Let the Moon Be Free- Conversations on Kashmiri Tantra

by Eric Baret

  You can also take in new information which will soften your judgment, but this will not take you very far.

  Your appreciation depends on your situation. For a Frenchman, Waterloo will always be a defeat; for an Englishman it will always be a victory. There is no use asking if, profoundly, it is one or the other; it depends from which point of view you are looking. When you comprehend this, you no longer identify with your ideas, you no longer look for yourself through them. A space has been created. Freed from the fantasy of being right, your opinions do not stop you. They are still limited, but they no longer rigidly define you.

  Go to a museum, examine the Chinese or Korean porcelain from a certain era and perhaps, you will notice that you do not see it. You know that a whole world exists here, that somebody else could appreciate, but that is not accessible to you. You acknowledge your artistic, intellectual, or sensitive incompetence.

  In yoga or dance practice, we also notice that certain movements do not fit us. That's the way it is, we do not feel diminished by that. I am not upset by the limits of my body or of my intelligence. I do not need my mind to be receptive to Chinese porcelain or my body to be able to perform this or that posture. I accept my incapacities and, since I respect them, they become very elastic.

  If I have the opportunity to contemplate Chinese porcelain with a lover of that art, I will begin to appreciate, at my level, its extraordinary character. Only love can transmit, it makes me look through the eyes of the one who admires. Depending on my capacities, a resonance is created in me, and the discovery begins. But if I view the art with somebody who has learned things, with an intellectual, my feeling will remain superficial. We need to approach an art with someone who is passionate about it. We appreciate music better in the company of a musician.

  But it is not essential to listen to music or to rave in front of porcelain in order to be fulfilled. Being available to one’s own intellectual, emotional or artistic capacities is a form of balance. The mind has its limits, but they need not constrain me. I can be free from them. I simply notice that my capacity for analysis is conditioned by my emotional, intellectual or professional life. Depending on whether I have a raging toothache or I am in vibrant health, my capacity for reasoning will be different. I approach things differently if I’m in love or if I have just been rejected, etc.

  My reasoning will always be restricted; that is its beauty, its character. There will come a day when I no longer feel bound to it, limited by it.

  When you refer to what we are by “I,” are you talking about what we are, that is to say the Being that perceives all of that? Is that what we deeply are?

  When you were eight, you dreamt of owning a red car; at twenty, you desire to be free of yourself. Those are two symbols. To be free of oneself is a symbol that is more aligned with what we are talking about than the red car, but as long as this stays a symbol, it is still a car. Notice that the deep yearning is to stop pretending and, in the same instant, let go of that understanding.

  It is important to detect in ourselves this greed to want to receive, to take, to be. Always begging like a dog who needs a bone: “I want that, if I had that, give me that.” Notice the mechanism. We need affection, acknowledgment, respect, teachings, we need to own this or that. We are always begging, in all directions.

  Become familiar with this way of functioning without making any comments. Can I be any other way? No! Then I face reality, in the moment. It is not about feeling guilty, but about noticing how I act.

  When I ask, I cannot receive. The more I become aware of my greed, the more I am free from it. As long as I want to acquire, as long as I expect something, this inner demand prevents me from receiving. We can’t demand a gift, demand grace or joy. We can only receive when we open.

  Become available to your unavailability.

  It reminds me of what Meister Eckhart says in instruction three of the Book of Spiritual Instructions. That is a very beautiful text, very short, to be read every day. The last sentence is the essence of any teaching: “Take a good look at yourself and, whenever you find yourself, deny yourself.”

  The highest realization is to become aware of our insatiability.

  We cannot see truth, beauty, joy, for they are our essence. The only part of ourselves which is visible is the one which wants to grasp.

  I feel the tension; this awareness happens in relaxation. I can only detect tension in the letting go. When I am really tense, I cannot be aware of it. When I perceive my eyes, my tongue, my nose in continual tension, I am relaxed; otherwise I wouldn’t notice them.

  If I say, “I am available,” instantly I am back in knowledge, information, grasping. I am trying to become Superman again, to become an awakened being, to become available.

  There is nothing to become. I notice my greed and that is the ultimate step. I embody freedom when I notice my lack of freedom. That is why in the East, this approach is called the negative way. We point toward what is non-objective. When I become aware of what is objective in me, this objectivity refers to its own space, to its origin which is non-objective. Then it no longer is an experience, it is a non-experience. That is real knowledge. There is nothing to know and nobody who knows. Detecting this grasping is the highest state. We need to understand that, to let it go around in our minds in every direction until it becomes a lived experience. That is yoga.

  Recognize envy, observe the demand: I need. At one point, an immense laughter invades my heart when I feel the rise of the I need in me. That laughter is freedom. In that space, nothing is needed. What’s left? The gift, with no action of giving or anybody who gives.

  Giving makes one happy, receiving doesn’t. Receiving burdens, weighs down, restricts.

  I don’t want to get anything. I do not wish for an initiation, a transmission, a teaching, all of this burdens me, bores me, locks me up. No, I do not desire anything. I vibrate in that space, that resonance.

  Giving without anyone who gives. When I give, I let go of the giver. Offering brings freedom. Life is only giving, there is no separation.

  As long as I want to take, to receive, to follow a teaching, I can only refuse this teaching which I pretend to desire. It’s a bit like someone who asks for an initiation, someone who demands a gift. You don’t demand a gift. You are receptive. The initiation, the teaching, the gift will arrive in the moment of opening, never when it is demanded, when it is hoped for. There is nothing to wish for. In the non-demand, everything is received. As long as I expect, I say no.

  Even though you had Jean Klein as a teacher, you do not refer to him constantly. That is not always the case in the different groups I have been part of. Why do we often feel the need to refer to somebody else? How does one get to speak from their own authority?

  Become aware that you cannot know anything. What we call knowledge is a projection. What is said only has value in the moment.

  If you invite friends for dinner, you evaluate your availability, your bank account, you go out and you spend ten, twenty or one hundred dollars. You look at the fruit, the vegetables, the grains, and a sort of resonance appears. Depending on your budget, on the style of your friends, on whether it’s summer or winter, you buy some foods or others. You go home and you still haven’t decided on the menu. You start to peel, to chop, to dice and, little by little, a meal takes form. You do not need any recipe. The recipe happens in the moment. You discover the color, the smell of the fruit, of the vegetable, which stimulates your creativity.

  There is no need to know. Life does not demand any formal education. What do you want to know? You can only pretend. You cannot know anything.

  Basically, yoga is the art of not owning. You do not know anything and, when you don’t pretend anything, you are open to knowing everything. The competencies needed for functional life will present themselves without anything to learn, to understand, to own. The talent you need, you will discover through love. If you fall in love with martial arts, this truthfulness will bring you some forms of resonance, o
f understanding. If you fall in love with yoga, with dance or with music, your enthusiasm for these arts will give you the intuitive capacity for discovery. What is more beautiful than the unprecedented?

  But it is discovery for the joy of discovery. Before you reach your deathbed, you will not have explored everything; life is infinite. You do not discover to accumulate, to know more, to write a book on the subject, to become an expert on spirituality, on art. There is no specialist, only tendencies. You will feel more and more in symbiosis with this resonance. But it is not knowledge. You can never know anything, you can just be sensitive to something.

  When you live with a woman, you cannot know her. You can be in love, available, but you can never know anything. If you imagine that you know a woman, you will undoubtedly run into problems. Not knowing resonates in you and will become really alive, concrete. Any interpretation is in the moment.

  It is possible, in the moment, to embody knowledge. When someone asks you something, there comes a resonance, and from there, an intuition. It flows through you like a piece of music flowed through the life of Bach or Mozart. The next moment, you no longer know anything on that subject.

  I remember the former curator of the Indian collections of the largest museum in Los Angeles, one of the greatest specialists of Himalayan art of that time. He was asked to write a book on Rajput painting—a romantic subject that is not of real interest to the true lovers of the arts of the roof of the world. He wrote the book called Rajput Paintings, considered by many one of the best popular writings on the subject. I met him soon after and he told me: “I didn’t know anything about painting before I wrote the book and I still don’t know anything about it.” He became available to this form of art for the time he needed to write the book. The book was written. Then he no longer needed all that knowledge.

  Knowledge can appear, but only in the moment. And no one knows anything.

  To want something is to live in fear. It’s the same as wanting a red car or a blonde woman. Some people feel the need to know something and they become specialists of yoga, of nonduality or of India.

  There is nothing to read, nothing to study—except out of passion. It is the love of Truth that takes you to Tantra, to car mechanics or to equestrian sport. You do it for the taste, you don’t look for yourself in your exploration, you do not expect anything for yourself in it, you are just a perfect tool.

  When you are available, the man-woman relationship becomes less pathological. Since you do not demand anything, a profound relationship can be born. You know you don’t need anything. When you don’t demand anything, everything is there; all creativity, spontaneity, elasticity, all of life is present. When you demand, you are miserable, locked in the past, agitated.

  There is nothing to know, nothing to ask for; that is true science, that is freedom.

  To become aware of the fact that we do not need anything is extraordinary. We have lived all our life convinced that it was compulsory to know, to learn, to be—and suddenly we realize how absurd that was. When I don’t know anything, everything is possible, every piece of knowledge can live in me. When I assert something, I shut myself off from any other knowledge. My little knowing isolates me, freezes me, cuts me off from the world. When I do not pretend anything, all knowledge is accessible, all of it can incarnate.

  Following what you just said, I conclude that the day when I no longer feel the need to be interesting, to be safe, because I no longer feel afraid, I will no longer need to quote anybody or to refer to anything external.

  No need to make an agenda out of it. Just see, in a flash, that all knowledge is misery, memory, a prison. See it now, in the moment. Why chain yourself, limit yourself to this or that? Isn’t the rest interesting? Why be a specialist? No! Everything captivates me, everything is beautiful. I do not want to settle for one piece of knowledge, I am open to everything that presents itself.

  How do I go about it? I listen.

  In a foreign country, when I do not speak the language, what do I do? I listen, I look, I feel, I observe facial expressions, movements, gestures, resonance. Using all of that, I can communicate, I can love without prejudice. There is nothing to know. Of course, we are more or less gifted for assimilation—that’s another issue. But the joy of not knowing is always here.

  I am particularly sensitive to your remark: “Don’t make an agenda out of it.” Every time, it is as if I have just realized something and then the mind takes ownership and says: “From now on this is how it will be.”

  Yes. As soon as you understand something, you must let go of it.

  You cannot understand anything; understanding happens. Clarity is only present when no one is here. As soon as I say, “I understand,” I fall into the soup. It’s like thinking: “I am realized.” It might be good for business as a guru, but that’s all.

  Understanding does not bring anything. Nothing is understood. Nothing needs analysis. Interpretation is a fantasy. It is enough to stop projecting non-understanding.

  The sight of a tree does not need any explanation. When you stop thinking, when you stop imagining the tree, you no longer stand in the way of unity. This non-separation can be called understanding, but nothing is understood and no one understands—there is nothing outside.

  Wanting to “understand someone” is violence, racism. I do not understand anyone; I listen to this flow of emotion, the sadness, the joy of those I meet. I do not have the arrogance to want to understand those around me. From my listening comes a resonance. In that resonance there is affection, beauty and love. There is no separation.

  Wanting to be free or wanting to understand are forms of sacrilege. Wanting to be humble too. “I’d like to be humble.” You become aware of the mechanism; you realize; you smile at so much arrogance.

  When you say that is a sacrilege, isn’t that a judgment? Earlier you said that we don’t have a choice. Thus, someone who needs to die, to own a red car or to become realized does not have a choice. But when you say that is sacrilege or when you evoke violence…

  People who commit sacrilege do not have a choice either.

  But the word “sacrilege” implies right and wrong.

  When you clearly see resonance as non-separation, it becomes silence; if you feel it as separate, it becomes an object of reflection. Reflection is a sacrilege.

  Of course, from a metaphysical standpoint, sacrilege isn’t outside of us. Don’t take what is said here too literally.

  All sounds are carried by silence, but we still can speak of musical harmony or disharmony. All colors are brought by silence, but we can speak of pure colors. All forms are born in silence, yet certain forms and proportions are more clearly pervaded by silence than others.

  A mantra chanted by somebody who has mastered its science will have a different effect than the mere repetition of common language formulas. But at a higher level, you are right, there is no difference. Deeply, every sound is the articulation of silence. But whether chanted in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew or Sanskrit, a mantra is a sound more distinctly bathed in silence than common language.

  When you chant a mantra, the science of sound brings it to resonate in you, then it dies in the heart. When you recite a profane text, it can’t really disappear, it will remain in the form of thought.

  Sacrilege is that which doesn’t emphasize unity but increases separation. Trying or wanting something separates. Conversely, being free of all process brings welcoming, availability and non-separation.

  Every time we want, we commit sacrilege. This sacrilege dies in the silence of the heart as soon as we become aware of it. Awareness of sacrilege is its extinction.

  It would be better to avoid thinking about this meeting. Too many elements were formulated and this could be hard to digest.

  Forget everything that was said. There is nothing to understand, to know. If you respect that, the essential can come to life. All attempts to think things over, to analyze, to remember, to argue would only be agitation. You will need some time to as
similate everything that was said tonight. Let digestion happen, like a boa who digests his zebra for days on end. For that process to take place, you need to be quiet and not think about what you swallowed. In this serenity, all this data will migrate to the different regions of the mind and will finally collapse in the heart. Those are not items for reflection.

  Thank you for listening.

  Chapter 8

  Searching is postponing

  Those who gloat at what they have done, have done nothing that deserves praise or blame, since the real agent in them and through them is none other than God, and they are but the placeholder for the manifestation of His actions.

  Abd-El-Kader: The Book of Stops

  You say that sensitivity is the doorway to silence. It is true that when I concentrate on my body, I feel peaceful and happy. I am curious if perhaps this is only my imagination, my hope… Did you experience, with Mr. Jean Klein, this sort of enthusiasm, this feeling that I have, that I have found something extraordinary?

  Jean Klein did not ask for anything. That was his most striking feature. He did not ask you to change. He harbored no violence whatsoever towards your behaviors.

  Jean Klein saw you as you were, with your conflicts, your problems, and never did he want to change you, even a fraction of an inch. That is extraordinary respect! Think of all the gurus, of all the teachers who transform their students and supposedly clarify them. Does this create anything besides egos infatuated with themselves, feeling more and more separate from their environment and from the whole universe?

  He did not ask for any transformation and never pointed out anything negative in his friends. You came into his room and he marveled at your beauty; he did not see anything else. Of course, the beauty he was seeing was his own, but the wonderment he had at his own beauty reflected in you. In turn you were amazed by his beauty. This beauty then became yours. You felt invited to keep listening to what was there, deeply, without ever pushing. No violence, no demands; you felt completely free. You could become anything. There were no comments. For him, no matter what you became was right.