by Eric Baret
If you don’t have a problem with yourself, you will not have any with society. Society is clear, perfect, except if you live in expectation, in intention. There lies conflict.
As long as you want the environment to be different, you will be dissatisfied. If my husband could become exactly who I want him to be, the next day something else would be missing. What I am asking from my husband, from my camel, is myself. Something that no camel can give to me. The moment I do not expect anything from anyone—including from myself—I realize that listening is my security, my bliss, my satisfaction. I do not need to be listened to, loved, or hated anymore; I understand, I respect the way the world sees me—it has its reasons.
The environment does not create any psychological hurt. If it triggers the slightest difficulty in me, this means that I carry a form of judgment: I see it and I come back to myself. Instead of living with reality, I think that the environment should be different. The environment is what it is. If you don’t agree with reality, you have a problem―not with it, but with yourself.
Look clearly within. Realize that your husband, your boss, your dog, can't help but feel what they feel, act as they act. Through this respect, this love of reality, you become available again.
Do you believe that parents can accept reality when they have a son who smokes too much hashish and who ruins his health one way or another? Are these parents too violent when they attempt to intervene and change the situation?
Depending on your past, your parents, the era you were born in, the circles you have been part of, you have developed the absolute belief that hashish is either horrific or harmless. You cannot help but act on this prejudice. You have no choice in the matter, you must accept it.
Here we do not suggest pushing one belief or the other, but noticing that your projection on hashish, or anything else for that matter, depends on your cultural, intellectual, or other conditioning. You have read newspapers, experimented, met some people, studied; you have adopted certain points of view, according to which you act.
To accept means to listen. To listen means to know nothing. If you reach the listening we are talking about here, in an instant you free yourself from everything you know about hashish and about your son. In this absence of judgment, what is left? Non-separation. This emotion, you share with the child. There, you are going to find the appropriate expression. What you are going to tell your son does not count; what counts is the way you will speak, the timing of what you will say. In your listening, you will feel the appropriate day, the moment, the way to talk to your son. You will not seek to convince him to do what you think he should, but to touch in him a space of resonance in which he will be able to hear what you say so that what he hears is going to touch him, to have an effect. Then, depending on his maturity, depending on whether he is intelligent or stupid, depending on his whole life, he might resonate with what you will have transmitted. Because you have transmitted a listening, an invitation to look into the situation.
But if you want to transmit information, you will remain in a very limited domain. You will tell him that you have read five books which prove that hashish is bad for you. If he is not stupid, he will bring you ten more showing that it is not. No deepening is possible that way.
The only thing to do with a child is to invite him to listen to the situation. How does he feel when he takes hashish? Psychologically? Physically? How does he perceive his environment?... Bring him to see clearly what this implies. The less knowledge you transmit, the more he will be able to listen, to deepen, and to draw his own conclusions. If you tell him, “I forbid you to take any,” he will take it elsewhere. You need to allow him to understand, to listen, to look at how he feels in this or that circumstance. This requires from you the humility to not know.
Listen to him, listen to his distress, to his joy.
To put an end to this or that is pointless. The child will stop smoking hashish and start drinking; he will stop drinking but will start seeing prostitutes, etc. The problem is not there. The problem is to bring the person, within their capacity, to a place of clear vision. That way, you avoid the usual conflict between generations when parents pretend to know, for then the child can then reply: “Is your life such a success, are you so completely happy, to claim to be able to teach me?” You will quickly run out of arguments.
So, rather than relay second-hand information, it is better to explore the subject with him. Sharing your fears with vulnerability requires a lot of listening, a lot of humility. But they are your fears, not necessarily his; the child can hear your fears. If you tell him, “You need to be afraid,” he will laugh at you, because rolling a joint doesn't scare him. If you say, “I am afraid when I see you smoke,” it's already more sincere; he can hear that. If you state, “If you do that you will run into problems,” he has already done it and nothing happened to him; this discourse is useless.
So, you speak about your fears, not his. You speak about what is difficult for you, not about what is difficult for him—for that, you cannot know. Through your honesty, he will find his own, and maybe he will share certain things that push him to smoke or behave in a way that concerns you.
All this comes from listening, from not knowing.
All religions transmit knowledge. You can see the results! Every war comes from the pretense of knowing what is right. In a space of humility, no conflict is possible. That is true on the geopolitical level as much as on the individual one.
Is philosophy also knowledge?
There is no need for philosophy. Simply listen. Soon you will discover that when you think you know something, your breathing becomes difficult.
Life is designed to question your knowledge, to make your breathing harder and harder, until you choke. Then grace arrives, you give up your knowledge, letting go happens and you breathe more freely. You only breathe well when you don't know anything anymore, when you die to the situation.
Knowledge gives a feeling of limited breathing. The more mature you become, the less satisfied you are with objective knowledge. You realize that all knowledge is imaginary.
Your advice is to not think during the practice of an art. However, there is technique. If you don't master it, you only doodle.
Of course. To express a feeling, to sing, to dance, to make a circle on a white page, to throw a punch, to shoot an arrow, a whole life is needed.
All arts demand complete dedication, but it is a dedication to joy. You will work incredibly hard, and better and better. Then, with age, you will weaken, your stroke or your step will become a little shaky, your punch less effective, you will regress. But since you are in the feeling, since you haven't put technique first, even when you are very old, when your painting or your martial art has left its technical prowess behind, the emotion that you transmit will remain intense.
If there is only technique without maturity, a form of degradation arrives with age. You see that with dancers. Those who express themselves through feeling still dance after fifty. Those whose expression was dependent on technique lose the taste for it as soon as they reach forty.
This is true for all arts. Those who cling to technique are psychologically weakened by aging, but for those who have evolved through the heart, something else takes charge of technique in this natural decline. Another body is there, an invisible one.
The body is not the body. You need a form of maturity to realize that.
What happens when this technique becomes difficult, when the feeling is there but mastering the technique brings suffering?
When you practice a martial art, you can hurt, but it is for joy. The momentary incapacity of a poet to find a rhyme brings suffering, but there is joy. For a writer who lacks inspiration or for an artist about to go on stage, it is the same. That anxiety is not psychological. It is a full part of life... unless something has not been integrated.
Before artistic expression or before meeting with your lover, a kind of fever comes up. It isn't an anticipation, but a sort of echo. Before th
e meeting, the meeting is already here. Before getting up on stage, you are already there. From the outside it looks like stage fright, but it doesn’t paralyze you. This fire is what makes artistic expression possible.
When the actor or the artist remains in anxiety or difficulty, it means that he has left what is essential. That happens, even with the greatest painters. Visit the workshop of most painters and you will find unfinished paintings. Something wasn't present any more, and, out of respect, they didn't want to finish it using technique alone. You will see that in music as well.
Conversely, when he cannot fight anymore, an old martial art master still lives his art, even if that cannot be seen from the outside.
No matter the medium, you have to learn the technique. Only in the decadent Western world can one imagine that a poet or writer could write without learning poetry or mastering the language, that a painter could achieve a masterpiece without knowing the technique of painting. This doesn't prevent extremely gifted people from doing without; but if they had had more technique they would have gone even further in their expression.
Jean Klein used to say that working was giving thanks. For him, practicing technique was a sign of respect towards life. In that respect, no laziness is possible. Passion, intensity and fervor express themselves. Amateurism has no place. Technique must be learned through the heart, from the love of art. Then it becomes easy, and even difficulties, obstacles, are no problem.
Can you shed some light on the way to manage the transition so as to live the duality between yin and yang? How to control, for example, the transition of the woman who can be a lioness when she lives in her feminine side, and in her masculine side becomes a golden retriever? What are the controls of this duality? What is the role of the three middle ways?
You seem to know these difficult subjects well. There are very good books which are even more complicated. Here, unfortunately, we do not have an answer on that level. Things are a lot simpler: feeling will bring you the answer to all these questions—which have their value and are not unjustified—in a direct way.
Hinduism or Islam also have their subtleties. All these things are true, but beyond this conceptualization there is feeling. You will spend a fortune on books, on workshops and on great theories which, despite their depth, all have their limitations.
What's important is not to know something, but to know yourself. When I want to study Taoism, Hinduism, Christianity, whatever it is, I move further away from myself. There is nothing to study. All these formulations were originally designed to bring us back to ourselves; unfortunately, it hasn't worked. Sometimes they bring a few sparks, but even that remains a form of distancing. Some people know a lot about Vedanta but nothing about their fears: this isn't of much use. People who know everything about Taoism and cannot put up with criticism do not know anything. I remember a moment of grace with Terence Gray—Wei Wu Wei—when, moved by the heavens, he repeated three times with an intensity that could only come from inspiration: “You know, Taoism does not exist. There is only the Tao!”
So, come back to this felt sense, in humility, in simplicity and realize that this is what is highest. No treatise can take you that far. Treatises must become silent to allow feeling to live within you. The only effect of a treatise is to bring about a saturation, a sort of mental calm.
Stay quiet. There is nothing to understand. In this appeasement, you will start to let live what is important.
Beautiful deep theories are only here to calm our fears. One day, you will stop wasting your time and money with books, teachings or workshops. What will matter to you will be you. It is free; you always have it around; you do not need to go anywhere to meditate, to be quiet. It is your gift of every moment. Come back to this constant gift. And, as if by magic, you will understand why some traditions have expressed the relentless intensity, the roaring of this gift as five, three or two elements.
All is true. All is a way of expression. But it is an expression that takes us away from the felt sense.
You need to be beyond the treatise to understand the treatise. That is why reading treatises is a form of avoidance.
Come back to your own experience of being, which is always available. The most profound thing is you. When finally, one day you come to understand them from a non-conceptual place, you will see that treatises only speak about you. More or less awkwardly, they speak about your beauty. You will read them like you read a poem, like you stroke a knee, like you look at the moon: without a reason. Then treatises will reveal themselves. But as long as you seek to understand them, you will become very agitated and not gain much.
That is exactly what I am feeling. I think that there is an early phase where you look for knowledge and techniques to find your way. Then, when you have found it, you can let go of all the techniques that have been taught to you.
Power is imaginary. True power is not individual, it is in nobody's hands. The only power you have is to be one year older every year. Sometimes, intuition develops, you feel that the table is going to split. If you imagine that you are a great yogi, you say, “I want the table to split,” and it splits. It does not mean that you made it split; it means that intuitively you were aligned with reality.
Nobody ever does anything; there is no author to action. Action comes from the heart, it isn't individual. Powers are like doors, symbols that should not be taken literally.
The real power is to be still. You realize that you don't need anything to be happy, that you have nothing to accomplish, that you haven't failed at anything in your life; your life is perfect. That power is extraordinary; it eclipses all the others. But to want something is vapid, it isn't powerful. Power is to know yourself free from all willpower. That is essential will.
You have been saying for a while, “Listen to your body and to your emotions,” but who is listening? Is it my consciousness? Is it the energy that I am? Who is it? I disagree with you when you say that consciousness is only functional, I think that consciousness is unique and dynamic and that it really exists.
You seem to be able to handle these deep concepts well enough. You must have the answer to that question... I do not. I don't have the question. It is of no use to me: it does not relate with being.
You can understand the word consciousness in many ways. Words are symbols. Here, it is true, we use the word without knowing if we are talking about the consciousness of something, as in Western phenomenology, or the consciousness without object which the East speaks of. It isn't necessarily innocent. Our meetings do not aim at any understanding. I haven't understood anything, nor do I transmit any understanding or teaching. We transmit non-understanding, this absolute conviction that there is nothing to understand. Freedom can only be found there.
I do not need to be intelligent, to understand anything, in order to discover the space of freedom in the heart; that is what we are interested in. I respect people who know what Consciousness or Essence is but here these things are beyond us. Philosophy, with all due respect, is still conceptual. The possibility to accept life in the moment does not need any theory.
What you have expressed is eminently profound. But, here, we do not seek profound understanding. Vedanta or Kashmir Shaivism are equally profound. But what happens in the silence of the heart is beyond any understanding, beyond any knowledge. What we are interested in is this revelation of the moment: I do not need any understanding to find this joy without cause, which is the essence of everything.
I do not disagree with what you are saying. However, even if they do not understand what Consciousness or Essence is, people who do not have your intelligence must also be able to become available. In this simplicity, all expressions are right.
How can I access what you want to transmit? What attitude is needed to reach this receptivity?
Just realize that you reject this receptivity in every moment. “I should be different and so should the world. When I am different, when I have less fear, less regret, less bitterness, less expectation, then
I will be free. When I have followed a spiritual path, when I am purified, when I have changed, when I have divorced, when I have remarried, when I am richer, healthier, a Buddhist, a Christian, when I meditate, when I do yoga, when I am less violent, when I stop beating my wife…”
I see the mechanism: I am always saying no to reality, always taking up a spiritual project. Clearly, I realize that. I cannot help it. It is not in my power to stop thinking that Buddhism, Taoism, Gurdjieff’s teachings, solitary meditation, or marriage with five women is the solution for me. But I can see that all my dynamics come from this fear of listening.
In being present, simply present, there is no one present. If there were someone present, it would be the past. All perception is the past. There is perception, just perception, but nothing is being perceived…
The mind cannot understand; it takes me further away.
The personality only exists in the future or in the past. When I say no, I find myself as a personality with a future and a past. When I say yes, there is nobody that says yes. The yes eliminates the person.
The personality cannot say yes. The structure of the personality is the no. Realize that deeply.
That is why you cannot relax, you can only become more tense. You can tense your body on purpose. You cannot deeply relax on purpose. A willful letting go is impossible. It comes by itself when you stop wanting to let go. Then the yes begins to live in you.
I am constantly living with an agenda, with an intention... What about now: does it not count? I exclude now from the reality of life. However, it is now that I must be happy― now, in this moment. If I am not happy now, tomorrow I will live the same misery: you must discover the mechanism.
Realize to what extent you say no every time you imagine yourself happy or unhappy tomorrow. Then there will come moments when you are walking down the street and your lover has left you, your child is sick, your dog broke his leg, you don't know how to pay the rent and... you experience a moment of radiant joy! You do not understand why you are joyous. You have perceived within yourself that saying no was a reaction. You have observed more and more consciously the mechanism that makes you always go toward something. You can't help it, only witness it. This realization, “I am constantly leaving essence, leaving presence,” creates a sort of crack; we cannot say in what, because it is an image. Through that crack, in spite of you, moments of causeless joy will seep in, which will allow you to see for yourself that joy is not connected to the situation, that it doesn't depend on anything. You will further integrate the fact that you don't need anything in life, because it all ends in the present moment. You do not have the time to build a conscious life. You cannot become anything.