How do you know that you are separate from yourself?
It is a long story.
How do you know now that you are now separate from yourself without going into the past? Not yesterday or tomorrow, but now. Are you separate from yourself? On what basis can you say that?
Keep going because I think I am . . .
Try to find whether you are really separate from yourself. Try to find out for sure. What I feel is that I am always with myself. I am my best companion. How could I be separate from myself?
Maybe it is just that I think I am separate.
Yes. But, where does your thought that you are separate appear?
In myself.
Right. So you are not separate from yourself.
I don’t know, I have to think about it.
Think about it.
So separateness is something we do in thinking, not in reality?
Absolutely.
If we could all stop thinking we would all be very happy.
We don’t need to stop thinking. We can’t actually end thinking as a result of effort, because the effort itself would involve thinking. There is a story about a king who was very ill. He sent for a famous physician and told him, “Cure me or I’ll have your head cut off.” Seeing that the king was dying, the physician said, “I can save you, but you have to follow my instructions carefully, otherwise the medicine will be ineffective.” The king agreed. The physician gave him some medicine and asked him not to think about a gray monkey whenever he took it. Of course, this turned out to be impossible. So, the king died and the physician saved his own life. This story tells you that if you try to stop thinking, your trying requires thinking, so you can never achieve your goal.
Do thoughts stop? I guess what I am trying to express is that thoughts are helpful in our role-playing, but don’t necessarily help us to be who we are.
The kind of thoughts which are not useful are thoughts which derive from the notion of being a person. Such thoughts bring about hatred, separateness, fury, desire, and so on. They are conducive to negative emotions. If I am convinced that I am this limited body-mind, born a few years ago and bound to die within a few years, there is no way I can prevent the myriad thoughts which originate from this belief from coming up. If I make an effort to prevent them from coming up, pressure will build up inside me, and I may end up in jail or in a mental institution. There is no way of preventing these thoughts from arising as long as their root has not been cut. If I want to get rid of the leaves of a tree, because they are littering my front yard, I can try to remove the leaves one by one, but next spring they will be back again. The real solution is to cut the trunk or, better, uproot the tree. The root of these thoughts and negative emotions is the notion that I am a personal entity, that I am separate. The uprooting of the tree is the understanding that my actual experience, the eternal now, is devoid of such a separation.
How do people make the shift of consciousness from identifying with their separate personality to becoming aware of the truth?
There is nothing the person can do to see that “personness” is a fake. The person persistently adheres to his identity as a person, but there are moments of freedom from this identity. In these moments there is an opportunity to take some distance and have a glimpse of this presence which we all are—awareness. What is our most precious good? It isn’t any part of our body. This is evidenced by the fact that people will submit to having a body part amputated, if necessary to save their life. Our most precious good is not even the body in its totality. What we really love is consciousness. The real question is: Is consciousness in the body or is the body in consciousness? We have been conditioned by our surroundings, by our teachers, by the prevalent materialism, to believe that our body is in the world, our brain is in the body, and consciousness is a function of the brain. From the vantage point of non-duality, the picture is just the opposite: The ultimate reality is awareness, within which there is the mind. The body, the thoughts, and the rest of the universe all appear in the mind. Now, how am I going to decide, from these two positions, which one is true? It is important to understand with our logical apparatus, the mind, that this question can’t be decided by the mind. If I choose one of these positions rather than the opposite, it is a belief, an act of faith. If I see that clearly, I am already free from the concept that I am in the world, that I am my body. I understand that existence in the world is an act of faith, not an absolute truth, and I am now open to the other possibility. The mind can’t decide because it knows only that which is within itself. What is beyond the mind cannot be known by the mind. All it can do is understand that it cannot decide. When it understands that it can’t find the ultimate answer, it becomes quiet. In this stillness there is the possibility for our true nature to take us. We can’t take it. We can only be open and welcome it.
The past few months, I have been meditating at night before I go to sleep. I have been going through, “I am not my body, I am not my mind, I am not my feelings,” and thinking about it. Then the question, “Who am I?” arises. Everything then comes to a screeching halt, and it is very alarming. My mind can’t figure it out, and I haven’t been able to move beyond that. I see clearly that I am not my mind, my body, or my feelings, but the, “Who am I?” part is a big blank. It is like there is nothing there, and then I experience a very alarming feeling. My mind just can’t get it. So, are you saying that when the mind understands that it can’t get it, something else opens up?
In the process you are describing you eliminate what you are not, but there is still a dynamism in you. You are starting this process with a goal in mind. It is the highest end, to realize your true nature. However, it is still a goal. As long as there is the slightest trace of intent in you the door remains closed. That is why it is so difficult to learn and understand how to meditate without help, and to establish oneself, without proper guidance, in the correct attitude of welcoming. I have a friend who lives in Europe. I have never met him, but we write to one another through the Internet, and he asks questions that I try to answer. He wanted to know the proper attitude for knowingly being the truth. This is virtually impossible to convey through words only. Finally, after a few exchanges, I advised him to attend the talks of a dear friend of mine who gives dialogues in his country, and to simply sit in his presence. That will teach him, because in the presence of someone who is free from the ego we spontaneously take the proper attitude, without knowing it, and we become free. One who is free from the notion of being a personal entity is not limited in space. He lives in an expansion, in welcoming, and when awareness in you, through a very subtle antenna, detects his field of welcoming, you start opening up. Your own space starts expanding. You might not notice it in the beginning. After my first meeting with Jean Klein, the feeling I had was not, “He is a realized person.” I thought, “What a nice gentleman! What a good friend he would be!” So, you aren’t grabbed by violence. You are grabbed through this welcoming. In this openness you aren’t afraid because you are totally accepted. Nothing in you is judged or evaluated. When you leave him you have the perfume of this presence and now you know how to meditate. This fragrance of welcoming is all you need. When you are in listening you are not going anywhere. You don’t know anything. All agitation stops. Then, there is an unfolding. You find yourself more and more in this expansion, and one day this sticky little thing you thought you were just falls off like a tick. Then you discover your beauty, your eternity. You know and are what you really desired. It is beyond the plus and the minus. It is beyond measure—absolute! That is what you are. You are that beauty.
It is ironic that the progress toward consciousness is unconscious. It unfolds slowly without you knowing it.
The mind doesn’t know it, but it is not unconscious. Would you say that the fish is unconscious of being in the water?
He knows.
When he is taken out of the water he knows it as an objective perception. While being in the water, in his natural state, he isn’t objectively conscious
of the presence of the water. There is no need for that, because he is one with it, and knows his happiness. How do you know that you are happy? The moment you say, “I am happy” you are no longer happy. When you are happy you know it, but you don’t know it objectively. You don’t know it as you know what you had for breakfast. You know it somehow, but through a different channel. This channel is very important. The channel through which you know that you are happy is the channel through which you know yourself. Find this channel. In other words, when you are happy, know that this happiness emanates from your true Self, not from something, not from an event, not from an object, not from a person. That is all you need. You don’t need to understand everything that is said here. There is only one thing to understand, so just take this one and you’ll be fine. That is called the path of happiness.
What is the way to get there if it isn’t meditating and finding your true self?
There are a thousand and one types of meditation. So when you ask that question, I don’t know what you mean.
I only know what I have learned here. I am new to this.
OK.
What I am learning now is just to try to release my mind. I don’t really know enough to give you an example.
There is only one way to get there. It is through desiring it. If you have no desire for it, you won’t get it, and you won’t be frustrated. However, if you desire it, it will find a way to come to you, because in this desire there is already the fulfillment of all desires. If you desire this happiness, which is causeless, which doesn’t come from any object, let this desire be your guide.
Don’t I have to read some books or find a teacher to arouse this desire? It shouldn’t just be a concept. Believing that I am not my body, my personality, or my personal history is one thing, but I want to experience it. Being around a charismatic teacher is either really going to get me there or leave me in a cult. I would like the help, but I can’t see myself going off alone with all my books, sitting in a cave, and going mad with desire.
Life may prove you wrong. To find the truth you have to move away from any exclusion. If you say, “I am not going to find it there,” think twice. The desire for the truth, being born from a glimpse of the truth, doesn’t come from the person. It comes from grace. There appears to be a personal entity with a desire for the truth moving on a gradual path toward truth, but, in fact, the truth was there in the beginning, the truth is along the path, and the truth is at the end of the path. The truth is—before the beginning and after the end. There is only the truth. There is only grace. Once you understand that, you don’t look for it in the future or in the past, because it is here and now. Your current sensation, your current thought, your current perception emanates from your awareness, rests in your awareness, falls in your awareness. The substance it is made out of is your awareness. So, everything is your awareness. Everything is you; everything you see; everything you understand. You are the fabric out of which this universe is made. And it is created in the present. It was not created in the past. Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal Fourth of July of your absolute splendor.
Someone mentioned feeling alarmed when she got to a certain point, and other people have described being terrified at the point where they were just ready to open up to this awareness. What causes these overwhelming reactions?
In these circumstances you have the opportunity to see what you are not: the ego. The ego is not a single thought, it is a recurrent thought pattern which, like frozen yogurt, comes in various flavors, such as, I am a mother, I am a father, I am my body. The ego is also made out of feelings, such as, fear, boredom, dissatisfaction, and a sense of lack. When you feel boredom, you touch the tip of the iceberg. If you welcome this feeling, you move into deeper waters as it becomes fear and even panic. Remain in welcoming. It is a test of the intensity of your desire for the truth. At some point, the desire for the truth becomes so intense that you are willing to die for it. When there is a readiness to give up everything, the fear will instantaneously disappear and the eternal consciousness will reveal itself in all its glory. That will be the end of the ego and of the problems that are associated with it.
You speak of the Self and also of consciousness. Is there any separation between the Self and the whole consciousness? Is there some part of that awareness that is separate? Are we reincarnated? Do we have a personality apart from the entire consciousness?
You know that you are conscious, but you don’t know yet that your awareness, which is you, goes beyond the limitations of your body-mind. We all share this awareness. It is our common good. All you have to do is to be open to that possibility. As long as you want to remain an ego, you will remain as such. Be happy with it, if you can. But, there may come a time when you feel dissatisfaction, and understand that this constant drive to seek pleasure and avoid pain is what keeps you in misery.
A Real Teacher Doesn’t Take Himself for a Teacher
How can a seeker know that he has met an authentic teacher and not merely someone who is offering a new philosophy or a new version of an old philosophy?
There will be, at first, the intuition that this person may be the one he was seeking to help him along the path. Then, at some point, through the words and gestures of the teacher, through the modulations of his voice and the look in his eyes, or more importantly, through his silent presence (because everything in an authentic teacher speaks of the truth, comes from the truth, and invites the truth), a fusion in the heart will occur that will give the seeker the total conviction that he has met the one for whom he was looking. In this real meeting with his teacher, he meets the ultimate friendliness and intelligence they both have in common: he meets himself. A real teacher doesn’t take himself for a teacher. He doesn’t claim to be different from his student. He doesn’t try to manipulate him. He leaves him with a feeling of enhanced freedom, of increased autonomy. He is not a father figure, nor does he try to convert the student. His behavior is a perfect example of humility and devotion to the truth.
More than his words, his humility and his genuine innocence convince the seeker, deep in his heart, that he has met the teacher for whom he was looking.
How can one know he is in the presence of an inauthentic teacher?
If there is a lack of clarity, if the teacher manifests personal emotions or feelings, such as attachment to his students, then you can know. I said earlier that a fusion in the heart has to occur in the presence of the teacher in order to bring about the total certitude of his authenticity. By “fusion in the heart,” I wasn’t referring to any emotional state, such as the states that can be experienced along a path of devotion, but rather to a non-event that results from absolute clarity of the mind. This comes first. Then, and only then, is there a fusion in the heart. In the absence of clarity, there is still a person-toperson relationship between a teacher who may be a holy person, but still a person, and a student who is bound to remain a student for as long as the teacher remains a person, which may be for a long time.
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Is it necessary to be intelligent to realize the ultimate?
It is necessary to be highly intelligent. However, what I call higher intelligence is different from common intelligence. Common intelligence is a cerebral ability that, for instance, enables an individual possessing it to obtain a postgraduate degree from a good university. It implies the ability to deal logically with complex and abstract questions that involve a large amount of data. It is a function of the brain. Higher intelligence, on the other hand, originates from the supreme intelligence, our true nature. It enables us to understand simplicity, unity. Common intelligence is a deductive process in time; higher intelligence is an instantaneous intuition that comes directly from the timeless. A very simple being can know the truth, whereas a highly educated one can fail to know it.
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Is higher reasoning affected by the physical state of t
he body, by the use of drugs, illness, or by the kind of food one eats?
The source of higher reasoning is not, the process of higher reasoning may be. The search for the truth, this investigation about our real nature, requires a very sharp mind. The use or abuse of drugs or alcohol may impair the mind’s natural alertness.
If someone is earnestly seeking, will he necessarily change his eating habits?
Real intelligence doesn’t exclude anything. It applies to the whole of our life. It affects everything, including the way we smile and the way we eat. These changes in our habits are a result of understanding. The body-mind is our instrument, our vehicle. We have to take good care of it and put the right kind of fuel into it.
What is the significance of vegetarianism?
Obviously, to think that a change in our eating habits would take us closer to the truth reflects a misunderstanding . . .
Of course, but I was asking the opposite . . .
If a change in habits comes as a result of understanding, that is a different question. This understanding comes from seeing situations as they are. When we feel in unity with our animal companions, compassion prevents us from being an accomplice to their suffering. We may also notice that someone we trust, a spiritual friend, for instance, is a vegetarian. Since we are open-minded, we can try this new diet and notice how it affects our body, immediately after the meals, and also after a few months. We may notice changes in the color and texture of our skin, or in the feeling of heaviness or lightness in our body. We can experiment in this way and make an autonomous decision.
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Many people who begin to explore their own nature get caught up with the notion of reincarnation. Could we go into this question?
Who is there to reincarnate? The ego?
They would reply, yes, the person, the mind.
Eternity Now Page 8