Hiding in the Observer
Watching suffering is not the same as removing what produces it.
To see the world as it is and become free of suffering, it is not enough to sit there saying, “I can see the suffering within me.”
What has that accomplished?
The suffering was there, and it is still there. You have learned to observe it—and perhaps to regard observation as a great spiritual achievement.
I see this as an old tradition of hypnosis, associated with Indian spiritual schools and now spread around the world. Instead of removing what torments you, you are invited to hide from it in the position of an observer.
Like a turtle withdrawing into its shell, you retreat from a frightening world.
But what makes the world frightening is not simply the world. It is the internal hypnosis: anxiety, low mood, fear, shame, and the other states through which you perceive it.
Instead of eliminating the source of the terror, you retreat farther into yourself and call it awakening. The effect lasts to the extent that you can avoid contact with ordinary reality.
Here is your actual life. And over there is the internal fantasy where you are “nondual,” where there is only “I am,” no separate self, and no one doing anything.
In my account, that is a deeper hypnotic shell. It gives you somewhere to hide from life while treating the hiding as an accomplishment.
People who have never heard of enlightenment often give the same protection a simpler name: comfort.
“I'm comfortable.” “I'm fine.” “I don't have any problems.”
As though comfort itself proved that a life was happy or working well.
But comfort is a feeling too. Any feeling, pleasant or unpleasant, can function as a hypnotic phenomenon.
Fear keeps you in place through threat. Comfort keeps you in place through reward. Both can serve the same pathological network.
When “nothing” becomes another experience
In my framework, the one condition that is not another hypnotic phenomenon is the complete absence of these imposed emotions, feelings, and states: nothing added, positive or negative.
I came to this “nothing” independently, before encountering books on Advaita and related teachings. Then I was struck by how many teachers managed to turn nothing into something.
They give it a special flavor. A special love. A special bliss. Cosmic significance. They teach people to search for it, hold it, observe it, and talk about it endlessly.
But if nothingness is full of special experiences, it is no longer nothing. It is another induced state with another label. Even the experience called “nothing” can be a counterfeit.
When pathological networks are eliminated, the positive and negative emotional states they produce disappear with them.
That does not turn a person into a robot.
The robot is the person before that release: full of automatic programs. Networks push buttons around the clock, producing thoughts, feelings, bodily responses, and decisions. The person follows the program and calls it “me.”
When the automatic pattern ends, what remains is not an empty machine. It is a person who can act without obeying an internal hypnotist—someone who can actually choose the next response.