This is part one of the 11th dialogue in the Ah Almas Wisdom series today. In this conversation we discuss the boundless ocean of divine love. Welcome. Welcome to Deep Transformation, Self, Society, Spirit, Life enhancing, paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy.

I'm Roger Walsh and our co host is John Dupuy. We are delighted to have with us once again for our 11th dialogue amid Ali, whose pen name is Ah Almas, founder of the Diamond Approach, author of multiple books and particularly the one we are working through in this series, the Inner Journey Home, which provides an overview of, of his thinking, his teaching, his practice as laid out in the Diamond Approach. And we are moving to another, literally another dimension today because the Diamond Approach lays out the idea that true nature, our true nature, reveals itself as many different dimensions or aspects or flavors and focuses in particular on five boundless dimensions. And Amit, I'm going to quote something you said about these. You said to give a detailed exposition of the five boundless dimensions would require five books as big as this one. And the Inner journey home is 700 pages. So there's obviously a lot to say about each of these boundless dimensions. But you begin with the boundless dimension, which you describe as love and light. So perhaps you could just talk, give us an overview of the, of the five boundless dimensions and then segue into this, this particular one.

It is true we are transitioning to different parts of the teaching. If you remember, the teaching has different turnings. I call them turnings, a wheel of teaching. So we've been working with the first turning. This is the second turning. This is the beginning of the second turning. So second turning consists mostly of the teaching of the what I call boundless dimension. I'll explain in a minute what I mean by boundless and has also two journeys in it. There is Journey of Ascent and Journey of Descent, which is also classical many mystical teachings about ascent, descent. So learning about the five dimensions is a journey of ascent going sort of deeper or higher, subtler. And then the descent is how to integrate from the top into everyday life. So in this teaching the, the first merged in a full way what I ended up calling divine love, Father's dimension of Divine Love, which is love and light, inseparable. I remember the first time I had the full experience of it. I've experienced love and stuff many times before in different ways and even, you know, love everywhere I've experienced before. But this is, was an interesting kind of emergence because even the bonded dimension emerges Emergence shows itself and shows us the obstacles against it to challenge them, reveal them. And shows more and more about itself until it becomes integrated as one, as what we experience, as what we are, you know, continuously. So the first thing, one that happened that way, for me at least, is the dimension of love. And it's love that's not just love in the heart, but love everywhere, as I said. I remember the first time I experienced it. Be instructive. We were traveling, my wife and me, to Hawaii. We were in Maui and we just arrived at Hana, Maui. It's a beautiful, jungly place. Wherever he smelled all the wonderful aromas of the tropical forest and arrived. He was driving, so I was tired. I went bedroom and to rest. I turned on the TV just to look, to pass time. And was nothing unusual on tv, some shows. But I felt I was in the tv. I was inside there, struck by that. What I mean, I'm there, okay, there in the film. So that's interesting. So turn on tv. Went out guava trees and things like that. And as the spelling thing, I start feeling I'm also on the tree. I haven't over here, I'm over there. I realized I'm not. I'm everywhere. I said, what does that mean? I'm everywhere. And here, when I started feeling everything filling out with some kind of richness, golden richness that was starting to fill out everywhere. So what I was seeing over here, over there turn out to be some kind of consciousness, some kind of a medium of consciousness, meaning conscious medium, which I know from my experience of presence. But it wasn't just localized. Not in the body or containing the body or the room, but it was in the whole environment. And then I saw that everything was dripping with that love. All the trees, first the dripping made out of looked like light, golden light. And then I realized it's sweet and was melty, kind sweetness and lovingness. And has appreciation, blissfulness, yummy kind of quality to it. Very satisfying yummy quality. And it was like filling the whole atmosphere, the whole context. Everywhere I looked. It wasn't like appearing through different things. It was one thing, one ocean of loving consciousness that was everywhere, pervading everything, constituting everything. Even the fruits were made out of it. Trees are out of it. My body was made out of it. So that for me, that was a jump, a quantum leap. Until experiencing presence. I'm experiencing presence here. But this is what I call boundless presence. Some people call it universal or infinite. I call it boundless. And it says it has no boundary, doesn't end because really you can't see, you know, infinitely. You can only see our environment. Seeing and feeling. I mean, you could feel it, feel like it has no end. And it both infuses everything, bathes everything. But the exquisite feeling of lovingness, like the love was like just there. The nature of reality was like a lovingness. Nature, reality or like a lovingness and also light, like a luminous light, luminous golden light. So I could see it as light, but I feel it as love. But it's also a presence, rich but delicate presence. Not like dense and very solid. It wasn't like that was flowing, fulging and trees everywhere. So the impression, you know, you get when experiencing this is that it's everywhere. It's everywhere I perceive. But the feeling is she must be everywhere. The whole universe is made out of it. That's how I experienced it then. That's how I believed it then. The whole universe made out of love. The whole universe not made out of. Exudes love.

Well, that's an incredibly powerful experience. I mean, that basically changes everything from an existential fear into, oh, my God, it's all love.

Yeah, all is love.

You know, I told you a few conversations ago that my original experience when I was 11, I had something similar to that all of a sudden experiences. God was everywhere and God was love. And I'm like, holy cow, it's like 11 years old. And why didn't anybody tell me this? You know, it's the most important thing you can know. And you call it the boundless ocean of love and light, of light and love. And George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, said God is an endless ocean of love and light. Almost exact same thing that you were. You were saying there. So I've. I was always admired of the Quakers and what they've done in the world. And that's very, very similar to what you experienced.

Yeah, so my experience of it is not unique because many have experienced it and many teachings actually include it as an important part of the teaching, depending on what the teaching is. Quakers probably very central to them. The central to the Sufis, that's all they deal with. They talk about love. You know, you read Rumi. I mean, this basically what he's saying in more different ways here is a direct experience. It is not a thought or a belief or emotion. It's a presence. People talk about consciousness, universal consciousness or cosmic. It is consciousness because it's made out of consciousness. But this consciousness has the flavor of love. It's a conscious love. It's a medium of Pure consciousness, conscious of itself. It knows itself as feels itself and knows itself as a kind of love that lights up the world. And it is. I remember thinking, well, if everybody knows this, the world will be at peace. Nobody will do anything bad to anybody else. I mean, everybody will be happy, contented and feel loved and loving and. But it is a potential for a human being to experience this obviously. Now there are many things. You know, I think that there's a whole chapter I written there about it detailed different things. But the most important thing is that it is what's called non dual. Non dual here is a full. Non duality doesn't mean just non duality between subject and object. There's no subject. There's just one thing that is both subject and object is aware of itself. But also nothing is separate from anything else. That's really the main meaning. Non duality. There's no separation because everything is that thing. One indivisible medium of loving consciousness. So I mean, we could say it pervades everything. We could say it exudes from everything. But we could also say it's makes up everything. And all these are true depending on the experience. It has a sense in it of giving generosity, like the universe is being generous, giving out of its heart. As I said, the feeling and the perception is as far as I can see, as far as I can feel. And then the feeling that it is infinite and then took me years to realize to say it's infinite is real, really subjective feeling. It's. We don't know it's infinite or not. We only know we can't see the end. No. Because human being really never experienced infinity. If you think of it, can you ever experience an infinite scene? Infinite line, for instance. Never see the infinite line. You know that line doesn't end. Later on I got to see that. Well, it is true and probably true. It's everywhere. But it is like our mind, our psychic can't help but come to this conclusion that it is the whole universe. Everything is like that. And which is how it feels. The feeling is always there. And why isn't nobody experiences it. This is always available and people just are not in touch with. Took me several. I got all the way to the fourth turning before I realized it is really. To say it's always there is problematic in some sense. Because that's not how most people experience things. I don't experience most people. They say what is it they doubt? God. And whether there is a God, whether there is love everywhere. I got to at some point to Say it is potentially there everywhere, and it appears that way for the one who's ready.

That seems a very crucial point, Hamid, because there are in multiple traditions there's this implication that often in the monotheistic traditions, God is always there and available. And in for example, zogchen rigpa, that is pure awareness is always present but obscured by our thoughts and obscurations, etc. And the question for me has been, well, yeah, presumably, I mean, that makes. There's a sense to that, but how can I know that for sure?

Yeah, that takes a great deal of experience and investigation and contemplation to come to see that the experience itself does not really say is the feeling how real it is, how fundamental that makes the mind believe it must be over there. And in some sense it's always there, but not manifest except for the one who's capable of experiencing it. Then it manifests. It manifests. So the individual consciousness is very important for experiencing it as everywhere. You see, not everybody experiences that way. Well, the one reason why I got to get this understanding, Roger, and that there are many things, many dimensions that appear and fear is always there. And as you know, many teachings, they think they're up the ultimate which define it when it is always there and then which one is right, then. So like saying seeing that, well, it is potentially there because it is inherent in true nature to have this quality and through nature, the nature of everything. However, we don't always see it as the nature of everything until manifest to the consciousness that are ripe enough for it. And when we see that, then can manifest any of its possibilities to that consciousness that is ripened and then it feels and we see it. So potentially it's everywhere, but doesn't mean everywhere in the sense that it's going to impact everybody the way it's impacting me. Because other people are not aware, not impacted. You know, maybe people who are around me because how I am and I'm behaving and they get impacted. But you know, the rest of the world have no idea that this experience happening or there is this ocean of divine love that available for everybody. So what we can say is available for everybody and it is potentially possible for every human being not to only experience it, but to experience it as constituting everything and the nature of everything.

And you speak a Mead or you write in your book of the different ways in which this can be experienced. And it seems like different degrees of depth. You speak of saying the soul can experience being conscious light that witnesses everything. But beyond that, then there can be the experience you're talking about, that this pure love, light is the ground of everything. So it seems like there are degrees of realization here you're pointing to.

Yeah, so the person can realize in different degrees in terms of how complete the experience is, how fully pervades everything. So that book mentions five boundless dimensions. This is one of them, the first one that emerges, in fact. In fact the easiest to relate to for human being. Human being, easy for them to relate to love. Not to awareness or emptiness or anything like that. You know, those seem to abstract for human being. But love, everybody wants love, want to be loved. And so. So it's a welcome experience usually. And easier to relate to, easier to open up to. But when I mention five part dimension, I mean dimension, not dimension like spatial dimension, you know, not like intersecting each other. You know, it's more like their dimension in the sense that each one of them is a little subtler, a little more fundament. But they're all really there all at the same time. Although you might not be aware of them all at the same time. Meaning they're all implicitly in true nature. And they're probably also other dimensions beside the five. I focus on those five and the teaching probably. But the idea here is, even though this is a non dual consciousness, I am saying the five dimensions basically point to the fact that non dual consciousness has dimensions. Just consciousness as non dual awareness. Non dual. No, it has also other dimensions, can be pure love, can be pure beingness, things like that. And I said. I said there might be more and five. I focus my experience, focus mostly in the five. What begins with this, which is, I think is a good one to start with. And exploring one dimension because it is the one we a human being in general, you know, they're not indoctrinated by some kind of a teaching that tells them you have to be to experience emptiness or awareness or this consciousness. Human beings, you know, they welcome love, they want love. And the difficulty with it is not what quality it is, but that it dissolves everything. It dissolves all restriction and dissolves all definitions of oneself.

Projections. You also said it dissolves your projections.

It was all your projection in the world. Yeah, because everything is not what we project, it says. But you know, I think the chapter brings out many of the challenges and obstacles that are in the way. The main one, of course, which is true about all the boundless dimension, true about nondevelopment in the sense of separateness. That being a human soul, you are a separate drop sort of. You're a separate entity. This dimension challenges that belief or identification was separate with entityhood. I call emptit. And this shows that although the soul is individual, is not separate from the rest of reality. And this dimension shows the lack of separateness, that we're all expression of the same thing. So we can experience the soul in this dimension, or the soul might be submerged in it, you know, and that's the different ways of experiencing it brings in a different way of experiencing it.

Hamid, you mentioned that people can have this experience of love. You know, God is endless ocean, boundless ocean of love and light. But we lose the vision. Like the grail castle. You know, the young Parsifal finds the castle. Then he loses a vision and goes throughout his life searching to find the castle again. And you talk about all our efforts to try to get back to that boundless dimension. Can often just reinforce the boundaries. And ultimately, it's when we surrender or when we're ready for it that the will of true nature itself is what does it. Is that accurate or somewhat in the neighborhood?

It is, yeah. We cannot make it happen. It is an emergence. It is revelation. Like basically the essential presence reveal itself to be unbounded. That has no edges, no boundaries. Because when you think about it, even when we experience a presence in the body, if you recognize it is not physical, why will the physical bond it? Why will the physical limit it? Because not physical, deeper than the physical. So it's only because part of the ego structure is a sense of being a bonded entity, you know, a separate entity with shape and size and all that, that we experience the presence as bonded and basically dissolve those boundaries. And that is the first challenge. Because many people don't want to lose those boundaries. They lose their definition of themselves. And that is scary. Can bring in terror and fear and trembling and all kind of things.

Or on the other hand, they may want to come back, they may not want to come back and be themselves again. Once you've experienced this, why would you want to go back and be, you know, me or John or Roger?

Well, it's true. When you are fully in the experience, you feel like, that's wonderful. Why be anything else? But the movement towards separateness is natural and healing to the soul has been imprinted in it. It's not like consciously you feel you want to be separate. You can't help but the simpleness comes out because there's a structure imprinted in the soul from years and years of experience. This individual, human, individual, mean bounded by the body, the shape of the Body, the size of the body. So that is. So it's not a choice. It's not like I don't. You might feel you don't want it to come, but will come anyway.

Ain't that the truth? Yeah.

Yeah. It's not about why is it that I have this boundary and that brings in a whole understanding what is ego, what I call ego, boundaries, egonimitic boundary that give us size and shape and that. Because that's a hard history, the whole imprinting and conditioning. And of course, everybody believes it. All humanity believes it. So it is supported by everybody else. If you tell your family and friends, well, I'm not an individual. I'm everywhere, they'll think, what the hell are you talking about? You know, what happened? So it's not a matter of what we wish when we are in that experience. Of course, you don't want to be anything else. It feels wonderful and natural and relaxed and easy and contented and full of goodness and satisfaction and pleasure. And so, of course. But the issues arise anyway.

And amid you point out that actually this experience of boundless love, of loving light, can actually highlight the barriers and blocks to it. And it seems as a general principle. So let me lay out the general principle I see you speaking to. And then the specific one. The general principle seems to be that when one either tries to cultivate a particular quality, such as love, or when it emerges spontaneously, there is often the upwelling of the blocks and barriers to it. And one faces those. And you talk about what John was alluding to, that as the soul becomes aware of its boundless nature and of this pure love, it begins to feel even more constricted by comparison. And then, as John said, desperately tries to overcome this feeling of constriction and separation, but only digs itself deeper into it. And you make the really crucial point that this existential sense of needing to escape, the sense of separation and boundedness exacerbates the issue and requires this profound letting go. That seems a really crucial point.

Yeah, very true, Roger. I mean, that's what happens with everybody. It's like, you know, some people talk about their experience as if this happens. It dissolves all the barriers just by having the experience. It's not true. It's not my experience. Not the experience of all the people I work with. It's not the experience of the actual real tradition, you know, so. So those people who call themselves non deva teacher or whatever and say, oh, I had the experience everything, and they're still an ego, the way they're talking is an ego talking actually, you know, so yes, we need. And that is. And. But there are many ways of working with the barriers. Different teachings have developed, different things. Like many teachings are based on love. You know, they talk about surrender and prayer and surrender and letting go and all of that. But you see. But surrender, even you recognize yourself as an individual, somebody who bound and contracted. And then at some point there is a movement towards surrender. But that, you know, that one path, the devotional paths are like that. And they do practices, chanting and prayers and this and that to help with that. The method of this teaching is. Continues to be inquiry. We inquire into those obstacles to understand them. And then so the separateness, we inquire into it, we realize it is actually like a boundary made out. A boundary, rigid boundary that has always been there for all the years. It's usually unconscious. Now it becomes conscious, an actual boundary that feels hardened, that feels sort of unchanging. And usually you have the shape of the body or the size of the body, because the body, we identify with the body for such a long time that identification leaves a deep, strong imprint in the soul and the consciousness. So the consciousness can't just say, I want to drop it, you know, it need to. So the inquiry help us understand it and how it happened. Understand that it is a boundary around the soul, around our consciousness that defines us. All this time had defined who and what we are as an individual. So I'm recognizing what are the fear of letting go that, you know, you have to see what are the fear. What are the attachments? Attachment to it? Because this is my definition that who I am, if I'm that's gone, that I am gone. Right. And even though people love God, you know, they want to be there with God. And here you're not going to be there with God. It's just God.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah. So there's an attachment to the individual. And also, then there's also fear of losing it because like you'll be people afraid of being lost, being not knowing they can't operate. They're afraid they're not being able to function if they're not. Because the individual is what function? What does things take care of things? Well, if that's gone, who's going to drive the car?

Right?

Who's going to do things? Who's going to do the taxes and all this stuff? You know, so people have all these fear, which makes sense. People have those fear because you do need to do these things. That's because we still don't understand how these things happening from this dimension because we don't understand them. We have all these fears, all these. And also history comes in into it, like somebody who was traumatized or abused or whatever. Their identification with the victim, identification with the traumatized person or the abused person is so strong that they are the scared, hurt kid or individual. And they can't just let it go. It is imprinted in them. There is a very deep unconscious conviction that that is what I am. And that is exposed here. If you stay with it and understand this kind of dimension can expose all the parts of the ego structure, the. That makes us be a limited entity.

Yeah. My understanding, Hamid, is. Is that when we're talking about the actualization that the boundaries are going to be there. So somebody can drive the car, but they have to be Horus. Boundaries, in other words, boundaries that connect us instead of separate. Separate us, that unifies. That helps us to be, you know, b. Hamid. And be an endless boundless ocean of light and love at the same time. Is that kind of where we're going with this or what happens?

Not exactly. Boundaries can dissolve and there'll be no more boundaries. But the functioning can continue to happen. And there are different ways it happens from this dimension that people don't know how it works. And it's a discovery. First you discover the ocean of love. And the next discovery, the actualization, which means to discover how. How life is lived, who lives it, what you know. And there are many different ways that. That we can see it. So it's not about the boundaries can't dissolve. If somebody. People who haven't worked through their boundaries when it comes to functioning, the boundaries come back and then become a separate individual again to live their life. So they could experience this once in a while when they have to function, the doer comes on, comes back to take care of things. Unless you work on the boundaries on the doer and able to understand them and let them go. So as we understand them, we don't let them go. They just let go. They dissolve. And this loving light, this divine love helps dissolve them because its action is dissolving. But it is held back by a barrier of the deep conviction. But as we recognize and understand the conviction, we're not as solidly convinced. We recognize it's just a historical event, something developed in us, something that our mind believes in. The more we recognize it is just a belief, it is just an identification, the easier for us to let this love impact those things can't dissolve Them. But if we don't, if we believe. No, that's true. That is what I am. You know, love doesn't have that power to dissolve it.

And I mean it seems like there are two. You talked about a fear coming up and it seems like there are two fundamental fears here. One is of the actual death of the ego, which is experienced as I'm dying. And the other is a. A fear which you were speaking to. A fear of the loss of autonomy. How I function, how will functioning occur.

Yeah, there are many fears actually these are two, two main ones. The fear of loss of what I am and then the fear of losing life. How do I live, you know, how do I function? Who's going to take care of things? And there are other issues too that emerge. But these are important thing about the sense of separateness, sense of intelligence, which is challenged by this dimension and by all the boundless dimension. This issue re emerges in all the boundless dimension. Each dimension showing another layer of that identity. It's a very deep strong. Then the ego has two main strong identification. It has many identifications as you know, thousands of objuculations of images. There are two main central. One, the boundedness. The definition gives a size and shape and sense of entitled. And the other one is sense of entity, a sense of identity, feeling what I am self recognition of this entity. Here the boundary dimension basically challenges the separateness, a separating boundaries that gives us a sense of being an individual being, an autonomous human being of being a being. And. And that is why actually many of the non dual teachings take the view that being a non dual being, a separate being, an individual being is an illusion. Just Advaia Vedanta calls it a convenient fiction. A convenient fiction that the divine takes in order to experience things. Which I don't buy that view, but it is their view.

Yeah, but you say that the individual is still is an essential part of true nature that can make its appearance as appropriate, but it's still there. Is that correct?

But not as a separate.

Yes, right. As connected.

Individuality can appear in different ways and functioning can. That takes it to the whole other thing about besides recognizing what is divine law, what are its properties, what are its qualities and what it does. And all the richness and all the generosity and the flowingness and the surrender and the letting go and transparent all of these things it teaches you love thing about what it is. And the next thing it teaches you how life happens from that place. And there are different ways that can happen. One of them is that it can Manifest the individual soul, our individual soul, but not as something, an encased entity within the ocean. No, it's more like as a wave of the ocean or as a bubble in the ocean. So it's part of it, but. So the soul appears as a manifestation within the ocean, made out of the same quality of the ocean, but not separate from the ocean. And that way it can function in the world as an individual. It has all the capacities and the knowledge that the individual has had, but now not as a separate entity, but as an individual expression of this boundless love.

Oh, that's very well said. Yes.

See here, no separateness separating boundaries don't come back. The soul comes back. But that shows us the soul doesn't have to be separate. People believe if I'm a soul, I am separate from my own entity. Actually, this dimension shows us. No, that's not the case. The soul is an expression of true nature inseparable from it. And it appears as individual and it function as an individual. Because the true nature needs an individual to experience things, to function in life, like divine love. How is it going to live? It can't live without an individual doing things. That is one way, There are other ways.

And amid it seems like at this stage there's a shift in the sense of doing that it feels like the sense of doing kind of also dissolves and life just somehow flows through and it feels, you know, for me, this is something I'm still trying to make sense of and live into. I'd love to hear you speak about this.

Stay tuned for part two of this, our 11th conversation with Hamid Ah Almas, as we continue to swim in this boundless ocean of love and life. 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 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.

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