Perpetuum immobile

Yesterday I went to a session of the dutch Advaita Vedanta 'missionary' Jan van Delden at Haarlem Central Station. He uses a whole set of attributes to deliver his message in a very funny and visual way. I have attended more Advaita sessions from other teachers, but this guy is also a great stand-up comedian. Check him out if you have the chance!

Basically Advaita tells you that permanent happiness cannot be found 'out there'. Nothing in the world will make you happy forever, period. The cause of our unhappiness lies in the fact that we identify with our thoughts. We think we are our thoughts. We think there is an entity in our head that is controlling our life, and we call it 'I'. Jan uses the metaphor of our thoughts as a scrolling text display that is claiming out attention all the time.


LED Text Generator

Advaita invites you to enquire into this assumption that has never been doubted before. In the end you will find out that you are not your thoughts and feelings but the observer of these thoughts and feelings. We are watching the messages on the text display, we are not creating thoughts and feelings.

We can speak of a First Cause behind everything. Some people call it consciousness or awareness. It is the stage for all good and bad things to happen. Without the First Cause there is nothing. This First Cause is not affected by the things happening, like space cannot be 'damaged' by its content. We are that First Cause, not the content. Our general assumption that we are that entity behind our eyeballs is just plain wrong. This First Cause is indestructible and timeless and therefore I came up with the term "perpetuum immobile".