by Jean Klein
Why doesn’t this silence remain?
It does remain. It always is, but you part company with it.
What I would like is to be able to express what I am.
But you do so constantly, you can never express what you are not.
I get the impression I express nothing but what people have made me.
Well, rid yourself of what others have made of you and you will be what you are. It is possible. Bare yourself completely. Eliminate all acquired characteristics, they are not really you. They are just a lot of habits held in place by memory.
When you garden or drive, you simply function, there is nobody who says “I am digging, I am driving.” Where, at that moment, is the person fabricated by others? It is totally absent. It only appears when thought of. It is an idea just like any other. You must see in the moment it happens, the very instant when the “I” pops up and appropriates the action. See it in the moment and change follows effortlessly of its own accord.
Since I saw that much of my life is a compensation for something deeper I have lost interest in my life, even my job and my family. It feels very uncomfortable to stay in the old situation. I feel like Siddhartha, drawn to spend all my time and energy in discovering the real nature of existence. I feel time is short and yet, of course, I cannot simply leave my wife and work even though neither understands my longing. Have you any suggestions?
See that up until now you have put yourself in categories, thought of yourself as a husband, a father, a banker and you have lived going from one state to another. Why identify yourself with all these functions? Why this restriction? When you really see this mechanical behavior a real background will appear in you which will sweep you away from identifying with all these categories. You will be this background in all the functions of life and they will no longer be stuck in a frame, your actions will be free from memory. They may appear completely new to you. You will no longer feel caged or restricted. The different roles in life are in you but you are not in them. They are not you but they belong to you and you are not lost in them.
Only then can there be clear vision and creative behavior.
There may come a moment in life when the world no longer stimulates us and we feel deeply apathetic, even abandoned. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. When we no longer find interest in activities and states, when we no longer feel much pleasure in objects and human relationships, we may find ourselves asking: “Is there something wrong with this world or with my attitude towards it?” This serious doubt can lead us to ask: “What is the meaning of existence? What is life? Who am I? What is my true nature?” Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions.
As we live with these questions, look at them closely, we become aware that the “me” always seems to be at the center of things playing several roles: “I am cold. I am tired. I am working.” With a more open-minded alertness it becomes apparent that the body feels cold, tired, or is working, not “I.” In the same way when we look at states: “I wish. I am depressed. I remember. I am bored,” we see that we have identified ourselves with the thought or feeling. In looking at this relation between the I and its qualifications it becomes obvious that we have taken it for granted and believe ourselves to be this “me.”
This “me” has therefore no continual reality. It is a false appropriation. It lives only in relation to its qualifications, its objects. It is fundamentally unstable. But because we have mistaken our real self for this imposter we feel an insecurity, a doubt, a lack, a sensation of isolation. The “me” can only live in relation to objects so we spend all our energy trying to fulfill the insatiable insecurity of this me. We live in anxiety, fear and desire trying at one and the same time to be as individualistic as possible and to overcome this separateness. The “me” which appears occasionally is taken as a continuum. Actually it is only a crystallization of data and experience held together by memory. Being fractional, its viewpoint is fractional functioning through like and dislike. Its contact with its surroundings is based on this arbitrary choosing. Living in this way is miserable. The loneliness of such an existence may be temporarily camouflaged by compensatory activity but sooner or later, as we said, our real nature will make itself felt and our questioning will become more urgent. We will begin to feel that what we take for the body and mind is not the actual state of things. In deeper inquiry we feel a certain distancing between the inquirer and his environment, activities and opinions. For a time we may feel like an observer of our life, the spectator of the spectacle. Our body and mind are instruments to be used. We observe the changes of the psychosomatic structure as we grow older. We become aware that many, if not most, of our actions are mechanical reactions. All these happenings are seen from the impersonal observer. We begin to feel closer to the knower of these changes and less identified, lost in, the changing. In the end the seeker is found to be what was sought.
What do you mean by that last statement, “the seeker is found to be what was sought?”
You are seeking your real nature. What you are looking for is what you are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is reality, a present actual fact. Looking for something to become is completely conceptual, on the level of ideas. It has no reality and no effective power. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.
It seems to me that not everyone who is a seeker has experienced this deep feeling of unfulfillment or abandonment that you talk about.
It’s true. There are those who, because of their past, sense the divine anchored deep within them. In these cases there is no motivation. As Meister Eckhart said, “God is seeking himself.”
What past do you mean when you say “those who because of their past” sense the divine in them?
It is a poetic formulation which betrays residues of belief in a past incarnation. Of course there is no past incarnation because there is no past. As long as you take yourself for somebody there is incarnation. But some people live with the feeling of what has never been born. They remember the face they had before they were born.
Is knowing our real self what we call transcendental knowledge?
We can never know our real nature, we can only know what we are not. We can never know transcendence, we can only know what we already know. Knowledge of the world of shapes and forms is not true knowledge. Objective knowledge is only superimposed perception, emotion or concept. True knowledge is “being knowledge.” It is not objectifiable or perceivable. The desire for this is the motivation, the reason behind all our activities. As we are not conscious of this real motive, our daily activities are generally very dispersed, and we usually need a teacher to guide us, to orientate us towards a better understanding.
The body and mind have no reality in themselves, they are entirely dependent on consciousness. They change constantly. It is the changeless background that allows us to realize this. They appear and disappear within us, within consciousness, but we are not in them. The body and mind come into existence only when we think of them and can thus be seen to be discontinuous.
When we objectify this being knowledge, when we try to frame it in the body and mind, consciousness itself seems to be discontinuous. For the psychologist this is so. But when closely observed we can see clearly and beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is an error. It represents a lack of deep inquiry.
In the waking state or when dreaming we are involved with the object. In deep sleep we are not. But these three states are founded in pure consciousness, the continuum. This continuum is in the interval between two thoughts, two perceptions, or in deep sleep. Generally we emphasize the absence of form. We put the accent on the objective side of the experience, which makes it appear negative. If we did not emphasize the absence of objects we would remember its positive side, the presence of pure consciousness, wholeness.
An
y question we might ask ourselves about our true nature springs from the feeling of being, otherwise we could not even imagine the question. It appears spontaneously from the answer itself. Once the seeker loses himself in silence, abandons himself to this fore-feeling of truth, he will discover himself to be this truth. The seeker is what is sought, and what is found. This discovery is not bound by the limits of space and time. It is an immediate insight. In this understanding the adorer loses all dynamism, all volition, and simultaneously his very existence as adorer. He sees himself to be adoration. Once the adorer and adored have disappeared, there is oneness. Then we can speak of true intimacy with ourselves, we know our own truth and essence, our true axis. It is not a case of reducing consciousness to knowledge of a thing but on the contrary instantaneous, direct insight brings consciousness without object. The word transcendence implies its complement, immanence. These are concepts. Living knowledge is not a concept.
What does relationship mean if there is no subject/object, nothing to relate to in relationship?
To you, your surroundings are nothing but an image, an idea or an object. You yourself are an idea, an image or object with which you have identified. Thus your relationship with your surroundings is no more than a relationship between two objects, two ideas, two states. All action on this level is really reaction, recognized as such because it is judged as likeable or dislikeable.
But sometimes you find yourself in the non-state, which is neither of the body nor of the mind. It cannot be located mentally or physically for it is not a thought nor a feeling. When you are free from definition, identification and location there is no separation from your surroundings. In the absence of an I-center all appears in your limitless being. In this non-state there are no surroundings because there is no center of reference to project me and you, peripheries, inner and outer, name and form. For example when you look at a tree or flower, it appears through your senses and you appropriate it by naming it as such and such a species. In the first instance there is perception through the body, in the second instance there is a concept in the mind. But as a percept and concept cannot happen together, when both dissolve, there is only the essence of the tree which you have in common with it. This is love. A scientist therefore stops in the percept or concept but a true poet lets himself be taken beyond these to the tree Itself.
The name and form spring from this eternal background. It is only within this global background that real relationship can exist. From the narrow, fractional standpoint of individuality how can there be true relation? Relation appears in consciousness. From the standpoint of consciousness there is only relation with all things. Otherwise there is isolation and separation.
The spiritual search apparently takes place on different levels but in the end they have a common source, the deep desire to know, to be the knowing. Any talk of a spiritual nature must take this into account and not emphasize the relative differences. The dialogue must point to the ultimate motive at any given moment and it is this motive in the question that is addressed and not the contradiction in the question’s formulation.
What can we look for in our first meeting with a teacher that proves to us that our approach is the right one?
The instant truth makes itself felt on the first real contact with a teaching, your whole life takes on another direction. You become aware that you have an entirely new outlook, you feel more independent, your habits, emotions, feelings and decisions become clearer. You feel that your thinking and doing is reorchestrated and freed from all dispersion. This change occurs without the slightest will to do so on the part of the person. This forefeeling of truth is decisive in eliminating what is false. We see clearly how we take ourselves for something that we are not, and how all our actions and thoughts, our ideas of success and failure, real and unreal, come out of this false idea of being. From the new, impersonal point of view only the impersonal real exists. The personality appears as a superimposition on the real. It is a name, a form, limited by time and space, produced by the circumstances.
Truth, that which needs no agent to be known, is inconceivable. It cannot be thought, it can only be lived. The longing to be autonomous, to be conscious without an agent, has its roots in consciousness itself. It is a call from deep within you, from your nearest. It cannot be made an object of desire. Once you understand this, the energy which sustained the unreal will be freed and will return to its source of origin, the ultimate Self, Truth.
Life is nothing but pain and suffering. The world is constantly in mourning. What have you to say to this?
Pain and suffering are felt by an individual. This individual calls the absence of pleasure suffering. But these complementarities are states perceived in consciousness. It is obvious, therefore, that the perceiver is distinct from what is perceived. The person, the individual, the ego, is but an object of perception. It is only by habit and error that we identify ourselves with our perceptions and this is itself the cause of all our suffering.
The person only exists within the pain and pleasure structure. The ego maintains itself by forever seeking the one and running away from the other; it lives in constant choosing, in continual intention. The first insight shows us that all intention, all will is to escape from the suffering incurred by the illusory ego. Choosing, attaining and ambition are a needless projection of energy. The object itself contains neither suffering nor pleasure, but is entirely dependent on the person behind it. Our inability to see all the elements of a situation as simply facts, in other words, to accept the situation, is due to the choices made by the illusory personality. We suffer but suffering and pain are strong pointers, inviting us to inquire just who is suffering.
With the deep desire to ask this question the accent shifts from the perceived to the ultimate perceiver whose nature is joy beyond pleasure or its absence. In this way we could say that suffering leads to joy.
What part is played by thought in the search for truth?
When taken to be a separate entity, thought is used by most people as a tool of aggression and defense. Thought is composed of the past, memory, but is quite capable of realizing its own limitations, and ultimately gives way to its source, stillness, being. It arises from silence and loses itself in silence. Thus its function is to point towards that from which it arises, the ultimate which is unthinkable.
Thoughts are always commandeered by the ego so as to enforce its existence, but isn’t the idea of the ego embedded deeper within us than thought?
The ego is nothing but a thought amongst many others. It is a product of memory, of the past. Believing itself to be a separate entity, it protects itself by building a screen and reacts against anything likely to menace this supposed existence, supposed continuity. This belief is the cause of agitation, worry and dispersed activity.
But how can we free ourselves from this phantom and its screen?
The ego struggling to survive either clings onto its accumulated memories, or projects desires into the future, thus using up a considerable amount of energy. Accumulation, choosing, elaborating, all take place on a horizontal plane, in time and duration. The energy constantly turns back upon itself, creating a vicious circle. Being uninvolved with this movement, this dispersal, this sterile swinging between past and future, puts to rest the energies that sustain these habit-patterns, and we finally awake to liberating awareness. Then the energies converge vertically in the eternal now. Only awareness which has nothing to do with mental activity, which is free from all reference to the past, free from bodily and psychological habits, free from selection and repetition can open the door to spontaneous understanding. Instantaneous understanding consumes error and the energy which previously constituted the error shifts away from it and integrates with truth that is being.
Be knowingly silent as often as you can and you will no longer be a prey to the desire to be this or that. You will discover in the everyday events of life the deep meaning behind the fulfilment of the whole, for the ego is totally absent.
> Your constant living in strategy, your involved expectations, derive from the anxiety/desire pattern and prevent you from finding what you are searching for, that which in reality has never been lost. Agitated swinging from past to future prevents you from living in fulfilment now. In your natural state, there is no need for reminders because nothing is forgotten.
Thoughts and feelings ebb and flow like the tide, you identify with them and say: “My thoughts, my feelings.” The body is a mass of dense sensation more or less localized. The mind is equally a collection of thought-patterns and emotions; but your body and mind are but manifestations of the Self, you exist because you are an expression of pure consciousness. Your nature is to be alert and aware of what appears in you, but you must be knowingly aware, know yourself to be aware. You are the ultimate knower of all things; direct perception awakens you to this living, this being.
You cannot know your true nature through logical analysis. Letting meditation flower in everyday life brings about its fulfilment.
When we live in the “now” are we always creative?
All potentialities attain fulfilment according to their inner capacity, but we are not these potentialities. Things follow their natural course without any intervention on the part of the person. You are creative when you seek nothing, when you do nothing. Things fulfill themselves within you without your needing to take part intentionally. Give all your heart and intelligence to whatever should present itself from one moment to the next, let every moment die and welcome the next.
I am sure that things fulfill themselves in oneself without any effort when one is already open, but is not a certain amount of concentration needed before one reaches this openness? Otherwise when you say “there is nothing to do” it seems to lead to a passive giving up.