has its own idea about "truth" which it states forcefully. On its website, several pages are devoted to a description of "true nonduality". The homepage features a header which seems to be representative of such "truth":
(...) The body produces shit and piss. It’s just a shit manufacturing plant. It’s something foul and so long as it contains energy, you worship it, but when the energy begins to run down, you try to get rid of it as soon as possible. There is nothing fouler than the body and yet you say: "This is what I am!" – Ranjit Maharaj.
Recently, while talking with my publishing firm, a manager from this company exclaimed: "The human condition is a concept!".
At least things are clear. Body and humanity are not on their list. At the "nondual" school, you make progress in nothingness. The "world does not exist" and even those who think they live there, you and I, are "illusions", just a figment of thought.
I
am not pretending to ignore the original meaning of these words and the teaching
which they were supposed to bring, but since truth is on the menu, this is my
version.
The human condition titillates everyone all the time, even beneath pious masks or behind nondual formulas. It’s a daily reality. How many among those who claim to be in the nonduality line today churn out the standard expressions [1] of their spiritual school against a backdrop of terror, flight and denial? About nine from ten of those I’ve met: vibrant with anger when they are asked to recognize what they are actually experiencing at the present moment in time rather than left to recite their formulas or invent a peace for themselves "that is already there"... but which in reality they have never known and is inaccessible because all their attention is focused on their own personal torments.
As taught in accordance with the foregoing principles, nonduality has, in the long run, been responsible for more "cut-offs" that any other spiritual school: a mental box on an unloved trunk. I’m not necessarily denouncing the testimony of nonduality teachers but the tragic use to which it is put by thousands of people.
The majority of those engaged on a spiritual journey are steeped in personal wounds, traumatic experiences and neuroses. They are sincerely looking for a way out. Many of them are ready to do anything and those who have the misfortune to encounter "cut-off apostles" plunge body and soul ("soul" at least since the "body is shit"). For all these people who think placing a lid over the inner volcano is a remedy, the quest for the "pure spirit" (an ancient mirage which existed long before the new nonduality wave began causing havoc) presents itself first as a hope then rapidly becomes a divisive tool or even a weapon of war.
Nothing
has been more divisive than nonduality for the last twenty years. While its
teaching pointed to the fact that there is "not two", the follower
understands "I’m not this or that" etc. The list is long, division
ubiquitous. What a paradox! How blind can you get?
Where welcoming and kindness should have been the order of the day, there is negation and rejection. Rejecting this or that reflects an unease more than it does any genuine disidentification. [2]
The suffering which underlies such attitudes is palpable and has led me to tackle this flaw in the way so many people today approach their quest. My head-on approach may well risk disturbing a hornets’ nest, but I would like to think that some people might be able to take what I say as a piece of friendly advice. Rather than talking about realities which are generally inaccessible to seekers (and which, in the long run, are just mental images that create a parallel world in the very place where one speaks of "nonduality"), I feel it is today essential to question them about their flights from Reality, in particular about the mind’s refuge where they hide away and bark out words of wisdom. There is a veiled distress here which arouses compassion in spite of the violence of the terms used.
"What is here" or the famous "right here, right now", together with all like formulas as they are used today, more often than not draw a blind across the human condition in favor of cold abstractions, intellectual ellipses or complications dressed as simplifications, all because the spiritual quest often springs from a flight from Reality.
There is a serious lack of love for the present moment in time as such and a serious misunderstanding... "What is here, right here, right now" is much simpler and deserves all our efforts to focus on and be receptive to it. Such is the reality to which anyone may awake. Receptivity is not a selective sorting plant. Receiving anything is nondual, and the body, its products, its causes and consequences are perceived globally, like miniature marvels, expressions of divine Intelligence. Like anything. From this receptivity, or Welcoming, more subtle values emerge in a living way.
Of
course, there is no more "absolute truth" in what I’m saying than
what those in the small business say. Since anything which is divisive is a
misunderstanding, it’s easy for us to go beyond what is said, provided we
don’t set too much store by the words used. I would, however, like such words
to provide an opportunity of taking an attentive and dispassionate look at
things, and not a dogmatic one, because the situation requires this and, if we
do this, a fresh approach may emerge from stagnant waters. We do not belong to
any school, and are not slaves of any concept or prejudice. At heart, we aspire
to experience Love and welcoming. And if these realities are to be living, we
must relinquish any notion of rejection, of "not this, not that" and
welcome with open arms the infinite field of the Intelligence of Life, from its
source to its myriad forms of expression.
Thierry Vissac 2007
[1]
See footnote 4.
[2]
"No longer being identified" (with an emotion for instance) means
that we are no longer glued to it, that we have naturally (and not in any
feigned way) stood back from it and created a certain distance which has
given certain people the impression of being "witnesses".