Tony Parsons - Nothing Being Everything: Dialogues from Meetings in Europe

Tony Parsons

Nothing Being Everything

Foreword

We appear to live in a world inhabited by individuals who, to a greater or lesser extent, have free will, choice and the ability to take action which brings about consequences. This reality is almost universally accepted without question.

For certain you are someone reading these words and it will definitely be your choice to stop or continue reading ... or so it seems.

In simple terms, it appears that our choice will be directed towards the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. We learn that, with the application of intelligent effort, we stand a better chance of making our lives work. This is the principle that apparently motivates most personal and global activity.

As the world we live in can seem threatening, we gather in various groups and create sets of rules which bring some sort of order and protection. Conflict and tension arise and our negotiations are not always successful.

Some of us seek a deeper meaning and purpose to life which can bring us hope and comfort. Out of this need, religious aspiration is born together with the belief in deity and a search for spiritual enlightenment.

Although these kinds of remedies can be effective for a while, they seem limiting in nature and do not, for some people, provide a profound and lasting fulfilment. The possible reason for this lack is given in Nothing Being Everything, together with an explanation of how the brain presumes, in early infancy, that there is a "world out there" which is separate to its host organism. In order to protect itself it apparently simulates a centre or a "self", from which negotiations and control can seem to be administered. Of course this construct of apparent individuality includes absolute belief and investment in free will, choice and the ability to act.

So, it appears that our whole way of living is grounded on a fundamental belief system which could be seen to be generated out of an assumption about reality, which is questionable.

Is it possible, for instance, that this reality is simply and only a unified and totally impersonal dynamic devoid of all intention, direction or purpose, but which paradoxically is the source and expression of vibrant passionate aliveness. Also, that within that expression, the apparent story of individuality manifests only as a meaningless reflection of its source.

This possibility would completely overturn the firmly established beliefs and values upon which we base our behaviour, and it would also undermine the very idea that we even have any choice about that behaviour.

It could be argued that the formulation of individuality is a very natural and inevitable process, so there is no need to enquire any further into its origin. And so, you could discard this book out of hand here and now ... but what would be discarding it? Would it be you, or would it be its source?

Is our cause and purpose simply a dream? If so it seems that the awakening from that dream could be a disaster. There would be no-one left to run their lives and possibly no managing director of the universe to offer guidance. So, if our life is lost then everything is lost, and there is only emptiness. But could it be that, like a vacuum, emptiness is suddenly absolute fullness ... simply nothing being everything?

Preface

It's a safe bet, I suspect, that many readers who find themselves drawn to this new treasure of unfiltered aliveness - Nothing Being Everything - will have logged more than a few miles on the long and winding road of devotedly seeking for that which could never be lost ... a self-reinforcing paradox that fuels the world of seeking.

As such, the vibrantly alive expressions of freedom that follow will typically be read from one of two broad perspectives. Either these words will be filtered through the lens of separation, anticipating that one essential insight might bring oneness and absolution for the seeker, or this radical communication may instead be received ... and celebrated ... as the ever-present and boundless immediacy of life simply happening on its own, with no agent or destination anywhere to be found.

Indeed, the profound simplicity of the open secret, so beautifully and powerfully pointed to in these pages, is always one step too near for the mind and "understanding" to ever approach. Herein lies the invitation to give the deductive analytical mind a rest and simply breathe in these words with the natural, effortless rhythm and resonance from which they arose. The unmistakable scent of remembrance of that most intimate of all things, so energetically and uncompromisingly present in these dialogues, is intuited most directly in the absence of the idea of there being anything to figure out or get.

Over the past decade or so, a wave of interest and appreciation for teachings of a "non-dual" persuasion has swept through the upper rafters of the spiritual pantheon. This interest has exposed the purely dualistic visions of earning worthiness for release from the wheel of suffering that form the plea and implied promise of almost all of spirituality and religion. And yet, save for a rare handful of exceptions, almost all the popular "non-dual-like" facsimiles on the current satsang circuit cater to the demands and expectations of the separate individual conditioned by the seduction of process and progression. Not so the open secret.

Such teachings of accommodation are often offered under the rationale, benevolently arrogant as it may be, of "stepping down to meet all the unawakened people halfway up the mountain", and thereby continually reinforce fundamentally dualistic misconceptions as hierarchy and a personal evolution.

This conundrum, in turn, presents a fundamental and subliminal reaffirmation for the seeker that they are indeed lost and in need of salvation. As Tony Parsons conveys again and again throughout his books, this is an absolutely unworkable bargain for the mind that can never find the home it so desperately looks for. For some, when this news is first really heard, it can bring a transient wave of despair, as all the hoped for and projected ideals of "becoming divine and exalted" crash and burn in the boundless ocean of there only being just this - life happening - with no personal markers on which to hang such attributes of attainment.

However, even in that first surprise of spontaneous recognition, what at times is initially overlooked is the unspeakable impersonal freedom that stands revealed in the timeless light of no-thing being everything. Not a detached pseudo-freedom conjured from a "spiritually sanctioned" avoidance of life, but from the innate immediacy of remembrance that there has truly never been a separate entity to whom this is all happening ... what a joyful revolution!

This is about paradox in the extreme, and that paradox simply loses its apparent power to obscure in the light of rediscovery of this primal innocence that is the open secret. A true paradox in that it is constantly being lived in full by, and as, everyone, and yet remains thoroughly hidden as the essential secret of life as long as there is a "someone" looking for it.

It's little wonder then that the vast majority of the world's wisdom teachings, including many recent therapeutic offshoots, all aim to resolve this mystery in a kind of progressive, linear fashion for the individual who is either overtly (or covertly as with many popular pseudo-non-dual teachings) taken for granted as the central locus of the universe ... i.e. the presumed one that needs to gain insight and understanding for that individual to become free.

Indeed, those teachings that do pay lip service to non-dual concepts often present a more subtle, even subliminal, confirmation of this core misperception, and thus inadvertently reinforce the illusory sense of separation all the more.