Aug 24
Guest post: Ramblings of my mind by James Bonser
This piece came in the form of a letter to me. I wanted to print it just as it is.
Dear Persphone,
Just recently I wrote an article entitled ” The questions that are never answered ” Persephone intimated that it may be provocative in it’s content; Which I believe to be true. So I would like to take this opportunity to go one step further.
In my life I have trodden many paths that others had trod before me. The searching, the seeking and the therapy; very often reaching fanatical status. During a seminar in Australia, I was approached by a fellow teacher. Taking me aside, he said, ” I have to tell you the truth. You think, that what you are doing in front of the group, is all about you, and no one else! ” I stood for moment and could do nothing other than agree with him. In that moment I could find no other reason for doing what I was doing other than to serve myself.
Who else was there? I have to admit up until that point, I had followed the assumption that the closer I came to enlightenment, the further I could take my students and my clients. But after that encounter with the truth, as I now know it to be, changed everything. Not in the way I had planned it however, quite the reverse. The many “how to become enlightened books” that had, at one time become breakfast, dinner and tea to me, no longer served any purpose; other than to adorn my book shelves.
I completed my last seminar in Denmark, with a question ” Do you think that all you have learned, will make the slightest difference to anything?” Everyone in the room nodded their heads and said, “yes”. It was the second time that this clear thought had entered my mind. I was in the wrong place doing the wrong thing. And then fear struck; if not this, what else is there? The journey, the path, the search for awareness, consciousness, all that at one time had been so important to me, now became irrelevant.
I desperately tried to console myself with the fact that all of the foregoing had brought me to this point. But this time, the point felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with the Indians not that far behind. Very clearly, I could not teach that which I no longer had faith in. So I stepped off the cliff and I’m still descending or ascending, I can’t really tell as there are no signs to show the way.
Each day, I meditate or self hypnotise, giving my thoughts their freedom. I suppose one could say that this is what Osho meant when he used the words, “Bliss or Joy.” In these very relaxed states my thoughts just simply wander, I can reach the stratosphere and hang in space or I can be so small I can enter my own body. You might say, “it’s an illusion,” and you would be correct in your assumption, but so is everything else. When you have entered this state of expansion or contraction, without the limitations of the physical body and no attachment to anything whatsoever, it is then you can really know you are god and all that entails.
In this state I’ve come to the conclusion that life and death are actually the wrong way round. Our true selves can only be actualized when we are free of the encumberments of the physical body, which we have named death. Yet it is the ultimate freedom; the releasing of us from the illusion, and all the limitation that go along with that which we call life. We seek home, the returning to what we are, pure energy, pure life. And the most beautiful of all is, that when I know I’m god, there comes with it a silence like I’ve never heard before.
Love James.
August 24th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Dear James, thank you for this – another strong knock at my own door! However, one thing I have noted in my very similar earlier experiences to yours – is this. Those I have met, and there have been a few who know what you know, decide to stay in their bodies. They know differently, death has no fears at all – in fact is welcomed. AND, they decide to stay. Do you have a comment about that? Persephone
August 25th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
James had sent me a reply which I edited and posted. Three hours later I received this, and deleted his first response. James has a profound ability to delve deep into himself, to uncover layers and layers to get to where he wants to get. I have much love and respect for this man – this is why I am so happy to publish him. I trust that, always, he will continue to delve until he is satisfied that, for that moment, it is as near his truth, as can be got! Here are his very latest delvings, in answer to my original question:
Dear Persephone,
I can see your gentle hand on my answer to your question, but it concerns me that I have not answered it clearly enough. It is, from where I sit, one very good question, and one that requires an honest answer. But trying to put the experience into ordinary language is not as easy as I would wish it to be. My first question to myself was, what was it that I knew ? The second question “They decided to remain in their bodies ”
What I knew was never a secret, it is nothing that is gained through intuition, or feelings or even understanding. It is just, for a brief moment of one’s passage through life, where all is suspended and all that you experience in that brief moment is no more than utter freedom. You are no longer what or who you thought you were. But you can only know this, when that brief moment is gone. Remember when Osho described the quantum leap? He said “there is nowhere to leap from and nowhere to leap to; and no one is doing the leaping.” I so wish I had said that. I try nearly every day to regain that experience, and know that the very trying is no more than the thought that there is something I can do, to once again find that freedom and its silence. But true to all profound experiences in this life, it did have it’s effect on me, both physically and mentally, which I can only describe as a feeling of total bliss. I sensed my body without any form of pain, no matter how hard I focused, not even the slightest feeling of tiredness anywhere; and mentally, it was if I knew that nothing really mattered.
The second question was where I needed to really understand what you were saying. In my physical body and in my logical mind I am James. One that has experienced life without the illusion of all that is outside of me being present, albeit for a fleeting moment. Why it is removed or how it is removed is really beyond my comprehension as a physical being. And yet one becomes aware that life and death are the same thing, or to put it another way, life as we know it, is energy, or God if you like, with the ability to create the illusion of everything outside of itself. Death is simply the same force without the illusion.
I had this strange picture this morning of Brad Pitt in a film role. After the day was finished he went home, poured himself a drink and dived into his pool. He was no longer the character in the film, everything around him was different, but he – he was still Brad Pitt. Just because the veil of illusion has been lifted it doesn’t mean anything else has changed. You simply stop creating the illusion. It is important to remember, if we see somebody die and the corpse is interred, that we miss them, and believe they no longer exsist. This is also part of the illusion. Everything returns to that which is one. With this knowledge, why would I not want to remain in the physical form? This also assumes that I have a choice. I do hope that this is more of a comprehensive answer than the previous one in the comment box. (now removed. P.)
Love James