I would suggest that they inquire, “Who is there?” which means, “Who am I?” and find out whether there is an entity that can eventually reincarnate. Reincarnation is to the idealist what death is to the materialist. To the materialist who inquires, “What is death?” we can put the question, “Who is there to die?” Similarly, in the case of the idealist for whom the body is part of the mind, and for whom the mind does not necessarily die when the body dies, the question is, “How can I escape from the endless cycle of birth and death?” This question can be met by asking, “Who is there to go through this reincarnation process?” The answer, the living answer to this question, leads the seeker to the understanding that the ego is a mere illusion. He then finds himself beyond death and beyond the infernal cycle of death and rebirth.
***
If the past does not really exist, what is the nature of memory?
Memory is made of records of past events, of objects. A personal memory, or recollection, tells us that we were present as awareness during a past event. The same consciousness witnessed the past event and is now witnessing its recollection. In fact, the recollection only confirms the reality of awareness, the unchanging presence behind the impermanent events. If this is understood, the interval between the past event and its current recollection is seen as awareness. If we believe that the events exist independently from awareness, identifying awareness with some appearing object, a body-mind, the same interval is seen as having a consciousness-independent reality. We call it time. To sum it up: When we grant reality to objects, to an external world, time seems to exist as an interval between two events; when awareness is seen as real, there is no time, there is only awareness.
If there is only the present, and there are only current upcoming thoughts, what is the meaning behind some of them coming up, from time to time, identified as memories, as recollections of something that occurred at some point in the past?
There is no meaning. Time and space are part of the creation of this illusory world. It could equally be said that their sole meaning is to celebrate the ultimate.
So, the fact that some thoughts arise labeled as memories is simply a part of this huge artifice?
Exactly. It is a huge artifice, a very well thought out one, but nevertheless an artifice. Our dreams are also very well thought out, very sophisticated.
That is true. In fact, we have memories in dreams, which we see upon awakening, never happened at all.
Exactly. During the time span of a dream, which from the perspective of the waking state lasts for a few minutes, we can dream of events that allegedly happened twenty years ago in the dream. When we wake up, it becomes obvious that these events never had a proper space-time frame in which they could have existed, and thus are mere illusions.
***
The Christian church holds poverty to be a virtue. Is there any relation between wealth or poverty, and realization?
Meister Eckhart, who was a Christian, taught that spiritual poverty, real poverty, is freedom from the I-concept. This real poverty, which originates from understanding, liberates us from attachment. The I-concept, with its train of fears, desires, and attachments, is the problem, not our material possessions.
***
Krishna Menon, a great teacher of this perspective, defined language as the art of concealing thought, and thought as the art of concealing truth. Could you expand on these definitions?
We could draw an analogy in which truth is the naked body, thought is a first layer of clothes covering the body, and words are a second layer of clothes veiling both the thoughts and the body. Of course, we run the risk of taking the appearance, the veil, for the reality, the body. In this sense, thoughts and words may divert our attention from truth. However, there are also words and thoughts which direct our attention toward truth. These words and thoughts can be compared with the clothes a beautiful woman wears, making her body even more attractive by drawing attention toward her harmonious proportions. Truth is always present, but we may forget its presence, and these kinds of words and thoughts remind us of its presence. Such are the sayings of the teacher: they directly point toward truth. They come from beauty, they point toward beauty, and they have the power to take us back to their source.
***
What is the nature of bondage? Who is bound? What binds him?
Bondage consists of considering oneself to be someone who is bound, a limited entity.
It seems extraordinary that such a simple thing, a person believing himself to be bound, could generate this enormous experience that we call life.
To see oneself as bound does not generate life. Life has an existence of its own. Life is autonomous. To see oneself as a person is what generates misery.
But doesn’t life give rise to the experience of being an individual inserted into the world?
Yes, but our experience, life itself, is not the product of the person. The person is part of the picture. As any element of the picture, it can be there, or it can be absent. One may think that the picture looks better in its absence, but in any case one doesn’t draw the picture.
Why doesn’t a sage use his understanding to work in an obvious way, in an open way, for the benefit of humanity?
All sages do work for the benefit of humanity. They simply don’t advertise their work. They don’t need recognition. We don’t know they are sages. Only a few become openly teachers of truth. A sage has the most efficient, the most powerful impact on the rest of mankind, through his mere presence, through the transmission of the ultimate truth. He is like a beacon in the night, a flame that illuminates the world.
***
In the context of seeking the truth, what is the meaning and purpose of surrender?
People often think that surrender means to renounce wealth, sexuality, or objects. Such a renunciation might be useful but it could also be a hindrance. Real surrender takes place when we cease to take ourself for a separate entity, an object. This renunciation seems, at first sight, limited in scope and too simple, but it is, in fact, the ultimate surrender. Such a giving up has no purpose, it comes from the deep understanding that our true nature, consciousness, is free from all limitations. From this perspective, surrender means to see the limitations for what they are: mere concepts superimposed onto our real being, which is limitless.
It seems easy for a person to give up an idea, a possession, or the opportunity to have an experience. These things are easy, because the person can do them by choice. But, for the person to give himself up is quite another matter, and it seems to me like it is anything but easy. It can’t be done in the way the other things can be done.
Of course, the person cannot give himself up. The person is always looking for something. The person wants to exchange . . .
Make a deal?
Make a deal. The person is willing to exchange wealth or anything else for a greater good, but can’t just give himself up. Real surrender comes from love, from grace, when there is an insight into the supreme. Everything else becomes relative, being important only as a modality, as an aspect of the ultimate. From this perspective, surrender is our natural state, the absence of an owner. It means to literally disown everything, every object. It is this surrender to which Meister Eckhart refers when he says that a man who is “poor in spirit” is one who owns nothing, wants nothing, and knows nothing.
***
How would you characterize the difference between listening to the words of a sage in person, and reading his writings or his sayings? This is a question that is important for truth-seekers who don’t, or feel they don’t, have access to a sage.
Words can be misleading. If the words of a sage are received without his presence, the reader has to conceptualize them, because he doesn’t know any other way of knowing. He will arrive at concepts that are more subtle and, in a sense, closer to the truth. But, in practice, in most cases, in order to have a glimpse of truth itself, the presence of the sage is necessary in the beginning. In his presence conceptualizing
comes to an end and is replaced by experience. After this experience, the seeker, reading the words of the sage or simply remembering his presence, will be brought back to the timeless glimpse he had during the first meeting. The words no longer refer to something unknown. Although he can’t grasp or visualize this “something” in his mind, the words point toward what he now knows to be his own reality, his intimate experience.
How is that?
Because he knows it now. Jean Klein used the following example: If you have never eaten a mango, the word mango won’t suggest any flavor to you. If somebody describes the taste and texture of the mango as being like those of a sweet peach or apricot, you will have a more accurate idea of the mango than if you visualize it as a carrot. But, it will still be a concept. After having once tasted the real thing, you know.
***
Is it possible to clearly see or know the interval between two thoughts or two perceptions, and, if that is so, is it possible to prolong that interval?
Is it possible to see this interval? Yes. Not to see it as an object, but to be it, to be alive in it. Is it possible to prolong it? Here a misconception arises, because this interval is not in time. How could the timeless be prolonged? This question originates from the desire to prolong a pleasurable experience, a samadhi. Such is the goal of a yogin who is in the business of achieving the cessation of all mind activities in order to experience the peace that comes with this cessation. The problem is that when he comes out of his samadhi he wants to find out how to get there again, and remain in it longer. Thinking so, doing so, he remains a prisoner in the chains of time.
So, even the notion of interval is wrong here. A succession of thoughts with gaps would imply a temporal succession, which is a misconception.
Yes, exactly.
It is not an interval.
Time is the substance of the mind, in the same way as space-time is the substance of the physical body and of the world. From the vantage point of the mind, this gap is an interval between two mentations; from the vantage point of the interval itself, it is the silent background, our timeless presence. From the vantage point of time, the gap has a beginning and an end, and thus an alleged duration, which gives rise to the question about its prolongation. If rugs and pieces of furniture are on the floor, at first sight there are objects with pieces of floor in between; but upon examination, it turns out that a single floor is the common support of all the objects.
The existence of the interval between thoughts is made obvious by pointing out that thoughts could not be continuous, because, if they were, there would not be thoughts, there would be one long thought. Each thought, thus, begins and ends. The fact that each thought has a duration, a beginning and an end, implies the notion of an interval. Is there a more direct way of knowing the interval other than this argument?
Of course, because we can’t know it through reasoning. We can only infer its existence in this way. All we can say is, “It makes sense” or “Why not?” This is already important, because it puts to rest the notion that there is not such a thing as pure consciousness, and we are now open to the possibility that we stand as awareness between mentations. However, between the conceptual inference of its existence and the actual experience of being awareness, there is the same difference as the one between the planning of Columbus’ trip to India and the discovery of America. This clarification through reasoning is useful. It erases the doubts of the seeker and leaves him open to the possibility that there is something beyond the mind. Then, as a result of the glimpse he has in the presence of his instructor, something changes in him. These intervals between thoughts are no longer an absence, or a blank, they are pregnant with our presence. They are alive, they have an unexpected fullness. They are that with which he is really in love.
***
If consciousness lies beyond opposites, and everything we have ever known lies within the field of opposites, within conceptualizing, how can we come to know consciousness?
It is not true to say that everything we have ever known lies within the realm of concepts. We have simply superimposed a net of concepts onto the known. The problem is not with what we know, but rather with the concepts we have about what we know. Otherwise, it would not be possible to have any access to the truth if it were radically separate from us. Nothing separates us from the truth, with the possible exception of our imagination. When we stop projecting a non-real separation, we find our Self to be what we have always been, where we have always been, and the so-called world finds its own place as an extension of the ultimate.
In a sense, this question arises from a wish to know consciousness conceptually, otherwise we would not accept that we know it.
We would like to know it objectively, as we think we know the world, or our body, or our thoughts. In fact, we never know objects, because there are no objects. There is only a continuum of consciousness, there is only one thing.
***
Does art have any function in daily life or in the pursuit of truth?
Art points toward beauty; art speaks to us about beauty. Beauty, truth, and love are one and the same. They are attributes of the ultimate. So art points toward the ultimate. That is its function.
How does art do that? How can a painting or a book, which are physical objects, be especially pointing toward the ultimate? Don’t other objects point toward the ultimate?
Let’s first consider the second part of the question. In principle, any object points toward the ultimate. But, to reveal the ultimate is not the function of all objects. Unlike most objects, a work of art refers to beauty directly, specifically, by design, so to speak. It uses the five senses as a vehicle, be it the auditory sense in the case of music or the visual sense in the case of plastic arts (although it could be argued that a piece of art in fact makes use of all the five senses; that there is rhythm in a painting and color in a concerto). A piece of art is a physical, sensorial object which has the power to bring the seer or the listener to the ultimate. Real art comes from the ultimate, from a vision; from the spirit, as Beethoven would say; from God, as Bach would say. Of course, technical skills are required to transform this vision into a physical shape, to translate it into the sensory language. When we listen to it, when we see it, we go through the various stages in reverse order. We move back from the sensory message to the original subtle intuition, and from there back to its source, where we are left alone in our own splendor.
There Is Nothing That Is Not Him
What is enlightenment?
Enlightenment is the experience of our true nature, which is made possible by the deep understanding of what we are not. Just as there is no need to light a candle in a room in which the curtains have been opened to let in the sunlight, nothing further is necessary once the mistaken identification with what we are not has been removed, and our true nature shines it its eternal glory.
Enlightenment, then, is the leaving behind of a thought that we are something, when, in fact, we are not.
Yes. It is knowingly standing as awareness disidentified from any limiting thought or feeling. From the vantage point of the person, from a relative vantage point, it is a hypothetical event in time and space, but this is a misconception originating from the person. From the vantage point of light, there is only light: There has always been and will always be only light. It is beyond time.
It seems like a paradox, because what you are saying implies that there couldn’t be such a thing as an enlightened person. That would be a contradiction in terms.
Exactly.
Yet, I have the impression that some individuals are enlightened and others are not. Is this a misconception?
Of course it is a misconception. As long as you take yourself to be a person, you will see persons everywhere; some beautiful, some not; some enlightened, some not. Once you realize you are the Self, you will see the Self, and only the Self, everywhere. In other words, as long as the student takes himself for a student, for a personal entity, he also projects a personal entity
onto his teacher. When he realizes that he and his teacher are one, there is no longer a student, there is no longer a teacher; there is only respectful friendliness, shared joy. Conceiving realization as an event in time is an obstacle to enlightenment. To the question, “When will I realize the truth?” the sage Atmananda Krishna Menon replied, “When the when ceases.”
***
The statement that the world and our body are mere illusions comes as a shock to most Western thinkers. Could we explore this further?
First, let’s understand that from the point of view of the witnessing consciousness, the body is a material object like any other. Along with the rest of the world as we actually know it, it is made out of sensory perceptions.
But, it isn’t quite correct to say that the body, like any other object, is made out of sensations. These other objects are made out of matter, and they are revealed to us via sensations, via the sense organs, the mind, and awareness.
Yes. At this instant, the illusory aspect of the world comes in. When we say that the world is made out of matter, we already implicitly define the world not as the world we actually know, but as a concept. We replace an undeniable fact, our sensory experience of the world, by the unverifiable hypothesis of a world out there that exists independently of us.
In fact, by a concept of matter which is not only unknown, but in principle unknowable.
Even before the concept of matter, which is a concept for the physicist, there is the implicit notion that there is an external world which exists independently of awareness, which exists even when it isn’t perceived.
Yes, and the theory of matter is a formal conceptualizing of this implicit understanding.
It is a refinement, a scientific theory that makes use of the pre-scientific concept of an external world.
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