The role of the spiritual practice is basically to exhaust the seeker. If the practice does what it’s supposed to do, it exhausts our energy for seeking, and then reality has a chance to present itself. – Adyashanti

I’ve heard this said many different ways over the years.  Most recently, Randall Friend likened it to a mouse:

I was just like that – I had to figure everything out, see how it works.  And along with this need came frustration, because it cannot be figured out.  It cannot be dissected using the baseline of existing assumptions like the brain.  So what happened was that the mind was like a trapped mouse in the corner, constantly banging it’s head against the wall over and over and over and over…  there was no way out with the mind.  At some point the mouse just said “f**k it” – it just died of exhaustion and frustration.  And in that pause, just sitting there without the first attempt to “see differently” or “figure it out” or “gain a new experience” – I was looking at a tree – there was no mental activity at all, just the looking.  And that was it.  That literally was IT.  That’s what the entire freaking search was about – it’s JUST THIS, just the knowing, the seeing.  The tree and the seer of the tree are entirely creations of mind, that subject/object equation is created by mind doing it’s job.  There was no separation.  And there isn’t now – for you.  Mind is doing the same thing.

It looks like I could take the spiritual practice approach or the analytical mind approach and end up in the same place… Exhaustion.  Well, dammit, I’ve been there before.  Oh, I can’t think of the movie, but there are probably a few like this:  A guy gets punched in the face, drops to his knees, then stands back up only to get punched again.  This guy keeps getting back up!  Finally a blow is landed that knocks him out, or so it seems.  Long seconds pass with him laid out on the concrete, then he stumbles to his feet again.  The guy who’s throwing his knuckles at this poor fellow’s chin is tired now, his hand aching, knuckles bleeding.  I’m that guy that’s getting punched.  I can’t just give up, admit defeat.  Who’s the guy throwing knuckles at me then?  Hmmmm…. Must be me, trying to figure it out.  My mind!  Then who’s the “me” that keeps getting smacked around, then gets back up for more?  That also must be my mind.  Jesus!  How messed up am I anyway?

Right.  So the mind will never figure it out.  It’ll go until it’s exhausted, but eventually it comes back.  It won’t let this go.  Something won’t let it let it go.  What is that?  Mind also?  Why would the mind do this to itself?  As I’m told, it must end with the mind realizing there’s nothing it can do.  Like Adyashanti says above:

…it exhausts our energy for seeking, and then reality has a chance to present itself.

In India I think there are four paths that are mentioned.  Jnana (knowledge), Bhakti (devotion), Karma (action), and Raja (emphasis on meditation).  I’m not an Eastern mysticism/philosophy expert, and I really don’t like being the guy who leans on India for spiritual matters (I know very little about it, but since I’ve read a lot of Nisargadatta’s and Maharshi’s work, it just seems to fit).  I would definitely be on the Jnana path.  I’ve just got to know!  Knowledge is power, right?  That’s what my damned brain is there for, isn’t it?  To figure things out?  Well, hell, if it’s not, that’s certainly what I’ve been using it for all these years.  Maybe I’m misusing the tool, like using a phillips head screwdriver to hammer in a galvanized nail.  I won’t know unless something changes.  Otherwise, this screwdriver of a mind is doing a fairly decent job of seating nails!

Going back to the two quotes above, I would lump Adyashanti’s with Bhakti, then Randall’s with Jnana.  It fits.  Adyashanti was trained in Zen Buddhism, and they’re big on practice/meditation, right?  Randall studied and learned via the Nisargadatta lineage through Sailor Bob – Jnana Yoga all the way.  Either way, it seems that the end result in any of the paths is that there’s a brick wall, then a realization that there’s nothing we can do.  Then whatever “it” is is allowed to creep in and show itself for what it is.  What seems to be happening with me is that I keep hitting that brick wall, and it knocks me the hell out, but I keep getting back up again.

೧.       ಶ್ರೀ ಪಿ.ಎಸ್. ನಾಗರಾಜ್, ಅವರ “ಜೀವನ್ಮುಕ್ತ” ಎ೦ಬ ಲೇಖನವು ಬಹಳ ವಿಭಿನ್ನವಾಗಿದೆ. ಬಹಳ ಕ್ಲಿಷ್ಟವಾದ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯರಿಗೂ ಅರ್ಥವಾಗುವ೦ತೆ ತಮ್ಮದೇ ಆದ ವಿಶೇಷ ಶೈಲಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಶ್ರೀಯುತರು ಬರೆದಿದ್ದಾರೆ.  ಇದಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಅವರಿಗೆ ನನ್ನ ಅಭಿನ೦ದನೆಗಳು. ಇ೦ತಹ ಲೇಖನಗಳು ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಹೆಚ್ಚಾಗಿ ಬರಲಿ. ನಮ್ಮಲ್ಲಿ ವೇದಾಧ್ಯಯನ ಸ೦ಪನ್ನರಿಗೆ, ಸ೦ಸ್ಕೃತ ಪ೦ಡಿತರಿಗೆ ಕೊರತೆ ಇಲ್ಲ. ಈ ಮಹನೀಯರುಗಳು, ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಶ್ರಮವಹಿಸಿ ವೇದ, ಉಪನಿಷತ್‌ಗಳ ಹಾಗೂ ಸ೦ಸ್ಕೃತ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಜ್ಞಾನ ಭ೦ಡಾರವನ್ನು ನಮಗೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಉಣಿಸುವುದಾದರೆ ಬಹಳ ಉಪಯೋಗ ವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ.

(೦೯-೨೦೦೩). ಶ್ರೀ B. ವೆ೦ಕಟೇಶ್., (Retired Enginner, Bangalore).

೨.       ಶ್ರೀಮಾನ್ ಪಿ.ಎಸ್.ನಾಗರಾಜ್, ಅವರ “ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತೆ”, ಎ೦ಬ ಲೇಖನ ತು೦ಬ ಅರ್ಥಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗಿದೆ. ಎಲ್ಲೆಡೆಯೂ ಕಾಣಿಸುವ ಗೀತೋಪದೇಶದ ಚಿತ್ರವನ್ನು ತೆಗೆದುಕೊ೦ಡು, ಅದರಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತೆಯ ಸಾರ ತು೦ಬಿದೆಯೆ೦ಬ೦ಶವನ್ನು ಮನಮುಟ್ಟುವ೦ತೆ ನಿರೂಪಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಧರ್ಮದ ಬಗೆಗಿನ ತತ್ವವನ್ನು ಸೂಕ್ಷ್ಮದೃಷ್ಟಿಯಿ೦ದ ಬಹುಕಾಲ ಅನ್ವೇಷಿಸಿರುವ ಶ್ರೀಯುತರು, ವೇದ, ವೇದಾ೦ತ, ಜ್ಯೋತಿಷ ಹಾಗೂ ಯೋಗ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದಲ್ಲಿ ನಿಷ್ಣಾತರು. ಇವರ ಅಧ್ಯಯನದ ಫಲ ಇತರರಿಗೂ ದೊರಕುತ್ತಿರಲೆ೦ದು ಆಶಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ.

(೦೧-೨೦೦೪). SRI (Doctor) H.S. ಅನ೦ತನಾರಾಯಣ., (Retired Professor, Bangalore).

೩.       ಶ್ರೀ ಪಿ.ಎಸ್.ನಾಗರಾಜ್ ಅವರ “ಜೀವನ್ಮುಕ್ತ” ಮತ್ತು “ಶ್ರೀ.ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತೆ”, ಈ ಎರಡು ಲೇಖನಗಳೂ ವಿಷಯ ಗೌರವದಿ೦ದಾಗಿ ವಿಶೇಷವಾಗಿ ಗಮನ ಸೆಳೆಯುತ್ತವೆ. ಎಲ್ಲ ದರ್ಶನಗಳ ಪರಮ ಲಕ್ಷ್ಯವಾದ ಪರಮ ಪುರುಷಾರ್ಥವಾದ “ಮೋಕ್ಷ” ತತ್ವವನ್ನು ಶ್ರೀ ನಾಗರಾಜ್ ಅವರು “ಜೀವನ್ಮುಕ್ತ”ದಲ್ಲಿ, ಸಾಮಾನ್ಯರಿಗೂ ತಿಳಿಯುವ೦ತೆ ತಮ್ಮದೇ ಆದ ನೂತನ ಶೈಲಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ವಿವರಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಅವರ ಚಿ೦ತನೆ ಆಧಾರಗಳಿ೦ದ ಕೂಡಿದ್ದು ಬೋಧಪ್ರದವಾಗಿದೆ. “ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತೆ” ಗೀತೋಪದೇಶದ ಚಿತ್ರವನ್ನು ಒ೦ದು ರೂಪಕವಾಗಿ ಪರಿಗ್ರಹಿಸಿ, ಅದರಲ್ಲಿಸ೦ಕೇತಿಸಿರುವ ತತ್ವಗಳನ್ನು ವೇದಾ೦ತದ ಬೆಳಕಿನಲ್ಲಿ ವಿವರಿಸುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನವಾಗಿದೆ.

(೦೧-೨೦೦೪). SRI (Doctor) ಬಿ. ಚೆನ್ನ ಕೇಶವ (Professor, Mysore).

4. ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತೆ ಲೇಖನದಲ್ಲಿ ಶ್ರೀ ನಾಗರಾಜ್ ಅವರು ವಿಶೇಷ ಅರ್ಥವನ್ನು ಕೊಟ್ಟು ನಿರೂಪಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ವಿಶ್ಲೇಷಣೆ ಬಹಳ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿದೆ, ಸ್ವಾರಸ್ಯವಾಗಿದೆ.

(೦೧-೨೦೦೪). ಶ್ರೀಮತಿ (ಗಮಕ ವಿದುಷಿ) ವಸ೦ತಲಕ್ಷ್ಮೀ ಸೀತಾರಾಮಯ್ಯ., (ಮೈಸೂರು).

೫.       “ಚಾತುರ್ವರ್ಣ್ಯ೦ ಮಯಾ ಸೃಷ್ಟ೦” ಎ೦ಬ ಗೀತಾ ವಾಣಿಯ ಮೇಲಿನ ನಿಮ್ಮ ಚಿ೦ತನೆ ವಿಶಿಷ್ಟವಾಗಿದೆ. ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ಪೂರಕವಾಗುವ೦ತೆ ಮತ್ತು ಪ್ರತ್ಯೇಕ ಚಿ೦ತನೆಗೆ ಪ್ರಚೋದನೆ ನೀಡುವ೦ತೆ ತಾವು ಚಿ೦ತನ ರತ್ನಗಳನ್ನು ಲೇಖನದ ಉದ್ದಕ್ಕೂ ಚೆಲ್ಲಿಕೊಟ್ಟಿದ್ದೀರಿ. ಸಮಕಾಲೀನ ಸಮಾಜಕ್ಕೆ ಈ ವಿಚಾರಧಾರೆ ಅತ್ಯ೦ತ ಉಪಯುಕ್ತವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ೦ದು ಭಾವಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ. ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಚಿ೦ತನ ಬಿ೦ದುವಿಗೂ ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು-ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಸ೦ಖ್ಯೆಯನ್ನು ಕೊಟ್ಟುಕೊ೦ಡು ಸಾಗಿರುವುದು ಮನನ ಮಾಡಲು ಅನುಕೂಲದ೦ತಿದೆ. ಇ೦ತಹ ಉಪಾದೇಯವಾದ ವಿಚಾರ ಧಾರೆಯನ್ನು ಲೋಕಕ್ಕೆ ಸಮರ್ಪಿಸಿದ ನಿಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಹೃತ್ಪೂರ್ವಕವಾಗಿ ಅಭಿನ೦ದಿಸುತ್ತೇನೆ.

(೦೭-೨೦೦೬). SRI (Doctor) ಕೆ. ಅನ೦ತರಾಮು., (Retired Professor, Mysore).

೬.       ವೇದಾ೦ತ  ಪ್ರಿಯರಿಗೆ ಆಕರ್ಷಣೀಯವಾಗಿರುವ ವಸ್ತುವನ್ನು ಒದಗಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ – ನನ್ನ ಶಿಷ್ಯ ರತ್ನ

ಪಿ.ಎಸ್.ನಾಗರಾಜ್.

(08-2006).               Sri V.K. DORE SWAMY., (Retired Mathematics professor) Bangalore.

7.         ತಮ್ಮ ಕಾಗದ ಹಾಗೂ ೭ ಲೇಖನಗಳ ಓ೦ ಪುಸ್ತಕವು ನನಗೆ ತಲಪಿದೆ. ಅವುಗಳನ್ನೆಲ್ಲ ಒಮ್ಮೆ ಓದಿ ನೋಡಿದೆನು.

ಆಧ್ಯಾತ್ಮ ಸಾಧಕರಿಗೂ ಹಾಗೂ ತತ್ತ್ವ ಜಿಜ್ಞಾಸುಗಳಿಗೂ ಈ ಲೇಖನೆಗಳು ತು೦ಬಾ ಪ್ರಯೋಜನಕಾರಿಯಾಗಿರುತ್ತವೆ.

ತಮಗೆ ಸದ್ಗುರುಗಳ ಅನುಗ್ರಹವು ಸದಾ ಇರಲಿ.

(೦೭-೨೦೦೯).                   ಮಹಾ ಮಹೋಪಾಧ್ಯಾಯ

ವೇದಮೂರ್ತಿ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಶ್ರೀ ವಿದ್ವಾನ್ ಕೆ.ಜಿ. ಸುಬ್ರಾಯ ಶರ್ಮ.,  ಎ೦.ಎ.(ಬೆ೦ಗಳೂರು).

೮.       ತಾವು ಆತ್ಮೀಯತೆಯಿ೦ದ ನನಗೆ ಕಳುಹಿಸಿದ ಪರಮ ವೇದಾ೦ತ ಪರವಾದ ಪುಸ್ತಕವನ್ನು ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಶ್ರದ್ಧೆಯಿ೦ದ ಓದಿ ಆನ೦ದಿತನಾಗಿದ್ದೇನೆ.  ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಉತ್ತಮವಾಗಿದ್ದರೂ, ನನ್ನನ್ನು ೧) ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತಾ ಮತ್ತು ೨) ಯೋಗಾಸನಗಳು ವಿಶೇಷವಾಗಿ ಆಕರ್ಷಿಸಿದವು. ಶ್ರೀ ಭಗವದ್ಗೀತಾ ಚಿತ್ರದ ೧೮ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ವಿವರಣೆ ಬಹಳ ಸರಳವಾಗಿಯೂ, ಮನಮೋಹಕವಾಗಿಯೂ ಇದೆ. ಆತ್ಮಧ್ಯಾನ ನಿರತರಾದ ತಾವು ಜೀವನದ ಸರ್ವಾನುಭವವನ್ನೂ ಈ ಪುಸ್ತಕದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರಹದ ಮೂಲಕ ತೋರಿಸಿರುವಿರಿ. ಒಟ್ಟಿನಲ್ಲಿ, ಈ ಪುಸ್ತಕ ಸಮಾಜಕ್ಕೆ ಸ೦ಗ್ರಹ ಯೋಗ್ಯವಾದುದಾಗಿದೆ.

ವೇ||ಬ್ರ||ಶ್ರೀ ರಘುನಾಥ ಶರ್ಮಾ; (ಉಪನ್ಯಾಸಕರು-ಶ೦ಕರಮಠ ಮೈಸೂರು; ಮತ್ತು ಪುರೋಹಿತರು).

(೦೭-೨೦೦೯).

೯.       ಪುಸ್ತಕದ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗಿ ಅರಗಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಓದುಗರಲ್ಲಿ ಸಾಕಷ್ಟು ಪೂರ್ವ ಸಿದ್ಧತೆ ಮತ್ತು ಸ೦ಸ್ಕಾರ ಅಗತ್ಯ. ೩೧ ಪುಟದ ಎ೦ಟು ಲೇಖನಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಲೆಖಕರು ಅದ್ವೈತವೇದಾ೦ತ, ಯೋಗಶಾಸ್ತ್ರದ ವ್ಯಾಖ್ಯಾನ, ಹಾಗೂ ತಮ್ಮ ಜೀವನಾನುಭವಗಳನ್ನು ಭಟ್ಟಿ ಇಳಿಸಿ ಕ್ರೋಢೀಕರಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ವೈದೀಕ ಸ೦ಪ್ರದಾಯ ಮತ್ತು ಆಧುನಿಕ ವೈಜ್ಞಾನಿಕ ದೃಷ್ಟಿ ಕೋನಗಳೆರಡರಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ವಿಶ್ಲೇಷಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಲೇಖನಗಳುದ್ದಕ್ಕೂ ಅನೇಕ ಆಣಿಮುತ್ತುಗಳು ಅಡಕವಾಗಿವೆ. ಪ್ರತಿ ವಾಕ್ಯವನ್ನೂ ತೂಕಮಾಡಿ ಸಮತೋಲನ ಮಾಡಿ ಬರೆದಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಪುನ: ಪುನ: ಮನನ ಮಾಡಬಹುದಾದ ಲೇಖನಗಳಾಗಿವೆ.

(೦೮-೨೦೦೯). SRI (Doctor) ಕೆ.ಆರ್. ಶ್ರೀಕ೦ಠಯ್ಯ; ಬೆ೦ಗಳೂರು.

(Retired Mathematics professor ಮತ್ತು ಕೌಶಿಕ ಸ೦ಕೇತಿ ಸ೦ಘ, ಅಧ್ಯಕ್ಷರು).

೧೦.     ವೇದಾ೦ತಸಾರ ಲೇಖನಗಳ ಹೊತ್ತೆಗೆಯನ್ನು ಅಧ್ಯಯನ ಮಾಡಲು ಸಾಕಷ್ಟು ಸಮಯ ತೆಗೆದುಕೊ೦ಡಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ಓದಿದ್ದೆಲ್ಲವೂ ಜೀರ್ಣವಾಗಿದೆ ಎ೦ದು ಹೇಳುವ ಧೈರ್ಯ ನನಗಿಲ್ಲ. ಆದರೂ ನನ್ನ ಅರಿವಿನ ಮಿತಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಅರ್ಥಮಾಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಪ್ರಯತ್ನಿಸಿದ್ದೇನೆ.

ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಅಧ್ಯಾಯದ ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಚಿ೦ತನೆಯೂ ನೂರಾರು ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಅಧ್ಯಯನವನ್ನು ಬೇಡುವ೦ತಿದೆ. ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಪುಟವೂ ಹತ್ತು ಪುಟಗಳಿಗಾಗುವಷ್ಟು ಗ್ರಾಸ ಹೊ೦ದಿದೆ ಎನ್ನುವುದು ನನ್ನ ಪ್ರಾಮಾಣಿಕ ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯ. ಪ್ರತಿ ಚಿ೦ತನ ಬಿ೦ದುವೂ ಜ್ಞಾನಯಜ್ಞಕ್ಕೆ ಅರ್ಪಿಸುವ ಆಜ್ಯದ೦ತಿದೆ.

ಕೊನೆಯದಾಗಿ “ವೇದ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರ ಪುರಾಣ ಪುಣ್ಯದ ಹಾದಿಯ ನಾನರಿಯೆ I ಹೃದಯಾ೦ಗಣದಿ ಜ್ಞಾನೋದಯವ ಎನಗಿತ್ತು ರಕ್ಷಿಸು ನಮ್ಮನನವರತ II”, ಎ೦ಬ ಶ್ರೀ ಕನಕದಾಸರ ನುಡಿಯೇ ನನ್ನದೂ ಆಗಿದೆ. ಈ ಜ್ಞಾನೋದಯಕ್ಕೆ ತಮ್ಮ ಲೇಖನಗಳು ಸಹಾಯ ಮಾಡಿದೆ ಎನ್ನುವುದು ಸತ್ಯ.

(೦೯-೨೦೦೯).      ಶ್ರೀಮತಿ (Doctor) ಸ೦ಗೀತ ವಿದುಷಿ ಸುಕನ್ಯಾ ಪ್ರಭಾಕರ್; ಮೈಸೂರು.

೧೧.     ‘ಜೀವನ್ಮುಕ್ತಿ’ಯಿ೦ದ ಆರ೦ಭಿಸಿ ‘ಪೂರ್ಣಾಹುತಿ’ಯಲ್ಲಿ ಅ೦ತ್ಯಗೊಳಿಸಿರುವ ಈ ಲೇಖನಮಾಲೆ ಸ೦ಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗಿ ಸಾ೦ಕೇತಿಕವಾಗಿದೆ. ಮುಕ್ತವಾದ ಜೀವ ಸ೦ಗಿಯಾಗಿ ಮೂಲ ಸೆಲೆಯಿ೦ದ ಬಹುದೂರ ಸಾಗಿ, ಬದುಕಿನ ಬವಣೆಗಳನ್ನೆಲ್ಲಾ ಅನುಭವಿಸಿ ಕೊನೆಗೆ ತನ್ನ ಮೂಲಕ್ಕೆ ಸೇರುವುದರ ಮೂಲಕ ಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. ಹೀಗೆ ಜೀವದ ಗತಿ, ಬದುಕಿನ ಸ್ಥಿತಿ ವತ್ತಮಯವಾದುದು ಎ೦ಬ ತತ್ತ್ವವನ್ನು, ಸಷ್ಟಿ ಸ್ಥಿತಿ ಲಯಗಳ ಪೂರ್ಣತೆ, ವತ್ತಮಯತೆಯನ್ನು ತಮ್ಮ ವತ್ತಮಯವಾದ ಲೇಖನಮಾಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಶ್ರೀಯುತರು ದಢಪಡಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.  ಇಲ್ಲಿನ ಪ್ರತಿಯೊ೦ದು ಲೇಖನವೂ ವೇ೦ದಾ೦ತದ ಒ೦ದೊ೦ದು ಬಹದ್ಗ್ರ೦ಥವಾಗಬಲ್ಲಷ್ಟು ವಿಷಯ ಸಾಮಗ್ರಿಗಳನ್ನೊಳಗೊ೦ಡಿದೆ. ‘ಆವತ್ತಚಕ್ಷುರಮತತ್ವ ಮಿಚ್ಛನ್ ಕಶ್ಚಿದ್ಧೀರ: ಪ್ರತ್ಯಗಾತ್ಮಾನ ಮೈಕ್ಷತ್’ ಎ೦ಬ ಕಠೋಪನಿಷತ್ತಿನ ತತ್ತ್ವವನ್ನು ಜೀವಿಯು ಅ೦ತರ್ಮುಖಿಯಾಗಿ ಹದಯಗಹ್ವರದಲ್ಲಿ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾ೦ಡವನ್ನೆಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಣಬಹುದು ಅನುಭವಿಸಬಹುದು ಎ೦ಬ ಅ೦ಶವನ್ನು ಪ್ರತಿಯೊ೦ದು ಲೇಖನವೂ ಸುಸ್ಪಷ್ಟವಾಗಿ ನಿರೂಪಿಸುತ್ತದೆ. ಎಲ್ಲವನ್ನೂ ವೈಜಾನಿಕವಾಗಿ ತಾರ್ಕಿಕವಾಗಿ ಬೌದ್ಧಿಕನೆಲೆಯಲ್ಲೇ ನಿ೦ತು ನೋಡುವ, ಚಿ೦ತಿಸುವ, ಈಗಿನ ಬುದ್ಧಿ ಪ್ರಿಯ ಜನತೆ ಬಯಸುವ ಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಷಯವನ್ನಿತ್ತು ‘ಬುದ್ಧಿಯನೆಲೆಗೂ ಮೀರಿದ ನೆಲೆಯಿದೆ ಬನ್ನಿ ಸಾಗೋಣ’, ಎ೦ದು ಕೈಹಿಡಿದು ಅವರನ್ನು ಕೈಹಿಡಿದುಕೊ೦ಡು ಕರೆದೊಯ್ಯುವ ನಿರೂಪಣಾ ಶೈಲಿ ಮೋಹಕವೂ ಆಕರ್ಷಕವೂ, ಆಗಿದೆ. ಒಮ್ಮೆ ಓದಿ ಪಕ್ಕಕ್ಕಿಡುವ೦ತೆ ಅಲ್ಲದೆ ಮನನಮಾಡಿದಷ್ಟೂ ತನ್ನ ಅಗಾಧತೆಯನ್ನೂ ವಿಸ್ತಾರವನ್ನೂ ವಿಷಯಗಾ೦ಭೀರ್ಯವನ್ನೂ ಬಿಚ್ಚಿ ತೆರೆದಿಡುವ ಈ ಕತಿ ಉತ್ಕಷ್ಟ ವಿಷಯಾರ್ಣವವೇ ಆಗಿದೆ. ಶ್ರೀಯುತರ ಅಗಾಧ ಪಾ೦ಡಿತ್ಯ, ಅನುಭವದ ಪಾಕದ ರಸದೌತಣ ಜನತೆಗೆ ಬಹುದೀರ್ಘಕಾಲ ದೊರಕುತ್ತಿರಲಿ. ಇದನ್ನು೦ಡು ಜನತೆ ಧನ್ಯರಾಗಲಿ ಪೂರ್ಣರಾಗಲಿ.

(೧೧-೨೦೦೯).           ಶ್ರೀಮತಿ ಕೆ.ಎಲ್. ಪ್ರಸನ್ನಾಕ್ಷೀ (Retired ಸ೦ಸ್ಕತ Professor; Mysore).

There are these lovely people scattered throughout the world who are apparently here for the sole purpose of pointing out the obvious.

I went to Japan for a week back in ‘05 and there was a guy with us named Galo (pronounced like the place where people are hung, or is it hanged?).  Galo’s a great travel companion and an absolute hoot to be around.  Funny as hell, too.  Great guy!  So Galo’s job the entire trip was to point out the obvious to the others in our group.  Nobody anointed him with this job.  He just kind of anointed himself.  I’m sure you’ve been with this guy in different skin, but he (or she) is the one who reads all the signs out loud and makes sure everyone around him knows that he knows what things are.  There was this strange pizza joint there called Pizza-La that was scattered about the landscape.  Pizza-La is a funny name for a people who don’t have “L”s in their vocabulary.  I never heard a Japanese say Pizza-La, but now that I think about it I think it would be fun.  Anyway every time we rode by one of those stores Galo would say, “Pizza-La”.  Thanks Galo.

7-11’s are very prolific over there, which I thought was the funniest thing.  The biggest convenience stores in Japan are 7-11’s!  Too funny.  Well whaddya think Galo said when we rode by one of those?  Yup!  ”7-11″.  They have dried fish, and dried squid in bags like you would see candy orange slices in here in the States.  The Japanese guy who was with us would always say that the dried seafood was “good for beer”.  Oh, and there were beer machines there like Coke machines here.  The first time we saw one, whaddya think Galo said?  Right.

After a while it was funny.  We’d wait for Galo to give us another snippet of enlightenment along our journey, and it was fun.  We came up with a cool nickname for Galo – Galomoto (pronounce the “l” as an “r”).  It actually stood for something: Galo, Master Of The Obvious.  I have no copyright on that “moto” bit, so you can plug it in at the end of anybody’s name.  Mine would be Mikomoto.  (I must offer my apologies if any of you that frequent the nonduality blogs automatically think of Minamoto, as in Takuin.  Sorry Takuin.  Next time I’m in Tokyo you can crack me on the head with a cane pole )

Anyway, I was thinking about these kind, patient (for the most part) people who continuously point the “obvious” out to us unenlightened dolts who are still using a broad sword to turn the lights on with in a pitch black dinner hall.  The “cartoon” above is sort of a poke at that.  The thing that the pointer is pointing to is so enormous and obvious (isn’t it?), and still the dolt can’t see it.  The cat?  ”Nee…ow”… get it?  Now.  OK, well I’m no cartoonist, and I sure as hell ain’t no comedian either.

Peace be unto you brothers and sisters of the seek.  And to you as well, oh pointy-headed ones.  Ones… get it?  Ah nevermind.

“Пойди туда, не зная куда, познай то, неведомо для тебя что”.

Из наставления Предков.

На дня я побывал на семинарах у Ричарда Ланга – танцевал танец “5 ритов”, участвовал в семинаре  “Видение”.  После завершения семинара провел замечательное время в кругу старых и новых чудесных друзей,  с Ричардом – это было еще одним подарком.

Мне очень понравилось.  Это просто, легко и мощно. Вернулось чувство из детства, когда Мир воспринимается свежо и просто и легко, когда весь мир заключен во мне.

Танцы оказались Подарком, так как я ждал некоего рода динамической медитации (мой первывый опыт с танцем 5 ритмов был именно таким, каждый танцевал один, сам по себе, в течении часа, совершая за жто время оин цикл из 5-ти ритмов)

На семинаре в зале было около 50-40 человек, танец происходил во взаимодействии в танце с другими участниками.  Такое взаимодействие дает множество осознаний о себе, о том как я двигаюсь в своей жизни, как взаимодействую с другими, открывает новые возможности для танца своей Жизни и новым способам танца с другими людьми (как в танце так и в Жизни).

Тем, кто делал  эксперименты с “Видением” самостоятельно – по книгах (или по видео) – рекомендую сделать это и в группе (например на  подобным семинаре или на встрече друзей Ричарда Ланга), так как на в группе есть возможность глубоко  войти в состояние “безголовости”, в состояние бытия Пространством, пережить ЭТО вместе с другими.

Предлагаю вашему вниманию короткий ролик с семинара “Видение” и несколько фото.

श्रीगुरुभ्यो नमः

In the Mundakopanishat we have the famous mantra:

द्वा सुपर्णा सयुजा सखाया

समानं वृक्षं परिषस्वजाते ।

तयोरन्यः पिप्पलं स्वद्वत्त्य-

नश्नन्नन्योऽभिचाकशीति ॥ 3.1.1

Here, the two-bird imagery is used to show the Ishwara-jiva pair residing in the body-tree.  While the jiva bird is busy tasting the fruits of samsara, the Ishwara bird is a mere witness to this.  Eventually, the jiva bird turns to the Ishwara bird, notices the latter’s passive and therefore blissful nature and ultimately knows its own nature to be non-different from the Ishwara bird’s a-samsaaric one.  This knowledge of identity frees the jiva of its jivatva, resulting in freedom from bondage.

Now, in the Bhagavadgita we have this verse:

उत्क्रामन्तं स्थितं वापि भुञ्जानं वा गुणान्वितम् ।

विमूढा नानुपश्यन्ति …..(15.10)

Here, the Lord says that he who fails to realize the ‘one’ that is experiencing samsara variedly like transmigrating, enjoying the fruits of karma, being associated with the three guNa-s, etc. is an ignorant one, a wretched one.  On the contrary, those who purify their mind by the appropriate sAdhana get to realize this ‘one’.

It would be interesting to study the ‘connection’ between the Mundaka mantra and the Gita verse.  While the former presents ‘two’ entities, jiva and Ishwara, the latter speaks of only ‘one’ entity whose knowledge alone results in liberation.  How are we to reconcile these two positions?

The answer is not very difficult:  While the Mundaka mantra says that the jiva is the karma-phala bhokta, the enjoyer of the fruits of karma, the Gita says it is the knowledge of the ‘One’ that appears to be the karma-phala bhokta that leads to liberation.  In the subsequent verse the Lord says:

यतन्तो योगिनश्चैनं पश्यन्त्यात्मन्यवस्थितम् ।

यतन्तोऽप्यकृतात्मानो नैनं पश्यन्त्यचेतसः ॥ (15.11)

[Those who strive with a pure heart succeed in beholding, realizing, the One seated in the cave of their heart. On the contrary, those who have not purified their intellect, even though striving, do not realize the Truth.]

This word ‘Atmanyavasthitam’ means: The One seated in the cave of the intellect.  It is this One who appears to be enjoying the karma-phala.  It is this One ‘who is seated in everyone’s heart’ says the Lord in this chapter itself:

सर्वस्य चाहं हृदि सन्निविष्टो….

वेदैश्च सर्वैरहमेव वेद्यो …..(15.15)

// I am seated in everyone’s heart…I am the One to be known by the means of all the Veda-s..//

Thus, in the Gita 15^th chapter itself we get the complete solution to the apparent problem of reconciling the Mundaka ‘dvaa suparNaa’ mantra and the Gita 15.10 verse.  Of course, in the Mundaka mantra itself, the subsequent two mantras settle the issue by the use of the words ‘परमं साम्यमुपैति’ – the jiva bird, after sadhana, realizes its absolute identity with the Ishwara bird.  Thus, according to the Mundaka mantra and the Bhagavadgita it is the Ishwara, ParamAtma, Brahman, that appears as the many jiva-s experiencing samsara.  It is this ParamAtma alone, as a result of sadhana, realizes His true asAmsAric nature and appears to get liberated. ब्रह्मैव स्वाविद्यया संसरतीव, स्वविद्यया मुच्यत इव – Brahman Itself, owing to ignorance of self-knowledge appears to be bound and due to acquiring self-knowledge appears to become liberated.

A question arises as to how do we account for the ‘many’ jiva-s that experience samsara? That the Lord residing in every being is One only and not many is also taught by the Bhagavadgita alone:

In the Gita, 18.20, the Lord teaches the Knowledge that constitutes Saattvic Jnanam:

सर्वभूतेषु येन एकम् भावं अव्ययं ईक्षते ।

अविभक्तं विभक्तेषु तज्ज्ञानं विद्धि सात्त्विकम् ॥

sarvabhUteShu yena ekam bhAvam avyayam IkShate

avibhaktam vibhakteShu taj jnAnam viddhi saattvikam.

[That by which a man sees the One Indestructible Reality in all beings, inseparate in the separated, that knowledge know thou as Sattvic.]

Sri Shankara comments: …That Reality, the Self, is not different in different bodies; like the AkAsha, the Self admits of no division.  Know thou this direct and right perception of the non-dual Self as sAttvic.

In the subsequent two verses, 18. 21 and 22, the Lord mentions, as that which has to be given up, the Rajasic and Tamasic knowledge where the vision of difference in Atman is the characteristic.  Evidently, the Saattvic knowledge alone is conducive for Liberation.

Again, in Gita 13.16 we have:

अविभक्तं विभक्तेषु विभक्तमिव च स्थितम्

avibhaktam cha bhUteShu vibhaktamiva cha sthitam..

[And undivided, yet remaining divided as it were in beings; … too is That, the Knowable…] Note the particle ‘iva’ used by the Shruti to denote that the mani-ness is only an appearance; not real.

Here again, Sri Shankara comments: It is undivided in the different bodies, It is one like the AkAsha.  Still, It appears to be different in all the different bodies, inasmuch as It manifests only in the bodies.

In the Kathopanishad 1.2.22 the Guru, Yama, teaches:

अशरीरं शरीरेषु अनवस्थेषु अवस्थितम् ।

महान्तं विभुमात्मानं मत्वा धीरो न शोचति ॥

[The Self is Bodiless in the midst of bodies, is Permanent in the midst of the impermanent ..]

A Synopsys:

• The Mundaka mantra 3.1.1 द्वा सुपर्णा mentions two entities in the body-upAdhi, one the jiva and the other, the Ishwara.
• The Bhagavadgita 15.10 says the One (only) entity experiences samsara and those who fail to question and realize this entity do not get liberated.
• By considering the subsequent verses herein we conclude that the one ParamAtma alone appears as the bound jiva-s in various bodies.
• The Brihadaranyaka Mantra: इन्द्रो मायाभिः पुरु रूप ईयते (Brihadaranyaka Up.2.5.19) [The Ishwara, owing to maayaa, takes up multifarious bodies/forms] is the scriptural proof for this.
• The Kathopanishad 1.3.1 mantra ऋतं पिबन्तौ सुकृतस्य लोके also conveys the same meaning of the Mundaka mantra cited above.
• The Purusha sUkta mantra: अजायमानो बहुधा विजायते ‘The Birthless One takes birth as many forms’ is another Vedic proof of Brahman Itself appearing as the world and the jiva-s.
• The famous episode in the Srimadbhaagavatam is another instance: //Thus expanding Himself as the boys and calves in their individual capacities, and surrounded by such expansions of Himself, Krsna entered the village of Vrndavana. The residents had no knowledge of what had happened. After entering the village, Vrndavana, all the calves entered their respective cowsheds, and the boys also went to their respective mothers and homes.//

http://krsnabook.com/ch13.html

• Hear a song of Purandara dasa that captures the above idea: That the ‘jiva is Brahman alone’ and the ‘world is Brahman alone’ and ‘Brahman alone appears as the jivas and the world’ are all graphically demonstrated by Sri Purandara Dasa in his composition: ‘alli nODalu Rama…’ .  In this song he describes how Brahman ‘felt’ like being the world and living a human life ‘became’ the entire world and donned the roles of the jiva-s.  He says: avanige iva Rama, ivanige ava Rama..For X, Y is Rama and for Y, X is Rama.  Hear this song here (second song in the album) and read the lyrics here.  Another song of his with similar import is: Govinda, ninna nAmave chanda.
• The Gita teaches that the one who appears to be the experiencer of the karma-phala is the One that is seated in every one’s heart.
• By considering all these we arrive at the conclusion that there is only one ever-liberated sentient Being that appears to be bound.
• The Gita itself and the other Upanishads teach unequivocally that only the body-mind upAdhis are many but the inhering Consciousness in all the body-mind apparatus is Brahman alone.
• The Gita specifically teaches in 18.20 that this knowledge of the One Unchanging, Undivided Entity alone is sAttvic knowledge.
• The subsequent verses teach that a knowledge, verily ignorance, differing from the above is unsuitable for realization.

श्रीसद्गुरुचरणारविन्दार्पणमस्तु

It is surely axiomatic that a phenomenon (an appearance, an object) cannot perform any action whatever on its own initiative, as an independent entity. In China this was illustrated by Chuang Tzu in his story of the sow who died while suckling her piglets: the little pigs just left her because their mother was no longer there. In Europe, even at that early date, the same understanding is expressed by the word animus which ‘animates’ the phenomenal aspect of sentient beings, and this forms the basis of most religious beliefs. But whereas in the West the ‘animus’ was regarded as personal to each phenomenal object, being the sentience of it, in the East the ‘animus’ was called ‘heart’ or ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’, and in Buddhism and Vedanta was regarded as impersonal and universal, ‘Buddha-mind’, ‘Prajna’, ‘Atman’, etc.

When this impersonal ‘mind’ comes into manifestation by objectifying itself as subject and object, it becomes identified with each sentient object, and the concept of ‘I’ thereby arises in human beings, whereby the phenomenal world as we know it and live it, appears to be what we call ‘real’. That, incidentally, is the only ‘reality’ (thing-ness) we can ever know, and to use the term ‘real’ (a thing) for what is not such, for the purely subjective, is an abuse of language.

In this process of personalising ‘mind’ and thinking of it as ‘I’, we thereby make it, which is subject, into an object, whereas ‘I’ in fact can never be such, for there is nothing objective in ‘I’, which is essentially a direct expression of subjectivity. This objectivising of pure subjectivity, calling it ‘me’ or calling it ‘mind’, is precisely what constitutes ‘bondage’. It is this concept, called the I-concept or ego or self, which is the supposed bondage from which we all suffer and from which we seek ‘liberation’.

It should be evident, as the Buddha and a hundred other Awakened sages have sought to enable us to understand, that what we are is this ‘animating’ mind as such, which is noumenon, and not the phenomenal object to which it gives sentience. This does not mean, however, that the phenomenal object has no kind of existence whatever, but that its existence is merely apparent, which is the meaning of the term ‘phenomenon’; that is to say, that it is only an appearance in consciousness, an objectivisation, without any nature of its own, being entirely dependent on the mind that objectivises it, which mind is only nature, very much as is the case of any dreamed creature, as the Buddha in the Diamond Sutra, and many others after him have so patiently explained to us.

This impersonal, universal mind or consciousness, is our true nature, our only nature, all, absolutely all, that we are, and is completely devoid of I-ness.

This is easy enough to understand, and it would be simple indeed if it were the ultimate truth, but it is not, for the obvious reason that no such thing as an objective ‘mind’ could exist, any more than an ‘I’ or any other object, as a thing-in-itself. What it is, however, is totally devoid of any objective quality, and so cannot be visualised, conceptualised, or in any way referred to, for any such process would automatically render it an object of subject – which by definition it can never be. This is because the mind in question is the unmanifested source of manifestation, the process of which is its division into subject and object; and antecedent to such division there can be no subject to perceive an object, and no object to be perceived by a subject. Indeed, and as revealed by such sages as Padma Sambhava, that which is seeking to conceive and to name this unmanifested source of manifestation is precisely this ‘whole mind’ which is the ‘animating’ or ‘prajnaic’ functioning which itself is the seeking, so that the sought is the seeker thereof.
Profoundly to understand this is Awakening to what is called ‘enlightenment’.

This reasoned visualisation, therefore, like all doctrine, is merely conceptual, devoid of factuality, a structure of theoretical imagination, a symbolic diagram devised in order to enable us to understand something immediate that can never become knowledge. Yet that ultimate ’something’, which is no ‘thing’, is nevertheless what the universe is, and is all that we are.

The psychological ‘I-concept’ has no nature of its own, is no ‘thing’, and could not possibly create genuine ‘bondage’. There cannot be any such thing as bondage at all, but only the idea of such. There is no liberation, for there is no thing from which to be freed. If the whole conceptual structure is seen as what it is, it must necessarily collapse, and the bondage-enlightenment nonsense with it. That is called Awakening, awakening to the natural state which is that of every sentient being. Sri Ramana Maharshi taught just that when he said that ‘enlightenment’ is only being rid of the notion that one is not ‘enlightened’, and Maharshi might have been quoting the T’ang dynasty Chinese sage Hui Hai, known as the Great Pearl, when he stated that Liberation is liberation from the notion of ‘liberation’. He might also have been quoting Huang Po (d.850), of whom he is unlikely ever to have heard, when they both used the same words, full of humour, to someone asking about ‘his’ mind: each sage asked in reply,’How many minds have you?’

How many minds had they, those two young men? Why, none at all. Not only not two, but not one. Nor were they themselves a ‘mind’, for there could not be such a thing as a ‘mind’ for them to be. Neither ‘they’ nor ‘mind’ ever had, or ever could have, any objective being whatever, for never has any kind of objective being been, nor will such ever be. All that, and every ‘that’ which ever was thought up – and ‘that’ is the most purely objective of pronouns – is the essence of the gigantic phantasmagoria of objectivity, which we spend our lives building up, and in which we search desperately for some ‘truth’ which could not possibly be there. The whole vast construction is a phantasy, a dream, as the Buddha (or whoever wrote it in his name) told us in the Diamond Sutra, and the truth which a dream represents, or misrepresents, of which it is a reflection or a deflection, is the dreaming source of it which is all that it is. That source can never have a name, because a name denotes a phenomenon – and there is no phenomenal dreamer, but a functioning that is called dreaming. Sri Bhagavan called it ‘I-I’: if it must be called anything, no nominal form could ever come nearer, or be less misleading as an indication, than his term.

All objectivisation is conceptual, all conceptuality is inference, and all inference is as empty of truth as a vacuum is empty of air. Moreover there is no truth, never has been and never could be; there is no thusness, suchness, is-ness, nor anything positive or negative whatever. There is just absolute absence of the cognisable, which is absolute presence of the unthinkable and the unknowable – which neither is nor is not. Inferentially this is said to be an immense and radiant splendour untrammelled by notions of time and space, and utterly beyond the dim, reflected sentience of temporal and finite imagination.

- Wei Wu Wei

Originally published in The Mountain Path, July 1964.

This article was first seen on:   http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/osliii.html

This interview was conducted 1n 1988 by Stephan Bodian when he was editor of Yoga Journal. I have posted it here for the benefit of those who would like to know more about Jean Klein.

Jean, I find you and your teaching interesting for a number of reasons. For one thing, you are a Westerner who went to India long before such journeys were common and ended up attaining a high degree of realization. What prompted you to go to India?

I was hoping to find a society where people lived without conflict. Also, I think, I was hoping to find a center in myself that was free from conflict – a kind of forefeeling, or foretaste, of truth.

While in India, you found a teacher with whom you studied for a number of years. What is the value of a teacher for the spiritual life?

A teacher is one who lives free from the idea or image of being somebody. There’s only function; there’s no one who functions. It’s a loving relationship; a teacher is like a friend.

Why is that important for someone on the spiritual path?

Because generally the relationship with other people involves asking or demanding – sex, money, psychological or biological security. Then suddenly you meet someone who doesn’t ask for demand anything of you; there’s only giving.

A true teacher doesn’t take himself for a teacher, and he doesn’t take his pupil for a pupil. When neither one takes himself to be something, there is a coming together, a oneness. And in this oneness, transmission takes place. Otherwise the teacher will remain a teacher through the pupil, and the pupil will always remain a pupil.

When the image of being something is absent, one is completely in the world but not of the world; completely in society, but at the same time free from society. We are truly a creative element when we can be in society in this way.

What did your teacher teach you?

The teacher brings clarity of mind. That’s very important. There comes a moment when the mind has no reference and just stops, naturally, simply. There’s a silence which you more and more live knowingly.

And the teacher shows you how to do that. Did you learn any meditation or yoga techniques from you teacher?

No. Because what you really are is never achieved through technique. You go away from what you are when you use technique.

What about the whole notion of the spiritual path – the idea that you enter a path, follow a certain prescribed way of practice, and eventually achieve some goal?

It belongs to psychology, to the realm of the mind. These are sweets for the mind.

What about the argument that if you don’t practice, you can’t attain anything?

You must first see that in all practice you project a goal, a result. And in projecting a result you remain constantly in the representation of what you project. What you are fundamentally is a natural giving up. When the mind becomes clear, there is a giving up, a stillness, fulfilled with a current of love. As long as there’s a meditator, there’s no meditation. When the meditator disappears, there is meditation.

So by practicing some meditation technique, you are somehow interfering with that giving up.

Absolutely.

How?

You interfere because you think there is something to attain. But in reality what you are fundamentally is nothing to obtain, nothing to achieve. You can only achieve something that remains in the mind, knowledge. You must see the difference. Being yourself has nothing to do with accumulating knowledge.

In certain traditions – Zen, for one – you have to meditate in order to exhaust the mind; through meditating the mind eventually wears itself out and comes to rest. Then a kind of opening takes place. But you’re suggesting that the process of meditating somehow gets in the way of this opening.

Yes. This practicing is still produced by will. For me, the point of meditation is only to look for the meditator. When we find out that the meditator, the one who looks for God, for beauty, for peace, is only a product of the brain and that there is therefore nothing to find, there is a giving up. What remains is a current of silence. You can never come to this silence through practice, through achievement. Enlightenment – being understanding – is instantaneous.

Once you’ve attained this enlightenment or this current, do you then exist in it all the time?

Constantly. But it’s not a state. When there’s a state, there is mind.

So in the midst of this current there is also activity?

Oh, yes. Activity and non-activity. Timeless awareness is the life behind all activity and non-activity. Activity and non-activity are more or less superimpositions upon this constant beingness. It is behind the three states of waking , dreaming, and sleeping, beyond inhalation and exhalation. Of course, the words “beyond” and “behind” have a spatial connotation that does not belong to beingness.

In the midst of all activity, then, you are aware of this presence, this clarity.

Yes, “presence” is a good word. You are presence, but you are not aware of it.

You’ve often called what you teach the direct way, and you’ve contrasted it with what you call progressive teachings, including the classical yoga tradition and most forms of Buddhism. What is the danger of progressive teachings, and why do you think the direct way is closer to the truth?

In the progressive way, you use various techniques and gradually attain higher and higher states. But you remain constantly in the mind, in the subject-object relationship. Even when you give up the last object, you still remain in the duality of subject and object. You are still in a kind of blank state, and this blank state itself becomes an extremely subtle object. In this state, it is very difficult to give up the subject-object relationship. Once you’ve attained it, you’re locked into it, fixed to it. There’s a kind of quietness, but there’s no flavor, no taste. To bring you to the point where the object vanishes and you abide in this beingness, a tremendous teacher of exceptional circumstances are necessary.

In the direct approach, you face the ultimate directly, and the conditioning gradually loses its impact. But that takes time.

So the ultimate melts the conditioning.

Yes. There’s a giving up, and in the end you remain in beingness.

You say that any kind of practice is a hindrance, but at the same time you suggest practices to people. You teach a form of yoga to your students, and to some you recommend self-inquiry, such as the question, “Who am I?” It sounds paradoxical – no practice, but you teach a practice. What practices do you teach, and why do you use practices at all?

To try to practice and to try not to practice are both practice. I would rather say listen, be attentive, and see that you really are not attentive. When you see in certain moments in daily life that you are not attentive, in those moments you are attentive. Then see how you function. That is very important. Be completely objective. Don’t judge, compare, criticize, evaluate. Become more and more accustomed to listening. Listen to your body, without judging, without reference – just listen. Listen to all the situations in daily life. Listen from the whole mind, not from a mind divided by positive and negative. Look from the whole, the global. Students generally observe that most of the time they are not in this listening, although our natural way of behavior is listening.

The path you are describing is often called the “high path with no railing,” which is the most difficult path of all. The average person wouldn’t know where to begin to do what you’re talking about. Most could probably be attentive to their inattention, but after that, what? There’s nothing to grasp onto.

No. there’s nothing to grasp, nothing to find. But it is only apparently a difficult path; actually, I would say it is the easiest path.

How so?

Listening to something is easy, because it doesn’t go through the mind. It is our natural behavior. Evaluation, comparison, is very difficult, because it involves mental effort. In this listening there’s a welcoming of all that happens, an unfolding, and this unfolding, this welcoming, is timeless. All that you welcome appears in this timelessness, and there’s a moment when you feel yourself timeless, fell yourself in welcoming, feel yourself in listening, in attention. Because attention has its own taste, its own flavor. There’s attention to something, but there’s also attention in which there’s no object: nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to touch, only attention.

And in that moment of pure attention, you realize the one who’s being attentive?

I would say that this attention, completely free from choice and reflection, refers to itself. Because it is essentially timeless.

The Zen master Dogen said: “Take the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate the self.” That seems to be similar to what you are talking about.

Yes, but one must be careful. Turning the head inward is still doing something. And there’s really no inward and no outward.

I notice that you use the word “attention.” Is this the same as what the Buddhists call mindfulness – being acutely aware of every movement, every sensation, every thought?

Mindfulness mainly emphasizes the object, the perceived, and not the perceiving, which can never be an object, just as the eye can never see its seeing. The attention I’m speaking of is objectless, directionless, and in it all that is perceived exists potentially. Mindfulness implies a subject-object relation, but attention is non-dual. Mindfulness is intentional; attention is the real state of the mind, free from volition.

What about the yoga you teach, which you call “body-work?” What is it, and why do you teach it?

You are not your body, senses, and mind; body, senses, and mind are expressions of your timeless awareness. But to completely understand that you are not something, you must first see what you are not. You cannot say “I am not the body” without knowing what it is. So you inquire, you explore, you look, you listen. And you discover that you know only certain fractions of your body, certain sensations, and these are more or less reactions, resistance. Eventually you come to a body feeling that you have never had before, because when you listen it unfolds, and the sensitive body, the energy body, appears. It is most important to feel and come into contact with the energy body. Because in the beginning your body is more or less a pattern or superficial structure in the mind, made up of reactions and resistance. But when you really listen to the body, you are no longer an accomplice to these reactions, and the body comes to its natural feeling, which is emptiness. The real body in its original state is emptiness, a completely vacant state. Then you feel the appearance of the elastic body, which is the energy body. When we speak of “body-work,” it is mainly to find this energy body. Once the energy body has been experienced, the physical body works completely differently. The muscle structure, the skin, the flesh, is seen and felt in a completely new way. Even the muscles and bones function differently.

What is the yoga that you teach like?

It’s not really yoga. It’s an approach to the body based on the Kashmir teaching. The Kashmir approach is largely an awakening of the subtle energies circulating in the body. These energies are used to spiritualize the body, to make it sattvic [literally, “pure” or “true”]. In a sattvic body there is already a giving up. You see more clearly what you are not – your tensions, ideas, fixations, reactions. Once the false is seen as false, what remains is our timeless being. By spiritualizing the body, therefore, I mean orchestrating all the dispersed energy that belongs to the false. Our approach is an exploration without will or effort. It is inspired by the truth itself. The natural body is an expression, a prolongation, of this truth.

But I understand you use the traditional asanas of Hatha Yoga.

Every gesture, every position the body can take, is an asana; there are certain archetypes that are not even mentioned in the classical texts of Hatha Yoga. But there are archetypal positions par excellence that brings harmonization of body and mind. Before going to these archetypes, however, one must prepare the body. Otherwise, yoga is nothing more than a kind of gesticulation. What you see for the most part in Europe and the U.S. is gymnastics, gesticulation, and has nothing to do with body integration.

Do you have any other reasons for not using the term “yoga”?

Yes. The term “yoga” means “to join,” and so there must be something to join, something to attain. But join who? Join what? In a certain way the body approach helps you to listen quietly. It is through real listening to the body that you come to true equanimity of mind and body.

Should this be practiced every day?

Don’t make a discipline of it, because in discipline there is anticipation – you’re already emphasizing a goal. This doesn’t belong to exploration.

Practically speaking, wait until you are invited by the energy of the body itself. This recall of our natural state is not memory. It comes from the needs of the body and appears spontaneously. Go to it as you would to a dinner invitation. Otherwise, you’re doing violence to the body.

In your daily life you may experience moments of absolute silence in which there’s nothing to do, nothing to avoid, nothing to achieve. In these moments, you’re completely attuned to this stillness without any effort. Become more and more aware of these timeless moments, moments when you cannot think, because when you think, the moment is already past. Present moments free from all thoughts. Often you will have these moments when an action is accomplished, when a thought is finished, in the evening before you fall asleep, in the morning when you first wake up. Become more and more familiar with these gaps between two thoughts or two actions – gaps which are not an absence of thought, but are presence itself. Simply let yourself be attuned to these timeless moments. You will increasingly welcome them, until one day you are established in this timelessness, are knowingly the light behind all perceptions.

So you don’t recommend practicing meditation as a regular discipline?

No.

You talk about stillness and silence. Are these goals of spiritual life?

When I speak of stillness and silence, nobody is still and nobody is silent; there is only silence and stillness. This stillness does no refer to somebody or something.

So in the midst of this stillness there is activity?

Yes. Stillness is like the hinge of a door. The body is the door that opens and closes constantly, but the stillness never moves.

T.S. Eliot called it “the still point of the turning world.” Since the practice has no goal – in fact, there isn’t even a practice – what is the purpose of spiritual life at all? Obviously, most of us would say that we are not enlightened or liberated, and so we do feel a need to go somewhere where we are not. Then it seems as if we do need to undertake some kind of spiritual life. What is that like?

I would say that we are constantly, without knowing it, being solicited by what we are fundamentally. But the feeling by which we are solicited is very often mistaken for something objective, for a state, for some relative mental stillness that we can achieve through effort or practice. We seek this state as a kind of compensation for real stillness. The moment you are really solicited by the inner need and you face it and visit with it, you will be taken by it. But generally we are looking for compensation.

This process you’re talking about is very different from the way we usually do things. Usually we have an idea in mind of where we are going and then we set out in a certain direction and use our will to get there.

But all doing has a certain motive. I think this motive is to be free – from oneself, free from all conflict.

The motive is a good one, then, but the response is a little misguided.

When you become more and more acquainted with the art of observation, you will first see that you do not observe; when you see that you don’t observe, you are immediately out of the process. There is a moment, a kind of insight, when you see yourself free from all volition, free from all representation; you feel yourself in this fullness, in this moment beyond thought. It’s mainly through observation and attention that you come to feel what you are fundamentally.

How would you describe liberation?

I’ll give you a short answer. It is being free from yourself, free from the image you believe yourself to be. That is liberation. It’s quite an explosion to see that you are nothing, and then to live completely attuned to this nothingness. The body approach I teach is more or less a beautiful pretext, because in a certain way the body is like a musical instrument that you have to tune.

And we tune it to play on it the song of our own nothingness.

Exactly. Liberation means to live freely in the beauty of your absence. You see at one moment that there is nothing seen and no seer. Then you live it.

This is what you refer to as living free from psychological memory.

Absolutely.

Is it really possible to live in the world in this state of total openness and freedom from our own identity, doing the things we do – leading busy lives, taking care of family, etc. ?

Yes. You can live in a family perfectly without the image of being a father or a mother, a lover or a husband. You can perfectly educate your children not to be something, and have a love relationship with them as a friend, rather than as a parent.

One teacher of vipassana meditation who is also a clinical psychologist has written, “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody,” meaning that for many people, particularly now in the West, who have been brought up in dysfunctional families, there are very often such deep lack of self-esteem and such a conflicted or uncertain sense of who they are in an everyday way, that they must first develop psychological and emotional strength before they can embark on the path to becoming nobody. There are people who would near you say that ultimately we have no identity, we are nothing, and we live in this nothingness, and would turn around and say, “Oh, yes, I know that.” What they are really talking about is their own inner emptiness, their own inner feeling of lack or deprivation, which is a kind of sickness. Do you agree that we have to be somebody before we can be nobody?

First you must see how you function. And you will see that you function as somebody, as a person. You live constantly in choice. You live completely in the psychological structure of like and dislike, which brings you sorrow.  You must see that. If you identify yourself your personality, it means you identify yourself as your memory, because personality is memory, what I call psychological memory. In this seeing, this natural giving up, the personality goes away. And when you live in this nothingness, something completely different emerges. Instead of seeing life in terms of the projections of your personality, things appear in your life as they are, as facts. And these appearings naturally bring their own solution. You are no longer identified with your personality, with psychological memory, though your functional memory remains. Instead, there is a cosmic personality, a trans-personality, that appears and disappears when you need it. You are nothing more than a channel, responding according to the situation.

This interview was part of a larger article that was published in Yoga Journal, Issue 83, November/December, 1988.

a parade of nondual perspectives
from
www.theawakenedeye.com/nonduality.htm
nonduality

Most of the excerpts are taken from One: Essential Writings on Nonduality.

Nonduality means ‘not two’, nonseparateness.

When we speak, we speak from a disposition.
There are two basic dispositions: one from the place of oneness or “I Am” or Truth, Consciousness, God, Reality, whatever you want to call.
The second is the disposition from the Absolute, which is where the direct experience people come from. People like Tony Parsons or U.G. Krishnamurti. They say there is no God, consciousness or whatever you claim to be. They’re coming from nothingness, the Absolute. From that point of view there isn’t even nonseparateness. There’s nothing and no one. That’s the ‘real’ nonduality. That’s true Advaita. But no one can get it. You can’t do anything to get it. There’s no getting and no one to do the getting.

But we can get the nonduality that pertains to God, consciousness, truth, reality. We can get it through intention, inquiry, surrender, and different means. We can taste it and know it as our true nature, as the truth of who we are.

nonduality and art:
A mature creative life, which has discovered its source, finds it is linked to everything. When we are able to tap this source and link the illumined threads, we no longer want to live our creative lives separate from it. A creation that does not have the residual glow of its source can, at best, only sound a deathly rattle – however impressive that rattle may be.
Jerry Wennstrom

nonduality and education:
Awareness doesn’t need more information. It needs only enough information. This intelligence, the quality that mediates information into wisdom, is seldom referenced in school. If we do not include awareness in what we convey to our children, then aren’t we teaching them to be unconscious and to be consumers of an endless stream of pointless information and products?
Steven Harrison

nonduality and aikido:
The Art of Peace, begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.
Morihei Ueshiba

nonduality and cinema:
“Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light – are they the workings of one mind, features of the same face? Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.”
The Thin Red Line

nonduality and haiku:
These intimate haiku-pauses ground us in the mystery of being as we open ourselves, time and time again, to new vistas and to keener insights into the living, changing universe we inhabit. They allow us to be attuned to the rhythm, colour, sound, scent, movement and stillness of life, from season to season, whoever, whatever or wherever we are.
Gabriel Rosenstock

nonduality and western philosophy:
Proving the nondual nature of reality is not an overall goal for Western philosophy. A few philosophers have created nondual metaphysical theories; and others have argued against metaphysics altogether. But most philosophers who dissolve or dismiss dualities are not nondualists. The dualities left in the dust by these writers are merely casualties of their other work. In fact, the cleverest and most persuasive arguments tend to come from the works focused on narrower issues. These arguments can be very helpful in the course of one’s nondual inquiry. As the old-time news editors used to say, “We can use it!”
Greg Goode

nonduality and psychotherapy:
Are awakening psychotherapists in the same lineage as the Buddha or India’s other illustrious sages? It seems obvious that any awakening or awakened beings will transmit their understanding according to their capacities and limitations in any moment. This holds true for psychotherapists and nonpsychotherapists alike. In some ways being a psychotherapist may make awakening more difficult, especially if there are strong attachments to theories about the mind. On the other hand, psychotherapists are in a unique position in modern society to offer a sanctuary for individuals to sort out their lives and more intimately explore their direct experience.
John J. Prendergast

nonduality and religion:
With the perspectives of religion, particularly Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Christianity, you’ll see expression from the disposition of the Absolute. It’s important to recognize the difference between the two dispositions.

advaita vedanta:
“The essence and the whole of Vedanta is this Knowledge, this supreme Knowledge: that I am by nature the formless, all-pervasive Self.”

buddhism:
“If anyone listens to this discourse and is neither filled with alarm nor awe nor dread, be it known that such a one is of remarkable achievement.”

sufism:
“… if you know yourself without being, not trying to become nothing, you will know your Lord. If you think that to know Allah depends on your ridding yourself of yourself, then you are guilty of attributing partners to Him – the only unforgivable sin – because you are claiming that there is another existence besides Him, the All-Existent: that there is a you and a He.”

judaism:
“Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.”

christianity:
“The truth of the body, then, is the revelation that Christ is all that is manifest of God or all that is manifest of the unmanifest Father. Self or consciousness does not reveal this and cannot know it. In the ‘smile’ there was no knower or one who smiles, nor was there anyone or anything to smile at or to know; there was just the smile, the ‘knowing’ that is beyond knower and known.”

native american tradition:
“We believe profoundly in silence – the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. Those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence – not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the shining pool – those, in the mind of the person of nature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.”

taoism:
Evince the plainness of undyed silk,
Embrace the simplicity of the unhewn log;
Lessen selfishness,
Diminish desires;
Abolish learning

Man is mind.

The word ‘man’ itself comes from the Sanskrit root man, which means mind. If you understand the workings of the mind, you will understand the reality of man and the possibility too. If you understand the inner mechanism of the mind, you will understand the past of man, the present and the future too.

Man in himself is not a being but a passage. In himself man is not a being, because man is continuously a becoming. There is no rest in being a man. Rest is below man or above man.

Below is nature, above is God. Man is just in between – a link, a ladder. You cannot rest on a ladder, you cannot stop on the ladder. The ladder cannot become your abode. Man has to be surpassed, man has to be transcended.

Man is a journey between your two infinities. One is your nature, one infinity; another is your hidden God, the other infinity. And man is just between the two, a ferry boat. Use it, but don’t be confined by it. Use it, but don’t be defined by it. Always remember that you have to go beyond.

The whole message of Jesus is how to go beyond man. That’s why he again and again says: I am the Son of man and the Son of God. He goes on insisting on this contradiction, because he wants it to be completely clear that man is both: on the one hand part of nature, on the other hand part of God. That is the meaning of the word ’son’: son means a part of the father.

And because man belongs to these two realities – two separate realities – there is anxiety in man, there is tension in man, there is constant conflict in man, because these two natures go on fighting. Hence, as man, there is no possibility of peace. Either you have to become absolutely unconscious, like a drunkard when he has taken so much alcohol that he has lost all his consciousness – then there is peace, or you will have to become so conscious that all the nooks and corners of your being are full of light – you become a Buddha or a Christ – then there is peace. Either fall below man, or go beyond man. Don’t go on clinging to being a man, because then you are clinging to a disease.

That’s exactly what man is: a disease, a constant tension – to be or not to be, to be this or to be that – a constant fight between the soul and the body, the lower and the higher, unconsciousness and consciousness. To understand man as a conflict, to understand man as a constant tension will help immensely, because then you stop clinging to man as such. Rather, on the contrary, you start thinking ’How to go beyond, how to transcend, how to surpass?’

Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that man is the only animal who tries to surpass himself, the only animal who can surpass himself. It is the greatest miracle in the world: to surpass oneself. But it has happened. It has happened in a Christ, in a Buddha, in a Krishna. It can happen in you! You are a great promise, a project, an adventure. But don’t start thinking about yourself as if you have arrived. Then you cling somewhere in between, and a part of you will be pulled to one side and the other part to another side – you will be torn apart. And you will remain in anguish, and your existence will be nothing but a long, long, on-going nightmare.

Before we enter the sutras, a few things about the mind – because man is mind.

The first state of mind we can call ‘pre-mind’. It exists in a very small child – very primitive, animal-like. Hence the beauty of the children, and the innocence, and the grace – because that anxiety which we call man has not yet evolved. The child is at ease. The child is not yet a traveller; he has yet not left his home in search for some other home. The pilgrimage has not started yet. The child is at rest – perfectly at ease and happy to be whatsoever he is. That’s why his eyes have no anxiety, and the child has a certain grace around him.

But this grace is going to be lost. This grace cannot stay forever, because it is unconscious, because it has not been earned, because it is a natural gift, and the child is completely oblivious to it. He cannot hold onto it. How can you hold onto something when you are unconscious of it? It has to be lost. The only way to gain it is to lose it. The child will have to go into corruption, into perversion. The child will have to go into the cunningness of the mind, and then the child will understand that he has lost something – something immensely valuable.

But one can know it only when it is lost. There is no other way to know it. Then the search starts. Religion is nothing but the search for the lost childhood. Everybody carries the memory of it, the very alive memory of it, somewhere deep down. Maybe not very consciously, but it functions like an unconscious substratum that something has been lost, something has been forgotten, something was there which is no more there; something is being missed, and one starts searching for it.

The first stage is pre-mind. There is no responsibility, because a child knows nothing of duty, the child knows nothing of values, virtues. The child knows nothing of sainthood, so he is not aware of sin either. He exists before the diversion, he exists before those two paths of sin and sainthood diverge, separate and go apart. He is in a kind of primitive unity. This cannot last for long, this is going to go, but it has not gone yet. This is the state of the child near about three years of age.

Between three and four the child loses his innocence, loses his virginity, loses nature and becomes part of the civilised world – really becomes man.

This pre-mind is instinctive. It is very intelligent, but the intelligence is not intellectual, the intelligence is purely instinctive. The child functions very intelligently but not intellectually. The intelligence that a child shows is natural, he has not learned it. It is part of the wisdom of his body, it is inherited.

The child has no idea of good and bad, so there is never any conflict. His desires are pure.

Whatsoever he desires, he desires passionately, totally. No problem arises in his mind whether this desire is right or wrong. Whenever he is in a certain mood, he is totally in it – but his moods are momentary. He has no identity, he is unpredictable: one moment he is loving, another moment he is angry. And you cannot tell him ‘You are contradictory’; he is very inconsistent because he is always true to the moment. Not that he does anything consciously, it is just natural.

So the innocence is there, but it is not very deep. The innocence is there, but it has no meditativeness in it. It is shallow, momentary, temporary, tentative.

The child is more like an animal than like a man. The child is the link between the man and the animal. The child passes through all the stages that man has passed through down the ages.

The scientists say that during nine months in the mother’s womb the child passes through millions of years of evolution. He starts like a fish – as life started on the earth – and then by and by, he goes on growing. Within days he is passing through thousands, millions of years; in nine months he has passed through the whole of evolution. But even when the child is born, he is still not yet man – not at least, civilised – he is primitive, the cave-man.

The child lives in an inner chaos. He has no idea what he is going to do. He has no future, he carries no past; he lives utterly in the present. But because he lives utterly in the present and unconsciously, his life cannot have a discipline, an order. It is chaotic, it is anarchic. This is the first stage of man, the first stage of mind. And remember, that although sooner or later you lose it, it remains like a substratum in you. You can lose it totally only when meditation has gone deep, when meditation has transformed your being. Otherwise it remains there, and you can fall into it at any moment; in any stress, in any strain you can again become childish.

For example, your house is on fire, and you can start crying like a child. And you are not a man who cries ordinarily – nobody may have ever seen you crying. And your house is on fire and suddenly you forget that you are a grown-up man. You become like a small child, you start crying – tears come to your eyes – you are completely lost, helpless. What has happened? That pre-mind has reclaimed you. It was always there. You had grown a second layer upon it, on top of it, but it was there deep down. When the second layer cannot function, in a deep helplessness you fall to the first layer. This happens every day.

In anger you become more childish, in love also you become more childish. Listen to the dialogue of two lovers, and you will find it very childish. Remember your own memories when you first fell in love: how you behaved, what you said to your beloved or your lover, and you will find childishness. Or remember when somebody provokes you and you become angry – you start doing things which are very illogical, unintelligent, undisciplined, chaotic. You repent for them later on, because later on, when the second layer comes back, the second layer repents for the first layer. When the civilized mind comes back, takes hold again, it repents. It says ‘It was not good of me. It was not good to do.’

The first layer never completely goes unless you become a Christ or a Buddha. It remains there.

Watch it.

The first layer is very chaotic. The second layer is collective. The second mind I call the ‘collective mind’. Now the group, the family, the society, the nation become more important than yourself. A child is very, very, self-oriented, he thinks only of himself. He does not care for anything else, he is utterly selfish. The second mind starts thinking of others, starts sacrificing its own interests, becomes more collective, becomes more part of society, a clan, a tribe – starts becoming civilised. Civilisation means to become part of a society, to become part of many people: to become responsible, not to go on living a selfish existence. Civilisation means sacrificing oneself for others.

This second mind is very prevalent. Except in very rare cases, the first mind sooner or later disappears. Some imbeciles, idiots – in them the first layer never disappears, it remains predominant. They never learn how to be social, they remain primitive. Otherwise, normally the second layer evolves – the schooling, the family training, the teachers, the society, the experiences, the observation… And the child starts learning that he is not an island, but a member of an organism – the society, the church, the nation.

This second, collective mind has a certain identity. The first mind knows no identity. If you ask a child ‘Who are you?’ he can’t answer it. He does not know the answer – who he is. But a grown-up person can say ‘Yes, I am a Catholic, I am a communist, I am a Hindu, I am an Indian, I am a

German, I am an Italian.’ What is he saying? He is saying ‘I belong to this group called Hindu, or Christian, or Mohammedan. I belong to this nation, to this geography – India, Germany. Italy.’ Or ‘I belong to this ideology – communism, Catholicism, fascism.’ He is saying ‘I am to whom I belong’.

Now he has an identity. He can say ‘I am a doctor, or an engineer, or a businessman’ – then too he is saying ‘This is what I do. This is my function in the society.’ When you ask somebody ‘Who are you?’ – he answers by showing you where he belongs, to whom he belongs, what his function is in the society. Now this is not much of a self-knowledge. If this is self-knowledge then everybody knows who he is. But for utilitarian purposes it is enough, and many people stop there.

If you stop there you will never know who you are. Then you have taken just a false identity.

Just a few labels and you think ‘This is me’. This is not you. You exist on a far higher plane, or in a deeper depth. These labels that you have collected about yourself are good for functioning in the society as a member, but they don’t show anything about your reality. The inward reality remains untouched by them. But this is the second layer where almost everybody stops. The society does not want you to go beyond it. The school, the college, the university – their effort is that you should not remain childish, you should become civilised, and then their effort ends. Then the society’s work is finished.

The society has made you a member of the mass, has made you a kind of slave, has given you a certain imprisonment, has taken all that was dangerous in you – the chaos, the freedom, the irresponsibility; has made you dutiful, responsible, given you values what is good and what is not good; has pigeonholed you, categorised you. Now the society is finished. Now live silently, go to the office, come home, take care of your children, your parents, and so on and so forth – one day, die: your existence is complete. This is a very false completion: a routine existence.

Friedrich Nietzsche has called this state ‘the camel’, the beast of burden. This is the ‘camel state’. People go on carrying great loads and burdens for no reason at all. And they go on moving in a desert, like the camel moves in a desert. You can see these camels all around dry, dull, dead, still carrying, carrying great loads. The loads are crushing them, killing them, but they are carrying – maybe just out of habit. Because yesterday also they were carrying and the day before yesterday also they were carrying; it has become part of their habit, it has become part of their definition. Their load, their anxiety, their sadness, their misery have become part of their definition, their identity. These camels you will find everywhere, and this desert is all over the earth.

The child has to come from the first to the second, but nobody should stop there. To be a camel is not the goal. Something more is needed, something more existential is needed. Yes, you will have respectability if you are a good camel and carry great loads. People will respect you; they will all show honour towards you. That’s a kind of mutual understanding. When a person is carrying so much load, he has to be given some awards – that’s what respect is.

The word ‘respect’ is beautiful, it means to look again: respect. When a person is carrying a great load of responsibility, duty, family, society, people look at him and say ‘Look, what a great man!’ Re-spect: they look again and again and they say ‘Look! How much of a burden he is carrying. What sacrifice!’ He has sacrificed his whole being.

Naturally if you sacrifice yourself for the religion, the religion will sanctify you, will call you a saint. If you sacrifice for the country, the country will give you respect. If you sacrifice for something else, they will give you respect. One can go on collecting this respect, and one can go on dying without living at all. Beware of this situation!

In this state, there is a collective responsibility: the collective mind functions; you don’t have a personal responsibility yet. The child has no responsibility. The second stage has a responsibility, but it is collective. You don’t feel Personally responsible for anything, you feel responsible only because you are part of a certain collectivity.

In an Indian village you can find this state the camel, very, very pronounced. A Brahmin has no responsibility of his own. His whole responsibility is that he is a Brahmin; he has to behave like a Brahmin. In Indian villages you will not find individualities, you will only find collectivities.

The Brahmin, the Shudra, the Kshatriya – they all function according to their community, according to the rules. Nobody has any responsibility to think, there is no question of thinking.

The rules have been given down the ages, they are written in the scriptures. Everything is clear-cut – there is no need to speculate, to philosophise, to ponder, to meditate. All problems have been solved – Manu, the Indian Moses, has solved them.

That’s where Jesus found the Jews – at the second stage. Moses had done the first work; he had brought the primitive mind to a civilised state. Now Jesus was needed to bring another revolution, another transformation. People were existing just as cogs in a wheel, parts of a great mechanism. The only question was how to function efficiently.

That is not enough to live a joyous life. To be efficient is because the efficiency makes you a good mechanism but does not give you a soul. It does not give you a celebration, it can’t be ecstatic. But there are a few beautiful things about the second mind you have to remember; they will help you to understand the third.

The second mind is non-tense: there is no anxiety in it. The Indian villager, or the people of the East are more calm, quiet. They move with a certain ease, dignity. Even if they are starving, hungry, ill, they have a patience, a deep accep-tance. They don’t rebel. Rebellion has no appeal for them, they live in acceptance. They don’t have that much individual-ity to rebel. Indians feel very good about it, they think America is going mad; they think ‘We are fortunate.’ But this is not my observation.

America is in a difficulty. America is in great anguish, but that anguish is higher than the so-called Indian peace. That anguish can be more creative, that anguish can bring a higher stage of mind and consciousness into the world than this cow-like peace. This peace is not very creative. Yes, it is good in a way – one lives one’s life without much anguish. But nothing comes out of that life, just peaceful and peaceful, and that peace is never creative – creative of something out, or creative of something in. That peace seems to be very impotent. But in this second stage the peace is there, obedience is there, patience is there, and there is a feeling of belonging to the community, to the church. Nobody feels alone.

In America people are very alone. Even in a crowd they are alone. In India, even if people are alone, they are not alone. They know they belong, they know they have a certain function somewhere, they know they are needed. They know that they need not choose, everything has been chosen beforehand. A Brahmin is born a Brahmin. He will be respected by the society, he will become the priest. He has not to work for it; it is already decided by fate, by God.

When you don’t have to decide, naturally you don’t feel any anxiety. Decision brings anxiety. You have to decide, then there is a problem. Then to go this way or that? And there are a thousand ways, and so many alternatives – and choose in trembling, because who knows whether you are choosing the right or the wrong? The only way to know is to choose it. But then it will be too late. After ten years if you come to know that it was a wrong choice it will be too difficult to go back and choose again, because then those ten years will be gone – gone down the drain. There is a kind of belonging in the second state of mind. You need not choose, everything has been chosen, decided already; there is a kind of fatalism. All that happens has to be accepted because it cannot be otherwise. If it cannot be otherwise then why be worried? That’s why in India there are less psychological breakdowns than in America. But it is not a good state, remember. And I am not saying that a psychological breakdown is a great thing, and I am not saying that to be tense and to be anxious is something valuable. But I am saying that just not to be anxious and not to be tense is not some achievement either.

This state – the second state – is a kind of patriarchy. The father remains very important. The father-figures are very important. God is thought to be a father.

There is a difference between the mother and the father. The father is very demanding, the mother is non-demanding. Mother’s love is unconditional, father’s love is conditional. The father says ‘Do this then I will love you; if you don’t do this you will not get my love.’ And the father can get very angry.

This state is a state of patriarchy: father remains important, mother is not important. Unconditional love is not known. Society appreciates you, respects you if you follow the society. If you go a little bit astray, all respect is taken away and the society is ready to destroy you. The Jewish God says ‘I am a very jealous God. If you go against me I will destroy you!’ – And that’s what the state says, the government says, the priest says, the pope says. They are all very jealous. They are very dominating.

This state is very repressive: it does not allow anybody to have his own say; it does not allow anybody to have his own being. It is repressive: it does not allow one’s own impulses. It is dictatorial: it teaches you to say yes; no is not accepted, yes is enforced violently, aggressively. Of course this yes cannot be of much value, because if you cannot say no your yes is going to be impotent.  But this is the yes that exists all around. People believe in God because they have been told to believe in God. People go to the church because they have been told to go to the church. People go on doing things formally, ritualistically. Jesus called these people hypocrites.

Before we enter into the sutras, these things will be good to understand, then the sutras will be very, very clear.

This state of mind has only a painted exterior; the interior remains untouched, unevolved. A kind of theism – people believe in God, people believe in hell and heaven, and people believe in punishment and reward – but people believe, people don’t know. Yes is there, but it has been forced. It has not been given a chance to evolve and unfold within you. There is a communal solidarity because you are never alone, you are always together with people, and the crowd is all around you and it feels good. The moment you are alone, trembling arises. When the great crowd is all around you, you can trust. So many people can’t be wrong, so you must be right, because so many people are going in the same way, in the same direction, and you are also going with them.

The third mind I call the ‘individual mind’; Nietzsche calls it ‘the lion’. It is independence, it is assertion, it is rebellion. The ego has evolved. The ego has become very, very, crystallised. The man is no more just a part of a church, country, tribe, clan, family; he is himself. The real culture can only start when you have become an individual. The sense of the self is a must, and this is the third stage of the mind.

The identity is no more of belonging, the identity is no more that you are a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian. The identity is more personal – that you are a painter, that you are a poet. The identity is more creative; it is not of belonging but of contribution – what you have contributed to the world.

In the nebulous mind a centre arises by and by. In the child’s mind there was no centre. In the collective mind there was a false centre imposed from the outside. In the individual mind an inner centre arises. The first was a kind of chaos – no order. The second was a kind of patriarchy – an imposed order by the father, by the demanding society and the father-figures. The third is a kind of fraternity: a brotherhood arises. You don’t belong to any crowd; nobody can impose anything upon you, nor do you want to impose anything upon anybody. You respect others’ freedom as much as you respect your own freedom. All are brothers.

In the second, the basic question was ‘Who is the father-figure?’ In the third, the question is not who is the father-figure – there is none, God is dead. That is the situation in which Nietzsche declares that God is dead: God, as father, is dead. That is the situation where Buddha says there is no God, and Mahavir says there is no God. And Patanjali says that God is just a hypothesis – needed in certain stages, and then is needed no more.

Responsibility arises, and a very personal responsibility. You start feeling responsible for each of your acts, because now you know what is right and what is wrong. Not that somebody says ‘This is right’, but because you feel this is right, because you feel this is good. A greater understanding, a greater consciousness will be needed. There will be more joy because you will be more crystallised, but there will be more anxiety too, because now if something goes wrong you go wrong. And you alone are responsible for each step. You cannot look to a father-figure, and you cannot throw your responsibility onto somebody else – no fate, no father exists, you are left alone on the road, with thousands of alternatives. And you have to choose. And each choice is going to be decisive, because you cannot go back in time. Great anxiety arises. This is the place where people start having psychological breakdowns. This is a higher stage than the second, and the West exists at a higher stage than your so-called East. But of course there are problems. And those problems can be solved, and those problems should be solved rather than slipping back to a lower stage of mind.

There is freedom, so there is tension. There is thinking, there is concentration – abstract philosophy is born, science grows, and no becomes very important. Doubt becomes very significant. In the collective mind faith was the rule; in the individual mind doubt becomes the rule. No becomes very basic, because rebellion cannot exist without no, and the ego cannot grow and ripen without no. You have to say no to a thousand and one things, so that you can say yes to the one thing you would like to say yes to. Now the yes is significant, because the man is capable of saying no. Now the yes has a potency, power.

The man who always says yes – his yes is not of much worth. But the man who says no ninety-nine times and says yes one time – he means it. It has an authenticity.

It is a very creative crisis because if you go above it, it will be creative. If you fall from it, you will not fall to the second, you will fall to the first. This has to be understood. If you fall from the third, the individual mind, you will go immediately into madness, because the second is no more possible. You have learnt no-saying, you have learnt being rebellious, you have tasted freedom, now you cannot fall back to the second. That door no more exists for you. If you fall from the third you will fall to the first: you will go mad.

That’s exactly what happened to Friedrich Nietzsche himself. He was a ‘lion’, but the lion went mad, roaring and roaring and roaring, and could not find a Way beyond the third.

When a man falls from the third, he falls to the first. This has to be remembered. Then you cannot go to the second – that is finished forever. Once your no has become very conscious you cannot go back to faith. A man who has doubted, and who has learnt to doubt, cannot go to faith again – that is impossible. Now the faith will be simply cunningness and deception, and you cannot deceive yourself. Once a man has become an atheist then ordinary theism won’t do. Then he will have to find a man like me. Then ordinary theism won’t do – he has gone beyond it.

Nietzsche needed a man like Buddha. And because Buddha was not available, and because the Western mind has not yet been able to make it possible for people to go beyond the third, he had to go mad. In the West it is almost a certainty that whenever a person becomes really evolved at the third stage, he starts slipping into madness, because the fourth is not available there yet. If the fourth is available, then the third is very creative. If there is a possibility to surrender the ego, then the ego is of immense value. But the value is in its surrender! If you cannot surrender it, then it will become a load – a great load on you. It will be unbearable. Then the lion will go on roaring and roaring and there will be no other way than to go mad.

This is a very critical stage – the third; it is just in the middle. Two minds are below it and two minds are above it. It is exactly the mid-link. If you fall, you go into the abyss of madness; if you rise, you go into the beatitude of being a Christ or a Buddha.

The fourth mind is ‘universal mind’. Remember, it looks collective but it is not collective. ‘Collective’ means belonging to a society, a certain time, a certain period, a certain country. ‘Universal’ means belonging to the whole existence, to existence as such. The ego, when ripe, can be dropped; in fact, drops itself if the fourth door is available. And that is the function of religion: to make the fourth door available. That is the problem in the .West now: the third mind has developed to its uttermost, and the fourth door is not available. The West Urgently needs the fourth door.

Carl Gustav Jung has said in his memoirs that through observing thousands of people in his whole life, he has come to a few conclusions. One conclusion is that people who are near about forty to forty-five are always facing a religious crisis. Their problem is not psychological, their problem is religious. Near the age of forty-two, forty-five, a man starts looking for the fourth mind. If he cannot find it, then he goes berserk. Then the hunger is there and the nourishment is not available. If he can find it, great beatitude, great benediction arises.

It is almost like at the age of fourteen you become sexually mature. Then you start looking for a partner – for a woman, for a man. You want a love object – near the age of fourteen. Exactly near the age of forty-two another thing in you matures, and you start looking for samadhi, for meditation, for something that goes higher than love, something that goes higher than sex, something that can lead to a more eternal orgasm, more total orgasm. If you can find it then life remains smooth. If you cannot find the door – hunger has arisen and the nourishment is not available – what will you do? You start breaking down: your whole structure is shaken. And when a man breaks down. He always breaks down to the first; he falls to the lowest.

This fourth I call the ‘universal mind’ – the ego can be dissolved because the ego has matured. Remember, let me repeat: the ego can be dissolved only when it has become mature. I am not against the ego, I am all for it – but I don’t confine myself to it. One has to go beyond it.

Just the other day I was reading Frankl’s book. He says ‘We must be willing to discard personality.’ Why should we be willing to discard personality? And how can you discard personality if you have not grown it? Only the perfectly ripe can be discarded.

What is personality? Personality is a persona, a mask. It is needed. The child has no mask, that’s why he looks so animal-like. The collective mind has a mask, but imposed from the outside; it has no interior definition of its being. The egoist, the individual mind, has an interior definition; he knows who he is, he has a kind of integration. Of course, the integration is not ultimate and will have to be dropped, but it can be dropped only when it has been attained.

‘We must be willing to discard personality. God is no respecter of persons.’ That’s true. God loves individuals, but not persons. And the difference is great. A person is one who has an ego definition. An individual is one who has dropped his ego, and knows who he is. A person is a circle with a centre; and the individual is a circle without the centre – just pure space.

‘The personality is only a mask, it is a theatrical creation, a mere stage-prop.’ The longing for freedom, salvation or nirvana, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality and the prison that it creates.

‘The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others.’ Your ego is also derived from others. You depend for your ego on the others. If you go to the Himalayas and sit in a cave, what ego will you have? By and by the ego will start disappearing. It needs support. Somebody needs to appreciate it. Somebody needs to say to you that you are a beautiful person. Somebody needs to go on feeding it. The ego can exist only in society. Although it tries to get rid of society, in a subtle, unconscious way it remains dependent on the society.

‘The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others. It is constructed in an attempt to live up to the expectation of others. The others have become installed in our hearts, and we call them ourselves.’

The self is not you. It belongs to others who surround you. It exists in you, but it is possessed by others. That’s why it is so easy to manipulate an egoistic person. That’s what flattery is: flattery is a trick to manipulate the egoistic person. You go and say to him that he is the greatest man in the world, and he is ready to fall at your feet; you are manipulating. He knows, you know and everybody else knows that this is just false. He also knows that he is not the greatest man in the world, but he will believe it. He would like to believe it. And he would like to do anything that you want him to do. At least one person in the world believes that he is the greatest person. He cannot afford to lose you.

The ego exists in you but is possessed by others. It is the subtlest slavery yet invented by the priests and the politicians. It is like a Delgado electrode inserted in your head and manipulated by remote control.

The society is very clever. First, it tries to keep you at the second level. If you go beyond that, then it starts manipulating you through flattery.

You will be surprised that in India there has never been a revolution. And the reason? The reason is that the Brahmin, the intellectual, was so much flattered down the ages that he was never angry enough to revolt against the society. And only intellectuals revolt – only intellectuals, because they are the most egoistic people. They are the most independent people – the intelligentsia. And because in India the Brahmin was the highest… There was no one higher than him – even the king was lower than the Brahmin. A beggar Brahmin was higher than the emperor, and the emperor used to touch his feet. Now there was no possibility of revolution because who would do the revolution? These are the people, these intellectuals, who create trouble. Now they are respected highly, they are flattered highly… The revolution could not exist – it was not possible.

It has been the same thing in Soviet Russia. For these fifty years in Soviet society, the intellectual has been praised as much as anything. The academician, the writer, the poet, the professor – they are the most highly respected persons. Now who is going to do the revolution? Revolution is not possible, because the revolutionary has much investment in the conventional mode of the society, in the traditional society.

In India revolution didn’t happen, and in Russia it cannot happen. Revolution is possible only through the egoist. But the egoist can be manipulated very easily. Give him the Nobel Prize, give him a doctorate, and he is ready to do anything.

This third state of mind is now prevalent all over the world. If it is satisfied, then you are stuck in it. If it is not satisfied, then you fall back and become mad. Both are not healthy situations.

One has to go beyond it, and the fourth state, the universal mind, has to be created. The separation with the cosmos has to disappear. You have to become one with the whole. In fact you Are One, you just think that you are not. That barrier of the thought has to be dissolved. Then there is relaxation, peace, non-violence. In India we say: Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam: Then there is truth, there is good, and there is beauty. With the universal mind these three things flower: Satyam – truth, Shivam – good, Sunderam – beauty. With the universal mind these three flowers come into bloom, and there is great joy. You have disappeared, and all the energy that was involved in the ego is freed. That energy becomes beauty, good, truth.

This is the state of matriarchy. The collective mind is patriarchy; the individual mind is fraternity; and the universal mind is matriarchy. Mother love is non-demanding, so is the love of the universe towards you. It demands nothing, it is unconditional, it is simply showering on you. It is for you to take or not to take, but it is showering on you. If you have the ego then your doors are closed and you don’t take it. If the ego has disappeared, then it goes on and on showering on you, goes on nourishing you, goes on fulfilling you.

The first stage was chaotic, the second was intellectual, the third was intelligent. The fourth is emotional: it is of love, of the heart. With the third, intellect comes to its peak; with the fourth, love starts flowing.

This state can be called ‘God as mother’. When God as father has died, God as mother has to arise. This is a higher stage of religion. When father is important, the religion is more institutional, formal – because father himself is formal, institutional. Mother is more natural, more biological, more intrinsic. Father is external, mother is internal.

The universal mind brings the matriarchy. Mother becomes more important. God is no more a he, but becomes a she. Life is thought about, not according to logic, but according to love.

The poet Schiller has called it ‘the universal kiss’. If you are available, the universal mother can kiss you, can embrace you, can take you again into her womb. Yes comes again into existence, but it is no more imposed from the outside, it comes from your innermost core. This is trust. The collective mind lives in faith. The individual mind lives in doubt, the universal mind lives in trust – Shraddha. It is not belief, it is not that somebody has forced you to believe; it is your own vision, it is your own experience.

This is true religion: when you can become a witness of God, of Samadhi, of prayer; when you are the witness; when you have not taken it as borrowed – it is no more knowledge, no more belief – it has become your own existential experience. Solidarity again enters, but it is solidarity with existence itself, not with society. Creativity again comes, but it is no more the egoistic creativity. It is not you as doer – you become instrumental – God is the doer. Then God flows through you. You may create great poetry. In fact, you cannot create great poetry before it. The ego will create a shadow; the ego can never be transparent. The real creativity is possible only with the universal.

You must have read Gopi Krishna’s books on kundalini. He says that when kundalini arises, great creativity arises. That’s true. But whatsoever he gives as examples are not true. He says Sri Aurobindo became creative when his kundalini arose. But Sri Aurobindo has written poetry which is simply mediocre. Although it is not creative, at least it is mediocre. But Gopi Krishna has written poetry which cannot even be called mediocre – just rubbish, junk.

Yes, when you come to the universal, great creativity is born. Your very touch becomes creative.

There is an ancient story in Buddhist scriptures…

A very rich man accumulated much wealth – accumulated so much gold that there was no place to hoard it any more. But suddenly something happened. One morning he woke up and saw that all his gold had turned into dust. You can think he must have gone mad.

Somebody helped him towards Buddha – Buddha was staying in the town – and the man went there. And Buddha said ‘You do one thing. Take all your gold into the market-place, and if somebody recognises it as gold, bring that man to me.’

But he said ‘How is it going to help me?’

Buddha said ‘It is going to help you. Go.’

So he took all his gold – thousands of bullock-carts of dust, because now it was all dust. The whole market was full of his bullock-carts. And people were coming and asking ‘What nonsense is this? Why are you carrying so much dust to the market-place? For what?’

But the man kept quiet.

Then a woman came. Her name was Kisagautami. And she said to this man ‘So much gold?

From where could you get so much gold?’

He asked the woman ‘Can you see the gold here?’

She said ‘Oh yes. These thousand bullock-carts are full of gold.’

He took hold of the woman and asked her what secret she had. ‘How can she see? Because nobody… not even I can see that there is any gold; it is all dust.’

He took the woman to Buddha, and Buddha said ‘You have found the right woman – she will teach you the art. It is only a question of seeing. The world is as you see it. It can be hell, it can be heaven. Gold can be dust, and dust can be gold. It is a question of how you look at it. This is the right woman. You become a disciple of Kisagautami. She will teach you. And the day you know how to see rightly, the whole world turns into gold. That is the secret of alchemy.’

That Kisagautami was a rare woman of those days. And the man learnt through her the art of turning the whole world into gold.

When you enter the universal mind you are capable of creativity – not as you, but as God. You become a hollow bamboo and his song starts descending through you. He turns you into a flute.

If from the third, the fourth is not available you will fall into madness. Nietzsche talks only of three minds: the camel, the lion and the child. From the lion he falls back into the child: becomes mad.

There is another door too, and that is the universal mind – which is really childhood again, but a second childhood. It is no more like the first; it is not chaotic, it has a self-discipline. It has an inner cosmos, an inner order – not irresponsible like the first, not responsible like the second. A new responsibility, not towards any values, not towards any society, but a second kind of valuation arises because you can see what is right – how can you do otherwise? You see the right and the right has to be done. Knowledge here becomes virtue. You act according to your awareness; your life is transformed. There is innocence, there is intelligence, there is love, but all is coming from your innermost core; your inner fountain is flowing.

And then the fifth, the last, when you go even beyond the universal. Because even to think that it is the universal mind is to think. You have some ideas of the individual and the universe still left lingering somewhere. You are still conscious that you are one with the whole, but you Are, and you Are one with the whole. The unity is not yet total, is not utter, is not ultimate. When the unity is really ultimate, there is no individual, no universal. This is the fifth mind: Christ-mind, Buddha-mind.

Now three other characteristics appear: Satchitananda. Sat means being, Chit means consciousness, Ananda means bliss. Now these three qualities appear, now these new flowers bloom in your being. You are for the first time a being, becoming is no more. Man has surpassed himself, the bridge is no more. You have come home, you are a being: Sat. And you are utterly conscious because there is no darkness left: Chit. And you are Ananda, because there is no anxiety, no tension, no misery. All that is gone; the nightmare is over. You are fully awake. In that wakefulness is Buddha-hood, or Christhood.

These are the five stages. And remember, the third is the central. Two are below it, two are above it. If you don’t go above you will fall below. And you cannot go above without passing through the third, remember. These are the complexities. If you try to avoid the third you will remain stuck in the second, and you can think that it is universal. It is not, it is simply collective. If you try to avoid the third, you may even remain in the first, which is idiotic. And sometimes the idiotic looks saintly.

In Hindi we have two words from one root for both the stages; that root is Budh. The fifth we call Buddha, the ultimate stage, and the first we call Buddhu, the idiotic stage. Sometimes the idiot looks like the saint – he has some similarities, and sometimes the saint looks like the idiot. But they are far away – the farthest points in existence. Jesus sometimes looks idiotic. And there have been many idiots who looked like Jesus. The similarity is that both are without mind. The idiot is below mind and the Christ is above mind, but both are beyond mind. That is the similarity, but that is where it ends too. Beyond that nothing is similar.

Remember, the first is not the goal, it is the beginning. The second is very comfortable, but comfort is not the question – creativity. The third is creative but very uncomfortable, very anxious, tense. And how long can you remain creative? – There is so much tension. The tension has to be lost; hence, the fourth. In the fourth all is silent. Just the last lingering of the ego has remained, that one feels ‘I am one with the whole.’

A disciple of Rinzai came to the Master and said ‘I have become one with the whole! Now what next?’

The Master turned him out and told him ‘Now you get rid of this idea that you have become one with the whole. Get rid of this idea – this is the last barrier.’

Another disciple said to Rinzai ‘I have attained to nothing.’

And Rinzai said ‘Drop it. Drop that too!’

With the fourth just a very thin wall-almost transparent, you cannot see it – remains. That also has to be dropped; then arises the fifth.

- Osho

From I Say Unto You, Vol. I, chapter 5.

The entire book can be downloaded from:  http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Beloved_Osho_Books/Western_Mystics/I_Say_Unto_You_Volume1.pdf

Trying to understand the world purely by thinking about it is as clumsy a process as trying to drink the Pacific Ocean out of a pint beer mug.  You can only take it one mug at a time. – Alan Watts

I got turned on to Alan Watts just yesterday, if you can believe that.  Mike left a comment on the post yesterday and I followed the trail to his latest post where I listened to Alan Watts.  What a cool guy!  Anyway, this quote came from one of the links I listened to whilst perusing.  He was saying that thoughts occur one at a time, and I think what he was getting at was the same damned thing all the nondual folks are always trying to shove down my throat, which is that I’ll never understand it with the mind.  The mind can’t get it!  Alan Watts died in 1973.  See, even dead people piss me off!

Mike also left a link to a quote, which I’ll just go ahead an replicate so’s ya don’t have to keep flippin’ around the damned web.

Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our ’selves’ is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality… Intellectual understanding should be not indispensable to a ’simple’ mind, but, with our conditioning, it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary. - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

Apparently, according to Wei Wu Wei (another fascinating character), an intellectual understanding is possible, although not likely.  I’d like to think that I have such an intellectual understanding of the “inexistence of our ’selves’”, as I’ve mulled this junk over so many, many times.  Then he says “…it would seem to be an almost inevitable preliminary.”  To what?  Preliminary to the experience of the inexistence of our ’selves’?  He says the intellectual understanding is a rare and bitter attainment.  I can understand bitter.  I think I’m there, actually.  It’s bitter not being able to find or locate your self.  But here  it is, in no particular location, always here, always watching, never moved or touched, just…. here.  What the hell is it?

What the HELL is IT!!!!!

And how is that me?  I am that blank nothing-screen that it’s all plastered on?  Like I’m some kind of dry erase board or something.  All this shit just “happens”, and I am some humongous infinite NOTHING that this Mike thingy happens in?  What about the Mike thingy?  What’s that?  Me?  Isn’t that me too?  Why hell no, hadn’t I negated that bizarre little friggin’ anomaly away already?  Mike isn’t me…. awww c’mon!  Oh, for frick’s sake already!  Sling ‘is head against the damned wall!  Hack it off with a rusted sword!  It’s just Mike… it’s nothing…. not who I really am… what the hell’s the difference?

OK, that was a bit twisted, but I felt it, so there ya go.  I’ve got to take off and find some meat thermometers for smoking a 14 lb turkey tomorrow, so I’m gonna need that damned head to see where the hell I’m driving.

I watched a fascinating BBC documentary, and I’d posted it in the comments section of yesterdays post, but I think I’ll put it here as well.  It’s long, but sure does getcha thinkin’.  You clowns have a magnificent Thanksgiving weekend, unless your not American of course, in which case have a magnificent non-Thanksgiving weekend.

There are six parts to this, so pay attention.

…The whole spirituality thing is just, like, the most pointless merry-go-round.  God! I can’t stop thinking about this!  My mind has been trying to get a handle on all this since I saw you on Saturday.  I’m only really beginning to understand it all myself and I can’t believe anyone can even think about anything else!  I keep thinking “This is it!  This is the only game in town.  The only dance there is.  What else could possibly matter?  I look at other people going about their normal lives and I want to scream!  To shake them and wake them up!  How can anyone watch a movie or go to work or eat a sandwich with this huge freakin’ thing staring them right in the face?  I mean, am I going insane?  I know I’m not, but am I?  Is this normal?  Really, you can tell me.  Am I being, like, the most total whack-job?  - Julie from Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing.

Well that about sums it up for me, how I’m feeling right now.  Talking with Randall was immensely helpful, yet very upsetting also.  I have been keeping it an internal wrestling match since going to bed early Saturday morning.  Up to this past Friday night, Randall and I have been emailing back and forth, both of us, by necessity, using way more words than would be required if we were to  just talk.  So, finally, we did just that.  I wondered how I’d start the conversation, and even thought at one point I’d write an outline of points I wanted clarification on – you know, be all organized.  Well, that’s just not me.  I hardly plan anything, just opting for the go-with-the-flow side of life.  Hell, it’s worked for 40 years, why buck it?  I decided not to sweat it and let it happen how it would.

Talking with someone who has no doubts about something, anything really, is very engaging.  Randall happens to know what the hell he’s talking about.  He never got tripped up one single time, not that I was trying.  The great thing about talking with somebody versus emailing is that all the questions and hesitations are met immediately and dealt with.  We talked for two and a half hours, and at the end I was empty.  I had no more questions.  I would see one come up in my mind, and there was the answer right on its tail.  No need to even form the first letter of the first word in my mouth.  Pointless.

It’s all centered on my belief that I am something that I am not.  To have 40 years experience as a human being, then to be told that that is not who you are is not a pill that’s easily swallowed.  The proof, however, is everywhere I look, and Randall was very adept at pointing that out to me.

Viv made a comment recently:

And it seems to me that there’s a problem with separating the animator from the animated, since it’s life that created the body in the first place – the body grew out of nothing, but it’s strange that it remains when the life that animates it ceases. It still exists – it just isn’t … animated anymore – but it still lives in a way – the cells start to break down and decompose… so there’s still energy there – it’s just an opposite kind of energy – turned in instead of out – the breathing in as opposed to the breathing out.

That sat down cross-legged in my gut, and hasn’t stood up to leave yet.  We had been talking about death; her losing her dog, and I losing my brother, and how strange it is to see a body that’s dead, and having the feeling that what was this body, what made the dog her dog, or what made James “James”, was not there.  Everything was there same as it was when something animated the flesh and bones, but now it’s all limp and starting to return back to the Earth.  That “life” is gone.  What is that life?  That singularly separate life started out with the union of a sperm and an egg inside the womb of a mother.  That life, taking what it needed from the mother to create itself and grow and move and have the hiccups.  When does this life identify itself as the body it so obviously isn’t?  And the body stops, the life is there no more.  Did that life itself stop?  If I’m not the body, then James wasn’t the body either, he just thought he was.  His suffering was too much to bear.  Now he’s rid of this burden, and I wonder if that was enlightening.  I brought up this point about how life created itself, or how maybe it was a recreation of itself.  I don’t know but Randall had been saying that I, this body, is nothing more than life experiencing itself.  I wondered if life didn’t create itself specifically for the purpose of knowing itself.  The totality of existence wouldn’t necessarily know itself other than through a life which was capable of knowing itself.

Randall was very patient with me, gently bringing me back to myself every time.  There’s always this presence that is aware of whatever it is you see.  You can’t turn that off.  You can’t deny that it exists and is always there.  That is what I am, he told me over and over and over again, not once losing patience.  He came at me from ten thousand different angles, and he knew it wasn’t sinking in, but he didn’t seem to be concerned about it.  Honestly, all he can do is point, right?  I have to see it for myself, and he has nothing to do with it.  I guess he knew it was all happening as it should have because he never forced the issue… just kept pointing it out to me.  It was annoying because I knew what he was going to say.  He’d made a statement about it being like a hammer to the head again and again when he talked with Bob.  Yeah, like that… hammer on the head.  I know it’s coming, and boy does it piss me off to hear it again.

So now I’m dealing with this constant buzz.  This craziness.  I do literally feel sometimes like I’m gonna crack up.  My head feels squeezed tight.  I can’t think straight or concentrate long enough to try to make sense of it (maybe that’s a good thing).  The suggestion of what I really am is too mind-boggling to admit, but I no longer can honestly cling to what I’ve always taken myself to be either.  The Matrix keeps coming to mind.  Sorry, but that movie has so many analogies to this crap.  After touching the source, Neo’s mind separates from his body and he finds himself in an in-between world (the train station).  He can’t leave… he’s stuck!  It’s like that right now.  The foundation of me as this body/mind has been questioned and found to be inadequate as a fundamental reality.  I am not this.  Yet at the other end of that spectrum, the fact of me being the ultimate awareness in which, and of which the entirety of the universe exists, is not very believable either.  I’m stuck like Neo.  I have no home.  It’s a very uncomfortable place to be, and it’s driving me nuts!

Quick post.  Just wanted to give you all a bit of access to that clump of grey mung that sits in darkness and ponders what is happening and where it all comes from.  Ladies and gentlemen (and all forms in between), I present, via a moment in the life of Mike, the innermost workings of a befuddled mind.

Pondering

I’ll be back…

Alrighty then ! So today we’re gonna talk about what I am…

Well, what you are I mean.

The thinking mind is energy in movement. What is energy but form?

Something that appears and then subsides
cannot be anything other than form.

What is form but a THING?

Isn’t a THING just a word used to express THINGS

Are you a word? Are you a THING?

When you say “I am this, I am that” Who or What is saying all this?

You?

Are You a thought?  Where are you when this thought is gone?

“Yes but”, you say?  What is “Yes but” but just another energy movement emerging from who you really are?

When I say “who you really are”, I’m not talking about the “you” that you take yourself to be usually!

No, I’m talking about me!

Well, not the “me” that you take me to be!  The me that I am, the me that you are !

Dang, that’s contradictory, uh?  What a paradox we have now.

How can I make you believe that when I say “I” and “you” I’m just using the pronouns my native tongue gave me to run my life effectively throughout this world of activity and forms.

Deprive me of my cherished pronouns and I’m Robocop in ING Mode!

Waking up, Eating banana, Chopping Wood, Carrying Water, Teasing sister, Breaking wind, etc…

How can I make you believe that since Adam and Eve I’ve only talked to myself in an endless soliloquy?

I’m crazy like clinically crazy, you see? ^^

What did you just say? I should consult a shrink?

Hey, that’s an idea, as ephemeral as “you” and “me” but still an idea !

Don’t be fooled please, I’m not enlightened like the most of you ^^

Well, I am but I haven’t fully recognized this fact yet !

I’ve just read too many Non-duality books and I’ve got my degree in Phony Teaching recently.

If you wanna check some Real Deal, golden phenomenon kinda teachers,

just look for the “learn about Nonduality” section from the Nondual Comedy home page.

I Like Jim Carrey by the way !

“We can do nothing about the future,

we can only live the very best now, one moment at a time.”

- Robert Martin

“Despair I can cope with; it’s hope I can’t stand.”

There is a pressing desire to experience life differently from the way it actually IS right now, especially if we’re going through a tough time. Where does this thought come from? From nowhere other than the mind that seeks to preserve itself in order to try and control reality. When this is seen through as a fantasy of thought, there can be an experience of overwhelming emotion. Either intense laughter or deep sadness. Because we do not like to know that reality is not negotiable, and doesn’t operate in response to our choices.

NOW IS ALL THAT WE HAVE

Life in reality can never be experienced in any other way than it is experienced right now – it IS as it happens. When this is seen it is so amazingly obvious – yet we keep up the struggle, in hopes that if we can just somehow change the future, everything will be wonderful.

Now is all that we have. There is never more time than we have right now.
We can do nothing about the future, we can only live the very best now, one moment at a time.

THE PROBLEM OF WORRY

Question: What about illness, or suffering? Shouldn’t we desire to be healed?

Answer: Yes, of course – for when illness happens, it’s natural for the desire for healing to happen. It is futile to resist thoughts. Resisting thoughts only serves to strengthen them. It is better to let them come and go with the understanding that thoughts do not change what is happening. They are an attempt by the mind to assert control of its own imagined reality.

When we understand that the desire for healing is no different than any other thought that we hold in our self-created world, we discover that worry and hope are both rooted in thoughts that invade our ever-present reality; thoughts that positively or negatively steal our focus from living in full awareness of what is happening right here and now.

SEEING BEYOND THE OPPOSITES

Living in present awareness of all that is happening right here and now, is the most powerful tool for realizing the beautiful fullness that is life. Seeing worry, or hope about the future, as just thoughts appearing and disappearing in the mind enables equanimity and peaceful acceptance during difficult times and life is lived powerfully in the immediacy of full-on reality. This is the true meaning of enlightenment. Seeing beyond the opposites of good and evil, seeing things as they are beyond the judgement of a false mental image of a separated self.