Tom: Some people say that with liberation there is no difference, no actual change that happens, that there is no difference between ‘someone’ who is liberated and ‘someone’ who isn’t. (I have put ‘someone’ in quotes as with liberation the very notion of a separate ‘someone’ who can attain liberation is itself dissolved, as we shall see below)

Here is an examples of something I recently saw on Facebook. It was a post from someone who I presume is a a non-duality teacher, followed by someone elses reflections on that post. I then gave my 2 cents on the end, which I hope provide some clarity. What do you think?

Question: So, there’s no difference between someone who’s heard about non-duality and someone who has not?

Response from the non-duality teacher: There’s no difference. Every human, every animal, every tree is the same aliveness. Not one is more than another. Not one knows something more than another. There’s an appearance of knowing something, like how computers work or science is. This, is the freedom from needing to know what freedom is. Sitting here saying that it’s all freedom is not knowledge; it’s not something in the brain that knows that it’s knowledge, it’s obvious. It’s what is happening. When you see water, you don’t have to know that its water, it’s obvious. It’s not coming out of a stream of time. Because you can’t find where it appears from.

Someone else then wrote their reflection on the above as follows:

The idea that people who speak about nonduality possess some rare understanding unknown to the average person is a great myth. This message is not about someone who gains some special insight, knowledge, or awareness. It is not about some heretofore hidden sense or perception that becomes switched on to reveal a penetrating understanding of reality that others seek their whole lives to find.Rather, this is simply, as X says, “the freedom from needing to know what freedom is.” This aliveness is no more alive in any appearance; nothing is higher or lower, more or less evolved, for nothing is separate. The wondrous impossibility of understanding replaces the quest for answers, and yet even seeking is simply this, only life happening just as it appears, any way at all.

I (Tom) then made some comments on the above as follows:

1) Isn’t the difference that in freedom there is a falling away of the ingrained belief that ‘I am a separate limited person’? So there is a change, and that change is the falling away/dissolving of a false-limited belief that causes suffering? If so, then there is a difference! It’s just that this difference is not new knowledge or something new to obtain, but the removal of false knowledge/false beliefs and illusions (ie. removal of ignorance).

2) Note, contrary to the above, many people already do not care to know what freedom is, so they are ‘free from needing to know what freedom is’ already! But that is not liberation per se. Because ‘they’ have the (false & suffering-causing) belief ‘I am a limited body-mind entity’, they suffer accordingly.

So, that’s my view. What do you think? Have I got it right, or is there more to it?

Here is what could be a very useful video – it explains why some teachings work, meaning it explains why some teachings are more effective at bringing about a lasting realisation, and why some don’t: