The Formless

"For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
— 2 Corinthians 4:18

I

In the world of form, the enjoyment of one always comes at the cost of the suffering of another.

For the lion to satisfy its hunger, the antelope must die in pain. In time, the lion, too, will be torn by vultures, tunneled by beetles, and its bones reclaimed by the earth.

This is nature’s way—the supreme law of opposites governing the ever-changing world of form.

Yet, as many sages throughout history have pointed out, that world is not the whole of reality. It is but a fleeting shadow, an illusion, a speck of dust lingering on the surface of the eye through which we perceive reality. It has no independent existence except as an idea.

Absolute reality consists of infinitely more—and infinitely less—than the perceived world, the so-called objective reality we imagine ourselves living in.

And in that discovery, as the sages have said, lies true liberation.

Then one may begin to grasp the words of Jesus:

A wise man lays his foundation on solid rock, while a fool builds upon shifting sand. When the storm comes, only the house set upon rock will remain standing.

What is the rock, and what are the shifting sands?

The shifting sands are the world of form—of appearances, contrasts, and duality. Everything in that realm endlessly oscillates between one state and its opposite. Nothing is permanent; what exists one moment vanishes the next.

This is Maya—the grand illusion, a fleeting dance of mirages and delusions that obscure the eternal truth.

The rock, on the other hand, symbolizes that which does not come and go—that which was never born and never will die. It is the unconditional, the absolute—the invulnerable principle that holds existence together, untouched by time, beyond the reach of change and decay.

II

Our existence consists of both these aspects: the transient and the eternal, the perishable and the imperishable, the mundane and the divine.

As many of the great sages of the past have recognized, the reason we suffer is that we mistake ourselves for what we are not and persist in ignoring what we truly are.

We suffer because we identify ourselves with the particular—this body, this mind, the story of “my life”—and have lost the sense of the transcendent, the universal, unbounded nature of our true being.

This happened progressively. In the beginning, we came into this life form without knowing either what a “me” was or even what a life form was.

There was just life. The experience of being alive was formless and impersonal. It wasn’t even an experience, because the notion of an experience implies an experiencer, and nothing of that kind was there yet.

There was light, colors, sensation, but none of it was yet owned by anyone.

Then, under the influence of human culture and language, a process of mesmerization with form began.

The previously nameless, undivided reality started appearing as if it were fragmented, made of separate things, each with a particular name, form, and story.

Suddenly, there were things to get and things to lose. Thus, a demand for safety and stability arose.

The notion of an individual self emerged as the controller—the one able to exercise power and will over itself and the environment.

And what else could such a notion be attached to, if not the apparently most stable of all forms—the body, its behavioral patterns, and, to a lesser degree, its immediate environment?

That was the beginning of the sense of specialness and ownership. It was the beginning of duality—of all opposites. Of good and evil, life and death, knowledge and ignorance.

It was the beginning of the world of form—a world where something seemed to be happening to a subject: me.

Mesmerized by the world of form and oblivious to our original nature, we choose to set the foundation of everything we build within what is most familiar to us.

We then spend the rest of our lives pursuing all sorts of good deals with life that could ensure safety and comfort for this body and this mind we call our home.

We strive to establish that false “me” in specific states—whether material, mental, emotional, or spiritual—that are deemed superior and believed to bring a lasting sense of fulfillment.

What we fail to see is that those states can never exist without their counterparts—joy without sorrow, pleasure without pain, gain without loss, peace without conflict.

Therefore, all attempts to permanently establish oneself in any of those states, no matter how much skill or dedication is put into the endeavor, are ultimately bound to fail.

What we also fail to see is that the central point around which all this dynamic is being constructed—the individual self—is itself nothing more than an idea. How could that idea ever experience fulfillment?

If you build upon illusion, sooner or later, the tide will rise, and the entire construction will be washed away. What comes must go. What nature gives, nature takes back.

To free oneself from the transient, there is only one way: one must come to see and recognize what lies beyond—the formless and changeless essence at the heart of oneself, that which does not come and go, is not born, and cannot die.

III

As Jesus also said:

“The truth will set you free.”

You can’t say what the truth is, but you can say what it isn’t. 

All that you have ever believed about yourself is wrong. You are not who you think you are. You exist completely beyond thought, beyond objectivity, beyond every limitation relative to the world of form.

Who you truly are extends far beyond the person you take yourself to be—beyond the ever-changing tapestry of positive and negative experiences, of gain and loss, of successes and failures, and even of life and death.

Yes, you were never born, and you will never die. Therefore how can anything you do or avoid doing in the world of form could ever establish you in that which you already are?

Only what is permanent and unshakable at the very root of your being will provide the foundation that cannot be shaken.

See that what you truly are is not a particular form, not a particular thing, not this ever-changing, ever-transforming body, and not a series of situations or events that seemingly take place for and around that body.

All of this is transient. It comes and it goes. It changes all the time while you remain the same.

IV

All of it is illusory.

You are far greater than any form. You are the timeless and formless mystery that stands behind the whole of existence—both bringing it into being and witnessing its unfolding.

The infinite space in which the world of appearances comes and goes. It is within what you are that all forms come to life.

Therefore, you are in any case not the particular, nothing that can be known. You are the unknown, the nameless and changeless root of all reality that stands behind it all.

You are the Absolute itself—all-encompassing, effortlessly embracing the multiplicity of existence—just as your body seamlessly holds within it countless births and deaths.

But who can accept this truth?

No one. It cannot be accepted. The particular—the one that wants to know—can never understand that which simply is.

This isn’t an information that can be processed by the mind. It is a reality that exists beyond and in spite of the mind.

It is already there, as immovable as a rock. But it cannot be used by the mind to reinforce its subject-object dynamic.

It cannot be the object of learning or discovery. There is nothing to find, for it was never lost.

This reality is already known by itself. It Is.

IMF, Luang Prabang - Laos, 14 February 2025