ABOUT NONDUALITY.FUN

I have to say, this About page was going to be kept private—to let the episodes playfully speak to ‘what is’—but maybe this video will answer some questions that the episodes can’t—so in that vein I present this interview—

directors notes

This video was made after Luchana and Emerson from Nothing Media contacted Dream Bus Tours for an interview.

The interview occurs over some animations or is broken up by animations but the text below should all make sense.

Okay, I'm going to stop the video right there. So I had made a video for Nothing Media after they contacted me about dream bus tours, and you can still watch it but it shows what will look like a personal journey of seeking that ends up being completely untrue. If anything blabbing on about a story muddies the waters, because actually all there is is this seemingly happening this animation apparently running and an apparent but not a real viewer watching this at their computer or on their phone or whatever it's seemingly happening is a whole appearance. No one here and no one there. So now that said watch an untrue tale. It was not true. While it seemed to happen, and certainly untrue and unfindable in the telling, when all there is is this apparently happening. And it's only ever this apparently happening. So any message to a viewer is completely useless. Nevertheless, here is the untrue video presenting dream bus tours and an untrue past.

Hello. I'd like to present to you the series dream bus tours. It’s story of Billy McMe and Boris McYou and they're searching for enlightenment. And they taking the usual route that we have all taken. For this interview, I went digging into the archives and found this animation I did about 15 years ago of my past seeking.

—animation plays out

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It was around about this time that I encountered the Ramana Maharshi lineage. I met some gurus in the Ramana lineage. And there was this massive awakening, or so I thought. One of those one’s where you and the earth disappear and you come back as one and you're left with the sense of who you is silent consciousness and that the ground of being is consciousness.

And you see others also as consciousness but you know, maybe they have a few trances running—and it seemed helpful to help people to wake up. I was then asked to teach and so I traveled to Europe and the US running retreats, thinking that I was helping the world wake up. But then there was this guru sex scandal and I decided to leave.

 

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I continued cartooning about consciousness but with an increasing suspicion that something wasn't quite right. Then one day, serendipitously I happened to watch a video on Tony Parsons and there's no other way to describe this but everything just turned into love—

So after that, you know, I immediately ordered all his books and flew across the globe to meet him but, I had books and a website with 700 cartoons on consciousness and enlightenment and exactly how to wake up to enlightenment.

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But Tony seem to be saying that there was no you and no consciousness. And that's just unheard of! You could have knocked me over with a feather!

And then there was a lot of teeth gnashing and hair pulling because that was the opposite of satsang and the non-duality that I felt I knew! And all that hair pulling then there was a lot of teeth gnashing and hair pulling because that was the opposite of satsang. And the non duality that I felt I knew. And this was swiftly followed up with the torture, of flipping a lot between me-ing (you see animation of flipping) and being.

 In every way it was so fundamentally different from the usual story of where you sit up on the platform with your beloved guru, and you discover your consciousness is the same as the guru’s and it's the same awareness as Oneness and, and this is your true self, and you are filled with love and bliss. And you want to share that enlightenment with everyone.

And here is someone saying consciousness is only a dreamt reality. So it's pointless trying to even capture this person's conscious awareness or experience for yourself, because there isn't one and it leaves nothing that is required for everything to be as it is.

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So here's the me, I live in time and space and all I'm aware of is ‘me’ and my perspective. From this perspective, it seems as if there is a subjective experience that I'm feeling. This is made up though. The brain can't see or hear or experience anything. It just reads code from the sensors. And the data flows in so fast that it creates a scenario is if it was a flight simulator in full immersion. There is even a sense of a pilot in here, that would be me, except that I'm not really here. Nor is there a real pilot in anyone else's brain. Neuroscientists have said that while the brain is like a flight simulator, there is no pilot in the cockpit. It's when you combine the proprioceptors of balance with the senses, bringing in external vision that you have full immersion in what seems like a someone in the cockpit who lives in here. And because the pilot seems to live in space, and time and in a location of in here, that it projects space and time and location out there as well, it's very good for survival.


Only problem, is that there is no real pilot, this here is an artificial dreamt reality. And sometimes this dreamt up pilot thinks, it's true self is consciousness. I'm not the pilot with a whole lot of problems. I'm the light of consciousness that I appear in. But consciousness is simply a function. This here is the illusory and transparent interface upon which knowledge appears. And that's all. Unfortunately, you can't just tell the dreamt up pilot, that it only lives in a dream as a way to end this artificial reality. As a dreamt reality, I can't access the brains projector and turn it off. Nor can I as the pilot wake up and go, “Ah, I am the illusion, I'm enlightened.” Nor can I say I'm not here. Saying that just seems to reconfirm that I'm here.

If you say there is no pilot, the brain runs it through its data and finds it an impossible thing to compute, especially when the dreamt up pilot adds to its sense of survival. So you can't convince the dreamt up pilot that it isn't real.Telling it that it isn't real seems to confirm it's very reality. And when the me seems like it is here, well, that's just what's apparently happening, a dream is occurring. There can though be a resonance when you hear that the pilot in here isn't real, because well, the pilot isn't real, or in here, and it can seemingly die, leaving an appearance of a functioning brain but no dreamt up pilot living in time and space and projecting time and space out there.

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Which leaves just what is as an apparent appearance of wholeness with no artificial separate observer. Without the artificially dreamt observer, it becomes obvious that there is only ‘what is’ and nothing other than ‘what is’ and that this ‘what isness’ is completely blind to itself and is completely without knowledge.

The dilemma is there, when the dreamt observer wants to know it’s a dream, which is impossible, but it seeks it anyway. And there is the added befuddlement when it's linked with tales of enlightenment, spirituality and awareness as a possible solution. And I've put this whole dilemma in Dream Bus Tours where Billy and Boris are seeking out the Absolute, and as you'll see, they are seeking with awareness, which is like looking for the dark with a flashlight! And so all they can see is light even though everything is dark, or everything is already the absolute as it is.

It's the artificial reality of a me consciousness that creates this great divide between ‘what is’ and the Absolute. Believing itself to be a conscious being, it naturally thinks that its true self, (once it's still and silent) will mean you can float off to a magnificent experience of the absolute.

Instead, there's no you, there's no awareness, there is no absolute, there is no non-duality. It turns the whole idea of an awake enlightened consciousness on its head. It does a little sad to discover that you've been searching with your awareness, going within and you've really just had your head up your own backside the whole time. And with such sincere earnestness! Not that any of it could be any different. Throughout Dream Bus Tours, we find Mr Non-dual at the “This changes everything bar”, where there is a neon flashing cube of the two views of an optical illusion, that perfectly highlight the two views of non duality. So in this view, you see a dark blue box sitting on the floor in the corner of two walls, and we tend to relate to being the box in the corner separate from our environment, and there with our own consciousness. And the cube that is the little box sitting in a corner represents the non dual teaching or satsang, whereby there is a ‘you’ who needs to or would be able to do something, to realize or attain oneness.

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Throughout Dream Bus Tours, we often find Mr Nondual at the ‘This Changes Everything Bar,’ where there’s a neon cube flashing the two views of an optical illusion, that perfectly highlights the two views of non-duality.

So in this view, you see a dark blue box sitting on the floor in the corner of two walls. And we tend to relate to being the box in the corner separate from our environment and there with our own consciousness. And the cube is that little box sitting in a corner represents the non-dual teaching or satsang whereby there is a ‘you’ who needs to, or we would be able, to do something to realise or attain oneness.

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When we look through a spiritual duality lens, we see people as separate and as needing to, you know, at least do something spiritual to attain a more awake awareness. And this list of what they need to do becomes endless. There is so much to fix, and change for clear to gain an awakened awareness.

And through the same lens, we see others as having attained a wondrous enlightened awareness. And these people we think we need to bow down to, you know, because oneness resides inside them as a person.

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But the second view of this optical illusion and the other view of non-duality is that there is only one cube representing wholeness. And there isn't actually a smaller box in the corner, representing a separate you. Where it was thought to be a box turns out to be nothing. No box is ever separate from the whole cube because it wasn't there in the first place. So there isn't a someone in the corner who can do anything, especially anything spiritual, because isn't anyone.

And where there seemed to be a person separate from Oneness turns out to be no-one. No-one to teach to, no-one to receive a teaching, no-one to receive an enlightened awareness. How can an unenlightened box in the corner even become an enlightened box in the corner, when the box in the corner turns out not to be there!

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It is then so funny that all these teachers of non-duality and satsang are actually teaching duality. It turns out, they're looking at Oneness and seeing Twoness. They're seeing duality. They're seeing a devotee who needs to do something to realise themselves as oneness.

It is so funny that all these teachers of non duality in satsang are actually teaching duality. It turns out they're the ones looking at you through the lens of duality and thinking that you need to do something to become oneness. It's funny, but I taught the same thing. I was a dualist teacher thinking I was pointing people to non-duality, but a message can’t be offered.

And just to go back to the brain again . . . that feeling of presence is determined by the number of sensory inputs to the brain . . . that’s all. In the end, that is all that’s apparently happening, as a seamless whole . . . it isn’t a veil that obscures a hidden truth and needs to be gotten rid of, it’s just what’s apparently happening. It doesn’t mean there is someone in here because there never is an actual someone in here. A feeling or the energy of presence doesn’t confirm a someone . . . it’s just confirming an appearance of what’s happening but for no-one.

And it does then seem ludicrous how some non-duality teachings point to presence as leading to a purer divine presence when all it leads to is an attempt for a non-existent pilot to have a still and silent interface in the brain . . . as if that would make the non-existent pilot enlightened and able to transmit enlightenment to other non-existent pilots. They are after an experience of purity and divine knowledge of the absolute when neither the pilot or the absolute exist.

And this seemingly illogical non-message of non-duality simply points out that there is no one to receive a message because there’s no-one behind the veil of the sense of presence  . . . there is no-one in here . . . so even if it seems as if there is a someone watching this video . . . and it feels like there is a sense of presence . . . . that sense of presence is happening for no-one . . . no-one is in there, nothing that seemingly happens ever does actually confirm a you . . . it is just what’s happening. And just as there is no-one behind the sense of presence, there isn’t an Absolute or a knowledge or something behind this appearance . . . there is just this appearance.

Nothing hidden . . . . no hidden you, no hidden reality behind this appearance. And what’s happening can’t be labelled or known and ‘what is’ has no knowledge of an apparent ‘you’ or ‘me’ or an apparent dilemma.



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And just to go back to the story now . . .I was also teaching 101 exercises on how to use therapy to wake up to your true self turns out to be an exercise in futility. Worse, is that it keeps alive the sense of being with its own consciousness, who needs to have an awake whole consciousness. That's the dream, the dream of being a conscious being.


Nothing helps, nothing helps homeless. Nothing helps a dream seeker who turns out not to be there. And that can be the most fantastic wonderful news, or can just be adding to the worst dilemma possible. Although is only an apparent dilemma, and poor billion bars to all the seeking. I think many of us have tried and meet many of the teachers in the seeker circuit. Even though it turns out there is no billion bars and all those teachers advocating for personal enlightenment or just was apparently appearing but no freewill or real and separate souls anywhere. Just what is a mod is has no knowledge of separate seekers or you or me or any dilemma.

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And I've put this search into a parallel world here, where Billy and Boris are searching for enlightenment and Mr Nondual keeps turning up to poke holes in what turns out to be a ludicrous set of instructions given by gurus out there, aiding and abetting duality, while pointing to themselves as enlightened. And yes, I do need to add a disclaimer here that they of course, aren't there! It’s wholeness appearing ‘as is’, which is the joke, isn't it?