It doesn’t come out of the mind?
The mind may be used as an instrument, but there is no resistance. When you clearly see that it is necessary to take or to avoid a specific action, you just act or refrain from acting. Since your action or non-action comes from a clear vision, there is no conflict, no effort.
If your teacher gives you advice about something in your life (which you don’t see) that needs to be changed, should you follow the advice out of trust in him, rather than because you, yourself, have seen and understood the problem?
A real teacher would not impose anything on you. He may make a suggestion, which you may well take into consideration and try to see what he sees, that you don’t see. If there is an immediate danger, for instance, and there is no time for reflection, you may have to act out of trust, out of faith, and postpone the intellectual understanding of the situation. But, your trust in your teacher, not in a person but in the ultimate reality he so beautifully represents, comes from higher intelligence, so that it can’t be said that your action doesn’t come from understanding. Real understanding doesn’t necessarily mean rational understanding. When we are moved by love or by beauty, these emotions too, even if they sometimes appear to be irrational, come from higher intelligence. If there is no need for immediate action, it would be better to wait until your understanding is complete. On a pedagogical level, your teacher may suggest a different attitude in life which would be more harmonious, and there is no way for you to really be sure about it without trying.
Trust is inherent in any learning process. It enables the young bird to take off for the first time; the young child who doesn’t know how to swim to dive into the pool where his parent is waiting, ready to catch him; the violin student to try the new bow grip his teacher has just recommended. The bird trusts out of instinct; the child out of love; the violin student out of reason; and the truth-seeker out of supreme understanding, which encompasses instinct, love, and reason. Trying is part of the spiritual investigation in the same way as experimenting is part of the scientific inquiry. You follow the advice of your teacher, but you ultimately have to arrive at your own understanding.
So it wouldn’t really be useful for anyone to follow secondhand advice. For example, someone may tell you that his teacher told him to be a vegetarian.
Regarding secondhand advice, you should always be concerned with possible distortions. However, you should remain open-minded, and be especially open to any direct suggestions coming from your own teacher. If your teacher makes a suggestion to you to become a vegetarian, for instance, you owe it to him to try this diet. After trying it for a while you will be able to make up your own mind based on your own experience. It is part of the unlearning process and it teaches you a lot about your old habits and beliefs. If you took a trip to an exotic country, the discoveries you’d make about yourself when in a new situation would be more important than the new landscapes you’d see and the new people you’d meet. The old habits become apparent. A change in diet is similar to a trip to an unknown country.
In terms of the original question, your answer seems to be, except for emergencies, which are rare, there really is no imposition. Everything is based on understanding and allowing understanding to act.
Absolutely. However, there are circumstances in which following a suggestion from someone you respect and trust, and postponing any conclusion, may be the most direct path, because the understanding won’t be solely intellectual, but also based on experience, as illustrated by the example of the violin student. Instead of procrastinating and wondering whether following the advice would prove fruitful, he may try the grip and be immediately convinced.
What if you don’t have a teacher? How do you go about finding someone who will make those suggestions, to gain understanding, and to develop the right way of living?
Let’s first understand that the right way of living is not a collection of recipes or suggestions. Life is not like cooking, and books can’t really tell us how to handle our relationships with our spouse, our children, and so on. The right way of living comes from a global understanding which potentially contains all the ingredients, all the know-how, that eventually will enable the disciple to be autonomous and live in joy and harmony. This global understanding is potentially available to everyone, but only those who have reached the required maturity are open to it. When I was a newcomer to the spiritual path, a friend once took me to a metaphysical bookstore in the Latin Quarter of Paris. I was surprised to find a new bookstore at a location that was very familiar to me, since I used to walk down that street every day a few years before, when my interest for the ultimate truth was still dormant. I spent several years as a college student in this area and knew all the bookstores, or at least I thought I did. I was even more surprised when my friend told me that this inconspicuous shop had been there during all those years, adding that it was known to be visible only to truth seekers. The truth, symbolized in this analogy by the bookstore, had always been in plain sight, available to all, but only the truth-lovers, because of their “oriented desire,” could recognize it.
In the same way as the compass always indicates the direction of the North Pole, so do the truth seeker’s mind and heart invariably point toward the ultimate. When truth seekers find themselves spontaneously preoccupied most of the time with the ultimate truth, they should know that they are indeed fortunate, and that this sacred preoccupation comes from the divine. When they find themselves desiring to meet their teacher, the ultimate truth in human form, they should know that no power in all worlds could possibly prevent this encounter. When this desire becomes strong and steady, its strength and steadiness are signs that its fulfillment is imminent.
Your question was based on the assumption that the truth seeker, as a personal entity, is the source of the desire for an instructor. From this vantage point, one can legitimately wonder whether one will ever meet such a rare and hard-to-find master, since, statistically speaking, the odds are not good.
Fortunately, your original assumption is questionable, since the ego could not possibly desire this encounter, any more than a deer could desire a face-off with a hunter. The desire for a teacher, which is, in fact, a form of desire for truth, comes from the absolute. It isn’t a thought emerging at random in the brain. This desire for grace comes from grace itself, and is a promise of fulfillment. When the student is ready, the teacher is present.
So there is no lack of teachers. If there were a lack of anything, it would be of serious students. Out of the pure perfection of the absolute, the so-called student and the so-called teacher arise exactly on time to participate, through their apparent learning and teaching, in the universal celebration.
***
I have a very taxing profession, and I find it difficult to stay on the path. Events throw me aside. For example, I experience difficulties in interacting with others. Is it possible to make use of these experiences, so that they deepen my understanding rather than take me away from truth, or do they only act as diversions?
They are here to help you, to deepen your understanding. The sage Krishna Menon allegedly considered a job in the police force or in the military as a good choice for a student of truth, because such challenging environments represent an excellent test for the degree of equanimity achieved by the disciple. It is a case of, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” I am not sure whether Krishna Menon actually made such a suggestion, or if he did, whether he was serious about it, but this illustrates the fact that challenging events give you an opportunity to grow spiritually and are a measure of your maturity. These events come to you because they have something to teach you. However, you don’t have to passively accept everything. Maybe the appropriate action is to leave. For instance, if someone is abusive to you over the phone, you hang up. There is no point talking to that person. You don’t have to submit yourself to that.
When I am in the middle of such a problematic interaction, it is rather difficult to remain equanimous
. How can I achieve that?
You have to see the situation from your wholeness. By that I mean not only to see the person in front of you, what he says, how he looks, and how he acts, but also to be aware of your own reactions, fears, desires, bodily sensations, and thoughts. This will bring about a positive change in you and will enable you to face situations in a creative way, instead of repeating the same automatic responses again and again. The upcoming emotions in you are not necessary. You can face a situation without any personal involvement. The situations are there, in a way, to teach you this equanimous attitude. It is a purification process through understanding.
As soon as you take yourself for a personal entity, you feel threatened, and you have to protect yourself, whereas if you see the situation from your wholeness, there is nobody in need of protection, nor is there anybody attacking you. From this understanding, an action or a non-action will emerge, a gesture, a smile, a welcoming silence, or an unexpected intervening event we could call a miracle, which will bring about a resolution.
So, people who think that work, the usual lifestyle that we need to live in society, is an impediment to being a seeker, have, to a certain extent, a misconception of what being a seeker is. Living a normal busy life, you can use every moment of the day to try to deepen your understanding.
Absolutely. The purpose of any situation is to deepen our understanding. Our existence is a constant learning through and from the situations. They are life itself teaching us happiness. The teacher is always with us under the guise of the ever-changing circumstances. We have to welcome them with the same love and listen to them with the same attention we give to the words of our teacher. In this way, the causeless bliss once experienced in the glorious presence of our instructor is discovered as the permanent background of our daily activities.
***
I used to think that devotion and worship were all that was needed. However, since I began delving more deeply into the sacred literature, and even more so through our conversations, something has happened, and I don’t think of myself as a worshipper any longer, nor anything else for that matter.
That is good!
I was going to ask whether it would be useful for me to understand the nature of what has happened here.
If you think of yourself as a worshipper, it prevents you from being a perfect devotee, because perfect devotees don’t have any image of themselves. The only object of their thoughts is their beloved. When you love, you lose yourself in love. When you become deeply interested in your real nature, you unknowingly become a perfect worshipper, beyond all images. Your love for the ultimate truth is pure. It is purer than the love you have for a person, even your teacher, as long as you take him for a person, or for any other image of the truth, any personal god, for example. Your love for truth is free from limitations and from attachments. If you identify your self with the body-mind complex, your longing for the object of your love is tainted by a secret demand, the desire to be loved, to be happy. When you seek truth itself, you aren’t projecting any anticipated outcome. Your desire remains innocent, devoid of any personal and emotional flaws. You aren’t seeking understanding for yourself as a person. You are seeking intelligence for the sake of intelligence, love for the sake of love. You are in love with love. There is no room for an ego, for attachment, or any other negative emotion.
I continue to think of myself as a woman, a wife, and a psychologist, and these identifications are reinforced every day through my interactions with others. I know that they are labels, analogous to thinking of myself as a worshipper. I haven’t experienced a weakening of these labels in the same way as I have experienced a weakening of my notion of being a worshipper. Why is that so?
What you have experienced is a shift from being an worshipper to being a truth-seeker, which is a more impersonal position. From this position, you have the opportunity to clearly see that to take your self for a person is a fatal addiction which makes your life miserable and prevents you from being a perfect worshipper, wife, or truth-seeker. As long as there is a worshipper, adoration is imperfect. True adoration takes place when the worshipper is completely consumed in the fire of adoration. This implies a total absence of resistance, an absolute surrender. If you surrender to the ultimate, but you want, at the same time, to be present as an adorator in order to enjoy the proximity of your beloved, your giving up is not complete. The worshipper needs to die for the final fusion to be achieved. When this happens, the notion of being a worshipper, or anything else for that matter, is not simply weakened but totally destroyed.
Having understood that the worshipper can’t bring about this fusion, that there is nothing you can do, live in this non-knowing and non-doing, welcoming your thoughts and sensations. When the decisive moment comes, when you hear from the depth of your being the call of your beloved, make sure that your giving up is total, at all levels. Surrendering body and mind, heart and soul, let his sweet appeal give you the courage to face the imminent death of your illusions. Be bold. Take your stand in awareness and watch the I-image and its cortege of fears and desires fade away in the splendor of your eternal presence.
***
You often suggest that we act from our totality. What is this totality, and how can we know that we are acting from it?
Totality means the absence of the division generated by the I-image. In this absence, we are in our wholeness, our undivided ground. The action that comes from undivided understanding falls in the right place. When you are solving a jigsaw puzzle, looking for a piece to match a given hole, and find the matching part, you know beyond a doubt that you have found the right piece. In the same way, when you find the right answer to a given situation, you know it, not because you follow all the written “dos and don’ts,” but because it is the right thing to do here and now, given the circumstances.
If I am confronted with someone who is in a position to maltreat me, and I am in a very difficult situation, are you suggesting that I somehow act without a separation between myself and the other person? It isn’t easy to see how I could incorporate what looks like someone else’s ill intent into me, and not separate myself from it. In fact, my tendency would be to walk away from it. How is that done?
If this person is maltreating you, why would you stay? Your decision to leave may be the right one.
And it would be acting from my wholeness?
Absolutely. You see the situation in its totality, including your feelings and thoughts, and out of this seeing an action arises: to stay or to leave; to say something or to remain silent; or perhaps, to offer a piece of candy to that person. This action will be perfect both for you and the other person.
***
I have had an experience which tells me that I am not a thing, an object, but I don’t know how to further explore this experience, or what the experience even means. Can you help me?
When you refer to this experience, are you saying that this experience is no longer present?
No, I would say it is still present. It was a one-hundred-eighty degree shift. Sometimes, I am more aware of it, sometimes less so, but it is still there. It left me with the impression that I am not my body or my mind or any object. Can you help me to understand it? Where should I go from there?
Who wants to go somewhere?
I guess, whoever had the reflection of the experience . . . my mind . . . I don’t know.
If you understand that you are not your body or your mind, if you see it clearly, there is no desire to go anywhere.
My understanding is limited. How can I refine it? Very often, I go back to the old notion that I am a body-mind.
In these moments, you forget the understanding, but the understanding doesn’t forget you. It does not need to be refined—it is. There is nothing to add to it or to subtract from it. It is perfect as it is. Just keep it in your heart, make it your best companion, your constant reference, the standard by which you measure everything in your life. Make use of it, go back to it as often as you need. It is
your best friend. It is here for you. It is you. When you think you have lost it, you are, in fact, desperately looking everywhere for the necklace you are still wearing around your neck. I also understand the desire to be a good student on the path. This desire comes directly from truth. In this regard, the dialogue between a martial arts student and his master comes to mind. The student: How long will it take me to become a master? The master: Ten years, provided you practice for six hours a day. The student: How long if I practice for twelve hours a day? The master: In that case, it will take twenty years.
The point is that everything is accomplished in non-doing. If you try to achieve more, you wind up achieving less, unless you try to achieve non-achieving, spontaneity. This spontaneity derives directly from the understanding that there is nothing to achieve, that you are already that which you are seeking.
I understand that, but there always seems to be a desire to make sense of it. So I go to a bookstore looking for books on spirituality. How do I decide which tradition would be best suited for me to deepen this understanding, to make it reverberate in me?
There are many interesting books. We should consider them as objects of enjoyment. We should never be a working truth seeker. Let your joy be your guide. Let it choose everything for you, including the books you read. But, notice that I said “your joy,” not “your pleasure.” In your case, since you already had an inkling of the truth, the sayings by sages from various civilizations have the power to reverberate in you and bring you back to your source, pure happiness.
Awakening to Immortal Splendor
Eternity Now Page 14
