by Eric Baret
We may formulate things. Dogs love to hear loving words. When you are with your dog, you can often tell him how much you love him; it is like stroking him with your hand. You can meet somebody and confess your love for them—but it is a figure of speech. You can admire your hand and express your tenderness for it. You can look at your desk, your car, a rock in your garden, the moon. Proclaiming your love for the moon is very beautiful. You can say it aloud, it is not a problem. But at one point, when you look at the moon, there is such emotion that only a tear in your eye expresses it. You are no longer caught in the need for expression. That is love without demand. You let the moon be free. You just admire her.
In some circumstances, for theatrical joy, you may ask your mistress if she still loves you. You can also ask your dog or your five-year-old child. But it is just for the fun of it. The word is light. Since the word means nothing, you can play with it. There is nothing deep there. Only the emotion is deep.
Telling someone that you love her or that you don't love her is the same thing. It is the emotion that counts. If you have a mistress, sometimes when she has been a bitch you tell her you no longer love her, and on other occasions you tell her you love her like mad; it's the same thing, it is for the joy of the moment. You tell her that you no longer want to see her, or that you want to see her more, it's the same thing. It is a game, nothing else. Life is light.
When you do not pretend that you have a story about yourself, you totally love the person you are with. You don't love your wife or your child more than the wife or the child of the neighbor. Loving your child more becomes unthinkable. You totally love the child who is in your arms.
In the moment, love doesn't require any justification, any reference. It is wholesome love that consumes itself immediately. The next second the world has changed but, in that moment, that love is all there is. There is nothing personal to it. It isn't your doing, it’s the nature of the world to love.
Saying yes is not an action, it is our natural state. Yes comes from availability, no comes from thoughts, from fear. Of course, I'm talking about a psychological no; if you put your hand on the candle, your hand says no, but it is not a psychological state.
Thinking that you do not love that which is not your immediate environment is pretending. The fear of loving is very strong in us. We have learned that love is a form of weakness. But there is no one who loves. The personality cannot love; it wants, it requires and it demands, and those conditions are its love. But that is not love, it's business.
Love is the strongest emotion; all others derive from it.
Love heals. But as long as I deny love and myself, wounds cannot heal.
Children who have suffered long-term abuse from a parent that they naturally love develop an apparent form of hatred towards the rapist. Many cannot go beyond their resentment and their whole life will be colored by this wound. But when maturity settles—twenty years, thirty years, a hundred years later—some of them will discover that they still carry this feeling of love for the one who abused them. If they let this love live again, they may understand that during all those years, their suffering was due to the fact that they didn't let themselves love the one who had abused them rather than to the abuse itself. It is a freeing experience that serious therapists know well. Of course, it can only be touched in very few cases but when it can be reached, it brings an extraordinary transformation.
Love liberates. Every time I believe that I do not love someone, I pretend. Just because he is of a different race, from a different country, with a different attitude, because he is like this, because he shouldn't be like that, I deny my primordial emotion, which is love. That is what makes me suffer.
Love does not prevent action. When somebody attacks you on the street, or attacks your child, feeling this deep love towards the aggressor does not prevent you from acting. It isn't an action against something, but through something. You might dislocate a shoulder, but without any resentment for the person. There are situations where we must fight, but we can fight without judgment. If an animal tries to bite you or your loved ones, sometimes you need to kill it; but you do not carry any hatred for the animal and when you have killed it, you remain present—for the situation does not end with the physical death of the aggressor. In this way, you do not hold any psychological residual effect. It isn't a judgment, it isn't a decision; it is a spontaneous act.
In Meccan Revelations, Ibn Arabi tells that after several circumambulations around the Black Stone, a very strong rain arrived. Hearing the drops of rain flow into a gutter, he said he experienced the extraordinary love of the world. The love water had for the gutter in order to stroke it in such a way, the love and the beauty of the gutter, which was there for the water. What was seen there, in a non-mental vision, was the love of the world.
This can be perceived in water that flows into a gutter as in anything else, except when you pretend to love, because then you are in a story. You cannot love as a person. Love is contemplation. This emotion only lives in the absence of a person. When we pretend to love, we lower the other to the level of our imagination, to the level of our fantasy. It is a form of abuse. We utilize the other, the image we have of the other, to satisfy our vanity, our fantasy of the moment. When the other no longer fits that fantasy, we replace him or her.
Love is without any doer, without any knowledge. There is only emotion.
When you speak about pretense, the words you use could suggest that you condemn pretense, which doesn't make any sense because when this pretense is unveiled, we realize that it was the way chosen by our deep being to find itself. This form of condemnation that I feel when I listen to you is something I have suspected for a long time; a sort of close link between perpetrator and victim that exists in each of us. That is the story I tell myself, but it is also, among other things, what brings me close to you. It is as if there were still something left over from that story of the perpetrator which is the truly fundamental story.
Non-separation is to witness what is false, meaning what creates separateness. But I must see it clearly. To be available is to become aware of entering into a story, to see that it's only a story.
Clear vision does not include any condemnation, it does away with the story of the snake. Since there is only a rope, it is a condemnation without an object. The word condemnation is a word like any other. It is clear vision and when I see that there is only a rope, I condemn the snake; when I realize that I have no reason to suffer, I condemn the suffering; when I discover that I only suffer because of my story, the story is condemned and it is a liberation.
You can certainly find words that will be more precise, more eloquent or more appropriate to express this idea. I did not study and my vocabulary is very limited.
What I was talking about isn't at all a judgment, it is an inquiry. I do not question the formulation but my felt sense of it.
I can only talk about the emotion that imposes itself on me in the moment. I do not know anything else.
I need to become aware that the suffering that I pretend to feel is egotistical, that I only suffer from myself. When I see clearly that my pretending to suffer is a story, that I am dishonest because I no longer listen, that I listen only to my story, then this clear vision condemns my story, it is a liberation. I instantly condemn both my pretending to suffer and my suffering. What remains is a tear of joy, untouched and untouchable by the situation.
I have known what you are talking about for a long time. When I was next to someone who was suffering, I used to have the fantasy to want to lessen his sorrow. Then, in the presence of someone who was sad, depressed, suicidal, I was gifted with a space in which I didn't want anything for him, in which I didn't want him to change, to move even a fraction of an inch, in which I was totally present, should he live or should he die, should he love or should he hate, should he be like this or like that. At that moment, I found myself a lot closer to him than to all the people I had wanted to help, the people on whom I had projected my i
magination of what is good.
If at some point, when with someone who suffers, the thought that the crisis should lighten up arises, then a presence devoid of any comment returns right away. It isn't my job to decide whether someone should live or die, whether they should be sad or happy. There is this presence, this emotion, this love of what is there, and at the same time I cannot do anything for the other. I cannot do anything for anybody. There isn't anybody. Life is what it is.
This urge to change something comes back, and again the resonance shows me the extent to which I am pretending, I am in my story and I know better than God what should be. At that moment, I come back to my natural stupidity, to my total ignorance. I do not know what is essential for the person who weeps, suffers or dies next to me.
I don't know anything. I am present.
What is the urge that leads to teaching?
The urge that would lead to teaching could be called megalomania: believing I know a thing or two. All the teachers who transmit their teachings are only there to spare the psychiatrists—a healthy social justification!
If I am honest, no teaching is possible. What could I teach? My own vacuity? That, you have already. That is what we all share. It is that absence of ownership which allows us to love, that absence of a pretense to be this or that, to know anything whatsoever.
We can transmit techniques. To use a bow and arrow or to dance tango, we can learn those things. If you want to master an art such as yoga, you need to learn it as well. But here we don't go into these things; there is no teaching. We meet each other for the joy of deepening the premonition of our autonomy, of our absence of need. We meet for the joy of deepening together this conviction that when I pretend to need something, I am being dishonest with myself, this conviction that I suffer because of my dishonesty and not because of my so-called need. I become aware of this obvious fact and I come back to integrity, with no one needing to have integrity. This is an exploration that we carry out together, but there is no teaching.
Let's stop focusing on what separates us. Opinions, imagination, knowledge— “I know this, you know that.” All that is nothing but a hodgepodge of fears codified and named spirituality, culture, civilization, morality and so on. It is so thin that it can't really separate us. What unites us, on the other hand, is the heart emotion, which cannot be taught.
What we do here is of interest to very few people. Most people need teachings, a guru and a tradition to follow. Here there is no such thing. There is no guru, no teaching, and nothing is asked of you. We go home without gaining any competence whatsoever. Very few people have the capacity, the maturity or the madness to spend so much time on nothing.
But this nothing, at one point, will stay with you forever. You will forget all the teachings you have learned. Later on, you won't be in a condition to apply all the techniques that you practice. All that has been elaborated through a thought process, all that seemed so important before will be inaccessible to you because your brain, your body will no longer allow it. But this essential emotion will stay. It will be with you on your deathbed when all the other senses will have stopped functioning. It is the heart of everything. All else is a distraction. All that you can learn, know, understand, depends on the functioning of your brain; it is superficial.
Nevertheless, we are under the impression that if we come to listen to you, it is because you have understood or perceived something… More than we have, in any case!
It is a prejudice that we may have in the beginning. Very soon, we become aware that we haven't understood anything and that we don't need to understand anything. That is what needs to be understood, the fact that I do not need any intellectual clarity, I only need to stop pretending to find myself in a thought, in a story. Free from all understanding, from all evaluation, I come back to the felt sense, at the heart of everything.
You have experienced that; therefore, you know more than we do.
Everyone has had that experience, at night when falling asleep or when a thought ends, before another one appears.
What brings one to experiment with more fervor is dissatisfaction. The belief that a situation could make me happy is the limit which prevents dedication to deep inquiry.
We need to awaken to the awareness of this total incapacity to be fulfilled by anything. As long as a smile, a look, a love, a caress, a situation can bring contentment, I am not deserving of deep inquiry, of deep listening. Why not? Because it is not true. Nothing can satisfy the human heart except its own collapse. At one point comes the grace of not being able to be satisfied by an object. This non-satisfaction is the reservoir of energy which allows this constant questioning; in each moment I contemplate my pretense, my arrogance, my suffering. I contemplate all of this with a total letting go of any intention to change.
As long as we carry within ourselves the capacity to be appeased by a car, a house, a woman, a dog, a profession, a future, a past, a body of knowledge, spirituality or some teaching, we don't yet have that fervor which is necessary to blow up what needs to be blown up. The complete madness of dissatisfaction is the energy needed to explode what is superficial in us.
Often, I have hunches that what I'm looking for is not this or that; and then, again, something seduces me, and I tell myself that it’s so wonderful to live it. I then betray my quest. It isn't a moral betrayal, but an energetic betrayal. The energy is no longer available for this constant madness. What we are talking about here depends on the intensity of that madness.
Is that energy available only in a state of permanent dissatisfaction?
In permanent dissatisfaction which isn't dissatisfaction anymore, because there comes a time when the dynamics inherent to unsatisfying situations disappear.
I can be grateful to situations, because life is wonderful and, in every moment, I meet something new. When I lay my hand on it, it becomes like sugar in water; I can no longer own anything. It is a very sensitive moment and a little like being on a razor's edge; I only get to witness.
This can look strange to the environment around me, which wants to create security by inventing me in a certain manner.
At one point, we can no longer belong to a situation. That doesn't prevent us from doing what we need to do. If we have children, we feed the children; if we have friends, we live with the friends; and if we have a bed, we make the bed, but without any urge to try to find ourselves. It may seem a little cold on a certain level, but that is deceptive. It is a discrete madness. Only very intimate friends get to see it. We can no longer belong to anything, and we can no longer comprehend what belonging to could even mean.
How can we be certain of not belonging to anything?
The need to be someone comes from the notion of belonging. There is no certainty here. Certainty is knowledge and here we talk about the absence of knowledge. It's very uncomfortable for oneself and for one's environment. When you tell those around you, “There is nothing I can help you with, absolutely nothing,” for many it's a shock. They can no longer pretend. That brings either their maturation, or more work for psychologists.
We can't aim at non-security and want to stay safe at the same time.
Am I ready to leave all my references behind? Am I ready to leave behind my race, my name, my country, my family, my children, my car, my house, my body, everything that could be called mine? To no longer own anything, not my past, not my future, not my emotions? Am I ready to witness life without any expectation? Everything is available in the moment. There is no need for sadhana, for spiritual quest. Nothing is needed. Just in this moment, sacrifice the pretense to be something.
Who is ready to have nothing?
I certainly can't be the one to decide this. If this is not ready inside of me, if it isn't leaving me yet, I am not in a position to decide that it should leave.
I can’t do anything about it. That is the good news. There is nothing I can do to bring about maturity. I can only observe my immaturity. At every moment, I can witness how much I try to find myself
, how I hope for myself and how I invent myself in a given situation: “I am rich, I am richer, I am less rich, I am poor, I am poorer, I am less poor, I love myself, he loves me, we love each other, we don't love each other, we no longer love each other.” I am only talking to myself. I need to see the mechanism.
When I face my dissatisfaction and my own discomfort, am I also talking to myself?
If I find the cause for them, then yes. If it is only a felt sense, then no, there is peace. Discomfort in my throat, fear in my belly, there is no agitation, no story.
It just happens?
Not even that. What could be more intense than the sensation of the moment? I need to see to what extent I look down on it, thinking that something is greater.
If it is not intense, is it that I'm not able to feel enough?
No, it is that you qualify the experience—because it is always intense. I call the intensity non-intense. It's like saying: “I do not feel my hand.” It is the verbal codification that I use to describe the sensation I have of my hand.
There is always intensity. You are too much of a good boy to know that experience but when you take LSD, you swallow a pill, you keep doing what you were doing and, after a half-hour, you say to yourself: “That's strange, I don't feel anything.” After forty-five minutes, you say again: “That is strange, I still don't feel anything.” And all of a sudden you realize that you've been on a full journey for over an hour. It’s the same thing here. It was so strong that you didn't realize it. Since you don't do LSD, it's not a good example for you, but I can't think of any other. If it isn't clear, perhaps we can find a pill!
What took us away from the ability to recognize this sensation?
Our arrogance, our knowledge, our imagination: “I understand, I am right, I know what is correct.” It isn't a condemnation, it is an observation.