We are so used to living in objects in the wonderful world that we find that crazy samsāra normal, even though many people find it a cauldron. But the trick is to experience it as a magic show, which is not real. Even the so-called being of a person with all his antics we call normal. But that is actually very unusual.

We find that crazy world an ordinary condition and then we become spiritual and then spirituality is suddenly very special or mystical.

The point that Vedānta makes is that in our experience māyā has mistakenly turned this around (viparīta). Our true nature is whole and normal (sādhāraṇa) because it always applies, and is the basis of everything. You cannot not be consciousness at all, so what is more normal than that?

The goal is to turn the reversal back. What is the wrong double reversal (anyonya adhyāsa)? That I, ātman, continue to function as the projected individual (ignorance), and that ego (ahaṅkāra) thinks it is ātman. It is not a real reversal (I am ātman in all apparent cases), but it seems so; The supposed individual lives in ignorance or falls into the trap of thinking that he or she is enlightened.

The invitation here is to find your totally free nature as consciousness normal (sādhāraṇa), and the superposition of a mind with an I-experience and the world rather unusual (asādhāraṇa). Then the idea is: 'enjoy the magic show!', but see yourself as infinitely ordinary.

Objects, thoughts, feelings are superimposed (superposition, adhyāropa), as images on the empty screen of consciousness that you are. Consciousness does seem to identify with them, however.

Let us take a good look. Why does a person have compassion for another? Why can we have empathy with the other or feel sympathy for the other? Two reasons for this.

First, every jīva has the same basic design, the circuit board of the mind is equipped with the same functions of doubt, sadness etc. So we can understand the other well.

Second: there is no other. My mind is a temporary manifestation of consciousness. The mind of 'other people' is a manifestation of the same consciousness. Therefore it is perfectly logical that I have compassion for the other or am empathetic because the other is the same as me. So love is also very normal. This is a beautiful fact. Again and again when there is suffering or anger it is experienced as an unusual situation, because there is a tendency to come out of it. Love is being the self. And so loving the so-called other as yourself. That is normality, and that is why we experience conflicts in the world as contradictory to our nature. Not as duality, but as the non-dual basis. Love is self-evident. And that is why tyrants can also simply love when they relax.

People sometimes talk about self-compassion. That too is a strange concept. You have the wrong, unusual self. I don't need to have compassion for the self, because that cannot be pitiful. Self-compassion means a split in the mind, or more precisely: an ego that changes roles very quickly. Are you pitiful, I ask 'myself'? 'Yes, please take me into account'. Then you already have two egos. An ego that takes into account..., and another ego that asks for respect or compassion. In itself there is nothing wrong with this, but at a certain point this illusion must be let go of for correct self-knowledge, and all mental movements are objectified as inert thoughts.

When we talk about objectification: Is there really a difference between how I look at my mind and how I look at someone else's mind? Both forms are actually objective. And then I come back to the subject:

From this perspective, it is abnormal (asādhāraṇa) to consider myself as one separate self among many. Once I look like this, it is very unnatural and against my true nature. What I see are all chattering thinking machines that appear, including the mind that appears to me from within.

But then what would be the right definition of what is truly ordinary (sādhāraṇa)? It must be that which always is, that which makes all perceptible things possible. That which is always the silent ground, witness and revealer of all objects. How more ordinary can you become? That ordinary is all of us: Tat tvam asi, consciousness. One ordinary self. The appearance of the stuff of life is extraordinary (asādhāraṇa).

Self-realization is the complete, difference-less presence of the truth of the self. Self-realization is therefore finding unity normal, and knowing why. James Swartz also includes the word "ordinary" in his definition of what is real. This prevents arrogance and the feeling of being special once I get "it." In self-realization, "I should be slinking off with my tail between my legs into the ordinary boundlessness that is infinitely normal, instead of blowing the trumpet in the apparent world that is abnormally wonderful or sad."