... but the difference is that there is now, behind the personality, an awareness of the fact that this personality is a mind-created identity, but that in order to function in the world you have to pretend you're still a person, otherwise the world will luck you up and put a straightjacket on you because they're afraid of you. Everything carries on, learning a language, doing a job, playing an instrument, because it is an enjoyable process when done unconditionally for the sake of enjoyment.
"Tony just doesn't have a complete teaching" - like I've tried to tell you before, of course he doesn't have a complete teaching, because he isn't trying to teach you anything. A teaching is a series of steps that you are supposed to imply in your life so that you, in your belief that you are an individual, can achieve happiness or enlightenment or whatever, but it is futile because enlightenment is the realisation that you are not an individual. A teaching is self-perpetual, Tony doesn't teach
In-Dividual = Un-divided = non-dual - In Divi = In the divine. The word and concept of Individual is beeing missused and missunderstood (even by "individuals" who had a glimpse of it). The core and essence of the individual is undivided non-dual oneness - not seperation. Individuality is not to be confused with personality - Individuality is the "emptyness" there the personality happens in and comes out of - like the whole "universe" is happening in and coming out of the same "emptyness". And individuation is a process that can an will very likely lead towards the core, home into that "emptyness" or at least a glimpse of it. That´s why the denial or missunderstanding of Individuality is not helpfull and can even lead astray towards a denial of (the) One-Self.
Nothing needs to change in order to Be. You don't have to do anything in order to be. You don't have to know anything in order to be. You Are I Am Beingness is the Now.
So in that sense, yes he's a very poor teacher if you approach him expecting to be taught how to attain enlightenment. Nobody atains enlightenment because there is nobody there to attain or do anything. If one believes that it is possible to achieve enlightenment, then one is still trapped in the illusion of being a separate individual, therefore Parsons doesn't give a teaching, but is rather a communicator of this message that there is only life or being. It's not a riddle.
The experience that everything is as alive as "me" - no separation - the ego is gone, "I" am the grateful dead - can happen. But then you are pulled back into what you call the dream - why? To remain conscious (not in the dream) when finally the body gives up the ghost may require a persistent cultivation of "being" allowing a gradual transformation of a "system" (which is the experience of self) which tries to reinstate its autonomy - or you keep coming back. This is what I now understand.
This message is about unknowing but the so-called energy of the apparent wise ape is conditioned to be an individual has evolved with the false illusion that it needs to know everything. Once that seeking arrogance begins to drop away that allows for the natural reality of infinite being to open up.
This is the limitation of using language to describe life or being. It can't actually be done. For most people enlightenment is seen as a desired state of pure bliss and joy, but in reality it is dropping the illusion. Happiness might be more apparent, because it is the natural state, but it is just an emotion arising in the body out of this pure being, therefore this can't be "it" - and yet it is "it", the pure being, because everything arises out of this. I've contradicted myself yet again.
That's an opinion, and one that you're entitled to have of course. He doesn't have a valid teaching, because he isn't teaching you anything that you don't already know, he's just helping you drop the illusion that you are an individual. To me he is the one so-called "teacher" who has the strongest impact on me at the moment. People who get confused in his presense confuse themselves, not the other way around. Most other teachers linger too much on superficial things. But that's just my opinion.
"Who are you?" There is only life, pure being. If I walked around thinking I was somebody I would still be in the illusion that I am a separate entity. The reason all of this sounds so incomprehensible is because it IS utterly incomprehensible by the human mind. The words point to the truth, but the words themselves have no weight. If one lingers at the words without going further it seems like a total paradox. When talking about this one might say one thing which is then contradicted later.
We r all necessarily trapped & caught up in this dream of individual human life, tru freedom is DEATH, nobody has ever gotten it or ever will get this, so wat do u do? U do watevr u find urself doing. No individual has the the power/control or know-how to DO anything, further more, there is no individual in existence to DO anything. It's all a mechanical dream process. We R the Dream.
People listen to Tony then start talking like each other the way scientologists do. They say things like: "There is no Tony Parsons, there is no enlightenment and there's nothing to understand. There is only a dream that life is having and it's happening to no one." But what is the "you" that is no longer in the dream of being a separate person? Whatever that "you" is, it speaks English and stands up for Tony Parsons.
It's a shift in perception. That's all. We miss the point because we look for a point. The only difference between this and nihilism is a tone. Nihilism is "there's no point oh no I might as well kill myself" This is "there's no point im free I can do what i want haha!" The I is just an interpretation we put onto reality. And reality bears all interpretations. Unless you become as a small child you shall not enter the kingdom. It's play, purposeless play.
When I said I feel sorry for people who turn to Tony Parsons for understanding you asked why and what you have written since explains in perfect eloquence why I feel sorry for such people. In short, it is your belief there is nobody, only non-dual awareness. There is no individual person who knows anything, reports anything etc. On the contrary, it is the individual person which does the knowing, does the reporting, does the experiencing and does the doing.
How do you know individuality is an illusion? Who is reporting this knowledge that individuality is an illusion? Who or what thinks "individuality is an illusion"? And for whom is it an illusion? Why would you approach Tony Parsons for any other reason than the desire to "attain" enlightenment? And, "there is nothing to understand"? Curious to know what you think enlightenment is and who you, the reporter of it is if not an individual person.
Will check him out. That is also something I don't like about Parsons, the fact that he dismisses all other teachings as preposterous, while they actually say exactly the same thing in the end, just with different words. It was especially difficult for me to hear him affront other teachers that I am very fond of.
wow, it's the grand High Priest of FUTILITY himself, tony parsons ! if there's nothing to do, nothing to get and nobody to know it, why does he bother to open is mouth at all ? what's the sensible response to hearing his message? never to give him even one more second of your attention? after hearing it once, why do people STILL waste their time chasing his wonderful message of Futilty?
If you read all the comments here that should in itself be the answer to why comments are turned off. The message is crisp and clean. You/I put this video here to play hide and seek. I guess "we" are at the end of the road here. Nothing more to find. It's over. It's the greatest joke ever told.
I also am not trying to make you believe in what I'm saying either, I'm simply speaking my mind because it is enjoyable to speak about. Out of curiosity, what spiritual teachers do you like? Tolle says, there is only one consciousness, one life, and you are not your body or what your mind tells you that you are. You and me are one and the same being, and that is true love. I cannot not love you because you are the same as me. It's the same as what Parsons says basically.
Errol246 There is my one consciousness and yours, therefore TWO... and many others..... where is the oneness? and sameness? bullshit, stop bullshiting fella
I would like to find out if Tony gives his lectures/teachings anywhere in Canada, preferably in and around Toronto. Please, somebody, let me know how to meet Tony.
It is true, what you say is not incomprehensible to the mind. You say, knowledge is the opposite of ignorance. If by ignorance you mean lack of knowledge, then yes. When teachers talk about ignorance, they talk about the obliviousness to your true self as pure being. In other words, self-ignorance. What does it mean to you? After enlightenment, life goes on as it would have. The seeming personality continues to go on and acquires knowledge or skill ...
I don't know that individuality is an illusion, there is nobody there to know anything. Nobody is reporting anything, reporting just happens. Nobody thinks individuality is an illusion, it's just as it is. Nobody is approaching Tony for anything, Tony doesn't exist, and enlightenment doesn't exist, there is only dropping away of the illusion of individuality, and behind that there is pure being. In fact everything is pure being, every thought, experience, creature, insect arises out of this.
Some teachers would say that the sole purpose in life is to recognise yourself as everything and nothing. Parsons just says, there is no purpose, after liberation happens there is only life, trying to determine the meaning of life is just more food for the mind, and the mind cannot understand what true life is. This is what's incomprehensible, what you stated IS comprehensible. We are not talking about the same thing at all. Parsons doese explain what the individual is. You have to listen close.
Errol246 You have to pretend you are one with everything and space isn't nothing. When in fact this isn't true and you still a person to other individuals eyes
Ryan, the last thing u should worry about is wat other individuals r thinking or how they c u, We r all being controlled, we r the Dream, Bottom line is: If u didn't control ur own birth, if ur not controlling ur breath & heart beat, & neurons firing in ur brain. U didn't choose ur parents or siblings, or schools, neighborhood, friends, & teachers, then wat makes us think we r controlling anything else? I'll tell u wat it is: Thoughts, thoughts r naturally fleeting, but they don't want to die, so they become repetitive in order to live thru ur body-mind. When a thought is not judged as rt or wrong & not reacted to, it dies or leaves u, it mite com bak & u mite act on it or not. If ur meant to kill someone, it doesn't matter if u had a thought of it or not, the result will be u killing someone & whether u get away with it or not is not in ur control either.
You are mistaken in saying that it is my belief. It is not a belief. If I believed what I said I would still be in the dream that I am a separate person who has now received a teaching form a person, and that that teaching is now what I am supposed to believe in. That's religion. Of course it happens with spiritual teachers too, even though the teacher tries very hard not to impose beliefs on the recipient. It is simply a knowing or a realization, but there isn't a person knowing it, just life.
Individuals are convinced that they are not real.but what about the sense of me? As I feel (even if it's illusion) me. I want to see what is this me.whats wrong in such investigation?
Thank you for asking, I was once under the spell of Tony Parsons. I am now the student of James Schwartz who teaches classical vedanta which Parsons is quoted as calling rubbish. His website is shining world and that is where you go if you want to discover the huge gaps of understanding and fill them. If you are ready for this, it will finish you off.
Don't be put off by James' enlightenment quiz and his book title, "How to Attain Enlightenment". He is a great joker. He is part of a lineage that teaches classical by-the-book vedanta. So it isn't his own teaching. If you acquaint yourself sufficiently to get it (and it doesn't take long) you will see the limitations of all other teachings. That is a guarantee. I still like to listen to some of the old teachers. I will always love them but now I know what they're talking about.
Tony's followers are waiting for their self to drop away. This waiting is obviously never fulfilled. However All there is is pure being already and pure being is already the only identity. Pure being has never been made into anything else and so there is no need for anything to change or drop or energy to expand. Pure being has never been made into a separate self -obviously- and so why chase away a ghost that isn't real? Tony's message has the effect of making people believe that they have a problem (the illusory self) that needs fixing, by being exposed to the words "there is no one" ad nausea. This approach has a track record of not working for nearly everyone but the odd one or two. People have been going to see Tony for years and are finally waking up to the fact that it just doesn't work. They originally thought it was their own fault, that their little self was too stubborn to drop, but now more and more are seeing that Tony's message just doesn't work and they have stopped believing his hype that everybody who goes to him gets it. However it does have many vocal proponents who are able to ape its message intellectually in lieu of realisation.
NucklearFusion Your words imply that there is a dropping away of no-one. What does one then suggest to able the dropping away of no-one if this message perpetuates the search?
Zachary Scelso The search has already been perpetuated from long ago. We have been schooled in the search and it is what everyone does whether it is searching for enlightenment or money etc. Obviously one will know if something does work to ease the search by its results. Otherwise I wouldn't really say that it perpetuates the search it just doesn't ease it. I was just discussing with someone who has been searching all his life with some results but says he now listens to Tony and feels some benefit from it. I say if there is some benefit then great keep doing it. But then he said how frustrating it is how the self keeps coming back and that he sees there is nothing he can do and feels he can only wait for Grace to come back again (I have known this frustration for myself many times). And this is my criticism of Tony: if his message works for you then great but otherwise it will persuade you that there is nothing you can do and no one who can do it and then the only thing you can and will do is wait. And waiting is seeking and hoping and is very horrible and a waste of time when actually progress can be made instead little by little. If you ever have the opportunity then go to one of his meetings and you can see that most of the audience are waiting for the self to drop and hoping that by sitting there it will happen to them. Some go for years and still wait and hope. And Tony openly doesn't care about them because for him he is ok (because he isn't there) and he thinks that they aren't really people and so there is no suffering, so he doesn't care. For me I find the idea that something has to drop away or something has to change is dualistic and a barrier. Actually nothing needs to change because this is it already. The whole thing is here already, otherwise we would have to say "This is it" but only when the self has dropped and the energy has expanded. No! This Is It- As It Is already. Now the experience of life is that things are constantly appearing and disappearing, thoughts, emotions, objects, apparent separate selfs, people, places etc. Life is a constant flow of these appearances and these appearances are known. There is knowing of them. Realization is the seeing that everything is knowing always has been, always will be and is knowing right now. Nothing is stuck in this knowing it just comes, stays a bit and goes. We don't need to drop a self because it too arises, stays and passes of its own accord. Try holding the self in place, it can't be done. We don't say that trees have to drop or bagels have to drop because we don't label them as problem. But once you label the apparent separate self as the problem then you will have to deal with it. But when allowed to be as it is then it is no more of a problem than a bagel. But try dropping knowing or aliveness or being here and alive. You cannot drop this. This that you cannot drop is it. it is that simple. It isn't that you can't get it or you can't do anything to get it, it is that you cannot get away from it. When we relax and stop trying to get away from it then we see that what we were looking for was always fully present right now, we just didn't give it a chance. Now to be fair to Tony this is sort of what he is saying. The energy shift he talks of isn't something real that happens but it is more of a description of the difference between always focussing on things and phenomena as if they were real and separate from the knowing of them and as if they could harm us or profit us and this focusing is a narrowing, a tunnel vision and this is the claustrophobic suffering we experience. Then when we see that this is already it and we don't need to effort and try and instead we relax and drop the seeking the focus is expansive(it always was) (yes this is the dropping really and again to be fair to Tony is probably what he means). It takes some practice to relax and let go but what is noticed is that there is ease and relief in this. The ease and relief isn't really created but it is that we see that there always was ease and relief available, but when we are chasing a special experience or trying to drop the self then we don't notice it. It is to notice that really everything is ok even if our circumstances may not be what we wish for (let's face it they never will be). I hope this is useful. I apologise for the length.
NucklearFusion If Tony works for you then perfect. If after one year, 2 years, 5 years you are still waiting for the self to drop and the energy to shift then not so perfect. Why? Because even though there is no cause and effect still going from being caught up in the self and appearances to being open and free is gradual, as Tony himself agrees. And in my experience there is no end to the opening up and the marvel of life, it continues to get more and more awesome. And so one really needs to make a start and know what Being is otherwise the years spent in waiting are dead years. Any practice will serve you better for 5 years than 5 years of no results. The consolation prize that at least you are faithful to the message that there is no one who can do anything about it is the booby prize.
I think if you hear Tony’s message in the mind, you will be mislead. He himself says, the words point to something beyond the words. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, my Guru, says that the knowledge that everything is God is a perspective that has to be shared appropriately, to someone whose search has already gone very deep - and that the knowledge of Advaita can be misused to suit your own fancies and justify whatever you’re doing. But if this is heard when everything else has failed, all permutations and combinations of strategies, practices, and knowledge have been exhausted, there’s an energetic let-go of that strain. Then, all that knowledge is reawakened and implemented in the forthcoming relaxation. But even still there’s danger of misusing it!
NucklearFusion also Tony himself talks about a “readiness” to hear the message, and that “being here isn’t necessarily better than being anywhere else in terms of ‘This’ “ in his Napa talk on RU-vid (part 2 I think). He had to toe his line almost absolutely, but also mentions on his website that we’re responsible for implementing this perspective intelligently (rather the mind is, which he’s speaking to, but he would say there’s no one behind the mind!) The Guru Gita mentions Gurus like Tony as a certain class, who say everything is nothing, but an alert, responsible person would consider him a part of the whole tapestry of perspectives that describe the enlightened perspective and how to reach it. Or if you (“you”) can hear this with devotion, faith (born of either that devotion or clarity/understanding) and resonance, then alertness, responsibility, and the person will drop away, and “you” will know it has worked because things do start happening better and more beautifully
What Parsons doesn't explain is what this individual person is. It exists on the very same order of reality that a tree exists or a house. Self-ignorance which is the sole cause of suffering is located in the individual person. Pure awareness which is YOU has no need for knowledge but the individual person does because knowledge is the only thing opposed to ignorance. This is NOT incomprehensible to the mind. Tony just doesn't have a complete teaching.
There's no such thing as a "complete teaching" or a "separate individual" to teach it, it gets real slippery as soon as the thoughts express itself thru the body-mind because we all have the fundamental false idea that we r separate individuals with free choice, but it's all one-ness, or Nothing-ness appearing as multiplicity, but the concept of multiplicity IS the Dream & there's no way of getting out of the dream, until the energy of One-ness happens to floats through ur body-mind mechanism, then seeing this happens, but it changes nothing, ur still trapped in the dream of individualism, but now u c the big picture because that's wat happened with u. We r wats being dreamed, we hav no control, power or say so about anything, it only appears we do, there's no cause & effect or relationships with anything. We're all just a bunch of barking dream objects, puppets, & Nothing-ness (wat most call god) is the puppet master. It's interesting, we have no way of knowing or understanding anything 4 real, it's all hopeless, we r helpless, even more, there is no U or Me- we really DO NOT EXIST!
You have a thought which by adding emotion to it pretends to actually exist as it describes- reified , and be a permanent existence. By watching from the backdrop of space between thought and emotions the fact that they are just an impermanent dream of symbols(labels) with emotional 'music' will be noticed.
Parsons talks in riddles because he doesn't have a valid teaching. He ends up confusing people except for the very very few who are qualified to grasp what he's saying. Being enlightened doesn't qualify a person to teach. He is a poor teacher, one of the very worst I've seen actually.
