by Jean Klein
You said that from a position free from individual will and choice, we are perfectly able to face whatever situation should present itself. How can this be?
Placing ourselves in a position where we must make a choice creates division. When your starting-point is already divided, it cannot possibly give rise to anything other than further division, which in its turn causes conflict and a state of disequilibrium. A position free from choice implies that you are totally available, receptive to the present moment and open to all possibilities. Any action that follows is born of the harmony implicit in the unity of life, which is free from opposition or contradiction. Nothing exists outside this. It transcends the three divisions of time, past, present and future. It transcends the good/evil duality, situations where we would say I like/dislike, or situations which give rise to negative or positive reactions. We are completely void of memory, in absolute insecurity, but within this insecurity we find everlasting security.
You said earlier that we should meditate on the words of the guru and let their content guide us. What does this mean? And is the content of the words as important as the presence of the guru?
We must let ourselves be completely penetrated by the sayings. As the sayings come from truth the verbal structure dissolves and what remains is the essence which we all have in common. The content of the words is the same as the presence of the guru and our own presence. To be completely penetrated we must not emphasize the words or the guru, the apparent “outside” but listen deeply to how they resonate in us, how they stimulate our own wakefulness. We cannot hold onto the sayings but must let them dissolve so that they can act in us.
Is this acting in us of the words visible or invisible?
Both. The real effective power is invisible because it cannot be perceived but its echo in us can be perceived.
When consciousness identifies itself with its object a subject/object relationship is created. Then we can speak of a sufferer and an object of suffering. But the knower of these is not an object.
All perceptions are objects perceived in consciousness. Fear is therefore an object, a perception. Before we name it there is no fear, there is only the direct perception, the sensation. Once we name it we lose touch with the perception and live in the concept, the label, for concepts and perceptions cannot co-exist. The fear is conceptualized by the relative subject which is also an object. This subject has no existence in its own right, it only exists within given circumstances.
Taking oneself to be a person is a habit just like any other. It is the desire to be distinct from one’s surroundings, different from others. The person exists when it is formulated as a thought, so we can see that it is nothing but memory. Repetition gives it a hold, a locality in which to situate itself. It is a state of disequilibrium which can only perpetuate itself, creating more fear and anxiety. This repetition gives rise to ready-made situations: we have no money, we are lonely, we are ill . . . it creates thought-patterns which install themselves in the mind and become cyclic. The person can never rid itself of these.
The ego cut off from its origin is easily filled with fear. We live in fear of suffering; the person is nothing but suffering. This suffering must first be fully felt and it can only be felt when it is accepted. Accepted as a fact, objectively not fatalistically. This scientific acceptance can only take place when there is no psychological relationship with the fear, when it is seen from the impersonal standpoint. When we don’t conceptualize fear it leaves us, for we no longer nourish it. It is condemned to die when seen in clear-sighted presence.
The understanding that the ego has no reality in itself springs directly from our true being. It does not result from any effort but is instantaneous, neither discursive nor mental. It brings about total presence, wholeness, where fear has no place.
You said that all perceptions are perceived in consciousness. Does not this mean that consciousness is perceiving, is functioning?
Perceiving is not a function. That is why the perceived leads directly to perceiving. Consciousness is perceiving. You cannot perceive the perceiving because you are it.
What do you mean exactly by “the perceived leads to the perceiving.”
It is the shortest way to consciousness. The moment the object gives up its representation we live in silent perceiving where there is nothing seen and nobody seeing. It is non-dual.
How does the object give up its representation?
An artist explores the object. He emphasizes the object. The object is passive and his vision is active, extroverted. The truth-seeker emphasizes the seeing, the welcoming. He does not explore the object as such but uses it only to establish himself in the seeing. The object unfolds in attention, brings you back to attention. The artist is temporarily receptive but this is also goal-oriented. He is looking for something and when he finds it he keeps it. The truth-seeker finds himself only in the looking.
How can we free ourselves from this feeling of anxiety that undermines us?
Once profoundly convinced that you are neither the doer nor the thinker, you will no longer be restless. Only an object, the insecure ego, can be restless and anxious. You will become aware of a host of energies never dreamed of before. Your relationship with those around you will be perfectly harmonious for you will no longer be seeking a result nor expecting anything in return. You will naturally act for the best, allowing only the circumstances to suggest to you.
All action is brought about by numerous factors and you are only one of them. Once you have understood the part which is yours to play, you will be fully capable of creating a society held together by relationships which do not bind but, on the contrary, free you.
Then what sort of life should we begin leading to reach this ideal society?
First of all you must realize that nobody lives, there is just life. It is the mistaken belief that there is a personality alive which drives you to look for security in objects, to maintain a feeling of continuity, to try and dominate life. The idea of being the doer of your actions is the one and only pitfall preventing you from really living. Life is free, without fear, it follows its natural course. Attune yourself to life, be one with it.
We must come to know our psychosomatic field, become aware of how we function without trying to change. This means facing the facts of our daily life without trying to escape or justify them. We should absolutely take note how all our thoughts and doings come out of a center and involve choice. We must note too the results of the actions of the divided, choosing mind. In this way we come to know ourselves and as society is not separate from us we come to know society. When we become familiar with the impersonal position new aspects appear in the situation which were concealed by opinions, likes and dislikes. These additions completely change the chess board.
For me sadhana is this coming to know your functioning, facing the facts of life.
I think I understand what you are saying, but I don’t see how I can avoid the conflicts that continuously harass me.
Conflict arises when you think you are this or that. This mistaken identification restricts you. You want to solve a problem by finding an answer in the past, in memory, in what you know. But the past is composed of experiences based on pleasure, pain, hope and all the other illusions of the ego. Free yourself from this pattern of desire and fear. All your problems derive from it. The solution to present problems does not lie in referring to your past, but in seeing the facts of the situation from the widest possible view.
The ego is nothing but memory, a set of definitions which are limiting. You strongly believe in these patterns you have yourself brought about and you mechanically repeat them. It is only habit that maintains them, makes them seem permanent. Let them go now forever.
Does all conflict disappear when one lives without the ego?
A conflict is for somebody. Who is left to remain in conflict? You know that awareness without tension, where you are uninvolved and do not seek a conclusion, is total awareness. It is this awareness
that enables you to see things clearly within yourself. All intention to manipulate the future comes from a partial point of view, that of the ego. Inevitably it breeds conflict. In total awareness the ego and its conflict disappear. When you try to solve a problem by referring to the past, the already known, memory, you may feel appeased for a while but this contentment is based on fabrication and cannot last. You continue to live in the shadow, the threat of conflict. There can be no lasting peace through trying to compromise the ego.
I cannot live in this meditative state, I am constantly distracted by other preoccupations. How can I avoid being distracted from the essential?
The meditative state is a state of being. It means we are choicelessly aware of the life within us, of our surroundings. It is not a divided state where striving is necessary. Culture, education, social and economic factors have conditioned our body and mind, creating fixed mental patterns. All this is at work within us, but we are not identified with it. Our true being is neither implicated in nor influenced by these limits. It is completely free. Once we realize this, an entirely new dimension opens up before us, duality comes to an end, the doer and what is done completely vanish, the object/subject relationship dies leaving no residue.
When does the question “Who am I?” make itself felt most strongly?
Although the question “Who am I?” may be stimulated by a crisis in life, it does not result from a setback, the loss of material possessions or an intellectual disappointment, it springs directly from the inner self. It is beyond time, free from cause, free from striving—for all motivation is inhibitive.
The inquiring state frees all the latent energies within us. The flow of these energies was obstructed on all levels by the rigidity of the ego. Their release is born in us with the presentiment of reality. The question “Who am I?” is entirely free of emotional excitement, which would only hinder the freeing and integration in choiceless awareness of these energies.
The desire to be, to be the living answer, stems directly from the Self, the answer itself. Thus the question “Who am I?” cannot arise in the mind. It has nothing to do with memory. All memory is absorbed by the living inquiry which takes place only in the present moment. Awakening is neither immediate nor gradual, it is instantaneous apperception. The One—which we are—is beyond time. When the mind realizes this, it loses its fear and desire—desire which oscillates between having and becoming.
Living is then that shining lucidity which reveals itself as autonomous, everlasting fulfillment. It is the all-presence in which the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states appear and disappear.
What kind of memory is meant by the saying, “Remember the face you had before you were born”?
When you try to remember the face before you were born you cannot. This frees you from all representation, from memory. In this absence of any representation you glimpse yourself, your is-ness or suchness which is an objectless dimension. In the extinction of being something, of your temporal birth, you find that what you are is never born and never dies.
So in “remembering” the unborn we use memory to come to the extinction of memory.
But it is often said, as Wordsworth phrased it, “Our birth is a forgetting...” and our re-birth is a remembering.
The glimpse of what we are is not a remembering, it is a recognition.
Could you speak of deep sleep? How can we be aware in this state?
Awareness is not in a state. States are in awareness. It is only awareness which makes states possible. Deep sleep is the purest expression of the Self because it is not in duality. What we call deep sleep does not last very long—if we can talk in terms of time—and in the semi-sleep in which we subsequently find ourselves we return to the subject/object relationship.
Because we do not know ourselves except in relation to objects we always strive to find ourselves in relation to objects. We constantly want to choose, control, arrange, classify, qualify. This is a tremendous waste of energy. In clear awareness you know that there is no sleeper, no entity rejoicing or suffering. You are that clear awareness in which objects lose their impact. With the deep understanding that the doer, the willer, is an illusion, you will find yourself in complete stillness following an act or a thought. Your sleep will take on a new peacefulness and then the idea of recuperating whilst sleeping will change.
First of all you will no longer dream, because dreaming is only an extension of the waking state, of the frustrations and defenses that have not been thoroughly lived in waking life. This of course will not prevent you from having certain dreams where you are no longer involved, where you are purely a spectator. Without any intervention on your part you will find yourself sleeping much more deeply and just the right length of time for you to be fully rested.
In the evening when you go to bed prepare yourself, so as to avoid taking your daily worries with you. Observe whatever presents itself without becoming involved in the observation. For example, if you feel tired, really look at it and you will spontaneously find yourself uninvolved in it. Sooner or later the tiredness will cease to be the focal point of your attention and will disappear, burnt up by this awareness. Do the same with all the worries that preoccupy you. You will come to experience a feeling of harmony. Finally let your body sink into deep sleep.
When you wake up in the morning, don’t go immediately into a relation with objects. Stay in that moment before the old patterns return. It is your true being. First of all be deeply aware, let the ego and the world come to life later in your awareness.
When your body feels exhausted it is generally a result of your continual reacting. Once you are free of the ego, you will no longer feel tired, you will be free of all set patterns for they will not be able to take a hold on you. Of their own accord they will find their own conclusion within you. You will become much more supple when confronted by things which used to bother you, you will no longer feel overburdened by them but will recognize them to be purely mental patterns, clichés providing a false sense of security and stopping you from feeling fully alive.
Isn’t it advisable to sleep less? Isn’t this constant want of rest only a compensation?
If you wilfully try to sleep less, you are only imposing a discipline upon yourself. This is ridiculous, and of no interest at all from our standpoint. Sleep normally according to your body’s needs, it knows its needs better than you do.
You mentioned uninvolved dreaming. What distinction do you make between uninvolved dreaming and dreaming?
Dreams, as I said earlier, are a means of eliminating reactions which were not fully lived in the waking state. The dreaming and waking states are identical in that you don’t know yourself in either but know yourself only in objects. While you are dreaming the objects are real for you. Only when in the waking state do you say “I have dreamed” but your relation with the dream apple or waking apple is exactly the same subject/object relation.
In the uninvolved dream, the spontaneous dream that is not composed solely of the day’s residues, the subject-ego is absent and these dreams are the only important dreams, doorways to your global being.
Sometimes in the moment between being asleep and being awake before you have gone back into the old patterns there may be an instantaneous feeling of being in reality, enabling you to understand this reality beyond analysis. To live this reality in the waking state is like an uninvolved dream where there are no objects or subjects.
I do not understand what you said about waking up, not to an object but to what we are intrinsically. Waking up, to me, is just that: the return of the objects.
I was not speaking of waking up to the everyday world of objects but of the awakening in our real nature. This is the only thing we are concerned with here.
It gradually dawns upon us that we are not the person, that we are this awareness; this becomes more and more tangible. When we really wake up what we previously called being awake seems also like a dream.
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sp; Can this non-dual experience be felt in the waking state, in daily life?
Yes. It can come about quite unpredictably. Suddenly we feel a letting-go. We are no longer impelled to action by outside circumstances. Abruptly we become aware and the mind is calm, it returns to stillness. Don’t let these moments go by or take them for simply an absence of objects. You will be often invited by them, for example, before the appearing of a thought or action and after its disappearing. You may even be solicited during action, when you feel the action is in you but you are not in the action. Be alert for these invitations.
Can we describe awareness?
No, we can express it in living but we cannot put it into words. All action which arises spontaneously subsequently takes place in time and space, calling upon your intelligence to carry it through to its accomplishment. Only in the complete absence of yourself is there total presence.
There are quite a few who are very lucid intellectually, who have, as you have said, a clear geometrical representation of truth. They may, after living like this for some time, believe themselves to be enlightened. The majority of teachers I have met are stuck here. What can you say about this? How can a seeker recognize one who is clear intellectually from one who knows his real nature? Can the intellectual guide be helpful? And how can one avoid or come out of this trap?
Yes, they have conceptualized the understanding and it has not become being understanding. The only way out is to be aware of what has happened, to face it in humility and simplicity free from the ego.
The seeker can observe whether the teacher has transposed his intellectual clarity into daily living. But the real test is whether the seeker finds himself becoming more independent or more bound to the so-called teacher.