by Jean Klein
In India there is a group of guides called upagurus who prepare the disciple for the ultimate guru.
You have said, “Live as if you were consciousness, as if you were enlightened. “Is there not a great danger in this advice?
When I said this it belonged to that moment. It was used to effect understanding into transposition in living, or to dissolve the “I am not free” idea. I don’t exactly remember because it was a pedagogical saying that appeared at the moment. Of course ultimately both freedom and non-freedom are concepts. But to say “act as if you are free” is very striking. It stimulates spontaneous acting, function without a doer.
Stillness does not mean a peaceful mind, for a peaceful mind is something and stillness is no-thing. The mind can be temporarily calm but this is not stillness. Once we have awakened to the stillness beyond the mind, the latter will cease to be agitated, it will be reduced to its function, that is to movement. Stillness is not in the slightest way affected by this movement. It is inaccurate to say that in stillness there is no longer mind-function. It is the nature of the mind to move although there may be spontaneous moments of non-movement when the mind is suspended in wonder, astonishment or admiration or any unexpected appearance that finds no reference to previous experience, or the moment after a desired object is obtained. Function and non-function belong to the mind but they appear and disappear in stillness which is not a function.
Agitation is produced by desire, the desire of the individual me to bring an end to its isolation, its separation from its origin. In its distress it tries every imaginable means to create pleasure and security. It ultimately longs for joy. Though moments of pleasure and satisfaction are reflections of ultimate fulfillment they remain conditioned by time and space. They are temporary and there is always the fear that loneliness and emptiness will return.
Once the ego sees that it only seeks what it already knows, that its desires are conditioned and that its true desire is for permanent security and tranquility, it loses its dynamism to find itself in phenomenal things. Then what is behind the desire, the ego, the mind, is revealed. We are left in wonder and all dispersed activity dissolves in this wonderment.
How can I get rid of troublesome ideas?
Such ideas, accumulations from the past, appear without being asked. If we intervene or control them, this only prolongs them. The person wishing to control is of the same nature as the object he wants to control. If we do not intervene the emphasis leaves them and they are reabsorbed into our silent observation.
Is the upward path (which strives step by step towards realization) in any way compatible with the approach you are talking about?
Listening does not depend on the level, whatever that level might be. Trying to exalt one level, or pass from one to another, is utterly useless.
How can we come to realize that we only seek what we already know?
When we seek we have a goal, we are seeking a result. This goal is based on the already known. It thus prevents us from being completely open to the unknown, to the completely new.
All thought is memory and is always expressed in terms of the senses. Thought is dependent upon the time and space framework, it appears and disappears and can thus be seen to be discontinuous. But this framework in turn depends entirely on the timeless, spaceless continuum, our true nature, which is eternal, ever there beyond birth and death.
The Ideals of Beauty, Truth and the Good spring directly from our home-ground. The representation arises from silence itself not from any known representation. Like creative thinking these archetypes do not begin with the phenomenal known but with being knowing. They do not arise from the mind but from the conviction of being.
So if we live with these Ideals without representing them or reducing them to common, fashionable notions of good, truth and beauty, they can lead us towards absolute freedom?
These original feelings do not need to be codified because they belong to our fundamental structure of Thinking, Feeling and Willing. In living with them they are spontaneously expressed in daily life. They have nothing to do with the becoming process, becoming beautiful or good but express themselves from moment to moment.
Hindu tradition tells us that all our suffering originates in avidya. What is avidya?
Avidya is the identification with what we are not, our physical and mental functions. Through clear-sighted vision we realize that these functions are inevitably dependent on their knower: vidya. When the accent is displaced from the object with which we have identified, the ego—the state, thought or function—we find ourselves spontaneously in silent listening, in non-function, in being the knowing. What we deeply are becomes living presence. What was previously seen as ignorance is now experienced as an expression of knowing. Everything is an expression of silence. There is no more complementary thinking. Being the knowledge wipes out the duality of knowledge and ignorance.
Could you talk to us about the suffering that results from fragmentation?
Events can be interpreted on many different levels, can be elaborated in many different ways, but this manipulation can never be a way out of suffering. It is the object, the body-mind which suffers, but what we are is the knower of the suffering. The moment we recognize ourselves as the knower and not “the suffering one” all psychological pain disappears. Physical pain, when seen objectively, is dramatically reduced.
Believing oneself to be somebody, an independent person, objectifying, projecting, are all objects amongst others, they are pure imagination. Projection is but a fraction of the whole. Taking decisions and thinking from this divided, fractional point of view, can only give rise to a fragmented result. A fraction is a state of imbalance and imbalance can neither achieve nor create a state of equilibrium. We cannot possibly understand the greater by the lesser. Fractions cause insecurity, suffering and a lack of plenitude. However, this feeling of lack originates in the forefeeling of plenitude and is intuitively conscious of it. Desire or lack lead back to their source. If there were no reminder, nor intuition of its origin, there could be no desire. This is where we need a master to point out to us that all objects point the way back to our true being.
Could you talk about listening and its origin?
To discover your innermost being you must start from where you are at this very moment, wherever that is. You cannot begin anywhere else. Whatever appears before you—your body, sensations, feelings , thoughts, etc.—must be accepted, listened to as a whole. This does not mean you should analyze, interpret, understand or look for an inner meaning. What is important is to discover listening itself, which sooner or later will be revealed to you. At first the accent is on what is listened to, the sensation, feeling or thought. But the more the listening is sustained the more the emphasis is shifted to this listening itself without a listened to. Then you are at the threshold of the source from which the listening derives. That very instant listening will become a living reality.
Real listening can be neither improved nor perfected, for it is perfection itself. It reveals itself when the mind is struck by wonder, when it no longer refers to the slightest object. This fulfillment is later erroneously attributed to an object but one who is aware of the true perspective knows that the cause of this peacefulness is not to be found in an object, but is a pure reflection of silence, of what Is.
Listening arises from wonderment, to which it also points—a state where there is no projection, where nothing appears. It is as if you had suddenly opened the windows of a dark room full of objects, and in streams daylight. Everything becomes clear in an instant.
What difference does it make whether we intellectually understand the teaching or not? I prefer to just sit in your presence.
When you emphasize intellectual understanding you can never understand. Your understanding is dead. You must go further: When the intellect has really understood it knows that it has no more role to play and spontaneously eliminates itself. Then you live in open light.
The presence o
f the teacher is the mirror of your own presence, reminds you of it. When you sit and fix the stillness, make a perception of it, you may become relaxed, but you can never come to real stillness. Localizing yourself in a state or focusing on the presence of the teacher you are not open to direct transmission. Only to know that all that can be perceived has no reality in itself. When this has been clearly seen, it is the perspective which opens the unknown region of what we are. There are marvelous moments such as we spoke of before, moments when the mind is suspended. For someone who is aware of the perspective, the thought-free state is not felt as the absence of something but as his own presence. Here the light behind the mind shines forth. Otherwise these moments are experienced as blanks or absent-mindedness, absence of function. The one who knows presence, joy without object, is free from all expectation, all dynamism to “fill the emptiness” and welcomes the experience of pure being. Expectation, anticipation, destroy openness. Imagine you have lived for many years with a Persian rug and one day you send it away to be cleaned. It may take time before you can really see the floor because you see only the absence of the carpet. So come to the absence of the absence.
It is only through living self-knowledge that our energy and possibilities are harmoniously orchestrated. Otherwise there is dispersion and living in the becoming process, end-gaining and ambition. An ambitious mind can never be a free mind.
All intentions aim at finding pleasure and security and escaping from a projected suffering. Many books have been written and many techniques proposed on how to escape from dis-ease, discomfort, but these proposals take for a fact what is fiction. To come out of the endless round of the pleasure-pain structure we must learn to face the fact, the perception, and not deal with the concept.
Listening implies recognizing that pleasure and pain are both part of the same process experienced on the same level. They have their relative existence in timeless joy. Plenitude is the background to pleasure, pain, sadness and satisfaction. These are all mind stuffs. If we examine them with uninvolved attention the complements converge and dissolve in their source, which is joy without object.
Whatever we do or think, we are awareness, so why try to be or think it? If we were not aware we could not take note of the states we find ourselves in. If awareness were only a mental function like all others it would disappear like all functions. But it never disappears. I cannot prove this to you without argument. Being it is proof. But I can tell you how to discover it. So trust me! It will be second-hand information at first but don’t remain in belief. Make it your own.
This awareness is present in deep sleep and in the interval between two thoughts. The pure consciousness we name “I am” is beyond mind and body. It is not subject to discontinuity. All sensation and facts are entirely dependent upon this pure reality. We can imagine absence of feeling, absence of perception but never absence of consciousness. You will find this difficult to understand as long as you have not experienced eternal presence.
The world consists of shapes and names. It is brought into being by your thoughts and senses. The world is only there because you are there, the eternal present, the unchanging “I am.”
Perceiving is entirely independent of the perceiver and of the perceived object, which are but concepts. Perception is living, the only reality, now. Each perception is a non-dual experiencing of pure awareness. Subsequently we may say: “I thought this or that,” or “I heard a chord in C major” but at the actual time, there was no thought, only the perception appearing in the “I am.” With deep conviction, this fact will take root within us and we will no longer need to make an effort to remember it. It is this true understanding that turns the “I am” into a reality.
Can you say more about how to live the “I am”?
The “I am” shines in its glory when you are free from the two volitions: doing and not doing.
What signs are there to guide us towards self knowing?
Since the sensory organs cannot function without the brain, objects known to our senses are likewise dependent on it. Seen from this angle the world is a projection of the mind. The mind exists within awareness. Its very nature is to express this awareness by means of name and form. Everything that appears to the mind appears in global awareness. It is this insight that shifts the accent from the object towards awareness, often called the ultimate subject “I am.”
How can we cease believing in total disappearance after death?
You will find the answer by inquiring first: What is life? You can become aware of the appearance of the body but you can never become aware of the appearance of life because you are life. So inquire about life and you will discover that the inquiring is life itself. We take so many risks with our body. Think of the sailor or the voluntary warrior. Would he take such risks if he truly believed in death? He knows without knowing it that it is only the body which dies, that his vital self is beyond life and death.
What is this self? Who am I?
Your real nature is stillness, light, expansion without center or periphery. It is unconditioned being, love. But you do not see it for you are a prisoner of your imagination and of second-hand information. You have enclosed yourself in a universe of concepts and beliefs. The ego is only a function, and to identify with it is a lack of true vision. Thoughts, feelings and actions appear in succession before the witness, leaving their imprint in your brain. Recalling them makes you believe in a continuity which is actually non-existent. But memory is a present thought, thoughts of the past occur in the present. In reality there is only presence, non-dual consciousness. We mistakenly take ourselves to be this or that, but there is only the true “I am” beyond time and space.
What is the real nature of the mistake I have made?
Desiring something which is nothing but an illusion, which has no foundation whatsoever; being afraid of truth, which is pure awareness free of thought.
Why would I be afraid of truth?
Because truth is life and you are afraid of living. You take yourself for an object which is born and dies, and you fear dying because you do not know life. It is only an object which is afraid and this object tries by all means to free itself. See that the effort to become free belongs to the belief in an object. The moment you see it turn your head and look behind.
On what level can we find the true answer?
Any question about ultimate reality that seeks an answer on the phenomenal plane is a pure waste of energy. The right question is the answer. The right question does not come from the intellect, books or hearsay. How, why, when, are all questions which stem from the ego. The latter is purely a figment of the imagination, and it constantly seeks an explanation on its own level. There is no answer to be found on this level. A true question is one that arises in the moment itself. It is resplendently new and contains a foretaste of the answer. The reply comes unexpectedly from the living Answer. It is stillness; it cannot be thought. To receive it we must be open to it, listening without referring to past experience. This openness is the key, it is the nature of the question and the answer. Openness is our real nature.
How can I stand back and observe myself and the different situations that appear? In other words, how can I be a spectator and not feel involved?
You are not the doer, the thinker that rejoices and suffers. Take this for a fact and do not try to be a spectator, to be detached. The fact that you can recall your previous acts proves that you were a witness to them. So above all do not try to be a witness—this would only be projection, and would keep you in the frame of ideas and expectations. If you accept this a change will come about within you, probably without your even realizing it at the time it occurs.
The witness is only a crutch to bring you to understand that you are not a doer. Once you are free from doership there will be a change of axis and the energy once directed towards the object will shift to the subject aspect, to the witnessing. In the end all residues of subjectivity dissolve and the witness with them. You discover yourse
lf as that in which the object and subject exist, but you are neither one nor the other. Then there is only living silence.
Are you trying to make us realize that it is identification with the body that binds us to objects, to situations and to the world?
Your true nature is obscured because you believe yourself to be independent, a separate entity. This is what binds you and keeps you living in the pleasure-pain cycle. See that renouncing and aspiring are two faces of the same coin. As long as you believe you are the body-mind you will see forms and shapes around you which are no more than images in juxtaposition with each other. What reality could such a process possibly have? As pure consciousness, you are out of the subject/object cycle and you enjoy the real relationship that only comes in living non-relation.
But discomfort often brings us back to our bodies.
Who knows the body when it is tired or rested?
I do.
Who is this I? Nothing other than the mind. And who knows the mind? The true “I.” The mind is simply an activity which comes and goes. The witness records this lack of continuity: body and mind are only perceptions and concepts. Silent non-directed attention reveals this to you and as a result you are filled with living presence: you live in awareness, which is sacred. This is your true nature.
How can I be sure it is not just another state that my ego has created?
In this non-state there is neither desire nor anxiety.
Problems cannot be solved through choosing and deciding. Opinions arise from the fractional mind. When the I is absent the situation presents itself to you as a collection of facts. When there is no one involved in these facts right action appears spontaneously. Seeing all the facts calls for acceptance. Where there is no longer psychological involvement there are no opposing factors and therefore no choices of some facts, some elements over others. Acceptance does not come from the body-mind, it comes from our wholeness. Once all the elements of the situation are welcomed in our acceptance free from qualifying, the situation itself calls for action, but we do not go to it already armed.