There is a vast play unfolding in our universe – a play which goes on and on, a play in which all its actors, like phantoms, appear and disappear. The price that we pay for believing in the illusion of separateness, is pain and suffering.

WHEN WE TAKE OURSELVES TO BE SOMEBODY, we both create and perpetuate the sense of duality that is felt amongst humanity as a whole. This is why it is important for us to live our lives with humility. The spiritual teacher who gets on the platform and pronounces himself as ‘enlightened’, or as ‘the messiah’ or ‘avatar’ is as guilty as the next person for this. The moment that we take ourselves to be an object in this way, we are into dualistic thinking – and dualistic thinking is responsible for all the pain and misery in the world.

Every time we reinforce the sense of ‘I’, by repeating self-centered thoughts and emotions – we further cut ourselves off from life. Every time we spend emotional and psychological energy planning for the future and how we are going to achieve, how we are going to get what we want, how we are going ot hold on to what we already think we have, we also cut outselves off from life. The concept of ‘separation’ is not some far off notion – it is something that each of us practices day in and day out for most of our life.

It is time to take responsibility for what we are doing in all this. If we understand that pain and suffering is primarily caused by dualistic thinking, by self-centered thinking and emotion, then we need to give time to address the issue within ourselves.

The individual, the person, cannot win, cannot conquer the whole, the universal life. No matter what you do, life will have you, sooner or later. You may hold out until you are old and frail, but then you will be consumed by the relentless process of birth, decay, and death. The longer you hold out, trying to preserve your sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, the longer you wil suffer.

Happiness, peace, love and all that human beings yearn for, come only when we relinquish this obsessive interest in ‘me’ and ‘mine’, and inwardly surrender to life. Most of us probably have a deep yearning in our life, but we don’t always know what it is we yearn for. We may externalize this feeling, this yearning, and say that we are seeking ‘love’ or ‘community’, when what we really yearn for is our original state of non-separation. What we ultimately seek is to be in touch with our true nature, which fundamentally we are anyway – because, in that, we do not suffer or yearn for anything else.

When we live in the person, when we live in this little ‘self’ that we carry around everywhere, life brings us difficulties. When we are concerned about our own personal, individual interests, we immediately cut ourselves off from life. When we understand fundamentally that we are not this person, this body, this mind, and that we are really nothing less than ‘pure consciousness’ itself, then we also know that we do not need to suffer anymore. Indeed, we also know that there is no one here to suffer anyway and that there never was anyone here.

This whole drama of life and death is one vast play within the universal consciousness. We assume the roles that we are asked to act and we never question them. The pain that we feel and the struggle that we partake in, can all end now, instantly. All that needs to happen is that we see what is going on, stand back, stop perpetuating our habitual patterns of thought and behaviour, and simply be who we are, in our true nature – no more, no less.

When it doesn’t get what it wants, the ego usually has a tantrum of some kind, or makes a more concerted effort at ruthlessness. People even commit murder, for very small gains for themselves. But these acts are always paid for, instantly. Some people consider that murderers, thieves and abusers of others have got away completely free if they are not caught and dealt with by the legal system. But, no one gets away from such acts.

The moment that you commit such an extreme act of separation, such as murder, burglary, child-abuse and suchlike, you further cut yourself off and push yourself deeper into pain and separation. You may think you are having pleasure, that you are enjoying yourself, but you are merely trying to compensate for the pain that you feel within – which is the pain of separation.

The greater the pain that you feel, often the greater and more distorted the acts that you are capable of. In a lesser way, people who are not criminals also cut themselves off from life and carry a continual sense of separation by always being focused on the ego, its gain and its interests. Conversely, selfless acts move us further away from separation and the sorrow that is born out of it.

To see the light, we have to rise up above the dark – we have to say “yes” to the light, we have to breathe out all our negativity and embrace the light, breathe out all our sense of separation and surrender to the light. If we hold on to any part of the ego that wants to remain in separation, we’ll fall back down from the light and re-experience the dark, with all the pain of separation. This is what is happening in the virtual world of the mind.

In reality, there are millions of physical entities, people, bodies, running about here and there in the world, believing that in their minds they are quite separate and distinct from each other. Then death comes for each of them in turn – the body dies, and where is the mind? It may or may not continual its virtual world. It may or may not find another body to incarnate in. We don’t know for certain what happens.

There is a vast play unfolding in our universe – a play which goes on and on, a play in which all its actors, like phantoms, appear and disappear. The price that we pay for believing in the illusion of separateness, is pain and suffering. The yearning that most of us feel at some stage in our life is the yearning to return to our original purity, to our true nature, to the bliss of simply Being.

In the silent emptiness of our true nature there is no separation, there is no yearning, because we are immersed in pure and unadulterated bliss. We suffer the pain of separation because we will not let go. The letting go could happen at any moment, even here and now – just one small step for mankind, stepping out of separation and into pure bliss. It is a stepping without stepping, because there is no one who takes the step – for letting go and allowing yourself to be no one, in the silent emptiness of your true being, is the step.

© Roy Whenary, 2005
This is the final excerpt to be shared from Roy's book: The Texture of Being. For details on how to purchase it, or enquire about Roy's latest work please visit the links below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roy Whenary lives and works in the English West Country town of Totnes, near Dartmoor, England, amidst beautiful rolling hills, and close to the rugged South Devon coastline. He lives with his partner Daniela Coronelli, who is a teacher/practitioner of both Shiatsu and a body movement practice known as ‘Amerta Movement’ (inspired by the Indonesian teacher Suprapto Suryodarmo). (see her website: www.lifehealingarts.org). Roy also has a son (from his first marriage) who is 20 and studying at University.

Roy has been writing all his adult life (he was born in 1951), but ‘The Texture Of Being’ is his first complete book. His interest in eastern spiritual philosophies began in the late 1960's, and his main inspirations have been J.Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj and Jean Klein (to whom the book ‘The Texture Of Being’ is dedicated). For many years in the 1970s and 1980s, Roy was a regular attendee of Krishnamurti’s talks in Europe, and he first met Jean Klein in 1980 and enjoyed a close contact with him for many years thereafter.

Roy is currently writing two new books: one to be published as an E-Book and the other as a normal paperback book. Whilst preferring the written to the spoken word, Roy will be offering an Advaita retreat in Southern Spain in the late summer of 2005 (details available via his website: www.lotusharmony.com). The emphasis of his writing thus far has been to bring our spiritual knowledge more into the ‘feeling’ realm, so that we embody it more fully than is the case with purely intellectual understanding. For this, we need to develop, according to Roy, a closer relationship with “the silent emptiness of our true nature”.

Roy’s book (The Texture Of Being) can be ordered via his website at http://www.lotusharmony.com/html/HowToBuy.htm and on www.amazon.com (in the US) and www.amazon.co.uk (in the UK). A complete listing of current sources can be obtained from his website: www.lotusharmony.com. The ISBN number is: 0-9543100-0-4, and it is published by Lotus Harmony Publishing.

Roy is also well-known in the field of New Age Music, both as a composer and producer. On his website (www.lotusharmony.com) he also offers 6 CDs composed by composer Robert Nicholas (and co-produced by Roy), plus a compilation CD of his own music from the late 1980s, entitled: ‘Inner Peace, Inner Joy’.