by Jean Klein
Is this not a withdrawal of the senses?
Not at all. Withdrawal is a wilful process and calls for deep concentration. Withdrawal is still looking for a result and maintains the subject/object duality on a subtle level. You can never come to unconditioned listening through withdrawal.
Through withdrawal you can of course eliminate the vibration, the natural function of the senses. It is a kind of samadhi, an experience you enter and leave. But why pursue such experiences? They have nothing to do with sahaja.
The word meditation has been misused by many traditions which have adopted so many techniques.
Is the consciousness within which manifestation takes place one?
From this point of view one cannot say you and I. “You” and “I” as body and mind appear and disappear each with their own qualities, but they are nothing other than a collection of memories which have no existence in themselves. Just as waves and foam are nothing but sea, as separate entities they have only a temporary existence.
Can’t we attribute these memories to the person?
As long as you take yourself to be “a wave” or “the foam” you cannot see this truth. All I ask is that you cease to identify yourself with them. You will then know your real essence: “the sea.”
But this does not prevent us from seeing the waves, can we see them and still know that we are the sea?
It is only when one sees things from the standpoint of the sea that one can talk of waves and foam, for then they are truly waves and foam. They do not have a separate entity, they are no longer isolated projections of memory. They gain their true significance and true relation as expressions of wholeness.
In everyday life don’t we need memory?
No, the situation always provides the adequate attitude, not memory. You are the owner of all memories but you are not the memories. You must realize that you are now only a heap of conventions, habits, what society has made of you. Once all these have left you, you will realize that they were defenses and aggressions accumulated solely to maintain this ego which simply does not exist. Then the real Self shines forth. It does not belong to memory. It is there because it is there. See this! Listen! You are not this memory. Get to know those moments when you are nothing, you will feel such freedom! Then all is possible.
Between memory and freedom is there an in-between state?
No, there is no half way. In the silence we are talking about, we are unconditionally free. In this silence we are strictly nothing. Memory intervenes only when we believe ourselves to be someone. When we are nothing, everything is possible. This freedom has its own unique taste; it is not the result of a political or social point of view but on the contrary engenders it. As long as this experience is not lived there is no freedom, be it political or social; there is only dictatorship.
Is there any difference between this freedom and grace?
Freedom is grace and grace is this freedom.
Is this grace permanent?
Grace has always been and always is, waiting to be welcomed. When grace is established we can no longer speak of grace, otherwise it remains a concept. We can only say it is truly living in the moment. In this is joy, total security without cause because this living in the timeless moment is causeless.
But it is pure torture to have heard of this without living it!
Your idea of torture is the only obstacle preventing you from living it.
When I transform this experience into a concept, when I objectify it, I leave truth behind to return to the turmoil of life. It is incomprehensible to me that it might happen yet I have a feeling it is so.
It is in the nature of truth to express itself as an object, but since the object arises from truth, the seeker intuitively retains knowledge of its origin. Knowing that, the seeker is no longer dispersed but centered on truth and the foretaste of reality is very strong. This insight brings about a letting-go, a retracing of one’s steps that leads you to pure consciousness, to your effortless being.
He who longs to know his true nature must first understand his mistaken identification with objects: “I am this,” “I am that.” All identifications, all states are transitory and consequently unreal. Identifying the “I” with this or that is the root of ignorance. Ask yourself what is permanent throughout all the stages of life. The question “Who am I?” will be found to have no answer. You cannot experience what is permanent in a subject/object relationship, as something perceivable. You can only formulate and explain that which you are not. What you fundamentally and continually are cannot be put into words or reasoned out. Being is non-dual, absolute and constant, ever present whatever the circumstances.
When we consider the knower independently of the known, he reveals himself to be pure witness. When knowledge and the knower are one, there is no longer a place for a witness.
All imagination is unreal, based on memory. But all that is not anticipated, all that is unexpected, that causes wonder, astonishment, surges forth from living reality. The quest for pleasure, for satisfaction, is born of suffering, of memory. Welcome life as it comes; don’t emphasize the world but change your attitude towards it. Your idea of the world, of society, stems from the belief that you are a separate ego. Be your totality and the world will change. The world is not other than you. The world is in you; society begins with you.
You say we should not begin by trying to change the world but we can change our attitude towards it. Is this what you mean when you say that existence is the film but we are not the film, we are the light illuminating the film?
Yes. You cannot change the film because all attempts to change it belong to the film.
Identification with your body and your personality binds you, making you dependent. Our sensorial perceptions are built up by memory and imply a knower. We must closely examine the nature of the knower. This requires all our attention, all our love. Thus you will discover what you really are. That is the only sadhana. To integrate awareness of the Self is freedom. The Self takes charge of everything.
Images arise and fade away in the mirror of consciousness, and memory creates the illusion of a continuity. Memory is but a mode of thinking, it is purely transitory. On such an unsteady basis we construct a whole world of characters. This illusion hinders clear seeing.
Striving to improve or to progress only confuses us even more. Outward appearances may lead us into believing we have reached a state of stability, that changes are taking place, that we are progressing and are on the threshold of grace. But in fact nothing has changed. We have merely rearranged our furniture. All this activity takes place in the mind, it is a figment of imagination.
It is all much more simple than that. Why make it so complicated? What you fundamentally are is always here, always complete. It needs no purification. It never changes. For the Self there is no darkness. You cannot discover or become truth for you are it. There is nothing to do to bring it closer, nothing to be learned. See only that you are constantly trying to go away from what you are. Stop wasting time and energy in projecting. Live this stopping, not lazily and passively, but live the alertness that is found in the stopping of expectation and anticipation. This also is your sadhana.
There is no room for improvement in reality. It is perfection itself. How could you possibly get nearer to it? There is no means by which you can approach it.
Is it not fatalistic to say we cannot change the film?
Fatalistic means you identify with the film and submit to it. In fact, the film goes on but you are the seer. Being off the screen will give you a new outlook on what the film really is. From this global, infinite view, which is no longer a viewpoint, which is not in time or space, everything happens in perfect simultaneity. So there is nothing to change.
Going back to our earlier conversation, you said the world changes when my perception of it changes. How can this be?
One who has reached full maturity, who knows himself in consciousness will not necessarily conform with social convention.
Such a one will act at the right moment as the situation dictates, without anybody being hindered in any way. If your acts are dictated by your desires, you have no freedom whatsoever. On the other hand, if you do what the situation calls for, you do what is right and you and your surroundings are free.
The sage has not the slightest idea of being a person when he acts, feels, thinks. The ego is totally absent. The ego itself is no more than a thought and two thoughts cannot take form simultaneously so identification with the ego only takes place once the thought concerning the object has subsided. Then it claims this thought as its own. The sense of ownership, “I saw it, I did it,” comes after the fact and has nothing to do with the fact. Once this mechanism becomes clear, you realize that the identification you previously took to be real is but an illusion. You neither own nor are a slave to the situation. Your true nature transcends it. Silent awareness is not a state but is the continuum in which all states, all things appear and disappear. The words we use in the waking state to talk about the non-state are an expression of this awareness. When we live in awareness all is an expression of awareness.
The world you perceive is none other than a figment of the imagination founded on memory, fear, anxiety and desire. You have locked yourself away within this world. See this without jumping to conclusions and you will be free. There is no need whatsoever for you to free yourself from a world which exists only in your imagination.
What you take to be reality is only a concept arising from memory. Memory arises from the mind, the mind from the witness, the witness from the Self. You are the witness, the onlooker standing on the bank watching the river flow on. You do not move, you are changeless, beyond the limits of space and time. You cannot perceive what is permanent, because you are it.
Do not nourish the ideas you have built around yourself nor the image people have of you. Be neither someone nor something, just remain free from the demands of society. Don’t play its game. This will establish you in your autonomy.
The example, so often mentioned by Vedanta, of the snake and the piece of rope, refers to the world on one hand and ultimate reality on the other. The snake represents the world of objects where we find persons, thoughts and affectivity; the rope represents ultimate reality, silent awareness. Once we cease to take the rope for a snake, the idea of the snake fades away and we see the rope for what it really is. It is perfectly natural that errors lose their substance and vanish when truth becomes evident. Since thought is an integral part of the illusion, it cannot possibly reveal ultimate reality to us. “Isness,” presence, which is the source of all experience, is beyond the experiencer/experienced duality. When the accent is on being aware, and not on thought nor on perception, we gradually become deeply relaxed, both on the neuro-muscular level and on the mental plane.
If we disinterestedly observe the arising and disappearing of all the states we experience, we soon come to realize that each state, each perception, each thought, is reabsorbed into an unspoken knowing, knowing as being. This, the continuum, the only reality, is there before activity commences. Let yourself sink deep within this stillness each time it makes itself felt.
You cannot expect reality to appear, for it ever is. Events appear and disappear. Never forget the passing character of all experience, this is all you need to do and the door to grace will open before you. As soon as opinions and reactions such as “I like, I don’t like” intervene, you have fallen into the personal habit and you weave a web around yourself and lose sight of your true nature. Feelings of antipathy and sympathy lead you to turn your back on the Self. Your ideas of change, progress, better and worse are fractional and personal. When you look at the world from wholeness the world will change in you. You are the world.
Is the freedom from thought I experience in meditation close to my real nature? Is it the same stillness you talk about?
In what is habitually called meditation, you strive to rid yourself of all intentions and concepts. Thus you find yourself before a screen free of thoughts, be they objective or subjective. Having rid yourself of these thoughts others, more rebellious, appear, invade you indiscriminately and you again eliminate them. It is true that after practicing this for a certain length of time, mental activity lessens. However, if the seeker is not guided by an authentic teacher this empty screen will always remain a mystery. The silent awareness we are talking about is beyond the absence or presence of thoughts, words, activity or passivity. These arise from and are reabsorbed into stillness beyond the mind, stillness beyond freedom from thought. Nothing whatsoever can affect this tranquility. Objective knowledge is perceived by means of the corresponding organ in the body, but silent awareness does not require a means.
Are conflict and war inevitable attributes of the human being?
Conflict is an attribute of the individual, not the human being. In your real nature which is oneness no conflict is possible. Effort, competition and aggression only concern the person. Ask yourself just how enslaved you are to your opinions and habits which are the source of perpetual conflict. Observe how your mind works, look at how it functions, look without any preconceived ideas. A moment will come when you discover yourself in the looking, not in the mind. Subsequently, when all striving has dissolved, you will realize that you are the light shining beyond even the observer. Reality is neither a product of the mind nor the result of a whole train of thoughts, it just is. You must realize that you can never find your true self in a perception. The only method we can suggest is to observe without analysis the way in which your mind reacts in the different circumstances of everyday life. Don’t alter your life to fit some idea. Live as previously, thinking and feeling, only become aware of these as simply functions, thus you will become spontaneously free from them. Then what you think of as your personality will vanish, leaving only the witness. In the end, even this will lose itself in ultimate knowledge.
That which surges forth unexpectedly, on the spur of the moment, without any cause, free from the past; that which springs forth without roots and neither flowers nor fades; that which is most natural, free from strain, is the Self.
The living “I know,” being the knowing, completely escapes memory. You can only remember what you have actually understood on a mental plane at a given time, that is, an experience. But life itself is not bound to time and space, it is not experience, not objectifiable. Living entirely detached from the mind’s hold is nondual, pure being. The real teacher who knows life is beyond what he teaches. Knowing the Self, being knowledge, cannot be communicated by words alone. Words are but a very pale reflection of the inexplicable Self, and communication by words must never become a limitation. The teaching is only a “pretext” to bring the disciple to a new quality of listening, a listening that is totally open, receptive and free from any concept or anticipation. This openness is the listener’s own true nature: stillness, ultimate knowledge. The teaching should never give a hold to any physical or psychological fixation. When the teacher is free from being a teacher, though the teaching is in space and time, it unwaveringly points towards true being, the domain in which the teaching originates. The so-called teacher helps the so-called disciple free himself from the patterns of body and mind, allowing him to find his real autonomy and ultimate security, the continual non-state.
Learning things objectively is always a fragmentary process. The guru passes on the knowledge of truth in its totality, for he and his teachings are one. Simply by his or her presence the teacher helps because this presence reminds the seeker of his own presence which he is in common with the teacher and in which all existence appears. Unintentional reminders of totality thus will come about and the disciple will be attracted by them. What was knowingly lived in the teacher’s presence will renew itself. The permanent establishing in reality is instantaneous; the reorchestration of the energy of the body-mind is a question of time.
If I understand correctly, the guru’s teaching points towards our true Self and by so doing leaves us with frequent remin
ders of what took place in his presence. Words are only a stepping stone and they will soon die out revealing silence free from objects, plenitude, the Self.
Quite right.
What is the correct way to listen to the guru when he talks of the spiritual perspective?
The disciple must totally accept all the teacher communicates to him; this implies that he be completely free of any preconceived idea, way of thinking or belief. He is totally open-minded. While the teaching takes place his inner nature will make itself felt, since what he is not becomes more and more clear and is eliminated.
What is the chief obstacle preventing fulfilment?
The chief obstacle to the fulfilment of our potential is the concept of a me. It is nothing but a figment of the imagination created by memory and by the social context we find ourselves in.
It is a fact that once a desired object has been acquired, there is a brief moment of desirelessness, a moment free from all intention, from the me, the knower and the known. It is only later that the me stakes a claim to this experience and transforms it into “I am happy,” into a subject/object relationship. The me is never present but is made of memory and thus uses memory to exist. So although there is no me at the time of the experience, no subject/object relation, memory ascribes the cause of this wonderment, desirelessness, to an object, thus reinforcing the whole process that makes us seek fulfillment in objects.
But if the ego habitually destroys oneness where does the desire for fulfillment, desirelessness, come from?
If the ego is in the slightest way separated from its source, it yearns to find it again. This search comes from the remembrance of unity and plenitude. As every experience emanates from the non-experience which is our real being, the me also bears the scent of its source. This remembering is awakened through those moments of desirelessness and in deep sleep. The ego is thus in permanent conflict, at once longing for its own oblivion in oneness and at the same time habitually fighting for its very existence.