by Eric Baret
In our intimate resonance, there is no longer any God, any religion, any spirituality. Conflict is no longer possible. I become available to what I receive; available to those times when I feel separate—they need to be accepted as well. Separation is one expression of non-separation. This feeling of non-separation is given to me as a form of resonance; I must find the essential in it. Silence is as much in presence as it is in absence, as much in agitation as in stillness. I do not need to be silent to be in silence. I cut short any urge toward ownership, toward religiosity.
It is a religion without a code, with the moment as its centerpiece. That is the essence of Kashmiri Tantric yoga.
What is Bhairava?
A concept which points to a non-concept. It made superb art pieces possible, just like the concept of God made beautiful architecture possible. Churches do not limit God. Bhairava's heads do not limit Bhairava. This feeling finds its expression through the proportion in Roman churches, through the madness of Gothic churches. It expresses itself in Nepal as sculpted masks and in Kashmir as numerous philosophical schools using the word Bhairava to designate supreme reality.
But those are only words. The map isn't the territory. The meaning must be revealed from the inside. It moves from the inside to the outside; then the word gets its meaning. But when you just utter the word, there often is imagination moving from the outside to the inside.
All Sanskrit words that designate the nameless must be spit out from the inside toward the outside, like a mantra. A mantra isn't linked to a meaning. Mantra is an explosion from the inside which can then, sometimes, be spit out, formulated outside. In moments of silence, of complete stillness, certain sounds are felt, and then uttered. Later perhaps, the mantra can be conceptualized and acquires a meaning. But to want to recite an external mantra to reach the inside is complete nonsense; it will stay on the surface.
Abhinavagupta wrote hymns praising Bhairava. He projected an internal emotion into a poem. Meister Eckhart also shared this emotion which later brought him to write his sermons. There, the God he talks about is a true God, a God that moved from the inside to the outside. It is a revelation.
If you read these texts with your mind, it is very unlikely that you will grasp their origin. When you read the word God or the word Bhairava, you immediately project a whole imaginary world onto them. The God that soldiers invoke before going to bomb a country in order to pay less for a barrel of oil is a different God than the one Meister Eckhart talked about. Yet, it is the same word.
Thus, we need to come back to direct emotion. Then, depending on your culture, your capacity, your means of expression, depending on whether you are an architect, a poet, a writer or a musician, you will express it in different terms, sounds, gestures, in particular atmospheres or through a certain lifestyle. It must come from the inside.
That is why the Islamic tradition refused to formulate anything that could be associated with God. In the Islamic sense, God isn't associated with anything—that is His first quality. Anything that you would associate with Him isn't Him. Any name, any shape, isn't Him. He is the non-associated. For Muslims, all those who created a form are idol worshipers.
Poorly understood, as is too often the case with monotheist religions, this vision will be imposed from the outside. In India, this attitude was responsible for the destruction by Islam of innumerable wonderful expressions, from the first Muslim invasions all the way to the decadence of the Mogul period; that is religion in action.
On the level of felt sense, any image, any concept, any name is an insult. That is why in India He is called the Nameless.
Actually, my question was motivated by the fact that I feel something, that I have visions and that I doubt these visions. So, I asked the question wanting you to confirm my vision and, instead, you destroyed everything. When I listen to you, I conclude that it isn't any God, that these are only images. At the same time, I feel these images as gates. I doubt and I do not know what to do with this doubt. I doubt all the time.
The doubt is the gate. In the beginning, the doubt will project itself onto the objective world—you will doubt something. Then, at some point, the doubt starts to eat what it doubts. A doubt without a direction will remain, which is a listening.
You need to remove the object of the doubt. The doubt is not-knowing. It isn't a doubt that projects a non-doubt. The doubt must be a real doubt. The doubt mustn't doubt objects. It must doubt itself. When it stops being a doubt, there remains an availability.
True doubt is energy which stopped being eccentric, which doesn't go away anymore. Yours is still oriented towards something. You doubt, forget what you doubt but remain with the doubt, and something will explode. Everything that you can doubt, you must doubt; there are good reasons for that. We doubt the objective world, and you must doubt it. At some point something will come which you cannot doubt. Live that.
What could it mean to be a Yogi in our times?
Non-dual Tantric yoga doesn't speak about times or Yogis. To take oneself for a Yogi or for any other image is pure pretense. This ownership is the opposite of what non-dual living could be like. Diametrically opposite to this identification, you find the possibility to feel within yourself a space free from images, free from ownership; that is the Tantric yoga approach.
In practice, all daily activities progressively integrate into this intuition of being nothing. To not pretend anything is an opening to the all-encompassing possibility. No longer limited by images and references, every situation—in our times or any other time—appear for what they are: the expression of the whole in which we play our part, without any expectation, without any demand.
Everyday life is a direct reflection of the essence of things. It is our field of investigation, in which we notice whether, or to what degree, our understanding is intellectual, superficial, imaginary, or real and integrated. If a life situation is psychologically difficult, it shows that nonduality is only a concept for me. Action is my field of investigation.
In my intimate relationships, I will discover the extent of my imagination, of my expectations, of my pretensions and of my strategies. It is in that arena especially that I will be able, little by little, to find in myself a space free from ownership. How? By realizing that every demand comes from entitlement. To demand anything from my wife, my lover, my child, my husband or my parents comes from the same illusion: I am looking for emotional security and its materialization depends on someone else's attitude. The need to love, to belong, is the most direct expression of my lack of clarity.
The more I listen deeply to my body through sensory awakening and yoga, the more—if I have joined an authentic tradition—I will notice short periods of time in which there are no demands and no requests. After a session of asanas or pranayama, I will live a few moments really free from the need to possess.
Instead of focusing on yoga as the apparent cause of this rest, I learn to turn my gaze inward and to free that feeling from any cause. The practices did not cause this feeling of well-being; they wiped out the tensions that prevented me from feeling it. When I begin to feel that the peace experienced after a session does not result from the session, but that the session allows peace to resonate inside of me, this understanding will continue to spread to other circumstances. Away from yoga, walking in the street, doing my job or washing the dishes, I will also feel moments of well-being without a cause. These moments will keep spreading, until they become almost constant.
In the Kashmiri teachings, the practice of yoga is not separate from its integration into functional life. The well-being apparently caused by the session will allow me to integrate, to listen to the environment and to myself, to hear the extent to which I am in demand, in intention, in hope.
The technical essence of this teaching is nonviolence, non-demand. Since, when practicing, I do not demand of my body that it master anything whatsoever, I can listen to it. The more I discover this space free from judgment and expectation, the more the superficial layers of
my body are set free; tension, heaviness and compression vanish, allowing the subtler layers of elasticity, light, stillness and vibration to appear.
This approach leads me to let go of the urge to look for myself. When I no longer look for myself, I am present, and in this presence, the outer body collapses inward. After the session ends, this new awareness will bring about emptiness, vibration, light, at other times during the day. Every part of daily life is an opportunity to come back, not toward myself, but toward listening. In that listening, these contemporary times are only an accident.
There is no such thing as traditional times versus modern times. Every era is sacred, every civilization springs from the same essence, the same beauty. We are exactly in the times we need to be—otherwise we wouldn't be here.
Facing everyday life is the essence of every traditional art. No running away, no hope, no regrets or longing for another era, no fantasy of change, of transformation, of the evolution of consciousness or other such pseudo-philosophical nonsense can remain.
Face what is here: peace today, war tomorrow—you can't have one without the other. Face full employment or unemployment, face fine weather or national disaster. Face your body in youth and health or in old age and disease. Face your psyche in its fears, its expectations, its anxiety.
To face doesn't mean to confront, judge, or try to transform; it means to listen. In this listening, free from any expectation, little by little, the psyche lets go of its urges, its fears, its hopes. It finds itself to be a free space in which every individual characteristic can emerge. Every modality of our era, in this fantastic array of energy fragmentation, is now seen as cosmic play, as the exploration of our being, and not as a distraction, or as something to regret or to correct.
In this simple acceptance of the world, of the body and of the psyche as they are, the non-dual tradition of Kashmiri Tantric yoga expresses itself in all its strength.
This allowing of the world in its many modalities does not prevent a clear vision of our times. Yet, the multiple ways a human being suffers no longer appear as something destructive which creates a desire to run away from life. On the contrary, this acceptance invites us to face things better, to listen better. When I realize that the origin of all suffering is imagination, I realize at the same time that it is my civic duty to end it in myself.
War and violence have fear as first cause. It is fear that triggers the need to assert, to demand, to require. And that fear is essentially the fear of not being, of not existing. When I am not acknowledged according to my imaginary requirements, I react and I demand to be recognized, respected, loved. This fear of not existing can bring me to impose my views even on a whole civilization or environment.
It is evident in the current socio-geopolitical situation. The enemy is the one who harbors different ideas, the one who lives differently. Recently, on American TV, a senator asked his fellow citizens to report anyone with a different lifestyle to the police—meaning different lifestyle from the stereotypical one. That is the result of fear! All current conflicts are based on ideology, on the need to be something.
As long as we identify with a race, a country, a history, anything special whatsoever, we remain in fear, in war. We need to assert ourselves, to differentiate and therefore to oppose. Noticing this allows me to find in myself a space free from identification, free from any pretension to be anything whatsoever.
All the suffering in the world is only an opportunity to deepen my intimate life. Suffering does not destroy; it allows maturity to develop, it presents me with what is necessary for self-questioning. Acceptance stops being mere passivity.
Presence to what is here—in my body, in my psyche, in the world—clear seeing without demand, without expectation… this presence is at the heart of our tradition, and at the center of every tradition.
This tradition does not create self-centered yogis but strong, active, well-balanced people. To face every situation, to get involved according to one's capacities, is a natural extension of this vision. There will be involvement, but it won't be psychological; there will be activity, but it won't be ideological; there will be commitment, but without the pretense that other forms of commitments are wrong.
Action springs from vision. Vision is action, and commitment doesn't take a stance against something. Commitment happens for and through something. According to my personal characteristics, I participate in the whole. I do not need any other capacities than those that are mine in the moment. The body and the psyche are here to serve. To serve what is here, not an expectation of what should be here, nor the desire to find myself.
Acting without intention is the essence of joy. The famous anonymous quote from the martial arts of Okinawa, “Karate is not designed to be used,” is at the very heart of traditional combat disciplines: action for the sake of action, action without a doer, the learning of an art without ownership. This does not contradict at all Mas Oyama's sentence, “Karate is designed to be used,” which asserts the technical orientation of this martial art and distinguishes it from modern sports like judo, aikido or even competition karate.
According to the teaching of Kashmiri Shaivism, daily life is the ultimate stillness.
What do you think of the use of transformational medicine, of awareness techniques such as Byron Katie's, whom you have mentioned, or other techniques, other groups, other ways of transforming one's attitude in order to be able to see things differently?
The quality of Byron Katie's work is her presence. She brings you to realize that pretending anything is the sole cause of suffering. As long as you stay with and in this acknowledgment, it is The Work. If you transform this into a technique—a tool where you constantly write down what doesn't suit you, reverse these sentences to free yourself from them and, in the next moment, take something else that disturbs you and write again—then it can become an escape.
To merely challenge the words that describe an emotion does not touch on its origin, which is the pretension to be. You can calm the ego, again and again, but it is only a temporary fix. These tools can have their use for people who do not have the maturity to listen to their emotions on a somatic level.
All yogic tools bring about progression, control, purification, but from our viewpoint, it is postponement. Sooner or later, we will need to abandon control, understanding and manipulation—all that requires the mind to be involved. Freeing certain body areas through willpower only contributes to conceptual knowledge. When I lose my memory, when I get Alzheimer’s, I will not remember how to do The Work, I will not remember that I need to reverse the sentence or how to free myself from this or that energy block. I will not have access to doing anymore. What will be left then?
Any technique which is based on activity depends on the condition of the brain—which does not have a life warranty. Here, the work is based on non-activity. No matter what the condition of your brain is, silence and stillness go deeper than activity.
Everyone has tried, each in their own way, at thirteen to stare at a burning candle without blinking, at fourteen to hold it still, or to stand under an ice-cold waterfall without breathing. To try to own tools and, later, to realize that there is nothing to own, is part of human maturation. As long as I feel the need to find props, I must continue to do so. If I feel the desire to buy a husband, a car, a dog, or to change my personality, I need to do it. And then one day, the desire to change husbands, to free myself from conflict, to change my personality or to see more clearly, all begin to look very childish. From then on, I don't want anything, only that which is here.
What is here is what is given to me, it is the revelation. What else would I want? This revelation changes constantly, but the idea to transform myself is a form of insult. An insult to God. God has made a mistake, I must fix it; I need to change, I need to see things better. But if I needed to see better, then I would see better. The vision is to be found in living my non-vision with humility, and not in seeing more.
Wanting is a horizontal proces
s. I only see the object itself and, no matter how pure, it is still an object. This does not prevent me from being in a situation which seems to create a deep resonance in me, from meeting a man, a dog, a camel, a spiritual teacher… and to act on it—why not? But I find myself entertaining yet another hopeful thought, thinking that the situation might be profitable for me. At some point, I will see that nothing can be favorable or unfavorable.
When I realize that there isn't a me, then everything is good for me. The urge to try something or not disappears; just what is here remains. This doesn't preclude anything. If the luck of the draw brings you to meet Marigal or any other inspired teacher, that is wonderful. But you meet them for the joy of sharing this non-ownership.
Of course, if we were to listen deeply to what Byron Katie says, we would realize that what she says is beyond technique, that she only talks about the essential; but generally, we hear her on the level of technique. Her undeniable quality is not at fault.
In the same way, while listening to Jean Klein, some remained at the level of technique, of words. They learned a non-dual teaching and they repeated non-dual sentences. Jean Klein is not to blame; their intentional listening is. Those who wanted to find themselves, to become wise or realized, fell into the pot and have only themselves to blame. They listened in a self-centered way and distorted what was given to them: the art of offering, of sacrifice. The teaching wasn't designed for anyone to own. It was the art of giving thanks.
When it's listened to in a polluted way, the same teaching seems to be reduced to a technique. In that way, one could completely take ownership of Jean Klein's or Byron Katie's approach. It all depends on the way you listen. If you meet her and you really listen, you will notice that her questions are not about something external, they unfold organically. This will allow a resonance in you and, when you are tempted to assert something or to be dissatisfied, you will notice your mechanism. Resonance shows me my limits—not what is authentic, but to what extent I am phony. In this way her teaching gives wonderful results.