Dear, Dear listener, hi, this is John Dupuy. I want to ask a favor of you. If you like the podcast Deep Transformation and you're getting a lot out of it, could you please help us by going to wherever you get your podcast, it's a Spotify or Apple or wherever it is and write, write a review that would really help us to get this out. We really believe in what we're doing and we're really praying and hoping this is helping people and being part of the solution. So if you could do that, it would be greatly appreciated by Roger, myself and our team. God bless. Thank you. Welcome to part two of our 16th dialogue in the wisdom series with A. H. Almaas where we continue our journey to the Absolute and answer the question what is the ultimate true nature of ourselves and the all. Welcome to Deep Transformation: Self, Society, Spirit, life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cloud, cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

And this also points to another very important thing you emphasize, Hameed, and that is that there's this mysterious paradox that the absolute is the unmanifest, radically radical non being. And yet it has an unbounded potential for manifestation. The universe, everything comes out of it. I think of Stan Grof's term the plenum void, the full void.

Yes, that's true. It is a plenum void. That's a good way of saying it. And there's a void sometimes called the void. And the thing about the void is that it is not like void of outer space. It is really beyond space. It's a void of even space. You know, it's like you can't catch it. You can't. If you really just look at it and nothing else, you don't see anything. If you really touch it, you can't touch anything. Your hand disappears, dissolves. If you look at it, the consciousness of your soul, it melts away. But it is also a place of non duality. This emptiness is non dual with consciousness or awareness or beingness. There are two sides of the same thing. And in beingness everything is not separate from anything else. The whole universe appears as a unity, as one tapestry is non dual in many senses. Not all non dual teachings teachers talk about the absolute or the non beingness. Many of our modern western non dual teachers don't talk about non beingness, especially in Advaita Vedanta, although Nisargadatta talked about it. And that's I wonder why those teachers don't mention teaching about that. I assume they didn't get it when they read it. But it is, you know, some teachers, some teachings refer to it directly, some teaching don't. And you know, some know it, some don't know it. That's why they don't. Because you don't have to be. You have to, don't have to experience the absolute to know non duality. Non duality can be just pure consciousness or pure presence, you know. Yes, non dual. So non duality. That's why I have many dimensions, each dimension with non dual. But the Absolute is the sort of inner nature of all non duals.

You're making a very important point there which seems to be overlooked so often. Non duality is one of the buzzwords in the spiritual world these days. It's kind of like quantum physics was 30 years ago. But people rarely seem to appreciate the point you're making that there are many kinds of non duality. And that can be a non dual, non duality with, for example, each of the five boundless dimensions.

Yeah.

And all these days, I think many people use the word non dual to me.

Spiritual almost.

Yeah.

Deep spirituality is non duality is non.

Dual, which is really not accurate. I mean, non dual is deep spirituality. But there are other kinds of deep spirituality that have nothing to do with dual and non dual. But we're talking about the non dual here.

Yeah, yeah. And you also emphasize me that with the experience in Absolute, since it's radically empty, devoid of, for example, sensation, movement, that of course the egoic self sense which is built on such experiences, necessarily dissolves. So there's a radical selflessness to the absolute.

Very true. Yeah. That is an interesting point here. First of all, being the Absolute, you feel there's no manifestation of selfishness or self centeredness, no sense of an individual self or an entity that has interests or preferences or any of that. It is just no self that way. But also at the same time, some teaching take the Absolute as the ultimate self. It's the Parabrahman of Vedanta. They call it the Self, the ultimate self. So you can experience it that way as the ultimate self, as I am the self self of everything. But it's not what most people call self. It's definitely selflessness and selflessness. Not just in the moral sense. And as I'm not selfish and not generous, but meaning there's no center that's called self. Yeah.

In fact, at this point, the very term kind of ceases to be meaningful in a way.

What self?

Yeah, it feels like self. Non self kind of dissolves at this point.

Yeah. I find it interesting that different teachings use different terminology. And the Buddhist in lexiton and non dual teaching of Buddhism, they don't refer to it as self. It's definitely selflessness, you know, no self, because self is a big deal. And Buddhism, the illumination of self. In the Hindu tradition, it is self, but it's seen as the final alternate self.

Atman.

Yeah, Atman. Atman is Brahman, Brahman.

Yeah.

But Atman is the individual sense of pure self moving into the universal pure self, which is in this case, the Brahman or para Brahman, which is sort of like the Absolute. It is also in Kashmiri Shaivism. Kashmiri Shaivism. Remember the origin of it, the apex of the path, or the deepest verization of the path is the Shakti. Shakti Shiva. Shivan. Shakti. Shiva is the unmovable, immovable, ultimate, pure, peace, stillness, all of that. And Shakti is the energy, the dynamism, the creative force.

Logos.

Logos, right. So they do have Shiv Ego. Shiva.

So you guys are all talking about the same thing, just different aspects. And just. It doesn't seem that any tradition can contain it all.

But that's why many people, many intellectual philosophers or historian of spirituality coined perennial philosophy. They're all talking about the same thing, but different ways. Yeah, you look at it that way every. They're all talking about the same thing. However, if you go to other teachings, they're not talking about the Absolute. When Dogen, Zen master, talks about realization, for him talk about suchness, he's not talking about the Absolute. It's a whole other different kind of realization. So we don't want to say that all teachings have the Absolute as their.

Realization, all deep teachings. How would you say that? I have to deal with that at some point. I don't think you're going to hear it at the First Baptist Church on the corner, but in. In all the great traditions, it's like, yeah, it's there.

This is the most common, you know, deepest teaching in many of the teaching. Yeah.

And I think you're pointing to a really important point both of you here, and that is that there are commonalities. There are some common realizations. But the generalization which was at the heart of the perennial philosophy, that all traditions are different paths up the same mountain to the same peak, is clearly not substantiated by comparative analysis.

Yeah.

So it's now history.

Yeah, yeah. Moving to a further implication of the Absolute, I need. And this gets. I'm wanting to get you into a discussion about what you call emptiness. We talked about the absolute as the fundamental round, for want of a better word, of manifestation of reality. But now you move into a description of. With the return of experience and manifestation of phenomena, that all phenomena are now seen in a very different way, where it's possible to appreciate, perceive both their appearance, they appear, and yet their fundamental nature is this absolute, which gives them a kind of, again, words fail, but an ontological transparency, an emptiness of the solidity and apparently finality and reality that we previously projected onto them. This is deep stuff. And I have to say that I've been trying to make sense of emptiness in the Buddhist tradition for decades, but this was really clarifying. So please, I'm saying a lot. I want to turn it over to you.

Yeah, well, it. A big part of understanding the absolute is that the nature, when you really experience what's at the heart of the absolute, it's pure emptiness, which means the non existent, non existence, non being. And it is when you recognize, even as everything emerge and appear as the glittering light, whatever, none of it has substantial existence because its nature is non existence. And this non existence, I call it non being because the thing manifests as pure presence of light or manifestation. And the absolute nature is. I call absence. To contrast it with presence, presence is absence is being is non being.

That's good.

The same thing. So I referred to as absence because when you look for it, you don't find anything. So absence is my word I use. I didn't borrow it from anywhere. Meaning it's the absence of everything, including space, including essence, including. So absence is like you look for. You don't find anything, basically. And you're completely cleared out in the process of trying to find it, you are erased of everything. So there's no substance, no presence, no being, no existence, no appearance in it, no color. That's why it's black. Black would mean no color. I see that black. Many teachings don't refer to the blackness of it. That's what I notice. And when I have to talk to some Buddhist scholars who know about Buddhism a lot for them to tell me, oh, yeah, they do have, you know, gray or black, but they don't talk about it.

So we're dealing with maybe the ultimate mystery of mysteries. How everything comes from nothing.

Yeah, it is the mystery. And that's one of the words I use for it is the mystery. In fact, it is the essence of mystery. It's mystery because regardless how much we know it, you can't say you really completely got it because there's nothing there to get.

Love that.

Yes, that does make it a little challenging.

Yeah, challenging the mind. The mind wants to know them. The mind disappears, pieces tries to know that.

You could say I got it.

Think it's oh, it's emptiness head. Oh it is the elimination is dissolving and then before you know it, the mind is gone.

Well, that could be a relief usually. But you also point out something here which I, I'd never seen before. I mean was absolutely intriguing. That is that the way we experience phenomena, for example, their solidity or quotes reality are actually projections onto them, onto phenomena. And that when we are able to get below that to experience the all phenomena as expressions of the absolute, then these projections dissolve.

Yeah, that's true. And that everything seems to be empty for anything, any substantiality. That's why everything's so transparent, so feel like bubbles, like almost like like hologram, you know, hologram, empty subsets, just light, just colors, you know, the whole universe looks like a hologram. Now in physics they talk about the holographic hologramic universe. They think of the universe as a hologram.

Do you think that is accurate in some sense? I mean, I guess you do because you just said it.

Not in the way they think about it. Okay, yeah, they don't mean hologram the way we talking about it, but they could. Holographic universe. But they wonder where is it projected from. They talk about it's projected from the periphery, from outside and which is sort of from the absolute nose and inside out.

Inside, outside. What the heck.

Anyway, I don't know if I buy the holographic theory in physics, but it is a big part of these days, one of the big theories, the quantum theory.

And you come to a kind of conclusion here about the experience of phenomena, in fact the experience of everything that is that it is that they are a combination of appearance and emptiness both.

Yeah, yeah. Things appear and appear sometimes to have substantial, you can experience them as substantial. But if you feel inside them there is nothing there, nothing that can be sensed or seen.

That's such a radical view. And I think one of my all time favorite historical heroes is Long Chinpa. And he practically goes hoarse talking about the inseparability of appearance and emptiness.

Right? Yeah, that's a big basic tenet of Zogyang Champa. He went to great details discussing. I read a lot of his books.

Oh, me too.

I learned a lot from him. He probably knew it better than me.

I don't know. But he was up there.

He wrote lots of books. He spent his life studying it.

Yeah, yeah, One of my favorite occupations these days, just to lie on my bed and listen to readings of Longchampa. This beautiful set of readings by actually one of the guests we had on the podcast Anon Jayasara Samaneri, who has a beautiful series on YouTube called the Wisdom of the Masters.

Oh, that's nice. You can listen to it and start reading it. I like that. Yeah, maybe I'll get that. I like to listen these days instead of reading.

Yeah, I've almost stopped reading Longchenpo, which was. Is quite saying something because I just. It. Once you hear it, it's as with a number of profound teachings, it's clear that it's designed to be heard. It's kind of poetry. So. Yeah, I'll send you the link. We'll post the link to JSR Seminary's readings of Longchamparamna.

Well, many teachings really gave detail understanding or elucidation of the Absolute and its emptiness. And it's mysteriousness, it's mystery in some sense. And I'm calling it the Unmanifest. It's a funny thing, the word unmanifest to say unmanifest. But we experience it, so how can it be unmanifest? Because this is the source of all manifestation. We call it Unmanifest. However, the way I look at it myself and my later understanding, when I was in the middle of it, I called it the Unmanifest. But later, upon reflection and having different kind of realization, I said, well, the Absolute is the dimension that shows that true nature is unmanifest. Doesn't mean the Absolute is unmanifest. The true nature, fundamentally the Unmanifest. And the Absolute reveals that. So it is the Unmanifest that way.

And. But everything that's manifest is the Absolute also.

Yeah, then, yeah, because everything is. Yeah, everything is just the appearance of the Absolute. I mean, that's one of the. My. I used to write poetry about this, that the universe is the rope, that the Absolute words, the glittering rope, the apparel of God.

Yeah, some poets might say, exactly.

Yeah.

And one of the things you've been emphasizing several times during this conversation amid is that is the fundamentally mysterious nature of the Absolute. And you keep coming back to that. Actually. You have, I think, four pages on the Absolute. And usually John and I have about almost as many pages of notes or probably even some kind more for each page of your book. But this one, I didn't. I didn't take notes because it was like, what can I say about mystery? But you managed to say four pages worth. So say something. Yeah.

It's, it's, you know, first we think that it's mystery because I don't know it. Mystery is mystery novels, you know, until you solve the mystery and you know and the absolutely shows that the mystery is not like it is not experience, but it is essentially mystery. It is the experience of the mystery that mystery is its nature. It's not that it's mystery because it haven't glimpsed it yet. No, when you glimpse it, you recognize it is the mystery.

It's known mystery, but it's still mystery.

It is mystery, but it's known as mystery because it is mystery. Because you can never plummet depth completely. There's always something you don't know and you point out.

We can say many things about it, but nothing even approach is exhausting.

Yeah, the thing you use the word about it. It's not an it. There's nothing there. Yeah, it refers to an object. I mean it's language. We have to use language. But it's really the absolute is really the elimination, the annihilation and the cessation of all things. And it is really. And it is odd, you know that that's the source of everything is a.

Oh, it's the understatement of the day.

But Taoism makes that point. You know, the non existence is the source of existence. And I think the Greeks understood that some had some non understanding, non being and being. I mean in philosophy non being is used that expression non being. And they don't mean it just there's nothing there. You know, it can be something there, but it's nature's non being.

Yeah.

Which is sort of a contradiction in ordinary language. How can something is but its nature non being so and so it's paradoxical. Experience of the absolute is for the.

Mind is paradoxical and we have to accept the paradox. But in the realization it is known beyond concepts, which is what we're trying to deal with here. I mean we are walking all around it and I think it's been an amazing conversation thus far. But we're kind of walking around the edges and exploring the mystery.

The more we get into it, the more it sort of dissolves, eats out everything from inside out. Like you, you are sort of annihilated from the inside out until the outside is becomes even the universe at life.

Yes. Yeah. And the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus, that's the one they found a few years back. Jesus said the the kingdom of God is within you and without you, which it doesn't say in the accepted gospel. So it starts Inside you, but then it's, it's outside you. It's everything else. Not else. It's just everything from a perspective.

Absolute everything in the kingdom of God.

That's right.

Everything is a beauty. Everything is majesty, Everything is pure. Although on the ordinary level, there's impurity, aggression and, you know, tyranny, inequality, all of that. But from the deeper level of the absolute, everything is. Nature is completely pure, 100% pure. Because there's nothing there. Yeah, it's the, the extreme limit of purity.

Yes.

It's so pure because there's nothing there completely. You remove impurities, you remove impurity until there's nothing there to remove. And it's like even being, even existence, even awareness, even consciousness, even soul, even everything is gone.

Jesus said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Pure of heart, mean heart that is empty of everything except the love of God.

Anita, I couldn't take notes on this section, but it did bring to mind a couple of my all time favorite quotes. One by Houston Smith, the great religious scholar.

Yeah.

And you were still young.

Yeah. Yes, he was a dear friend and mentor for me.

He used to be our neighbor two blocks away.

Ah, okay. Well, I've been past your place many times then. And he published his autobiography on his 90th birthday, which is probably a great time to publish one's autobiography. And the last lines of this, his autobiography, here's one of the great masters of the world's wisdom.

Yeah.

The last sentences of his autobiography are, we are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery.

I think. Very true. Yeah. One thing about mystery, mystery is the fundamental nature of everything, the underlying nature. But also mystery is like we live in an ocean of mystery and what we know are little islands. You know, most people, their mind is full of knowing, information, misinformation, all of that. I mean, they think they know and most people think they know where it's at, what's happening, what life is about. It's actually miniscule. It's a little island in darkness or complete mystery, you know, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with, you know, that there's mystery. No, mystery is the nature of things, the nature of reality. You know, it cannot be eliminated. It's not like we're gonna know. At some point. Humanity will know everything. There'll be no mystery. No, mystery is fundamental.

Yeah. That was a very important moment for me. I mean, I still remember being in my. Sitting on the couch in the living room and this being aware of this vague unease and recognizing it was around, but it was centered on the fact that I didn't seem to understand anything. Then the next moment I realized, oh, that's not a problem. That's the way it is. That was such a relief.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, we talk about. People are ignorant in general when they don't know about realization or spiritual truth. But even the ones who know. And then knowledge is minuscule.

Well, what you just said a few minutes ago just really got to me. Like words fail me. But you said everything is absent except love.

Yeah. In the heart. Yeah. Yeah. So in the heart and the movement or the absolute, everything, the absence. Because all other beloved, everything else we care about is gone, but remains only the passionate love for the beloved, which we don't know what it is until finally, when the heart is completely pure, it appears and occupies its place. The heart becomes like the throne upon which the majesty sits.

What a beautiful description.

Another thing, you know, important to mention in relation to the Absolute. Why it is the sort of acme of this, the apex of all spiritual teaching is that in the Absolute, the search ends.

We.

I don't mean search and meaning. You believe. Oh, I got it. So I don't need to search anymore. No. The energy of search disappears, ceases. The absolute annihilates the energy because the search was nothing. But the distance from the absolute makes me want to go look for it. When you're there, there's no energy to search. So the search end. And from then on, whatever happens after that, there's no search. Things happen on their own.

At the end of this chapter, you talk about coming home. Yeah, that's what you were saying.

Yes. Like from the perspective of the soul, that is its final resting place. Like how when we get home, we feel well, we are at rest, we can relax, we take it easy. That's for the soul. That is the home. I mean, you realize that the word home actually means something deep. You know, home is not just a house. Home is the place of no worry, no concern, complete safety, complete trust and relaxation.

It's all okay. It's all okay.

All okay and all good and all. No effort need to be made. And, you know, so it is the true home. I think that it's the essence of the meaning of home. When you feel it, when we are at home, you have a feeling I'm at home. What does that mean? Yes, because home is not equated with a house. When you feel I'm at home, what does that mean? Doesn't mean I'm at house or my apartment, no feeling I am at home. And that comes from the absolute.

And you make the point amid that, with that realization of being at home and the utter fullness, satisfaction, well, being that goes with it. There's the realization that one's entire life up till that point has been a search for that even though we didn't realize it, everything was at some level powered by the desire to find this home.

Yeah, very good. That what many teachings also say and that all humans are searching for it. All living being are searching for their true home. But they don't know. They search in many other many places. No, they search, search and outer satisfaction. Search and riches and comfort and pleasure and fame and this and that. And I mean there's so many stories how people get disappointed doesn't do it and that. And you ever hear somebody who's a billionaire who says I am completely fulfilled.

Well, I need another billion.

They might think that if I get a trillion, maybe I'll be completely fulfilled. That's why the spiritual teaching says, yeah, good, be fulfilled. Other, but you're not going to be complete. Move inward.

Yeah, well, it seems like you can never get enough of what you don't really want. But you can certainly ruin your life and the planet. Try you can.

Yes, that's what's happening.

Yeah, yeah.

I love what you said about home. That's so powerful for me because I've been at a time where I thought I lost my home and it was a place. But yeah, when I. When I think of home as being inside and hence everywhere, I'm at home. And that is. This is very beautiful, very powerful, very comforting.

It's very comfortable and many people know that somewhat. But they don't like if their house is burnt. Whatever they feel they lost their home and they think of it as the loss of their memory, Libya and their history, their objects, their precious thing, their photos, whatever. They think that's what their history that they're living there. They think that's what makes it home. But home, really the feeling of home comes from something much deeper. That's what we see here, that home is everywhere. If you are in touch with the absolute nature you take home with you wherever you go. Home is in the heart. Almost everyone that depth of the heart.

At home you make a point which is, I don't doubt, but I also have trouble wrapping my head around. And that is that everything, every pleasure and satisfaction that we find through manifest phenomena through things, whether it's money, power, whatever it Is in some way the satisfaction comes from it being a reflection or a taste of the absolute love. To hear you explain that.

Yeah. I mean many of the things we find in the world they are reflection of some sense. You know, like when we are in love, we love somebody and we feel sort of contented and happy to be with them. We're really seeing the inner beloved, but not directly we're seeing an expression of it. But that brings us closer that oh it's so perfect, so beautiful. Well, I mean most people look at that person, they don't think so. You see what are you seeing when you. You really see, but you don't know you're seeing. Liber.

You talk about the end of the search here as you give the technical term the personalization of the Absolute. Saying and talking about. And you described. It's a very rare realization where the vastness of the mystery, the Absolute find itself walking around in and through a body.

Yeah. Yeah. The Absolute can pour itself into as an individual like in absolute become like manifest being that flows and pours itself as an individual being that is expressing itself in the world. That is in fact that's why the Absolute need humans to live in the world. The Absolute doesn't just want to stay absolute and stay unconscious of itself. Only become conscious, want to be known, knows itself and it is its nature to express itself with all its qualities and living a personal life that expresses all the majesty and beauty of the Absolute and individual life.

Roger. We still have some homework to do. I'm getting. Yeah.

That is more difficult. That's what I call the actualization beyond realization. Absolutely. But then how to express it in the world.

Yes.

Not just being a guru, sitting and being carried around. No. Live a normal life.

Yeah. And you point out to me that there's a process here that with this profound realization of the Absolute manifesting in and through the individual that at first there's this sense of wow. A kind of eureka. Excitement about it. But even that excitement fades over time into a sense of just where it is or the almost an ordinariness to this extraordinarily profound realization.

Yeah. Become a simplicity. Because Absolute is the essence of simplicity. There's nothing there. So so much nothing there. It's so simple. And that appears in our life. That was simple, ordinary. Even though there's a profundity.

I think you. I don't know whether you draw the comparison. I think you do. But to in your foot endnotes to the xenox herding pictures that wonderful 10 pictures which portray the spiritual path from beginning to end. And the final picture being the returning to the marketplace with help, sewing hands.

That and the picture before that is a empty circle, the emptiness.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah. And then you, marketplace, even ordinary, you're shopping and talking and all that. Yeah.

And the next, the next term, the next chapter of the book that we're going to start getting into is about actualization, about coming home, about expressing it, about being it, about living it in human form.

So we call the Generative Descent. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That'd be nice to explore.

Yeah, yeah. I mean this has been extraordinary. As I said note at the front of, at the top of this chapter. This is my favorite chapter and it's truly, it's just a, it's quite remarkable. It has opened up for me and made sense of some issues I've been trying to make sense of for a long, long time. Of course, it's a never ending process. In fact, maybe just before we'll end, I'll, I'll share the other quote I was thinking of sharing about the mystery, which is one of my all time favorite quotes. It's by Newton, who, you know, perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived. And at the end of his life he said, I do not know how I may appear to others, but to myself I have been as a little boy playing on the seashore every now and then finding a brighter pebble or a prettier shell, while all around me the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered.

It's your favorite because that means you love yourself. That's what you are.

Bless you amid for showing that to all of us. As always, it's a priceless gift to.

Have these conversations and hopefully many of our listeners can get some whiff of this gift.

Indeed. Is there anything you'd like to say before we end, honey?

Yeah, I mean, I think the important thing, the sense of home and the other thing we didn't mention, the sense of total intimacy. Sense of intimacy in it. Like true, everything manifests out of it, but we feel we are intimate with everything that's very, very deep. Any part of everything.

Beautiful.

Total intimacy. That's where the word intimacy comes from, I think. See you next time.

God bless you. Thank you. It's been absolutely great. You're so appreciated discussion.

I appreciate, you know, us discussing these mysteries of reality.

Indeed. Thanks so much, Hameed.

Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved, as we are moved being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to. Mainly to get this podcast out to more people, because the bigger audience have, which is steadily growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done that a couple of ways. But we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee. Very simple. And I do that with podcasts that I support, and I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help, thank you for your presence, and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.