Dear Dr. Robert,

I read your article on Awakening, and now I wonder, how many people do you think are 'awake' in this sense? I don't mean guess the exact number, do you guys have meetings or anything like that. It's just that you seemed just to bump into your teacher, and perhaps he his. How common this is among people who have really grasped non-duality?

I think of that line from the Tao Te Ching: "Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know," so I find it uplifting to think there might be countless people out there, quietly going about 'their' lives, experiencing this place I have not been, while most people never notice, since they talk about it only if asked. Not the spiritual teachers who hold satsangs, publish books, and so on, but the photographer, the therapist, the guy who fixed my shower . . . .So how often have you come across 'someone' who's awakened? When will I bump into my teacher?

If each brain is a separate awareness, then it's hard to see how anyone could be non-dual, the same singular awareness expressed through different minds, but I guess such such thoughts have little to do with being still and examining "your" awareness.

Hi, James--

The human intellect, having evolved over countless millennia, is extremely powerful. It is so powerful, in fact, that one can spend an entire lifetime simply moving around within the thought-forms which intellect can create as if they were "reality." If someone wants to do that, and finds it satisfactory, fine. But thoughts are not reality. Of course, thoughts are part of reality in the sense that everything that exists at all is part of reality, but that is not what I mean. What I mean by "not reality" is this:

The intellect can create all kinds of fantasized scenarios about me and who I am which have nothing to do at all with who and what I really am. And once these have been created, the intellect can devise countless ways of defending itself against any doubt that those scenarios are accurate.

When I refer to an "awakened state," I mean a state in which that process—the process of pulling the wool over ones own eyes—no longer operates. That does not mean that the mental scenarios never arise, but that they are discarded immediately as false, and not identified with or defended. A classic example from Vedanta is that of seeing a rope as a snake. The fear that arises on seeing the "snake" disappears as soon as the rope is seen as a rope. Suppose, for example, that I awake with a headache, and then I have this thought: "This could be a brain tumor. Oh, my God!" That will be seeing a rope as a snake, because, obviously, a thought is not a brain tumor. If I see the rope as a rope ("Oh, that's just a thought, those arise constantly, and usually don't mean anything."), then the fear of serious illness disappears, and I am left with just the discomfort of a headache. In classic Buddhist terms, the headache is a pain, but the fear of deadly illness is the "pain of pain." The first experience—pain—is unavoidable, but the other—the pain of pain—is entirely self-inflicted and totally imaginary. One mark of the awakened state is the complete lack of the pain of pain. This is one reason why people in an awakened state seem so serene. They are free of any self-inflicted suffering, which, believe it or not, is most—almost all, in fact—of our suffering as human beings,

Now it may seem that intellectual speculation such as yours about non-duality is not anything particularly painful, but that depends entirely on point of view. I assure you that from an awakened point of view, such stuff is horribly painful, and is a principal reason for all the necessity for drugs, sex as drugs, idiotic entertainment, overeating, gossip, intellectual arguments, etc. All those are ways of avoidance. But the avoidance itself is painful, the primary source of pain.

In other words, the primary source of pain lies in attention being directed towards something imaginary, something that is not real. When attention moves towards what actually is real in this moment, the pain ends, and one awakens as pure awareness. That is why I strongly recommend that you simply stop identifying with thoughts entirely, and instead notice and identify with the awareness in which all thoughts are arising. The thoughts are not real, but the awareness in which they arise is real. This change of focus can make all the difference in the world to a person who is ready to make that change. Simple as that.

"No wonder you are so unhappy. You spend 99 percent of the time thinking about yourself, and that doesn't exist." ——Nisargadatta

Now, not so many people are awake in the sense that I expressed in my memoir, but many people are only an eyeblink away from awakening. Some of those will awaken, and some will not. That is the real meaning—the esoteric meaning—of the phrase, "Many are called but few are chosen." This might sound discouraging, but I see it simply as the way things are. In my experience, if someone sees the value in awakening to reality, and if that person sincerely seeks a way, often the way opens. Not that trying alone will turn the key in the door, but without trying one is simply in the condition of awaiting a random lightening strike. As this is said in Zen, "If you try, the very trying will impede the awakening, but if you don't try at all, there is no difference between you and a rock. So what is needed is a 'non-trying trying.'" Why will the very trying impede the awakening? Because awakening consists entirely in noticing that a separate self which tries is an illusion—a widely shared illusion, to be sure, but still an illusion based on what I call "mis-identification." As soon as that is noticed, one is awake. Not that some person awakened, but awareness simply is and always has been. In other words, awakening has nothing to do with doing anything--there is nothing to be done and no one to do it--but in stopping doing something which one has been "doing" habitually since early childhood and now takes for granted as "me."

Yes, those who know do not talk—at least not much. I have only begun talking recently—after many years in this condition during which I stayed in the closet so to speak—and I described in my memoir how, and in a sense why, that happened. But, please remember that my talk—anyone's talk—is not "reality"—not the Moon, but only a finger pointing at the Moon. When you point, a dog looks at your finger, but a wise human looks not at your finger, but towards where the finger points. Therefore, do not take what I say here as some kind of description of an awakened state, but rather as one manifestation of how an awakened state appears in words—that is, as the finger, not the Moon.

No, people in an awakened state don't have meetings in the sense that high IQ people have Mensa meetings, but it is comfortable to associate with someone who can understand what you are saying without foolishly trying to dispute it or argue with you about it, so I am happy to say that I have at present one excellent amigo who enjoys such a state, and it feels delightful for the two of us to sit together quietly and to speak and listen without resistance—without even knowing really who is speaking and who is listening.

Some "spiritual teachers"—the kind who give satsangs—could be helpful, but perhaps not. Adyashanti is a public satsang-giver whose finger seems often to point in the right direction. Some others are not so good, and seem either to be intentionally fooling others—charlatans, I mean—or are just fooling themselves and others unintentionally. As in any sector of the marketplace, caveat emptor. When in doubt, go to earlier sources: Lao Tsu, Hui Neng, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta.

Yes, it is uplifting to understand that anyone you meet might be in an awakened state. In that regard, I will recount two incidents from my own earlier life. When I was quite young, 21 or 22, I felt confused about life, and spent much of my time in emotional pain. I was living in New York at the time, and one day, while in a funk, automatically boarded a bus. In those days—this was the 1960s—you could hand your quarter to the driver, and he would give you change. I handed my coin to the driver, and as he pushed a dime into the palm of my hand, I felt an immediate and dramatic change of state. Suddenly my habitual mental funk lifted. I found myself awake in the present, seeing the bus, all the people, the colors, the sounds—everything, as if briefly psychedelicized. This awakening I remember vividly to this day, although it lasted only a few moments.

A few years later, I was 26 at the time, I was walking on a beach in Mexico and happened to fall into step with a much older man. We began to converse. I have never been able to recall even a word of that conversation which lasted for at least an hour—perhaps more—except for my final words to him: "Oh, I never knew it was like this!" Another brief moment of awakening mediated by a "contact high," so to speak. But this one took. Soon after, I found myself turning away from sex, drugs and rock and roll, and towards seeking something deeper.

Finally, James, you ask "So how often have you come across 'someone' who's awakened? When will I bump into my teacher?" James, in every moment there is a teacher. It might be another human being, or it might be anything else in your environment—a book, an animal, the ocean, whatever. In this moment—the moment of your reading this, these words are the teacher. Your sincere desire to awaken creates the teacher. Your true guru is within you in this very moment, always was, and always will be. Yes, most of us—I was one of these—require another human being to carry the guru energy for us until we see it for ourselves as "myself," but you must not wait for that. Make every effort now, and if you need a human teacher it is likely that you will find one. When I say "make every effort," I mean something very simple:

There is very little that we really know for certain. In fact, the more intelligent one is, the less that person "knows." This realization of ignorance is the chief feature of true intelligence, which has nothing at all to do with "IQ." Intellect is one thing, wisdom is quite another. Judging from your questions, I imagine you would agree. OK, we don't know much. But there is one thing you really do know, so in your search for the real, begin with the one thing you really do know:

In this very moment, I AM.

Not my name, not my body, not my thoughts, not my personal history, but that which is aware of all of that. I am that. That's what "I" am: awareness. It was here when I was a child. It is here now. And between childhood and now, although many things have happened, and many changes have occurred, that awareness, that "I am," in which all the world constantly arises, has never changed. It is always here right now. Empty and just available to be filled. Just start right there, James. Right now. Only now.

Dear Dr. Robert,

Thanks so much for your reply. I have tried what you suggest, but when I go into myself, and try to just observe, see the thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings, and try just to be aware, I still find myself in a position of duality. It's me and the mind stuff. Much of this mind stuff concerns an outer world and other people which seem totally separate from "me." I actually find myself in a lonely place, with nothing magnificent or endless about it. Just one little spark of watching, and loads of mind stuff which is all "not me."