Nonduality

We have freed ourselves and others from spiritual bondage in which teachers, masters, gurus would like to keep us all our lives

Freeing the Activists

Jerry Katz

I need to make clear that the nondual activism I'm talking about, if it's worth its nondual salt, stands for or against nothing. One asks, How can one be an activist and be for or against nothing in particular.

I ask you Gloria, and all who have helped to create the Nonduality Salon, HarshaSatsangh and other internet communities, to look at exactly what you -- what we -- have done. We have brought about change. We moved from a condition of limited freedom to one of greater freedom. We have set people free from the shackles of their teachers and their doubts. We have shown people how to lead, how to stand alone, how to stand free, how to speak with authority, how to shovel away every particle posing as Truth in order to see what is neither Truth nor the absence of Truth. We have stood scientists and the unemployable in the same circle with Ramana and Jesus. We have shown that communities can be built and sustained without the presence of any one individual who everybody thinks is spiritually a cut above everyone else. We have freed ourselves and others from spiritual bondage in which teachers, masters, gurus would like to keep us all our lives.

What I describe above sounds an awful lot like activism. Yes, that's what I'm saying. If any of you feel you have contributed to the reality of these communities, you are an activist. An activist is one who is aggressive in the name of a cause. I don't know if any of those responsible for these communities has ever seen him- or herself as aggressive in the name of a cause, but please look again at all you have done and said over the last two or so years. I dare say we are abounding in activists.

Yet what kind of activist are we? The handful, Gloria included, who broke away from the Kundalini list, can taste the activist nature of what we did. We were activists. That was an aggressive act in the name of a cause. The cause was freedom of expression and the development of a community which could share freedom of expression. None of us ever stopped to think of our acts as activists. But they were.

Therefore, I suggest that the purest activism knows not itself; it is simply an act toward freedom. It is not the wish to help the ecology. In my activism it doesn't matter if one is growing forests or burning them down. That's how radical my activism is. (In time it will turn into Nondual Terrorism, but one piece of insanity at a time.) (No, it is not a terrorism of physical violence, but of violence to cherished nondual adherences, and the 'violence' will be carried out by artists and film makers.)

In my nondual activism I will be looking for something. At first I'll be listing nondual activists who keep a high profile. I'll be talking about the esoteric side of activism. I'll be encouraging people to be open to movements of greater freedom. I'll be defining and re-defining activism and nondual activism. I'll be laying a foundation for a new kind of activism. I am an activist's activist for I will free the activists. No longer will they require a cause! This is an amazing thing. It is truly nondual activism.