However, if it is not our experience that everything is consciousness and if we have not come to the deep conclusion that it is so, then it means that some doubts and beliefs still remain. In this case, we have to investigate further.
If we do understand that it is true although it may not conform to our actual experience, then we can provisionally take the attitude that everything is consciousness; take it on trust. By trust, I do not mean belief. There is a big difference. By trust, I mean based on the understanding that there is nothing in our experience, nor is there any valid argument to suggest that there is anything that is not consciousness. If we have come to this conclusion we become truly open to the possibility that everything is consciousness. We put this conclusion to the test and we find that it is confirmed in our life. It is not a verbal, conceptual confirmation. It is a living confirmation. It is confirmed internally by causeless joy and peace, and it is confirmed externally by the unfolding revelation of the divine in the world.
***
Sometimes, during meditation, thinking stops, the residual tension in the body is released, attention returns to the source, and nothing remains. However, my mind doesn’t like this nothingness, so thinking starts again, and the process is repeated.
This nothingness is a blank state.
There is nobody in a blank state. It is not that I am experiencing nothingness; there is no thinking about nothingness. I couldn’t tell you how long it had lasted.
Yes, but it lasted. Everything that lasts is in time. Everything that is in time is an object. Even if it is a blank object, it is still an object. What you were seeing was your expectation, a projection coming from expectation. It is still the mind. When we go to understanding, it is totally free. We do not go there through effort but as a result of grace. When we try to solve a math problem, we don’t make any effort because we don’t know what to do. We just take a look at the data and then relax. In this effortless relaxation, the solution comes to us. In this timeless moment, we are in touch with the source of intelligence. Don’t expect to see the timeless in time. Don’t expect to make the timeless last. The timeless doesn’t last. In our effort to see it in time, we make an object of it.
The situation was quite relaxed. In that blank, there doesn’t seem to be anything one can do because there isn’t any thinking. So one cannot say, “Here is a blank, therefore . . .”
You have created this blank and you have to wait until the energy that created it dissolves by itself. It is a manufactured state created by the desire to visualize the truth. You have to understand deeply that the truth cannot be visualized by the mind. It cannot be visualized in time, which is itself a product of mind. Your energies and desires are focused on the truth, so all you have to do is understand clearly that truth is not an object. As a result all effort will stop. All your life, you have been accustomed to making efforts to attain goals, but now you have to let go of this residual effort. Once we have realized that all these goals cannot bring about happiness, there remains only one goal and that is to realize the Self.
When we understand that truth is not an object we realize simultaneously that we cannot be present as a person to enjoy it, because the object and the subject always come together. If truth cannot appear as an object, by the same token it cannot appear to a subject. The bad news is that the sense of being a person has to disappear. The good news is that the person never existed in the first place. When we have a moment of understanding we are free from the person, we are in our true nature. We cannot go there by our own effort. We go there in a moment of grace.
Can we be there knowingly?
We are there knowingly, but it is not an intellectual knowing. We can formulate it if needed. For instance, it is being formulated right now because a question has been asked. When we are happy, we are happy. When we notice intellectually that we are happy, we are no longer happy. In this case, we create a person who is happy. The truth is that we, as a person, are never happy because we are happiness itself.
So being there knowingly has nothing to do with the person. It is just a knowing.
Yes, it knows itself by itself. Joy knows itself. As children we didn’t even know the word joy, we were joy. Later on we started to think about what joy meant, to make an object or a goal out of it, and therefore we lost it. Hence the search began. However, to be knowingly happy is to be happiness. To be knowingly intelligent is to be intelligence. This happiness, intelligence, and beauty is self-aware. It is not intellectually self-aware. It knows itself by itself. Shankara says in the Atmabodha, “It is self-luminous, unlike other objects that need the light of the sun or a lamp to be seen.” This Self doesn’t need any external light to be perceived. It is effortlessly self-aware. In this moment you are effortlessly aware of my words and also of your own thoughts and reactions. You are that effortless space of awareness. Awareness is the most natural thing. It is the abode of happiness. It is happiness. However, we have forgotten that it is our treasure, that we already are it, and we think instead that happiness comes from external things. We don’t need to make awareness self-conscious. It is already perfectly self-conscious.
Understand that what we most need and love is our own Self, and that it is not something far away out of reach. It is this very Self which, here and now, is aware of these words and whatever else you are experiencing in this moment. It is also the same Self that is experiencing everything that everybody else and every creature is experiencing in this moment.
Several teachers have said that the Self is only conscious of itself, and not of anything else.
It is true that it is only conscious of itself, but when that is fully understood it is also understood that everything is the Self, that nothing is apart from it. So whatever is experienced is experienced as the Self.
So consciousness doesn’t see the birds, for instance, as something separate from itself. Birds are consciousness.
Ask yourself, “Can those birds which you are looking at now, be perceived without consciousness?” The answer is obviously, “No!” If the birds cannot be perceived without consciousness, how can we possibly claim that they are independent of consciousness? Try to separate the birds from consciousness. It is impossible! It is only when we name our experience “the birds” that the thought apparently separates us from it. When there is perceiving, there is only perceiving. Nothing is perceived and nobody perceives. There is only the Self at every moment. There is only the Self and yet we think, “I perceived the birds.” However, that is only a thought, and there is no thinker thinking this thought. In fact, there is no thought, there is just thinking. There is only the Self. There is only non-duality, at all times, and there is no time, at all times.
***
I would like to ask about effort. The cat watching the mouse has to be vigilant, and sometimes that feels like effort.
As long as we think that there are mice to watch, there will be a cat, and we play cat and mouse. The moment we understand that the cat and mice are one, the game stops. As long as children play cops and robbers, they enjoy their game, but when they get tired, they have a break for candy. However, as long as we think that there is something to do, cat and mouse is a good game to play. The same thing applies to self-inquiry. It is also a good game to play if we think that there is something to achieve. Ramana Maharshi was very clear on that point. He recommended self-inquiry for those who really wanted to do something. However, he would also say that there is nothing to be done. “Just enjoy yourself. Abide in the Self. You are that already,” he would say. Most people didn’t listen, so they would play cat and mouse.
At the beginning of the weekend I experienced a spontaneous openness. Then there were layers of repressed energy, in the form of dryness, the same blank wall. At these times the natural openness is not perceived. Could you speak more of the patience required in the exploration of this depression, this dullness, this dislike?
We should love our dislike, because even our dislike is the Self. Love is a prerequisite
for understanding, dissolution, and freedom. As long as we maintain a separation between ourselves and our dislikes, we perpetuate it. As long as we maintain a conflict with our enemy, we perpetuate the hostility. The moment we embrace our enemy, he lays down his arms. We have to stop separating ourselves from our dislikes, to stop saying, “I don’t like my dislikes.”
I’ve experienced love coming into my dislikes, but it takes patience and courage.
It is not a manufactured love. On the progressive path we could practice permeating our dislikes with love but that would be a manufactured love, a superimposition of one feeling on top of another. I am not saying that this type of approach could not be beneficial, but it is not what is being spoken about here. Love means to be open, simply to include whatever arises within consciousness without preference, interference, or intention, not to manufacture anything, but to see the facts as they are. See your dislike about the fact, which is itself simply another fact, and see your dislike about your dislike, which is yet another fact. We have piled up feelings, one on top of another, and we have to start dismantling them from the top of the pile. The top of the pile is always in the now. It is whatever is presenting itself in this moment. However, there is nothing to do about the pile. It dismantles itself in our benevolent, welcoming presence.
Love is all-inclusive. Some people only love their own children. When some women have their first child, they love it so much that there is no love left for their partner. This is a case of love being applied only to one realm but not to the whole. The Self is intelligence, beauty, and love. Since everything is the Self, we should apply intelligence, beauty, and love to everything and see everything as intelligence, beauty, and love.
I feel that this applies to everything, whether it is the birdsong or the sound of the heater. If I am distracted by thoughts, I am not receptive. But when I am simply receptive, the “I” disappears, and there is space for everything.
There can be thinking without the sense of being a person. What you have just expressed is a good example of that. We should not limit the realm of our experience to perceiving and sensing; that would be limiting God. We should include thinking. However, at some point, the thinking that is based on a personal entity drops away by itself.
I don’t think there is anything I can do about thinking, but I can choose silence when it comes. Is that thinking again?
Know that ultimately everything is silence.
It is difficult to see everything as silence if we divide things into beautiful and ugly. Out of love for the truth, there is a tendency to choose the beautiful in preference to the ugly. However, whatever one is disgusted with or hates tends to come back with quite a force. Can you comment on this?
When we love our hate, we stop hating. Love always wins. To love hatred means to welcome it. It doesn’t mean that we should do what it tells us to do, but we shouldn’t suppress it either. When we love hatred we put ourselves out of the process of hatred, and love begins.
But it is so strong. Where does it come from?
It is the old habit of thinking that we are separate. Just let it go. Go back to the child in yourself. Be kind to it and listen to it, because the child is the Self. The child doesn’t hate or love; it just is. Don’t resist it. Just surrender. What is important is to get rid of the notion that there is something to change, something to fix, that things are not the way they should be. Stop playing God. When we stop playing God, we are God.
I would like to ask about pain and suffering.
There is a distinction. Do you mean pain or suffering?
I think it is artificial to say that there is a difference. In many cases I would say they go hand-in-hand.
Suffering, psychological suffering, is not necessary and can be avoided. However, there is certainly pain and that cannot be avoided. Hence the distinction. To enjoy pleasure and suffer pain is part of the package of having a body. Psychological suffering is the most intense of all and it is not necessary. If you don’t want to make a distinction, I cannot explain why psychological suffering is not necessary. Psychological suffering is related to the notion of a sufferer, a person. It is always related to past and future. Consider for instance the case of my friend William Samuel. During World War II he was in China. He was assigned a Chinese interpreter who was a Taoist sage, although he didn’t know it at the time. The first thing that he noticed about this man was that he was always happy, smiling and enjoying.
One day they were in great danger. William’s platoon was being pursued by the Japanese who were very close. They were running back towards their lines. There were hills on the horizon and the sage pointed to the purple line of the mountains and said to William, “Look, how beautiful!” William said, “It was the last thing I would have thought about at that moment.”
Some time later William discovered that three months earlier the sage’s wife had been raped and killed by the Japanese and that they had also killed his two sons. That’s what triggered his interest in this man, and he eventually became his student. This Taoist sage was free from the past. He may have been in pain, but he was not suffering on account of the death of his wife and children. In seeing the beauty of the purple hills while under enemy fire, he was teaching a wonderful lesson in courage and love. It is hard to imagine more atrocious circumstances.
Not too many people are in a position of such psychological and spiritual maturity. Look at the millions of people that you see on television.
Of course, but we are here to discuss another possibility. We are not here to save the world or alleviate the suffering in the world. We first have to save ourselves from suffering, because unless we are free from suffering, we cannot help others. As long as we see this world as a world of misery, we perpetuate the misery. It is only in the moment that we see the beauty of the whole painting and not just the light places, that we are able to convey this sense of beauty, this sense of eternity, to others. All suffering is based on the notion that death is bad. Whether we are aware of it or not, suffering is about the fear of death. People are willing to suffer a great deal of physical pain rather than die. The belief that we are subject to death is the cause of suffering and this suffering prevents us from truly living, because instead we live a life based on this false belief. This belief projects us into the past and future. It is incompatible with happiness. Understand that there is no death.
Some people experience tremendous mental suffering and commit suicide to end the suffering. You say that suffering has its roots in the fear of death, but they are saying that death is preferable to suffering, so how is the fear of death the cause of suffering in these cases?
These people have mistaken the origin of their suffering. They want to escape a situation that is unbearable, but psychological suffering is always created by the person. It hinges around the sense of being separate. Nobody imposes this on us. I am not saying that suicide is always wrong. There are circumstances in which it may be the only way out.
Many people say that they aren’t frightened of dying but rather the suffering that leads up to it.
Yes, but the origin of this suffering is the notion of being a person, a separate individual. This separate individual is subject to fear. It is this fear that generates suffering.
How can we be free of the fear of death?
We are afraid of death and focus our minds on it. We are hypnotized by our fear of it. However, the true question is about life, not death. Before we understand who dies, we need to understand who lives. It is too soon to understand death, but we can understand life. Life is present right now. So, who is alive? When we find out what life is, we may also discover that there is no death. After all, who is there to die? This path is a path of joy, not fear. We see the world according to our own projections. If we believe we are separate individuals, we will be subject to desire and fear, and we will suffer. A suffering world will then appear in accordance with this belief and we will perpetuate it, without realizing that we are actually creating it. If we see a w
orld of injustice, we become injustice and perpetuate it.
The implication of this may be disappointing, but it is the only way out of suffering for ourselves and for others. Unless we are free from suffering, how can we help someone else?
For instance, consider the case that you believe that death exists and that it is the ultimate evil. You have a friend dying of cancer in the hospital. You visit him and ask him how he is and tell him not to worry. He knows he is dying and that everyone is lying to him. You are his best friend and you come and lie to him also, not perhaps by telling him that everything will be fine, you may be more honest than that, but you will still be piling up your own fear on top of his.
It would be a different situation if you were free from the fear of death. You would just go and listen. Whatever is going to happen will happen. Whatever you say, which will of course be unpredictable, will somehow work miracles. You do the best you can, given the circumstances.
If we think that death is the ultimate evil, something we have to fight against, we fail to understand that fighting is simply more suffering. We will see our mission as a war. War against poverty, war against social injustice, war against death, war against illness, but nevertheless still war. War is the perpetuation of suffering.
It is very different if we see that things are not that important. This life is a dream and we play our part in it. If we are detached, we play our part as well as we can and because of our detachment, we play our best. We are like a violinist who doesn’t worry about the critics while performing, and is therefore going to play well. It is the same thing here. We are not attached to the results because there are no results. It is a game and there are no positive or negative outcomes. This attitude will enable us to give the highest form of help we are capable of.
The Perfume of Silence Page 9