The Perfume of Silence

by Francis Lucille

  This tracing back of the feeling to its source is what we call “higher feeling.” If we move along a feeling upstream towards the source, it is higher feeling. If we move along a thought upstream towards the source, it is higher thinking, higher reasoning. When a feeling appears, don’t stick to it. We shouldn’t be afraid of our fear; neither should we do what our fear tells us to do. Rather, seek the source in which it originates, the presence. Trace the fear back to the welcoming space. The source is always bigger than the feeling that appears in it. We move away from the object into this space, into this conscious presence. In this process, there will be intermediary feelings, transformational feelings that are analogous to the intermediary thoughts that we have about the truth in higher reasoning, until they merge in presence.

  Although this meditation is not an activity or a practice, it is not passive either. It is passive in the sense that there is not a personal doer doing it and no personal goal to be reached. It is active in the sense that it is not devoid of higher activity, such as higher reasoning or higher feeling. Any activity that is impersonal, which comes from the source and goes towards the source is part of the meditation. In this way, there is no clear-cut separation between meditation and daily life. There is no separation because meditation encompasses both activity and repose.

  Don’t worry if everything is not clear. It will eventually become clear if you are interested. Meditate from what you understand about meditation, such as benevolent indifference, or welcoming the totality of your experience without exceptions, or remaining in not knowing, or just being as you are without goals, or offering your thoughts, sense perceptions, and feeling to the presence in which they arise. Any of these suggestions will take you to meditation. The moment you have the goodwill to try them, meditation reaches its perfection. Although it may not seem to you to have reached its perfection, it reaches its perfection at the moment of goodwill. The reason you may think it is not perfect is because you construe meditation as a pleasurable state, which it is not. Meditation is not a state. It is freedom from all states.

  Some of us think that a number of conditions have to be met in order to meditate. We think we must be at home, sitting on the floor with incense burning and flowers. We must be on vacation in the perfect house and the perfect orientation. All of these are simply the ego postponing the moment of its execution. Instead, we should develop an eagerness to seize the fleeting moments between two activities, such as sitting in a bus, waiting at the dentist, or taking a rest at work. Three seconds of spontaneous meditation that happen when we seize the moment have more value than hours of false meditation towards a goal, towards a personal goal. It is not a question of duration. It is a question of intensity and spontaneity. That is all it takes to take us right to the Absolute. As we become more and more one-pointed, we will develop the skill to seize these moments. And these moments will seem to become more and more frequent until they become one single moment. It is called the stabilization process.

  Understand also that any activity that comes out of pure joy is not separate from meditation. It is part of it. Joy is the seal of the sacred, the seal of the divine. Psychological suffering, misery, is the seal of ignorance. It is the rejection of what we are and a futile attempt to replace it with what we are not. It is ridiculous and preposterous, the source of all good comedy.

  We should make our interaction with others part of our meditation practice. In this way, we will never be out of meditation, whether we are with our co-workers, customers, employer, employees, strangers, family, friends, or simply on our own. These are wonderful opportunities to meditate, to practice higher reasoning and higher sensing, in the presence of others. In your interaction with others, practice benevolent indifference, listening to and welcoming what they say, do, or project, and also your own responses, without resistance. That will go a long way in transforming our life.

  The sitting meditation we do in our bedroom once or twice a day is simply a preparation for the real meditation, to the big meditation, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If we practice in the privacy of our bedrooms, it will be easier and more natural to practice during the day. However, it will still require goodwill and desire to do so during the day. If we don’t do so, everything we have learned here will remain frozen. It will not die, but it will remain a frozen embryo. However, if we practice it in daily life, it will permeate our life with sweetness.

  The Transparent Diamond

  When I see that the world arises in me, there is no sense of participation, but this understanding leaves and I am involved again.

  The important point about this experience is the revelation of the open secret. When this revelation happens for the first time, it is often accompanied by an exhilarating feeling of freedom and joy. This feeling is the objective aspect of the experience. The revelation of the open secret itself is the subjective aspect, the true substance of the experience. There is a tendency to forget the revelation and become attached to the objective aspect that accompanied it, to make an image of it. It is as if God reveals herself surrounded by trumpeting angels, and we tend to fall in love with the music and forget the revelation of God, which is invisible, inconceivable, and untouchable. Having been beguiled by the objective aspect of the experience in this way, we become attached to it and then, when it disappears, we develop nostalgia for it. This nostalgia comes from the ego, together with a sense that everything would be perfect if only we could reproduce the original feeling. Forget about reproducing the feeling; what is important is to receive the revelation.

  The revelation itself is timeless. It is the presence of the mirror of consciousness, that in which and as which all our experience occurs. It is the same mirror that is understanding these words right this moment. It has never vanished, unlike the experience of the angels.

  It is not necessarily a pleasant feeling.

  We shouldn’t insist that God show up on our own terms, which are always conditioned by past experience. We want trumpets and angels, but this time God wants to appear as a warrior! We have to be open to seeing any of the possible faces of God at every moment.

  I always thought that it would feel like love, but sometimes what turns up is very uncomfortable.

  This feeling of discomfort has to be seen as one more reflection in the mirror. If we identify with the reflection, it means that we have not noticed the mirror, the true revelation. That which is revealed in each moment is the open secret of the presence of the now. All problems vanish when we refer directly to the revelation itself, but we forget what the true import of our experience is, where the true meaning is. We fall in love with a beautiful box, in which a transparent diamond has been placed, forgetting that the true gift is the colorless, transparent diamond. The box is so rich and full of color that we fall in love with it, but it doesn’t have the same value as the diamond.

  The open secret sounds so obvious.

  It is this very obviousness that hides it. The mind is too complicated for the simplicity of the secret.

  The mind is not content with being simple.

  Yes.

  So is the idea just to stay with whatever presents itself?

  Yes, but also allow it to evolve freely. Staying with it doesn’t mean to crystallize it. It means to be with it lovingly, in freedom, without trying to reject it, take hold of it, or even understand it. Just respect it; let it have its own life.

  Is that also true of tensions that don’t yield easily because they are so deeply established?

  Don’t try to make them yield. If they want to yield, that’s fine, but if they don’t want to, that’s also fine. Don’t make your happiness a hostage of their yielding. Don’t feel that you have to have an extraordinary experience. It is our ordinary experience that is itself extraordinary. Usually, we are unable to see this. We tend to reject whatever situation arises in the moment because it doesn’t quite conform to our idea of how things should be. It is not special enough. We have to see clearly that it is precisely this
rejection that makes the experience seem ordinary. When we stop escaping it, it reveals its extraordinariness. Having rejected this moment, we then imagine how things should really be. We conceive the ideal experience, the true spiritual experience, which is always something other than this moment, somewhere else, and at some other time. We then start to seek this extraordinary experience, failing to notice that this cycle of dissatisfaction, rejection, and seeking recreates itself perpetually. Just stick to the ordinary circumstances without labeling them ordinary. Be open to them with no desire to change them in any way. They are, in fact, already magical and miraculous. They are the revelation of the Absolute. The mountains, for instance, are already miracles. We don’t need a little angel on top of the mountain to make it more miraculous, so don’t make one up.

  If something happens to my body, I use the mind to remind myself that it is not happening to me, that it is happening to my body.

  It is very good to use the mind to readjust the way that we perceive our body. When we look at our body from this perspective, it becomes objectified, it is seen as an object of consciousness, out there in front of us. When our body is seen in this way, it is not possible to think, “I am this object out there.” It is only when the body is not completely objectified, when some aspect of it is not clearly seen, that there is the possibility of thinking or feeling that it is “me.”

  If the body is an object and I, as consciousness, am its subject, is this not duality?

  In order to free ourselves from the illusion that we are the body, we first have to become fully aware that it is an object of our attention. As we become established in this understanding, we begin to look for the boundary that separates us, consciousness, from this perceived object, and the closer we look, the more deeply we realize that it does not exist. We begin to understand that the body is an object in consciousness, not merely of consciousness. As this understanding deepens, we begin to ask ourselves what this object, which is obviously in consciousness, is actually made of, and it dawns on us that it is made of consciousness, for there is nothing else out of which it can be made. We realize the body, along with everything else, as consciousness, not simply in consciousness. Therefore, the understanding of the body as an object of consciousness is a step that is necessary in almost all cases. However, it is not the complete understanding of our experience. There is a progression of understanding from “I am the body” to “I am nothing” to “I am everything.” “I am the body” is Savikalpa samadhi. “I am nothing” is Nirvikalpa samadhi. “I am everything” is Sahaja samadhi, our natural state.

  ***

  I keep being swamped by pain.

  The pain has now gone, so it was obviously not your body. You are attached to your interpretation of the origin of the pain. You think that the pain was happening inside your body, but that is just a theory. In fact, it was your actual experience that the pain was happening inside consciousness, inside you. If you let the object, the feeling of physical pain in this case, completely unfold, then there is no longer any possibility of feeling that it is you.

  It was so strong that I couldn’t welcome it.

  Yes, there are moments when this happens, but ultimately they don’t change anything. Don’t let these moments of intense pain disturb the clearer and far more prevalent times when this identification is not taking place. When we are completely involved with a sensation, there is nothing we can do. Then this involvement diminishes and we realize we were unnecessarily identified. What usually makes us feel that we are the body are tiny contractions or localizations, which in themselves are not an issue. If we simply experience them as they are, in easy situations to begin with, we get a taste of how it feels to remain uninvolved. We just experience everything the way it really is, as an appearance within consciousness. We do not have to question whether or not to become involved. We simply remain as we really are, as that within which and ultimately as which everything appears.

  This is the great understanding about the inclusion of bodily sensations in our meditation. It doesn’t have to go through the mind. Simply seeing the appearance as it is, an object in awareness, disidentifies us from it. When we have disentangled ourselves from the object in this way, there is no longer any personal connection with it that could subsequently trigger thoughts such as, “I am the body” or “I am pain.” Just leave everything alone. You, con­sciousness, are fine, and the objects that appear in it are also fine. Don’t tamper with anything.

  This impartial attitude will itself have an effect on what appears within consciousness and, for no apparent reason, we will find that the conflicts in our life begin to diminish. However, that is not the goal; it is one possible outcome. There is no goal. There may still be pain but deep inside something is free from it, beyond it, behind it, and all around it. To begin with, it is not obvious, but as the background appears to be more and more present, we start to feel it in circumstances in which we would usually be completely involved, and this is the beginning of detachment.

  The direct path is often misconstrued as a process involving someone who comes here, asks the right question, receives the right answer, and leaves liberated. But in reality, there is no individual entity called “I” that is coming and going. There is no one who becomes free. There is only freedom. This notion of a person who comes and goes, who asks and answers, is only a story for children. The direct path doesn’t necessarily mean short; it just means direct. We go straight to the absolute truth of our experience, directly to the feeling-understanding that we stand as consciousness at every moment.

  To begin with, we have an inkling of this truth. Then, the first question that we ask on encountering this perspective, if we are genuinely asking for truth, soon results in a glimpse of our true nature. Subsequently, there is one glimpse after another and something begins to change. It is like a photograph being developed. Everything comes out simultaneously in all realms of our experience: the way we understand life, the way we feel about people, animals, situations, and events, our relationships, our profession. Everything in our life is permeated by this understanding. The background comes to the foreground just as the black tones come out of the photographic paper. It is a revelation.

  There is a discomfort that comes from a feeling of separation. Just witnessing this discomfort doesn’t seem to be enough to dissolve it.

  There is a misunderstanding. Don’t just witness it. Welcome it. To welcome it means not to entertain the desire to get rid of it or change it in any way. Your question indicates that there is such a desire. We have to be prepared to live with this feeling of discomfort forever. From then on, how the feeling evolves is of no concern to us. As long as we think that the presence or the absence of the feeling makes any difference at all, then even if it does disappear, another one will soon appear. It is a bottomless bag of uncomfortable feelings. Therefore, it is important not to care. We just give up doing anything about the bag. Just welcome the presence of the bag. After all, what does it really matter if we know we are not the bag? It is the same with the feeling of separation. We have to love it. The feeling of separation is the ego. If we try to get rid of it, we separate ourselves from it and create an ego killer, which is another face of the same thing. It’s better to stick to one ego!

  ***

  The sun is always shining but the clouds obscure it.

  The cloud is the thought that I am a person. The biggest cloud of all is the thought that I am a person who is free from the cloud. It is also a cloud to think that I am a person who is bound by the cloud. We are here for one single purpose, which is to experience love. Love is the experience that consciousness, that which we are, is not personal. In order to experience love, we have to be open to it. We have to be open to the possibility that what we truly are, consciousness, that which is seeing and understanding these words right this moment, is not personal. We are all it. The bodies and minds that appear in it are all different, but that in which they appear, that which sees and experiences, is always one and t
he same. It knows itself as consciousness in each one of us, as each one of us. When we are open to it, it resonates. When we catch this resonance in the heart, it radiates as love. When we catch it in the mind, it appears as understanding. When it is revealed in the world, it shines as beauty. They are all the same thing, consciousness revealing itself to itself in different ways. This is how it knows itself, by resonating in this way. It is like when somebody says, “You!” something in us responds, resonates. Before we are a mind or a body, we are this “I am.”

  In our meetings we turn our attention away from objects, towards the source. We are constantly being reminded of the source. We might wonder how it is possible to turn our attention towards something that is invisible, inconceivable, and incomprehensible. However, each time we withdraw the focus of our attention from objects, we are in fact turning towards the source and, each time we do this, we vanish as a person.

  Every time we are reminded of this unknown direction, we look towards the source and we vanish into it, we are taken by it. Then the mind arises again, the old habit of focusing exclusively on objects, and we seem to forget, until the nostalgia returns and we are taken again. When this happens often enough, life begins to change for us. The way we perceive, see, and understand, changes. Our actual experience changes. To begin with, we feel a causeless joy filtering in between the objects, through the gaps. Then it begins to permeate the objects themselves, our thoughts, our body, the world. The things that we always thought of as being solid begin to feel transparent and that which we thought was fleeting and ephemeral, consciousness, becomes more tangible and stable. This is the open secret of satsang.