by Jean Klein
In concentration you anticipate what belongs to the already known. It is the known which veils the surprise. In active acceptance the unexpected comes to you.
When I say, “There’s nothing to do,” I mean there’s nothing to project and no one who does. Live without memory. There is nothing passive in the not-doing. It is supremely alert, a mental and physical readiness, a whole-hearted welcoming of life as it comes to you. This welcoming is not with a view to fatalistic surrender in which there is still the residue of achieving something. It is welcoming for its own sake. Welcoming, openness, is the nature of life.
It seems to me there is thought provoked by memory and spontaneous thought.
Intentional thought makes use of the already known, of memory. Spontaneous thought finds its roots in the ever-pervading source of life.
Sooner or later the thought-patterns elaborated by the ego in its self-defense lose their emotional impact and are reabsorbed into the all-possible of which they are only a part. A mind filled with thoughts concerning the already known is not receptive to the current of life that flows from the all-possible.
Where is memory localized?
Conceptual memory is localized in the brain. It is concretized perception. It is the recognition of name and form. When we live only in concept and recognition we live in abstraction. By abstraction I mean we live separated from the perception, in fraction. The body is not included. The real understanding of things is the total understanding in which the body participates.
There is also organic memory which is maintained in the cells of the body. The body can recall it, but just as conceptual memory abstracts us from the perception of a flower, so we live in abstraction from the perception of our actual body. This organic memory is usually paralyzed by an overactive intellect, an intellect driven by desire and intentional thinking.
What role does meditation play in eliminating the effects of memory?
True meditation means the absence of a meditator and something meditated on, the absence of the subject/object relationship. Only this true meditation, timeless awareness, can free us from the hold exercised by the automatic reactions of thought and memory. This presence frees and regulates—without any desire to do so—the energies engaged in these reactions.
What connection is there between the permanent state and the state of meditation?
The meditative state, our true nature, is not properly speaking a state. It is the very substance, the background to all states. There is no anticipation, no projection, no striving towards a goal or a result. It is silent presence. We can distinguish neither an inside nor an outside, thus we cannot situate it physically or psychologically. Beyond time and space, it is being.
What is meditation? How should we meditate?
First of all, ask yourself why you want to meditate. Don’t think about it, just look at whatever should present itself, without trying to extract an answer. You can never meditate intentionally. You can only learn to give up what is not meditation. All effort to eliminate or become is useless because the attempt is itself part of what you are trying to eliminate.
Total understanding, instantaneous awareness, cuts short all intention and the driving force behind it. The stress placed on the object, the uneasiness, fades away without anyone intervening. A silent emptying pervades us. Here there is meditation, fullness and love; in the Ultimate there is no desire either to love or to be loved.
All objects of meditation or adoration, all representations of Ishtamurti, are mental creations, projected qualities of the divine which keep us in the subject/object relationship by stimulating our affectivity. Such representations are effective only when the admirer is completely dissolved in the admired so that there remains no emotivity or representation.
Senses and mental faculties, continually coming and going, appearing and disappearing, can never contribute to the experience of the Ultimate, the continuum. The latter transcends thought and senses. Any object is a pointer towards ultimate reality but we must carry it back to its generic form, thus eliminating its changeable nature, to reveal its essence, the living reality with which we are one.
To reach the source, the essence of Ishtamurti, form and idea must be entirely abandoned. Many seekers caught up in the subject/object web find themselves confronted by a final object, a blank state. The object has been reduced to its generic form but this undifferentiated potentiality then becomes an object which cannot come home. It always threatens to become again differentiated. There is a certain effort required to maintain this blank state. For those caught in this subtle duality, the blank state becomes a mystery which the mind can never solve. Having reinforced dual conditioning by bringing it to the most subtle levels a seeker can never escape this self-made prison. It is a tragic enigma which only blessed and unexpected circumstances can solve.
Do these blessed circumstances necessarily include the presence of a teacher?
Not necessarily. Life is full of surprises and there are circumstances which may take you out of the mind. For example, in astonishment or admiration you live in the absence of the mind and in your fullness because you are taken outside the subject/object relationship. Such circumstances are rare. A real teacher is also rare but once encountered stimulates the presence which is behind the mind. It is the presence of the teacher which has the power to awaken the non-dual presence of the disciple.
Does the teacher ever act with intention? Does he or she ever use their power to stimulate freedom?
Using any powers belongs to the mind, the ego, and inevitably fixes the disciple in discipleship. This happens very often in the guru world!
It is only in mind relation that there’s bondage. In freedom from the mind you live your autonomy. There can be no intention in the sayings or actions of a true teacher.
So the teacher does not free the conflict, he brings the disciple to free himself?
The teacher is established in the non-dual and, through his or her presence and by his sayings, shows the disciple that he is the knower of this enigma. When the disciple is convinced that he is the knower of the blank state, he is open to the new dimension of non-dual presence. In this openness the fixed energy that maintained the blank state dissolves. The words of the teacher come directly from the freedom the disciple most deeply longs for and they awaken this freedom in the disciple. The guru does not free the disciple but brings him to the threshold where freedom abides. The disciple is taken by his own autonomy. Then it seems to him that nothing was attained but that he has always been free. He sees that the blank state belonged to the mind and he is now forever on the other shore.
When you say there is nothing to do or to learn, there is only undoing, unlearning, is it not a game of semantics? It seems that unlearning is a form of learning and a much more difficult learning than acquiring knowledge.
Our natural state needs no learning. There are paths where there is unlearning of wrong learning but this is a progressive way which in the end is still a new learning. Be free from learning and unlearning, doing and not-doing. No volition is necessary to see you are conditioned. In seeing all that you are not in one moment, no other state is projected because it is not possible to conceive of an unconditioned state. So in seeing what is false there is a spontaneous giving up and all that remains is the unconditioned, inconceivable non-state, that you are.
That is why the direct way is so simple, you abide in the seeing and the rest takes care of itself just as eighty percent of our functioning takes charge of itself.
How does discrimination work?
Seeing facts as they are is discrimination but in order to see facts the discriminator must be absent. Discernment thus only takes place when there is no controller, no person to perform it.
What habits reinforce the ego?
Habits such as being attached to things, looking back to the past, recalling past experiences and their emotional content, wishful thinking and daydreaming in search of security for the continuity of
the person, all do so. The person is a phenomenon of time but being is eternal.
Your true nature transcends the mind and body. This is why the question “Who am I” can never be answered. It has no hold on you: all terms of reference slide away and you awake to all-answering silence. Searching for yourself in any way is a complete waste of time. This must become a perfectly obvious fact to you. Don’t endlessly question this self-evidence. Living is to be found in the timeless “now.” So don’t accumulate more things, learn new ways to meditate or relax or purify. All this accumulation of states and sensations and techniques is nothing but vanity. It still belongs to the person who looks for security and confirmation. Conflict and problems all derive from the mind as it tries to justify its existence. When you see this suddenly, in the utter conviction of total awareness you become conscious of what you have never ceased to be: the unfathomable bliss of the Self.
In the non-dual state which is not truly speaking a state, there is neither a subject perceiving nor an object perceived; creativity unfolds spontaneously, free from the split mind. States are temporary; they come and go in a background which acts as a support to all the different states that arise. This continuum is ultimate security and peace. If we are lacking in lucidity we are easily led to believe that the peace of this non-state results from action. Therefore we attribute it to something outside ourselves. Spontaneous, clear-sighted vision dissolves all the patterns that produce states and shows us that the non-state is without cause, it exists in itself by itself. Without the object the seeker disappears. All that remains is what was there at the outset. This occurrence can be called enlightenment.
These words can only find their full development and reintegration in non-directed listening. This listening is openness, living meditation. Everything that is heard in this listening points directly towards ultimate reality. This cannot be conceived of in words or thoughts. We feel it in moments during our lives, for example, when in a thought-free state of wonder or astonishment.
The true aim of our existence is to be, without conditioning. This is the only way of life promising joy, freedom and peace. There are many ways which lead towards knowing our condition, depending on a person’s temperament. However, it is essential that we should not, for one instant, lose sight of the fact that the Self, the continuum, Life, is not a mental or psychic experience and cannot be found on the level of experience or mental exercise. Only a clear mind which knows its limits can free the way for what is beyond it. If the mind remains confused and keeps striving to attain something, however subtle, however open-minded, it will inevitably finish up by turning round and round in circles within the same old structures. Such a so-called progressive approach is totally ineffectual. Deep reflection on ultimate reality is not a question of dialectics but a letting-go of the fractional intellectual hold to make room for an awakening of global consciousness. An experience of this order is beyond all description. It is devoid of all conceptual content. It corresponds to what we are outside of time, and by transcending perception reveals itself as eternity.
Man’s essence escapes the qualifications given it by his environment. Once he ceases to identify with the definition given by these surroundings, he discovers himself to be unique and free. Total, living freedom is exempt from all concepts such as the image of the ego. Projecting a “me-image,” just like any other object, is conditioned by purely accidental factors but is always dependent on the unchanging ultimate subject: pure consciousness. It is only the imaginary me which feels deprived of liberty. In its absence such a deprivation cannot take root.
Questions concerning the “Who am I?” always derive from a state of disequilibrium. For whom is the world a problem? For whom do pleasure, pain, like and dislike exist? For the me who is but a creation of society, a fictitious entity. When the ego sees this fact quite clearly all its problems vanish. These questions find their answer in enlightenment, the “I am” beyond words, thought and expression. The quest takes you beyond the known, to the back ground of the known. The question here becomes the answer and it is reintegrated into silent awareness.
The ego likes to direct things and circumstances according to its wishes, but its existence is only a shadow dependent on the body-mind that projects it. In the guru’s presence, the ego is not rejected, but the clear-sightedness the teacher conveys to us gradually rids us of the characteristics that the ego falsely appropriated. Sooner or later, this clarified ego is reabsorbed into its essence and homeground which is lucid presence. It only appears when called for and never again steals the light for itself.
Enlightenment is instantaneous but the mind becomes gradually clearer. The clarity of the mind brings about a relaxation from old patterns, a freeing of energy which in turn stimulates clearsightedness. It leads us towards living free from all striving to attain something, free from the tension brought about by waiting for something to happen, expectation.
While we listen to the teacher as he sets forth the spiritual perspective, everything seems to be quite clear, free from problems, but afterwards, we seem to leave our true center. Why is this?
As we listen to the teacher talking of the truth, our listening is totally receptive, we are open to what is said. It takes body and life within us. Later, the old patterns of the ego, interrupted as we listened to the guru, take a hold again in everyday life. You must see them to be objects and thus you will spontaneously find yourself outside their field of action. If you do not comply with your old patterns they will be isolated and this will re-install you in your true nature such as you experienced it in the sage’s presence. This position, this stepping-stone, will fall away as the experience becomes more and more frequent.
Can we come closer to understanding reality, “things in themselves”, through word and thought?
Language and words cannot possibly express what is inconceivable. Words are at the mercy of an egocentric empiricism. They find their foundation in the consciousness from which they arise and to which they return. The ego has its origins in a mental image: “I am the body.”
Spontaneous thought escapes all contradiction, leaves no samskaras, no residue. Over and above the opposing poles of beautiful/ugly, good/bad there is a uniting consciousness which cannot be grasped, nor apprehended by the mind, for it is beyond all concepts.
We do not know things, we only know them in appearance. To know a thing itself, we must go far beyond its appearance, which is nothing but name and form. We can only see the reality of a thing when we are that reality: knowledge without object.
I know moments where I am completely satisfied, there is nothing lacking, and I am free from any striving or expectation. Apart from these rare moments I tend to feel rather gloomy.
The ego lives in complementarity and is sometimes gloomy so it seeks pleasure to avoid its opposite “gloominess.” Avoiding gloom is quite impossible, for happiness and gloom are the heads and tails of the same coin. The moments of satisfaction you experience are not in a subject/object relationship where you can say “I am free, I am happy.” These moments without thought, dream or representation are our true nature, fullness, which cannot be projected. It is an experience encountered where there is neither somebody experiencing nor a thing experienced. Only this reality is spiritual. All other states, “highs,” whether brought about by techniques, experiences or drugs, even the so often exalted samadhi, are phenomena—and carry with them traces of objectivity. In other words, as what you are is not a state, it is a waste of time and energy chasing more and more experiences in the hope of coming closer to the non-experience.
How can the giving up of experiences happen so that we come to global understanding?
You see that in an experience there is still an experiencer who is stuck in the pattern of going in and out of states. Global understanding is the sudden awareness that the perceiver of these states is unaffected by them, that they appear in the perceiver. This insight occurs in a flash when all the fragments preventing us from understand
ing, yet which point towards it, unfold in the uninvolved witness.
Awareness is the essential element allowing non-understanding to become understanding. It does not result from accumulation as when we learn something, a language or an instrument, for example. It is instantaneous like a flash of lightning where the various elements preceding it are suddenly seen simultaneously and are reorchestrated, just as the particles drawn by a magnet fall into a pattern when they become attached to it. This sudden vision can eliminate all previous problems without leaving the slightest shadow of non-understanding. This resorption into total understanding releases all the energies usually molded into set patterns and opens the way towards ultimate truth, oneness.
Seeing ourselves as an autonomous entity, an individual, is the basic error of our conditioning. This fractional viewpoint makes understanding an impossibility. It is a fictitious concept, totally lacking in substance and independence, just like the images that appear in dreams. Everything we do on the level of the concept “me” is intentional and implicated. Any action influenced by the concept of the individual I, traps us in a vicious circle. In these circumstances we are the doer, the thinker, and are chained in a psychological relationship to the act or thought.
Pure spontaneous action, free from choosing, the action of infinite consciousness, is quite indifferent to conventional morality or immorality, positive or negative. Concepts elaborated from a moralistic point of view only limit the action which in itself is undivided plenitude. When the action occurs spontaneously, it is entirely free of the opposing force that any form of choice implies. Where there is choice there is someone choosing, a viewpoint, doer, thinker. But in truly creative moments, everything takes place without an I interfering. Things occur of their own accord, such action is total action.