by Eric Baret
So, we only fall in love if we lack presence, if we feel empty inside?
Falling in love is a projection. A dog comes by, we fantasize about the dog. He is the dog of our life, a faithful dog, a nice dog, he is not like the other dogs, etc. Notice the projection mechanism. Two years later, we have a different opinion of the dog. Yet the dog hasn’t changed. Observe this automatic reflex to project on all dogs that come by. We can't help it, but at one point, we notice the mechanism: we still have this expectation, this hopeful fantasy of finding security, comfort, affection, love in the arms of somebody—we deny our own integrity.
This is no criticism. At a certain age a child needs to be nursed; he doesn't have a choice. For a part of our life, this fantasy, this need to be loved, is necessary. Then something moves on and we can no longer fall back into that kind of melodrama.
What does it matter if I am loved or not? When I am on my deathbed and someone is holding my hand and repeating, “I love you,” what can that bring to me?
It is pure fantasy. That person loves me until the moment she sees another dog and becomes infatuated with him. Nothing more. That love, she can keep. It has no substance.
This does not prevent affection, but you don't have to fantasize, to pretend to love and to be loved. When you no longer expect anything from a relationship, a deep bond is created.
Hope hides fear. Fear triggers desire, need… and when you want, you don't give anything. You need to realize that. In a deep relationship, you give without needing anything in return. When you no longer have expectations, you are taken by this non-need.
As long as I make demands, I live in misery. When I give, I live in fullness. Giving brings balance. The slightest expectation brings me back to misery. Understand the mechanism.
Being happy because someone loves me brings suffering, constant suffering, because doubt is always present. I can't ever be a hundred percent sure. I am convinced that I am loved, yet deep down there is something that says: “Maybe it isn't exactly that, perhaps tomorrow will be less, when another dog passes by…” I always worry. When I realize this, then I no longer feel the need to be loved; I discover real love.
That is good news because nobody ever loved me. Beings cannot love, they only know how to want. They believe they love, but they are after something else. My girlfriend loves me a lot, but if I sleep with the neighbor, she will love me a lot less. That is what love is! That kind of love, nobody needs.
When I realize that I do not need to be loved, a deep psychological transformation happens. From then on, I can love somebody without any demand. I am not afraid of anything. I no longer love someone in order to get anything.
When we really love somebody, whether they stay or they go, we love them. That is unconditional love. But love under conditions— “I love you if you do this, I don't love you if you do that”—that kind of love is not worthwhile.
The more you realize that you don't need to be loved, the more you discover this unrestricted love. Your love life stops stagnating. You are present to what is here. With a child, you are present no matter what his health is. Whether a baby is born or dies, you are present.
The slightest demand, the slightest asking, and I live my conflict. Being untrue to myself is what disturbs me. When I pretend to suffer, I deny the intuition of autonomy. I lie to myself. There lies the discomfort. Non-autonomy is the lie. Suffering doesn't come from pain, but from self-deception. When I am dissatisfied, I deceive myself. I justify my discomfort by inventing a cause. That is phony.
You need to have the maturity to look at that.
To find an excuse for my sorrow shows a lack of the humility which is needed to discover the joy of Life. When I become aware of this and I stop justifying my dis-ease, distress can remain, or very strong pain, but I no longer link it to a situation—except in a symbolic way.
It is a very important transition.
If I have the maturity to never associate my suffering with any condition whatsoever, to live it somatically only and independently of any context, then a kind of extreme dryness, a sort of constant inner death will arise in me. I will die to all my relationships, whether they are affective, social, friendly, intellectual... This transition period is unavoidable. One day, this sadness will reveal itself to be its exact opposite. It is enough to have the maturity to live it without objectification, without reference to a situation.
When I return to my fantasy and I pretend to be desperate because of this, I have lost my honesty, and with it any way out. Today this cause affects me and tomorrow I will find another reason for my distress; there is no solution.
When suffering sets itself free from so-called situations, when I have the maturity to feel a sadness without cause that nothing can alleviate, then sadness allows my own death. That is a moment of great intimacy.
But most often, I try to keep my head out of the water to breathe and not drown in that suffering. On the contrary, we need to surrender. The only risk is to die, and without dying, we can't be born.
As a matter of fact, I find it rather practical to remember what we have lived... Is it really of no use anymore?
Photo albums aren’t of much use. The idea of remembering disappears. Remembering can happen, but you no longer really think in terms of your past or your future. You can refer to it on a functional level, but not in psychological terms.
You become convinced that what happens to you is exactly what you need in order to discover this autonomy and that is the only certainty you need. What happens to you—health, illness, wealth, poverty, family, the way you will die, etc.—has been decided for you. You don't have anything to do with it. You don't have to become involved with your life on a psychological level. This attitude allows you to become a lot more active on a functional level.
The usual psychological way of functioning constantly condemns you to prudence, to smallness. Fear freezes you. You always worry about the consequences of your actions. When you realize that you don't have anything to lose, everything becomes possible. You can destroy yourself in every imaginable way, everything is welcome.
Fear restricts life. Approach life without a direction and everything will open to you, everything will be available. You can become a saint, a dictator... You will not find any limit to life's creativity.
When you know or when you want something, you incarnate your own mediocrity. You get tunnel vision. You project a pitiful concept of some psychological refuge. Like a room padded with fabric, sealed, without too much noise, too much violence, with enough to eat, to survive. It's only fear. Some lives look like that, some apartments look like that.
When you have the intuition of non-direction, all directions become available to you: that is creativity. Everything is possible in life, why restrict yourself to the few patterns of bourgeois society? Knowing something makes you repetitive. You try to survive. Why survive?
When I survive, I do not live.
When the intuition arises that there is nothing to accomplish, that there is no hope, nothing ahead, the present moment becomes its own rich meal. I do not need anything else, I do not need tomorrow, I do not need manifestation. The situation of the moment is the richness. Everything else is philosophy.
The art of yoga is to give yourself more and more consciously to this availability of the present, without anyone being present.
What is the place of memory in the present?
Memory is a thought.
There is no memory, only the present exists. Everything that appears arises in the moment. What we remember about twenty years ago is a present experience. The blows that hit you twenty years ago are felt now, the fear you have felt lives on in you in this very instant.
What is memory? When I observe your body, I see your past. It hasn't passed, it is present, your body is present. The present body contains all of the past. There is no memory.
On another level, everything is memory. The present is memory, it is already the past. Nothing can be present. The body is onl
y memory, that is why we can function. It is not a psychological memory which fades away when you listen to life. It is a physiological memory which is needed for our system to function.
One day you will see that the terms memory, present, past are only words, images that you throw on the table to play the game. They are wonderful images, but unreal ones. That is not what is here, that does not exist. What exists is indescribable, it cannot be turned into concepts.
Do not think too much; thought takes you away. Come back to somatic experience: I am not in the sensation; the sensation is in me. Give space to that aftertaste, that discomfort. There, clarity is on its way. But in philosophical discussions on memory, past and present just remain debates. Mentally, everything can be justified. An intelligent man can prove anything and its opposite. A Buddhist can show thesis and antithesis. Both will be right and both will be wrong. It is a mental exercise that is not of much use. Leave that to agitated people. Come back to the felt sense.
Is there a difference between constant sadness without cause and depression?
The feeling of sadness is in the moment. It doesn't have any past. When I say, “I am depressed,” I link the sparks of the present into a necklace. There is no necklace. Sparks are always present. They are one within another, they are not left and right so you can make a necklace out of them.
When the idea of depression leaves, there remains this extraordinary sensation of total sadness without cause. I cherish this state as my deepest treasure. I sit on it, I protect it from all understanding, from all escape, from all treatment, from all desire to look elsewhere. I let the sadness rise; my love is the yeast.
One day, this sadness will blow apart everything that is not directly related to it. Its origin is the intuition of autonomy. If I didn't sense autonomy, I couldn't be this sad. It is because I am feeling it without being able to live it that the sadness lives in me. The sadness isn't a consequence of my difficult life, it is here because I glimpse something else without being able to reach it.
The yeast of my sadness is that intuition. It needs darkness, warmth. As soon as I look somewhere else, a ray of sunshine lights up the sadness and, again, the dough flattens out. The slightest hope, the slightest understanding, the slightest attempt to do or to reach and, again, the dough flattens, the sadness fades. As soon as I understand the mechanism, I lose all aggressiveness towards my sadness and I let the dough rise. Once again, the intuition for being and my availability to this intuition are the yeast. The yeast will break the box open. Those moments of humility toward that sadness will allow the box to burst. But there again, if I find an escape, if I look elsewhere, the puny clarity of mediocre security comes to me and the dough flattens.
We need to forget our intellectual, technical elaborations. Those things only have value in the moment. They are here to create a resonance chamber which will lift us up.
If you forget everything, there is something that doesn't forget you. That something is going to interfere, at first imperceptibly, then more concretely, in our lives. Any attempt at understanding, memorizing, owning, accepting or rejecting what was said remains a form of agitation.
As soon as I know, I leave my honesty. I notice it; this noticing is honesty itself. In that availability, life reveals its true creativity.
Knowledge is death.
Chapter 4
Free of all understanding
We follow what is inspired in us,
not what we want.
Abd-El-Kader: The Book of Stops
W e all know moments of very great joy and beauty in our lives. These moments are but a weak reflection of the essential emotion which we all feel at night when letting go into sleep—when everything we have ever wanted, desired, or contemplated dies in the heart. This is the deepest bliss for human beings. No fabrication, no situation can compare with this absolute intensity experienced when entering into sleep. Allow the body and the psyche to die in peace.
To sink into sleep, every night, is to let go of the most beautiful woman, the greatest wealth, the most vibrant health. After three or four days without deep sleep, there is no greater fortune on earth than the simple possibility of filling that gap.
This forefeeling will shed light on everyday life. This doesn't prevent you from making a fortune, from meeting women, men, dogs. But at a certain point, we realize that beyond all experience, all acquisition or qualification, a deep joy resonates. All our conditions die into peace.
Are there any questions on this subject?
What about duality and nonduality?
Words are images. The word nonduality is an image made for children, because they need representations. When they ask questions, since no answer comes to us—because nothing can be explained—we communicate the incomprehensible through an image. We call this poetry, myth. Nonduality is a teaching myth.
We need to grow up and stop living with childish images. Nonduality, duality, all these concepts described as so much candy for children in the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, are only a preparation. These words can be compared to preparation postures in the martial arts: they have value for beginners, to build strength in the legs, but in a fight, you cannot use them.
Duality and nonduality are only symbols. They help to divert your thoughts, to make you think of something else than your mistresses or your bank account. You engage in reflection on duality and nonduality in order to allow questions to become more essential than, “Is this woman, this work, good for me?” or “Should I make more money? Follow a diet? Buy a car?” etc.
Sanskrit scriptures which use the expression advaita exist through a rhythm, through a life current. When you read them, you feel a caress making its way inside of you and when you close the book, a flavor, a joy remains. This joy is present because you haven't built any mental image on the subject. With nonduality, you cannot build much—except perhaps a useless career as a false guru!
These concepts have their value, until the moment when they lose all meaning. Meaning does not exist, it is only produced by fear. Understanding, wanting to give significance to things, to situations, is a childish attitude coming from helplessness. When I'm scared, I want to understand. But you cannot explain or justify anything, because nothing is separate. To understand something is to cut it off from the whole. I want to understand this, but this does not exist as such. It's like wanting to understand a dog's tail while ignoring the dog. You cannot understand the dog's tail, it is impossible.
The so-called beginning or end of a situation only exists in the mind of the one who projects it. There are no such things. Totality cannot be understood by mentally cutting it into parts. The tiniest part of the cosmos can only be understood as a function of its totality. When this is clear for you, you realize that no understanding is possible. From there on, you will give up trying to use a concept or a traditional structure to approach life. You will become attentive. The situation that looks like an attack on you is what you will meditate on; that which touches you, insults you, disgusts you, that is your field of inquiry.
Simply notice that concepts, as beautiful as they may be, are useless. When you have a toothache, when a loved one is on their deathbed, when somebody you love leaves you, or whatever your emotional fantasy may be, metaphysical images cannot help you. What helps you is to be present, to be physically and psychically available to receive the situation.
The words duality or nonduality have the same value as the world descriptions that you find in the puranas, they can just help you to understand that the world does not exist. The image has a justification. The Samkya describes the evolution of this world from the ultimate principle to its most concrete manifestation. Even Kashmir Shaivism allowed itself to play with these concepts. This brings a sort of psychological security to children.
Wanting to understand is a form of misunderstanding. When you are in a situation and you give up trying to understand, what happens? You let the situation speak, you stop your psychological meddling. When you mentally remain within
yourself, you notice that nothing in the situation can disturb you. To get lost in the situation is what is disturbing. Don’t do that. The situation is within you, but psychologically you have nothing to do with it.
Acceptance allows you to see your environment, your body, your psyche with clarity: no more surprises. Amazement remains, with nothing to be amazed about. Since you are without expectation, psychological discomfort is no longer possible.
You have no hope: you are available to what presents itself. That is nonduality in everyday life. That nonduality is not conceptual.
Can you get lost in joy?
No, because in joy there is no one to be joyous or to get lost. In joy, everything is already lost. In awe, there is only presence, without an owner. Joy does not allow a subject. When you say “I am joyous,” it comes from memory.
You speak of the bliss of falling asleep. Does it belong to the emotional realm?
We need to liberate ourselves from words. No word is correct. That is a fantasy. Leave that to the academics. Words do not need to be right: they are all wrong. We always use them with different meanings, because they speak of nothing and nothing is understandable. If the goal were to make you understand something, we would use precise words. Instead, we want to arrive at the certainty that nothing can be understood. When you say, “Yes, I understand,” you are clinging to a childish concept. Let this concept leave you. There is nothing to understand.
Emotion is an explosion in space, a roaring fire in which everything is alive. For this sensation to deploy, the word must die. Your task is to feel what we are talking about; no word can convey this. It is a sort of intuition that cannot be conceptualized.
It is very important to stop before understanding. Stopping before intellectual understanding is the art of living in the deep sense of Kashmiri yoga. You hear something, you observe in yourself the mechanism of wanting to explain and you stop before that happens. It's like a dog who sees a bone which gets taken away when he goes to grab it. There is an instant―as if suspended; that is the essential instant. There is not yet an absence of bone, the dog hasn't had the time to realize that something has been taken away.
