Writings

Writings by Josan.

The freedom of not knowing

Knowledge names things, makes distinctions and reveals connections. Yet any insight can become a boundary as soon as it is treated as final. What is already known then determines what can still be seen at all.

Certainty gives us something to hold on to. At the same time, it can bind us to an answer whose validity is no longer examined. The answer remains; the question that gave rise to it falls silent.

Not knowing means neither ignorance nor giving up on understanding. It means acknowledging that no answer exhausts its subject. Something can be understood without the matter being closed.

This openness does not mean that anything goes. A claim does not become true simply because certainty is absent. Reasons still carry weight, and experience still matters. Yet even a well-founded conviction remains open to questioning.

The freedom of not knowing lies in not having to possess a final answer. An open question need be neither answered too quickly nor declared unanswerable. It can remain and lead thought beyond its familiar boundaries.

Understanding does not lose its value through this. It loses its finality.

… because reality IS.

Reality does not wait to be understood. It is neither in some hidden corner of the intellect nor in a future moment when everything will finally be known.

We try to approach it through thought. Yet this very attempt already takes place within it. Even the thought of being separate from it is not outside its presence.

It can go unnoticed while our attention is absorbed in thought. This does not mean that thinking has to disappear. A thought does not obscure reality simply by being there. It is itself part of what appears.

But thoughts can come to be taken as complete accounts of our own being. A memory becomes “my story”, a conviction “my truth”, a judgement “This is who I am”. What is thought then seems to determine who is here.

Yet thoughts know nothing of themselves. Even the thought “I” is perceived. It can name our own being, but naming it is not in itself knowing it.

A question opens here: who is aware of all this?

Another description may offer an answer. Yet that answer, too, appears as a thought. The question reaches deeper than the image thought creates of who we are.

Self-inquiry therefore does not ask us to fight against thinking. It asks us to stay with the question and turn our attention towards our own being. Towards more than what we know about ourselves: towards that which is aware even of this knowledge.

Stillness can arise without being forced. Thoughts can be there without every one of them having to be followed or held on to as a statement about our own nature.

Reality does not begin where thinking ends. No thought brings it into being; no thought abolishes it.

Even the search for it is already possible within it.

… because reality IS.

For clarity

“Reality” is used here in a spiritual sense to mean what is fundamentally present: that which does not first come into being through an idea and does not cease to be when the idea disappears. The question concerns the ground of existence and, at the same time, our own being.

It touches human life directly. What we take to be “I” helps determine what seems threatened, what has to be defended and what our hopes attach themselves to. If our being is equated entirely with changing thoughts, experiences and self-images, it seems to stand or fall with them. Self-inquiry asks whether this already says everything about what a human being is.

This inquiry has a long history. Greek philosophy explored being, appearance and change. The Indian Upanishads contain questions about the Self and the ground of existence. Ātman names the Self, and Brahman the fundamental reality. In Advaita, they are understood as essentially undivided; other schools interpret their relationship differently. These terms are not simply names for personal deities. They belong to different attempts to understand existence.

Such traditions can offer guidance. Yet our own inquiry requires neither adopting them nor believing in gods. A guru, membership of a tradition, religious symbols and rituals are not prerequisites either. This does not deny the value they may have for individual people.

Nor is any particular meditation practice prescribed. But this does not mean that self-inquiry happens without attention and depth. It calls for concentration, composure and a willingness to stay with our experience rather than immediately judge it or turn away from it.

A quiet, natural setting can greatly support this turning of attention. A peaceful room, few distractions and enough time make it easier to find inner quiet and turn towards our own depth. Outer silence cannot do this for us. It gives it room.

Yet calm is not a state that must be perfectly attained before self-inquiry can begin. Restlessness, doubt and thoughts can also be noticed. What matters is a willingness to attend to them without becoming lost in every movement they make.

Spirituality here means this direct inquiry into our own being. Concepts can make it easier to understand, and philosophical reflections can encourage it. They cannot replace our own turning towards it.

The word “spirituality” is used on this website to help us communicate. Here it names a turning towards our own being and its direct exploration. This possibility does not depend on any particular name.

The same is true of “meditation”. Here it means gathering our attention, resting quietly and attending more deeply—not a prescribed technique or a promise that we can acquire a special state.

Where such words become associated mainly with products, methods and promises of success, their simplicity can be lost from view: the possibility of turning directly towards our own experience. This website seeks to offer room for that.

Change IS reality.

What seems fixed does not remain unchanged. Every form exists under certain conditions, changes and passes away. Yet it is often precisely what is lasting, tangible and measurable that is taken to be truly real. Change then seems like something that happens to things afterwards.

But is there any thing that first exists entirely on its own and only then enters into change?

It is not that fully formed things begin to change. Within continual change, forms emerge, remain for a time and dissolve again.

A human being, too, is not a self-contained object within this. The body, sensations, thoughts and self-images change. To fix our being to any one of these forms would be to make a single moment the final measure.

What is being described here is an experience, not just a philosophical idea: change and that which makes it possible are not separate. The ground of existence is not behind appearances. It is inherent in them, yet is exhausted by none of them.

“Prior” therefore does not mean earlier in time. It points to what is always present, without which neither appearance nor disappearance, neither being nor non-being, would be possible.

This is where the meaning of the divine lies for me. Not a being alongside other beings, nor a power outside existence. What I mean is that reality from which nothing can be separate.

Even as a teenager, I once said in a conversation: “Whether God exists or not amounts to the same thing.” I did not mean that the question was meaningless. I meant that neither affirming nor denying God reaches beyond this reality. Both are already possible within it.

This reality does not depend on whether a concept survives. Rather, every concept loses its claim to encompass it completely—including the concept “God”.

This is what I mean by the truly divine.

Between boundaries

We live at the boundary between what we think and what we are.

Between the mind as we conceive it—and the space.

In which everything happens and appears.

Consciousness is gathered in the head, as though concentrated there. This is the ordinary human condition.

It therefore follows the mind as we conceive it almost without question. And this conceived mind creates a personal identity: an invented life, an invented death.

There is another possibility.

Consciousness does not need this personalisation. In its nature, in its essence, it is free of concepts, images and time. It is freedom itself.

Consciousness can become aware of its own nature—of its essence, of itself.

Because this nature is formless, it can permeate the boundaries of the intellect and become fully aware of itself again.

But why can we say that it is formless?

This is precisely where living experience begins. It has to be experienced.

As this formlessness, consciousness permeates every appearance and experiences itself as free of all appearances—not because they disappear, but because they do not touch its freedom.

Free consciousness.

Not free of thoughts.
Not free because there are no thoughts left.

But free in its nature—whether thoughts appear or not.

For clarity

Freedom of consciousness does not mean: “I am free.”

It means that consciousness is not bound to the “I” that arises in thought. This “I”, too—with its wishes, intentions and ideas—appears in consciousness. It does not determine its nature.

Freedom therefore does not belong to a person who attains or possesses it. It lies in the nature of consciousness itself.

Thoughts and desires can continue to appear. Personal life does not have to disappear. Yet consciousness is not exhausted by what is thought and experienced as “I”.

This is the crucial distinction: not the freedom of the “I”, but the freedom of consciousness from the “I”.

Amplitud Viva

Through Amplitud Viva (Living Vastness), Josan opens a space for people to come together and explore fundamental questions about life, consciousness and their own being.

At its heart are shared conversation, stillness and direct experience. Questions can be explored and apparent certainties questioned without this having to become a new teaching or belief system.

The aim is not to adopt ready-made answers. Different philosophical, spiritual and religious traditions can offer inspiration and guidance, but what matters is what can actually be recognised and examined in our own experience.

The beauty and depth of these traditions lie not only in their forms or what has been passed down. They also point to the people who brought them into being, lived them and explored them afresh.

The meetings are for people who want to make time for this, whether or not they are already familiar with meditation, philosophy or spirituality.

What is real?

Question: You speak of our underlying nature. What do you mean by that?

Josan: We experience the world, think and feel. We know a great deal about ourselves—and can still ask: am I really what I know about myself?

By our underlying nature, I mean what we already are before describing ourselves through our history, qualities, experiences and ideas about ourselves.

All this belongs to our human life and shapes our personal identity. But does it already answer the question of what we are—or, more directly still: who am I, really?

Question: But how can I tell whether what I think about myself is really true?

Josan: First, I want to stress that a question as deep as this should not be treated superficially—by you or by me. It touches on an age-old problem and calls for a distinction that can ultimately become truly clear only through deep personal experience. The kind of questioning we are practising in this conversation can help us approach it, but we cannot simply think our way to a solution.

Still, I would like to offer you something to take with you.

Even in ordinary experience, you can distinguish between what you think about yourself and what you already are. Someone might say: “I am in a good mood.” Someone else says: “I am generally a cheerful person.” These are not the same. One describes a passing state; the other something a person experiences as an existing quality of their own.

What you think about yourself may describe many things accurately: your history, your character, your experiences or the way you experience yourself in the world. But none of this yet answers the question of what you are.

You cannot get to the heart of this question through thought alone. It calls for another kind of depth—a direct inquiry into your own being.

When you say: my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences—you can ask: who or what is this “my”? But this question, too, should not remain something you merely think about in your head.

For a moment, do not try to find an answer.

Be still, deep, spacious.

The answer does not have to appear as a thought, be heard in your head or even arise as a feeling. There does not have to be an answer at all.

In this way, you can explore for yourself whether what you have taken yourself to be until now can really be the whole of what you are.

Question: What changes through this?

Josan: Outwardly, nothing has to change at first. Thoughts and feelings are still there. But they no longer have to determine what we take ourselves to be.

A freedom can open here, a spaciousness in which the personal still has its place without having to determine everything.

Question: Do thoughts have to disappear for this to happen?

Josan: No. Thinking is not an obstacle in itself. Things become confined when we confuse its contents with ourselves. Thoughts and feelings, too, can be experienced freely.

Question: You speak of peace. Is that not simply a feeling that passes again?

Josan: A peaceful feeling comes and goes. The peace I am speaking of does not depend on how the moment happens to feel.

Question: And what is that like in the middle of a conflict—for you, too?

Josan: Sometimes it is difficult, just as it is for anyone else. But if you want to know what this freedom means, comparing yourself with me will not help. You can explore it only in your own experience.

Question: How does this search begin?

Josan: Just as it is beginning now. You are right in the middle of it.

Question: And how can I tell that this Self is not just another idea arising from my experiences?

Josan: Now we have reached the real question.

For the word “Self”, too, can become another idea if we believe that knowing the term means we have already understood what it points to.

How deeply someone explores this question is up to them. I do not want to say any more about it at this moment.

Where is spaciousness at home?

What do we actually know?

We can describe how something happens, recognise connections and keep refining our knowledge. Yet knowing how something happens does not necessarily mean knowing what it is.

So what do we really know—and what do we already believe we know?

An explanation can be correct without encompassing the whole. Explanations become knowledge, knowledge becomes certainty, and sometimes we stop asking as soon as an answer seems convincing enough.

Certainty

Questioning does not mean doubting everything. Even a certainty can be examined without losing its value.

The point is not to reject knowledge, but to keep open the question of whether what we know is already what we believe we know. An answer can take us further, but it can also close a question that has by no means been fully explored.

Not knowing

There are moments when not knowing does not mean being lost. We are used to looking from within what we already know.

What happens if, for a moment, we take none of what we believe we know for granted? Not to reject what is familiar, but to see without immediately having to find an answer.

What remains?

What remains when we take nothing for granted? Not as a thought experiment, but directly.

What is here now, before we name it or decide what it means?

This question does not need an immediate answer. It can remain open.

Spaciousness

Spaciousness does not mean that thoughts, feelings or our humanity have to disappear. The confinement does not necessarily lie in what appears, but in how unfreely it is experienced.

Nothing has to go. What is here can be released and experienced freely.

Meditation

Spaciousness is not the result of meditation, nor does meditation produce it.

It should be clear what meditation means here: not accumulating something, reaching a goal or eventually becoming someone else through practice.

In fact, it is a movement in the opposite direction: not having to produce or add anything, and not seeking to get somewhere else first. Meditation can then become a space in which we meet what already is.

Where is spaciousness at home?

Living spaciousness is at home wherever it is lived—in you. It is what remains when everything else can be released and experienced freely.

It is the ground of your meditation.

Where is living spaciousness at home?

Always here.

The true Self

The idea of the true Self appears in different contexts. Spirituality, religion and philosophy use and describe it in different ways.

When the true Self is spoken of here, it does not mean the personal “I” that develops over a lifetime and is shaped by experiences, upbringing, culture and ideas about ourselves.

This does not make the personal “I” meaningless. It carries its own history, its conditioning and its individual form.

We could analyse this “I”, take it apart and explain it in ever greater detail. But in doing so, we might simply place it at the centre once again.

Almost as some religions have focused so much attention on the devil that he eventually seems to lurk around every corner.

That is not what this is about. Let us turn instead towards what already is, before all of this is added.

Before any thought, before any idea about yourself, before anything you know about yourself, you must already be.

You must be before you can think.
You must be before you can describe yourself.
You must be before you can say: I am this person or that.

And what is true of a human being on a small scale leads to the same question on a larger scale:

What is the Self of this whole?

What is, before anything else is?
Before space is?
Before time is?
Before anything appears that we call world, life, human being or universe?

But what if we do not even take space and time for granted?

Here we touch on what different spiritual traditions point towards with the word Self, and what Ramana Maharshi also spoke of.

The Self is not an object.

It is not something standing opposite something else.

But neither is it nothing.

For nothingness, too, is not the final word.

The Self is not confined to space and time. And yet it is as space and as time, in space and in time—and also where space and time can no longer be assumed.

There is nothing—nothing at all—that could stand outside this Self.

Ultimately, the Self cannot be explained.

Any explanation would already reduce it to what can be said about it.

Even the word “Self” is a concept of our mind. It is not what it points to.

What is called Self here therefore cannot be captured by a definition.

Anyone wishing to come closer to this mystery will have to explore it for themselves.

Self-inquiry

The Self is not my Self. It is the only Self.

There is not my true Self here and yours over there.

There is THE SELF.

And nothing that appears stands outside it.

What we call “I” in everyday life is the idea of a separate, autonomous being.

I think.
I decide.
I act.
I did that.
I know that.
I can do that.

Here, too, we encounter the difficulty of our concepts.

“I”, “Self” and “God” are words. None of these words is what it points to.

What is called THE SELF here could also be called God—provided this does not mean a higher being outside us.

In Hinduism, too, we encounter understandings of God that differ fundamentally from the idea, widespread in the West, of a God separate from the world.

So when God is spoken of here, it does not mean a being alongside other beings.

What is meant is THE ONE.

Nothing stands opposite this One.

Where could such a separation take place?

You cannot separate water from ice. Ice is water.

And you cannot take a wave out of the sea and set it before you as something independent.

The wave does not exist independently of the sea. It is the sea in motion.

Just as the wind is not waiting somewhere until it starts to blow. Wind is the blowing itself.

Our language readily turns appearances into separate things. We give them a name—wave, wind, I—and the impression can arise that something independently existing must stand behind that name.

But a name does not create an independent existence.

The “I”, too, can become something whose existence we take for granted in this way, without asking what the word actually points to.

And you cannot even separate yourself from your own breath.

You can say:

My breath.

But how independent is this “my”?

Take the breath away, and the one who was just claiming to possess it very soon disappears as well.

What is our own is not separate.

Our own Self is not a private Self.

Awakening

Who awakens?

The “I” cannot awaken. For the “I” is not an independent being that could awaken.

Nor is there a second, individual Self hidden behind this “I” that awakens at some point.

There are not billions of little true Selves, one of which awakens while another is still asleep.

There is THE SELF.

What, then, does it mean to speak of the Self awakening?

The Self itself has never changed.

The capacities of human consciousness allow us to look at ourselves, think about ourselves and relate experiences to ourselves.

This is precisely what makes identity possible.

And here we need to be more precise.

Up to this point, I too have repeatedly spoken of the “I” as though it named something independent. This reflects our ordinary language and helps us understand initially what is being discussed.

Yet this very language can solidify something whose independence we had actually wanted to examine.

We say:

My mind.
My consciousness.
My body.
My thoughts.
My life.

But who is this “my”?

Even when we say “the I wants”, “the I thinks” or “the I takes itself to be something”, we have already granted the “I” an independence of its own.

But the “I” does not declare:

I am I.

The human being says:

I am I.

This is a crucial distinction.

There is not an independent “I” somewhere within us that thinks, wants and decides, and then also identifies with itself.

This does not mean, however, that thinking, remembering, reacting or deciding cannot develop a momentum of their own.

Thoughts can arise and continue without our having consciously produced them. Habits can be active without our having chosen them at that moment. Even thinking we do not want can continue.

Yet this momentum does not in itself imply an independent, conscious “I” standing behind these processes and carrying them out.

Rather, what we call “I” has become so deeply taken for granted that almost everything is related to it: my experience, my thoughts, my history, my decisions, my body, my life.

Here we see the power of conditioning.

What is repeatedly referred back to this single point of reference can eventually seem so self-evident that its reality is no longer questioned.

We must therefore be careful not to grant the “I”, through our language alone, the very independence whose reality we are examining.

The illusion is not that a genuinely existing “I” somehow needs to be eliminated.

The illusion lies in the independence we attribute to it.

Within human consciousness, this “I” can become an object of identification.

A person identifies with it and eventually takes it to be what they themselves are.

They can free themselves from this identification.

Not because an “I” disappears in the process.

But because it becomes clear that this supposedly independent “I” was never what it was taken to be.

Awakening therefore does not mean that the “I” disappears and the true Self takes its place.

It means the release of consciousness from identification with this “I”.

What remains was never absent.

THE SELF.

It is THE SELF that appears as a human being, as life and as consciousness.

Yet its appearances do not stand opposite it.

Appearance is not separate from the Self. It is the Self appearing.

Nothing that appears can stand outside what is called THE SELF here.

When identification with the supposedly independent “I” falls away, “you” no longer exist in the way you previously took yourself to exist.

And yet everything continues to be experienced through YOU.

Outwardly, everything may seem completely unchanged.

But for you, nothing is the same any more.

What happened?

Here I can no longer speak theoretically or by way of explanation. Here I have to share the experience itself as directly as possible.

The sky opened.

And I do not mean that only figuratively.

Space came alive.

It was no longer an empty place in which things are put and life unfolds.

It was itself alive.

Something utterly intrinsic, eternal, was there.

Soham?
The I-am?
Nothingness?
That which eternally prevails?

It cannot be done.

It cannot be put into words.

And then my mind became still.

A seemingly endless stillness I had known nothing of until then.

Still, as perhaps only an unborn star could experience.

Still as the deepest waters.

Still as life itself, as though even sounds were held within this stillness.

And at the same time, free.

Full of confidence.

Full of knowing.

And nothing that needed to be known.

What I did not know before

Much of what I say and write today, I did not know before this event.

The questions and themes explored here were not unfamiliar to me. They had been with me for a long time.

But I could not previously have drawn from this well that has been present to me ever since.

This well was entirely unknown to me.

And when this experience happened, there was no one with whom I could really make sense of it or unravel it.

Years of profound doubt followed.

Not because the experience had not been powerful enough.

But because an experience does not automatically come with its own explanation.

What was that?
What in it is experience?
What in it is interpretation?
What am I adding to it myself?
What can I really say?

I had to put it to the test.

Yet throughout all those years, the experience itself never left me.

Doubts arose. Pain, despair and ever more questions could enter into it. But what had opened in that experience remained present.

It remained present as an enduring awareness.

Not as a memory of something that had once happened, but as something that could no longer be separated from my life.

Today I also understand what has remained present in it.

It is not something that was added to life.

It is life itself.

It is the nature of what is alive, the nature of space, something always present that does not itself become changeable through changing experiences.

You cannot think it away.

But neither can you think it into being.

No one can produce it through a thought or a wish.

And that is precisely why I do not have to pretend today that I do not know what I experienced just to remain open.

Openness does not mean uncertainty.

A certainty can be questioned without having to become a conjecture.

Questioning does not take the experience away from me.

And the experience does not take away my freedom to examine everything that has been said again.

Much of what I say today, I did not know before.

It is not first thought out and then put into words.

For me, this is an essential difference between wisdom and ordinary thinking.

It does not announce itself.
It is not thought out beforehand.
It is there.

Sometimes I encounter what I am saying only in the very moment it is being said.

That is why what I say is not an invitation to believe.

I can say:

This is what I experienced.
This is what I recognise in it.
This is what I am speaking of.

And all of it can be questioned.

More than that:

You can look for yourself.

Not a hair’s breadth

When Meister Eckhart says:

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me”,

this means something very simple to me, and at the same time something almost impossible to express:

Not a hair’s breadth of separation.

Not me here and God there.

Not my consciousness with another, greater consciousness behind it.

Not my Self and the Self.

Not the One with the many things beside it.

For the many do not stand opposite the One.

They were never separate from it.

This is what the idea of the true Self points to for me.

---

Perhaps the star is being born now.
It will take its course,
and a long tail will follow it.

And full of joy it will sink back
into the same stillness
from which it …

IS.

Where understanding truly begins

When a person manages to look beyond their familiar perception of themselves and the world, a reality may open to them in which all distinctions seem to dissolve.

No here or there, no before or after, no movement leading anywhere. And yet That is not simply Nothing.

In such a vision or experience, the certainty may arise that everything is one and the same being, which neither begins here nor ends there, but permeates everything.

But to say that this being has always existed and always is—might that, under certain circumstances, seem evident to the person experiencing it?

Yet how easily we can be dazzled by such a moment! The immediacy of an insight can be so overwhelming that we barely distinguish between what actually revealed itself and what has been inferred from it.

It is possible to recognise that it is the same being in every direction, and even that there are no directions separate from one another.

But does that allow us to bear witness to what was before this insight?

Looking into the past from the present is not the same as knowing the past itself.

Perhaps this is precisely where a misunderstanding runs through many philosophical and mystical explanations.

The experience of the timeless becomes a claim about eternity.

Yet eternal, in this context, does not necessarily mean lasting for an infinite length of time.

Eternal is simply a name for timeless.

When a person manages to look into this One, this spaciousness, this prevailing non-existence, they themselves have become the factor of time, permeated by the same Self. Consciousness experiences its own creation and passing away without any movement taking place within it.

An eternal vision. But eternal only because time no longer has any meaning within it.

Now we might ask who perceives the arising and passing of consciousness. Who remains when consciousness passes away? Is it God? The true Self? An all-encompassing consciousness?

Such answers are quickly found. And perhaps that is precisely why they deserve particular care.

The words of Jesus come to mind: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

We can explore what he meant. But his words need not serve to explain something that eludes our explanation.

I know only this: when It is, I am not. Not here, not there, not nowhere.

I return as I and know of it. But when it is, I am not.

There is a peculiar contradiction here. The “I” can speak of it afterwards, but cannot testify to having been present as “I” while it was happening. And yet something remains that cannot simply be dismissed as imagination.

Does the return to consciousness first bring the memory into being? Does it give meaning to what was experienced, or is something entirely different happening here …?

The real consequence of such an insight might lie in attributing no more to it than it itself allows us to recognise.

But what if a person were able not only to look into this One, but to be this One themselves? Not for a moment, not within an experience, nor for a certain length of time, but as this very Self.

Then the person no longer experiences their true Self, but is it. Their true nature is no longer the object of an insight. It is their own being.

There is neither time nor timelessness. Space, the body and all appearances are no longer something that stands apart from a Self. Everything is this one Self, in which no separation, no boundary, no beginning, no direction and no end can be discerned. No “I” shares in the experience. The Self is itself the one experiencing.

If a person has entered this divine kingdom, then, as a human being, they have become being and, as an “I”, have ceased to be.

And if this is not merely a passing experience, but being that has irrevocably become aware of itself, then all dreaming, all suffering and all doubts about their true nature are uprooted. Not because the person has found a final answer to which they must now cling, but because what seemed to separate them from their own nature no longer exists.

When a person truly is this, then and only then is it accomplished once and for all. Everything seems to have found its place anew. The dream of separation is over.

Only now can we speak of what it truly means to be human. For the body alone does not make us what we are in truth. Nor can reason, or even wisdom, accomplish what this innermost Self can. Only in this divine working is the human being’s true meaning revealed.

No wonder a person suffers so deeply in their supposed separation. To live in separation while sensing one’s own true nature must bring forth pain. For what they seek is not foreign to them. It is what they themselves are.