Would you do it?

I recently had an interesting conversation with a really lovely and open-minded neuroscientist who had read my book. He considered himself a seeker and had spent a lot of time with non-duality teachers. 

We were discussing the challenges that would be involved in setting up a neuroscience experiment to test the theory that liberation involved, or might even be invoked via, the neural mechanism of Memory Reconsolidation (as proposed in my book).

I suggested that even if we could set up a way to reliably, and safely, erase the assumption of separation, the biggest issue would be finding participants who actually wanted to go ahead with the procedure. The neuroscientist was taken aback, “Why would that be a problem? Surely lots of people are seeking for just that?” he asked.

“Well” I said “ Would you want to do it?”.  With some surprise he realised that he didn’t think he would: “I feel like my family need to be a priority at the moment and I wouldn’t want to not have control over being there for them”. 

I wonder how many seekers actually feel like this. However much we are told that liberation is simply the end of an illusion which was never true anyway, there often seems to be a primal fear of losing something really important. In the neuroscientist’s case it seemed to be the (illusory) sense of control. For others it might be the (illusory) sense of existence. Even though there appear to be large numbers of people interested in non-duality, it is possible that most of them would prefer to wait until tomorrow to realise the simple, ordinary truth that life isn’t personal (and never has been).