It is important not to identify with past experiences, especially with past spiritual experiences. On the whole one should refrain from talking about them or even thinking about them. Every time we think of such an experience, we should immediately understand that the happiness that was present then, is still present now. Use it as a means of coming back to the present, of forgetting the past. Otherwise we create an ego that allegedly had these experiences and, the bigger the experience, the bigger the ego.
The truth we are referring to is peace. It is an absence of problems. It is the true background. It doesn’t have this vibrancy, this extraordinary knowledge. It manifests it, but it is not it. This expanded state of consciousness appears in the Self, in peace. It is a different mode of knowing. It is unusual but it is not the source. The source is beyond all of that and is always present.
If we focus our mind on these big experiences, it prevents us from seeing the leaf on the tree, the problem in our neighbor’s heart, the sky, the stars, the sun dancing on the wallpaper in our room, and so on—all these little things that tell us about God. Krishnamurti used to say that if we want it big, we don’t really want the divine. We cannot see how divine the hills and the mountains are, so we want an angel with wings on top of them.
Is the purpose of awakening to point to the now, where we are?
Yes.
But if one is fortunate enough to have these big experiences, is it still the now?
If we have an experience of happiness, at the moment of happiness itself we are beyond the mind, beyond time. We are in our timeless presence. We are abiding as the Self. This place is the now, the timeless now. It is present right here and now. When the memory of a past experience comes to us, let’s say a happy past experience, we welcome it and, in this welcoming, all the objective elements that remain will dissolve and leave us with that which is always present, the perfume. As long as we make an object of this experience, instead of taking advantage of its liberating effect, it binds us still further.
What are these kind of experiences pointing to? Are they pointing just to the Self, to something beyond time?
It is for the one who has these experiences to know where they are pointing. Ultimately, they point to the source, happiness, the Self. However, a general statement could be made about these experiences. In this process of pointing towards the source, towards the Self, they will unravel and reveal some of the complexities of the mind and some contractions in the body. They will free some knots. In that moment, we feel a great relief from these knots. We feel liberated. It is an exhilarating experience. They will also bring understanding, because the moment we have an experience beyond the mind we realize there is a force behind it and that we are this force. If we truly have an experience of being beyond the mind, then there is no death for us any longer.
What about loving other people?
Loving other people is not loving. When there are no others, then there is the possibility of love. It is the only prerequisite. It is a necessary and sufficient condition for love.
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In the Indian tradition, it is said that one should stick with one teacher. Would it be wrong then to visit other teachers?
I don’t like these “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” How do they accord with freedom? We should be free from them. However, having said that, it is true to say that in many cases the desire for a teacher arises at some point. Then, like in ancient China, we start touring the mountains. We go from here to there and at each place there is some kind of a teacher. We visit them and at some point think, “I would like to spend some time with this one.” However, it is not in fact our decision. It is a decision we do not have to take. It will be taken for us in the heart. However, all of that is an illusion because in reality there is only one teacher. The teaching in words is just the beginning. After this there is the teaching in silence, which involves simply sitting in the presence of the teacher. However, there is an even higher and more direct form of teaching, which is simply hanging around the teacher.
There is a Hassidic story about an advanced truth seeker who went to see the rabbi, the teacher. The teacher’s assistant asked him, “Why do you want to see the master? Do you have any questions you want to ask him?” The truth seeker replied, “No.” “Well then, I suppose you want to sit silently in his company and take advantage of the grace that pours from his presence.” Again he said, “No.” Then the assistant asked, “Well then, what is it that you want?” and the man replied, “I want to see how he puts on his shoes!”
In this business of being a student of the truth, one should feel very free and follow one’s heart. Also follow your reason and try to make them work together. If they disagree, follow your heart.
Consciousness and the disciple are one. One should follow love and happiness more than the mind. Follow freedom. One should go to a teacher in whom there is no restriction. For example, in one of his books Jean Klein describes a time before he went to India when he stayed for a while in Sri Lanka. During his stay he became acquainted with the head monk of the Theravadin Buddhist order. They became friends and apparently this monk wanted Jean to stay with him and become his disciple, although he didn’t say so at the time. Jean then went to India and wrote him a thank you letter. Sometime later he was surprised to receive a reply from this high-ranking monk, telling him that he was coming to India to visit him. At that time Jean was staying with an Indian friend who was a singer and when the monk arrived, she was in the middle of a recital. So Jean went out to welcome him and said, “Please come in, there is a beautiful recital going on.” However, the monk said he could not, because it was against the rules of his order. Jean said, “Well, I respected that, but at the same time I felt it was not my path, because there was some restriction. There was a lack of freedom.”
It is important that everything is included: beauty, love, intelligence, and life. Life is a celebration. Consider everything that makes you happy as a gift from God and say, “Thank you.” Feel gratitude for being alive, for being conscious, for having been given this extraordinary gift of life, and for being able to look for your true nature.
In this celebration we very often experience great magnificence, enormous potential, when it seems anything could happen. One looks around like a child and thinks that it could be this, that, or anything.
Yes.
I suppose it’s linked to the, “What do I do next?” idea, to the sense that with all of this potential.
This is a false question. Ask yourself, “Who is asking the question? Who is this ‘I’ who doesn’t know what to do next?” There is nobody. However, life will move on anyway, don’t worry!
I realize it is a false question, but it keeps recurring.
Life will move on. Don’t you already have enough activities with a family, children, and your search for the truth? Each moment takes care of itself. It is beautiful to live without knowing what the next moment is going to be, to be open to all this possibility, as you mentioned, like a child. Don’t be afraid of this openness. Don’t try to fill it! Keep it open!
It is a fear of being stuck that I’m worried about.
Keep everything up in the air. Keep everything open and live from openness to openness.
There seems to be such a gulf between the teacher and the student.
The teacher may seem to be one step ahead. We think we have understood something and indeed we may have done so. However, there is a tendency to crystallize this understanding, to formulate it, and this creates an understander, an ego, a fixed view of how things are. Although the teacher may have formulated the same understanding that enabled us to have a glimpse of our true nature in the first place, nevertheless, when we next approach him, the teaching he gives will be completely new and fresh. Immediately our formulation is dissolved and we are taken to a deeper level of understanding. As this cycle of formulation and dissolution continues, we may develop a great love for the teacher who is instigating the process. This love is very precious,
but a good teacher, which means in this case, one who is completely impersonal, will not let this love be directed towards himself as a person. He will be like a slippery fish, impossible to get hold of or settle onto. This enables the student to see that what he really loves is understanding, intelligence, consciousness, and not a person.
At this point it is possible for the true relationship with the teacher to begin. It is a relationship of impersonal love. As this relationship unfolds we become increasingly sensitive to the obstacles that prevent this meeting in the heart, this impersonal intimacy. It is simply by becoming aware of these obstacles that they begin to drop away, not only in relation to our teacher, although for many of us this may be our first experience of it, but also with others, with our partner, our family, our friends, our colleagues. And strangely enough we find that the more we behave towards others with this attitude of impersonal love, so this attitude in turn compels the other to respond in a similar way. We find that we no longer have problematic relationships.
Many traditions refer to surrendering at the feet of the guru. If the real guru is this impersonal presence and not a physical person, what is really meant by “the feet of the guru”?
Meditation is the constant offering of our hopes, fears, beliefs, disbeliefs, doubts, thoughts, feelings, concerns, and world perceptions to the guru, to the conscious presence. It is a constant prasad, a constant giving and receiving. We place all our hopes and fears, our problems, joys, and sorrows at the feet of the guru. The “feet of the guru” is the threshold of consciousness, this place in the mind that doesn’t belong to the mind, this openness, this window through which consciousness sees the mind. It is this conscious presence in us. This offering is not something that we do once and for all. It is a continuous offering to the threshold from moment to moment. It is from the same threshold to which we offer, that we receive. However, we cannot receive if our hands are full of objects. So we have to give, to offer, in order to be empty-handed, empty-minded. We have to be in not-knowing in order to receive the gift from the guru, the grace, the understanding, the presence, the life. As long as we hold onto the problem or try to solve the problem, there is no offering. There is no not-knowing.
Offer your thoughts especially. Let the universe take care of the problem. If your thoughts are running in circles, just offer them to the infinite. This will break the circle of your repetitive thoughts so that you can be graced with intuition and understanding.
Let the emptiness pervade your mind and your body. Offer body, mind and world to the presence constantly. As soon as you realize that you are stuck, gently liberate yourself from the stickiness. It is not an effort. In fact, it is the ending of an effort. Don’t make an effort out of it. It is a relief to let go. If you make an effort you pile up an effort on top of a pre-existing effort. This is not what “letting go” means. Give it back to the infinite. Let the infinite take care of it. You don’t have to carry the weight.
At a certain stage in meditation, it is mostly your body that appears, so your body naturally becomes the principal object of your contemplation. At this stage, the principal offering to consciousness is the body with all its feelings and sensations.
Be willing to completely lose control over the body, over the feelings. It is our will to make things happen, to play God, little god, that prevents them from happening, that gets in the way of the natural flow of things. Understand that you are not in control of anything, that there is no choice you make as an individual, no decision.
Let your experience of the body be whatever it wants to be, however it spontaneously evolves. Trust this unknowing. Do not be attached to any image of the body. Become aware of all of the tensions that have been superimposed onto our natural emptiness and which have thereby created a separate entity or the illusion of a separate entity. Do not try to eliminate these contractions but don’t reject them either. Give them complete freedom to evolve in space and time.
There is no goal, nothing to achieve, no need for striving. Consciousness is already a fact. It is the most basic of all facts. It doesn’t have to be brought in. It is already here and everything is in it. So why strive? And what is it that we are striving for? We can only strive for an object, something of no value.
Instead of striving, contemplate the striving. Welcome your striving. Let it tell its story. Simply love, simply welcome the striving. Welcome the striving mind and the striving body without striving for them to be different in any way from what they are.
An Explosion of Freedom
I have had occasional experience of meeting someone when there is no them or me, but all day long we are busy meeting people. Can you say something about that?
The only place that we can start from is our own experience, not somebody else’s. We have to research the true nature of our being and understand first that there is nobody here. That is the prerequisite. At some point we understand that what we truly are, is this non-localized presence, non-localized welcoming. At the very moment we understand this, we have a glimpse of it, because we can only understand it when we are it. To understand it we need to be it knowingly and, at that moment, we become acquainted with the impersonal way of being, of just being present without being a person; being open, being this welcoming space. This welcoming space is not only a welcoming mind, a mind that is open to other people, their ideas, concepts, and concerns, but it is also a welcoming body. A welcoming body is a body that is not solid, not limited, but which is open to the totality, completely vulnerable. When another person appears in this welcoming space, the welcoming presence is felt by the other as friendliness, as silence, as very intimate. The other feels you as family and rightfully so, because what is being felt is his or her own intimacy at that moment, which is the space of silence that we share. In other words, our being silent and welcoming in this way resonates through the screen of thoughts and feelings, and goes directly to this place which we have, which we are, in common.
In India there are various ways of classifying these means of transmission, such as through silence, looking, speaking, and touching. This experience of oneness has various ways of communicating and expressing itself. It comes in different flavors, but it comes from the same place and it takes us to the same place.
Everything that comes from love is spontaneous. Spontaneous means the absence of a person, a separate entity. For example, if while looking at someone, the thought comes to us that what is behind their eyes is our own essence, and if we treat this person accordingly, our subsequent behavior will be spontaneous. It may look like a doing but it is not. It comes from understanding. Everything that comes from understanding is spontaneous.
If someone who has many layers of protection, and therefore many conflicts, approaches us, enters our field of expansion, we will feel their tensions in ourself. These tensions are not something that we are carrying around. They come to us from the circumstances. If we welcome them completely, they will flow through us and, at the same time, we are very subtly showing the other person the way out of his or her problems. This other person won’t realize it, perhaps they will never understand what has happened, but it is very efficient.
What is the true purpose of our existence?
Happiness. We are born out of happiness and are an expression of happiness. We are also an instrument that is very well designed to find happiness. We are an instrument of celebration.
I see that I create my own problems, but I do not see others as myself. It doesn’t worry me. Should I just carry on?
Of course. Carry on as long as you are happy. The purpose of life is to find happiness and to celebrate it, so whatever makes you truly happy is perfect.
I have been told that I am self-realized but do not know it.
We project the state of self-realization and we project a “someone” who is in that state. The reason that we project “someone” being in a state of self-realization is because we project ourselves as a “someone” being in a state of non-realization. We should ask oursel
ves, “Who is there to be realized or non-realized?”
What is the flash of enlightenment that the Upanishads speak of?
Some of the teachings in the Upanishads are nearer the mark than others. The ancient sages were addressing people with problems, people who took themselves for individuals, and they would therefore answer their questions from the individual’s vantage point, the vantage point of ignorance. From that vantage point there are realized and non-realized beings. The people who were asking the questions didn’t immediately want the ultimate truth, though the sages tried to take them there directly. Therefore, the sages granted them their point of view in a provisional way and answered accordingly. We have to understand that these people’s point of view was mistaken. Here we are more drastic. The question is, “Am I a separate individual?” Realization, when it is understood as an event in time, would mean that something had been added, that something was not present before, that something had come in. However, from where would it come and for whom?
Then would it be useful to keep in mind the question, “What am I?”
It is not necessary to keep it in mind. However, when circumstances that bring about suffering arise in daily life, we should investigate, “What is it or who is it that is suffering?” When we are happy, however, there is no need to ask, “Who is happy?” Just be happy. When you are happy you are in your true state, because the true purpose of life is happiness, which is something we all know. That is why all human beings are looking for happiness. Happiness is not the question, it is the answer. The answer is not a verbal response. It is life itself. It is consciousness itself. It is you. It is your very being.
The Perfume of Silence Page 12
